The Bomb Maker's Son (30 page)

“Where are they holding him?” I ask. “Has he revealed anything?”

“He’s dead, Parker. After he killed Sedgwick, he attacked the prison guard. He was a powerful man. He wrestled the gun away from the first guard, and another guard shot him. It was suicide by cop.”

I don’t say anything. What’s there to say?

“There’s more, Parker. Before Moses was shot, he shouted, ‘This is for Ian!’”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Four hours after Dworsky murdered Sedgwick, Judge Gibson’s chambers received this:

Subject: Communiqué #3

To: Judge Carlton Fascist Gibson

From: JB

The brave Charlie Sedgwick and the steadfast Moses Dworsky belong to the ages, martyrs to the cause. Moses knew what had to be done; Charlie understood why it had to be done. Moses and Charlie died by fire, like true revolutionaries.

Free Ian!

~JB

I make the motion for a mistrial on the grounds that the news of Dworsky’s crime has gone viral, the publicity destroying whatever evenhandedness the jurors had left.

“This means
nada
, Mr. Stern,” the judge says. “
Nada.
The jury has been instructed not to read the newspapers or watch the news on TV or read it on the Internet. That’s sufficient. So we’re going to move on. Anyway, Dworsky belonged to your side, and I’m not going to let you take advantage of your investigator’s crime.” He shakes his head. “First Ilan Goldsmith, now this. Bad things happen to witnesses when you’re involved, Mr. Stern.”

For the last day or so, Holzner has mostly stayed in his bedroom. His melancholy stupor borders on catatonia. In an effort to get him to talk, I gather . . . well, I gather the “family”—Emily, Lovely, and my mother. It’s all I can do to get him to come out of his bedroom and sit on the living room sofa. We’re all seated across from him, but I’m the chief inquisitor.

“Once and for all, did you have anything to do with this?” I ask.

“He wouldn’t,” Emily says.

“I didn’t ask you,” I say, and she recoils because it’s the first time that I’ve spoken harshly to her. “Dworsky was your guy from the beginning, Ian, even after Lovely began having doubts about him when he antagonized Judge Gibson in court that day. I want to know if you’ve orchestrated all this, just like Marilee Reddick and the FBI believe.”

He’s been sitting with his head down, but now he looks up at me and shakes his head. I realize that before this happened I saw something oddly noble in his enigmatic statements, in his refusal to do anything to save his life, in the undercurrent of radicalism that still seemed to inform his every move. At this moment, he seems shattered, and I feel a combination of sadness and betrayal. Is this the disillusionment children feel when they finally recognize their parents’ flaws? Is this horrible murder case the way I experience the arc of father-son relationship, warped and twisted into some perverse joke?

“I’m risking a lot to be here,” Harriet says. “I think Heim and her people are following me. I can’t keep coming here. So listen to what I have to say.”

Here it comes—her inevitable defense of Ian Holzner.

“I want you to tell the truth, Ian,” she says. “The whole truth. I’m sick of the whole thing.”

He forces himself to stand, and when he rises, Harriet does, too.

He looks at me. “The truth is I was wrong about Moses Dworsky. There’s nothing more to it.”

“So you brought this man into the case without really knowing who he was?” Lovely says. “You trusted your life to him? Hard to believe. Everyone is going to say you’ve been working with him for years, planning your comeback. That you’re the leader of the Harpers Ferry Liberation Front that Ilan Goldsmith was talking about.”

“You want to call me a fool for trusting him?” he says. “You’re right. But if you’re calling me a liar, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ian, what are you hiding?” I ask.

He crosses his arms in front of him and shakes his head.

I appeal to my mother.

“Tell Parker the truth,” she says.

He tilts his chin up slightly as if he’s about to say something but stays mum. He wearily shuffles over and kisses Emily on the cheek, and to my shock kisses Harriet on the lips. As he passes me, he tentatively extends his hand out to pat my arm, but thinks better of it, then walks into the bedroom and shuts the door. The only sounds in the room come from Emily and Harriet, soprano and alto weeping in counterpoint.

In the space of two days, the medical examiner autopsies Dworsky’s body and releases the remains to Eleanor, who has him cremated without ceremony—not that anyone would’ve attended. The surprise is that Dworsky had pancreatic cancer, with a few months to live. He hid it well. I thought the stooped posture and the ashen pallor and the occasional wincing were the results of aging.

The trial resumes on Monday, and during the weekend we’re still working out of Dworsky’s office.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Lovely says. “I know it’s a silly thing to say, but there’s evil in here.”

The statement surprises me, because she doesn’t scare easily and because she’s an observant Jew who’s not big on mysticism. I’m pretty much a nonbeliever—my time embroiled in the Sanctified Assembly has made me treat the spiritual with skepticism—but I reply, “I know what you mean.”

We sit, not in our makeshift offices, but in the conference room, neither of us wanting to be alone. After about a half hour, Lovely glances up from her computer and considers me for a while. She leans over, softly kisses me on the lips, and says, “I love you, Parker Stern.”

