by Webb Hubbell
Sam was livid. “I suppose that’s why you wanted everything in private—so this Bea woman won’t be hounded by the press until she writes a tell-all book. Do you represent her as well? Your Honor, we’ve had enough of this. If Ms. Taylor, whoever she is, has anything relevant to say about the murder, then let her climb into the witness chair and testify.”
Sam was losing it, and I needed him to quit being a jerk prosecutor. In the most serious voice I could muster, I began, “Sam, I understand your frustration. You don’t trust my motives. You think I’m playing lawyer games. Trust me, I’m not. Bea Taylor is real and a critical witness to a conspiracy—a cunning conspiracy to manipulate the price of oil, along with many other crimes.”
The room was as silent as a tomb. Woody stared at his prison-issued, lace-less shoes.
“That’s why my life is in danger. I believe Bea Taylor’s life is in danger as well. You’re damn right I want to protect her, but not because of any book—you should know better than that. She doesn’t understand the significance of what she knows or saw, but I do. And I fully intend to protect her—not just for her sake, but for your sake and for the sake of everyone in this room.”
I looked at the first friend I’d made in Little Rock.
“Sam, think about the Kent affair. Remember telling me that Woody didn’t take a minute to consider whether you might have had a really good reason for the way you handled that case? Remember saying, ‘He never stopped to think that I was trying to tell him something?’ Well maybe, just maybe, you need to pause and think. Maybe I’m trying to tell you something.”
The silence thickened. Marshall cleared his throat and growled, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but you’ve gone from defending a murder case to suggesting the existence of some oil pricing conspiracy. I’ve given you a lot of latitude here, but it’s time for an explanation—now!”
“Your Honor, if the court and Sam will allow me to tell you what I know without the formality of a proffer, I believe I can get everyone up to speed very quickly. Sam has his probable cause to bind Woody over to trial. If you’ll allow me to bring it all into context, I think both of you will understand what’s really at stake.”
Marshall rolled his eyes. “Anything within reason, just speed it up so we’re not sitting here in the dark.” He looked at Sam, “Counsel?”
Sam gave me a ghost of his old grin, “No tricks?”
“No tricks.”
“No objection, Your Honor. Let’s hear what Jack has to say.”
47
I ADDRESSED MARSHALL directly. “I first learned about the shooting when Helen Cole called me. Beth and I saw it on TV, probably much like you did. After the initial horror, the first thought that came to mind was—why? As far back as college, Woody respected, admired … hell, he’d walk through fire for Russell Robinson. He was Russell’s right arm, his confidant. A few weeks ago, Woody called to ask if my law firm would host an event for the senator—help get him connected with the power brokers in Washington. What could have happened in a matter of a few weeks to bring about this tragedy?
“Helen begged me to help, and I agreed to come to Little Rock. I told myself I owed it to Helen, but down deep, I think I came here to get answers. I just couldn’t shake off Woody’s earlier, upbeat call. Even before I arrived, people asked me not to come, specifically my law firm. They made loud noises about the firm’s reputation—how could I represent someone so undeniably guilty of assassination? What they didn’t tell me was that my own firm represented Russell.
“My best client, the Houston-based energy company Arcade Oil, also urged me to stay out of it, and when they couldn’t stop me, offered to send a corporate jet to fly me back—the sooner the better. Maybe I should have suspected something wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t.” I turned to Sam. “I wasn’t listening either.”
“Your honor, the point is, from the moment I arrived here, both Arcade Oil and my own firm hounded me to return to DC. Were they responsible for the series of threats on my daughter and me? I hope not. But the fact remains that someone wanted me out of Little Rock and was willing to kill me if I didn’t leave. Why?”
Marshall interrupted. “Enough with the rhetorical questions. Get wherever you’re going quickly or we’re headed to open court.”
Why can’t he just listen?
“I’m trying to present a complete picture, Your Honor. All this can’t be a coincidence.
“I asked Beth to research the donors to Russell’s campaigns, because I believe that’s exactly what Woody was doing those nights on his home computer. When I read the results of her research, I immediately realized why someone didn’t want me to dig too deep. At least thirty major donors to Russell’s senatorial campaign were executives of my client, Arcade Oil, or executives of its primary competitors. I know them well because I was Arcade’s lawyer when they and those same competitors reached an agreement with the Justice Department to cease anti competitive and manipulative practices.
“Now, making campaign contributions isn’t a crime, and anyone can find out who gives to a campaign—not a big deal. But I saw these contributions from a different point of view. I became suspicious because I’m an antitrust lawyer and sensitive to the appearance of collusion by competitors. It also surprised me for another reason—Russell had always been strongly pro-environment. I had to wonder why these five oil companies were pouring money into Russell’s campaign.”
I took a deep breath, a sip of water from the glass on the table, and tried to read my audience. Marshall and Sam seemed mildly engaged, but still confused as to what this had to do with murder.
“Maggie is giving you summaries of Russell’s key pieces of environmental legislation as governor. In one such instance, he made it easy for any landowner to recover damages to his property resulting from environmental contamination, without regard to whether the driller had a lease that excluded liability, whether the damage had been done a long time ago, or even whether the driller had caused the contamination. This is extremely beneficial legislation for landowners and is as anti-drilling as it comes.
