The Bomb Maker's Son (21 page)

“Was O’Brien there?”

“Rachel wouldn’t have said anything. She was cautious around people who weren’t in the collective, like I should’ve been. Cracknamara might’ve been a fellow traveler, but he was an outsider. We talked through the night and into the morning and then stopped, and I remember my head resting in Charlie’s lap when finally I came down. So I don’t really know exactly what I said.”

“You’ve consistently maintained you didn’t have anything to do with Playa Delta. If that’s true, how is it possible that he’s going to implicate you in the attack? Is he going to lie, like you said Hayes and O’Brien did? It’s hard to believe that they’re all liars.”

He gapes at me, and now I’m the one who feels that insects are probing at my flesh, because I finally understand. “You
might
have mentioned targeting a Veterans Administration building because that’s what you were planning to do,” I say. “
You
were planning it.”

He exhales audibly and rubs his eyes with his thumbs, almost gouging them. His hands flop hard into his lap. “I called it off, Parker. We all agreed.”

“You’ve been lying to me all this time.”

“Not about the important part. I had nothing to do with it. I don’t know how it happened.”

“Why did you call it off?”

“Because I realized it was murder, not revolution.”

“That’s not what you’d believed for years. What changed your mind so abruptly?”

“Maybe your birth had something to do with it.”

“Why don’t I buy that?”

He shrugs, then stands up and stretches his arms toward the ceiling. “Wish I had a cigarette.”

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t. Not in forty years.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before so we could’ve prepared for it?”

“I never suspected Cracknamara was FBI, and I certainly never thought that he’d come forward and implicate himself.”

“I’m your lawyer. I need to know all the facts.”

“No matter what you think of me, you’re my son. You’ve been in my mind for all these years. A father doesn’t want to disappoint his son.”

“Who the hell cares what was in your mind? Your imagination had nothing to do with my reality. What’s real is you were doing these awful, violent things until I was, what, a year, a year-and-a-half old? While I was learning to walk and talk, you were playing guerrilla soldier.”

Despite my harsh words, I know he cared about me. There’s the photo taken in the forest when I fell and scraped my knee. At least at that moment, he was my father. More than that, when the photo was taken, he would’ve been on the lam for six months. Long gone, one would think. Yet he apparently risked his freedom to see my mother and me. Harriet took a huge chance, too. She was harboring a fugitive and could’ve been charged as an accessory to murder.

Who shot that photo? I haven’t bothered to ask my parents. I’m sure they won’t tell me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Wednesday, December 17, 2014: to the day the thirty-ninth anniversary of the Playa Delta bombing, and the first day of trial in
United States v. Holzner
. Judge Gibson’s morbid scheduling joke. As a defense lawyer, I would ordinarily welcome a trial at Christmas time, because jurisprudential folklore has it that jurors are more likely to show mercy during the holiday season. Not in this case. Their tendency will be to give a gift to the bereft families of the Playa Delta dead.

Ian Holzner insists on wearing prison garb and shackles again, and this time Marilee Reddick doesn’t object. Why would she? JB’s courthouse bombing and the murder of Belinda Hayes have changed everything. The media has speculated that Holzner is an unreconstructed terrorist who orchestrated the acts of violence while under house arrest. It’s just fine with Reddick if Holzner looks like a jailbird and a mass murderer. And that’s just what he looks like, dressed in those clothes. Never mind that earlier this year he became eligible for Medicare.

What I do know is that despite his bravado, Holzner is frightened. When the marshals arrived at my condo unit this morning to transport him to the courthouse, he was trembling. He calmed down only when Emily came into the room. It’s not that surprising, really. He spent a lifetime running from this day. Is that why he insists on coming to court in shackles and jail garb? Not to make some political statement, but to fend off the fear? I’d find something ignoble in his attempt to play detached warrior except for one thing: I, too, am a man who’s scared and trying not to show it.

Reddick and I stand before Judge Carlton Gibson, who’s just called our case. Before we attorneys can state our appearances, the judge begins admonishing Holzner, who once again refused to rise when Gibson entered the room.

