Running Out of Road

by Daniel Friedman

  I rocked back and forth in my seat. “I know that. I know that.”

  “If you know, then why do you pretend not to sometimes?”

  “I’m not pretending. It’s just confusing. There are so many doctors and so much to keep track of.”

  “And it’s easier to forget.”

  “I don’t know that it’s easier. I’m not deciding to forget anything. It’s just what happens.”

  “You know, Buck, every time you would get a medal for bravery, I’d go to the ceremony, and I’d listen to them tell a story about your heroism. About how you’d chased some murderer down an alley or kicked in a door, faced down some degenerate who came at you with a knife or a gun, and got the better of him. And I always thought, ‘What happens to us if it goes the other way? What happens if one of these murderers gets the drop on you? What happens if you’re not as fast as the other guy?’ And I was afraid to say anything about it to you, because I was afraid saying it would make it happen. Like talking about it would put a jinx on us. I think you know how that is.”

  I nodded. “I don’t like talking about things.”

  “I know you don’t. And that’s also why I never brought it up. But I used to think it was unfair that you were the one making the decision to run down that alley or kick in that door.”

  “That was the job,” I said.

  “A job you chose. A job you fought so hard for, that nobody even wanted you to have. And it was never my place to tell you not to pursue that dream, never my place to tell you not to be the hero who gets the medal. It was always your decision to run into danger, and I always had to accept that I would be the one to live with the consequences.”

  I stubbed out my Lucky Strike. “You would have got my pension if something happened to me. I had life insurance. Everything would have been taken care of.”

  “I know it,” she said. “And I always supported your choices. You wanted to protect people. I admired that about you. And I admired the fact that when you had to decide whether to run into danger or let the bad guy get away, you never hesitated.”

  “I did it for you and for Brian. To keep you and people like you safe. If I didn’t get those scumbags, who knows what they would have done, or who they would have done it to,” I said.

  She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “But you’re hesitating now.”

  “I’m not. It’s just hard. I can’t remember.”

  “You were never afraid when you ran down those alleys or kicked in those doors. But you’re afraid now. You weren’t afraid to die, but you’re terrified to be left alone.”

  “That was never how I thought of it,” I said. “I never felt like I was making a choice. Somebody had to go after those guys. Somebody had to stop them. It was my job, and it was more than that. It was a purpose. It was a calling.”

  She shook her head. “It was a decision, though. There were plenty of detectives who didn’t go after those guys the way you did. Plenty of detectives who didn’t put themselves in harm’s way like you did. I never said anything, because it was your decision whether to chase after the bad guys. And it was a decision that you were always prepared to make. But you’re not prepared to make this decision. You’re so unprepared to make it that your mind is turning itself inside out to avoid it. And I don’t blame you. If you had called me before you went chasing off after some armed psycho and asked me for permission, I don’t know what I would have told you. I would never have asked you not to do the thing you were best at. But if I’d told you to go, and something had happened, it would have felt like it was my fault. It was a kindness for you to make that decision on your own. If something had happened, I might have blamed you, but I wouldn’t have had to blame myself. And it’s selfish of me to ask you to help me make this decision, because you are the one who will have to live with the guilt if it goes badly. It’s selfish of me to be angry at you for not being able to make the decision I don’t know how to make either. It’s selfish of me to be annoyed with you while I am watching you tear yourself apart.”

  “I want to help,” I said. “I really do. I’m so sorry.”

  “I know what you want. You want me to fight, like you always fought. Fighting has always been the right thing for you to do. But you don’t want to tell me to do it, because you’re scared that if you do, something will go wrong. Just like I didn’t want to talk to you about how scared I was for you.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said. “Nothing makes this all right. I don’t know how to fix it.”

  She smiled. “You don’t have to say anything. Of course, I already know what you think. I’ve known you long enough that you don’t have to tell me. You were always strong on your own. And I have to decide on my own now, about whether to try to treat this cancer. And I’m not going to do it.”

