Bearing Witness

by Michael A. Kahn

  I came back down several stairs and sat next to him. I shined the flashlight overhead.

  There was a platform less than thirty feet above. I put my hand on his shoulder and gave him an encouraging squeeze. “We’re almost there,” I said.

  Benny leaned back, saw what the beam was illuminating, and nodded, his breath still wheezing. I sat quietly, listening to his breathing return to normal.

  “By the way,” I said, “I’m impressed with your tool collection.”

  “Most women are.”

  “I’m referring to your tool tools, you goofball.” I lifted the backpack and shook it, rattling the equipment inside. “You always put yourself down as a Jewish mechanic, but when we needed a chisel and a special hammer, you came through like a champ.”

  He shook his head. “I got those from my neighbor. He’s some sort of genetic freak.”

  “How so?”

  “He’s a urologist but he isn’t Jewish. Probably the only Gentile urologist in the Midwest. And a goy through and through. Took me down to his basement. Place looked like a TrueValue Hardware wet dream. I ask him for a hammer, he shows me a wall that looks like the goddamn Hammer Hall of Fame. I took two for tonight—a normal one and a big mother that looks like it once belonged to Thor.”

  I was smiling as I stood up. “Come on. Let’s find the judge her corroborating evidence.”

  The platform overhead turned out to be the clock landing, and it had clearly been refurbished since Warnholtz began his prison term. All four clocks were new, with whirring electronic motors and special illumination bulbs. There were wires and cords and electric panels. Even more important, there were additional stairs. I had mistakenly assumed that this platform was the highest point in the tower, but in fact the clocks were set in the walls about fifteen or twenty feet from the top of the tower.

  We left the clock platform and headed up the stairs into complete darkness. There were no windows up here. I clicked on the flashlight as we reached the final landing. The wind howled outside.

  “The northwest corner,” Benny said as he turned, trying to get a fix on our location. His breath vapored in the frigid air.

  I moved the flashlight beam slowly around. The area was a square, and three of the four corners were standard right angles. But the fourth one was beveled—essentially a narrow extra wall set at a diagonal into the corner from floor to ceiling. I tried to visualize the outside of the clocktower. The little minaret was attached to the northwest edge of the tower. The beveled corner must have been the common wall with the minaret.

  “This is it,” I said, pointing the flashlight beam.

  I kneeled in front of the wall and set the backpack on the floor. Unlike the other walls, which were made of brick, this beveled corner was composed of limestone blocks. The blocks were a little longer than regular bricks and about twice as high—about twelve inches long, five inches high. I shined the light along the masonry as I moved my other hand slowly over the blocks and mortar.

  Benny was kneeling beside me and unzipping the backpack. “Where’s it supposed to be?”

  I replayed Warnholtz’s words in my mind. “Five from the left, three up from the floor.”

  We counted. I held the flashlight close to the wall. The masonry looked the same as what surrounded it.

  “He was either a helluva bricklayer,” Benny said as he positioned the chisel against the mortar, “or full of shit.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Benny had cleaned out the mortar on all four sides of the block. It took the two of us several more minutes to loosen the block and slide it out of the wall. It was an ample piece of limestone, far heavier than an ordinary brick. Benny reached his hand inside the opening and scooped out loose pieces of mortar.

  “There’s something hard back there,” he said as he brushed out more debris.

  “Let me see.” I leaned down with the flashlight to train the beam on the opening.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Look.”

  He put his head close to mine as we peered inside. The flashlight illuminated the lower-left quadrant of what had to be the front of a safe.

  “Whoa,” he said quietly.

  To expose the entire door of the safe, we needed to extract three more blocks. Fortunately, the opening created by the first brick sped up our task. We had the other three blocks out of there in under fifteen minutes. Once we’d cleared away all of the loose pieces of mortar, I shined the flashlight in the large, square opening. The sturdy little safe was in good condition. The numbers on the combination lock were clearly visible.

  “What was the combination?” Benny asked.

  “Hitler’s birthday: April 20, 1889.” I peered into the opening and trained the flashlight beam on the combination knob. “I’m guessing it’s four right, twenty left, eighteen right, eighty-nine left.”

  I guessed right. On the second try, I pulled down on the little handle. There was an audible click and the door swung free.

  “We’re in,” I said.

  I opened the door and shined the light inside. The safe contained one thick manila envelope bound with twine. I reached in and lifted the envelope out of the safe and through the opening in the wall.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Benny said. “I’m freezing.”

  “Wait.” I sat down with my back against the wall. I placed the manila envelope on my lap. “Let’s just take a peek.”

  I fumbled with the knot until Benny, exasperated, opened his pocket knife and cut through it. I pulled off the twine and opened the big envelope. It was filled with papers. I carefully removed them, making sure not to get any out of order, and I placed them on the ground between us.

  I lifted the top page. It was an old, yellowed bill of lading. I wasn’t used to reading them, but from what I could decipher, it pertained to a consignment that left the Port of Buenos Aires in South America on a vessel named La Guardia on June 7, 1948, and arrived in the Port of New Orleans thirty-three days later. The bill of lading was difficult to understand: parts were in Spanish, parts were in English, and many of the entries, including the weight of the goods shipped, were in abbreviations that I didn’t understand. But the goods themselves were identified quite succinctly: DENTAL GOLD.