The words lift me through the next dismal hours as I try to craft some defense for Ian Holzner. Then I stand, go to the reception area, thumb through Eleanor Dworsky’s old-fashioned Rolodex, and find the number. I dial from the office phone.

Brandon Soloway’s “Hello” sounds sullen—he’s always sullen—but now he’s got a reason. When I identify myself and ask to speak with Eleanor, he says, “She’s not talking to anybody. I’ll give her your, what do you call them, condolences.”

“Yes, please tell her how sorry I am. But I’d also like to ask her if Moses kept other files about the Rachel O’Brien case. Something he didn’t share with us.”

“My mom just lost her husband and found out he was a psycho murderer and you’re worried about your case? You’re pathetic, man.”

“Brandon, I didn’t mean to—”

“My mom blames Holzner for this. She thinks he convinced Moses to kill Sedgwick to shut him up for good. We knew about Moses’s cancer, he didn’t have long to go, but now his legacy is fucked up forever. Do you know what that’s done to my mom?”

“I’m just doing my job.”

“That’s what all scumbag lawyers say. Well, your job sucks, man. Moses was a lawyer, and he was an asshole. You’re an asshole.” He hangs up the phone.

So imagine my surprise when, three hours later, the office door opens and Brandon Soloway walks in carrying three old boxes bearing a Bekins logo. He sets them on the table, mumbles, “My mom told me to bring these to you,” and walks out.

CHAPTER FORTY

The missing transcripts from Rachel O’Brien’s trial are in the boxes. So is the December 17, 1975, tape recording. It’s the old reel-to-reel kind that won’t work even on the obsolete audiocassette player that I found in Dworsky’s desk. Lovely calls the Frantz Law Office’s crack IT woman and takes the tape back to see if they can make sense out of it.

After she leaves, I spend hours skimming the O’Brien trial transcripts. The transcript of Gladdie Giddens’s testimony is missing. Too bad. I’d welcome the chance to impeach her at our trial with her prior sworn statement. I do locate Belinda Hayes’s testimony, and, just as she told me, Dworsky browbeat her into exonerating O’Brien and implicating Holzner, despite the best efforts of the prosecutor and the judge to rein Moses in.

In the first trial, both Hilton and Roudebusch testified, and both expressed their belief that Holzner was the bomber. The testimony and evidence in these documents implicate Holzner at every turn. In his closing argument, Dworsky said over and over that Ian Holzner and others unknown, but not Rachel O’Brien, bombed the Playa Delta VA. Would this man later commit murder at Holzner’s behest?

At eight in the evening, Lovely calls. “Our expert couldn’t do much,” she says. “You can hear some of what Sedgwick says, but that’s it. The bad news is that it does sound like Sedgwick is saying, ‘Ian will handle it.’”

“We don’t know the context. Anyway, let’s get someone other than your IT person to enhance this tape. She might be good, but she’s not an expert.”

“We contacted someone Lou used in a trial a couple of years ago, Ezekiel Bauman. Tops in the business. He says it’s a third- or fourth-generation version, so there’s nothing more that can be done. Bad luck. This whole fucking case feels like bad luck.”

“We’ll find someone else.”

“There’s no one better. I looked on the Internet and LexisNexis, and all roads lead to Bauman. I’m sorry, Parker.”

“Call your office and have someone bring the tape to Romulo at The Barrista. Right away.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“If it works, I’ll tell you. Just get Romulo that tape.”

After we hang up, I carefully consider whether I should make this next move. There are people who could help me, but they might refuse, might not be in the country much less close enough to LA to examine the tape recording before the trial ends. But there’s no choice. While the tape might convict my father, it’s the only thing that might save him.

I use my smart phone to e-mail my former client, a reclusive video-game designer and computer genius known to the world only as Poniard. An hour later, I get a reply saying I should be at The Barrista at precisely 12:07 tomorrow morning, which I consider later tonight. My ex-client has an annoying fondness for offbeat drama—perfect for a designer of fantastic, violent video games, but not so comforting to someone like me, who’s looking for a reliable ally.

I wait in the darkness at my usual table. There’s a comforting eeriness to The Barrista after closing time. The wooden chairs and stools are stacked upside down; the mephitic smell of ammonia from the wet mops contends with the sharp-tangy fragrance of arabica beans. I welcome the clicks of the foundation settling, the moan of the wooden beams yielding to a drop in barometric pressure. I do hope there’s no scurrying that could displease the Health Department.

There’s a different kind of creak behind me. I turn to find that a man is already inside—no surprise, though I left the door locked. When I see him, I have to fight back disappointment. He’s not the person I hoped would come. He’s dressed in a black gaucho hat and matching black shirt, slacks, and cape. He always dresses like a character in a Poniard video game. Last time I saw him, he went by the name of
Banquo Nixon
.

“Who are you this week?” I ask.

He bows and tips his hat with a flourish. “Call me
Zorro Snowden
, the Cyber Fox.” He lifts the hem of his cape to reveal a scabbard and a sabre, real no doubt. The man is a cosplayer, not a clown—a kind of performance artist who appears at comic-book and video-game conventions.

“You have something for me, Mr. Stern. At your service.”