by Webb Hubbell
“Please! I’ll get to work setting up a new client file and doing the media research.”
Maggie normally opposed our representing anyone unless it was antitrust related. Her enthusiasm surprised me.
“Don’t spend a lot of time on this, Maggie. I don’t know what kind of relationship Ben has with his daughter, but things can’t be all peaches and cream if she changed her name. She may not want his help. I expect all he needs is for me to recommend a decent criminal attorney in DC who specializes in espionage cases. But if it comes to it, are you okay with our getting involved?” I heard her take a deep breath.
“Yes, Jack, I’m okay—mainly because I’ve learned that nothing will stop you from representing someone once you’ve made up your mind, no matter what I say. I’ve lost the argument too many times. I haven’t given up, but this time even the press is calling for the death penalty, and you know how I feel about that. There are enough murders every day without the government setting the example.”
I smiled as I listened to my English-born friend question the wisdom of our criminal justice system. I knew the real reason she wouldn’t argue this time—she knew how much Ben meant to me. I was a sucker for old friends and lost causes. Rachel or Rochelle, fell into both categories.
3
I CALLED BEN’S CELL, but his wife Linda answered. She told me that when Ben heard I was coming, he had snatched his fishing rod from the umbrella stand and headed to Miller’s Pond, reasoning, “Well, if Jack’s coming, I’ve got crappie to catch.”
“Don’t worry—we’ve already got plenty of food in the fridge. Gifts from friends.” Linda taught middle school math for many years, but had retired six months ago. Ben tried to get her to help at the restaurant, but she wasn’t having any of it.
I hadn’t thought of pan-fried crappie in a very long time. Most Arkansas fishermen will tell you that well-cooked crappie is the best tasting freshwater fish around. Crappies were puny, not more than half a pound. But they put up a heck of a fight and tasted as sweet as sunrise.
I started to call Carol, but thought better of it. She’d be busy entertaining guests and organizing dinner. So I texted her that I was off to Little Rock, figuring I’d hear from her sooner or later. But it had now been a couple of hours. Maybe things weren’t back to normal after all.
Clovis picked up on the first ring. Yes, we were expected at Ben’s for dinner. We’d eaten at Ben’s restaurant many times, but neither of us had ever been to his home. Sam and Micki would meet us for brunch tomorrow at Crittenden’s, the restaurant in the Armitage Hotel.
Sam had been one of my best friends in high school, my college roommate, and was now the county’s prosecutor. Micki was a defense attorney who’d take on almost anyone with a convincing story—she’d never get rich practicing law, but she’d always be able to sleep at night. She’d acted as my co-counsel on the cases I handled in Little Rock, and this spring saved my butt by helping me defend Billy Hopper, the NFL all-pro wide receiver accused of a brutal murder in DC I looked forward to seeing them both. Sam was the friend you might not see for years, but when you did, you picked right up as if your last conversation had been just a moment ago. Micki . . . well let’s say Micki occupies a special place in my heart.
The cab dropped me off at Montgomery County Airpark, just a few miles north of DC. Walter’s pilot, a fellow of few words by the name of Abe, pulled up the stairs and settled into the cockpit with his co-pilot. I leaned my seat way back, aware of the privilege. Air travel today is tough and usually unpleasant. Many of my friends prefer to drive rather than fight the hassle of flying. If you can afford it, a private jet is the way to go. No long security lines or luggage hassles, not to mention generous legroom and a well-stocked bar.
As we climbed to cruising height, I immersed myself in articles about Rachel. She’d met her rabbi husband in New York, and they had moved to DC soon after the wedding. He became an assistant rabbi at a prominent synagogue in the District, traveling often to Israel as part of a cultural exchange sponsored by the Israeli government. She earned a Master’s in International Affairs at George Washington University and, after graduation, took a position with the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, climbing the ladder to become a senior analyst for the Middle East. They had no children.
