Defending the Truth, page 26
“How about you?”
Randy snorted. “You got brass balls, baby.”
“So do you.”
Randy frowned.
Chapter 20
“Who’s that, Marger?” the voice said from inside the small house.
“Some of those people from the courthouse thing,” she called back.
“Who?”
“The lawyer, Joshua Rabb, father of one of the girls. Got that Indian with him.”
Lawrence Joslin came to the door, hitching his suspenders over his shoulders. “What is it?”
“Mr. Joslin, I’m Joshua Rabb. Remember me, from the preliminary hearing? And this is Officer Solomon Leyva with the San Xavier Reservation Police. I think you’ve met Solomon before.”
“Yeah, sure did. He come out here to show us a picture.”
“Right. Now I need a little more help. I’m defending my daughter and the other students.”
“Yeah, I remember. I remember ya at that hearing. I also reckon I read about ya in the newspaper a while back.”
Joshua’s face colored. “Yes, it was a lot of lies, Mr. Joslin. I’m as much a traitor as you or your wife.”
The elderly man studied him for a moment. “Okay. Come on in.” He opened the door wide, and they walked into the living room, cramped by a long gold velveteen sofa and two large rocking chairs upholstered in celery green burlap.
“Marger, throw a kettle on the stove, rustle up a little Java.”
“Thank you, sir,” Joshua said, “but that really isn’t necessary.”
“It’s my house, and I decide what’s necessary.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“The identification you and your wife made of the photograph that Officer Leyva brought over here the other night.”
“Well, now, we never said we was for sure on that. We think it’s him, but we couldn’t say it was for sure.”
“Okay, Mr. Joslin. I understand that and that’s the problem. We need to have a more positive identification so we can investigate further.”
“Who is the guy, anyway? He was wearing an army officer’s uniform.”
“He’s the administrative aide to Senator William Maitland.”
Lawrence Joslin tilted his head at Joshua. “You don’t say. You think the senator had something to do with that bombing?”
Joshua shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.”
Joslin shook his head. “This Commie business is scary stuff, ain’t no question about it, what with ‘em fighting us in Korea and looking to take over all of Europe.” He pursed his lips and studied Joshua. “But I think it’s going just a tad too far when the politicians start using that stuff against anyone who doesn’t agree with ‘em. When ya got this guy McCarthy screaming that Secretary of Defense General George C. Marshall hisself is a Commie sympathizer, ya done gone too damn far.”
Joshua nodded.
Mrs. Joslin brought in three cups of black coffee on a small wooden carving board. She set them on the table and handed a cup to each of the men.
“Ain’t no sugar,” she said. “What with Lawrence’s diabetes, I don’t even keep no sugar around.”
“This is fine, ma’am,” Joshua said. He dutifully took a drink from the cup and smiled his appreciation. Solomon took a shallow swallow and smiled politely.
“So what are ya after with us?” Lawrence Joslin asked.
“There’s a Republican election rally over at the Congress Street Sports Arena tomorrow evening.”
Joslin nodded. “I read about it in this morning’s paper.”
“Senator Goldwater is going to be there with Maitland and Senator Richard Nixon from California.”
“So?”
“Where Maitland goes, Horton Landers goes. I’d like you to come with us and look him over up close. If you can make a positive ID, great. If not, well, then I was just barking up the wrong tree. But it’s the only way to be sure.”
“I don’t think you should, Lawrence,” his wife said. “Fooling around with United States senators is a little out of our bailiwick.”
“I’m just an old retired packing plant inspector from Iowa, Mr. Rabb. Got bad lungs getting gassed in France in the First War. Got some shrapnel in my guts, still working out of me piece by piece. All I got is my social security. They take that away from me, we plum starve.”
“They can’t take away your social security, Mr. Joslin.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I know. I was just being dramatic.” He laughed and his wife smiled.
“What do ya think, Marger?”
“I think it’s too dangerous. What happens to us if they find out we identified this Landers? Who protects us?”
“Well, Mrs. Joslin, they’re certainly already aware that you both testified at the preliminary hearing. You haven’t been threatened, have you?”