“In the interest of saving time, Your Honor, I won’t burden the court with the many other examples of pro environment and pro landowner laws Russell Robinson passed. Most oil companies screamed bloody murder about his legislative agenda, but five specific oil companies, already under orders from the federal government not to collude in any way, contributed heavily to his coffers in every election. No other individual who worked for another oil company ever contributed to any of Russell’s campaigns. If anyone else had tried to find a link between the contributions and Russell’s environmental stance, he’d be puzzled and conclude there wasn’t one.
“However, I saw and understood the linkage. I learned Arcade’s business from top to bottom during the course of representing their company. The five companies in question all have one thing in common: They do nothing but buy oil from the Middle East and Latin America and import it to the U.S. The more expensive it is for other companies to drill in the U.S., the more they can charge for their imported oil. Because of their unique niche in the petroleum business, these five oil companies actually benefited greatly from Russell’s pro-environment legislation.
“But again, there’s nothing inappropriate about supporting a governor who’s trying to improve the environment or benefit landowners, even if it does make you a buck or two. No one had any reason to think that Russell had anything but the environment at heart when he introduced and worked to pass this legislation. These contributions, which occurred over several years, raised no red flags for Woody or anyone else. The contributions were public, and Woody knew that oil executives were supporting Russell long before the events of the last few weeks. Therefore, Woody must have discovered something recently that caused him to start working late into the night and ultimately led to the argument with Russell.
“My old baseball coach had a saying: ‘Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.’ I knew that Woody was winding
down the governor’s office, closing up the campaign, making sure all the bills were paid, et cetera. I wondered if Woody’s strange behavior could have been triggered by something he discovered during that winding-down process. I called Janis Harold and asked if Woody had given her anything else when he’d executed the trust on Wednesday. She remembered the envelope that contained the guest register—I got lucky.
“Bea Taylor says she received a call from Senator Robinson three weeks ago asking her to give the duck club’s register to Woody. That date corresponds almost exactly with the day Helen Cole noticed her son’s increasingly strange behavior; and if you look closely at the register Woody picked up from Bea, you can understand why he was troubled. Not only did it contain, shall we say, ‘unguarded’ comments by various guests, Woody had to wonder why Russell’s Texas contributors spent so much time at Russell’s duck club.
“Remember, Woody didn’t hunt. His father was killed on a duck hunt. Russell’s guests were a closely guarded secret, even from Woody. And, as the state trooper testified yesterday, the duck club was off-limits to the troopers as well. So when Woody saw the register the day he picked it up from Bea, it would have been the first time he had seen what had been going on for years, and with whom.
“Here’s the corker—Woody didn’t know there were two books and that Bea had held one back. She took it home with her after Russell’s death and gave it to me only yesterday. Bea was worried that Lucy would find out about the women who stayed at the club. But if Lucy had realized what the book revealed about Texas oilmen flouting the Justice Department and the law, she would have been more concerned that her husband’s legacy could be destroyed. Understand that I’m not making any accusations, just thinking out loud.”
I paused to look at faces. Even Sam’s deputies were listening now.
“Read in tandem, both books show that McAlvin, Cooper, Cunningham, Douglas, and Nobis, the chief executives of the five oil companies in question, were frequent guests at Russell’s duck club, and the entries in Russell’s journal document much more than a love for duck hunting. In fact, they hardly hunted at all. Russell made notes you might be surprised to see. For example, on page sixty-seven—’Discuss oil legislation, pricing, and political contributions.’ Some notes seem a little odd, such as on page forty-nine, ‘Arts Center leasing, provenance, and eminent-domain laws.’ Look for yourself at the entries that correspond to these five men. Not only were they frequent guests of Russell’s, they also met at the club several times a year without him. Taken together, the two books reflect a pattern of use of the duck club for private meetings during which these executives conspired to manipulate the price of oil and engage in other criminal behavior that I will soon explain.
“Once I saw the first register, I knew there had to be someone like Bea Taylor, someone who could give me more information about the guests at the duck club. As it turns out, Bea not only knows more than I could possibly have imagined, she also had Russell’s second register—the journal. She’ll say that Russell asked her to take special care of these five oil executives and their guests whenever they used the club. Their private and exclusive meetings occurred more and more often in the last couple of years. She cooked for them, did their laundry, and kept the lodge cleaned. They hunted every now and then, but mostly, they just talked. She told me that sometimes they wrote their names in the register and sometimes they didn’t, but she always remembered what they did and said.
“Since Russell only paid Bea when she worked, she also has pay records of the days she worked that correspond with the days these men were there. If Russell wasn’t there, he asked Bea what the men talked about, and then entered what she told him in his journal. She also took her own notes, which I now have, since Russell rewarded her handsomely for “listening.” For example, on page seventy-three of his private journal, Russell wrote the date, then ‘RR not present, Cooper, C, N, D, and Mac—talked about price of oil for summer.’”
Peggy Fortson stood up. “Your Honor, I apologize for interrupting, but may I ask counsel the present whereabouts of Bea Taylor and her records?”
