Nick focused on Hamilton. “What about Hamilton? He knew Roger was killed?”
“Yeah, he knew, he knew.”
“Do you think he helped in your life being spared?”
“He would’ve helped if he could have. He always said, ‘Ridley guys stick together.’ He was friendly with Cho, but he wouldn’t let me die.” There was a long hushed moment.
Nick turned to Lindquist, “No further questions, your Honor.”
Harris’s two associates shook their heads in tandem, signaling that Jack hadn’t hurt them —at least, not insofar as the main objective, keeping under wraps the Task Force mission and the fact that over 400 POWs were left behind after the final repatriation. Harris, though, could not leave it where it was, “The government has a few questions of this witness, your Honor.”
Rather than walk to the lectern, he preferred to attack the witness from behind the security of his table. “Mr. Prado, sitting here testifying today, I noticed that you were swaying back and forth. You seemed to, in fact, doze off at one point. Are you well, sir?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Well, if you are well, let me offer an explanation as to why we saw you dozing off. Sir, you are inebriated? Drunk, aren’t you?”
“No, I ain’t. I have this condition,” Jack said.
“Are you telling this court that you had nothing by way of alcohol before you came here today?”
Jack was silent, looking down at his lap.
“Sir, we need an answer.”
“I don’t think it’s... it’s none of your business.”
“Your Honor, would you please direct the witness to answer?”
“You will answer, sir.”
He looked at the crowd. “So I have a shot to calm my nerves.” He grinned, shrugged his shoulders. “So, what’s the big deal?”
“Sir, you didn’t walk a straight line when you came across the courtroom today, is that not true?
“I walked okay.”
“Did you drive here today?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You are not sober enough to drive are you?”
“I don’t drive.”
“Are you currently facing charges in Superior Court of resisting arrest, assaulting an officer and criminal trespass for walking along the railroad tracks?”
Nick turned to Art. “Oh, shit!” He said and stood up. “Your Honor, allegations such as this are not relevant.”
“I agree, Counselor, move it along,” Lindquist responded.
Harris defended his line of questioning by trying to tie Jack’s arrest to his admission of having a drink before he came to court that day. “You were drunk that night, weren’t you?”
“Objection.”
“Sustained.”
“I noticed you muttering to yourself Mr. Prado. Isn’t it true that you’ve been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and on occasion exhibit delusional tendencies?”
“No, that’s not... ”
“Aren’t you under the care of a psychiatrist?”
“Yes, I see someone from the VA.”
“Are you capable of separating your dreams from reality?”
“Objection, irrelevant.”
“Sustained.”
“Your Honor, records obtained from the army and the VA tell us that this witness has a long history of delusional tendencies, and we suggest that his testimony here today about seeing Roger is simply another manifestation of that illness.”
Lindquist turned to Nick. “Counsel, would you like to comment?”
“No, sir, I think that the Court can well determine Mr. Prado’s ability to testify accurately and truthfully today.”
“Very well, the witness will answer the last question. Clerk, please read it back.”
“Are you capable of separating your dreams from reality?”
Jack hesitated before answering in a weak voice, “Yes, I’m on medication and don’t have those problems.”
“But you were not on medication in Camp 13, were you?”
“No, sir.”
“So it’s possible that all you now remember may have, in fact, been yet another delusion?”
“No, that’s not... ”
“No further questions of this witness.”
***
Nick turned to Art and shook his head. With mouth turned down, Art raised his arm as a sign of success. Nick smiled faintly at Mitch and Kathy. He turned to the crowd, then Lindquist. “Plaintiff rests, your Honor.”
“Mr. Harris, are you calling any witnesses?”
“The Army does not plan on calling anyone, your Honor.”
“Then you rest?”
Lindquist, face wan and drawn, looked at the lawyers and spoke in a quiet voice. “Gentlemen, this concludes the trial portion of this case. I will expect your findings of fact and conclusions of law on my desk no later than two weeks from today.” He sat up, grabbed the temples of his glasses and moved them to the bridge of his nose, before looking at the crowd and saying loudly, “Thank you both for a well conducted trial.”
