Along the field’s margins, the knee-high stalks of last year’s grass with their sun-tortured tops swooned against the unexpectedly humid air. The breeze should have cooled Rush’s glistening neck, but that early spring day had turned humid, and droplets of sweat rappelled down his body. In the first minutes of waiting, his cuffed blue suit pants, starched white shirt, and red tie were rendered damp and flaccid. Rush could only hope that the Klansman failed to notice the obvious—that he was uncomfortable, even scared, waiting for the secret summit to start.
. . .
The agreement to meet in a vacant expanse now seemed naïve, even reckless. McClure, the primary proponent of the meeting, had served in the army as a Special Forces ranger and had pushed his body beyond all reasonable limits. At some point his body had pushed back, and he had developed an involuntary shudder that regularly overtook him, like a miniaturized earthquake. Near retirement, McClure possessed a penchant for drink and mischief.
McClure lay low in the car’s back seat, service Glock in hand, but he couldn’t see beyond the sheet metal door. His assigned role that day was to react to any sounds of escalation—like cries for help. He would engage only if and when the situation became violent. If he popped up too soon, like a gopher surveying the prairie, it would precipitate a confrontation, not solve one. A misjudgment by McClure could cost someone his life.
Mercer, a college football player turned accountant turned special agent, drove the car. Despite the heat, Mercer wore his G-man suit, complete with lined jacket, to better hide the holster and firearm. Mercer’s bureau badge was secured to his brown leather belt, which bore the bruises of countless previous clip-ins. He told Rush before they arrived in the field that he wanted to have his own separate dialogue with the titan. If they needed to extricate themselves from the scene, the extra seconds could mean the difference between a successful retreat and a gunfight.
Mercer positioned his bureau car so that when he got out, he would be closer to the Klansman than Rush. Mercer pushed the driver’s door wide open so it created a metal barrier. He planted his foot and then slid out of the car, never losing eye contact with the man standing across the way.
Rush took what appeared to be a nod from Mercer as his sign to also leave the car. As he did, he struggled not to glance back at McClure hiding in the back seat. Rush bent to hide his reedy six-two frame, not out of humility, but because of anticipation. He was relying on two men he didn’t know to protect him against a man he suspected he knew too well.
The grand titan leaned against his truck a dozen yards away. He had the look of someone prepared to fight his perceived enemies, including his country. His short-cropped hair was combed straight back, and when combined with his intense gaze, it gave him the look of someone leaning forward. His limp, collarless shirt marketed an unknown band, whose logo had weapons in place of instruments.
The three stepped into one another’s orbits. Mercer moved slightly off to the titan’s right, creating a clear line of sight—and firing line—between himself and the suspect. Not understanding why Mercer had repositioned himself, Rush moved closer to him, stopping when he reached an arm’s-length lifeline between them.
“Mr. Bullock, my name is Rush—Adrien Rush. I’m a lawyer with the Justice Department in Washington, DC.”
Rush offered his hand and an abbreviated shake. He was relying on habit to keep from bolting. A secret meeting with a Klansman in a place with an infamous history of racial violence did that to the average person; it discouraged you from lingering.
“I’m Agent Lee Mercer with the FBI. Mr. Rush and I work together. We’re here at your request.”
“Where’s the other guy? The veteran.”
“He’s busy.”
Rush had the sudden urge to inform the titan that in fact McClure was armed and in the nearby car, but instead he asked, “Mr. Bullock, what is it you want to discuss?”
“To know what my situation is. You’ve been asking around ’bout me.”
“I’m not clear what situation you mean,” Rush responded.
Rush and Mercer knew exactly what the Klansman wanted to know, but it was the titan who needed to talk, to disclose as much as possible, as early as possible. They also had been taught that interrogations had a life span—an arc—during which suspects first deny and obstruct, then with luck admit and damn. But none of that happened if a suspect got spooked early. So the goal was to get the titan talking, and soon.
