First Citizen (12 page)

I saw the special sapper units go through the city, using professional demolition techniques. Five satchels of plastique, strategically placed, and a fifteen-story apartment block would come straight down like the earth had opened beneath it. For the shack rows on the city edges and the cottages of the middle-class suburbs, they fitted ’dozer blades on M-60 battle tanks and drove diagonal lines across the landscape. The rest we soldiers broke up with picks and crowbars, as I have explained.

Looting? What could the average infantryman want in one of those places? A five-year-old transistor radio? Handmade clothing? Cracked dishes? A dimestore cherrywood Madonna? The CIA teams had gone through the government buildings and staff officers had gone through the hotels and official residences. The rest was a thousand times poorer than an East Los Angeles garage sale.

Yes, I saw the dusters at work. That was one of the assignments of the 452nd Airborne, although I never flew one. Yes, moonsuits and breather gear were the uniform of the day. But no, they never did explain what the stuff was, except that one day the ground in Managua showed plenty of black soil and green plants, and the next it was blowing dust and brown stems. The lakeshore was three feet deep in dead fish for a week. Yes, I did know some of the pilots—names if not serial numbers—who flew the duster flights. Yes, I could probably contact two or three without any trouble; some of them kept in touch through the battalion newsletter. Then it was my turn to ask him the questions.

“Why do you want to know all this? Just history now.”

“We are trying to find out, through various sources, who it was that gave the orders for the dusting of Managua,” Corbin said.

“Came from the President, right?”

“No, not according to any published source. The highest authority we can locate is this Colonel Donald Beyer. He was in charge of ‘Special Operations.’ ”

“Who is ‘we,’ exactly?” I asked.

“This law firm.”

“But why are you involved? If there was something wrong with the orders, if this Beyer exceeded his authority, then it would be a military matter, a court-martial.”

“Not necessarily. This is a civil case, a class action suit brought for damages on behalf of the soldiers who were exposed to this unknown ‘dust’ you describe.”

“How many of these soldiers are there?”

“We don’t know that yet.”

“Come again?”

“The firm is—ah—prospecting right now.”

“You mean you are peeking inside the ambulance to see if there is a case for you.”

“Indelicately, yes.” Corbin smiled that wide, clown smile he had.

“And you want me to help you find pilots who can testify about the dust.”

“Or exhibit symptoms that may be related to its use.”

“All right.”

“We can make the effort worth your while. …” He eyed me steadily. “Do you want to name a sum?”

“I will have to think about it.”

In the end, I agreed to work with them. Over the next eight months, I helped him and the other lawyers question veterans from the Nicaragua campaign, about four hundred of them. How much help I was, who can say? Three obvious bullshitters—men who never left the States on active duty, although to hear them tell it they cleaned out Managua singlehanded—were eliminated on my say-so in half an hour. But Corbin and his paralegals would probably have weeded them in twice that time themselves. Sometimes, I could corroborate a man’s testimony; sometimes, just correct a few town names.

Corbin, himself, was as distant and cool as a judge, although he must have wanted the case against Beyer pretty badly. Still, he would have blown it if he had gotten into the spirit of their stories, adding and embellishing. He had to hold off and explore whatever doubts came to him. He had to think like Beyer’s defense attorneys, who would surely raise those doubts themselves. And Corbin could do it every time—think through the evidence and testimony rationally and coolly— all but once.

That was over a young soldier. He must have been fifteen when he went to Nicco because he could not have been more than eighteen when he came into the KSH&T offices. He had blond hair in fine curls, doe eyes just like a girl’s, and a beautiful mouth. To me, he was just another immature kid, at most a PFC with a worm’s-eye view of the action. But when he walked into the office that first day, I thought I could hear Corbin draw breath from across the room. Jay believed everything this Harry Schisser had to say. And once, when I corrected the little darling about a landing zone—he had been just a wrench jockey, a ground mechanic, after all—Corbin cut across me in his defense. Corbin took him to dinner, and afterwards he was talking about the little jerk as some kind of star witness. The boy sat at his right hand like a poodle.