“That’s your freebie, Mr. Holzner,” the judge says. “You
will
stand when the prospective jurors are brought to the courtroom. Once we impanel a jury, you
will
stand when they enter and leave the courtroom. If you don’t, you’ll be ejected, and you’ll observe the proceedings in a tiny room we have for recalcitrant witnesses. I call it the
poco
room. Some describe it as a cell. I hope you’re not claustrophobic.
Comprendes?
” Without waiting for a response, he gestures toward the marshal. “Bring them in,
ándale
!”

It takes twenty-five minutes before the marshal comes back with the jury pool. The prospective jurors file in, seated both in the jury box and in the first three rows of the gallery, which have been kept empty for them. There are about fifty people in the pool, some with their eyes on Holzner, but just as many staring at me, as if I’m the one who’s on trial. Maybe that’s a good thing—I’ve got a better chance of winning the jury’s sympathy than he does.

“This is a murder case,” Judge Gibson says to the jury. “It’ll last some weeks, into January, so kiss your Christmas good-bye. Don’t give me any phony excuses. You have a civic duty as American citizens to serve, and you’ll do so unless I say so.” His voice crackles with irascibility. The vast majority of judges treat prospective jurors with patience and compassion. The court process is unfamiliar and intimidating, exponentially more so when the trial involves a notorious defendant charged with murder. Gibson is the only judge I’ve ever seen who’s shown hostility to prospective jurors.

“Whoever believes he or she can’t serve on the jury, raise a hand,” he says.

No response at first, but then a few hands timidly go up. The judge twists his mouth in disdain and calls on each. A young woman owns a flower shop and almost tearfully says her business will suffer if she’s absent for more than a week; a well-dressed blond says she’s a working actress and has an audition at Paramount next week; an elderly woman says she’s hearing impaired and can’t serve effectively; an even older man says he’s caring for his wife, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.

The only person Gibson excuses from jury duty is the actress.

“I’m going to ask each of you some questions, and you better answer truthfully,” he says. “It’s your obligation.” If we were in state court, the lawyers would get a chance to ask the questions—
voir dire
, it’s called—but here in federal court it’s the judge’s show. Both sides have suggested questions in writing, but the judge is free to ignore them.

The clerk calls fifteen names. Those who were chosen take seats up front. After asking some basic background questions—age, marital status, occupation, level of education, relationship to the parties or lawyers—the judge says, “Those of you who’ve heard about this case, or what’s called the Playa Delta bombing, raise your hands.”

The only one who doesn’t raise his hand is a young man with long, oily brown hair, an acne-scored complexion, and an indelible smirk. He says his name is Joey. He’s twenty-eight years old, an animator for an Internet company that creates online commercials.

“How could you possibly not know about this case, sir?” the judge snarls. “It’s all over the news.” It occurs to me that Judge Gibson hasn’t peppered his language with Spanish words in the presence of the jury pool. I suspect half the man’s eccentricities are contrived. I worry about the other half, however. I also worry that those people who are ultimately selected as jurors will so despise Carlton Gibson that they’ll take their wrath out on Ian Holzner.

“I don’t follow the serious news,” Joey says. “No gossip or talk radio, either. Bad Karma.”

The judge conducts a scathing cross-examination, asking whether Joey knows who the president is (
of course he does, but he didn’t vote, all politicians are the same
); whether he’s heard of 9/11 (
horrific, he was in the ninth grade, and his school in Salinas, California, was closed for a week
); and whether he’s aware that there were wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (
that’s why I don’t listen to the news, all that stuff is such a downer
). He avers three times over that he could weigh the evidence objectively and apply the law (
that’s what it’s all about, Judge, right?
).

“I like this guy,” Lovely whispers.

“Not me,” I say. I don’t believe he hasn’t heard about this case. I think he’s trying to look unsullied so he can wheedle his way onto the jury. People who do that have an agenda, and Joey’s might be to convict a terrorist and sell his story to the tabloids.

