Rush

by Wozencraft, Kim

“The investigation is preliminary at this point,” Gonzales said. “I’ve been hired by the City of Beaumont to represent you while you’re down here, only because the FBI will not interview you unless you have representation. I’ve spoken at length with your former boss, and I really think you should discuss things with him. Your defense strategy is a matter for counsel in Beaumont.”

  I sat down next to Jim.

  “I believe they would like to speak to you separately,” Gonzales said. Then, looking at me, “They want to see you first.” I glanced at Jim and he shrugged.

  “Give ‘em hell,” he said flatly, in almost a whisper.

  I don’t know what I expected to find when I walked through the door, or even if I had enough presence of mind to be able to expect anything. I turned the ornate brass knob on the door and took a deep breath and walked into the room.

  The first thing I saw was a tape recorder on a long mahogany table in the middle of the small room. It leapt out at me like a sudden close-up in a film, and I had to force myself to sit down before it. There was a flowing, hollow noise rushing into my ears, like the sound that had hit me so many years before, the first time I’d really done cocaine.

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Three years late. A matched set of feds. One short, one tall. The short one had brownish-gray hair combed in wispy, slanting bangs that reached about halfway down his forehead, leaving a strip of waxy skin between there and his heavy gray-flecked eyebrows. He was wearing a gray suit and a red tie. His nose was pink with sunburn below his small brown eyes, and he was smoking one of those long, thin, dark brown cigarettes. The tall one had on a white sport shirt with epaulets on the shoulders and a breast pocket with a plastic insert full of felt-tip pens. He had mounds and mounds of thick black hair, combed in a style reminiscent of the fifties, and large, slow-moving green eyes with thick black lashes. His lips were so thin as to be practically nonexistent.

  As soon as I sat down, the short one looked at the tall one and said, “Well, Fearsome, shall we begin?”

  The tall one flipped out a badge case and hung it for a brief moment in front of my face, then slipped it back into his jacket.

  “This is Agent Maygrett,” he said. “I’m Agent McPherson.”

  Maygrett shifted forward and casually flicked his cigarette in the direction of the ash tray. McPherson pressed a button on the recorder and I watched as the plastic reels began turning. Like my insides, twisting and reeling and turning. A dizzying wave of nausea rolled through me. I took a glass from the table and poured some water.

  “September fourth, 1981, three forty P.M.,” he said, speaking more to the recorder than to me, “interview with Kristen Ann Cates, conducted by Special Agents Walter McPherson and Thomas Maygrett in the office of Berg, Lonner, Hoffman, Rosenthal, Wulf and Gonzales in San Antonio, Texas, concerning subject’s participation in the 1978 undercover narcotics investigation by the Beaumont Police Department.” He looked at me. “Is that correct?”

  “Yes sir,” I said.

  “Now, since you are a former police officer, I assume you are aware of your rights?”

  How many times had I said it? Now it was my turn. I had the right to remain silent. And the right to be considered instantly guilty by doing so. The only ones who don’t cooperate are those who have something to hide. We were talking FBI, talking J. Edgar, secret files on God-knew-who, on Martin Luther King, on every half-baked sixties radical who ever strapped on a headband and jumped on a park bench and said Fuck The Establishment. I did not know how much they knew.

  “Yes sir,” I said, “I know my rights.”

  “And you are here voluntarily.”

  “Yes sir.”

  McPherson leaned back in his chair and Maygrett leaned forward.

  “Did you take drugs while you were working undercover for the Beaumont Police Department during the winter and spring of 1978?”

  It was like being in the starting blocks, crouched over the white chalk line, so hyped, so psyched, that when the gun went off I would either set a new record or fall over and land with my face in the cinders, just pass smooth out.

  “No sir,” I said. “I have, as my application to the department indicated, smoked marijuana on three or four occasions when I was in high school. That’s the extent of my drug use.”

  It went downhill from there.

  * * *

  “Damn it to fucking hell!” Jim yelled. He hit the brakes at the intersection and slammed his hand hard against the dash. “Son of a bitch!” The rage in his voice seemed to bounce off the windshield.