The big surprise came when I had to call Corbin’s office to change the timing on an appointment. The call might have been picked up by his secretarial pool or an answering machine. It might even have been picked up by Corbin himself. But the voice on the other end was little Harry’s. And when he knew who was calling, I swear his voice changed from his normal demure to sassy-brassy bold, like he had aced me out or something.

For that alone, I was ready to render him for parts. But the heavy stuff came down three days later when I found him in Jay’s apartment, alone, in a silk bathrobe monogrammed with the familiar GJC, holding a pillowcase half full of silverware, desk accessories, and some crystal. I worked out the contents later, but right then all I could see was some sharp-angled bulges that did not look like feathers.

“Hey! I can explain!” Harry protested.

I threw him across the living room.

Up against the book case, he tried to take a stance, digging his toes into the thick carpeting. Before he could plant it, I kicked him twice, once in the balls and again higher, in the solar plexus. Neither was a crippling blow—just a light snap with my instep, a lion tamer. Harry screamed like a woman and went down clutching himself. He curled up on the floor like an infant or some kind of wounded snake.

I bent down and put my mouth close to his trembling ear. “Now listen to me, fellah. I am going to turn my back for three minutes. You are going to get up, take off that stupid bathrobe, put everything back where you found it, get your clothes on, pass a little inspection—with all your pockets turned out—and then get out of here. Go find yourself a bus back to wherever you came from. Can you remember all that, hey?”

He nodded, blinking back tears.

“Very good, soldier. Now march!” I nudged him with my shoe. Harry moved. And none of us ever saw him again. When he did not show at the law offices, there was not a word from Corbin, even though I was listening for it. The case went on without our “star witness.”

I soon figured out that Jay Corbin had a blind spot for beauty. He reacted strongly to people with pretty faces and bodies because he thought his own were not. He fell for people who were self-centered because that sort of self-absorption sometimes passes for confidence, which the young Corbin sometimes lacked. So he would close his eyes while the love of the moment climbed up on his or her pedestal. Corbin was always looking for a state of grace and beauty that was perfect and permanent. He never found it.

He had another weakness that I discovered during the investigations for the Beyer case. We were locking up the papers and tapes after a long day of depositions. Corbin was rolling on about the latest testimony.

“… clearly had the authority to order suppression of the Nicaraguan civilian population,” he was saying, “but not the destruction of public property. And if that compound
was
dioxin based, as those medical officers claim, then we have at least a violation of OAS environmental principles if not of the Contadora Con-con-con … vention … of eigh-eigh-eigh … ty-nine …”

Corbin’s voice stuttered out like an engine running down, dying at last in a hiccup. I looked across the work table after a minute to see if he had just lost his train of thought. His face was a blank, his jaw hanging down toward the knot in his tie. He had half-risen from his chair, then he threw it over backwards as he flopped down.

It took me perhaps four seconds to get around the cubicle and, by that time, the seizure was in full flood. I got my billfold out and jammed it into his mouth—I still have it today, with a perfect set of Jay Corbin’s canines and bicuspids cut into the leather.

His head, elbows, and heels were all bouncing in different rhythms on the carpet. To keep him from busting his skull, I grabbed him around the shoulders in a kind of wrestler’s pin and held his head up. Since then, I have read that holding him like this was most dangerous because it put pressure on his back muscles and could have injured his spine. I should have just put something soft under his head.

The spasms went on for about five minutes, and in that time he wetted himself. Eventually he went limp and stayed that way, almost a natural sleep, for about an hour. It took most of that time to clean him up, blotting his trousers with a paper towel as much as possible, then I just sat over him, watching and waiting.

When his eyes opened and focused, he looked at me with a great frown. “Did I forget what I was saying?”

“Yes.”

“Then the—uh—
grand mal?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“A few minutes.”

“Not getting any worse,” he said, mostly to himself. He started to sit up, discovered the damp stain in his pants. For an instant his face broke up like he was going to cry. Then his mouth firmed and he stood up, leaning heavily against a chair.