When the gavel came down and court adjourned, Julie looked for Jack, but he had disappeared. Julie’s mind raced, stunned by what she had heard Jack tell the court. She boarded the bus to Willa Street and Barnum Avenue, its diesel engine warbling and emitting a cloud of black smoke before the driver’s brake forced the strap-hangers to pitch forward. Two sets of accordion-like doors opened with a shisss from its underbelly—the end of the line for Julie and the bodies spent in the south end factories. She walked to the old house, where she found the sink empty, fresh linens on the beds. The house had been vacuumed. Out back, garbage cans were filled, a box brimming over with spent bottles of beer, hard liquor. A bundled pile of newspapers had a note: “For recycling.”
She sat in her grandmother’s chair, thinking about Jack’s small talk and slowly cooled down. She thought about how Jack was not completely to blame. After all, she ignored the signs, the ones Father Ryan talked about. She wanted Roger to materialize in a world that she knew did not produce miracles. Neither Jack nor she ever mentioned what ailed them, what lay buried in their hearts—as much her fault as his. Maybe because they had no name for it. Rather than talk about it, they carried the weight of it—each year stooping lower than the year before, each year further narrowing their gaze into the unsounded future. For Jack, the weight became heavier and heavier until unbearable: a pending divorce, out of work, alcohol, delusions, dark impenetrable things he carried. Anna and she would talk about what bugged him, but they had no choice but to leave it where it was, each year letting it compress his space a little more, each year making him smaller and smaller in a world that did not notice. She could not hold Jack responsible for wanting to keep the pain of Roger’s death from reaching her. In the truest sense, it was an act of devotion.
Extra! Hear All About It
AMY DUSSELDORF’S BYLINE ON PAGE ONE IN THE morning edition of the Bridgeport Post caught Nick’s attention first. Lindquist had yet to decide the case, but she jumped the gun, detailing the Girardin case from the beginning—including Jack’s startling testimony the day before. The story told the unsolved mystery of POWs lost in war. It mentioned that Trent Hamilton, a businessman, philanthropist and prominent politician, was a POW at Camp 13. Dusseldorf wrote that during the trial witnesses testified to a mark on maps detailing mines along a road near Camp 13 and that the marks appeared “surprisingly similar” to a trademark of Hamilton Helicopters used a year following the Armistice. Trent Hamilton and his family still owned a majority interest in the company and, based on U.S. export records she obtained, it also indicated that an agent of the current company in the Far East appeared to have the same name as a North Korean guard identified in connection with the atrocities at Camp 13. Nick knew Freedman’s hand was all over the story. In his excitement to share the story with Diane, it wasn’t until twenty minutes later, when he turned the front page over, that he read below the fold:
The medical examiner ruled ea
rly this morning that the death of a Bridgeport man hit by a train on the New Haven Line was an accident. Authorities identified the victim as Jack O’Conner from a dog tag he wore around his neck. It was later confirmed he resided at 320 Willa Street. O’Conner died of multiple traumatic blunt injuries. The medical examiner is investigating why the victim, apparently on his way to Washington D.C., fell from the southbound platform. The spokesman said that the medical examiner’s office is conducting an autopsy and routine toxicology tests. On Thursday evening, about 10 p.m. the engineer of the 10:03 p.m. Grand Central to Bridgeport Express reported seeing someone on the tracks. Police are asking anyone who witnessed the fall to call 203-333-7000.
***
Later that morning, Hamilton called Russell to tell him Jack had been killed, but Russell responded with some news distressing to each of them: the U.S. House of Representatives, Veteran Affairs Committee leaked to the Pentagon that its staff was looking into Korean and Vietnam POW/MIA matters again and was making a trip to interview Kenny Preston. “God knows where this will go once the committee gets it,” Russell groused. “And this is not completely for posterity; these assholes are always looking for blood—maybe yours, Trent, maybe mine, if I can be tied to this fiasco... keep that I mind.”