  “Easy,” I said. “It’s only a red light.”

  “We are fucking getting hung out to dry,” he seethed, “and Nettle’s behind it. The bastard’s gonna give us up like a damn ten-cent donation to United Way.”

  “How can he,” I said. “He can’t. He was giving the orders.”

  “Fucking feds! They’ve talked to everybody. Did you get the impression that they know everything that happened during every godforsaken instant of that entire investigation? Did it seem that way to you?”

  “They knew what to ask,” I said. “They definitely knew what to ask.”

  “There’s so many tongues flapping in Beaumont right now you can put your laundry on the line and the goddamn hot air will dry it in three minutes flat.”

  The light changed and Jim ground his way into first and popped the clutch, leaving short black patches on the pavement behind the Blazer.

  “It’s not right, man,” he said. “It ain’t fucking right. I’m not going to hang for that bastard.”

  “So what, we’re supposed to tell them the truth? That would go over like nuns at a Klan gathering.”

  “They know,” Jim said. “They’ve known for years. They can’t afford to hear it. You can bet your ass the feds would like to take down the local boys, and the state as well. Fade some of their own heat by turning up the burners under the locals.”

  “And leave the DEA to carry on? Like they’re straight?”

  “Ask me about the feds,” he said, “Ask me who trained me.” He punched the cigarette lighter and glared at nobody. “First goddamn undercover work I ever did was with the DEA. Bastards taught me everything I know. And I,” he turned to look at me, “taught you.”

  “I met one once, I said. “At Rob’s house. He was ushering people back to the bathroom one at a time, all afternoon. There were three or four state boys over, and noses were running, you know. Finally I got Rob alone and asked him why I wasn’t included in the split-down, and you know what he said? The fed was hainty of local cops. I couldn’t believe it, that fucker, strutting around looking like a cross between Waylon Jennings and a top-dollar gigolo. Had this big black Stetson on, and a bright red rodeo shirt, and he had a long brown beard. Know what was on his feet? Tasseled Italian loafers. I don’t know how he ever managed to buy any dope. Somebody must’ve felt sorry for him.”

  “Where was I?”

  “Who knows,” I said. “It was during the investigation. We were both pretty much down and dirty by then. You wouldn’t have believed that Yankee DEA bastard, trying to play urban cowboy. Saying you-all this and you-all that. Right before I left I told him it was y’all, man, like yawl.”

  “Well we ain’t talking DEA here, baby, this is FBI, accountants turned cops. These boys do it with paperwork and tape you know, and they’ve got us on the record now. You can bet they’re on their way back to Beaumont to talk a grand jury into indicting our little white asses. We go to trial? We’d be rolling bones on ten years. Smartest thing we can do is cop a plea and hope we catch the judge on a good day.”

  I remembered the night of the bust-out, Jim standing outside the office doing his Tricky Dick imitation: Don’t cop out. I felt my insides go wormy and heat shot up the sides of my neck to the top of my head and spread slowly back down, as though it were being poured over my skin. I tried to make sense of the words rattling inside my head.

  “We could run.”

  “Run?” Jim s
aid. “You ready to disappear? Live the rest of your life wondering when you’re gonna get caught? Man, I’ve got so many fucking scars on my body that they’d find me in no time. Some goddamn bounty hunter would be on our ass and steady looking for a dude with a fucked-up left arm. You don’t see a scar like this every day.”

  He waved his arm at me, turning his hand so that I could see his forearm. It had gone white, over the years, puffy and white, but the tiny ovals from the steam vents in the iron were still visible. And there were the other scars, the ones hidden under his clothing. The mass of stitch marks on his arm. The metal where bone had been. The fist-sized crater of sunken skin on the front of his thigh.

  “Look,” Jim said, “everybody’s got at least one probation coming. We can do that. If anybody goes, it’ll be me. They aren’t going to put you in the joint. Hell, you tried to do right. Nettle stonewalled you. You got nothing to worry about.”

