Troubled Waters (7 page)

“Imogen Cunningham,” I murmured, “or Margaret Bourke-White. Every photo a masterpiece of social significance. The downtrodden as Art with a capital—”

“There's something else in the bag,” Ron said.

I reached in, digging to the bottom before my fingers grasped an envelope. It was business-size, with no return address.

The handwriting was large, the letters round and childlike, yet written shakily, as though the writer were an elderly woman with the soul of a ten-year-old.

I glanced at my brother. His face wore an expectant look, but it wasn't the pleased anticipation he'd shown when I'd looked at the photograph. Instead, he seemed tense, ready for trouble.

Inside the envelope were four sheets of typing paper written in the same awkward script.

“Dear Ron,” the letter began. “Thank you for writing to me. Your letters meant a lot. I feel like I'm starting my life all over again. I have a lot of things to make up for.

“In the Program, we have this thing called the Ninth Step. You have to make a list of people you've harmed and then try to make amends. When I did my Ninth Step, I closed my eyes and remembered all the faces of people I'd hurt when I was drinking. One of those faces was yours. And one was Kenny's.”

I stopped reading. “God,” I murmured. “That's a hell of a thing to do. Think of all the people you've harmed. And what does she mean”—I stared directly into my brother's eyes—“when she says she harmed you?”

Ron looked away, his cheeks reddening. “That's another story. Keep reading.”

“I mean, I remember you and she were—”

“Keep reading, Cass.” I opened my mouth, then shut it as I caught a glimpse of something in his eyes that told me to quit while I was ahead.

I kept reading. “I can't make amends to Kenny because he's dead. I can't tell him I was wrong, that I know he wasn't the one who sold us out to the cops back in '69. We all thought he was the traitor who got us busted, but the truth is that the FBI had an informer in our group.”

The letter fell from my hands. “What is this woman smoking? Is she serious? Does she really believe this crap?”

Ron nodded. He leaned down and sipped the coffee Zack held under his chin. “Keep—”

“I know, keep reading.” I suited action to words.

“Kenny didn't sell us out, Ron. The cops knew everything before we got to the county fair, but it wasn't from him. One of us was working for the feds all along, and I'm going to tell everything when I turn myself in.”

A wave of nausea hit me. I felt hot and cold, sweaty and chilled. Sick to my soul.

The guilt flu. I had only been three years older than Kenny when I'd looked at him after the arrest with cold, rock-hard eyes and said, “I don't talk to traitors.” Then I'd walked away, my head held high with righteous fervor. I had no idea he'd take our rejection so hard, that he'd poison himself with the very pesticide we were protesting.

I was a child. A dangerous child.

“Cass?” Ron's concerned voice broke in. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. My teeth were chattering. “I got a little drunk on the plane is all.” A little drunk, a little maudlin, a little guilty. Some people do the Ninth Step sober, some have to drink in order to remember.

The letter ended with a signature. No truly, no sincerely, and no love.

“God, Ron,” I began, “I already felt rotten about Kenny, and now—if he didn't even sell us out, then—”

“Then we're even more guilty than we were before,” he finished. “We jumped on that kid so fast.” He shook his head. “I mean, I never even thought of anyone else. As soon as the bust went down, I said to myself, ‘Kenny, you little fuck. You're going to pay for this.' And then he did pay for it.”

I looked at the wheelchair. “So did you, Ron. So did you.”

“Yeah, well, sort of.”

“Sort of, my ass. It was because of the arrests that you got sent to 'Nam.”

“What do you think of the letter?”

I let Ron change the subject. “She sounds pretty flaky. And besides, she just got sober. Does that sound to you like somebody with her head on straight?”

“Does to me,” Zack said. I looked across Ron at the wild black hair and shaggy beard, the tattooed arms and studded wristband, the leather vest with the motorcycle patches. His huge face glowed with joy. “Kicking juice and shit and coming home to Jesus was the best medicine I ever took, praise the Lord.”

“Well, maybe for some people,” I muttered, aware of Ron's suppressed laughter.

