Troubled Waters

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Troubled Waters

A Cass Jameson Mystery

Carolyn Wheat

C
HAPTER
O
NE

I thought she was dead.

I hoped she was dead.

But she was very much alive, too damned much alive, and her thin, nervous face stared at me from the front pages of every newspaper on the Court Street kiosk.

Jan was back. She'd been working at a Wal-Mart in Emporia, Kansas. One day she left work early and drove to Kansas City, where she walked into the FBI office in the federal building and turned herself in.

That night, Jan was the lead story on all three national newscasts.
Fugitive Captured: Woman who fled murder charges in 1982 lives underground for almost fifteen years
. “I never knew,” says boyfriend. “She was the nicest clerk in the store,” proclaims Wal-Mart manager. “I always suspected there was something,” landlady announces. “She never got any mail. Not even catalogues.”

Not even catalogues. Jan had fled to where not even L. L. Bean could follow.

I watched in fascination, flipping through all my channels to catch a glimpse of the exact same footage of cops marching Jan toward a waiting police van as the announcer repeated the charge: wanted for the shooting death of a federal agent in 1982.

She wore a long dress with a tiny flower print and a stretched-out cardigan. Given the Indian summer temperatures, I assumed she was dressed to cope with the Wal-Mart air conditioning.

Face, dress, sweater all would have looked at home in a Depression photograph by Walker Evans.

I studied the face. It was the same Jan face, thin, intense, slightly mad. Darting eyes, a tendency to hang her head and gaze at the world through a curtain of limp hair. The hair was auburn, not the mouse-brown I remembered; I guessed at an over-the-counter dye job, not certain whether she'd done it as a disguise or just a middle-aged flight of fancy.

Do fugitives from justice care about covering that gray?

Once upon a long, long time ago, Jan and I had been foot soldiers in Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. In the summer of '69, we'd helped organize migrant farm workers into a union and gotten ourselves arrested. We'd been young, idealistic, insufficiently worried about consequences. The difference between us: I'd grown up and she hadn't.

Jan was back. On the way to court the next morning, I scooped up a copy of every paper on the newsstand. I'd need them in order to explain to the Honorable Harold “the Toop” Feldman exactly why I wasn't going to be picking a jury in his courtroom.

The Toop wore the absolutely worst hairpiece ever seen in the borough of Brooklyn, which was saying a great deal. On the outside, he resembled every pudgy, nerdy little guy who still lived in his old bedroom in his parents' house in Sheepshead Bay. But this particular nerd had graduated second in his class at Columbia Law School and clawed his way onto the bench by sheer willpower. People might laugh at Harry the Toop behind his back, but he demanded and got deferential respect in his courtroom.

He did not grant adjournments lightly. Hell, he didn't grant adjournments at all. The courthouse still buzzed over the time he'd given Kathy Malone the morning to bury her husband's mother, demanding that she show up ready to try her case after the lunch recess. She'd dabbed at her eyes with a sodden Kleenex every few minutes, but she'd conducted a passible
voir dire
.

The Toop was not going to be pleased when I told him I absolutely, positively had to be in federal court in Ohio by two o'clock. This afternoon.

Jan was back, and that meant my brother Ron faced federal charges for the things he and Jan had done together in 1982. At the time, he and Jan had shared the same lawyer, but now, with her facing a murder charge, I wanted to be there in person, handling his case.

My Brooklyn client waited for me in the hallway outside the courtroom. He was a natty little black man of sixty-something. Pops, his neighbors called him. Sometimes he showed up in court with his twentysomething girlfriend and their four-month-old daughter, but today he'd come alone. He sported a hat with a bright green feather, which complemented his shiny, moss-colored Lawrence Welk suit. He was not unhappy to learn that his case might be put off; things didn't look good for him, and every day he spent out of jail with his wife and child was a blessing.

The judge was another matter.

“This case is ready for trial, Ms. Jameson,” he said testily. “And I see no reason why it shouldn't be tried today. Whatever matters you may have pending out-of-state will just have to wait.”

“This matter can't wait, Your Honor,” I replied. I was uncomfortably aware that the urgency in my voice was dangerously close to the surface.

I took a deep yoga breath and willed myself to relax. Where to start? How to cut through the fog of ego that hung over the judge's bench and make him see that “the matter” I had to attend to wasn't just another case.