I told her she was with my daughter at Ms. Lawrence’s home, well protected.
At that, Peggy looked relieved and took her seat.
“As for other criminal activity, I also discovered that these men were involved in more than oil pricing—as if that weren’t enough. The senator’s final press conference was supposed to be about the Townsend Arts Center, although I still can’t find anyone, not even his staff, who knows exactly what the announcement was to be. Unless Woody decides to talk, we may never know. I’ve asked my team to look into anything concerning the Arts Center that might raise a red flag. We found one oddity that was included in a state transportation-appropriation bill three years into Russell’s first term as governor. It was a small, hidden provision that modified this state’s eminent-domain laws.
“It provided that, if a work of art—broadly defined to include paintings, artifacts, coins, or antiquities—was openly displayed in a public art gallery for ten years, then that display was deemed to be ‘open and hostile’ under the state’s laws. In other words, had I loaned a painting to the Townsend Arts Center for a period of ten years, during which it was on display indicating that I owned it, after ten years, it belonged to me, no matter how I’d obtained it. In the language of the art world, my ‘provenance’ would have been established.
“No one seemed to notice this inclusion into an appropriation bill for transportation, and it passed both houses unanimously. But—almost immediately after its passage, a new wing of the Arts Center was built specifically to house antiquities from the Middle East. I understand that the overall collection is one of the finest in this country. Many of its major pieces are on personal loan from Arcade Oil’s collection and the personal collections of Mr. McAlvin, Mr. Cooper, and Mr. Cunningham. One has to wonder why these people wouldn’t keep their art close to home. I find it interesting that these Texas oilmen would instead choose to house their collections in the Townsend Arts Center—right after this legislation became law.
“Your Honor, our guest today is Ms. Peggy Fortson, the chief deputy at the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. She can tell you that illegal trafficking of cultural property is the third-most-prominent business on the black market. The FBI estimates that trafficking in stolen art and antiquities represents over six billion dollars of losses annually.
“These crimes have intensified during the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The looting of priceless art has become a major international issue for many countries. Since the Iraq war, thousands of priceless artifacts have disappeared. Not surprisingly, the original owners of these treasures—whether individuals or states—want them back. The Iraqi government estimates that more than ten thousand artifacts and antiquities are still missing. In Afghanistan, the government estimates that more than ninety thousand artifacts are missing from only one museum, even after more than three tons of artifacts were returned by the British government. More than twenty-five hundred artifacts sit in a US customs warehouse in New York, seized as they were being smuggled into our country.
“If stolen art isn’t enough, and I don’t know as much about this as Ms. Fortson, there are major concerns that terrorist groups in the Middle East are either stealing or otherwise obtaining valuable antiquities, selling them for pennies on the dollar, and using the cash to fund their activities. What’s more, the ultimate purchasers of these antiquities have also used their connections with terrorists to engage in illegal trade with the Iranians—and we’re not talking olives here—we’re talking oil. Ms. Fortson is probably not at liberty to discuss the ongoing investigations underway at main Justice involving the linkage between oil and stolen antiquities. She would say she can’t discuss them because of national security. But I know the connection exists. A simple web search will confirm that what I’m telling you is true.”
Marshall had only to look at Peggy and Rodney to know I wasn’t exaggerating
.
“Governor Robinson’s legislation made it a whole lot easier for those who exhibited their art in Little Rock to keep it, regardless of its origin. In essence, whether Russell intended it or not, he created a safe haven for individuals who want to ‘park’ stolen art—and nobody parked more art at the Townsend Arts Center than the people who met regularly at Russell’s Duck Club and fueled his campaigns with cash. You can draw your own conclusions as to their motives.
“Back to the case at hand: I believe that prior to his last argument with the senator, Woody discovered that Russell had been betrayed by his oil friends. The word art is buried in his note to me, and the locker contained a replica of an ushabti, a small figurine traditionally buried with the Egyptian dead. The original of this artifact is on display at the Townsend Arts Center and is owned by the president of Arcade Oil. You’ll find it featured on the Arts Center’s website and in their brochures. Replicas, like the one I found in the locker, can be purchased at the museum store or online. Moreover, Jerry Maguire, the movie Woody left in the locker, is known for the line, ‘Show me the money.’ Nobody showed Russell the money more than five Texas oil men.”
Sam interrupted. “Don’t you think that’s a bit of a stretch?”
“It might be, but look at the last page of Russell’s journal—you’ll see he wrote an entry less than a month before he was shot.”
What they read was this: 3/02/2011—RR, Mac, Coop, C, D, and N—need for confidential hold on Int. arts treaty, delay Justice Dept. appropriation for art theft, contributions to Super Pac, B&T to coordinate hold and opposition to funding.
“On November fourteenth, right after the election, he noted, RR not present, Mac, N, C, C, & D—Price of oil during winter. Probably most everyone in the state knows this, but I didn’t until my friend Clovis told me—neither November fourteenth nor March second fell during duck season last year. In other words, these oil executives were using Russell’s duck club as a secret meeting place to fix the price of oil and to oppose legislation and investigations into stolen antiquities.