Bearing Witness
Page 24
“You’ve got an appointment tonight?” Benny repeated in disbelief. “Just like that?”
I shrugged. “Jonathan called in a favor. It’s not as if Warnholtz has a prior engagement.”
Benny came around the desk to look at the map with me. “Where the hell is Potosi?”
“There.” I pointed to a spot about ninety miles south of St. Louis in the heart of the Lead Belt mining district.
He studied the map for a moment and turned to me. “Are you really going down there tonight?”
I shrugged. “Maybe it’s just a wild-goose chase, but I have to do it.”
Benny frowned. “Even if this creep knows something, what makes you think he’ll tell you?”
“I don’t, but I’ll never find out if I don’t try. What’s the worst that could happen? I drive a four-hour round trip for nothing, right? I’m still home before midnight. How bad is that? It’ll be quiet in the car, I’ll be able to think about the case, maybe come up with some good ideas for cross-examination. Oh, and I bought myself a treat last weekend: Bob Marley’s greatest hits. I can listen to that, too.”
Benny stared at me for a moment and uttered a weary groan. Silently, he opened a bottle of beer, took a big sip, swallowed, and rolled his eyes heavenward. “I can’t believe this.”
“What?”
Grumbling under his breath, he turned toward the phone, lifted the receiver, and punched in a number. As he waited for it to ring, he shook his head in frustration.
“Hi,” he said into the phone, his voice subdued. “It’s me. Listen, something’s come up in this case. They’re going to need my help tonight. Yeah, I’m real sorry. Maybe we can get together later this week. Sure. I’ll call you. Take care.”
He hung up and stared at the phone.
“Oh, Benny, you didn’t have to do that.”
He snorted as he headed over to get his coat. “Right. Did you happen to notice where Potosi is located? Smack dab in the middle of Deliverance country, that’s where. And you’re planning to head down there alone? And at night?” He slipped on his coat. “Let’s roll.”
“Benny, you really don’t—”
“Enough,” he said, holding up his hand to silence me. “Move it, woman.”
I was, of course, delighted and grateful. I called the prison to confirm the appointment, and then I stuffed a yellow legal pad, my portable dictation machine, and three dictation cassettes into my briefcase. On the way down the walk toward my car, I asked him who he had called.
“Who?” He looked over at me and shook his head sadly. “Here’s a hint: what do you call a sexy twenty-one-year-old aerobics instructor who can suck a golf ball through a garden hose?”
I knew the punch line, but it took a few seconds to get the point. “Oh, Benny,” I said sympathetically, hugging his arm. “You’re an angel.”
“An angel?” he said sarcastically. “No, I believe ‘imbecile’ is the correct term for someone who just passed up an evening of, shall we say, high-impact aerobics to spend some quality time inside a state penitentiary with a Nazi cretin doing life for murder.”
“Well,” I said, kissing him on the cheek as I slipped my arm through his, “you’re my imbecile, and I think you’re the greatest.”
“Words suitable for an epitaph. Oh, well, as Bob Marley would say, ‘No woman no cry.’”
***
Look at the bright side,” Benny said impatiently. “If you marry him, at least you can start getting laid again.”
We had exited the divided highway about ten miles back. We were now on Highway 47, an unlit state road that cut west through St. Francois County and into Washington County. We were definitely in the boonies now, many miles from the nearest minyon.
I glanced over at Benny in the darkness. “You know what my sister said? She told me that Jonathan is what you’d call a real Jew.”
“Oh, really?” he said caustically. “Did you tell her that her husband is what you’d call a real putz?”
“She didn’t mean it as an insult, Benny. It’s just that he’s so…well, you know.”
“Religious?” Benny put his hand over his chest in mock horror. “What a disgrace.”
“Benny,” I said, exasperated.
“Listen,” he said, holding up his hands, “if it was me marrying him, you could understand my reluctance.”
I gave him a baffled look. “Huh?”
