Absolute Rage (19 page)

Their food arrived, sandwiches thick as dictionaries, and Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray, in cans, instead of the beautiful brown bottles it used to come in. Sterner took a big bite of his and continued to talk around the wad. “And so everything is fine and dandy, we say. Better than Russia, yeah, but that's some better! The problem is the public is too insulated now.”

“How do you mean, insulated?”

“From the concrete realities. Think about it. Take a look around this place.” Sterner made a broad gesture. “Every single object you see except the human bodies—all the clothes, the shoes, the tables, the plates, the silverware, the floor tiles, this corned beef sandwich, which by the way is cold in the middle, the patzers used a microwave, and this is not real Jewish rye either—
ev-er-y-thing,
was made at some stage by a worker using his body, and not only using his body, using
up
his body. And probably none of the people in this restaurant have a single friend who does that. See, that's the difference between us and them. They consume themselves making the world we live in; they're less every year, just like piles of coal. And they deserve better than what we give them, which by and large is
bubkes.”
He put the sandwich down and examined Karp closely. “What, you're not impressed by my argument?”

“I'm always impressed by your argument. But what's the alternative to what we got now? Socialism? Great idea, doesn't work.”

Sterner frowned and extended his jaw like the ram on a trireme. “Listen, do me a favor and don't talk to me about socialism, because you don't know what you're talking about. When anyone says the S-word, you've been trained to think, ‘Ugh, Stalin!' You think I'm talking that shit? I spent years fighting Stalinists, and I mean literally sometimes, with
this”
—again the fist held up—“but I will say one thing for that shithead, for the Soviet Union, their one good deed: They scared the bejesus out of the plutocrats, which was why they let Roosevelt save capitalism, and why they finally legalized unions. Unfortunately, the Reds were too far away to scare our plutocrats enough, which is why we're the only industrial democracy with no real social democratic party. I except the Japanese; who the hell can figure them out? And when the Cold War started, our marvelous union leaders kicked out everyone who had any tinge of socialist leanings, leaving what? Gangsters and turtles. Ostriches! The result? Unions are down to, I don't know, 11 percent of the labor force? The Chinese make half our consumer goods in their sweat-shops and two-thirds of our country has no unions at all. That's why Red Heeney was important.”

“I was wondering when you'd get back to him,” Karp said. “I take it he wasn't called Red just because of his hair.”

“No, like I said, he was a true believer. And I'm not going to let them get away with it.”

“What's your involvement?”

A sly smile here, a waggle of the hand. “Eh, you know, some phone calls. I'm a kibitzer now. I make suggestions.”

“I thought you were a mover and shaker.”

“Please. That was years ago. You want some cheesecake? On second thought, they probably ship it in from Korea. What I did do was, I called Roy Orne. A good guy. I knew his dad from the CIO days, a coal union man. So we talked, and he wants to handle it on the state level, but quick and quiet. I said I'd get back to him with some names.”

“Wait a second, Saul, slow down. Who's Roy Orne?”

“What, you still don't read anything but the sports pages?”

“And the crimes,” said Karp. “Who is he?”

“Dumbbell! He's the governor of West Virginia, that's who! Look, here's the situation. Robbens County, where the murders took place, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Majestic Coal Company. Not only does the company own the union, it owns the district judge, the sheriff, most of the land, all the mineral rights, the congressman, and at least one U.S. senator. This has been going on for eighty years. Clarkesville, PA, was a rough and dirty town, but Clarkesville is Scarsdale compared to Robbens County. It's in a class by itself. You know anything about the history?”

“Not a thing, except what I gathered from Heeney and his wife. Union troubles?”