  The next several documents made up the paper trail that followed the shipment from the Port of New Orleans to St. Louis via two different railroad trains. When the gold reached St. Louis, it was unloaded and transported to the Gravois State Bank & Trust, where it was placed in the vault. Sixteen days later, according to the documents, the gold was sold to a dealer in Chicago named Hubert Schwinn for the sum of $300,000, which was placed into Account #2438712, a new account opened that day at the Gravois State Bank & Trust in the name of “Die Spinne.” The next document was a carbon copy of the signature card for that account. I held the card up and shined the light on it so both of us could see. It was dated August 12, 1948. There were two signatures, each one neat and legible: Herman Warnholtz and Conrad Beckman.

  I turned to Benny. “Time to go. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

  I helped him close the safe and shove the four limestone blocks back into place in the wall. He slipped on the backpack and adjusted the straps. It was his turn to carry it.

  We’d passed the clock landing and were almost at the water reservoir when Benny stopped.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He shook his head in disgust as he slipped off the backpack and set it on the stairs.

  “Please, please,” he grumbled as he unzipped the bag and shined his flashlight inside. “Aw, shit.”

  “What?”

  “I left the damn chisel up there.”

  I shined my light overhead. “You want me to?”

  “Naw, it’s my fault. I’ll go get it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I need the exercise. I’ll me
et you below.”

  “I can wait.”

  “No, go ahead.” He turned and started up the stairs. “See if you can get your bearings there, figure out how we get out of this dump.”

  I waited a few minutes. I could hear him trudging up the stairs and cursing under his breath. But by the time I’d squeezed past the rusted water reservoir, his footsteps and grumbling were no longer audible. With the manila envelope under my arm, I mulled over possible exit routes as I continued down the stairs. We’d entered the upper section of the Headhouse on the far west side, had crossed over the center section, and were now at the eastern edge of the building. Instead of a fifteen-minute hike all the way back to the other side, we might be able to find a stairway and an exit nearby.

  I reached the bottom of the stairs and paused to listen. From far overhead I could barely hear the muffled echoing of Benny’s footsteps. Clicking on the flashlight, I carefully picked my way between the pigeon corpses and through the arched opening.

  I hadn’t taken more than a few steps when a powerful beam of light flashed in my face. “Well,” said a deep, resonant voice, “look who finally came down from her tower.”

  Startled, I stumbled backward a step, squinting into the glare.

  He chuckled. “I don’t suppose you’re Rapunzel, eh? Not with that hair.”

  I was unable to see him, unable to see anything. Although flustered, I remembered the archway. It was directly behind me. Benny was on his way down. Trying to shield my eyes from the light, I staggered off to the side, moving in a wide arc, trying to draw him with me, away from the archway. The whole time he kept the beam of light on my face, like a prison spotlight. Blinded, I heard the scrape of his shoes as he followed me.

  “Whoa, sister,” he said with a chuckle. “Hold still. Turn off your flashlight.”

  I did.

  “Who are you?” I said, my voice shaking, still backing away from the archway. His voice was familiar. I struggled to place it. “Are you a guard?”

  Another chuckle. “Not the kind you’re hoping for. Where’s the Pillsbury Jew Boy?”

  I stood there dazed, squinting into the light. I recognized the voice. I couldn’t believe it.

  “I asked you a question. Where’s the Pillsbury Jew Boy?”

  “He went to get the car. He’s out front waiting for me.”

  “Left you here all alone?” Another chuckle. “Pretty little girl like you. Fat boy sounds like a pussy to me.” He shifted the beam to the manila envelope under my arm. “You find something interesting up there, Rachel Gold?”

  The sound of my name made me flinch. “Who are you?” I asked, stalling for time, my heart racing.

  “Answer my question first.”

  He had his back to the archway. Benny might be in earshot. I had to warn him.

  “Who are you?” I shouted. “Who are you?”

  “Ssh,” he said. “No need to get all in a lather here. If I was going to hurt you, I’d have done that already.”

  “What do you want?” I asked, struggling to keep control of myself.

  He shifted the beam toward the envelope again. “Just that.”

  I pulled it closer to my body.

  That made him chuckle. “You don’t have much leverage here. First of all, you’re inside this place illegally. I believe you lawyers call it trespassing. Second of all, you’re unarmed. Third, you’re alone. I have an automatic in my jacket and three men waiting up those stairs back in that old ballroom. They’re armed as well. But don’t worry. All I want is that envelope.”

  “Why?”

  “We lost track of you and the Pillsbury Jew Boy back there—in fact, we didn’t figure out where you’d gone until one of my men spotted a flashlight moving up the clock tower.” Another chuckle. “Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure there must be something awfully important inside that envelope—important enough to make you break into this building in the middle of the night in the middle of your trial. That kind of behavior is just unusual enough to get me thinking that maybe, just maybe, whatever’s in that envelope has something to do with our dearly departed Herman Warnholtz. Now, if that’s the case, I can—”

  There was a sudden Whomp.

