Эд Горман - Riders on the Storm

“Hi, Sam. I figured you’d know what was going on. All I hear from the news is that Will is a cold-blooded murderer who spent two terms in the bughouse. The murder stuff, that’s got to be bullshit, right?”

“I’m sure he’s innocent, Greg, but there are some extenuating circumstances.” I explained the situation as quickly as I could.

“Because that asshole Donovan beat him up? Will is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever known.”

“I agree, but as much as I’d like to, I can’t blame the police for making certain assumptions at this point.”

“Think if Cliffie was involved.” Then, “I know you gotta run. Five of the guys called me in the last fifteen minutes. I said I’d call you and see what was going on. Anything we can do, you know you got it, Sam. I don’t have any legs but I’ve still got a pretty good mind.”

I wanted to say you didn’t need to say that, Greg, but he was used to people pitying him without quite taking him seriously as a human being. I wondered if Senator O’Shay ever realized things like that.

“I’ll keep you posted, Greg.”

“Say hi to Karen for us. A very sweet lady.”

“She sure is that.”

On the walk to the courthouse I didn’t think about Will or Karen, I thought about O’Shay. What might have been a political embarrassment for him had been turned into a victory. O’Shay would get to rail again about the “sickness” of the country — and what better example of that sickness than the murder of a brave soldier, a man he’d favored for Congress. Soldiers never “died,” they were always “cut down in their prime.” Apparently he was unaware that men as old as fifty-five were fighting and dying over there, too.

A press conference was inevitable. He hadn’t been scheduled to return to Washington for a few days so he’d likely stage a splashy performance here. If I were one of his aides I would suggest he stage it down in the basement of the funeral parlor where they prepared the corpses for burial. But that would be too much of a reminder about what the good old president Nixon and his de facto vice president Henry Kissinger were really up to, wouldn’t it?

Then I started thinking about Will again. I was so tight and angry that I took a pit stop in the john on the second floor of the courthouse. I splashed chilly water on my face and since I was alone — I’d carefully checked — I got down and did twenty push-ups. My max. These gave me a sheen of sweat and for some reason sweating usually relaxed me. I wanted to represent my client as well as I could. I was pretty confident.

I wished I was as confident about Will.

In the late 1950s a large number of boys wanted to be James Dean or Elvis or maybe Ricky Nelson. My friend Kenny Thibodeau and I had different aspirations. Kenny wanted to be Jack Kerouac and I wanted to be the actor Robert Ryan.

Kenny did something about his aspirations. If he couldn’t be Kerouac, he could at least meet him. And so in the summer of 1958 Kenny drove to San Francisco to meet Mr. Kerouac. Kenny spent several days hanging in and around City Lights Bookstore where all the important Beat writers hung out. He did meet the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who also happened to own the bookstore, and he did see, among others, such Beat writers and poets as Gregory Corso and even the famous Allen Ginsberg. But no Kerouac.

A few days before he was to leave, Kenny read some of his poems to some tourists. A man who’d been listening came up to him afterward and offered him a job writing what we’d called at Catholic school “right-handers” (some imagination required here), books with brazenly sexy covers and titles but with almost prudishly written “erotic” scenes inside. Kenny was expected to write one book a month for four hundred dollars.

The man gave Kenny a cardboard box full of what he called his “product” and after shaking hands as Kenny was about to depart said, “Kid, think lesbian.”

At the moment Kenny was shoving not one of his monthly paperbacks but a magazine called Real Man’s Adventure across the table to me.

The mostly naked women with bullwhips had swastikas all over the tatters of their skirts and shirts. A rugged American-hero type was tied to a pole. The lashes had slashed his bare chest mercilessly. “Nazi Gal Killers Made Me Their Sex Slave.” I thumbed my way to the contents page to see what pen name he’d slapped on this one. “Burt Scaggs.” Manly, very manly.

“Ten cents a word. Eight thousand words — the second lead in the magazine — and I did it in two afternoons. And they want more from me.”

I asked what I thought was the logical question. “If he’s their sex slave why are they beating him?”

“They’re sadists. All Nazis were sadists.”

“Wow, all this and historical accuracy.”

He smiled. Kenny had a good novel in him. He’d shown me the part he’d written. I truly believed — and I hoped he did, too — that he would finish the book in a year or so. He was a hell of a good storyteller and a number of his soft-core novels really had strongly developed characters.

We were sitting in the café where the town’s lawyers hung out before and after court. I’d won the case for my client. Kenny had agreed to meet me here.

“You know what time it is.”

“Yeah, I do.”

Melissa Thibodeau was in danger of becoming the most photographed little girl in the state. But she was so damned pretty and sweet, who cared?

The new photographs showed her in her new bonnet and Sunday dress. I did the expected oohing and aahing, but it was sincere oohing and aahing. I was Melissa’s godfather.

“She’s beautiful. Thanks for letting me see them.”

I handed them back and then he spoke the mantra. “No way anybody’s going to convince me that Will Cullen ever killed anybody.”

“I know. That’s what most people I’ve talked to say. But when you put it together as it stands right now you see why Foster thinks he’s got a case.”

“I hear average citizens call him ‘Paul.’”

“Yeah, I don’t know about that. It’s like a political gimmick. It creates a false sense of security. He’s a cop. You can only trust cops so far.”

“Wow. You sound like some guys I know who drop too much acid. Mr. Paranoid. Maybe he’s just a nice guy.” He leaned forward and dragged his billfold out of his right back pocket.

I went through everything again; the kicker was the tire iron.

“Yeah, I see what you mean. But it’s not Will. He’s just not like that.”

“No, he isn’t. But I need to move on this. I don’t know enough about Donovan to really get going on checking him out. I need to spend time in the library, for one thing. And Karen told me a couple of things. I guess he and his business partner had a falling-out.”

“Yeah, big time. Donovan forced him out. Or his new partner did, this Lon Anders.”

“That’s been proven?”

“Yeah. The old business partner, Al Carmichael, dropped into this depression and finally just said screw it. He let Donovan buy him out for pennies on the dollar. He lives in Pittsburgh now and works for an outfit named ChemLab. I’ve known Carmichael for a long time. You remember him?”

“Right. Al. He had that cool racing bike when we were in seventh grade. Then he went to public school.”

I told him about the angry husband Karen had alluded to.

“Thad Owens. That happened two, three years ago. He caught Donovan and the wife making out at a party. The wife broke down and told him all about her affair with Donovan. He’s remarried and could care less about Donovan now. He’s got a newborn with the second wife and enjoys himself. I run into him at the supermarket every once in a while.”