Against the Wind

by J. F. Freedman

  “So what’s the deal? When can we get out?” He looks at me levelly; he wants an answer, the right one.

  “In about an hour,” I tell him. “They’re going to want bail, because of your priors. Can you make it?”

  “How much?” he asks.

  “I can probably get a group rate. Cost you a grand apiece.”

  He nods.

  “You’ll have to stick around until the preliminary. If you’re caught leaving the county all bets are off.”

  “That’s Monday?”

  I shake my head. “Things don’t move that swift around here.” They’re from urban jungles, they’re used to a quick in and out. “I’ll try to jam on it, get it on the docket by Friday.”

  They groan collectively. “We’ve got plans,” the leader says.

  “I know,” I tell him. “You plan to enjoy a week in Santa Fe and keep your noses clean.” I stand. “You’ll be out in an hour. Here’s my service,” I add, writing it on a slip of paper, “call me after you’re out and let me know where you’re staying. It’s cool,” I reassure them, “by lunchtime Friday you’re on the road.”

  The jailer swings open the metal door. I take a parting look at them through the glass insert: they’re staring right back at me. As I walk outside I’m thinking I’d hate to ever get on the wrong side of my new clients.

  The corpse is transported down to Albuquerque in a county paramedic’s ambulance. By state law ail murders require an autopsy, and in cases like this one: bizarre, heinous, possibly cultish or at the least a retaliation, they’re handled at the best facility in the state, which is the university medical school pathology lab, presided over by the state coroner, Dr. Milton Grade, an old man now but still a powerhouse, a past president of the American Association of Forensic Pathologists.

  It’s a mutilation. The autopsy team is hardened to killings, but this one’s particularly gut-wrenching. It didn’t help matters that the body lay out in full unremitting sun before it was found, so that it not only was decomposing more rapidly than usual, but had swelled to the point where another day of baking would’ve caused the whole sorry mess to explode, which in turn would have made an accurate estimate as to the time and method of death much harder, if not impossible. Fortunately that didn’t happen; the body was iced in time, stabilized, and shipped.

  Grade’s the last one to arrive. He apologizes, why do these things inevitably happen on a weekend? His staff laughs politely, but it is true, they get a lot of Saturday and Sunday business, it has to do with New Mexican culture which in a perverse historical way honors Friday and Saturday night drunks and their close acquaintanceship with guns and knives. He hangs his street clothes in a locker and dresses for work. Now they all look alike—a team of butchers. The long white coats are washed after each autopsy but the laundry can’t completely bleach out the faded bloodstains of previous dissections.

  Grade works his way down from the head, speaking into a micro tape recorder, moving smoothly and professionally, calmly instructing the assistant pathologist and lab technicians to lift a limb or turn a body part when he needs to get a better look at something.

  It takes twice as long as usual to get through this section of the autopsy. Grade gives the team a short break. He stands outside the room, leaning against the tile wall, having a cup of coffee from the vending machine with his assistant, Dr. Matsumota, a young resident from Columbus, Ohio. It’s quiet down here in the basement, the low-hanging blue fluorescent lights accentuating the coldness and sterile eeriness that comes with cutting up dead bodies.

  “This must’ve been what doing the Manson victims was like,” Matsumota ventures. He’s new enough at this that he still gets physically sick when he works on a particularly grisly one; back in the room he’d had to fight to keep from regurgitating the #3 combination plate he’d had for lunch (cheese enchilada, chile relleno, rice and beans).

  “Worse,” Grade replies. He pauses. “Think how it must’ve been for the victim,” he adds.

  “But he was dead …” The alternative is too morbid to contemplate.

  Grade drains his coffee. “I think the gunshots came last.”

  “You mean he was alive … ?”

  “For some of it. He would’ve gone into shock before whoever did it was finished.”

  Matsumota starts to gag.

  “I’ve come across it in some recent literature, maybe at a seminar, I don’t remember where exactly, doesn’t matter,” Grade continues. “Ritual killings perpetrated by roving gangs of homosexuals. You saw the poor bastard’s ass,” he says, not bothering to mask his disgust, “that was pure mutilation.” He stares up at the ceiling. “I hope to hell he passed out fast. God help him if he didn’t.”

