He put the phone back in his pocket and looked at me. “The guys following you are Korean cops. I guess they’re trying to keep an eye on you because of all the trouble you’ve been causing.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said.
It was Wednesday afternoon. The trial opened Friday morning. We had thirty-six hours left. I hoped I wasn’t imagining things. I hoped the CIA’s techies could find enough color pixels to get a reasonable picture of this guy. I hoped he wasn’t just some guy who turned out to be deaf and blind and was standing perfectly still only because he didn’t have a clue what was going on. What I really hoped was that he didn’t turn out to be a tree.
CHAPTER 32
The time had come for Katherine and me to pay another visit to our client. With thirty hours left till the trial started, we’d reached what lawyers call the moment of decision. We climbed into the sedan and I insisted on hitting McDonald’s and the Class VI store, which, to the uninitiated, is the military version of a liquor store, only the prices are much cheaper because the booze is untaxed. If the drunks of America had any idea how much Uncle Sam gouges them, there’d be another American revolution.
I splurged on two six-packs of Molson and another bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. I wasted a moment trying to persuade Katherine to get her OGMM buddies to recompense me for my costs, but she’s a stickler on these things. She said bribes don’t fall within OGMM’s idea of allowable expenses.
We actually had an amiable chat on the way over, although our discussion was intermittent and halting, and I could tell she was distracted and nervous. She kept tinkering with a leather band around her left wrist, and every now and again stared wistfully out the window, like she didn’t want to be in this car, like she really didn’t want to visit our client.
I guessed she was apprehensive about admitting to Whitehall that his defense was damn close to hopeless. That’s never a great feeling. On the other hand, Katherine had spent most of her legal career telling clients they didn’t stand a chance. I don’t know what her win-loss record looked like, but if it was 0 for 100, I wouldn’t be surprised. She’d won plenty of appeals, because that was the point of her strategy, but she was probably accustomed to seeing jury foremen shuffle their feet, and avoid her eyes, and look up at the judge, and say, “Hang the bastard.”
So what was making her so pent-up? It wasn’t the public spotlight, I didn’t think. She’d bathed in the public glare more than any other ten attorneys combined. She’d been cover-storied on magazines, profiled on those television news magazine series, had her glitzy moments with Larry King and Katie Couric.
Was it because this was a murder trial? After all, the worst that comes from your ordinary gay trial is maybe a few years in the slammer. More often than not, it’s a dishonorable discharge from the service, which is really nothing but a fancy epithet for being fired. Maybe the stakes were getting to her. Maybe the thought her client could get the death sentence was eating at her insides.
Anyway, the big bully rushed right down when the desk guard retrieved him. He broke into a huge, hungry smile when he laid eyes on me, and I winked and pointed a finger at the search room. He nearly sprinted for it.
He dug his hand inside the bag, withdrew his scotch, his two burgers, grinned hungrily, and then led us to Whitehall’s cell. I could teach that Pavlov guy a few tricks.
Again he said one hour, ushered us into the cell, then wandered off, actually caressing the bottle of scotch. I was smitten with envy. I wanted to caress that Johnnie Walker Blue with my tongue.
Thomas got up and studied both of our bleak faces for a stagnant moment. Then he reached out a hand and I shook it. He actually hugged Katherine, and I’ll be damned if she didn’t collapse into his body, then start sobbing on his shoulder. I heard these small, muffled moans. Her body was quaking.
He stroked her hair and said, “Hey, hey, come on. Take it easy, okay. Katherine, really. Don’t get all worked up. I know you’re doing your best.”
She finally pulled herself away, and I scratched my head a few times. I’ve seen some things in my day, but a defense attorney crying on a client’s shoulder? Everything was backwards in this case. But even more backwards was seeing Katherine Carlson with tears on her cheeks.
I decided it was time to immediately rearrange the mood in this tiny cell, so I put down my legal case, opened it, tossed two Big Macs at Whitehall, and then withdrew three beers.
I said, “Hey, Tommy, this guy walks into a bar with a monkey. The guy takes a stool at the bar, and the monkey perches next to him. The guy orders a drink while the monkey starts eating everything it can reach – peanuts, olives, lime slices, even napkins. The monkey wanders over to the pool table, where a couple of guys are playing, and he jumps up on the middle of the table, then lifts up the cue ball and swallows it whole. The monkey’s owner immediately knocks down his drink and says to the bartender and the other customers,‘Hey, I’m real sorry. The little bastard always eats everything he can get his hands on. I’ll pay for everything, I swear.’ So he does, and then he leaves. A month later, he and the monkey come back again, they take stools at the bar, and the guy orders a drink. Everybody in the bar watches as the monkey reaches across the bar, grabs a Maraschino cherry, holds it up to his eye, reaches down and stuffs it up his butt, then pulls it out and eats it. It’s so gross, people are getting sick. The guy says to the bartender, ‘Hey, I’m really sorry. I know it’s disgusting, but ever since he ate that cue ball, he measures everything he eats.’ ”
Tommy started laughing like hell. These huge guffaws were erupting from his throat. The joke was funny, but it wasn’t that funny. I guessed the tension and pressure had him teetering on an emotional cliff.
As for Katherine, she coldly said, “Is that a joke?”
Tommy said, “Actually, I think it’s a parable for my situation. I’m like that monkey. Now that I’ve been locked in this cell for ten days, I’ve measured my future.”
Katherine frowned, but I chuckled because he was right.
Then we all went over and sat down on Tommy’s sleeping mat. Katherine was in the middle, and we all propped our backs against the wall. For a few minutes, we took sips from our beers while Tommy wolfed down his burgers. This was actually a chivalrous attempt by Tommy and me to give Katherine time to stop sniveling and get collected.
Then Katherine skillfully explained everything that had happened over the past two days, from the massacre, through our meeting with the judge, through our interrogations of Jackson and Moran. She told him what we suspected and how disgustingly little headway we’d made in proving any damned thing. She explained how we expected Fast Eddie to handle our pitifully small inventory of revelations and courtroom surprises.
Tommy heard her out. He occasionally took another sip from his beer. Otherwise he was inert, peaceful, unresponsive. It struck me that he expected everything he was hearing.
I had to admire his self-control. If it were me, knowing I’d been expertly framed for murder and other hideous deeds, and I was hearing my attorneys say they were making a complete hash of my defense, I would’ve been screaming my lungs out.
When she finished, he got up and went over to my legal case and withdrew three more Molsons. He opened them and then handed one to Katherine and one to me.
“No shit,” he said, grinning proudly at me. “You actually went to the demonstration?”
“Couldn’t resist it,” I admitted.
“God, I wish I could’ve seen that.”
“You might be the only guy in the world who didn’t. The damn thing was broadcast by every network.”
“Think you’ll get in trouble?”
“Probably,” I admitted.
The Army’s not particularly vindictive, but like any organization, it has its limits. A picture broadcast worldwide of an officer in uniform amid a sea of homosexuals ain’t exactly what the Army means by “be all you can be.” I wasn’t looking forward to the next promotion board. But Tommy Whitehall’s problems were a little more grim than mine. Enough said.
Then Katherine said, “Thomas, sit down, please. We need to make some decisions.”
He squatted on his haunches and faced us. It was a very Asian gesture, that squat. Only ten days in a Korean prison and already he was going native on us.