“I’m talking about a female version of me, okay? I’m making a cogent point here.”
A female Benny Goldberg. The image made me giggle.
“What I’m saying,” he continued, “is that we’d be like oil and water, Jonathan and me. I’m about as likely to spend a Saturday morning at a synagogue as I am to have an elective colostomy. But look at you. What more could any nice Jewish boy pray for? You light the candles on Shabbat, you fast on Yom Kippur, and you’ve got a tush that would make the Ayatollah recite the Shema. The perfect Jewish wife.” He paused. “Right?”
I looked over at him with a smile. “I thank you, and my tush thanks you, but neither one of us has any idea what you just said.”
“Look, Rachel, it’s not like you’re marrying some Lubavitcher zealot in a black coat and felt hat who gets his jollies throwing rocks at cars. The man’s got cable TV, for chrissakes. I even watched Beavis and Butt-head with him one night.”
“Now there’s a testimonial.”
We’d reached Highway O, which was about two miles east of the town of Potosi. My smile disappeared as I turned right at the intersection. It was up ahead, a few hundred yards down Highway O, looking more like a space-colony garrison than a high-security prison. We stared at it as I drove slowly along Highway O. The prison consisted of a group of low-slung, gray-block modules topped with huge rolls of coiled razor wire that shimmered beneath the powerful overhead spotlights. Facing Highway O was the large gray door where the hearse drives in and out on execution day. I’d read somewhere that the grassy expanse on either side of that road fills with black crows on execution days.
We passed through the first checkpoint and parked in a guest spot near the entrance to the administrative building. Once inside the building, we moved through another checkpoint, this one with a guard behind a glass enclosure, and then we entered the spartan waiting area. Five minutes later, deputy assistant warden Billy Dillard came out to greet us. He was a pudgy man in an off-white short-sleeve shirt and a wide iridescent tie held in place by a Southeast Missouri State tiepin. In his forties, Dillard looked remarkably like an updated version of Oliver Hardy, right down to the unkempt black hair and splayed little mustache. He’d obviously been briefed in advance and instructed to be courteous.
“I talked to one of the paramedics an hour ago,” Dillard explained as he escorted us down the hallway and through the first of several checkpoints. “He said Herman seemed alert.”
“That’s not always the case?” I asked.
Dillard pursed his lips and shook his head. “Oh, no. I’m afraid Herman’s in bad shape.”
“What kind of cancer does he have?” I asked.
“Prostate. Inoperable. He’s dying. He’s lost a lot of weight in the last three months. They don’t give him more than a few weeks, a month tops.”
“What kind of inmate was he before the cancer?”
“Well, ma’am,” he said thoughtfully, “he’s been a resident here since this facility opened. He was transferred from Jeff City with a clean record, and he’s never been a problem here. He pretty much keeps to himself. Likes to do woodwork. It’s his hobby, you might say. He subscribes to one of those carpenter magazines and works down in the prison shop a couple days a week—or used to, back before the cancer got him. Tables, chairs, that sort of thing. We donated some of his stuff to the local library. He was a pretty decent carpenter in his day.”
We stopped at the prison infirmary checkpoint. The gu
ard acknowledged Dillard’s arrival with a nod and a polite “Evening, sir.”
“Where’d they put Herman, Ray?”
“Room C, sir.”
We followed Dillard through the main section of the infirmary, past the execution room (with curtains drawn over the observation window), and down a short hallway lined with doors. Dillard stopped in front of the one marked “Room C” and peered through the narrow observation slot. Then he opened the door and stepped in.
“Herman,” he said in a loud, artificially cheerful voice, “here are the folks I told you about.”
Dillard turned and gestured for us to join him. I filed into the small windowless room, followed by Benny. A hospital bed dominated the room. I stood at the foot of the bed as Dillard introduced us to Herman Warnholtz.
