Steve Martini - Double Tap

They might never have convicted Kwan in Chapman’s murder except for one thing: the Orb at the Edge . The piece itself is now resting unceremoniously somewhere in a landfill. Nathan admitted that, had he known what it was worth, he might have been tempted to fence it. But, knowing Kwan, I doubt it. The risk that the cops might find it and trace it back to him were simply too great. Nathan placed it in a large plastic trash bag and smashed it into small shards before depositing all the sharp little pieces in a dumpster behind a grocery store in Chula Vista the night of the murder. The problem for Nathan was that some of the pieces didn’t stay in the bag. Trace evidence found on a pair of slacks in Nathan’s closet revealed small shards of blue glass along with traces of dust, a unique compound of lead and powdered pigments known to have been specially mixed and used by the artist in crafting the blue Orb. It is the problem with a piece of art that is peerless: the materials used to make it are often one of a kind. Nathan’s strong suit was never evidence.

As part of his plea bargain, Nathan also gave up information regarding the murder weapon and how he knew where to find it. It turns out this was a gift from Chapman’s Mexican maid, the one who walked off the job one day and never came back.

Kwan, who had watched Chapman’s house on and off for more than a month, guessed that the maid was illegal. He followed her home, found out where she lived and where she hung out. She went to a local tavern at night. Nathan dressed down, struck up a conversation, and fed her drinks at the bar one evening. After she was mildly swacked, he made sure the word Isotenics came up so that the woman tried to impress him with the fact that she worked for Chapman, who owned the company. He picked up details about the size and the layout of the house, the fact that Chapman never turned on the security system. And then the clincher: the maid volunteered that she had stumbled over a very large pistol in a dresser drawer upstairs when she was putting things away one day. Apparently it frightened her. Nathan couldn’t believe his good luck. As he told his interrogators, “If you have to shoot somebody, it’s always nice if you can get them to supply the gun.” Kwan wanted the cops to be looking in the wrong direction from the get-go. He knew the caliber of the gun from the description the maid gave him. She remembered enough of the letters engraved on the side that it took Nathan less than five minutes searching online before he found the Mark 23, a contract piece made for Special Operations Command that only came in forty-five caliber. As far as Nathan was concerned, he’d found the Grail. He brought his own bullets and then discovered he didn’t need them. He swapped out rounds anyway, just to mix things up in an effort to confuse the cops further.

When he was finished fishing for information, Nathan drove the maid from Chapman’s house with an anonymous call from a pay phone one afternoon. He identified himself as a security guy from Isotenics and asked about her work references and her legal residence status. The woman left and never came back. This removed the final live-in obstacle to Chapman’s house.

Kwan will not be eligible for parole until he is nearly seventy years old.

In the months since he was arrested, pled out, and sentenced, the media frenzy surrounding the name Nathan Kwan has transformed it into a synonym for corruption that makes it difficult for me to recall that there was ever a time, in another life, when Nathan was a friend, part of the social unit that was my world.

I have often wondered what part of the cancer that ate his soul resides, perhaps in a more benign state, within each of us: the need for approval, the appetite for adulation that comes from some ancient, subterranean part of our being.

Nathan could tell you about every good cause and social need, from education and protection of the environment to the banishment of poverty, and was willing to tax us to the nth degree to pay for them all. At times he could make you love him, as he did that day when he delivered the photograph to my office.

In the next breath he could sell his soul to some liquor lobbyist or gambling tycoon, carving a massive tax exemption in the law for their benefit, and he would see nothing wrong in any of this. He would laugh and tell you that consistency was “the hobgoblin of little minds.” The next day he would climb back on the stump and rail against loopholes for the rich, and under Nathan’s definitions of truth and commitment he would mean it.

I wonder if I knew him at all, or whether it is even possible to discern those forces that transform the human soul to commit an act so calculated and brutal as the murder of Madelyn Chapman.

As for Isotenics and the government’s IFS program, or Information for Security: congressional committees, the Pentagon, and civil-liberties groups continue to battle in a ceaseless war of probes and investigations. With ever-emerging technologies and the explosion of classified projects within the government, it will probably never be known to what degree private information has been plundered. What is certain is the peril that such technologies present for the future. Given the mandate by governments that all shall participate in the advances of the electronic age, the pace, noise, and fury of the future carries with it immense risks for privacy and the inevitable destruction of those sheltered and quiet places where each of us can reside in peace.

Afew years ago I found myself sitting in my study, tears running down my face. My aunt had called to tell me that my uncle, my father’s little brother, Evo, had died. He had been diagnosed with throat cancer a few months earlier, the chimney that never stopped smoking, and was in the hospital for tests when his heart gave out. The death certificate read myocardial infarction . In a way it was merciful. My father had passed away two years earlier. Now they were both gone.

In later years Evo’s mental state had improved enough so that he lived at least at the margins of normal life. New medications and therapy helped. While his moods could swing wildly and severe stress could put him in his chair to stare at the wall, he was able to drive again, though he never went far. He ran errands for my grandmother in the years before she died.

As my father grew older and his health failed, I found myself filling the void.

I once had to help Evo out of a scrap with the law. Pulled over in a routine traffic stop, you might think his first instinct would be to run, but it wasn’t. Seeing the red light in his mirror, Evo crossed two lanes of traffic and slammed on his brakes so quickly that a man riding a ten-speed along the shoulder plowed into the back of my uncle’s car.

The fellow ended up on top of Evo’s trunk, upside down but unhurt, and mad as hell. Weeks later my uncle could laugh about it, gapped teeth and all. But at the time it wasn’t funny.

The initial stop for a bad brake light now produced an angry cyclist and a cop, who I am sure was beginning to wish he had never seen my uncle or his car. It was about to get worse.

Screaming at my uncle from behind the cop, the cyclist demanded that Evo be arrested. In the meantime my uncle was fumbling with his wallet.

Told to get his license out, Evo couldn’t get the lumber that were his thumbs and fingers to function enough to slip the license from the plastic window in his wallet. He tried to give the wallet to the cop. The officer wouldn’t touch it, only the license. Evo wasn’t saying anything. He was trying to stay away from the cyclist, whose adrenaline rush was being enhanced by elevated testosterone levels, now that he realized this colossus driving the car wanted no part of him.