Judge Gibson lets Joey remain in the box and moves on, asking the others what they know about the case. He excuses several jurors for cause. One persistent woman says she’ll hold it against Holzner if he doesn’t take the witness stand, even though that’s his right. Two others say they already know that Holzner is guilty. One guy proclaims that Holzner is a worse terrorist than Osama bin Laden.

After exhausting the subjects of Playa Delta and Ian Holzner, the judge says, “How many of you know that defense counsel Parker Stern used to be Parky Gerald?” Almost everyone raises a hand, including Joey.

After four hours of voir dire, the judge’s scalp is blotched and beaded with sweat, and he’s continually rubbing his eyes.

Because this is a death-penalty case, each side has twenty peremptory challenges—the right to get rid of a prospective juror without cause. Marilee Reddick uses her challenges to excuse a college history professor who ran for office on the left-wing Peace & Freedom Party ticket, numerous others who oppose the death penalty, and four people who appear to be of Middle Eastern descent. Lovely reminds me that it’s illegal to excuse prospective jurors solely based on their ethnic background. But I don’t object, because I’m not beyond a bit of stereotyping myself. I worry that jurors who might be the victims of government profiling will want to convict Holzner as a way of affirming their loyalty to America.

We use our peremptory challenges to excuse an arrogant woman with a law degree who gave up her practice to raise her children but boasts about rising to leadership positions in five different school organizations. I ding seven people whom Judge Gibson should’ve excluded because of hardship, but didn’t—not because I feel sorry for them but because they’re more likely to want to convict quickly so they can get back to their normal lives. I excuse a scowling retired police officer who never once stopped glaring at our side of the table. I eliminate a number of others who say they’re active in their church or whose looks I simply don’t like. Jury selection brings out the worst in lawyers, forces them to evaluate people based on gross stereotypes. It’s a dark business that’s essential to justice.

I have one peremptory challenge left, and I intend to use it on Joey the animator when I hear the clinking of chains. I lean back so Holzner can whisper in my ear. I’m not pleased that the prospective jurors will believe he has control, but it would be worse to ignore him in front of the jury.

“You’ll be stuck with whoever they put in that box next,” Holzner says. “We could do worse.”

“I don’t think so.”

“He’s a crap shoot, I know,” he says. “But this whole trial is a crap shoot. Worse. Let’s go with him. I feel it’s right.”

Harmon Cherry once advised me that when I’m in a court of law the only instinct that matters is my own, but I stand and say, “The defense accepts the jury as now constituted.”

So we have a jury. There’s a grad student who’s pursuing a PhD in comparative literature at UCLA; a retired mechanical engineer who enlisted in the naval reserve to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam but who ended up being stationed at the Da Nang air base; a recent college graduate and former fraternity president who’s interning at a stock brokerage house; a woman in her late thirties who heads up a law-firm marketing department; a middle-aged man who works as a checker at Costco; the flower-shop owner and the elderly man whose wife has dementia, both of whom wanted off the jury but both of whom seem fair-minded; a voice-over artist who serves as a volunteer cantor at his synagogue; a showroom designer for an upscale furniture store; a housewife from the San Fernando Valley; a driver for Federal Express; and Joey the animator. There are five women and seven men, three Hispanics, two Jews, two African Americans, and one person of Persian descent. A jury of Ian Holzner’s peers? Decidedly not. The only way Holzner could get a true jury of his peers would be if all the newly sworn jurors had misspent their formative years bombing government buildings.

The judge asks the jurors to stand and raise their right hands, and the clerk has them swear that they’ll “true deliverance make” between the United States and Ian Holzner and “a true verdict render.” Judge Gibson, all warmth and smiles now, welcomes the jurors to his courtroom. As he’s instructing the jury not to discuss the case among themselves or with third parties, there’s a clanking of chains, and I experience maybe a dozen tachycardial heartbeats when I sense Holzner standing behind me. Lovely draws in an audible breath. When I glance back, it seems as if he’s about to speak, but instead he respectfully clasps his hand in front of him and waits for the jury to stand, and then we all rise and watch as the jurors file out.

Judge Gibson nods. “Counsel, be ready to give your opening statements after the lunch break.” He pushes himself out of his chair and dodders off the bench and into chambers.