After Ira’s death she took a small apartment in Arlington, keeping to herself most of the time. An anonymous tip led authorities to discover she’d been downloading mountains of information about top-secret weapon systems under development by the Department of Defense and private contractors to a zip drive. The theft was breathtakingly simple.
The Feds were holding Rachel at a secret location while they tried to assess the damage. The Department of Justice and the various intelligence agencies had been oddly silent about what they’d discovered, including whether Israel had recruited her or she had volunteered after her husband’s death.
High-level government sources, speaking off the record of course, insisted that Rachel was acting on behalf of the Israeli intelligence service. Our relationship with Israel had come under increased scrutiny. She faced a lifetime in prison or possibly a death sentence for espionage. I could find only a passing reference to her Little Rock connection.
The press interviewed her husband’s brother, Mort Goodman, who said, “I don’t agree with what Rachel did, but out of respect for my late brother, I’ll pray for her soul and hope that life in prison will make her see the errors of her ways.” The parents of her husband refused to talk to the press, but a family friend who insisted on anonymity said, “Abner Goodman and his wife Shirley are devastated. What on earth was she thinking? She has disgraced and betrayed the family and Ira’s memory.” The letters to the editor in the papers were of a similar tenor.
The Post reported that prior to her husband’s death Rachel had been very active at their synagogue and had coached girls’ basketball at the Jewish Community Center in Fairfax. The synagogue’s rabbi declined comment, but a senior member of the JCC’s staff told the reporter, “You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard Rachel had been arrested. I’ve never known a kinder or more generous person. She spent much of her free time coaching and mentoring young girls. She quit coaching after her husband’s death, but we all thought she’d return at some point.” Other articles reported that she had been outgoing and very supportive of her husband’s work both at the synagogue and in the community, but that after his death she had become reclusive and withdrawn.
I expected to read that the FBI had discovered large overseas deposits in her bank account, or that a dark, good-looking Israeli agent had turned her after Ira’s death, or that she was embittered after Ira’s killing and had become radicalized, but not a word. I couldn’t remember a high-profile case in which the press hadn’t been fed information by law enforcement off the record. How else could they prejudice the public beforehand?
If you believed what you read, the authorities had her dead to rights. But I had learned that things aren’t always as they appear. I had lots of questions, beginning with how an African-American woman from Little Rock met, fell in love, and married a rabbi from Brooklyn.
I closed my laptop and allowed my thoughts to turn to the young college student I’d known as Rochelle Jennings. One weekend, she’d driven with friends from Charlottesville, Virginia to DC for a basketball game between Georgetown and UVA. She didn’t want to party all night in Georgetown with her friends, so she was left to fend for herself. Her dad had told her if she ever found herself in DC needing help, she should call me. I was out of town, but she asked Angie if she could sleep on our couch for the night. She ended up staying the whole weekend, and Angie drove her back to school on Monday.
Rochelle would stay with us for a weekend now and then from that day on, bonding with Angie and becoming almost a big sister to our daughter, Beth. I was busy at work so I didn’t get to know her well, but her maturity, good manners, and friendly demeanor impressed me. After college, she rented her ow
n apartment. I saw little of her after that, but Angie and Beth would go to lunch with her occasionally. I thought I remembered seeing her at Angie’s funeral, but I have to admit that time in my life is still a blur.
Thinking about Rochelle reminded me of her father’s history. He was raised on a small farm outside the prairie town of Dumas in southeast Arkansas and drafted into the Army during Vietnam. When he returned from the service, he attended college on the G.I. Bill, but dropped out after a year. He sold barbecue at construction sites out of the back of his truck and eventually opened “Ben’s” in Little Rock, just on the outskirts of the now shabby industrial district. It wasn’t much to look at, and if the wind blew just right, your eyes burned from the smoke pouring from the big smoker out back. But any weekday you might run into the city’s mayor, or the president of a local bank, or ladies from the Junior League, all lined up to get the best barbeque in Arkansas.