  Matsumota’s already gone, running for the men’s room, his hand clutching his mouth.

  They gut the chest cavity, working roughly now, cracking the bones that are in their way, blood splattering all over the white butcher coats, cutting out the organs, dropping them into heavy freezer baggies, weighing them, cataloguing them. It’s tedious; it all has to be done right, accurately, there will be a trial and their conclusions will be presented as evidence. When it’s over the technicians lift the remains, just a shell now, into a body bag, put it into a locker. They were able to get a couple decent fingerprints, which’ll be sent to the FBI in Washington, and to the Pentagon. Hopefully someone will miss him and come identify the body so he’ll get a decent burial, his name spoken, rather than an anonymous grave in a state-maintained dump site.

  Grade showers and dresses, goes to his office in the medical complex. Tomorrow his secretary will type up the official report; right now he has to call the District Attorney. This one doesn’t want to wait until tomorrow.

  “YOU’D BETTER GET DOWN here right away.”

  “Now what?”

  “The shit has hit the fan, Bubba,” Robertson tells me. “I don’t want to talk about it over the phone,” he continues, “it’s too important. Just get down here muy pronto.” He’s sweating, I can feel the moisture through the line. That in itself is unnerving; John Robertson never sweats.

  “By the way,” he adds, “do you know where your biker clients are? Right now?”

  “No. They checked into the Sheraton. Give ’em a call if you’re that anxious, although I doubt they’re hanging around on a Sunday evening.” I hesitate. “Does this have anything to do with them?” That was a dumb question, I think immediately.

  “We’ll talk about it in person.” He hangs up.

  I pop a brew, strip, head for the bathroom and a quick shower. I just got in from taking Claudia back to her mother’s. We’d spent the day together, hiking, swimming, goofing off, she’d run me ragged. The phone was ringing as I walked in the door, it was my service telling me the District Attorney had personally been trying to reach me for the last two hours, that I was to call his office immediately, no matter how late I got the message.

  I stand under the shower longer than I have to; whatever’s awaiting me isn’t good news, and the idea that my new clients are involved in something else, something more nefarious than an unprosecutable armed robbery charge, is discomforting. Lawyers, defense or prosecution, are human like anyone else. We can’t like everyone, even if we’re defending them. The good lawyer doesn’t let it affect his performance, but at the same time there are cases you wish you weren’t involved in. Experience and my gut are telling me this is going to be one of those situations. So I let the shower run longer than necessary, and wash my hair for the second time today. Robertson’ll be looking good, well-dressed and freshly-clean, even if he’s wearing jeans. And for one of the few times when I go to the jail when it isn’t working hours, so will I.

  Before leaving the house I call the Sheraton. Their line doesn’t answer; them not being there shouldn’t bother me, but it does.

  “THEY FOUND A BODY up in the hills yesterday afternoon. Some kids were hiking up by the ranger’s station; they found it.”

  “Yeh, I know,” I say. “
I saw it on the news last night.” That was the commotion Claudia and I had seen when we were fishing. “Sounded pretty grim.”

  “Pretty grim. That’s an interesting way of putting it.”

  I’m in Robertson’s office again, just the two of us, although outside there’s activity, considerably more than you normally see on a Sunday night. It’s almost dark, out his window I can see the sun finally melting down behind the ragged horizon.

  “I’ll show you the pictures in a minute,” he says. “If they don’t give you a negative twist on your fellow man nothing ever will.”

  “What does this have to do with the bikers?”

  “Maybe they did it.” He looks at me straight-forwardly; it’s a look that tells me the fun and games are over.

  “What makes you think so?” My mind’s already racing, if these guys have to go up on a murder charge it’s a new ballgame and I’m not equipped to play. You need a support team behind you in a case like that, a lawyer who’s just been kicked out of his firm can’t do the job; not the way it has to be done when your clients have an image comparable to Adolf Eichmann’s.

  “Dr. Grade told me,” Robertson says.

  “Are you out of your mind?” I explode. “That’s prejudicial and you know it. How did he even know these guys were in town? Jesus Christ, John, that’s inadmissible, you won’t even be able to get an indictment.”