I was surprised and I was disappointed. This was not the Herman Warnholtz I’d expected to see. Perhaps it was the ravages of age and disease, but there was no sign of the brute in the shrunken ghost that gazed up at me from the bed. He may once have been a Nazi thug who headed a vicious gang named after the SS guards that ran Treblinka and Buchenwald. He may once have celebrated Hitler’s birthday by tying up a Jewish shopowner with baling wire and incinerating him in his store. But these were not the eyes of the Devil’s henchman. These were weary eyes—faded blue but still clear—eyes that seemed almost benign. This was a dying old man, a faded stick figure with sunken cheeks and a bald head sprinkled with age spots. His arms were at his sides on top of the sheet, the skin as thin and fragile as tissue paper. A slight palsy caused his left hand to make a faint patting noise on the sheet.
“Good evening, sir,” I said.
He nodded in acknowledgment, a tiny movement of his head.
As he stared at me, I thought of his old adversary, Harold Roth. Both men so young and vibrant back in 1939, decades later so withered and frail, Harold now dead, Warnholtz soon to follow.
“I’m here to ask you some questions,” I continued. “I hope you’ll be willing to answer them.”
“About what?” His voice was soft and husky.
“Conrad Beckman, sir.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“Because you knew him.”
He gazed at me, his eyes closing. “What makes you say that?”
“Because I know things about you, sir.”
His eyes remained closed. For a moment I thought he was asleep, but then he asked, almost in a whisper, “What things?”
“I know about the Deutsche-Horst family camp along the Meramec River.” His eyes opened and then narrowed. I continued. “I know that you were one of the camp counselors, along with Rudolphe Schober and Conrad Beckman.”
His expression was blank, but his eyes were now alert.
I met his stare. “I know about the Death’s Head Formation. I even know about San Carlos de Bariloche.”
He studied me. “How?”
“I just do.” I shrugged. “But I don’t know the whole story. I know that Conrad Beckman was active in the Bund before World War II. I know that he did a major construction job down in San Carlos back in the fifties, and I know that he did it with one of his competitors.”
“Who?” Warnholtz asked in his hoarse voice.
“Who?” I repeated, unsure.
“Which competitor?”
“Eagle Engineering.”
“Eagle?” he repeated in a whisper, searching his memory.
“Down in Memphis,” I explained. “Max Kruppa owned the company.”
“Max.” He nodded, a faraway look in his eyes.
“You knew Max?”
He seemed to contemplate me for a moment, and then closed his eyes. “Long time ago,” he said. “Who cares anymore?”
“I care. I think it might hold the key to my lawsuit.”
His eyes still closed, he asked, “Who are the others?”
I told him about the bid-rigging conspiracy and the names of each of the company founders.
He listened in silence. I waited. Eventually, he opened his eyes and turned toward Billy Dillard. “I’ll talk to her. Alone.”
Dillard shrugged. “You sure, Herman?”
He nodded and turned toward Benny with a frown.
I shook my head. “He’s my colleague, Mr. Warnholtz. I need him to stay here.”
He mulled it over. “Fine.”
He waited until Dillard had closed the door behind him. Then he turned to me, his eyes narrowing. “I never was a snitch.”
I nodded, not sure where this was going but not wanting to derail it by saying the wrong thing.
“I did my time,” he said after a moment, his voice still hoarse but now more forceful. “I never said a thing. Not even to that madman Lindhoff.” He paused. “But he let me down.” There was bitterness in his voice. “He promised he’d take care of my wife and son. But when my wife died in 1964…” His voice trailed off. His eyes seemed to lose their focus. “Pretended he never made that promise. Pretended he didn’t even know who I was. He let them put my boy in the state mental hospital.” He shook his head. “Not a damn thing.”
He squeezed his eyes closed, as if the memory were too painful to bear in the light. I waited. When he finally opened them, they were moist. “That was wrong,” he said in a whisper.
