Brain Storm (38 page)

“I know, I know,” chuckled Harper. “He’s really a good boy at heart. Anyway, before you go too far out of your way making work for me, I thought I’d let you get to know your client a little better,” he said. “I sent some stuff to your old address. I wouldn’t call it
Brady
material,” he added with an ominous laugh. “And I threw in the TDD printouts, too.” His voice assumed his Mary Whitlow falsetto. “ ‘I just want us to be alone together. And next week, James will be gone to Nevada. I want to see you and have you touch me with your signs.’ ”

“I don’t have the stuff you sent yet,” said Watson, paging through the materials Harper had sent him. “The people at Stern, Pale said it was sent by regular mail. You know what that means.”

A silence at the other end.

“That means government employees are responsible for delivering the documents,” continued Watson, “which means the documents are probably in South Dakota by now, or maybe they were sent to Mr. Whitlow by mistake. There’s no telling, when the government is in charge, is there, Mr. Harper?”

“You sound like a criminal already, and it’s only your second day on the job. Your boy’s in Minnesota being studied like the insect he is, and I’m seriously considering those conspiracy charges I told you about. I sent you some other stuff to consider before formally rejecting our plea offer.”

“What is this, a depo?” asked Watson, riffling pages, “a hearing transcript?”

“So you
do
have it,” said Harper. “Kid, you break me up,” he said without a trace of levity in his voice.

Brady
sounded familiar, but Watson’s Criminal Procedure course had happened three years ago; he’d studied the subject matter for seventy-two hours and had retained the information all the way up to the closing paragraphs of the last essay question. He opened a window to the right of his information manager, double-clicked on the Reference icon, and selected West’s Guide to Legal Terms and Notable Cases. At the query prompt, he typed in
Brady
and hit return.

“You like computers so much,” said the prosecutor, “and so does your client, apparently. It’s a transcript from a computer Usenet group. One of those on-line bulletin board deals where like-minded people can ‘meet’ in virtual conference rooms and type messages to each other on their keyboards. Mr. Whitlow chats with a group of guys who call themselves the Order of the Eagles. Maybe you’ve heard of them? Remember the IRS agent who was splattered all over Atlanta by a car bomb a few years back? Remember when they tried to blow up the Department of Education? The Florida abortion clinics? Nice fellas. Good old boys who like to get together and talk about their feelings. Nigger jokes. Weapons and ammo recommendations. Welfare queen stories. Nigger this, nigger that. How to kill a baby killer. When your boy signs on he uses the handle Thor61. Some kind of Aryan, right-wing militia thing, I’m told. Once he gets on-line, old Thor ain’t shy when it comes to expressing his feelings about African-Americans.”

While Harper dressed Whitlow up in Satan’s filthy colors, Watson’s query was answered: “Brady materials—evidence favorable to the defense
which the prosecution is obligated to turn over, even if it is not requested. From the United States Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963).”

“How did you get these?” asked Watson, skimming the pages. “This is …” he stammered. “This is bullshit” was what he wanted to say, but instead he cast about for a plausible legal pejorative. “This is an invasion of my client’s privacy,” he said, somewhat tentatively. “It’s an unlawful search,” he added with gusto.

Harper scoffed. “Let’s analyze this together.” Watson could almost hear the prosecutor’s tongue pushing his cheek into the phone. “We found out that your boy visits one of these on-line, right-wing, extremist Web sites. We paid a law student nerd to log on and read a transcript of computer postings that took place in a public newsgroup and were stored in an on-line Usenet library, the contents of which are accessible to anyone with a modem. Then we downloaded the transcript and printed it out, along with any other sessions featuring your client’s user ID or the handle Thor61.”

Watson’s eye skimmed pages until he found Thor61: “And if they think Africa is such a Garden of Eden, let ’em go back there and live in banana trees with their cousins. We could have the United Nations build basketball courts all over the continent.”