  “Calm down, Will. Grade doesn’t know they’re in town; hell, he doesn’t even know they’re in the state.”

  “Then what in hell are you talking about?” He’s playing head-games with me, I don’t like it. Not when there’s a murder charge lurking around.

  “This.” He picks up a file from the top of his desk. I recognize it: an autopsy report. “He told me this. I put the rest together myself,” he says. He pauses a moment; “and so will you when you see what’s in it.”

  “I’ll judge that for myself,” I say, reaching for it. He doesn’t let me have it.

  “After they’re formally booked.”

  “When is that?”

  “Any minute now,” he says, glancing at his watch. “We picked them up a few minutes ago. They’re on their way in.”

  “From where?”

  “From wherever they were. Don’t panic,” he reassures me, “they weren’t trying to skip. They were out somewhere normal.” He drops the folder on his desk. “Let’s talk man to man, Will. This is really hairy.”

  “Off the record?”

  He nods.

  “Okay,” I say.

  Now he hands me the folder. I look at the pictures. He was right; this is truly sickening. I was in Nam, a ballsy kid fresh out of high school, I saw front-line action; I know instantly I never saw anything this barbaric.

  “Jesus H. Christ.” I swallow. I need something to drink, even if it’s only water.

  “And these are black and white,” John says, indicating the photos. “Think what it must’ve been like in living color, with the temperature sitting on a hundred degrees. Not to mention the odor. The cops who went out on it threw up.”

  I force myself to look at the pictures again. The images don’t improve.

  “I can’t blame them,” I say. “But why do you think my guys did it? If anything, it points to organized crime, the Mafia, organizations like that.”

  “Because of the cock,” he says, having a hard time getting out the words.

  “Exactly. It’s a common wiseguy touch,” I answer. Whoever had killed this guy had cut off his dick and stuck it in his mouth. “The Mafia have been known to do that to snitches; everyone knows that. And the Viet Cong,” I suddenly remember—I never saw it personally, but it was common knowledge over there.

  “Outlaw biker gangs have been known to do it, too,” Robertson informs me.

  An alarm goes off inside my head. “I didn’t know that,” I say cautiously.

  “Neither did I,” Robertson admits. “But Grade did. He volunteered the information without knowing we had these guys in hand,” he adds. I can tell from the way John says it he’s attaching real significance to it. Maybe he should; there’s going to be an uproar when this goes public.

  “What else did he volunteer?” I ask. I’m trying to get a handle on this but I can’t tear my thoughts away from those pictures.

  “That he wasn’t killed by the gunshots,” he tells me.

  If he didn’t have my undivided attention before, he does now.

  “Then …”

  “He was stabbed to death,” Robertson confirms. “Forty-seven times. Or maybe he was emasculated first, then stabbed forty-seven times. Whichever it was, the shots to the head were last, an afterthought,” he says, bitterly.

  “Okay,” I say slowly. My head’s starting to clear; I want to make sure what I say is to the point, which is to protect my clients. “I grant you this is hideous, barbaric, and disgusting. I still don’t see anything that ties my clients to it.”

  “They were in town at the time it happened,” he says.

  “Give me a break.”

  “And according to Dr. Milton Grade, one of this country’s most eminent forensic pathologists …”

  “I know Dr. Grade’s bona fides as well as you do,” I interrupt, impatiently.

  “… this kind of ritual murder has strong homosexual overtones …”

  “One guy cuts off another guy’s Johnson you could say there was sexual shenanigans involved, so what?” I say.

  “… which has become characteristic of certain outlaw biker gang killings,” he finishes. “Grade’s come across it in some journals,” he adds.

  I hear the first shoe dropping. Now I’ll be on edge until I hear the second, if there is one.

  “Fine,” I tell him. “That still has nothing to do with this case. What else do you have? Anything that ties the victim to my clients?”

  “Not yet,” he says evenly.

  “Then where’s your case? Besides a general fear and loathing in the law enforcement community for these kind of people?”

  “That’s part of it. Everyone hates scum like these,” Robertson says. “Including you. Even when you’re representing them.”