Ben had tacked up decades of family photos on the paneled walls: his kids and their friends, pictures from family trips, pictures of the fish they’d caught, and the sights they’d seen. You’d see autographed photographs of state politicians he admired: Fulbright, Clinton, Pryor, Tucker, Beebe, and Bumpers. Republicans were always welcome to pay for his barbeque, but only one Republican graced Ben’s wall: long-deceased Governor Winthrop Rockefeller. Six days a week, from eleven in the morning until nine at night, the tables filled with folks eating good barbecue and drinking beer. Benches and picnic tables shaded by huge oaks sat on an empty lot next door and, depending on the drift of the wind, they were full, too.
Ben wasn’t a big man—about five-foot-eight with a barrel chest and arms as big as tree trunks. When I was a young man, I’d sit at the counter eating a chopped pork sandwich so wet with slaw and barbeque sauce you needed a drop cloth underneath to catch the drippings. Unless the police were present, and even if they were, I’d wash down the barbeque with a beer. Ben was always ready to listen to my problems, usually stories that involved a girl, my stepfather, or my curve ball. His down-to-earth advice wasn’t always what I wanted to hear, but was almost always what I needed. The day I left Arkansas, I spent my last night with Ben talking out my options.
Twenty-five years later, I returned to Little Rock to help Woody Cole. In a matter of days, I was back eating a late lunch at Ben’s, picking up where we’d left off. I’ve been back to Little Rock several times since, and each time lunch at Ben’s has been a must. His barbeque alone was worth the trip to Arkansas. My wife Angie used to beg friends to bring a few bottles of his sauce when they came to DC. She occasionally cooked her own, but she could never duplicate Ben’s. I want them to serve Ben’s barbeque at my funeral. Add Helen Cole’s chess pie, and the church will be overflowing.
Abe’s voice announcing our approach into Little Rock gave me a start—I must have dozed off. As I watched the square fields of rice and soy beans come into shape below, my thoughts turned to the man who had died last night on the eighteenth green, Harold Spencer. His name sounded familiar, but I still couldn’t place it. Could the high-stakes poker game that Friday have had anything to do with his death? At least it had nothing to do with the business at hand.
4
CLOVIS WAS LEANING against his black Chevy Tahoe when I walked off the plane at Little Rock’s Hodges Air Center. We exchanged an easy hug, and he tossed my bag into the back seat, asking, “No golf clubs?”
“Won’t be here that long. What do you know?”
“Not much. The Demozette made a big deal about Rachel growing up in Little Rock, ran pictures of her playing basketball for Central High, and interviewed old classmates who speculated on what made her turn into a traitor.”
The local paper, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is the product of a bitter battle between two papers—The Arkansas Gazette and The Arkansas Democrat. When the dust cleared and the owner of the Democrat ended up buying the Gazette, he merged the two papers, and everyone but him called the product the Demozette. The Gazette had been an old-line, well-respected publication. The Demozette had a conservative bent, but it had gotten better over the years, and at least Little Rock still has a real newspaper, complete with good comics and the cryptoquote.
“Can you get someone to pull those articles for me?” I asked.
“Maggie’s got your number. Copies of the relevant papers are in your room at the Armitage.”
I smiled. Maggie was always a step ahead of me. She knew I liked to hold the actual paper. Sure, you could dive right to a specific article on the Internet. But you couldn’t see the positioning, the ads, the obits, the style pieces, the local sports news—all the components that showed the character and quirks of a community. The Demozette still did a good job of that.
“The bad news is Ben has shut down his restaurant,” Clovis continued.
“No way. Why would he do that? That restaurant is his life.”
“Some jerk painted Stars of David, swastikas, and ugly graffiti on the walls. If you wanted takeout, you couldn’t get through on the phone for all the nasty callers tying up the line. His employees and customers were scared to come in, and several of his suppliers refused to make deliveries. I don’t know what’s come over folks to be so hateful. Maybe it’s those guys in the new administration.”
“Ben’s not scared off easily. Did he have the good sense to call you?” I asked.
