by Joseph Flynn
Now, after all the intervening years, they were still going at it. Martin asked, “Are you saying, then, that your parents failed to raise you in the way they considered right? Or should I say white?”
Ron didn’t take the bait.
“What I’m saying is that my father is a bigot who comes from a long line of bigots, and he expected me to carry on in the family tradition. But I’m a disappointment to him.”
“So now you love black people, when you aren’t shooting them, is that it?”
“Objection, Your Honor!” Jack Hobart shouted. “Prejudicial. Counsel is attacking the witness.”
“Sustained,” the judge ruled emphatically. “The jury will disregard, Mr. Martin’s last remark. Mr. Martin, you may represent your client’s case vigorously, but if you make another such blatantly inflammatory remark, I will declare a mistrial and hold you in contempt of court.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Martin said with false humility. He knew he’d walked right to the edge on that one, but he was worried now. He’d had to make the point that this unflappable bastard was still a lying racist who’d shot two black men.
“Lieutenant Ketchum,” Martin resumed, “you testified that you used the word nigger routinely as a child. Did you ever use it in the course of your duties as a police officer?”
“No.”
Martin let the sneering look of disbelief linger on his face for the jury to see. He asked his next question only when he sensed the judge was becoming restive.
“You must have undergone quite a change of heart then. Can you tell us what it was?”
This was it, Martin knew. Ron Ketchum would have to come across with a story right now that was so persuasive and substantive that Martin couldn’t destroy it with either ridicule or logic. And Martin didn’t believe Ron had such a story.
Ron began, “I made a friend when I was twelve years old. His name was DeWayne Michaels. He was a little guy like me, so when he came up to me one day when I was shooting baskets in the park and asked if I wanted to play some one on one, I agreed. I still regarded black people as niggers at that time, but I didn’t think of DeWayne as black. He didn’t look any darker than I was when I had a tan, and he had green eyes. So, by the values my father taught me, I didn’t see anything wrong in playing ball with him. And we had great games. We were very evenly matched, and we both played our hearts out.
“After a couple weeks of playing every day, DeWayne asked me if I wanted to come over to his house. I said sure, but on the way I started getting nervous because we were going a long way and heading toward a neighborhood where my father, who was a police officer, had told me never to go. I asked DeWayne if he lived around there, and he said yes. I asked why, and he said that’s where black folks like him lived. I couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d told me he was from Mars.”
“Can we skip ahead to the good part, Lieutenant?” Martin asked sarcastically.
The judge castigated Martin without prompting from the defense. “You asked the question, Counselor. The witness is answering it. Remain silent until he finishes.”
Martin nodded mutely. He was pissed. The judge had lectured him as if he were some little snot nosed law student who didn’t know how to behave in a courtroom. He only hoped that the jury took into account that the judge was white, too.
Ron continued, “DeWayne introduced me to his mother and father and sister. His dad was plainly black; anyone could see that. But his mother looked as white as my mom. When I asked DeWayne, in the softest whisper I could manage, if she was white he said no. She was from New Orleans, the kind of person they called an octoroon down there. In the South, he told me, one drop of black blood made a person black. That was very hard for me to comprehend. I also had difficulty understanding the fact that both of DeWayne’s parents had jobs and their house was as neat and clean as my own. I’d been told that black people were either thieves or welfare bums and lived in rat-infested tenements. When it came time to leave, DeWayne’s dad insisted on driving me home. He said the neighborhood got a little dangerous at night.
“I was glad to have the ride, but I was very anxious about my father seeing that it was a black man and his son bringing me home. What was really bad was that I could tell DeWayne wanted to see my house after he’d shown me his. But there was no way I could bring him in. I mean, maybe I could have tried to fool my dad into thinking DeWayne was white, but what was I supposed to tell him, ‘Sorry, DeWayne, but your father has to wait outside in the car.’ Luckily for me, Mr. Michaels seemed to understand my problem, and didn’t let on to DeWayne. He just said he was sorry they couldn’t stop in and say hello to my family, but they had to get right home.