“More like a war. The first thing you have to know is that when coal got big, back in the 1880s, all the way through to the 1920s, West Virginia had the worst mine safety record of any state. They were able to keep the UMW out of the state until 1902, and even after that, there were whole chunks of it that organizers just couldn't get to. Organizers were arrested as a matter of course, and beaten, all over the state, but in Robbens they were just shot, bang, and sometimes their families, too. Okay, World War One there was a boom in coal, and after the war the operators laid off the miners they'd hired and cut wages. The UMW targeted three counties in southern West Virginia as its top priority—Mingo, Logan, and Robbens. There was a full-scale war in Mingo County. The operators brought in thugs, the so-called detective agencies, the miners armed themselves, dozens of people got shot. Then a couple of miners going to a trial on trumped-up murder charges were assassinated on the steps of the courthouse by company dicks. The miners went crazy. They took hostages. The mine owners and their political allies called in the National Guard—machine guns, tanks. Airplanes dropped bombs on the miners' camps. This is in America, remember. Finally, President Harding, the old fascist, sent in federal troops and the miners surrendered. That was the end of the war and the organizing drive. The coalfields didn't get unions until the New Deal came in. You knew any of this?”

“Some. And I assume the same thing happened in Robbens.”

“You would assume wrong. Majestic had two advantages in Robbens: one, they owned the whole thing, all the coal patches. Two, they didn't bring in outside detectives. They used locals, and the locals were a lot worse than the goons. What they did was they fomented a civil war, based on existing feuds. Everyone in those parts has a connection to one of two families. You're either a Cade or a Jonson. Majestic hired Cades to kill Jonsons and Jonsons to kill Cades, and of course, anyone came in from outside got killed just on general principles. They set up a phony union, the Independent Mine Workers, so that by the time the feds got around to investigating, they had everything nailed down. There's no local law enforcement to speak of. This is like Latin America, no difference.”

“I don't understand,” said Karp. “No one did anything? The state? The feds?”

“No one complained. They were afraid to. Finally, underground mining became unprofitable and they switched to surface mining. The same kind of union, of course. They junked all the underground miners, put a bunch of mostly sick, busted men out to pasture on miserly pensions. But their stock does very well. Majestic's part of AGAM, a multinational commodity operation. Believe me, their corporate officers don't eat at Sam's on Canal. So into this mess walks Red Heeney. He's got two strikes against him—one, he's an outsider. They don't care much for outsiders in Robbens. The other thing is, everyone's scared there. They're used to taking what the company cares to give them, or else. So he performs a little miracle. He goes in there, gets a job driving some kind of big tractor, a bulldozer, whatever. And he starts organizing, finding men he can trust. All this is done secretly, just like in the bad old days, which, by the way, are still going on down there. And not just down there, either. He joins the company union, plays it cagey; for years this is, he's quietly building trust. He's waiting for his chance.”

Here Sterner paused and took a sip of his drink, the ice clashing noisily in the glass. His eyes were glittering; he loved to tell a story, as Karp remembered from law school. It was part of what made him such a good teacher.

“So, one day he gets his chance: there's a disaster. The company has all these old impoundments, big ponds, where they keep the water they pumped out of their underground mines. They're supposed to maintain them in perpetuity, but, needless to say, they don't. Also, they're blasting at the strip mines. They're supposed to be limited as to when and where they blast, and how heavy the blast can be, but again, they cut corners. What happens is, they set off a charge and a dam gives way and a wall of water rushes down one of those little valleys, and twelve people die, five of them kids. A whole family's wiped out. Red organizes a meeting at a church, he gives a speech, and believe me, that man could talk! Holy Moses, what a mouth on him! He gets them all stirred up, he mobilizes his shadow organization, and the next day the whole workforce goes out, a wildcat strike, the first strike in Robbens County since 1921. And,
alevai!
The company backs down. It's finally dawned on them it's not 1921 anymore. Red's a hero. At first they figure they can coopt him. He plays along, acts nice. Then, this year, he challenges this dirtbag Weames for the presidency of the union. Of course, they steal the election. But Red comes to me, I go to Labor. I still have some clout there, not much, but I use what I have. They're going to contest the election, send in investigators.”

