No Truth Left to Tell

by Michael McAuliffe

“Anyone else I can speak to?”

  “Nope. I was your last chance.” An unceremonious click of the line ended the exchange.

  . . .

  Rush arrived at the bureau’s office full and satisfied. He had been up early and out in search of coffee and a short-order combo. Well-worn counters, metal-rimmed tables, and leatherette seating had seduced Rush many times over the years, only to leave him deflated when a promising place closed at a ridiculously early hour like midnight. That morning, however, was near perfect—the coffee was strong, and the food was greasy and hot.

  By virtue of his perpetual state of poverty, Rush had spent his college years searching for the perfect diner, that rare and mystical place—the cheap mix of comfort, convenience, and calories. One of the things he disliked about DC was its lack of true diners, with the possible exception of Jimmy T’s on East Capitol, where a weary woman with wet hair tucked behind her ears sat every day in the same chair with a cracked green seat cushion. She picked at her raisin toast, removing and then replacing the two slices of cheese laid upon it earlier by the short-order cook. She scribbled on a thick pad—page after page—in a furious effort to record her suspicions before they evaporated like the coffee’s steam. Rush had come to believe the diner was the perfect American cultural yardstick, or at least a most intimate stage. If a diner flourished in a neighborhood, all was good, or all was at least possible. Without one, a community was doomed.

  . . .

  “Morning. I’m here.” Rush spoke into the reception area’s tacky-to-the-touch phone.

  Mercer buzzed Rush through the heavy gray metal door. Once inside, they traced the convoluted route to the war room. Rush, as was his East Coast lawyer habit, took the seat at the head of the table.

  “Get in OK?” Mercer asked as he watched Rush take up the point position.

  “OK.”

  Besides their work on the Klan case, they didn’t have any history together so the banter was shallow, with long periods of silence dominating their meetings. In essence, the two men reintroduced themselves every time Rush came to Lynwood for a grand jury session.

  “How was your weekend?” Rush asked.

  “Same as always. Kids have games. Kids got homework. Kids got a cold.”

  “How many children you have?”

  “Two. Samantha, who’s eight, and five-year-old Caleb, but seems like we got half-dozen more with their friends coming and going.”

  “Sounds harried,” Rush said, not knowing what that really meant in the context of raising children.

  “It’s a challenge, but we like it,” Mercer responded. “What’s your agenda?”

  Rush had more personal questions, but they would have to wait.

  “Let’s review the subpoena list for the upcoming session,” Rush proposed.

  “All right. Come down over here,” Mercer said, revealing his tactical competence in one breath.

  He opened a banker’s box on the conference table and finger-surfed the folders. He pulled out an expanding folder packed with individual files. One file contained copies of all the subpoenas issued and served since the last grand jury session in May. Those subpoenas were returnable, or due, on the date of the upcoming grand jury session.

  “Here’s the most recent batch. I got Hal Gordon, from white collar, to sign them.” Mercer put the folder on the table and left for coffee in the office’s break room.

  Rush got up, went over, and flipped through the files. He was perturbed—again—because Mercer hadn’t faxed him the draft subpoenas so he could review them. Most were directed to service providers and sought call records, gas receipts, and convenience store videotapes. It didn’t really matter who signed off on the subpoenas, but why not keep him in the loop? He saw deep in the pile a subpoena served on Billy Joe Bullock, the Klansman who had toyed with them at the secret summit.

  Rush had not confronted Mercer about the US attorney’s indirect but unmistakable edict about the Klan subpoena. He had hoped the issue would die a natural death, but now Rush stewed as he waited for Mercer to return.

  “What the hell is this?”

  Rush waved the subpoena like it was the enemy’s captured flag. Rush looked at the attachment, the one requiring the titan to produce the Klan’s “citizen” list. Serving a subpoena on a criminal target in a federal investigation was unusual, but serving that subpoena without the assigned prosecutor’s approval was a direct challenge to Rush.

  “Tell me this subpoena wasn’t served on Bullock.” Rush shifted in his seat, as did the direction of the day.

  Mercer examined the subpoena, but he didn’t need to read it to give an answer.

  “It got served. Bullock wasn’t happy about it,” Mercer said. “Almost punched McClure when he figured out what it was about.”

  Rush was as livid as the titan over the subpoena. “The government can’t just demand a list like that. You know we’ve got the First Amendment.”

  “I know it’ll help to know who’s in the local Klan.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” He needed Mercer to know he knew without saying it. “Who decided to do this?”

  Mercer wasn’t about to call out the US attorney.

  “Isn’t the Klan behind the cross burnings? Isn’t the member list the best way to identify suspects?” Mercer asked.

  The list—the goddamned list, thought Rush. Mercer had wedged him between logic and the law, and he didn’t like being squeezed.

  “What happens if we served a subpoena for a church’s list of congregants? Or the list of Rotary Club members?”

  “Those are legitimate.”

  “The Klan may be racist, homophobic, anti almost everything, but being a member of the Klan isn’t illegal.”

  “Maybe it should be.”

  “Should be what? Illegal?” Rush couldn’t tell if Mercer was serious or just being obstinate. “You don’t think that.”

