The Bomb Maker's Son (3 page)

At the end of the article is a collection of quotations attributed to Holzner. I only have to read one to know how misguided my father was:
It’s time for privileged white kids to join our black brothers and sisters and take up arms against the racist American war machine; it’s time for us to build the bombs that will reduce our hometowns and the bourgeois values they represent to rubble. Long live revolution!

I close the article, clicking the mouse aggressively, surprised at my level of agitation—or is it disgust? My mother is a domineering, abusive stage mother turned religious charlatan who preys on the vulnerability of others for profit and self-aggrandizement. My father was an immature, privileged kid who was playing war and might have murdered innocent people. I’ve spent my professional life trying to see that justice is done, and when that’s impossible, to represent my clients zealously. As for my private life, I’ve tried to lay low and not hurt the people around me. Reading about Holzner, I feel that I’m not the person I thought I was, that somehow I’m complicit in his crimes. Once revealed, long-suppressed truth can be so disappointing.

If the Law Offices of Parker Stern exist, they’re located at my back table in The Barrista Coffee House in West Hollywood. The staff and I jointly own the place. Now, it’s the day following the visit from my “parents,” and the last of the late-afternoon caffeine freaks have just left the shop. I’m reading a memoir by Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the Weather Underground. The book is self-indulgent and defensive, but what I care about is that Ayers seems to ignore the Holzner-O’Brien Gang entirely. At least I’m getting a sense of these 1970s radicals, seen through the prism of old-age rationalization. They were educated, well-off, good-looking, popular kids who formed their own deadly fraternity and played at guerilla warfare. They were so condescending and narcissistic that they actually believed they could lead the oppressed masses in armed rebellion against the United States government, when all the masses wanted was their share of the American dream. The Weather Underground, the SLA, the Holzner O’Brien Gang—they didn’t have any idea which way the winds were blowing.

Someone approaches my table and hovers over me. I look up to see my mother, dressed in a black peacoat, white blouse, black beret tilted on her head at a forty-five-degree angle, Jackie-O sunglasses, and a fuchsia silk scarf. If she thinks she’s incognito, she’s wrong. Her outlandish outfit is only drawing attention. Once again, she’s alone.

She sits across from me, removes the sunglasses, and like a Vegas blackjack dealer satisfying a hit, slides a manila folder toward me. She turns around and motions toward Romulo, The Barista’s manager, who’s doing double duty busing tables.

“Fetch me a black coffee in a paper cup,” Harriet says to him. It’s a command, not a request.

“I thought caffeine is off limits for Assembly devotees,” I say.

“Just this once.” She flutters a hand toward Romulo. “I’m with your boss. He says it’s on the house.”

“Romulo is my partner and The Barrista’s manager,” I say. “The real boss. And he doesn’t give out freebies.”

“It cuts into the profits,” Romulo says with a straight face, though he’s a man who laughs easily.

Harriet blinks once but shows no embarrassment. “You mean I have to pay for my drink?”

“It’s Romulo’s call.”

He makes a mock show of contemplation. “Okay, on the house this one time.”

Harriet turns away, frowning as if she were the one who’d been put upon. She and I stare at each other in silence. Thirty seconds later, Romulo returns with the coffee. She doesn’t even thank him.

“What can I do for you, Mother?”

She slaps her hand on the table hard, rattling my coffee cup. “Open the envelope.”

Inside, I find a black-and-white photograph of a young Ian Holzner holding a toddler in his arms. The boy has a Band-Aid on his left knee and streaks of blood on his shin. He’s grasping the man’s neck with both arms. Holzner looks like he did in the
Wikipedia
photo, though he’s shaved off the Fu Manchu mustache. He’s grinning slightly, but the expression might only be an involuntary contraction of the risorius muscle, because there’s no joy in his face. Standing to his right is a petite woman in a dark tank top and bell-bottom jeans—Harriet Stern. She’s wearing aviator sunglasses, and she’s barefoot. Her straight, dark hair flows down to her waist. She, too, is smiling, but there’s something downcast in her expression. She’s holding a cigarette between the index and middle fingers of her right hand. I started acting in commercials at age three, so I’ve seen photos of myself as a toddler, but no pictures like this. I can’t remember seeing any photos of my mother and me together taken before I turned seven years old. By that time, I was already an established actor. I stare at the photo for a long time. We were in the woods somewhere.