Sterner stopped, shook his head. Suddenly, but just for a passing instant, he looked his age. “What a waste! And I consider it partially my fault. I encouraged him. I honestly, so help me, did not think they would stoop to this.”

“You're pretty sure it was them?” Karp asked. “The union?”

“No question,” said Sterner with finality. “All right, Governor Orne's got a problem. He's a decent guy, but if you're the governor of West Virginia, you can't just spit in the face of Big Coal. On the other hand, he needs to show the state he's not a coal company patsy either. He needs a victory where the bad guys are really, undeniably shits. But if the feds come in on this, if it's a big national story, he's essentially out of the picture. He's got political assassinations happening and he can't cope by himself? He looks like a patzer. Not to mention, we got a U.S. AG in there now who's not exactly a friend of the working man. So let's say Orne does it himself. He's still got a problem. His own legal apparatus has been lying down for Big Coal for years. It's his first term, he's not sure who he can trust. Also the state's attorney in Robbens is a kid. Orne put him in there, true, but he's not up to this kind of case, this kind of pressure. The governor wants to send in a special prosecutor.”

Karp nodded. “That seems like a good idea.”

“It
is
a good idea.
My
good idea, as a matter of fact.” Sterner looked at Karp expectantly. “Well? What do you think?”

“I told you. I think it's a good idea.”

Sterner wrinkled his nose and looked upward. “No, no! I mean
doing
it.
You
doing it. You think I'm buying corned beef sandwiches—even mediocre corned beef sandwiches—just so a fella can tell me I got a good idea?”

“You're serious?”

“Of course, I'm serious. I told Roy about you. He thinks you'd be perfect. Superb reputation, all the right skills, no local interests . . .”

“No license to practice law in West Virginia,” added Karp, “no knowledge of the laws and procedures thereof, no interest in doing it. Plus I have a job.”

Sterner's eyes seemed to drift away from Karp's for a moment. Could that be a tinge of embarrassment?

“Well, as to that,” said Sterner, “I talked to Jack. He's all for it.”

“You talked to
Jack?”
Karp asked coldly.
“Before
you talked to me?”

“It came out. We were at a party thing the other night, meet and greet with some little Kennedy. Your name came up and I mentioned this thing and . . . you know how people discuss.”

“Actually, I don't. I never go to meet and greets. But I'm not surprised that Jack is less than reluctant to let me go for a long stroll through the woods. I put him in a situation he'd like to slide out of, and he can do it a lot easier if he doesn't have to look me in the face every day.” Here Karp summarized for Sterner the business with the congressman, the pimp, the pimp's girlfriend, and the hapless Bailey.

To Karp's surprise, “So what?” was Sterner's reply. “You want this fella, you'll get him on the next round. He's not going to go away. Although you force me to say that your target has a first-class voting record on labor issues.”

“Saul, he fucking takes money from a pimp and a murderer,” said Karp, loud enough to draw glances from the surrounding tables.

“Yeah, and pimping is bad and murdering is bad and bribery is bad, and worst of all are infractions of an election statute that nobody understands in the first place. And you know what? Pimping and murdering and bribery went on before you got there, and believe you me, they'll be there a long time after you go.”

“Saul, stop it . . .”

“No, listen to me! Every year, I used to look out into the lecture hall on the first day of my litigation class and I would think to myself, another bunch of embryo shyster assholes. Ninety-five percent of them were going to end up with the three-car garage and the Jags and the Guccis. I wasn't interested in them; I was looking for the few that had a real passion for the law, a real understanding for what it meant to the human race. I didn't find all that many, sad to say, but you were one of them. I kind of hoped you still were.”

“Sorry, I'm a shyster asshole, too, now, and I don't even have a Jag.”

Sterner did not return Karp's smile. “Butch, be serious! This is a major thing here. This is epic. It's bringing the relief of law to a bunch of people who have hardly known what law is. It's freeing the serfs, for crying out loud. Are you telling me you can't do it because you're more concerned with pinching a guy who took a little dirty money?”