Bearing Witness

by Michael A. Kahn

Six years ago his wife died of ovarian cancer, leaving behind two little daughters. According to courtroom pundits, the young widower decided it was time to provide for their future. He resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s office and hung out a shingle as a criminal defense attorney. It was an astounding career change, and astoundingly successful. The Lone Wolf became the Wolf Man—defender of the accused, tormentor of the accusers. His significant cases since the switch included the acquittal of Frankie “The Stud” Studzani on first-degree murder charges and two hung juries in the tax fraud prosecution of former Missouri congressman Jim Bob Pegram.

  Jonathan and I met as litigation adversaries, and I had detested him from the get-go. My mother, of course, decided from the start that he was the perfect man for me. I told her no way—he was far too arrogant. She told me it was pride, not arrogance. I told her if that was pride, he had too much of it. “Sounds like someone else I know,” she answered with a wink, “and on top of that, sweetie, he’s such a nice Jewish boy. What could be so bad?”

  Well, I wasn’t quite ready to concede to my mother, but I was starting to weaken. Jonathan was in his early forties. His close-trimmed black beard was flecked with gray. Standing a trim six feet tall, he still resembled a light heavyweight fighter, right down to the nose that had been broken and never properly reset. Although it scratched him from the pretty boy category, I had to admit that Jonathan Wolf was, as my niece would say, “fine.” I could well imagine the younger women on his juries wondering, during a dull moment of trial, whether that yarmulke stayed on when everything else came off.

  I did, too.

  Dating an Orthodox Jew was a new experience. In addition to the strict observance of the Sabbath from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday—no cars, no telephones, no electrical appliances, no work—there were exacting rules about sex. Although few organized religions celebrate the joys of marital sex more than Orthodox Judaism, the counterweight is a stern prohibition against premarital sex. I suppose it added a touch of nostalgic charm to our relationship, as if we were a pair of high school kids from the 1950s going steady. But it sure added plenty of frustration, too—and for both of us.

  “What do the suspects say?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Nothing yet. They’re being held without bail. The police are going to let them stew in the county jail over the weekend and try another interrogation on Monday.”

  “That might work.”

  “Even if Gloria doesn’t fit the profile,” I said, “they still may have a possible hate crime motive.”

  Jonathan looked up from his meal. “Oh?” he asked skeptically.

  I told him what I’d learned from the homicide detective. Gloria Muller had been having an affair with a Jewish gynecologist whose clinic had been the target of a pro-life demonstration three months earlier; moreover, the doctor had received several anonymous death threats over the past years. Skinheads tend to be fiercely anti-abortion, the detective had explained.

  Jonathan shook his head in disdain. “Those cops should know better than that. Hate crime motives are never subtle. Hammerskins have been tied to two other Springfield murders. One was a thirty-one-year-old black man. He was stomped to death in an alley behind a bar by two skinheads who claimed he had danced with a white woman. The other was a gay man. Stabbed to death. Forty-two stab wounds.”

  “My God,” I murmured.

  Jonathan nodded solemnly. “That’s not unusual. The killer does it to demonstrate his commitment to the cause. In that one, he sliced off one of the victim’s ears, presumably as a souvenir. That’s how the police nailed him. They found it in his glove compartment.”

  I silently absorbed those appalling details. Jonathan’s knowledge didn’t surprise me. Six weeks ago, the Missouri Attorney General had appointed him a special assistant attorney general to supervise the investigation and potential criminal prosecution of Bishop Kurt Robb and the other leaders of “Spider,” a white supremacist organization headquartered in St. Louis. Although Jonathan’s criminal defense practice was at least a full-time job, he’d been spending long hours poring over state and federal investigative files and talking to various law enforcement officers charged with monitoring hate groups.

  I twirled some pasta onto my fork as I thought it over. “Does that Springfield group have ties to Spider?”

  “I’m not sure.” He took a sip of wine. “Skinheads tend not to have deep affiliations with any of the established neo-Nazi organizations, but they usually know one another. Spider operates in Illinois, so I’m sure there are connections. I’m thinking of going up there myself. See what those two suspects have to say.”

