Boca Knights

by Steven M. Forman

  I pushed some computer control buttons and Dominick’s face disappears from the screen, replaced by the computer simulation of the front of the house with a view of the garage. In coordination with Dominick’s words, a computer-generated three-dimensional car pulled up to the front of the house. Dominick’s voice went on. “I yell, ‘Hey Goldenblatt, I wanna talk to you.’“

  An animated three-dimensional man exited the car and moved toward the garage.

  “Would you look at that,” a voice said from the audience.

  “Unbelievable,” was heard from another corner of the room.

  Dominick continued talking, and the simulation kept pace. “Goldenblatt sees me coming.” The figure in the garage simulating Goldenblatt looked up and moved toward the back of the garage. Two people walking a dog appeared in the bottom lower corner of the screen, and another person approached from the left. “Goldenblatt pushes a button to close his garage door.” Dominick’s voice was shaky, and he gagged a couple of times. The poor bastard was dying. “I moved quicker,” Dom continued the narration. “I ducked under the door when it was about halfway down.” On the screen the Amici figure had entered the garage; the overhead door finished closing. The simulation paused. We saw the front of the house, the cars, and the three witnesses. “So it’s me and Goldenblatt alone in the garage.” The scene changed to inside of the garage. Goldenblatt was at the back of the garage by the exit door, and Dominick was walking toward him. Goldenblatt is holding a golf club. “I yell at Goldenblatt to put down the golf club.” All this action was being displayed on the screen in perfect coordination with Dominick’s words. “Well, the son of a bitch comes at me. I grab the club and cut my hand on a sharp edge.” The animation was awesome. “We swing around, so we’re now in opposite positions. He’s still holding the club, and now I’m out of breath and dizzy. I musta been sick already and didn’t know it. So I reach for the back door next to me, open it, and take one step into the courtyard. I tell Goldenblatt to calm down again but this time Goldenblatt comes at me with the fuckin’ club over his head like an axe. I’m yelling, ‘Stop, stop, stop,’ and he’s yelling crazy stuff like, ‘Fuck you’ and ‘Get away from me.’ When he got close to me, I saw him stumble, but I wasn’t going to wait around to make sure he was all right. I let go of the door and ran like hell. All I heard was a loud bang when the door swung shut.” The computer showed the door slamming shut and Dominick running around to the front.

  “I got in my car and drove away,” Dom said. “I was really rattled. I got home, collapsed in my armchair, and tried to tell Carol what happened. I had blood on my hands from a cut but I don’t know how I cut myself. The next thing I know the police are at the door.” The animation had stopped with Dominick getting into his car and driving away. Now his picture was back on the screen. “I don’t know what happened after I left that garage,” Dominick said, “but Robert Goldenblatt was alive and running after me with a golf club the last time I saw him.” Cough, cough, cough. “And that’s my story.”

  The screen went dark and Doug came forward again. “Thanks, Eddie.” He patted me on the shoulder and took the mike. “So, ladies and gentlemen,” Doug addressed the audience, “Dominick Amici, from his deathbed, denies murdering Robert Goldenblatt.” Doug walked away from the podium and moved closer to the audience. “But there is no denying the fact that an eight-ounce golf club cracked Robert Goldenblatt’s skull and caused his death. The question is: Did Dominick Amici deliver that death blow?”

  The audience sat in rapt silence awaiting an answer. Instead they got another question.

  “Did any man deliver that blow?” Doug asked.

  The audience started buzzing like a swarm of angry bees.

  “What kind of a stupid question is that?” Seymour Tanzer asked loudly.

  “Yeah, what kind of stupid question is that?” another man shouted.

  More buzzing followed accompanied by a smattering of derisive laughter.

  “Actually,” Doug spoke into the microphone and held up his hand for silence. “This is not a stupid question at all.”

  The buzzing stopped.

  “Scientifically,” Doug emphasized the word, “it is virtually impossible for any human being to deliver a blow that could crack a man’s skull and enter his brain using an eight-ounce, rounded-edge golf club.”

  “Dominick was a big man,” Seymour heckled. “He was six foot five and about 250 pounds at the time.”

  The buzz was back. Doug was unfazed.

  “They were both big men. But that’s irrelevant. I don’t care how big Dom was,” Doug said. “Medical pathology studies prove that it would take approximately 400 pounds of force to cause the damage done to Goldenblatt’s skull. That means the club would have had to be traveling at 150 miles per hour.”

  “Impossible. No one can swing a golf club that fast,” Mikey Tees spoke up from the back of the room. “Not even Tiger Woods.”

  “That is correct,” Doug agreed. “The average professional golfer can achieve club-head speed in the 150-miles-an-hour range,” he told the group. “Tiger Woods has been timed at 125 miles an hour.”

  “Amazing,” an anonymous admirer said.

  “It is amazing,” Doug concurred. “But it’s not fast enough to crack a skull and penetrate a brain. And Tiger was timed using a conventional golf swing with a long driver. Goldenblatt died from a downward chopping blow of a four iron.”

  “So who bashed in Robert Goldenblatt’s skull?” a man asked. “God?”

  That got a few laughs.