“At first he refused my help, but when he closed the restaurant, the assholes targeted his home—bricks through the windows and honking cars driving by all hours of the night. Now I’ve got guys watching the place, very visible guys. We take care of Ben and Linda and watch the restaurant day and night to make sure no one torches the place. Sam’s been a big help with the police.”
“I can’t believe it. There hasn’t been a word about any of this in the Post.”
“Nope, and not a word in the Demozette either. They’re spending all their ink reminding people that Rachel is a dirty rotten traitor and that her parents live and work right here in River City. Sam had to go to the publisher to get them to quit running pictures of the house on the front page. Remember how worked up folks got when Woody shot Russell? Well, that was nothing compared to this. I’m surprised we haven’t seen white sheets and burning crosses.”
“Come on, you’re exaggerating.”
“You can see for yourself. Little Rock has changed a lot since you left, mostly for the better. But pockets of racism and anti-Semitism still linger, and some people are quick to get riled up. Maybe they’re just bored and enjoy the diversion. But Sam’s worried, and so am I.”
“All this has got to be expensive. I can…” I blurted.
“Put your wallet back in your pocket, Jack. I’ve got this. You have your hands full figuring out what you can do for Rochelle.”
He was right, but I felt guilty. For weeks, Clovis, Sam, and others had been doing what they could to help, while I was completely unaware. I hadn’t lived in Little Rock for over twenty-five years, but it was still home.
“I’m sorry, Clovis. I’m the latecomer to the party. Remind me to listen and keep my mouth shut. I didn’t even know Rochelle had married, much less changed her name.”
“I want Ben and Linda to tell you the story, so I won’t jump the gun. Instead, let’s go over how to keep you safe while you’re here.”
I interrupted, quickly breaking my promise to shut up and listen.
“What? Not again! Has Maggie put you up to this?”
“Yes, Maggie and I talked, and yes, she pulled rank, so be quiet and listen. In case you’ve forgotten, folks remember you as that hotshot lawyer who helped Woody Cole, the man who shot their beloved Senator. Those folks have long memories and short tempers, especially if a little Jack Daniels is involved.
“You’ve got a reputation for upsetting the apple cart, so to speak. Speculation will run rampant that you’re here to get Rachel off. The press will hound you, and those same people throwing bricks through Ben’s window will turn their anger toward you. No one knows you’re i
n town yet, but that won’t last long. So listen up: you’re not to leave the hotel without one of my people or me, Maggie’s orders. We’ll drop your bag off at the Armitage. Then we’ll head to Ben’s. Got it?”
I gave him a curt nod and changed the subject. He might be right, but I didn’t have to like it.
“Is Stella joining us for dinner?”
Stella and Clovis lived together, and most everyone figured they’d get married; it was only a matter of when. Clovis bought the ring over a year ago, but he still hadn’t popped the question. I’d asked why the delay, but he always changed the subject.
Stella looked nothing like my image of a computer genius and an expert in cyber security. She loved skyscraper heels, tight jeans, piercings, and multi-colored nail polish and hair. When she wasn’t buried in the depths of a computer system, you’d find her working out at the high intensity CrossFit gym she owned. She’d met Clovis when we worked on the Stewart case together. They were an unlikely pair, but it worked. Love is funny that way.
“Not this time. She’s in Charlotte at Walter’s data center. Walter’s computers are under attack by a sophisticated team of foreign hackers. She’ll be there for at least another week.”
Walter had tried several times to hire Stella to become head of I.T. for his companies. She’d avoided giving him a definitive answer, but was willing to consult whenever one of his companies had a serious problem. Stella valued her independence.
“She’s not much on fried foods anyway,” he said with a poorly concealed glance in my direction. “Looks like you’ve put on a few.”
“Okay, okay, don’t rub it in. I’m trying to eat better, but I haven’t had fresh crappie in ages. I can’t wait.”
“Me, either,” he grinned. “Let’s go!”
5