“Yeah, this fucking “fiasco” may already have screwed any chance at putting my hat in the ring,” Hamilton complained, with a tinge of self-pity.
“That’s the least of my worries,” Russell added, sounding a more ominous note.
“So, what’s the answer?”
Russell had no answer, but said unyieldingly, “I’ll handle it from here.”
***
The night after hearing about Jack’s death, Father Ryan offered a few words during a novena for the good nuns and a few devout parishioners, “We may think God does not hear our prayers. He hears, but all God can do is give us the signs so that we may act where it may be impossible for Him to exercise his will.” The parishioners did not know what to make of his remarks.
Father Ryan met Julie at the house on Willa Street. He sat on the overstuffed sofa that had lost all its tension, giving him the sensation of being stuck in a hole, and drank a whisky and water Julie had mixed. Julie lifted the blinds, and in light from the street lamp, she could see Jack’s calico swishing its tail, probably at the rats that now inhabited the demolished house across the street. She thought about how Jack, Roger and she, each in their own way, were no different from the cats and rats with whom they shared this place: born of parents, lived and died—natural machines, that for a time overcame to produce the things essential for life, each in their own way moved by fear, hope, turning life’s gears, reeling-in dreams, desires, devotions, hates, pushing against the next barrier. Were their lives directed by accident, fate or neither? Or were they like an unavoidable liquid force, drawn to a common ground, avoiding obstacles, hidden forces conspiring to channel their essence into the unfathomable ocean, the end of their journey? To what end, what purpose? She walked to the fireplace mantle and lifted the tin frame with the picture of her and Roger on the beach. “Someday, I will learn the truth, Father. This story has not ended.”
After consoling Julie, Ryan returned to the rectory and his soundproofed study where he drank more whisky, smoked cigarettes and wrote:
We who possess the human soul bear an inborn capacity to love and to kill because we have been programmed to guarantee the survival of our kind, our species. The recurring thought of this fact of nature consumes us above all else. We do that which maximizes the chance that our blood will endure another day, a week or indefinitely. It drives us to love, it drives us to hate; it drives us towards civility and barbarity—we employ all methods, sometimes all in the same event—as the soldier who kills his comrade to show how much he loves him.
The Last One Standing
December 2004
TWO DECADES AFTER JACK’S ENCOUNTER WITH the train, Mona’s son, Ned, stepped on a land mine in Iraq. A funeral was held at St. Patrick’s where Monsignor Ryan, pastor emeritus, gave the sermon, which in part reflected on the young man’s life, and in part on what Ryan learned about life from the vantage point of the corner of Barnum and Willa. In his inimitable way, the priest’s sermon ended with a philosophical observation that Julie once again found hard to follow.
“In our quest to discover who we are and what potential lies ahead, we each take different paths, deciding whether to go left or right at countless forks along the way, and when we reach the end we come to see that we have traveled but one inevitable journey.”
Following the funeral services, Anna and Julie invited mourners to refreshments at their house on Willa Street. Julie smiled warmly. “Thank you for coming, Father. Your sermon touched me deeply.”
Heads bowed, Julie and Ryan stood looking down at a blue, hooked living room rug while breathing in a bouquet taken from the funeral parlor. Visitors in the adjoining room chatted, clinked glasses. A moment later, a shadow caught Julie’s attention. A man with a heavy white mustache in a dark pin-striped suit, blue tie, stood in the double French door to the outer hallway. Their eyes met as he walked toward her.
“Julie, I do not know if you remember me. I’m... ”
The man nodded. She extended a frail hand. “Of course, you’re Nick, Nick Castalano. How could I not remember you?” she said, her voice quavering.
“I didn’t know Ned, but I wanted to express my condolences,” he replied, taking her hand.
“Oh, Nick, thank you. It’s been probably... twenty years, right?”
“Yes, twenty years, Julie.”
“Monsignor Ryan, I’d like you to meet Nick Castalano.”