“No, but we didn’t identify nobody, neither. This is a whole lot different. If their people murdered a marshal, what’ll stop ‘em from hurting us?”
Joshua sighed deeply. “Truth is, Mrs. Joslin, every time a witness testifies against somebody in a court of law, the witness is in danger. But I’ve been practicing law for sixteen years now, and I’ve never had a witness stalked or hurt.”
“Well, we don’t want to be your first ones, Mr. Rabb,” she said.
“And I don’t want you to be.”
“I got a gun,” Lawrence Joslin said. “Nobody’s going to hurt us, Marger.” He turned toward Joshua. “I’ll help ya, Mr. Rabb. But Margaret, she’ll stay here.”
Joshua nodded. “Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it.”
“Okay, Mr. Rabb. You pick me up and bring me back so’s I don’t have to waste my own gas. Twenty-one cents a gallon lately is pretty damn rough on the pension.”
“I’ll be happy to, sir. I’ll pick you up at seven.”
The Sports Arena was a couple of blocks west of downtown Tucson, past the Congress Street bridge over the Santa Cruz River. The river was dry now. It had run about two feet deep from the monsoon rains that had doused southern Arizona in August, but now the bottom was as parched and cracked as its desiccated banks. Sporadic clumps of bright yellow daisies and lavender Mexican primrose only slightly ameliorated the roughness of the land and the sandy riverbed.
They drove past the wood and tin and tarpaper shacks of the destitute Mexicans who lived on this side of the river. There was no use getting to the huge arena early, since the entourage of politicians would undoubtedly arrive late to make their heraldic entrance to the roars of the eagerly waiting crowd. So by the time that Joshua parked his car on the street a block away from the arena, they could already hear the tumult from the rally. He and Solomon and Lawrence Joslin walked on the rocky dirt path by the equally rocky dirt street and entered the open doors of the arena.
In the central area where the boxing ring was usually set up for the Monday night fights, there was a stage. The instantly recognizable Richard Nixon stood behind the podium, speaking closely into a tall microphone, trying to be heard over the roaring and cheering of the Republican faithful.
Joshua pushed his way through the men standing in the aisle. Solomon and Joslin followed. They worked themselves forward to the stage, over their heads, and Joshua didn’t see Landers. They worked their way around to the back of the stage. Landers was sitting on a folding chair next to two man-sized amplifiers.
“Mr. Landers,” Joshua said.
The noise was too loud.
“Mr. Landers,” he yelled.
The man turned around, recognizing Joshua and Solomon. “You’re interested in my photograph, I hear?” he said. The roaring had died down.
Joshua nodded. “We’ve got an eyewitness who says you threw the bomb under Ollie Friedkind’s car.”
Landers appeared stunned, then vicious. His upper lip turned up over his teeth and his eyes were suddenly wide and wild.
“You lowlife!” he spat out. “You fucking Jews and Commies are all the same. You buy somebody? How much you have to pay him to lie?”
“You’re finished,” Joshua said, his voice steady and hard. “You and that fat tub of pus, Maitland.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Landers barked, “before I have security drag you out by your feet.”
Joshua worked his way through the crowd and out of the arena, followed by Solomon and Joslin.
“Well?” Joshua asked?
Lawrence Joslin shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Joshua was deeply frustrated. “You sure?” He nodded. “I think the guy had a thinner face, real bony. Maybe a couple of years older. But maybe I just didn’t see him as well as I thought I did.”
“Shit,” Joshua muttered.
The rally was a huge success, according to the political pundits who traveled with Richard Nixon, now campaigning hard to be selected as Eisenhower’s running mate at the Republican convention. Later that evening, Landers had nodded and smiled and drank his share of scotch at the reception for a few Republican high rollers at the Santa Rita Hotel. Finally, Bill Maitland had drunk enough and sated himself sufficiently on pigs-in-a-blanket hors d’oeuvres that he called it a night and made his mawkish good-byes to the party stalwarts.
Horton drove the big Cadillac north on Highway 89 toward Phoenix. The senator dozed on and off, slumped in the front seat.