  The unlit cigarette I had been holding between my fingers dropped to the floor. “What?”

  “I’m not going to do chemotherapy. I am not going to put myself through that. I am not going to put you through that. All those hospital trips. All the weakness and sickness and vomiting and the bleeding. I am going to enjoy the time I have left, I am going to take care of you as long as I can, and when it’s time, it will be time.”

  “Is this because of me?” I asked. “That’s not what I wanted.”

  “I know it’s not. It’s what I want. And I know you will be angry about it, and that’s what I want, too. I’d rather leave you feeling angry than guilty. I’d hate for you to spend the time you have left carrying guilt. It will probably be a year or so before I get really sick, and until then, you can just forget this is happening. You probably will, whether you want to or not.”

  I started to bend down to retrieve the cigarette on the floor, but I felt a little lightheaded. The last thing I needed was to tumble over and cap this night off with a trip to the emergency room. I left the fallen soldier and pulled a fresh one out of the pack instead. “You know, it’s not true that I was never afraid when I chased after those scumbags. I was always afraid. I never had any illusions that the things I saw happen to so many people couldn’t happen to me. I was scared, and I did it anyway, because it was something that needed doing. What’s different now is that I’m helpless. Useless.”

  Rose stood up, and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “Don’t say that, Buck,” she said, pressing her face against my neck. “Don’t say that, even if it might be true. You’re all I’ve got.”

  TRANSCRIPT: AMERICAN JUSTICE

  CARLOS WATKINS (NARRATION): As you may recall, I have been trying to get Baruch Schatz to sit down and talk to me on the record about how he extracted the confession that doomed Chester March. He has been evasive. I’ve gotten him on the phone a couple of times, but he gets cagey when I ask about this case, and he will not agree to sit down and talk to me face-to-face.

  Buck Schatz is a lot of things, but he isn’t a coward. Even if he knows he did something wrong, he is the type who would want to make excuses or rationalizations rather than hide from a reporter. And if I am being honest, I expected he’d talk to me when I pitched the Chester March case to NPR. I can tell a version of this story without his piece of it, but it will be incomplete. And listeners have been e-mailing me, asking me what he has to say for himself, and I’m embarrassed to tell them that I don’t know. I promise you, I’m not hiding him. I’m not saving him to build suspense. I am trying to get him to talk. That’s a big part of what I am doing in Memphis right now. You want to hear from him, and I want to hear from him, and everyone who knows him has told me he certainly has something to say about this. He’s got something to say about everything.

  So why isn’t he talking to me? Well, that piece of the puzzle is Buck’s grandson, William Tecumseh Schatz. William recently graduated from law school and will be working at a white-shoe law firm after he takes the bar exam next month. Buck told me William doesn’t want him to sit for an interview with me. It sounds like old Buck has lawyered up.

  So, if William is going to be th
e old man’s lawyer, then he’s got to speak for the old man. I called him up and told him as much, and he has agreed to meet me and go on the record. He doesn’t know firsthand what went down in 1976; he wasn’t even born yet. But I can look him in the eye and ask him why he’s so dead set against his grandpa talking to me. It’s better than nothing. I’m still trying to get Buck to sit for an interview. I’m not giving up. But, for the moment, we can have this.

  I scheduled the meeting at the lobby bar at the Peabody. It probably would have been better to do the interview in my room, where there would be less background noise, but the mics I have are pretty good at filtering that out, and the room is a little disappointing; it’s just, like, a regular hotel room. The lobby, though, is such a great backdrop. It’s a two-story space with marble floors and huge columns, and the bar is wood-paneled with a barkeep in a vest and a bow tie. It’s like old South meets Coruscant, and it’s weird as hell, and I love it.

  I was expecting Buck’s grandson to look like Buck in those old photos—a thousand-yard stare beneath heavy brows and a permanent sneer, like he was just daring you to try something. The kind of man who can be imposing without being big, because he makes you feel so small. In retrospect, I don’t know why I expected that of William. His grandfather came up during the Great Depression and got his education at Normandy and in a German prison camp. William went to NYU.