What you did when addressing the Toop was concentrate on his chin. You could maybe raise your eyes to encompass the nose, but you did not under any circumstances go above the eyebrows. If you did, you were in danger of seeing the Thing Itself. I aimed my words at the judicial nostrils.

“A woman named Jan Gebhardt was arrested in Kansas yesterday,” I began. “She was a fugitive from justice, having fled the jurisdiction in 1982 after the murder of a federal law enforcement officer.”

“I read the papers, Counselor,” Judge Feldman interjected. “Just tell me what all this has to do with you.”

“I knew her in the summer of 1969,” I replied. “When we were in college, we worked with migrant farm workers. Jan and I and my brother, Ron, and some other people.”

“Ms. Jameson, just because you knew this woman in 1969 is no reason—”

“I understand, Judge,” I cut in. “I'm not saying this very well. The reason I have to go to Ohio for her arraignment is that my brother was arrested along with Jan in 1982. The charges were held in abeyance after Jan fled, but now that she's turned herself in, they've been reinstated. He's surrendering this afternoon in the federal courthouse in Toledo.” Among the many things I didn't say was that I'd had this piece of information not from my brother himself, but from my parents. It was they, not Ron, who'd begged me to go to Toledo and help out.

“I see,” the judge said. His meaty hand stroked his chin.

I was aware of an unnatural silence in the courtroom. Everyone from the court officers to the front row of lawyers waiting for cases to be called to the defendants chained to chairs inside the well area seemed to hang on my words.

“Your Honor may recall that the federal agent was shot and killed during an arrest for transporting illegal aliens. Ms. Gebhardt and my brother were part of what was called the sanctuary movement. They were helping refugees from Central America.” I deliberately glided over what the judge and I both knew; that sanctuary was no defense to violating the immigration laws.

“The van in which the aliens were being transported,” I continued, carefully masking my feelings in legalese, “was owned by my brother. It's a specially equipped van. He's—” I stopped and drew a ragged breath, willing away thoughts of Ron facing arrest and imprisonment. “He's a quadriplegic. A Vietnam veteran.”

I thought I detected a glimmer of sympathy in the judge's poached-egg eyes. Much as I hated to use Ron's condition this way, I had to pull out all the stops if I wanted the Toop to let me off the hook. “He didn't know what Jan was up to,” I explained, uncomfortably aware that I was trying to convince myself as well as the judge. “He didn't know the people were illegals. But after the shooting, he was arrested along with Jan. She fled, and the charges against him were adjourned
sine die
.”

This meant that the charges hung over Ron's head like the sword of Damocles. And now that Jan was being brought back for trial, the sword, which had glimmered into nothingness, had miraculously reappeared, as strong and solid as ever. Ron faced trial as a codefendant. He faced jail.

My brother faced jail. There was no way on God's earth I was going to let him do that alone, with or without Judge Feldman's permission.

He heard a few more minutes of argument. In truth, the prosecution put up only a token fight. I walked out of the courtroom a free woman. But the judge's last words hung in the air like a rain cloud.

“I'll give you two days, Counselor,” he said. “And after that, I'm proceeding to trial with or without you.”

In case I didn't get the full picture, he went on. “I'll assign a new lawyer, and while he prepares the case for trial, your client can enjoy the hospitality of the State of New York.”

In other words, if I wasn't back in two days, Pops would go to jail.

“I'll be back,” I promised.

Pops tugged at my sleeve as we left the courtroom. “What's that mean, Ms. Jameson? You ain't gonna leave me high and dry, now? You ain't gonna let old Pops go to jail?”

“No,” I said firmly. “I'll be back in two days.”

I believed it, too. My plan was to fly to Toledo, step into court next to Ron, play the quad card, get him out of the whole mess, and come straight home.

I swept into my office, hung my jacket on the hat stand, and walked toward the cork bulletin board in the corner. It held pink phone messages from January of last year,
New Yorker
cartoons of guys in jail commenting unfavorably on their legal representation, and, in the right-hand corner, a small collection of political buttons.

There it was, in between a NOW pin and a button from the last Legal Aid strike. A green button with a ripe red tomato in the center. Over the tomato were yellow letters that spelled out FLAC. Farm Labor Action Coalition, northwest Ohio's answer to Cesar Chavez' United Farmworkers union.