“The crosses thing,” Bullock said.
“Well, what do you want to know?” Mercer asked.
“I want to know where I’m at is all,” the titan answered.
“We’re investigating the attacks on the minority communities in Lynwood as possible federal hate crimes,” Rush said. “We intend to bring all those involved to justice.”
The grand titan looked up toward the line of trees fifty yards off. Rush worried he had somehow seen McClure in the back seat, but another kind of threat concerned him nearly as much: that the titan would mention a lawyer. Even an offhanded comment about a lawyer would sink the summit.
“What do you want to tell us?” Rush asked. “We’re here to listen.”
“Like I said, I’m here to figure out where you’re at with me.”
“Don’t you want to help yourself, Mr. Bullock?”
The titan’s request to meet in the field signaled an interest, but so far it was only the suggestion of something, not the something.
“How can we tell you anything if you’re not willing to help us?” Rush asked. Rush’s youthful, wilted look now worked against him.
Silence.
“We’re going to make this case with or without you,” Mercer added. “Did you know Mrs. Wynn’s still in the hospital?”
“Who’s Wynn?”
“Nettie Wynn, who lives in the home you lit up with a cross. She almost died.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about that.”
Rush couldn’t tell if the titan was playing dumb or lying. Every newspaper in the state had reported the story of the elderly African-American woman who suffered a heart attack when confronted with the burning cross. Maybe the Klansman didn’t read the newspaper, or maybe he just didn’t care.
The sticky air was all that held the three in their artificial embrace. Rush was still, his body leaning slightly forward and hands on his waist so the shirt would stay off his soggy skin. He glanced at Mercer and then the Klansman, expecting some sign of shared distress, but concluded it must be a southern trait to tolerate such a place.
“Of course, we want you to help us, and that would help you,” Rush said, but the enthusiasm was drained from his pitch. “Mr. Bullock, for you to have choices, you’ve got to own up to what you did and what the others did. That’s the first step. Everything else follows that.” There would be more to demand of Bullock, but the finer points of cooperation, like testimony and federal prison, seemed little more than distant thunder as they faced each other.
“What’s that mean for me?”
“This has to be done the right way. You need to be willing to talk about what you did and why, then we discuss what it means for you,” Mercer explained.
Mercer and Rush traded half glances while the titan stirred up the dry, milled dust with his Justin boots.
The secret summit was stuck in the preliminaries. Without more leverage, the grand titan wasn’t giving up anything about the hate crimes.
“That’s all I got to say.”
He backed away and disappeared into his white ’86 F-150 pickup.
Mercer and Rush watched the grand titan drive off, chased by a dirt snake.
“Bet that truck carried the crosses,” Mercer muttered.
The back door of the bureau car flung open, followed by McClure’s disembodied voice.
“He gone? What the hell just happened?”
6
THE EDUCATION OF ADRIEN RUSH
As a young prosecutor, Rush felt the same breathlessness as when gaining higher altitu
de during a mountain climb. It was a familiar discomfort. Seduced by the talismans of isolation and challenge, he had pursued routes to the summits of America’s majestic mountains: the San Juans in Colorado, the Cascades in Washington, and the Alaska Range near the Arctic Circle. He lived simply and acquired the proficiency of an alpinist. But the mountains proved less of the path and more a cairn along the longer journey. His determination to be a lawyer pulled him back to sea level, and the tragic fall from the ridge had kept him there ever since.
The real source of his at times quixotic pursuit to become a prosecutor was far removed from the mountains and stemmed from a much different kind of injury. Rush had needed someone to help him long ago, but no one did. He suffered in silence, so much so that the struggle became an uninvited but constant companion—a shadow that hid both the glare and the warmth of the sun. From then on, he had committed to help those who also walked with a shadow. He saw the law as the best way to keep the promise. He’d never explained it that way; he didn’t feel the need to justify his life’s truth. He just needed to live it.