“I’m not taking the rap.”
Maitland looked around at Landers. “You say something?” His speech was slightly slurred.
“I’m not taking the rap.”
“What the hell you talking about?”
“Ollie Friedkind.”
“Who’s that?”
“The U.S. marshal who got bombed.”
Maitland straightened up in the seat, and his speech was clearer. “What happened?”
“The fucking eyewitnesses.”
“Well, we knew that. They testified at the preliminary hearing.”
“Yeah, but now Rabb must’ve shown them the picture they took from the Star the other day. They IDed me.”
“You got to be kidding.”
“No. Rabb and that Indian buck of his came to the rally with an old man, must have been one of the witnesses. Rabb told me.”
“Damn! That son of a bitch is in serious need of some straightening out. I guess we just haven’t impressed him enough. The guy’s mule-assed stubborn. Dangerously stubborn.”
Landers nodded.
“The witness say it was you?”
“That’s what Rabb says.”
Maitland slumped again in the seat. “You better find out where those witnesses live. I can’t have none of this shit. I just can’t have this.”
“I’m not going near the witnesses.”
Minutes passed. They could see the lights of the small town of Casa Grande several miles west of the highway.
Maitland was wide awake and sober. “That fucking kike. I wish he had done him.”
More minutes of silence.
“I’m not taking the rap for this,” Landers said.
Maitland stared out the side window into the desert blackness.
Bill Maitland sat before his picture window on Camelback Mountain, seeing none of the lights of Arizona’s sprawling capital. He saw only the end of his career, the end of his dream of being somebody. If garbage like Dick Nixon could make it, why not he? He was better-looking than Dick, a hell of a lot wealthier, and he was one of McCarthy’s closest allies. It would be the cruelest injustice if his brilliant and promising career were to end because of one scumbag lawyer in Tucson, Arizona. And it would be a loss to the country. America needed him. Rabb was injuring America.
He sat brooding for hours. He could not call so early in the morning. Joe would still be drunk from the night before, as he always was. He had to wait until three, six o’clock Washington time. Then at least he wouldn’t be waking Joe up. The senator’s day started early.
Three hours passed as though they were a week. He sat staring morosely out the living-room picture window.
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He took the small, folded piece of paper out of one of the pockets. Joe’s home number. Practically nobody had his home number. A special sign of respect.
“Hello.”
“Good morning, Joe. This is Bill Maitland.”
“Hold on a sec, I got a mouthful of tooth powder.” Pause. McCarthy hawked and spat loudly. “What’s going on, Bill? It must be two, three o’clock your time. Got insomnia?”
“‘Fraid so. But I think I got the cure.”
“Yeah? What?”
“I got a little trouble out here that you can help resolve.”
“What?”
“There are a couple of eyewitnesses to the murder of that U.S. marshal.”
Pause. “You kidding?”
“I don’t kid about that.”
“Jesus! What do they say?”
“They fingered Horton Landers.”
Long pause. “Holy shit,” McCarthy muttered. “That’s real bad news.”
“Horton isn’t too thrilled about it either.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“He says he won’t take the rap.”
Long pause. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know. But we better do something damn fast. If the county attorney down there suddenly sprouts a pair of balls, all hell’s going to break loose. And you know where it leads.”
“Who you talking to?” McCarthy’s voice was gruff.
“Listen, Joe, help me out of this,” Maitland soothed. “You can do it. I got faith in you. We’ve got a job to do for this country. But first we just got to root some crabgrass out of the cotton field, kill some weevils.”
David Goldbergs’ 1937 Packard touring limousine was parked at the curb when Joshua got home. Suddenly he was no longer thinking about Landers and Friedkind and Lawrence Joslin. Why would Mark’s parents be here at nine o’clock on a weekday evening? Something had happened to Mark.
Joshua parked behind the Packard. The driveway was full, Hanna’s faded yellow Chevy parked in it. That wasn’t so unusual. Hanna often came back home to spend the night, do her laundry, get a good meal. But the Goldbergs?