Harper cleared his throat. “Maybe in law school you learned some new-wave Fourth Amendment theories about how downloading a transcript from a public computer bulletin board is an illegal search. I’m just a government employee, so it’s probably way over my head. Come to think of it, Judge Stang’s also just a government employee, so it might be over his head, too.”

Watson scanned an affidavit and fought off an attack of gooseflesh.

“You want to put jokes, posters, and library books into evidence?” asked Watson. “Maybe you should see what kind of movies he checks out from Blockbuster. Maybe you could have somebody testify that he didn’t fulfill government specifications for being sufficiently moved by the Roots miniseries.”

“Good idea,” said Harper. “It’s not the books, it’s what he did with them and his accompanying comments. More conspiracy stuff. We’ll get it in. Even if we have to take an interlocutory appeal to the Eighth Circuit and reverse Judge Stang to do it.”

“That’s it?” asked Watson, trying to sound unimpressed.

“Oh, I forgot,” Harper added with a chuckle. “We’re adding a charge under the new Violence Against Women Act on the strength of Mary’s testimony that he threatened her with deadly force after killing her chosen heterosexual companion.” Harper chortled. “Fix me up with a computer, kid. I could write a book on this one. Jury bestseller. How’s this sound? ‘Members of the jury, Elvin Brawley shared a language and a disability with Mary Whitlow’s only son, little Charlie Whitlow, a deaf child. Elvin taught Mary Whitlow how to talk to her son using American Sign Language, the only true language of the deaf, and then he fell in love with her and her son. One day last March, that love died, when Elvin Brawley was murdered by a racist who didn’t want his own son to be able to communicate with his mother using sign language.’ ”

“If this is what you wouldn’t call Brady material,” said Watson. “Where’s the stuff you would call Brady material?”

A detectable pause ensued, followed quickly by a sharp laugh.

“If I had Brady I’d have to give that to you, wouldn’t I?” protested Harper.

“Yes, you would,” said Watson. “I guess my next question would be
when
would you give it to me? Sometime before trial, right? Like the day before?”

“This is turning into a misunderstanding,” said Harper soothingly. “I didn’t say I had Brady material.”

“And you didn’t say you don’t have Brady material, am I right?”

“These are bad boys, Joe,” his tone shifting from professional adversariness to avuncular concern. “You don’t want to cut your baby teeth workin’ for these jackals. They run guns, fraud schemes, money laundries, counterfeit rings. They got silos in southern Missouri full of explosives. Lately they’ve been recruiting the skinhead fringes from military bases. And if we find out your boy is a member, he may see a couple more trials after this one, or we’ll amend our complaint and do them all at once.”

Watson felt a chill spreading outward from a sudden attack of nausea, just as Myrna Schweich appeared at the door. She was wearing a worsted, gray, four-button wool suit, matching gray heels, nylons, fresh, tastefully sheer makeup, a silk blouse. Downright corporate.

“Can you hold a minute?” said Watson. He put his hand over the receiver. “Dr. Green’s fees came in,” he whispered to Myrna. “It’s Harper. He says Whitlow belongs to some kind of militia.” He could feel blood drain from his face.

Myrna curled her lip, then bit it thoughtfully. “What else is he telling you?”

“Order of the Eagles,” he said. “Remember the Department of Education? 1999?”

“Does he have Whitlow connected to them?” A glimmer of fear appeared in her eyes, then vanished. “Solid evidence? Or is he fishing? He’s fishing, goddammit!” She took the phone from him and covered the mouthpiece with her small, freckled hand.

“Does he think that I moved you over here?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Watson. “He asked me that. I told him I came here because I did research for you and I needed office space.”

“Good. Look at me,” she said solemnly, grabbing him by his sober tie, pulling his head down to her level, peering up at him with a ferocious look. “No chinks in the armor. Tell him nothing. The best offense is offensiveness,” she urged. “If need be, you will stand alone in a field of corpses. You’ll beat him to a bloody stump with a bicycle chain in front of a federal jury unless he gives you what you want. Are you ready?”

Watson grimly nodded, and she gave the phone back to him.

