skyscrapers and shiny new cars and, believe me, more than a few billionaires.
“The Lord surely has wrought a miracle,” he pronounced.
“Indeed he has. Is this some kind of returning vets’ group?” I asked, nodding with my chin.
“Nope. We’re all preachers and deacons.”
“Aha!” I said to Preacher Peach. “I suppose, then, that you’re all here for some religious convention?”
“Not actually, no. We’re here ’bout this Whitehall thing. Y’know, that murderin’ ho-mo-sex-u-al,” Preacher Peach intoned, painfully stretching out every single vowel, like it was just so damned hard to force that particular noun through his lips.
“Uh-huh. I guess that makes sense.”
“We’ve been invited by the Army,” he said, obviously immensely proud of that.
“The Army? No kidding? What? They asked you to come over?”
“They sure did. See, we were in Washington, for the big march. You see that on TV over here?” he asked in such a tone that it sounded like, Hey, did you see me land on the moon?
“Uh, yeah, I did. Very impressive,” I assured him.
“Yep. Well, we’re the fellas who put all that together. Anyway, a group of us was asked to stop over at that Pentagon, and the Chief of the Staff of the Army, he asked us hisself if we wanted to come over. Even loaned us a plane. A real nice fella, you ask me.”
“Well, ain’t that really something,” I remarked, slyly slipping into my own version of a bacon-and-grits brogue. “Mind if I ask, what’s the Army expecting y’all to do over here?”
“Ah, well, there weren’t no conditions nor nothin’. We’re just here to represent the views of all good Christian ’Mericans,” he said. “We’re here to show the cross.”
“You got any plans for how to show the cross?” I asked as offhandedly as I could manage, under the circumstances.
“You’ll be seein’ us around.” He smiled and beamed, nudging his bag up another yard or so. Then he looked at the lawyer insignia on my collar, and his eyes moved down to my boots and back up again.
“Say, you’re a lawyer, ain’t you?”
“Yep,” I admitted. “Worst thing in the Army to be. Dregs of the profession of arms.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, like from his experience that surely was true. “So, you got any opinion how this Whitehall devil’s gonna fare in court?”
“Sure do,” I announced.
“And what’s that?” he asked. Immediately seven or eight more of his preacherly brethren turned around to hear what I might say.
This was what you might call a golden moment. I mean, no way it was going to be a good thing having a bunch of fired-up, overzealous preachers demonizing our client. The environment was already poisonous enough. Besides which, the only leverage we had over the Korean government was its fear that American public opinion might be on our side. We didn’t want anybody creating the impression that fear was unfounded.
I put on my most lawyerly expression and recklessly announced, “I think he’s gonna get off.”
His chin flew back and his big beefy jowls shivered like poked Jell-O. “Get off? Now, how could that boy get off? He was sleeping right next to the corpse. His own belt was wrapped around that child’s neck. And his devil’s fluids were inside.”
His explosion was so loud that nearly twenty of the preachers and deacons began gathering in a knot around us, collectively eavesdropping on every word. There were more than a few apprehensive faces. The last thing they wanted was to publicly vilify a man who might subsequently be found innocent. How could they ever return home and look their flocks in the eye?
“Look, there aren’t many lawyers over here, and y’all know how us lawyers love to talk, right? Rumors fly around pretty thick.”
“That right?” another preacher stepped forward to ask. This one was a few years younger than Preacher Peach, and leaner, and weathered in that tough, parched, dried-out way some southerners get. He had hard eyes, too. What my mother used to call brimstone eyes. He would be Preacher Prick, I decided.
I said, “Well, I hear things.”
Preacher Prick’s neck shot forward an inch or two. “So what you hearin’, son?”
“That maybe the police didn’t do such a thorough job. They might’ve jumped to conclusions a bit, if you get my meaning.”
“Nope,” he said. “Don’t get your meaning at all.”
“Well, I’m only going on rumors now, but the word is the Korean police rushed into that apartment and messed up the scene of the crime something terrible. Contaminated the evidence, shoved around the witnesses. Also, given who died and all – if you’ll excuse my language – they were getting their nuts squeezed something awful to name a suspect. Any suspect, even if meant cramming a square peg into a round hole.”
The lids on Preacher Prick’s tight eyes screwed down even tighter, until all there was were two thin black slits, and the part of his face beneath his nose started moving around, like he was chewing something hard with his lips.
“Don’t say?” he asked, craning his neck forward dubiously.
“Just what I hear,” I replied, glancing at my watch, as though I suddenly remembered I had some drastically important appointment.
He drew his shoulders together a bit, and in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, said, “Son, ’fore we all dedicated ourselves to this lofty task, we got briefed by some two-star general back in the Pentagon. He went over every last detail about this case. Accordin’ to him, now, that Whitehall boy’s guilty as hell. He says he ain’t got a rat’s chance of gettin’ off. Them’s his words.”
I suddenly tasted a rush of bile slithering up my throat. I swallowed it, though, and struggled to appear normal.
“Ah, well,” I said, “and would you happen to remember that general’s name? I mean, even generals sometimes get these things wrong. And he’d be back in Washington, wouldn’t he? And we’re out here, on the forward frontier of justice, aren’t we? Besides, he ain’t a lawyer, is he? So what’s he know?”
“I can’t recall the man’s name,” Preacher Prick frankly admitted, scratching his head a bit. Then he quickly said, “I mean, there was a whole room full of generals when he was talking. He was a lawyer, though, just like you. ’Ceptin’, he’s like the head lawyer, so I expect he knows what he’s talkin’ about.”
The smile disappeared from my face. Then, since I’d already made a horse’s ass of myself, I glanced down at my watch again and said, “Holy cow, look at the time! I gotta get going.”
Preacher Peach smiled benignly, while Preacher Prick stared at my nametag like it was a name he meant to remember, and maybe even check up on.
I rushed straight to the elevator and up to my room. I was so furious, I could barely see straight. I lifted up the phone and gave the operator the number in Washington. A few seconds passed before Clapper’s administrative assistant, a captain with the silly name of William Jones, answered.
Trying to contain my rage, I choked out, “Drummond here. Let me talk to the general. Put the bastard on right now!”
Somehow or another, Captain Jones detected I was miffed.
“Major Drummond,” he said, in the calmest, most reasonable voice imaginable, “perhaps I should offer you some advice. You really might want to cool down, and call back later.”
To which I replied, “Jones, put me through right away or I swear I’m gonna climb on the next flight out of here and come kill you.”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” he answered, quite wisely deciding that his definition of duty did not require him to get trapped in the middle of whatever was happening here.
A moment later, Clapper, all warm and bubbly, said, “Hello, Sean. What can I do for you?”
“What can you do for me?” I screamed. “Jesus Christ! I just ran into a lynching party made up of cornpone preachers. They claimed the Chief of Staff of the Army invited them over here.”
“Now, settle down, Sean. It’s not like you make it sound.”
“No?” I replied. “Okay, listen closely to this, because I mean it exactly like it sounds. I am formally advising you that I’m considering filing an immediate motion to have this case dismissed. You’d better have a damned good excuse for this.”