  “Yes,” Doug said. “Robert Goldenblatt was killed by an act of God.”

  There was no stopping the nonbelievers in the audience.

  “This is bullshit!”

  “What are you, nuts?”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “Let me finish, please,” Doug asked for quiet.

  The noise died down when the back of Goldenblatt’s house appeared on the screen. Doug had a laser pointer. “This is Goldenblatt’s courtyard in back of the house.” The red laser line traced the area. “As you can see, there is a narrow space between the two houses.” Doug pointed. “This effectively creates a wind tunnel so that even on a relatively calm day there’s a breeze off the lake that accelerates through this narrow area. The night Goldenblatt died, the weather bureau confirms that there were wind gusts over forty miles an hour. Coming off the lake and into this wind tunnel, the speed would be greatly increased.” Doug pointed to an even narrower area where the back door to the garage was located. “Dominick says he was standing by this door the last time he saw Robert Goldenblatt.” The simulation showed a three-dimensional figure at the open door. “This door leading to the garage was solid wood with a metal fire plate, and weighed approximately twenty-five pounds. I verified these specifications myself. Now, according to Dominick, a strong wind blew the doorknob out of his hand, Dom ran, and he heard the door slam shut.” The animation showed the action. “So what happened on the other side of that slamming door?” Doug asked. He tapped some keys on the computer, and the three-dimensional animation of the inside of the garage appeared again. There was a man’s figure simulating Goldenblatt holding a golf club out in front of him at eye level. The figure was running toward the open door where the Dominick simulation stood. The Goldenblatt simulation stumbled forward, head first. The Dom simulation flees. The door slams shut on the heel of the golf club, driving the toe of the club into the top front of Goldenblatt’s forehead. The tremendous force generated by the door drove the toe of the club into Robert Goldenblatt’s skull. Goldenblatt’s head and body flew backward. He fell to the garage floor approximately five feet from the point of impact. Goldenblatt’s body lay motionless on the floor with the golf club implanted in his forehead.

  “Based on the laws of physics, the forty-miles-an-hour wind slammed the twenty-five-pound door shut with the force of approximately one ton of kinetic energy. That amount of residual energy is more than enough to crush Goldenblatt’s skull, penetr
ate his brain, and throw his body five feet to where he was found.” Doug paused and took a deep breath. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “based on these facts, we contend there was no murder the night Robert Goldenblatt died. There was a terrible accident. An act of God.” Doug turned from the audience and handed me the microphone.

  The lights went on. There was an eerie silence in the room. I started talking before anyone in the audience had the chance. “At this moment there is only one question you should be asking yourself,” I told them. “And that question is, ‘Could this have happened?’ Could Robert Goldenblatt have been killed by a freak accident caused by high winds, a heavy metal-reinforced door, a golf club, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time? It definitely could have happened that way. Does anyone here remember how Tom Mix, the cowboy movie star died?”

  “A car accident,” someone volunteered.

  “Actually he died avoiding a car accident,” I said. “He swerved to avoid going over a washed-out bridge, and a suitcase in the backseat of his car slid forward, hit him on the back of the head, and killed him. It was all a matter of bad luck, like getting hit by lightning or a falling object or an airplane landing on a highway or an errant golf ball or getting strangled by a necktie caught in a rising garage door. All these things have happened. So, could Robert Goldenblatt have been killed by a heavy door slamming shut and driving a golf club into his head? Of course, it could have happened that way. And that creates reasonable doubt as to whether or not Dominick Amici killed

  Robert Goldenblatt. A reasonable doubt is all it takes to find a person not guilty.”

  “Are we just supposed to accept this?” a random voice called out.

  “You can draw any conclusion you want,” I answered. “But wait. Is there a lawyer in the house?”

  Maybe fifty hands went up.

  “I should have known,” I joked. “Okay, lawyers, if you think we’ve established reasonable doubt as to whether or not Dominick Amici killed Robert Goldenblatt, please put down your hand.” There wasn’t a hand left in the air. “The defense rests,” I said. I put the microphone down and left the podium.

  Before I could make an exit, I was confronted by retired lawyer and current pain in the ass Seymour Tanzer.

  “Eddie, a minute, please.” Seymour put his hand on my arm to slow me down.

  “Seymour, I saw your hand go down,” I scolded him with a smile. “No more questions.”

  Carol Amici came up to me on the other side of Seymour. “Thank you, Eddie,” she said.

  I turned away from Seymour, who, to his credit, didn’t protest. I hugged Carol, and then I was hugging her daughters, Lisa and Debbie, who were also thanking me. “We did the best we could,” I said.

  “You did great, Eddie,” Carol spoke for all of them. “Maybe now Dom can rest in peace.”

  I felt good until I saw David Goldenblatt walk directly to Carol Amici. I held my breath.

  “I’m sorry about my behavior the other night,” he said sincerely to Carol. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I’m sorry about your father,” Carol said graciously.

  David Goldenblatt nodded to Dominick Amici’s daughters, who returned the nod. He turned to me. “Good presentation, Eddie,” he said, and shook my hand.

  “Thank you.”

  “Eddie,” a voice said impatiently.