Rush had worked a closet full of forgettable jobs to pay for college and law school, and while he was proud of his fierce independence, by the time he inked the Justice Department’s W-4 forms, he had less than three hundred dollars to his name. He had trimmed his diet to two meals a day waiting for his first paycheck.
When in DC, he had lunch several times a week with his Criminal Section colleagues in the department’s basement cafeteria. The section’s supervisors—the deputy chiefs and special counsels—made occasional cameo appearances, but the chief, Kay Tipton, never came, not even to say hello. The tacit understanding between the lawyers and the section’s leadership was that the marathon lunches would be tolerated if the work got done. The lunch cabal could be unforgiving to the uninitiated and punishing to the know-it-all, but the midday gathering was so engrained in the section’s life that prosecutors scheduled meetings and travel around it. The ritual was a version of hazing, not for frat rats but for the elite young recruits who would need to develop a reservoir of resilience if they were to survive in a world of hate-mongers, violent anarchists, and corrupt cops.
. . .
“Adrien, what the hell are you wearing?” Al Haynes asked as he sat at the table with a tray full of cafeteria food splayed before him. Haynes was a lunch fixture and had successfully tried numerous police misconduct cases, including the recent federal prosecution of the Rodney King beating.
“What do you mean?” Rush asked, anticipating an onslaught of verbal abuse and trying to gain precious seconds to prepare a defense.
“That tie, it doesn’t match anything but those cheeky curtains in your office.”
“At least everyone can tell which office is mine,” Rush offered. Given his aversion to verbal combat, Rush made for the perfect target at the table inquisition, and his tepid replies often invited more abuse.
“Good one, prick. You aren’t supposed to fight back. Didn’t they teach you that in the public school system?” Haynes liked to play on the sharp edge that separated hazing from assault. “By the way, did I tell you the joke about the Asian guy who—”
A collective moan erupted at the table, stopping cold the coarse setup line. Haynes, who had been circling Rush, was well known for his offensive homophobic humor. The joke had been awful when he first told it years before, and nothing had changed since. Odd, Rush thought, that a guy so skilled as a trial tactician could be so oblivious in his personal habits. Did Haynes not know that at least one of his regular lunch mates was gay? Maybe he did know and was trying to coax his closeted peer into responding to the verbal garbage heaped onto the table, or maybe he simply was being a jerk.
“Not to end this wonderful exchange, but Al, shut up about the guy,” Tim Newberry said. “Adrien, how goes the Klan investigation?”
Newberry, a former state court defense lawyer, had joined the section so he could stop complaining about corrupt cops and start investigating them. He helped give the section its reputation as the most liberal group of prosecutors in the nation.
“Lots of interviews, and one almost came in, but nobody’s giving up the ghost,” Rush said. “It’s the Klan. But there’s not much else to go on.”
“Does the bureau give a shit?” Haynes asked, trying to rehabilitate himself before the group left him behind as roadkill. “It’s a roulette spin whether we get a great partner or the kiss-my-ass agent.”
“They could say the same about us,” Rush offered.
“We’re civil rights; it’s all we do,” Haynes answered. His rebuttal was delivered as if he were the personal target of Rush’s observation.
“Just ’cause you do one thing doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing it right,” Rush said.
“Are you speaking for yourself ?”
“I don’t have an issue with the hate crime investigations, but the FBI doing the police investigations is like professional incest,” Newberry said. “Law enforcement investigating law enforcement isn’t kosher.”
“Don’t hold back.”
“It’s the truth. You know it.”
“We’re gonna work a cop case together at some point,” Haynes told Rush, “and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
“How it’s done in?”
A couple of hands smacked the table.
“Screw it. I’m just trying to help the poor kid learn how to play like an adult.”
“Does the FBI care whether it catches the Klan?” Rush asked, repeating the original question. “Of course it does. It’s a nice press release to announce they caught the bad guys.”