“Yeah,” said Watson into the receiver, “Sorry, Harper. Go ahead.”

Myrna whacked her forehead with the meat of her small palm. “Not ‘
Sorry
, Harper’!” she mouthed in a hoarse whisper. “ ‘Fuck you, Harper’!”

“So, what I’m saying,” said Harper, “and the reason I sent you shit that I didn’t have to send you, is that this guy is badder than we thought. Natural life is going to look good to him by the time this is over.”

“I can’t plead him to life on the present charges,” said Watson. “I’m pretty sure about that.”

“Pretty sure?” she groaned.

“He will not go for that.”

“Not he,” whispered Myrna. “
You.
You will not go for that.”

“You will not …” said Watson. “I mean, I will not go for that. But I’ll take it to him. I’ll ask him.”

Myrna lit up a Gitane and blew smoke in disgust. “Is he still bringing a toothless, three-legged mongrel to the dog show?” she said loud enough for Harper to hear.

Watson shrugged.

“I can’t stand it anymore,” she said, snatching the receiver out of Watson’s hand. “Harper?” she said. “It’s Myrna Schweich. Yup. Listen, other than your dick being way too small, how are ya?”

She puffed and nodded impatiently. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. I’m corrupting youth, here. Yeah, that’s right. He was a Stern, Pale choirboy counting angels on the heads of pinheaded prosecutors, and now I’m teaching him about Satan and the federal government.”

She blew a big, vibrant smoke ring and then launched a small, tight one through the middle of it. “I told him what I’m telling you,” she said into the receiver. “I told him that you are trying to dick him around, and nothing you’re saying today is changing my mind.”

She sat on Watson’s worktable, held out her cigarette, searched the tabletop over her shoulder, and when she didn’t see an ashtray, tapped ashes on the floor.

“OK,” she said, “so you’re not dicking him around, because your dick is too small. But you are trying to fuck with us, are you not? Albeit with a tiny dick?”

She winked at Watson. “I’m a what? Joe, activate the recording device. I’m a what? You’re using the c-word on an open line? You, with a dick so short it pees on itself? Harper, I am alarmed, mortified, psychologically traumatized by your language. I think it comes perilously close to sexual harassment. ‘Mr. Harper threatened me, Your Honor. Then he tried to use his penis as a weapon, but I was laughing too hard.’ ”

She tilted her head and listened some more. “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” she
said with a nod. “I’ll tell you what his client would say. His client would say, ‘Why is the Assistant United States Attorney trying to fuck us with such a tiny dick?’ ”

She pinned the receiver between her chin and her collarbone. “Uh-huh. Well, if we can’t reach an agreement, we go to trial, right? That’s not so bad for us in federal court. We gonna have plenty of whites on that jury. You wanna scare me with a black jury, you better restage your murder and have your witness change her story, for what? The third time? The fourth time? And have it happen in East St. Louis and off federal land.”

She crossed her arms, blowing smoke and disgust. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. The problem is, Harper, if we go to trial, then the whole courthouse will see how small your dick is. You got one witness and she changes her story to match her outfits. You got an inadmissible tattoo, some nigger jokes, and a dead rapist. Uh-huh, uh-huh. I gotta go,” she said. “Call us back with a serious offer. And make sure you have authority, OK? I don’t want to hear this runny bullshit about how you have to ask your boss or your wife first—hear me?”

She hung up and pounded the desk with her tiny, pale fist.

“Why are they such assholes?” she fumed. “They should do plastic surgery on those fuckers over there. Take their assholes and plant them right in the middle of their faces, so everybody knows what they are dealing with right up front.”

Two trills. “Outside call from your daughter,” said the receptionist over the intercom.

Myrna picked up. “Sweetie,” she said, fluidly assuming the voice of Mommy. “Yes, I’m thinking about you, too. Make cookies with Nana and save me some, OK? OK, bye now. I won’t be long. Bye.”

“Order of the Eagles,” said Watson, still feeling cold and a little scared.