“I was still terribly embarrassed. I was also angry and confused that my father had lied to me. Most of all, I was fearful that DeWayne’s father had told him what was what after I got out of the car, and he’d never be my friend again.”
Now, Ron asked for a drink of water. Dredging up these memories was clearly painful for him, and the jury could see that he was not putting on an act for their benefit.
“DeWayne stayed my friend. We kept playing one on one at the park; sometimes we’d team up and play two on two against other guys. I kept waiting for him to ask to come to my house, but he never did. I figured his father must have told him something, but he wasn’t holding it against me.
“One day, toward the end of the summer, my mom told me I needed new shoes for school, and she’d take me before she went to work that day. So when I didn’t show up at the park to play basketball at the usual time, that was the day DeWayne decided he’d drop by my house to pick me up.” Ron took a pause to finish his glass of water. “The only person home when he got there was my dad. He was sleeping after working a night shift and then having a few drinks at an after-hours place with some friends. That morning, DeWayne made the mistake of ringing my doorbell.
“The next thing he knows my dad yanks the door open and starts beating him over the head with his baton. My dad is six-two and weighs over two hundred pounds. DeWayne was a foot shorter and not much more than a hundred pounds. And all of a sudden he has this madman beating the hell out of him, probably going to kill him right then and there, for the crime of coming to pick up his friend to play basketball.
“I saw all this as I was coming home with my new shoes. My father was beating DeWayne on his kidneys with his baton. I threw myself at my dad, trying to tackle him, to get him to stop. But I was no bigger than DeWayne. I bounced off. So I ran in the house and got my father’s gun.”
Ron took a deep breath and rubbed his hand over his face.
“When I got back outside, my father was still hitting DeWayne. Now, he was working over the backs of his legs. I fired a shot into the air. That finally broke the spell for my dad. He looked around, saw I had his gun and that it was pointed up, and he jumped on me. I thought he was going to start beating me, but I was wrong. He was shielding me. He yelled at me that when you fired a bullet up into the air it had to come back down, and when it did it could kill you. So he’d thrown his body over mine to take the bullet I’d fired if he had to.
“I couldn’t make heads or tails out of the man. Willing to die for his son, but lying to him about how he should think about other people. Where was the sense? With tears running down my face, I scrambled down to hold DeWayne, who was unconscious and bleeding from several places on his face and head. I demanded to know why my father had tried to kill my friend.
“I’ll never forget the look of genuine surprise, and disgust, on my father’s face. He said, ‘Your friend? I thought he was just some nigger casing the house so he could break in.’”
Ron turned to look directly at the jury.
“DeWayne recovered. And he didn’t even hold it against me for what my father had done to him. We went on to play basketball together for four years in high school. I’ve never addressed a black person as ‘nigger’ since the day my father nearly killed my best friend.”
Now, Ron directed h
is attention at Marcus Martin.
“You might remember DeWayne Michaels, Counselor. You recall that time you cheap-shotted me when our frosh-soph teams played that basketball game? You sent me to the hospital. DeWayne Michaels was the guy who said he’d take care of you if you ever tried it again.”
Martin could have objected to the personal reference as hearsay, but he knew it would be pointless. His case was lost. There was no way to attack that story.
Just to make sure the case was well in hand, Jack Hobart called Walter Ketchum, Ron’s father, to corroborate his son’s story. The old ex-cop dispassionately admitted he didn’t like blacks and that he thought they were responsible for most of society’s problems. He said he’d beaten DeWayne Michaels as his son had stated, and he’d honestly thought the boy had been about to burgle his house. Walter agreed that he, too, had learned his attitudes from his father, and if you went back far enough, you’d find a Ketchum who’d owned slaves in Texas, and had tried to keep them even after the Confederacy had lost the war.