“Are there medicines—?” I asked slowly.

“There might be, if I were stupid enough to tell anyone about this.”

“Why not?”

“Because epileptics get dumped on. I could lose my job, my driver’s license, my freedom. … People would be watching me, waiting for me to flop over. It’s a misunderstood sickness and I will not have it.”

“Hunh!”

“Hunh! Right, Chief!” He spat the words at me. “Hunh!”

“I did not mean—”

He stared at me for an uncomfortably long time. “Can you keep this secret? Can I
trust
you?” His eyes bored into me and there was no weakness, no pleading in them.

“Yes, Jay, of course.”

“There isn’t any ‘of course’ about this. No matter what happens, no matter who asks, can you keep your mouth shut?”

“What if you die?”

“The seizures are messy and debilitating but not lethal. Can you keep shut about them?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” With that he turned and walked stiffly out of the workroom, back straight, limping slightly from a pulled muscle in his calf.

It took us six months to prepare the case on Beyer; a year more to get venue, go through discovery, pull a jury; two weeks of argument and two weeks of deliberations. And in all that time, I never saw another seizure. So they must have been pretty rare.

How did the Beyer case go? He was convicted of unauthorized use of dioxin compounds that endangered the lives of the soldiers assigned to him. The award was six hundred million, of which Knox, Schnock, Hughes & Thayer would keep forty percent—if and when. Because the case was on contingency, nothing would be paid until the appeals process was completed, and that was still pending three years later when Corbin disappeared into the mountains of Japan.

Of course, Corbin got his regular salary—maybe a hundred thou a year with all sorts of options. And I was paid, all told, about twenty-five thousand for my time. It kept me in room and firewater.

Those were rocky times, what with inflation heating up again and the transition to an “information economy” all over but the shouting. The only ones making out were the lawyers, it seemed, and even then Corbin barely had enough to get married on.

Oh, yes. A couple of months after our Harry split for Kansas City, Jay introduced me to his newest lady, Anne Caheris. She was a practical young woman with smiling gray eyes, a straight jaw, and a father in the U.S. Congress. I do not think she had any money of her own and Daddy still owed bundles from his last three campaigns. So she had to be the only woman Jay Corbin married for love.

He should have quit while he was ahead.

Chapter 7

Jay Corbin: Good For Nothing

Anne Caheris never lied to me. She said she wanted three things from our marriage—money, security, and children. So long as I could provide the first two and promise the third, she stayed with me.

I suppose Anne cared so much about money because of her father. William Caheris was living proof that not all politicians are crooks. He ran for the House three times and never was less than a hundred thousand in debt. He was a fine man and I respected him, but he never did figure out how to make a living by serving his country.

To her credit, Anne never asked me to help him out. What was ours was ours, and she was just thankful that inheritances didn’t work the other way.

So long as I stayed with Knox, Schnock, Hughes & Thayer, we had everything a young couple in San Francisco could want: a six-room apartment on the north side of Nob Hill with a view of the Gate; a Porsche 979 Eierförmig under valet parking; catered brunches, with confections from Just Desserts; morels in brandy six nights a week if we wanted them.

We were so flush and fat, I could even afford to finance my own dip into politics running on the ’96 ballot for the city’s Board of Supervisors. The voting was at-large, with four candidates for three seats.

That winter and spring, I went in succession to the Chinese New Year and ate smoked duck, to the Saint Patrick’s parade and drank green beer, to the Cherry Blossom Festival and sucked teriyaki chicken off a stick, and to Cinco de Mayo and packed away giant burritos. I gained fifteen pounds and shook half a million hands. I spoke at the Commonwealth Club on the Beyer case, which we were winning at the time. I bought time on Sunday morning radio talk shows and dittoed Beyer.

The issues of the day were a downtown sports arena (again!), children’s housing rights, and the city’s control of certain strips bordering the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. My issues were pass the salsa and get the man who poisoned Lake Managua.