A hand tapped my shoulder. I jumped. A uniformed officer said, “Court's in session, Counselor. Better get inside. Judge Noble's a stickler for punctuality.”

I nodded and rose from the bench. Zack took the handles of Ron's chair and wheeled him toward the courtroom, where I came face to face with a piece of my past. Dana Sobel Rapaport, Harve's daughter and Rap's ex-wife, stood waiting outside the big double doors. She wore a navy blue suit that cried out for brass buttons and epaulets, flat shoes, and an Oxford cloth shirt with a straight gold pin through the collar.

I knew it was her by the shiny, straight black hair. Indian hair, I'd always thought, particularly in the old days when it hung down to her butt. Now it was short-cropped and gray-streaked, but it was still the hair of a Native American princess.

“Cassie, is that you?” she asked. “I almost didn't recognize you.”

Me? What's different about me? You're the one who got old, who cut her hair and put on forty pounds and started dressing out of a Land's End catalogue. I'm still the same
—

“Dana,” I said, forcing enthusiasm into my tone. Pretending this was a reunion, not a court appearance that might end with my brother in custody, awaiting trial as an accessory to murder.

“Where's Harve?” I asked. “I wanted to talk to him for a minute or two before the case was called.”

“He'll be here,” Dana replied. “He had a case in Common Pleas, but he'll be here by the time our case is called.”

This was the Harve Sobel I remembered, always running late, always dashing into court at the last minute with a breezy apology, always having to cool out the judge before getting down to business. I'd hoped having the first two rows of the courtroom packed with media people would have been reason enough to adjourn his other cases by phone and show up on time.

“He's going to piss off the judge before we even open our mouths on bail.”

Before Dana could reply, an ebony-black man with a shiny shaved head stepped up and said, “We have to talk.”

“Do we?” I answered, raising an eyebrow. “And you are…?”

“Luke Stoddard,” he replied, “assistant United States attorney.”

The enemy. The man trying to put my brother in jail. But if he was ready to talk, that meant what he really wanted was a deal. A deal that would cut Ron loose, in return for … what?

I nodded my willingness to discuss the matter and followed him down the corridor to a spot where the others couldn't hear.

I jumped the gun, letting my opponent know I intended to control the situation. “What do you want?”

A small smile crossed Stoddard's smooth face. “I want Jan Gebhardt.”

Not a news flash. “In return for what?”

He shrugged. “A clean walk for your brother.”

I refused to make the obvious remark. “All charges dismissed? He leaves town and forgets the whole thing?”

“Not exactly,” the prosecutor replied. “There's the little matter of his testimony at trial.” His smile grew broader. I was reminded of a poem from my childhood, about the fish with the deep-sea smile. The smile of the big fish who always eludes the hook, who swallows up the smaller fish.

“Ron can't add anything to your case,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “He was a passenger in the van.”
A mere passenger
was the way I intended to phrase it when addressing the judge. “He didn't know the other passengers were illegals.”

“It
was
his van, Counselor,” Stoddard reminded me. “That makes him a little more than a passenger. Besides,” he went on, “those original charges of smuggling illegals pale beside the murder of a federal officer.”

“Ron was nowhere near the scene of the crime,” I pointed out. “Jan was on her own during the whole thing.”

“But he was waiting for her back at the church. It's my guess he knew exactly where she was and what she was doing.”

My face reflected my complete astonishment. Stoddard smiled his deep-sea smile and said, “It seems your client hasn't told you everything.” He put the slightest possible emphasis on the word “client,” managing to needle me not only for walking into court unprepared but for being the kind of sister whose brother hadn't seen fit to tell her the whole story.

Before I could reply, the prosecutor said, “Think about it, Ms. Jameson. We'll talk again after the arraignment. You and your client may see things a little bit differently then.”

He strode down the hall and into the courtroom. I followed, thinking as I walked. Would a deal be so bad? All Ron had to do was deny any knowledge of Jan's intent. Whatever went wrong was her fault, not his, so why should he suffer?

The first two rows of the courtroom were filled with reporters. I scanned them, hoping to recognize Ted Havlicek. It would be nice to have a friendly ear into which I could drop pro-defense tidbits.