Chantelle Michaels, DeWayne’s sister, also was called as a defense witness. She told of Ron’s friendship with her brother. She said that informing Ron her brother had been killed in an accident while serving in the army was one of the hardest things she’d ever done.
Sergeant Oliver Gosden testified for Ron. He insisted on testifying even after Ron had told him it probably wasn’t necessary as the case looked to be won. Coming to the aid of a white officer — even one who’d saved his life — was sure to cause resentment among Gosden’s fellow black officers on the LAPD, the force was so riven by racial and gender animosities. But Oliver decided he had a moral obligation, and he fulfilled it.
In his closing statement, Jack Hobart painted Ron not just as a good man but a noble one. He was the police officer who had literally served and protected his neighbors. He was the police officer who risked his own life to save that of his fellow officer. But more than that, he was the kind of man who overcame an insidious legacy of hate which could have made him a racist like his father and grandfather and who knew how many other of his forebears before that. Make no mistake, Jack Hobart told the jury, Ron Ketchum, too, was exposed to this awful virus of hatred. It was bred into him as soon as he was first taught to say the word nigger. But he overcame those malignant lessons by hard experience and great effort. To coin a phrase, Hobart said, the man you see before you was a recovering bigot. He fought every day against the potential for hatred within him, and every day since he saw his father beat his best friend, he had won that fight.
The jury took less than two hours to return a verdict in Ron’s favor. But the media knew a sound bite when they heard one. They seized upon Jack Hobart’s description of Ron and affixed it to him forever in the public consciousness: Ron Ketchum, recovering bigot. The label would be his epitaph.
Especially since he never publicly disputed it.
There were those, of course, who would have liked to see him stripped of the fig leaf that the adjective recovering provided. Marcus Martin was the foremost among them, suffering not only the injury of losing his case against Ron but also the insult of being ordered to pay Ron’s legal fees.
Leilani Ketchum’s last act of solidarity with her husband was rewarded when a TV producer who’d attended each session of the trial was struck by her exotic beauty and cast her in a highly-rated police drama, Plainclothes, giving her, at long last, her big break.
Walter Ketchum suffered a stroke four days after testifying, and after his hospitalization had his home care provided by Esther Gadwell, an AfricanAmerican LPN, the only person who would put up with him.
And Ron Ketchum pulled the pin on his badge and retired from the LAPD.
That was where most of the media coverage had left off with Ron. Now that he was being run through the news cycle again, he was sure there would be an update added. The press was nothing if not complete in its invasions of a person’s privacy.
After his retirement and divorce, alone in a home he’d once hoped to fill with his children, still vital at 45, he tried to figure out what the hell he was going to do with himself. He hadn’t the slightest idea. But he suspected whatever it was would have to be done elsewhere. He was too controversial to stay in L.A.
For three months, he divided his time between fishing and fixing up his house for the day when he’d eventually put it on the market. Then one Monday morning the phone rang and a woman with a high-tone British accent asked him if he might be free that day to take lunch with Mr. Clay Steadman. Yes, he was told, that Mr. Clay Steadman. Ron thought this was all part of a joke Leilani was playing on him, and since he’d missed her badly, he agreed.
Much to his surprise when he showed up at the appointed place and time, he met Clay Steadman. Far more shocking, Mayor Steadman of the town of Goldstrike, had a job offer for him: He wanted Ron to be his new chief of police. The movie star mayor admitted that he’d had Ron thoroughly checked out, and he liked what he’d heard. He said the chief’s job came with a good salary and benefits, and the town would provide a fully modern six room cabin for his use. What did Ron think?
Ron asked if the mayor really wanted a recovering bigot to head his police department. Clay asked if Ron would have a problem working for a recovering drug addict. The two men suited each other. Once Ron made certain he could run the department with a large degree of autonomy, he accepted, packed his bags, turned his house over to a broker and headed north.
He’d been happy in Goldstrike, high up in his mountain retreat, the past three years. But now he knew you could keep the world and its troubles at bay only so long.