I nodded, feeling a tug of compassion in spite of myself.
He looked up at the ceiling, as if he were addressing God. “He broke his promise,” he said, his voice stronger. There was more color in his face now. He leveled his gaze at me, his eyes burning. “So I’m breaking mine. I’m a dying man. I’ll answer your questions.”
“Who broke his promise?” I asked.
He seemed to grit his teeth, as if gathering the resolve to clear this first hurdle. “Conrad Beckman,” he said, his voice laced with anger.
“I see,” I said, keeping my expression neutral. I gestured toward the chair along the side of his bed. “Would it be okay if I sat down?”
He nodded.
As I came around the bed and sat down, he turned his head to watch me. I was close enough to hear the raspy strain in his breathing. I set my briefcase on my lap and opened it.
“May I take notes?” I asked as I removed a legal pad and a pen.
He nodded.
I held up my portable dictation machine. “May I use this as backup, in case I can’t read my notes?”
He nodded again.
I set the dictation machine on the nightstand and pressed the Record button. I glanced back at Benny, who had moved into the far corner of the room. He was leaning motionless against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, his expression solemn. I turned to Warnholtz, who was gazing up at the ceiling again.
“Mr. Warnholtz, I’m going to ask you some questions about Conrad Beckman and his company. How long have you known Mr. Beckman?”
He turned to me. “We grew up in the same neighborhood. Back in the 1920s.”
“Okay. That’s one of the subjects we’re going to talk about. I’m also going to ask you about Mr. Beckman’s relationship with the men who ran the five other companies that we believe were co-conspirators with Beckman Engineering.”
He shook his head. “That might be a waste of your time. I been inside for forty years.”
“I understand that, sir. I’m interested in the period before your incarceration.”
He gave me a curious look and raised his eyebrows. “How far back?”
“That depends, sir. How far back does your knowledge about those men go?”
He considered the question. “Well, pretty far. For some, even before Die Spinne.”
That name again.
“Who was he, Mr. Warnholtz?”
“Who?” He frowned.
“Spinne, sir. Who was he?”
“Who?” he repeated, puzzled. “You mean what.”
He stared at me for a moment, and then his face broke into a smile. As I stared at him, at that grinning bag of bones, the rib cage visible beneath the sheet, the neck a gristly stalk, the sudden awful irony made me shudder. In his final days Herman Warnholtz had become the mirror image of one of those haunted Auschwitz survivors.
“Why are you smiling?” I finally asked.
“You don’t know German, do you?”
“No, sir. I don’t.”
He nodded, amused. It was an awful grin, the skin stretched paper-thin over his skull, the thin lips pulled back from brown, crooked teeth worn down to stumps. A death’s head grin.
Chapter Twenty-six
I got home at twelve-thirty. At two o’clock I was still wide awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, my mind racing. I almost called Ruth to tell her about the interview. Instead, I played part of one of the tapes again to reassure myself that it hadn’t all been a dream. I finally drifted off to sleep somewhere around three and awoke with a start at five-ten. I was so antsy I threw on my jogging clothes and took Ozzie for a brisk thirty-minute run.
I was at my desk at six-fifteen drafting my application for a writ of habeas corpus ad testificandum, a mouthful of legal mumbo-jumbo that, if granted, would compel the superintendent of the Potosi Correctional Center to transport Inmate #2574312 to the courtroom of the Honorable Catherine Wagner the following morning to give testimony in the matter of United States ex rel. Ruth B. Alpert v. Beckman Engineering Co. If, however, Herman Warnholtz was too ill to travel, the habeas application requested that I be allowed to take a videotaped deposition at the prison to show to the jury.
I had it in hand when Judge Wagner summoned us into her chambers at 9:00. a.m. to go over the morning’s schedule. “Are you done with Mr. Beckman?” she asked, shuffling through some papers.
“I have a few more questions for him, Your Honor. Depending upon other testimony, I may call him again.”