  “Right,” I said. “Nothing at all. I’ll just skip into the federal building and tell them I’m sorry, I got fucked up on dope and wasn’t thinking straight. Good luck with your case, Mr. Prosecutor, and have a nice afternoon.”

  “You’d better cut the bullshit,” he said. “And concentrate on saving your ass.”

  “Hey,” I said, “Raynor? Why don’t you tell me what you suggest. I’m wide open here, but I also know that the truth didn’t go over so great the last time I had occasion to tell it.” He tightened his grip on the wheel and pressed himself against the seat back.

  “Step one,” he said, “is we get on the horn to those feds and tell them we’d like an appointment.”

  * * *

  The FBI kept its Beaumont agents in the Jack Brooks Federal Building, a limestone neo-Gothic number that stood next door to Sears and smack across the street from the old red brick Baptist church. Maygrett led us to his cluttered desk, situated near the back wall in a windowless corner.

  “First,” he said, “let’s find you a lawyer. Before we talk, before we do anything.”

  “Two-thirds of the lawyers in town were involved in our cases,” Jim said. He sat with his legs crossed, his left foot nervously tapping the floor. “Who does that leave?”

  “I suggest someone with experience in federal court.” Maygrett’s chair whined as he leaned toward the floor to grab the Yellow Pages.

  * * *

  The Honorable Melvin Francis Hardwick, esteemed member of Beaumont’s tight-knit circle of practicing attorneys, would do his best to keep Jim’s sentence to probation. The Honorable Mr. So-And-So. Mr. So-And-So, Esquire. Lawyers in Texas could opt for either. Frank liked Honorable. The word Esquire, he said, reeked of feudalism.

  Titles aside, Frank was our lawyer: Thirty-five hundred for me, and absolutely no way he would plead me if there was the remotest chance I would do time. Seventy-five hundred for Jim. We could empty our account of Jim’s remaining retirement money, and Frank would bill the rest.

  After we signed, he handed the papers to his secretary and ran a hand through the few strands of hair that sprouted from his crown. Then he looked down his long, slender nose and took a step back from his bed-sized desk.

  “Tell them everything you know.”

  Jim’s mouth dropped open.

  “Shouldn’t we discuss this?”

  “You did it, right?”

  “We don’t even know for sure what Dodd said.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’ve got one shot at it. Cooperate every way you possibly can.”

  I heard Maygrett’s pager beeping out in Frank’s waiting room.

  I didn’t want to talk. Out of fear. Out of shame. But when I thought about the investigation, about what had been done, about what I had helped to do. . . . Nothing that happened in Beaumont had been about justice. Now, maybe, there was a shot at it. A chance, finally, to take a witness stand in a court of law and actually tell the truth, no punches pulled, just lay the entire ugly mess out there in the open. Let someone else decide. Let them put Nettle away.

  All that self-righteousness sounded good bouncing around in my brain while I sat in the Honorable Frank’s office. Honorable Mr. Lawyer. Mr. Lawyer, Esquire. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d heard them whispering in the hallways outside of courtrooms, making deals with people’s freedom.

  Hanging on the wall behind the Honorable Frank’s desk, next to his diplomas, were three framed needlepoints. without justice, courage is weak. there is no little enemy. we must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang separately.

  Dodd had snitched, and God knew why. I sure didn’t. To clear his conscience? Because someone had enticed, or perhaps insisted?

  Frank’s high-pitched voice was fluttering around my ears. “. . .the only thing you can do,” he was saying. “It’s like this, boys and girls, the immunity train pulls away from the station one time, one time only, and whoever’s the first on board gets to take the ride. Dodd’s the one who gets to drive the engine and toot the horn.”

  Had I seen some other way out, I might have taken it. Then again, I had Nettle in my sights and the United States of America was begging me to pull the trigger. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. James Michael Raynor and Kristen Ann Cates. All hail to the Red, White, and Blue.

  Thy banners make tyranny tremble.