  What William actually looks like is: a white man. I wish I could do better for you, but that’s what he looks like. Have you ever been at the airport, waiting to board an airplane, and you saw a white man in a light blue button-down, non-iron dress shirt, probably from Brooks Brothers, and a pair of khaki pants? Because I see a white man like that, and usually more than one, every time I fly. And they all look the same, and they all look exactly like William Schatz. He was even carrying the same black canvas expandable Tumi briefcase that white men in blue Brooks Brothers shirts and khaki pants always carry.

  If you squint at his face, maybe you can see a little bit of Buck around the eyebrows. But he doesn’t have the stare or the sneer. He doesn’t have the air about him that lets you know he’s been hungry—really hungry—or that he knows how to hurt you—really hurt you. His face is rounder. He’s soft.

  William sits down in the leather chair across from me; he crosses his left ankle over his right knee. On his lap, he rests the black canvas Tumi briefcase that is exactly like the black canvas Tumi briefcase that every other white man in a blue Brooks Brothers shirt and khaki pants has. He is wearing lace-up wingtip shoes. This is unsurprising. The shoes are the one thing that varies among your standard-issue airport white men. The ones who wear lace-ups are lawyers; the ones who wear loafers, usually without socks, work in finance; and the ones who wear sneakers work in tech.

  CARLOS WATKINS: You’re William Schatz, Buck’s grandson?

  WILLIAM SCHATZ: Yes.

  WATKINS: Buck told me on the phone that you like for people to call you Four Loko.

  W. SCHATZ: Where did he—how does he even know what that is? No. That is not correct.

  WATKINS: What do you want me to call you?

  W. SCHATZ: My friends call me Bill.

  WATKINS: So you want me to call you Bill?

  W. SCHATZ: Call me William.

  WATKINS:… Okay, William. I’ve been trying to get your grandfather to speak to me about the investigation and trial of Chester March, and he won’t do it. He says you don’t want him to talk to me.

  W. SCHATZ: That’s correct. I’ve listened to the first couple of episodes of American Justice, and it’s pretty clear that you’re telling this story in a way that downplays the severity of Mr. March’s crimes and that you are trying to accuse my grandfather of professional wrongdoing. I’m not going to allow my grandfather to participate in your show. Baruch Schatz is ninety years old. He suffers from Alzheimer’s, and he is very frail. I am trying to protect him. I hope you will understand my concerns, and I hope you will stop calling him.

  WATKINS: Your grandfather was involved in a gunfight about a year and a half ago. He killed a young black boy.

  W. SCHATZ: My grandfather was forced to defend himself when a car he was riding in was attacked by drug dealers and rammed off the road. The armed man my grandfather shot was responsible for the murder of a Memphis police officer. That story was covered extensively by local media at the time, and neither he nor I have anything to add to the ample information that is publicly available regarding that incident.

  WATKINS: I’m just saying your grandfather doesn’t seem like a weak, confused old man who needs your protection from me. And even if he is, that doesn’t mean he should be spared scrutiny when his actions from 1976 continue to have serious consequences. A man your grandfather arrested was convicted of murder on the basis of evidence your grandfather gathered and a confession your grandfather extracted. Every question I want to ask your grandfather deserves to be answered before Chester March is put to death.

  W. SCHATZ: Every question that needs to be asked has been asked during Mr. March’s trial and during his decades of subsequent appeals. My grandfather’s record of professional conduct is exemplary, and he has been retired from the police department for decades. He doesn’t need to sit here and participate in your distortion of the facts or the smearing of his name.

  WATKINS: I’m not trying to do anything except tell the truth. I’m not looking to distort anything. I’m not planning to engage in any deceptive editing of any audio involving you or your grandfather. I have been interviewing Chester about these events, and your grandfather is the only other participant in this story who remembers what happened. I want to hear what he has to say. If he has a conflicting account, I am happy to air both sides.