  “Are you still here, Seymour?” I turned to the retired lawyer. “I’m a little busy right now.”

  “That’s okay, Eddie.” Carol Amici kissed me again. “We’re going home. I’m exhausted. This has been very stressful for us. Thank you again.”

  When the Amici family departed, several people took their places around me. I got the feeling I was being hemmed in, and I was uncomfortable. “I told you I’m not going to answer questions about the presentation,” I said to Seymour.

  “I don’t want to ask about the presentation,” Seymour surprised me. “You got my vote for reasonable doubt, like you said. I want to ask about something else.”

  “Okay, Seymour,” I said. “What do you want to ask?”

  “I want to ask you about Aryan Army.”

  “What do you want to know about Aryan Army, Seymour?” I asked the retired lawyer.

  “Are they as bad as Jerry Small says?” Seymour asked.

  “They’re pretty bad,” I told him.

  Jerry Small had written articles about Aryan Army in the Palm Beach County News, and he didn’t paint a pretty picture.

  “We don’t know as much about Aryan Army as we do about Aryan Nations,” I said to the group. “We know that Aryan Nations isn’t as strong as it was in the seventies and eighties, but they can still be dangerous to your health.”

  Jerry wrote that Aryan Nations was founded in the 1940s by Wesley Swift and was originally known as the Church of Jesus Christ Christians. The organization believed that America would be God’s final battleground where Jews would be annihilated.

  After Swift died, Pastor Robert Butler assumed leadership in the mid-seventies and changed the hate group’s name to Aryan Nations. Butler formed allegiances with the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party, the Worldwide Church of the Creator, the National Alliance, and the Silent Brotherhood. Butler also founded the Worldwide Aryan Congress in 1982. Unfortunately for Aryan Nations (aka the Brotherhood), a disaffected freak named Robert Mathews broke away from the Nation and put together a group of crazies called the Order. They staged a series of bank robberies in the early eighties. In 1984, Mathews was killed during a shootout with federal agents, and twenty-four of his followers went to jail. The Order was officially out of order. In 2001, Aryan Nations lost a lawsuit filed by a woman and her son, who were attacked and seriously injured by some of the organization’s members.

  The legal decision bankrupted Aryan Nations, and they lost their beloved Hayden Lake compound. They relocated to Pennsylvania but they were a fractured faction. Some disgruntled members originally from the southeast formed Aryan Army and moved their headquarters to Tobacco Junction, South Carolina. They were a wounded nest of snakes, but they could still bite you in the ass if provoked, and I guess Palm Beach County provoked them. First, a little Jew from South Florida (that would be me) apprehended one of their members. Secondly, two black women accused him of assault. If that wasn’t offensive enough, a Jewish district attorney was going to prosecute their soldier and a Jewish judge had set an exorbitant bail. Aryan Army was pissed and they were going to rise again.

  Jerry Small’s articles in the Palm Beach County News were inciting people.

  The Anti-Defamation League claimed defamation.

  The United Jewish Appeal appealed.

  The Jewish Federation made it a federal case.

  The Jewish Defense League was defensive.

  Jews for Jesus were confused.

  The case became national news. In front of a South Carolina federal courthouse, Amos Bellamy, a cross-eyed tractor mechanic from Tarelton, spoke for another splinter group, the boisterous Silent Brotherhood. “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,” Bellamy quoted David Lane of the Order. Then he took off his NASCAR baseball cap and held it over his heart. “God bless America,” he said to the camera.

  It was reported that as many as 500 anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-everything fanatics would appear in front of the Palm Beach courthouse in three days, demanding that the “fuckin’ Jew judge FREE RANDOLPH BUFORD.”

  “Can we stop them from coming here?” Seymour asked.

  “Some of them are already here from what I heard,” I told them. “They were already spotted in Boca.”

  “How do we know for sure it was Aryan Army?” Seymour asked.

  “Skinheads in a battered old car flying a Third Reich flag from the antenna tend to stand out in Boca.”

  “Can we stop them from marching?”

  “We could kill them,” I said.

  “Murder aside” - Seymou
r looked at me uncertainly - ”what are our options? Who knows where an event like that can lead?”

  “It can lead to anarchy,” I said bluntly. “That’s what Aryan Army wants. They want their own country without us in it.”

  A worried-looking septuagenarian woman asked, “Is all this happening just because of the attack on those two Haitian women?” She sounded as if the attack had nothing to do with us.

  “No, it’s not just because two women were attacked,” I said. “It’s because Aryan Army is a hate group and one of their members has to defend himself against just about everyone they hate. Black victims and Jewish authority aren’t exactly what Aryan Army has in mind for the perfect society.”

  “The judge should have recused himself,” Seymour said.

  “The judge said he could be totally objective about the case regardless of his religion,” I said.

  “What about you, Eddie?” another man spoke up. “Without you there’s no case.”

  “That’s probably true,” I agreed. “Are you suggesting I don’t testify?”

  “Maybe,” the man replied. “It would save us a lot of trouble if we just appeased these bastards, so they’ll go home.”

  “You can’t appease these people,” I said. “They’re neo-Nazis. They think Hitler was right.”