  “Don’t tell me what to think. We’ll look like real pussies to the Klan if we withdraw it now.”

  It was Mercer’s turn to walk over and sit at the head of the table.

  “Most laws are just an excuse for doing nothing,” Mercer protested. “Why not for once use the law to get something done!”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You heard me.” Mercer wasn’t backing down. “This place got too goddamn many laws. They’re all just fences to keep people like me out, or pen us in.”

  “Laws now try to do the opposite.”

  “You sound mighty confident in that pronouncement.”

  “It’s what I do for a living. What we both do.”

  Mercer’s jaw twitched. “Preaching about race ain’t the same as living it.”

  “I’m not saying it is.”

  Mercer shook his head. “You don’t walk around in my shoes, and don’t try. They don’t fit.”

  “I don’t have to be you to know right and wrong,” Rush responded, “and to want to do something about it.”

  “Then do something!”

  “I am,” Rush said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  They both paused.

  “Why’re you so angry?” Rush asked.

  “’Cause I’ve waited a long time only to see that it’s not any better here,” Mercer said. He examined the popcorn ceiling for any small changes of paint color. “I think this gets worse, much worse.”

  “How so?”

  “The fires are just the beginning—”

  “The town’s different than before,” Rush offered without much authority or experience.

  “There’s no before. It’s all now.”

  Rush attributed the tension with Mercer, at least in part, to the natural relationship between an agent and a prosecutor. But Rush now was realizing that Mercer viewed him with an extra dose of contempt. Serving the subpoena for the Klan member list without checking was Mercer’s way of sending a message not just about tactics, but also about the issue of race in Lynwood. Rush was being told he’d arrived at the table rather late.<
br />
  He also knew a confrontation with Mercer and the US attorney would be a fatal mistake. Rush would get tag-teamed and likely sent back to DC with clean clothes to spare.

  The exchange in the conference room was an ominous sign of a deepening rift. Rush couldn’t change what he was, and neither could Mercer.

  “All right,” Rush finally said. “You want aggressive. Let’s get aggressive. When’s the return date for the subpoena?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “We’ll see if he shows up.”

  . . .

  The federal grand jury sitting in Lynwood convened on the designated day. Mercer assigned an agent dressed in casual street clothes to linger outside the courthouse’s main entrance and watch for the titan. Mercer also had provided a photo of Bullock to the court security officers—contract officers with the US Marshals Service—and asked them to be cautious about the titan and anyone who accompanied him.

  Thirty minutes late, the titan walked up to Mercer outside the grand jury area.

  “This is nothin’ but goddamn government oppression,” Bullock said.

  “Nice to see you again, Mr. Bullock. You have the subpoenaed materials?”

  “Screw you.”

  The titan wore jeans and a checkered collared shirt. His brown hair was combed over to the right side. He looked different, less confident than he had in the rural field.

  “I take that as a possible no,” Mercer said. “Wait here.”

  Mercer went behind the closed doors leading to the jury room in search of Rush.

  “Titan man is here,” Mercer said, “and he’s not impressed by our bureaucracy.”

  “On that we might actually agree,” Rush said. “You thought he’d simply appear and cooperate?”

  “He’s here, isn’t he?”

  “I’ll put Bullock in and see what happens,” Rush said, although he knew how the session would go.

  “I’ll get him.”

  Rush disappeared behind the closed doors of the inner sanctum while Mercer went off to escort the titan. After ten minutes Rush came out of the grand jury room, and unlike the previous encounter, he now was the one in his element.

  “Mr. Bullock, come with me,” Rush said as he turned back toward the door without shaking hands.

  The titan didn’t say anything but followed Rush into the room.

  “Sit over there,” Rush instructed. “Let’s go on the record.”

  The court reporter nodded.

  MR. RUSH: Madam Court Reporter, please swear in the witness.

  COURT REPORTER: Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

  MR. BULLOCK: I ain’t answering based on the Fifth.

  MR. RUSH: Sir, you cannot properly refuse to take the witness oath or affirmation.

  MR. BULLOCK: I ain’t goin’ to answer based on the Fifth.

  MR. RUSH: Are you refusing to swear or affirm that you will tell the truth if you choose to answer a question?

  MR. BULLOCK: I said I ain’t answering.

  MR. RUSH: As the legal advisor to the grand jury, I am informing you that a refusal to take the standard witness affirmation may subject you to being held in contempt by the US District Court.

  MR. BULLOCK: That a question?

  MR. RUSH: Is your name Billy Joe Bullock?

  MR. BULLOCK: I ain’t sayin’ a thing based on the Fifth.

  MR. RUSH: Sir, the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution provides you a basis to decline to answer a question asked by the government only if a truthful answer would tend to incriminate you criminally. Sir, are you still refusing to provide your name or take the witness oath?

  MR. BULLOCK: I done said everything I got to say.

  MR. RUSH: Let’s go off the record.

  The court reporter stopped typing.

  “Come with me,” Rush said.

  The titan stood up, surveyed the room with an amalgam of contempt and nerves, and followed Rush out the door.

  “Wait here,” Rush ordered.