“They’re in it for the press?”
“Why not? We send up our own self-congratulatory balloons all the time,” Rush said.
“We sure as hell don’t send them out for the losses,” Haynes added, “except maybe Steadman. He doesn’t mind losing. He thinks it builds character, through suffering and all that.”
“How very Catholic of him.”
“Where is Steadman anyway?”
“On travel.”
“To Mike Steadman!” Newberry said as he raised his foam cup. “May we all take our losses like Mike!”
Rush didn’t touch anyone’s cup. “I hate losing—”
“My young naïf, when you prosecute civil rights cases, you’re going to lose—a lot—at least the cop cases, so get used to it,” Haynes said. “We aren’t country club prosecutors like the assistant US attorneys.”
“What do you mean?” Rush looked doubtful.
“We prosecute police officers who commit crimes, right?” Haynes asked. “We’re all about the law. We answer the most difficult question, was it a mistake or a criminal act? Do you charge the cop for the extra hit when he just ran half a mile chasing down a fleeing scumbag? When does the extra hit go from questionable—but maybe understandable—to criminal? The line exists, but even when you’ve grabbed on, it squirms like a slippery eel.”
“And the victims in the police cases aren’t active members of the PTA,” Newberry added. “It’s not a To Kill a Mockingbird moment where a helpless innocent is standing trial for a heinous crime he didn’t commit. How many times did I represent someone who was guilty as hell but also got a cop’s summary punishment or had an officer lie on the stand to help get that guilty verdict a little faster? More times than I can count.”
“The most disappointing Mockingbird character was the prosecutor,” Rush said. “When it was clear Mayella was lying, the case should have been dismissed. The judge might have done it, but the prosecutor had an obligation to stop it. It shouldn’t have been Atticus Finch’s job to convince the jury of anything.”
“But then there’d be no hero,” Newberry said, a most unlikely defender of the fictional district attorney. “And what about the town’s expectation—insistence—that the DA prosecute the case?”
“The DA’s job isn’t to give in to the pressure,” Rush replied. “The job isn’t to prosecute people based on lies. He could ha
ve been the hero in the story.”
“How?”
“By doing right,” Rush said.
“That’s not how the story goes. Hell, I don’t even remember the DA’s name in the book.”
As Newberry spoke, Steadman, the one who found strength in losing, arrived hungry and with his beat-up luggage in tow. “Did I miss anything?”
“Just the education of Adrien Rush,” Newberry said.
7
UNITED STATES ATTORNEY
Lynwood was a past-tense town. But like most places, its history depended on opinion. It possessed the basics—a post office, a grocery, bars, motels, restaurants, and gas stations—but the historic central square had long ago lost its sheen, and then any patina, as retailers fled with the masses to distant malls connected to the town by escape routes. The town’s core could support only so many specialty clothing shops. And while longtime residents claimed—with some regional pride—that Lynwood was their home, those same folks remembered the past with fondness, discussed the present with frustration, and anticipated the future with fear.
To the bewilderment of these protectors of the past, a craft brewery had replaced a vacant warehouse, and a new tapas restaurant was filled to capacity every night. Lynwood even had garnered a blurb in Southern Living as an up-and-coming foodie destination. The magazine noted with enthusiasm how the town was reinventing itself with farm-to-table restaurants offering seasonal tastings and tattooed servers who knew visitors’ tastes better than the visitors did. The mention included a photo of a creamery fronted by fresh faces serving dollops of artisan flavors.
Lynwood’s happenings—welcomed or not—involved a recurring cast of characters, not all well liked, but mostly familiar to one another. So when Rush started showing up, it was of interest to the town’s inhabitants. No photographers awaited him at the regional airport, but civic leaders were well aware of the new arrival. And the most notable of the town’s dignitaries was the Honorable James Warren “JW” Cristwell, the colorful US attorney for the Western District of Louisiana.
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