  “Mind if I tag along?” I asked. “I have a few questions for them, too.”

  He smiled. “Sure.”

  I sighed with disappointment. “She was my only witness, Jonathan.”

  “You’ll find others.”

  “Not after what Judge Wagner did to me today.”

  “Maybe you’re searching for the wrong ex-employees.”

  I gave him a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve alleged a conspiracy, right? Beckman Engineering may be the only defendant in your case, but it’s just one of the conspirators. Beckman has its guard way up, but the same won’t be true of all the others.”

  “Oh? Look what happened to Gloria Muller.”

  He shook his head. “You can’t assume that her death is connected to your case.”

  “Come on,” I said, frustrated. “I talked to her, Jonathan. She definitely knew something about the conspiracy.”

  “Rachel,” he said patiently, “that wasn’t a mob hit, and she was hardly a mob witness. Moreover, look at the incongruity. Even assuming that she had damaging information about an alleged civil conspiracy—and that’s a big assumption—is that reason enough to kill her?”

  I watched glumly as he finished his salmon. Although I was convinced to my bones that Gloria’s death was connected in some way to my case, the objective facts didn’t offer much support.

  He wiped his mouth with his napkin and gave me a smile of encouragement. “Start with the bid documents,” he said. “You’re getting them tomorrow, right? They’ll include all of the relevant federal government projects. That’ll define the bid-rigging universe. Use them to figure out which company won which bid, and see what kind of pattern emerges.”

  “Wait,” I said, giving him a time-out signal. “All I’m getting are Beckman’s bids. How do I figure out who won each one?”

  Jonathan leaned back in the booth, his green eyes twinkling. “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of Commerce Business Daily?”

  I frowned. “Ruth mentioned it. Something about using it to keep track of the bids. What is it?”

  Jonathan winked. “The key to the kingdom.”

  “Ruth is meeting with me tomorrow. I’ll—”

  I paused. Coming down the aisle on her way out was none other than Judge Catherine Wagner, accompanied by two other women her age. My surprised look must have caught her eye because she slowed and smiled in recognition. “Why, look who it is. Hello, Rachel.”

  I returned the smile. “Hi, Judge.”

  She approached the booth and nodded approvingly toward my nearly empty plate. “I’m pleased to see that my rulings haven’t ruined your appetite.”

  I laughed politely.

  She glanced from me toward my dinner companion. Her expression froze for an instant before she regained her composure. “Ah, Mr. Wolf,” she said in a much cooler voice.

  “Good evening, Your Honor,” he answered with a courteous nod.

  Her gaze shifted from Jonathan to me as she appraised our situation, her brow furrowing ever so slightly. We didn’t have that business dinner look about us—no notepads or pens on the table, no briefcases on the floor. Her two companions stood behind her, waiting quietly.

  “Well, Counsel
ors,” she said with a perfunctory nod, “good evening.”

  I turned to watch her leave and then looked back at Jonathan. “You two have a history.”

  Jonathan inhaled deeply. “Unfortunately.”

  “Criminal or civil case?”

  He gazed at me for a moment. “Neither.”

  “Neither?” And then it sank in. “Oh, my God.” I leaned forward and whispered, “Did you and she…?”

  He frowned. After a moment, he said, “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly?” I repeated, amused. “What in the world does ‘not exactly’ mean?”

  He looked into my eyes for a moment and then shook his head self-consciously. “We had a misunderstanding.”

  I pried the story out of him as we left the restaurant. It happened seven years ago at the annual Christmas party thrown by the U.S. Attorney’s office and attended by several of the judges. When Jonathan went down the hall to his office to get his briefcase and coat, Judge Wagner snuck in behind him. He was at the coatrack in the corner when she closed the office door behind her. She sat against the edge of his desk, facing him with a boozy, carnal smile. He stood there, immobilized.