  He groaned in pain as something hard clunked to the floor. His flashlight beam gyrated. There were the sounds of heavy footsteps charging, then an Oomph of a collision. Two bodies crashed to the ground. I clicked on my flashlight just as Benny was raising his claw hammer. He was straddling the other man, who was facedown on the floor. Benny smashed the hammer down hard into the middle the man’s back. I could hear a rib crack. He smashed it again. Another crack.

  I grabbed Benny’s arm. “Enough. There are others back there.”

  Benny looked up at me, his eyes wild. He nodded and got to his feet. We both stared down at the man on the ground, who was whimpering.

  “This way,” I whispered, pointing the flashlight toward the east.

  “Wait.”

  Benny leaned over and grabbed the man by his shoulder. He pulled him to his side and shined the flashlight on his face. We were staring down at Bishop Kurt Robb. His glasses had been knocked off in the fight, his nose was scraped and bloody. He winced in pain.

  Benny turned to me. “You got tape in that backpack?”

  I nodded.

  He raised the hammer over Robb’s head and waggled it menacingly. “Keep your mouth shut, you Aryan asshole, or I’ll crack your head open like a soft-boiled egg.” He turned to me. “Get me the tape.”

  I dashed over to the archway and grabbed the backpack. On the way back, I dug around and pulled out the roll of duct tape. Benny tore off a long strip and handed it to me. Then he leaned over Robb, shoved him onto his stomach, and yanked his arms behind his back, holding his wrists together.

  I squatted next to him and wrapped the tape several turns. Benny let go of Robb’s hands. They fell limply against his back.

  Benny reached for the duct tape and tore off another long strip. He handed me the strip of tape, grabbed Robb by his hair, and pulled his head off the ground. “Say cheese.”

  Benny looked over at me and nodded. I positioned the duct tape over Robb’s mouth and wrapped it around his head twice.

  When I was done, Benny leaned in close, still holding Robb’s head by his hair. Robb’s eyes were darting around in fear and pain.

  “Pillsbury Jew Boy, eh?” Benny said. “Well, guess what, motherfucker? Fourth quarter just ended. Final score: Jew Boy one, Spider zero.”

  Benny released his grip and Robb’s head conked against the ground. He made a muffled groan.

  We headed quickly toward the eastern end of the building, hoping that Robb and his men had entered, as we had, from the west side. I looked back as we reached a stairway. Off in the distance I saw two flashlights moving in our direction.

  “Hurry,” I whispered.

  We scrambled down the stairway toward the door at the bottom, pushed through it, ran down a short corridor, came to another door, pushed through it, and found ourselves standing on the sidewalk on Eighteenth Street. I looked back with a wince, expecting the door to burst open.

  “This way,” Benny said, grabbing my arm and running toward Market Street. We jogged to the front of Union Station and the entrance to the Hyatt Hotel, where there were several cabs parked in a line. We hopped in the first one.

  “Police station!” I shouted. “Hurry.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The cabbie shifted to Drive. The tires squealed as he pulled away from the curb.

  We settled back, both of us breathing hard. After a moment, I turned to Benny. “How did you do that?”

  “A hammer.”

  “No, I mean the first time.”

  “That was the other hammer. That big sucker. I snuck up behind him and threw it.” He pantomimed a hammer throw. “Right in the middle of his back. Whack!” H
e paused for a second and then smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Ahhh.”

  “What?”

  “His tools.”

  “Whose?”

  “The urologist’s. They’re back there.”

  “Don’t worry, Thor. We’ll buy him some new ones.”

  Chapter Thirty

  They were all in the courtroom that morning.

  Ruth Alpert was seated at my side, and next to her was Benny. Conrad Beckman, looking especially dour, was over at the defendant’s table seated next to Kimberly Howard. The two of them were surrounded by the usual entourage, with Laurence Browning officiously shooting his cuffs.

  Out in the gallery every seat was taken. Stanley Roth had the aisle position in the first row behind the barrier on the defendant’s side. He was going over some point with an intent young spin doctor from the St. Louis office of the public relations firm of Hill/Dowling. This was Hill/Dowling’s first appearance in the courtroom. Fasten your seat belts, fellas, I thought. The rest of those two rows were packed with executives from Beckman Engineering and attorneys and paralegals from Roth & Bowles.

  My mother was in the courtroom today, along with Ruth’s grown daughter Barbara. They were seated in the first row on the plaintiff’s side. Next to them were Jacki and my five law student volunteers.

  The press was here in force this morning, both print and broadcast. Their numbers had been swelling each day. For those following their reports on the trial, our side was slightly behind on points. The Post-Dispatch reporter had decreed Conrad Beckman’s testimony yesterday “impressive” and “forceful.”

  There were plenty of spectators in the gallery as well. The television accounts had been luring them into the courtroom in greater numbers each day.

  And finally, there was a new group today: the law enforcement professionals. Jonathan Wolf was there, seated in the back row between two of his investigators, his crutches leaning against the bench next to him. I recognized a couple of FBI special agents, an agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, an assistant U.S. attorney, and someone from the city prosecutor’s office.