Ryne Pearson - Capitol Punishment

“I thought not,” Darian commented. None of them had, but all were willing to. Griggs, too, he believed. Something in the boy’s eyes and on his face convinced him of that. The same thing Darian saw each and every morning in the mirror. “I have a good feeling about him. And about this.”

“Power, Brother Darian,” Mustafa said.

“Power,” Roger added.

“John, Mr. Mankowitz is here,” Louise Barrish told her husband as she poked her head into the bedroom.

The head of the Barrish family was resting on the bed, his head propped high against pillows and the book he had just purchased open before him. He looked over the book to his wife. “What?”

“He’s here,” she repeated. “In the living room, and he has some people with him.”

What is he doing here? John closed the book and placed it facedown on the nightstand. “Who’s with him?”

Louise looked sheepishly at the ground, then back to her husband. “A man and a woman.”

There was more to it than that. John could sense it in his wife’s hesitation. “What are they?”

“John…”

“What are they?” he asked again with gritted teeth.

“An African and a Mexican,” Louise answered. “I think the woman is a Mexican.”

Damn you, Mankowitz! “All right,” John said with obvious irritation. “Get in the kitchen and stay there.”

Louise walked from the bedroom down the hall, passing the visitors without a look as she went into the kitchen and kept herself out of view. John was a few seconds behind her.

“John,” Seymour Mankowitz said, beckoning his client over.

Barrish went past the arched entryway to the living room, eyeing the visitors as he joined his lawyer nearer the front door. “What is this?”

“John, just listen to me and play this smart,” Mankowitz said. “They’re FBI agents—”

“FBI!?” Barrish whisper-yelled. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Listen,” Mankowitz insisted. “Just listen. You just dodged a bullet with one federal case. More suspicion is not what you need right now.”

“They can’t screw with me about that anymore, Seymour,” Barrish said. “I know my rights.”

“And I conveyed those rights clearly to them. There will be no discussion of the Saint Anthony’s shooting. Zero. But if you refuse to talk to them about this you can expect further scrutiny, more investigation, more visits, more phone taps.” Mankowitz, despite his distaste for all that John Barrish was, held a two-hundred-plus-year-old piece of paper higher than any motivation alive in his irrational self. There was right, there was wrong. Then there was the Constitution. “You don’t want that, I don’t want that. So… you listen to their questions, and, if you can, you answer them. I’ll stop any improper inquiries. Understood?”

You idiot. You worthless, legal eagle idiot. “Fine.” Barrish turned and walked straight into the living room where the agents stood from the place they had staked out on the couch. He took a seat in a well-worn recliner that faced the entire room from the corner, his lawyer standing a few feet away beneath the arched opening to the front hallway. “Sit down. Please.”

“Mr. Barrish, I’m Special Agent Jefferson and this is Special Agent Aguirre. We’re from the Los Angeles FBI office.” Art removed his notebook. “We want to ask you a couple questions about someone named Frederick Allen. Do you know him?”

“I know of him,” Barrish answered, betraying no emotion outwardly.

“How?”

Barrish shifted his gaze between the two federal pigs. The man, an African, looked to be of pure stock. No long-ago mixing of his female ancestors with the master apparent. The woman, though, was obviously the product of racial melding. The Spanish conquistadors’ taking of native Central American Indians so long before was the start of her bastardized bloodline. Probably an Aryan influence somewhere along the many generations, too, he guessed. Her figure, trim and attractive, was not reminiscent of the stockier Indian ancestry that probably provided the female half of her lineage. One mongrel. One purebred. Both equally worthless, and both equally dangerous to him at the moment. His lawyer, having obviously shown the pigs to his home — and without warning — was at least right that he should just answer the questions and be done with them.

“From his actions,” John answered. “He killed one of your brother federal officers, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Art confirmed, recognizing the tonal shift as Barrish spoke the word brother . “Is there anywhere else you know him from?”

“The papers. He died in that chemical thing not too far away.”

“Twenty miles,” Frankie said.

“Fairly close,” Art commented. “He was of a like mind to you in certain respects. Isn’t that so?”

Barrish sniffed a laugh. “The uneducated as to my beliefs might say that.”

“So you differed with Mr. Allen?” Art asked, hoping to lead Barrish into at least hinting of additional knowledge of Allen.

But the AVO leader was going to have no part of that, and chose his words carefully. “Not with Allen in particular. As I said — I did not know the man. But I understand some of his views from his past and from the news that he was part of the Aryan Brotherhood. Now, just because they and my organization share a word in our names, well, that does not mean we share a mirror-image philosophy.”

“But similar?” Art pressed.

“Look, I believe in separation of the races,” Barrish explained. “You people always call me a ‘white supremacist.’ I’m a white separatist . I believe that Aryans, or white people of sufficiently pure blood, should have America as a homeland. I believe that you and your fellow Africans should be repatriated to the continent my ancestors so foolishly stole you from. I believe your assistant here—”

“Partner, Mr. Barrish,” Frankie interjected. “I’m his partner.”

“Partner.” Whatever you want to call yourself, half-breed . “Your partner here should go back south of the border to the place where her kind abounds. It is all very simple. Now, the Aryan Brotherhood espouses the views of separation by destruction, meaning they want to separate anyone who is not Aryan from the group of the living. Some other similar groups have the same basic philosophy. But those groups, like the Aryan Brotherhood, all advocate violence as a means to achieve their end. I simply believe that the end is a foregone conclusion, and it is up to organizations such as mine, and individuals like me, to prepare my race for their destiny.”

“I see,” Art said.

“No you don’t,” Barrish countered. “But you will.”

He was cool, not cocky, Art thought. He spoke his words of hate as if he knew them to be the truth. He believed he was right. What more was needed to make this man dangerous?

“Did you know of Allen before your arrest?” Frankie asked.

“Excuse me,” Mankowitz interrupted. “That time period is—”

“Hold it, Seymour,” John said. “I don’t mind. The answer is no. Only after his actions hit the papers.”

“What about Twelve-Twelve Riverside?” Art asked, following Barrish’s previous answer quickly. “Have you ever been there?”

“No, but I’ve spent a great deal of time around Temple and Main for the last year,” Barrish said, referring to the Metropolitan Detention Center in which he had been held preceding and during his abbreviated trial.

“Monte Royce?” Art said, tossing the name out.

“Who?”

“Nick King or Nikolai Kostin?”

Barrish shook his head at the African’s questions. “Sorry.”