  “It’s party time, Counselor,” she told him, her voice somewhere between a purr and a growl. “How ’bout a party favor?” She lifted her right leg and planted her high-heeled foot on the armrest of the chair in front of the desk. As she did so, her skirt slid all the way up her parted thighs. “How ’bout you come over here and fuck me till it hurts.”

  I giggled in amazement. It was a scene out of a trashy novel. I couldn’t imagine Judge Wagner doing that. I couldn’t imagine any woman doing that. “What happened?”

  We were standing under a streetlight outside Cardwell’s. He shrugged. “I tried to act responsibly. I told her I was married, that she’d had too much to drink, that she was too fine a person to have a one-night stand. I told her I’d be happy to get her a cab or find someone to drive her home.”

  I winced. “Oh, Jonathan, she must have been mortified.” I slipped my arm under his as we walked up Maryland toward the parking lot behind the church. “She must have been furious.”

  “She was a little upset.” He shook his head ruefully. “Our relationship has been somewhat strained ever since.”

  I laughed. “I bet it has. Oy, as if I didn’t already have enough problems in that lawsuit.”

  “I don’t think she’ll hold that against you.”

  “Oh, come on, Jonathan, she’s a woman, too.” I shook my head and groaned. “She’s already got an anti-plaintiff reputation, especially where the defendant is a corporation. Now she’ll have an added reason—Oh, my God.”

  I stopped, dismayed by what I saw. I turned to him. “Is that your car?”

  Without answering, he left my side and headed toward the car, moving with grim resolve.

  Someone had bashed in the windshield and side windows. As I approached the car, I could see broken glass scattered on the asphalt. In the dim light from a distant streetlamp I could make out what appeared to be white streaks of paint on the car hood. As I got closer, the pattern became clear.

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  Spray-painted on the hood of Jonathan’s car was a swastika. He stared down at it, his face implacable. I said nothing, waiting. I could see his jaw muscle flexing. His eyes shifted from the hood to the interior of the car, which was strewn with broken glass. He surveyed the seats and carpet, moving slowly along the side of the car toward the rear and then back to the front.

  At last he turned to me, his eyes cold. “Do you have a phone in your car?”

  I glanced toward my car, which was a parked a few spaces over, and then I looked back at him. “I do.”

  He reached into his suit jacket, removed his wallet, and took out a card. “Do me a favor,” he said, his voice calm. He handed me the card. “Call this number.”

  I squinted at the card. It was for a Lieutenant Hendricks of the state police. I looked at Jonathan.

  “Tell them where I am,” he said. “Explain what happened, and ask them to find Hendricks. Tell them to send someone from Forensics over here.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  He turned to his car.

  “Jonathan.”

  He looked back at me. His utter composure was almost eerie.

  “This is”—I gestured toward his car, struggling for words—“this is terrible.”

  He nodded.

  I gestured helplessly. “I’m sorry.”

  He mumbled a “Thanks” and turned back to his car.

  Chapter Four

  I was never supposed to represent Ruth Alpert.

  When I reluctantly agreed to meet with her a year ago last November, I warned my mother in advance that I wasn’t going to take her case, regardless of its merits. Age discrimination cases against large companies are hard enough to prove without the complicating factor of a corporate downsizing that permanently eliminates your client’s position. Moreover, Beckman Engineering Co. was a particularly unappealing target, especially in front of a St. Louis jury. It was not merely that Beckman was headquartered here, employed more than two thousand local citizens, and spent millions of dollars a year burnishing its public image, as personified by its revered chairman, Conrad Beckman. No, what made Beckman Engineering especially unappealing was its reputation as a tenacious litigant. It tended to respond to a lawsuit with wrath, indignation, and an abundance of litigators. All of which meant that this was not a company to sue unless you had a deep-pocket client and a large support staff. I had neither back when I met with Ruth, and things sure hadn’t changed in the year since then.

  So why had I taken her case?

  It was a good question.