  His phone rings. “This is Robertson.” He listens a moment. “Fine.” He hangs up. “Your clients are across the street.” Meaning back in jail.

  “Are they under arrest?”

  “Let’s say they’re under suspicion.”

  “What for?”

  “Aggravated murder and kidnapping.”

  We both know what’s left unsaid: aggravated murder and kidnapping in this state carry the death penalty.

  MY CLIENTS ARE OUTRAGED and they’re not in the least bit trying to hide it. They haven’t been processed yet; it’s been less than thirty-six hours and they’re sitting across the jailhouse table from me again, this time dressed in their colors, which makes them especially fearsome. Lone Wolf leans towards me, his heavily-muscled arms crossed on the table. They’re covered with tattoos, elaborate snakes and hawks and hearts and daggers and blood and roses, all intertwined, a living populist art museum.

  “What in the fuck is going on here?” That soft, whispery voice of Lone Wolf’s is ghost-like, in stark contrast to the gut-level savageness he physically projects.

  “What kind of bullshit lawyer are you, Alexander?” he continues. The threat is palpable, I can feel its pulse: you took our money, you told us you were going to solve the problem. Now we’re back in here.

  “You called me, ace, remember?” Fuck them, if they want another lawyer let them get one. I’ve got enough aggravation that I’ve got to take, the surplus I can do without.

  He stares at me. They’re not used to being called out.

  “Don’t get your bowels in an uproar,” he says. That sly grin peers out from behind his three-day growth. “We know you’re the best.” He leans back, withdrawing the menace. “Just tell us what’s going on.”

  “What’ve they told you?”

  “They didn’t tell us jackshit. They paraded in where we were
eating, picked us up, told us if we didn’t voluntarily come in for more questioning they’d revoke our bond. Didn’t leave us much choice.”

  “Made a big goddam scene about it,” a second one chimes in. His nom de guerre is Roach, he looks like Mick Jagger with a wine-colored birthmark the shape of Florida running up the right side of his neck to his eyebrow. “Scared the shit out of the civilians,” he adds, grinning. He also sports a star sapphire filling on his left eyetooth.

  “They didn’t even let us finish our dinner,” the third one, aka Dutchboy, says. He’s huge, the baby of the group. Red hair in a bowl-cut and freckles: Huck Finn in your worst nightmare. “I’m still so hungry I could eat a virgin.”

  They laugh; I smile along despite myself. Maybe it’s because I share their sentiments that they’re getting screwed.

  “There’re your basic vending machines in the cellblock,” I tell them. “They’ll have to do ’till breakfast.”

  Their faces cloud. This isn’t going to be easy, but easy’s no longer an option.

  “There was a murder in the mountains north of here a few days ago,” I say. “They found the body yesterday.” I pause; there’s no reaction. That’s good.

  “They’re holding you for it.” No point in pussyfooting around.

  They stare at me, almost a classic group double-take.

  “No fucking way.”

  “You didn’t do it.”

  “This is getting old, man.”

  “I had to ask. I told you that. I always have to ask.”

  “Okay. I hear you.” Lone Wolf’s calmer now, an act of will. “We didn’t do it, we don’t know anything about it. That is the truth, man, I swear to God.” He’s staring at me; they’re all staring at me, they don’t blink.

  I look back at them. Not with as much intensity; you have to be somewhat crazy to have that kind of intensity. These men have it in spades. I don’t; I’m glad of that. I can feel the cherries, lemons, grapes, bells tumbling around in my head, the kind of internal slot-machine that plays inside a lawyer’s consciousness that comes together and tells him whether his clients are bullshitting him or being straight. There’s no immediate payoff this time. When they told me there was nothing to the armed robbery charge I believed them flat-out, but I’m not totally convinced about this one, there’s something nagging. I’m inclined to believe them, the absolute lack of recognition when I first brought it up can’t be faked, ninety-nine out of a hundred people would’ve revealed something; but they’re one-percenters, they survive by walking the tightrope. Maybe, even probably, they didn’t do it; but it’s the kind of barbaric act these men are certainly capable of.