Ron's chair sat at the defense table. I had barely reached my seat when the cell door opened and out came a phalanx of guards, all surrounding a prisoner in a faded print dress.

I stared frankly and openly at the woman whose untimely return from the dead had caused all this trouble.

Thin, tense, her mouth working and her fingers idly twisting a hank of stringy hair, she looked like a haggard prostitute emerging from the drunk tank. Her face was pale as oatmeal and there were old track marks on her skinny arms. A fine shiver ran through her body as I watched her; it was as if my eyes had somehow touched her in a sensitive place.

Her face lit up as she caught a glimpse of Ron; the smile took twenty years off her face.

Breaking from the guards, she rushed toward the chair. Before they could stop her, she threw her arms around his torso and kissed him. It was a long, deep kiss with plenty of tongue.

I had never thought to see a woman kiss my brother that way again.

Luke Stoddard wanted Ron to testify against Jan.

It was my job to sell betrayal as a viable option.

But how could I ask Ron to betray a woman who kissed him as though he were still a whole man?

C
HAPTER
S
IX

July 15, 1982

It was like being on speed. Black beauties with a hit or two of grass to fuzz the hard edges. Jan gunned the motor as the van sped along the black-topped T-square road toward Lake Erie. The summer wind licked her face, swished her long fine hair into her eyes, her mouth. She leaned back and laughed. This was alive—the most alive she'd felt since the day she stopped drinking and doping seventy-nine days ago. Seventy-nine long days without a high, gray days in spite of golden summer sun, days as flat as the farmland on either side of the blacktop. The danger only heightened the high. Was this what Harriet Tubman felt leading slaves to freedom? Was this what Raoul Wallenberg felt smuggling Jews out of Hitler's Reich? Were all heroes danger junkies at heart?

“Eh-slow down,
por favor
,” the man in the passenger seat said, his Spanish accent heavy. Jan, loving the feel of summer wind in her hair, bristled at the peremptory tone behind the polite words. Miguel wasn't asking, he was ordering her to reduce speed.

She glanced at the speedometer. Sixty-five and rising. But hell, there was nobody around, even if it was afternoon. What was wrong with a little speed? She gunned the motor, taking the van another five miles over the limit.

A quiet voice from the back of the van said, “He's right, Jan. The last thing we need is to be stopped for speeding. Slow it down, okay?” It was Ron Jameson, strapped into the back of his specially equipped van like precious cargo.

He was right; she lightened her foot and the van slowed. But damn it, she was right too! If Miguel used that tone in front of anyone else, he'd never pass as a migrant farm worker. Humility was as much a part of his disguise as the
guyabera
shirt and calloused hands.

Anyway, Ron owned the van. He called the shots. So do the double nickel all the way to the lake.
Fifty-five, stay alive
. Her mind repeated the words like a mantra as her sandaled foot touched lightly on the accelerator.
Fifty-five, stay alive. Fifty-five … five
.

Five
. Five years. Five years if they got caught. That mantra, stronger than
fifty-five
,
stay alive
, took root in her brain.
Five years, five years
, she said to herself. Five years in a federal pen for transporting illegal aliens.

Could she do five years? No booze, no drugs—hell, as far as getting high was concerned, she was already in jail. Sobriety jail.

No men. Jan thought about that a moment, remembered Hal, her ex-husband, still actively alcoholic. Remembered the nameless, faceless men from the bars, men who'd reeked of booze, just like her Daddy. No men. She shrugged; no loss.

No loss for her, but what about Ron? Would they really give five years to a man already imprisoned by paralysis? No, of course they wouldn't.

Right. And maybe the tooth fairy would drop by and slip some coin under her pillow for the two teeth Hal had knocked out just before he left.

“How far?” Miguel asked, not for the first time. He looked like a typical Mexican-American migrant worker: face dark as a buckeye, wearing a loose shirt and a straw hat. Shorts and dusty huaraches. He had the look of a man who'd spent his life squinting into the sun, squatting over strawberries, sweating over rows of sugar beet seedlings.