  As I sat at my desk rapping a pencil against a legal pad, I could hear Ruth Alpert’s voice in the outer office. She had arrived a few minutes early for our one-thirty meeting and was out there now boring poor Jacki with one of her interminable Lauren stories. Lauren was Ruth’s niece, and she played a minor character on Gold Fillings, a moronic sitcom about a Beverly Hills dental practice that seemed the nightmare offspring of an unholy coupling between ER and Married With Children. One of the first rules of survival with Ruth was learning how to interrupt her latest Lauren story before she got rolling. Jacki had yet to master that skill.

  So why had I taken Ruth’s case?

  Partly because of my mother. Ruth was her friend and Ruth had been wronged. What else could I possibly need to know? My mother’s powers of persuasion and guilt are wondrous to behold and virtually impossible to resist. Trust me.

  Another reason, of course, had been the injustice of it all. Here was a woman—a widow, no less—cut adrift at age sixty-three after more than two decades of loyal service. BECKMAN ENGINEERING ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL LAYOFFS, read the headline. INDUSTRY ANALYSTS APPLAUD LEANER PROFILE. In an era of perpetual corporate “rightsizing,” the familiar headlines could dull you to the individual victims and their pain. Ruth’s had been one of 150 JOBS TO BE TRIMMED IN THIRD ROUND OF CUTS and her anguish was palpable. Here was a woman who took great pride in her secretarial skills, who bragged during our first meeting that she had graduated as the top secretarial student in her class at Soldan High, who could type seventy-five words per minute (“eighty-five on a computer, Rachel, but that’s easier”), who knew several computer programs, including WordPerfect, Lotus, and DisplayWrite (“that’s capital D, capital W, no space”), who had taken only seven sick days in two decades and just two personal days (one to bury her husband, one to sit shiva). On the Friday before I saw her, she had applied for unemployment compensation—“As God is my witness, Rachel, the most humiliating experience of my life.”

  But injustice and a mother’s guilt trip will get you only so far. The deciding factor had been Uncle Harry. On that chilly morning a year ago when Ruth and I first met, we’d both started our day reciting kad
dish. For me, it had been two weeks before the first anniversary of my father’s death. He had no son to say kaddish for him, so that first year I’d gone to the synagogue every Saturday morning to recite the prayer for the dead. For Ruth, it was the fifty-fourth anniversary of the harrowing night her beloved uncle Harry had been seized outside his little jewelry store while locking up. Later that night, his bullet-ridden corpse was dumped from a moving car onto the pavement in front of a police station. His wife died in a nursing home in 1964. His only sibling—Ruth’s mother—died in 1973. His two sons died within six months of each other in 1979—one from heart disease, one from cancer.

  From then on, there was no one but Ruth to say kaddish for her uncle, and she’d done it every year thereafter, less from a sense of familial duty than of profound devotion. Although she was only nine when he’d been killed, she cherished her vivid memories of him—of the card tricks he used to perform, the penny candies he used to sneak her, the silly bedtime songs he sang whenever she spent the night.

  Ruth told me the story of Uncle Harry on that cold November morning last year, and when she finished, we both had tears in our eyes. “It’s a mitzvab,” she explained in her gentle voice, “an honor to be able to say kaddish for that wonderful man.” So moved was I by the image of her bearing lone witness each November for her beloved uncle that I agreed to take her case.

  Back then, of course, neither of us suspected what was to come. Our first hint: Beckman Engineering’s response to Ruth’s complaint. It included a vicious, petty counterclaim that accused her of everything from making personal telephone calls on company time to taking excessive lunch breaks. I remember reading through it when it first arrived. I was worried about Ruth’s reaction. I’d seen many a client recoil at the first answering volley. Frankly, the best plaintiff in an employment discrimination case is one of those gritty, hard-scrabble types willing to go the distance. Ruth certainly didn’t look the part. In fact, she looked more like a storybook Jewish grandmother, right down to the gray hair pulled back in a bun, the soft face, and the dowdy floral-print, calf-length dress. She actually wore granny glasses.