Then some shit-head would come along and nail a minister to a tree.
Chapter 12
Annie Stratton had tired of hosting the ever growing media mob, and kicked them out of the Muni Complex so she could go have a quick dinner. The newsies didn’t go far, however. They set up camp on the grassy area near the wishing fountain just outside police headquarters. They called in or emailed their stories about the victim’s identity, the conflict between the victim’s father and the chief of police, and the chief’s history. It was a warm, pleasant evening; the press was happy with their pickings so far; they were content to chat amongst themselves in the Muni’s genial environs and await further developments.
The senior people would leave when darkness fell and retire to dinner, drinks and their hotel rooms. The junior staffers would remain all night lest anyone in authority try to sneak something past the people’s watchful messengers.
Shortly before dusk, the head of the public works department appeared and started taking a census of the media. Unused to answering questions, the reporters demanded to know why the man wanted their names and those of their employers. Was this some form of harassment? The man from public works said with a smile that he just wanted to know whom he should bill to have the Muni’s lawn resodded, and whom he should hold responsible if there were any other damage to public property.
The media were in such a huff over this affront to the First Amendment that they almost missed the arrival of the victim’s family. But Charmaine, Japhet, and Mahalia Cardwell looked too much like the three tired, grief stricken out of towners they were to go unnoticed. Their race, their obvious emotional distress and their stiffly formal dark clothing led the newsies to the unerring conclusion that these people had to be the victim’s family.
Only the timely arrival of Annie Stratton, returning from her brief evening meal, kept the media from descending on the Cardwells like ravenous scavengers. The press secretary lashed the mob back with threats that they would be expelled from the Muni Complex entirely if they didn’t behave civilly. Such unreasonable demands brought loud cries of complaint. But Annie held her ground while a police officer responding to the uproar escorted the Cardwells into the mayor’s office.
Clay Steadman personally seated the bereaved family on a sofa in his office. Ron Ketchum and Oliver Gosden, also present, offered their condolences. The mayor assured the Ca
rdwells that the town of Goldstrike grieved with them over their loss.
Charmaine Cardwell nodded her acceptance and fought back tears. Mahalia Cardwell only glared in silence. But four year old Japhet spoke up.
“Can I see my daddy now?” the boy asked.
The question was more than his mother could bear. She took her son in her arms and began to sob. Ron nodded to Oliver. He summoned a female police officer, and she took Charmaine and Japhet from the room.
That left Mahalia Cardwell. She stood and stuck her jaw out at the three men. She looked to be in her seventies, a tall, unbowed, rawboned woman with strength in her body and fury in her eyes.
“Charmaine lost her husband,” she said, “and my great-grandson lost his daddy. But I …” She looked as if she wanted to lash out, spend her rage rending flesh and crushing bones. “I raised Isaac since he was Japhet’s age, since his mama died. I lost my baby.”
“Mrs. Cardwell,” Clay said, understanding her perfectly, “if I could hand your grandson’s killer over to you right now, to dispose of as you please, I’d do it. But all I can tell you is, this town will spare no effort to see that justice is done.”
Mahalia Cardwell nodded as if she’d expected no lesser promise.
“You catch the man who killed Isaac,” she told the municipal authorities arrayed before her. “You catch him or heaven help you.”
Just as when he’d spoken to her on the phone, Ron felt this woman knew who the killer was. And she had known that Jimmy Thunder would try to claim Isaac Cardwell’s body. He wanted to question her, but he knew he’d do better to wait until tomorrow.
The mayor said, “Mrs. Cardwell, I’ve reserved a suite at the Hyatt for you and your family at my expense. I’ve also arranged to have your grandson’s body returned to Oakland in the morning. If there’s anything else I can do for any of you, just call. My staff will put you through to me at any hour. I’ll have Chief Ketchum take you and Mrs. Cardwell and Japhet out the back way so you won’t be bothered by the reporters.”