  Rush saw Mercer and signaled for him to walk outside the grand jury maze. A court security officer sat behind the juror sign-in desk and watched the titan watch him.

  “Our honored guest won’t take the witness oath. Hell, he won’t even acknowledge his name.”

  “What a shit,” Mercer said.

  “At least he didn’t bring a lawyer.” Rush was surprised that the titan had appeared at all. “We got to cut him loose. No sense in bringing him back in.”

  “Can’t we haul him in front of the judge?”

  “We could, but it’s the list we’re after,” Rush said, “not politeness.”

  “You can’t back down now.”

  “Lee, damn it, this gamesmanship is just what we got to avoid,” Rush said. “You want to hand him a big fat megaphone to rail against the government?”

  “But we need that list.”

  “Assume a list exists. We’ve just been told in no uncertain terms that the Klan won’t turn it over, not without a fight. We look like we’re just messin’ with him, which is exactly what we’re doing. The judge won’t like it one bit. You want to be on the wrong side of a public relations debacle with the Klan?”

  “At least it shows we’re working the case,” Mercer responded. “We can’t embolden these creeps.”

  “We’ll lose on the law, and we won’t get the list.”

  Rush, however, had his own plan to end the whole misadventure.

  “Mr. Bullock, I’m continuing your appearance before this grand jury to a later date,” Rush declared, “but be advised we’ve obtained the information from other sources.”

  “What the—who?” Bullock sputtered.

  “Like you, I’m not going to answer that question,” Rush said. “You think you’re the only one who wanted to meet with us?”

  10

  PLANS & ALLIANCES

  The confederates hadn’t contacted one another since the white night, but the isolation proved too much, and the very person who had issued the stay-away order in the first place broke it. After several months of quarantine, Daniels reached Bullock by phone at home.

  “We need a Klavern meeting,” the grand dragon said.

  “No, we need to stay quiet.”

  “We been quiet. They got nothin’. Just cocksuckers is all.”

  “They’re getting around.”

  The titan hadn’t told anyone about his grand jury appearance, and he hadn’t uttered a word, not even to his wife, about the meeting in the field. And he would never share any of it with the grand dragon. Daniels talked too much. Unlike his leader, the titan knew there was safety in secrets.

  Despite his misgivings about Daniels, the titan found common purpose with his fellow Klansmen after his family experienced death in a faraway land. Bullock’s brother had been a Marine peacekeeper in Beirut. The titan would never forget the date—October 23, 1983—and the subsequent visit to his home by men in crisp dress uniforms delivering the unbearable news to his parents. News of truck bombs exploding, barracks destroyed, and lives lost. He couldn’t hear the number 241—the number of Marines dead—without tearing up or the phrase Islamic jihad without screaming obscenities. He hated all Muslims, and the US government, too, for allowing it to happen.

  Their mutual hatred of foreigners was useful for now, but that was all. It wasn’t something he relied on, as he was more of a visitor than congregant.

  “I want the meeting to keep it all goin’.”

  “What going?”

  “Shit. Them crosses, that’s just the start.”

  “Start of what?”

  “We didn’t collect them guns for nothin’.”

  “What exactly you got in mind?” The titan lowered his voice and looked around to make sure his wife wasn’t in range.

  “We got the AR-15. We got double twelves, long rifles, and some pistols. I even got my old six-shooter.”

  Daniels had amassed quite the collection of fire
arms and hid them in the field behind his house under a metal door, flat to the sky and covered by cracked red clay and dead branches. Beneath the door, the cache of weapons waited in brown cloth bags.

  “It’s one thing to scare the shit out of ’em, but goin’ to straight shootin’ ’em ain’t smart,” the titan said, “unless they’re coming for you.”

  “They’re comin’, all right—they done taken everything from us. By the time they’re at the door, it’ll be too late. We’d be done for,” Daniels warned. “Why not shoot up a mongrel place? Maybe some sniper shots across the river?”

  “Where are you? Home?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Alone?”

  “Why, goddamn it?”

  “Don’t be sayin’ that shit ’round no one else.”

  “I’m dead serious. We done got started on this here path.”

  “You gotta think about what you’re sayin’. It’s not the time for more right now,” the titan said before pivoting to his other concern. “You keep a list of citizens?”

  “What? Of the Klavern?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I got some notebooks,” Daniels said.

  “You keep a list of us in notebooks?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Any copies?”

  “Why?”

  “Just keeping you from fuckin’ this up for everyone.”

  “Stop whining. We need another meeting.”

  “Where?”

  “Your house.”

  “That ain’t ever going to happen.” The titan’s home was off-limits to his Klan brethren, and that wasn’t about to change.

  “I’m ready,” the grand dragon declared, “for some real shit.”

  “That’s clear.”

  “Not a sin to shoot the enemy in war,” declared Daniels.

  “You been drinkin’, Frank?”

  It would take more than a call from an intoxicated grand dragon to coax the titan into another nighttime mission, especially one that would escalate into bullets and bodies. The feds were investigating, and a gathering now—particularly if it included the titan—would draw even more interest. The feds suspected that he was involved with the crosses, but the titan knew they couldn’t prove it. It needed to stay that way.