  * * *

  Some days Jim went first, some days I got the morning session. The Holiday Inn in South Houston was only a few miles from my parent’s home. I had driven past it daily on my way to work at Wild Bill’s in the Alameda Mall when I was in high school and after. Now I was, in effect, under house arrest there. Debriefing, they called it. We would stay in Houston until they were through asking questions. Fewer security risks that way. We could go nowhere without the agents. We went nowhere period.

  When I wasn’t sitting in a puffy brown chair in the agents’ room answering questions, I was sitting at the table in our room, staring out the window at the traffic on the Gulf Freeway, wondering if I would actually go. Incarceration.

  “You’re looking at probation,” Maygrett would say at least once every session. “No promises, but as long as you tell us the truth, my opinion is it’s definitely a probation situation we have here.”

  I sat across from him at the small table in his room and listened to him assure me. Or maybe he didn’t say anything about it. Maybe I imagined it. McPherson didn’t look so confident, but I didn’t question Maygrett. I couldn’t bear to.

  They had charts and diagrams and names and places and dates. They dressed neatly in shirt and tie each day. Maygrett smoked his brown cigarettes and reminisced about other cases before he started the interrogation.

  “Yeah,” he would say, “had a bank robber over in Port Arthur, popped that fucker like a grape. Popped him just like a grape. Took two hours. He told me everything.”

  We went over each case. Was it legitimate? Did you turn in all the dope or cut it? Did you testify in court on this one or was it a plea? When did Jim start shooting up? How much dope were you taking? When did you first meet with Dodd about Jim’s problem? With Nettle? What about this Denny fellow, and Rob? When did they meet with Nettle? What was said? What really happened the night of the shooting? And so forth, and so forth, and so forth.

  When we finished telling them, they didn’t believe us.

  We followed them back to Beaumont and they set up the polygraph in an empty lecture room in the Federal Building, one flight up from their office. I sat in an injection-molded blue plastic chair, facing rows of scattered tables and vacant seats. The examiner was strictly business, short and light-skinned, with spiky brown hair. His card said office of enforcement operations, criminal division, department of justice. He had an almost cybernetic air about him, moving super-efficiently as he attached gadgets to my body. I felt as though I were being prepped for surgery.

  The drill was the same as it was when I took the exam in Houston, only this man was obviously a professional.

  After he’d wired me up, he sat down at the table, to my left and slightly
behind me, and I heard the familiar sounds of switches flipping and needles scratching against paper. It occurred to me that if the examiner in Houston had been any good at all, or hadn’t been on Nettle’s payroll, I did not know which, I would never have passed that test, and I wouldn’t be sitting where I was. I wondered if the defect was in the examiner or in me, if I’d played so many roles that I could no longer distinguish one self from the other.

  I don’t remember very much about the examination itself, except that I was honest. I listened to his voice, which, unlike his manner, was gentle and soothing. He spoke softly, with a quiet rhythm.

  “Just relax,” he said, “and answer truthfully with a yes or no only. If you have problems with the way I phrased a question we can discuss it afterward and I’ll ask it again later. The test is about to begin. Be very still now and relax.”

  I stared at the wall, tried to empty my mind. The paper was rolling.

  “Is your first name Kristen?”

  I recall that he focused, during the first hours of the examination, on the meetings with Nettle and on drug use. I recall worrying that he was being too nice to me.

  “Have you taken any drugs today?” he asked near the start.

  “No,” I answered.

  It didn’t seem as if any time at all had passed before he told me that was all for the day, we would continue tomorrow. He quietly removed the metal plates from my fingertips, undid the blood-pressure cuff, and disconnected the tube wrapped around my chest. I stood, anxious to get out of there.

  “Did I pass?”

  “You can talk to the agents about that,” he said. “I really shouldn’t discuss results with you.”

  But then he pulled a couple of chairs up to a table near the back wall of the room and motioned for me to sit down. I hadn’t realized until then that the sun had gone down, the room was growing slowly darker as dusk arrived.

  “I told you the truth,” I said. “I know I shouldn’t say that to you, that it will make you suspicious and all, but it’s important to me. I’m telling you the truth. I told the agents the truth.”