“I don’t remember this,” I say. But I’ve always had a blurry memory of scraping my knee in the forest and of a nice man holding me. It’s my only recollection of a father, a fragment of memory that I’ve clung to all my life while fearing that I imagined it. The pain from learning that it’s real is excruciating. I toss the photo back to my mother.

“What’s the point of all this, Harriet? It’s too late, too sordid.”

“If you represent him, I’ll answer your questions. After the case is over.”

“What questions?”

“The ones you’ve been asking ever since you were a child. About your history.”

“As if I’d believe what you’d tell me.”

We stare at each other for a long time.

“Why would you want to hire me?” I say. “Why not get a lawyer who’s objective? A lawyer who’s more qualified? I’m not even a criminal lawyer.”

“We want you because you’re his son. No one else will believe in his innocence.”

“I don’t know if I’ll believe in his innocence.”

“But you’ll want to. Besides, you’re good. And I know you. You want the information I’m offering.” Everything has always been a commodity for my mother—patience, compassion, her own child. Especially her own child.

“Even if I wanted to take the case—”

“Of course you want to, Parky.”

“Even if I wanted to take the case, I couldn’t. If Holzner turns himself in, the feds are going to seek the death penalty, and I don’t qualify as competent counsel.”

“You’ve tried a death-penalty case before.”

So she’s been following my career for a long time, because I was involved in that capital homicide case after only five years on the job. I don’t know whether I’m pleased or annoyed that she observed my life like a lurker on an Internet bulletin board.

“I handled one capital case when I was an associate,” I say. “I was third chair. It was pro bono, and I was working with two experienced death-penalty experts. Under the rules of court, to serve as lead counsel in a capital case, you have to have practiced criminal law for ten years, including, I don’t know, two or three murder cases.”

“You’ve handled other pro bono cases involving serious crimes. The woman who killed her husband because he beat her, that bank robbery.”

“I’m mostly a civil lawyer, Harriet.”

“There’s an alternative. You can do it if you consult with an experienced death-penalty lawyer. I already arranged it.”

“What do you mean you arranged it?”

“Louis Frantz can act as consulting attorney.” Lou Frantz is one of the top trial lawyers in the country, a person who inspires awe in even the smug TV legal commentators and the litigation wonks. Frantz and I have been adversaries in two brutal lawsuits and don’t like each other.

“That’s absurd.”

“It’s perfect.”

“Why don’t you just hire Frantz to represent Holzner? He’ll definitely take Assembly money.”

“Because Ian and I want you.”

“Frantz would never agree to help me even if I were willing.”

“He’s already agreed.”

Of course. The Church of the Sanctified Assembly is one of Lou Frantz’s biggest clients.

“Your girlfriend will assist you in the trial, if that makes a difference,” she says.

“By my
girlfriend
, you’re talking about Lovely Diamond?”

“Yes. I can’t get over that silly name.”

Lovely Diamond is a lawyer who works for Lou Frantz. She’s also my former law student, a budding superstar trial lawyer, and the woman I can’t have but can’t live without. At age nineteen, she spent a year or two performing in hardcore pornographic videos, a fact that many in the media won’t let her forget. About a year ago, she regained custody of the son that she’d given up at birth, and soon after she broke off our relationship because I wasn’t father material. She also thought that I courted danger. Since then, I’ve tried to win her back, but it’s mostly been a war of attrition.

“It’s agreed?” Harriet says. “You’ll help your father?”

So my mother is offering yet another version of my family history—the truth, finally?—and a chance to be near Lovely Diamond again. I crave both of those things. But at the moment, there’s something else I want even more, and that’s a chance to get to know my father.

“If Holzner turns himself in, which I can’t believe he’ll really do, I’ll take on the case.”