He walked quickly up the stairs. David and Judy Goldberg were sitting on the sofa in the living room. Hanna was next to Judy. Barbara was in one of the upholstered chairs. There was sepulchral silence.
“What is it?” Joshua asked.
David handed him the flimsy single half-sheet telegram: “The President of the United States regrets to inform you that it has been notified this date by Eighth Army Headquarters, Korea, that your son, Second Lieutenant Mark Goldberg, is missing in action. The United States government shall take all possible steps to locate Lt. Goldberg and to secure his safety.”
Joshua sank into the chair beside the sofa.
He sits on the edge of his bed and tears drip from his eyes. He had not let himself do this in front of the Goldbergs and Hanna. But the Goldbergs are gone now, and Hanna has gone to her room, rather than returning to Maricopa dormitory, and he can finally give in to his own grief. So much is happening. So much terrible is happening.
Is there no end to your punishment, God? Are we all Jobs, just put here for you to afflict with boils and bitter suffering?
He opens the drawer of the bedstand and takes out the Bible that had been a gift from his father so many years ago. It will keep you from harm, my son, his father had solemnly pronounced. Had Joshua believed it once? He cannot remember. It seems like three lifetimes ago in a gentler time.
He opens the Bible idly. The Psalms, the Psalms he has read so many times in the army hospital in Antwerp. He thumbs the tissuelike pages to them. “It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn thy laws, O God. Who will stand for me against the workers of iniquity? The Lord is my defense, my God is the rock of my refuge. And He shall bring upon my enemies their own iniquity and shall cut them off in their wickedness.”
A perfect psalm for Maitland and McCarthy. A perfect psalm for Joshua’s enemies. But was God listening?
Barbara rolls toward him on the bed and touches him gently on the shoulder. “Put the Bible away now and come to bed, honey.”
“My father believes in it,” he says. “Do you believe in it?”
“Yes. Come on to bed now.”
“I don’t know how anybody can believe it. I want to believe it. It hurts not to.”
He puts the Bible in the drawer and switches off the lamp.
“I feel terrible,” he whispers, “helpless. I can’t help myself. I can’t help my daughter. The bad guys always win.”
She kisses his cheek. She touches him softly and they lie there, holding each other, trying to sleep.
Hanna parked the faded yellow Chevrolet convertible on the pebbly shoulder of the Nogales Highway and walked past the mesquite bosque to the line of cottonwoods and sycamores and willow trees on the west bank of the river. She sat down at the edge of the arroyo, which sloped gently at this point to the brakes where the water oozed underground. Despite the fact that it was late September, it was still a hundred degrees under a ruthless sun. She sat against the trunk of a spreading sycamore tree. It shaded her with its wide five-pointed leaves, under its smooth white bark branches like a protective mother with her arms outstretched.
The ten-mile-long bajadas of the Santa Rita Mountains to the east of the river sprawled in alluvial fans down from Mount Wrightson, ninety-four hundred feet high, to the Santa Cruz River bed seventy-five hundred feet below it.
The old-timers said that just seventy or eighty years ago, the Santa Cruz River had run year round in its wide channel, swift and clear, from its highest point in the Pinito Mountains of northern Sonora, Mexico, to its confluence with the Gila River about fifty miles north of Tucson. But for some reason, it had begun to meander and to cut arroyos far from its primordial channel. Then suddenly the waters began to disappear into the earth, about thirty-five or forty miles south of Tucson, forming one of the underground rivers that were unique to the Great Sonora Desert.
In the etched sides of the arroyo Hanna could see the strata of rock and sedimentary silt representing millions of years of geologic time. It was daunting, even overpowering. She had begun coming to this place three years ago, when she was sixteen and had first gotten her driver’s license. She had lived next to the San Xavier Reservation then, in a tiny adobe house with a wire chicken coop attached to the side and fifty or sixty squabbling White Rock chickens that pecked at her toes when she scattered feed for them. She had been thrilled when they had moved into Tucson, six miles north of the Reservation. But Hanna still came to this place, more often now even than before. Because she and Mark used to come here together to be alone.