  W. SCHATZ: If you were really interested in the issues your show claims to cover, you would be talking about how Chester March exploited the privileges associated with his race and his class to escape charges in 1955 after my grandfather arrested him for killing his wife, Margery, and an African American sex worker named Cecilia Tompkins. A racist prosecutor refused to put Chester on trial because the case my grandfather built was centered around the testimony of another African American sex worker, a woman named Bernadette Ward, who identified Mr. March in a lineup as the man who had abducted Tompkins, and described Mr. March’s car.

  WATKINS: So, you talked with your grandfather about this case, and you don’t want him to tell me what he told you about it?

  W. SCHATZ: My reasons for preventing him from talking to you have nothing to do with what he told me and everything to do with what I have heard on American Justice. I think you are a credulous, ideologically motivated dupe, and I think you are being manipulated by a psychopath. I have listened to you air Mr. March’s lies without presenting facts that rebut them.

  WATKINS: Baruch is welcome to come rebut anything he wants.

  W. SCHATZ: My elderly and infirm grandfather doesn’t need to provide you with facts that are available from numerous other sources. The facts are recounted in the appellate record that I know you have seen because I heard you discuss it on the air. Mr. March is guilty, and the evidence supporting his conviction is overwhelming. You have portrayed this evidence as being much more ambiguous than the record justifies. You have uncritically aired Mr. March’s risible claims of innocence. I don’t want my grandfather to talk to you, because I don’t think you are a serious journalist or a good-faith interlocutor.

  WATKINS: Edward Heffernan is one of the most respected law professors in the country, and he’s representing Chester and trying to save his life.

  W. SCHATZ: Professor Heffernan opposes the death penalty categorically. His current appeals are based on theories that are unrelated to the settled question of Mr. March’s guilt and have nothing to do with Baruch Schatz. You’ve gotten way out ahead of any position he would take with your irresponsible suggestions that Mr. March might be innocent. If you ask Professor Heffernan whether he believes Chester March is a murderer, he will avoid the question and pivot back
to his generalized objections to capital punishment.

  WATKINS (NARRATION): At this point, William Schatz unzips the standard-issue black canvas Tumi briefcase and produces several Redweld accordion folders from inside of it.

  W. SCHATZ: Do you know what Chester March was up to between his wife’s disappearance in 1955 and his eventual arrest for murder in 1976?

  WATKINS: He was living in California.

  W. SCHATZ: And do you know what he was doing there?

  WATKINS: How is that relevant?

  W. SCHATZ: Mr. March inherited his father’s cotton concern in 1961. At the time, March was living in the San Francisco Bay Area. March did not return to the South when his father fell ill. He arranged for the liquidation of the business, and while the agents he hired dumped the company’s assets at fire-sale prices, March collected seven hundred thousand dollars after taxes and fees. That’s the equivalent of about five million dollars today. Have you asked Mr. March what happened to his money?

  WATKINS: Nothing about that is referenced in the case or any of the appeals.

  W. SCHATZ: I know it isn’t. My grandfather and the Tennessee prosecutors had Chester’s confessions for three local murders. There was limited coordination or cooperation between police agencies at the time. In 1976, the Memphis police simply didn’t have any way to find out what Mr. March had been up to in California. But that information is now available through various legal and public records databases. I’m not even sure if my grandfather knows about this.

  Chester March married a woman named Catherine Wood in 1963. She disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1967. Local authorities investigated Mr. March in relation to the disappearance but never indicted him. However, in the year after Catherine March’s disappearance, Mr. March retained expensive criminal defense attorneys and made several sizable donations to local political leaders. I have those records here, if you’d like to see them. Catherine March’s parents, Eugene and Agatha Wood, sued Mr. March in 1968 for the wrongful death of their daughter. Chester March settled for an undisclosed sum in 1971 after their lawsuit survived a motion for summary judgment.