She actually smiles, which she rarely does, at least around me. The smile fades as abruptly as it appears. She reaches across the table, picks up the photo, and puts it back in the envelope. “You have to get to the jail. Ian is surrendering to the FBI as we speak. He needs you.”

CHAPTER FOUR

I fear that the news media will already have picked up on Holzner’s surrender before I get to the Metropolitan Detention Center, the fancy name for the jail that houses federal inmates. But when I arrive, the building’s entrance is clear. As I walk toward security, I hear a clacking of heels on linoleum. Lovely Diamond moves across the room with the determined walk of someone who’s displeased and looking for someone to blame. She’s wearing a white cotton blouse and black pants. Her blonde hair is pulled back behind her ears, and she wears only a bit of lipstick and eyeliner. No matter how plain she tries to appear, no matter how hard she tries to flatten out her body’s curves, people stare at her when she walks into a room. It’s been more than a year since she broke up with me, and the acute pain has faded into an occasional unspecified ache I only later recognize as longing. Sometimes, I’ll sit outside on my balcony, let the soft Pacific breeze caress my face, and pretend that it’s Lovely who’s stroking my cheek.

“What the hell, Parker?” she says, in a tone so strident that she’s probably dashed my daydreams forever.

“Good to see you, too.”

“Lou ordered me down here. Why?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“Why else would I ask you?”

I explain in a hushed tone that Holzner is accused of being the Playa Delta Bomber. She’s only thirty-one, so she’s never heard of him.

“This is going to be a cool case,” she says when I finish. She views the law and trial work as grand theater, just as I did before the stage fright hit and all my assumptions about the practice of law evaporated. Then I reveal that Holzner is my father.

She audibly gasps. “Omigod, Parker, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. It’s just a case.”

A jailer escorts us into the cramped attorney meeting room, which is painted in a shade of green the color of bread mold. Sitting on the other side of a conference table is Ian Holzner, already dressed in a loose-fitting khaki jumpsuit, standard issue for recent arrestees.

“We meet again, Parker,” he says. “Harriet said you’d take my case. I’m glad.” He regards us with a relaxed frown that somehow conveys amusement, not distress—odd for a fugitive who’s just been incarcerated after forty years on the run. He’s sitting with his legs crossed upon the chair and his hands folded on the table in prayer pose, making him look more like a guru in an ashram than an inmate in a jail lockup. I introduce him to Lovely.

Without waiting for us to ask a question, he says, “There are two reasons why I turned myself in. The first is that I’m pretty sure the feds were onto me, anyway. Or would be soon.”

“What made you think that?” I ask.

He tenses and then deflates, losing his Zen-like demeanor. “Because of Dylan. He’s . . . he was my son. Your half brother. Eight months ago, he was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade while on patrol in Afghanistan. My picture appeared in the local throwaway paper, and there were people from the military trying to contact me about death benefits. I think the government got suspicious about my identity. There were people asking questions of the neighbors, showing up at work.” He inhales deeply. “Dylan was a good boy, a good son.”

“Jesus,” I say, under my breath. A young man died needlessly, a father grieves, and I’m truly sorry about that. But I also envy my dead half brother because he wasn’t abandoned. You can’t reason emotion away. But a lawyer learns to hide it.

“Tell us your story,” I say. “All of it.”

He says that Martin Lansing was the name of a baby who was born and died on January 22, 1949, the same day he was born. One of the radical “underground railroads” forged the baby’s birth certificate and made a duplicate, which Holzner used to apply for a Social Security number. Holzner appropriated the name
Martin Lansing
and hid himself in the humdrum of anonymity. He spent years in tedious isolation, continually on the move and working at various low-level jobs. He often survived on a diet of dry cereal and boiled noodles seasoned with salt and garlic. It was an unremarkable existence except for the constant fear and paranoia. He ended up in Utah, working as a ski instructor, where he met his wife, Jenny, who knew nothing of his past. They kept moving, leading an itinerant life, but Jenny wanted to settle down and have children. He got a job in Orange County as an auto mechanic and has been there ever since. Jenny died in 2011 from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.