Ryan carried his cane in his right hand, so he extended his left, which had a slight tremor. “Hello, Nick. You were the lawyer... ”
Grasping the man’s hand, Nick finished the sentence, “The Roger Girardin case.”
Julie glanced over at Nick. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get something out of the oven.” The men watched her hobble into the hallway.
Searching to break the silence, Ryan, arms folded, turned to Nick and asked, “Are you still in practice?”
“No, retired last year. I do a little teaching at the law school. Left the practice to a younger man, Mitch LeBeau, good fellow—once an intern of mine, specializes in veterans’ rights. And you, Monsignor, I remember you were the pastor at St. Patrick’s.”
“I retired, too, two years ago,” Ryan said with satisfaction. “I was ninety this year.”
“God bless you.” Nick pursed his lips and put his hands in his pockets. The men were quiet again, until Nick asked, “How long have you known the O’Conner family?”
The priest raised his white, bushy eyebrows as if calculating. “Oh, from the time Julie was about ten—back when the war started, the big one.”
After a few minutes of silence, Ryan excused himself, and was later seen exiting the front door. Another ten minutes passed, when Nick turned, feeling someone at his elbow. It was Julie. Her soft pale eyes were moving from side to side.
“Nick, can I trouble you for a very, very big favor?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
Nick lowered his eyes, tilted his head forward and, with a note of empathy asked, “What’s that, Julie?”
“Well, with Ned passing,” Julie hesitated, “and, so much of my life having changed because of one or another war... ” She hesitated again. “Well, I was wondering if you’d would sit with me to talk about Roger and Jack.”
She raised her eyebrows, calling Nick’s attention to the lime green eyes he remembered from over two decades ago.
Nick squinted apologetically. “Julie... I don’t know much more than what you heard in court, years ago.”
“I know that, but I have spent most of my life trying to make sense of what happened. I’m old now, and you’d think it doesn’t matter anymore. But with Ned going, it simply makes it all the more... ”
Appreciating that she would not take no for an answer,
Nick agreed to sit down sometime after Christmas.
On the last Sunday of the month following the New Year, Nick visited Julie. He sat on the overstuffed sofa across from Julie, separated by the stained maple coffee table and a bottle of red wine. The blinds were drawn, keeping the afternoon sun from imposing on what was a room still in mourning. Julie fixed her eyes on Nick. “Can you tell me anything outside of what I heard in court those years ago?”
Nick began to recount details that Julie already knew. He seemed a bit reluctant to go beyond the record and, after fifteen minutes, said, “Well, I am afraid I don’t recall more than that.”
Julie smiled almost imperceptibly. “Nick, tell me if I am right in assuming that if I talk to a lawyer their lips are sealed forever?”
Nick nodded his head. “Yes, if you tell a lawyer something, it’s protected by the attorney- client privilege.”
“So if I tell you something, it will stay between us, here in this room, right?”
“Yes, I suppose, but what’s so secret, Julie?”
“Before I pass away, I want someone to know what I have lived with for almost twenty years.”
Nick seemed befuddled. “You’re making this sound ominous. What would you like to tell me?”
“Nick, when Jack died, I never believed he committed suicide. I know it appeared he did. And to tell you the truth, a few months before... he was ready to blow his brains out. But in the end, he was going to set the record straight. I think that you know something here. I think that you know that he was on his way to Washington.”
“Well, yes, he had an appointment with Senator Skidmore’s staff, but the authorities didn’t find any foul play. So the assumption was that Jack decided, at the last minute, to end it all. He did have a good deal of alcohol in him at the time.”
Julie continued. “Be that as it may, I started thinking after he died that Trent was the one who should have been punished. He was Will’s dad, you know. Never once asked about him, never once offered one single dime when the kid wanted to go to college and couldn’t afford it, never stepped in when he was drafted. And, not to tell you how Jack sacrificed for Trent. Trent would never have been an officer if Jack had not taken the blame for that poor girl’s death. And I know that he was mixed up in Roger’s death, somehow. Otherwise how come he was so friendly with that Chinese guy?”
We Were Beautiful Once Page 34