The Laws of our Fathers (63 page)

    We were making our way slowly down the strip. It was well

    past midnight by now and goodtime America was still thick along the broad walks, beneath the signs. Dolens lifted the radio microphone and told someone they had the subject on the lead out of San Francisco. The agent in back, Rudolph, pushed himself up so he faced me. There were spots of sweat visible on the front of his white rayon shirt. I hadn't run that far. I must have scared him, thinking he'd let me get away.

    'You don't got as many friends as you think you do, goodbuddy. Somebody dropped a dime on you. You understand? We didn't turn up just by accident. You oughta think about that.' He watched me to see what effect the information had. 'Did you know there was a grand-jury subpoena out for you?'

    'For me?'

    He grimaced to show he didn't appreciate my act. 'Agents in Frisco tried to serve you today.' He looked at his watch. 'Yesterday actually.'

    I vaguely recollected my instructions. Say nothing.

    'See, I think you must have known that, Mike. Otherwise I have a hard time figuring why you were skedaddling through that parking lot.'

    Rudolph wasn't particularly good-looking, a big guy with the close haircut that Hoover demanded - 'white sidewalls,' as they said. You could see the skin and the sweat at the sides of his head. His sideburns had crawled down past his ear, in an allowable concession to style. Assessing myself, I found I was not as fully terrified as I might have expected. The presence of the second agent relieved me a little bit. He had a sense of humor. I'd never heard of the FBI hitting. Local cops did it. Not the FBI.

    'Where am I going?' I asked.

    'Wait, Mike,' Rudolph said. 'Wait. Did you answer my question?'

    'He answered your question, Rudolph,' said Dolens. 'You just didn't like what he said.' Dolens was a smaller guy, very happy. Either he liked driving around, or having a prisoner, or giving it to Rudolph. He wore a cheap blue sport coat and a tie. 'We're

    taking you to the FBI Field Office, Mike. For processing.' 'Am I under arrest?' Neither of them answered at first.

    ‘I told you, Mike,' said Rudolph. 'There's a subpoena out.'

    None of us said anything for a while. Dolens had turned the radio down after calling in, and at this hour there was little broadcast: sleepy voices and static. Eventually, we turned into a hulking squarish structure. By now we had left the land of glitz. It was just a Western downtown, the buildings sprawling rather than rising in this region where land was cheap. From the shapes, it all looked to have been constructed in the last few years. At the bottom of a subterranean driveway, Dolens hung out the window and inserted a key card. A segmented metal door rose with much creaking. I thought of a mouth opening, of Jonah and the Whale, a story which had paralyzed me with fright as a child. They parked and walked me through a maze of concrete corridors.

    'Is this the record case?' Dolens asked. 'The guy who was duping records?'

    'No, no. This is a possible UFAP.' Yew Fap.

    'Christ, I got it mixed up. That's why I was calling him Frank Zappa. What's the violation?'

    'Nine twenty-one,' said Rudolph.

    'Christ,' he said. 'Kid just looks like a hippie.'

    The lights were out when we got off the elevator. We were in a small carpeted reception room, furnished with a few cheap chairs. On a wall before me, I recognized the crest of the FBI, an eagle screaming, with the banner of justice in its talons. It surprised me to find that their office closed for the night. I would have imagined this as a twenty-four-hour operation, men in grey suits and glasses who never slept. Rudolph seemed more like a gym teacher. One of them hit some lights and they pushed me through another door.

    Down the corridor was a horrible government room - grey asbestos floor tile, with those grained flecks of white and black and blue so that the grime of daily use didn't show, and ranks of green metal desks topped in Formica and stewing under painful fluorescence. There was not a thing that anyone could consider beautiful, except an American flag in the remote corner. Photos of Richard Nixon and his Attorney General, John Mitchell, hung askew on one of the sheet-metal partitions. Rudolph's desk was in the middle of the room.

    'Have a seat here, bub. Michael. Okay. Let's see what Frisco says. Biddie-bee, biddie-bum,' he said as he read to himself. 'Okay. Okay. "Expected to arrive Eden's Garden Spa, approximately 23:00 hours PST." That part was right, wasn't it?' He smiled. 'City by the Bay,' he said. 'Great place. That was my OP, Office of Preference. Only then my wife got rheumatoid arthritis. So here I am. Life can turn out strange, can't it? Where you live out there, Mike?'

    He was shuffling the few papers on his desk, but I knew it wasn't an innocent question.

    'Damon,' I said.

    'Girls with no bras. Must get kind of distracting.' I dipped a shoulder. Us guys.

    'Whatta you have to do with that bombing, Mike?' He plunged the full weight of his meaty face onto his hand as he considered me.

    I wasn't speaking. Whatever little lick of terror was left in me, after the depletion of my adrenal systems, flitted across my thorax. Rudolph had light eyes, a feature that seemed somewhat disarming.

    ' "What bomb?" Right? That lab where you work blew up four days ago. Did you know that? Or were you out of town for that, too?'

    I murmured that I knew about it.

    'What?'

    ‘I said, "I know." '

    'Oh. Just wanted to be sure. Well, here's what it is, Mike. Guys in Frisco think headquarters ought to get a look at your prints. Cause if they match anything we got on any of those little bitty

    pieces of what went boom, your ass is grass, and I'm not referring to anything you smoke. Follow me?' 'Yes, sir.'

    'See now, my guess - I been doing this sixteen years next month, and I've gotten to be a pretty good guesser -1 think you may have taken flight when you heard about that subpoena. I think you think your fingerprints are all over that device. I think you smuggled in the pieces. That's what Frisco thinks.' He held the paper he'd read from beside his face.

    'No, sir,' I said.

    'Will you take a lie detector?'

    I shrugged, as if I didn't care. I knew I should ask for a lawyer. That or shut up. But I had the feeling I was doing all right.

    'What are you doing out here, Mike?'

    I shrugged again. Rudolph sighed in manifest disgust and looked down to an open space on his desk where there was absolutely nothing to see.

    'What's the subpoena for?' I asked.

    'Told you. Grand jury wants to see your fingerprints, Mike.'

    'You can subpoena somebody's fingerprints?' ' Yessiree, Bob. There's one with your name on it. You go back to Frisco, you'll get a chance to see it.' 'Do I have to go along with it?'

    'I'm not your lawyer, Mike. Far as I know, you gotta go along with it' He let his guard down a little. 'Some Commie took it to the Supreme Court years ago and they said you gotta.' He read the paper again. We were the only people in this vast area. Across the way, there was a large interior window revealing a brightly lit room banked with radios and electrical equipment. An older blond woman was speaking disinterestedly into a microphone suspended a few feet before her. She caught me staring at her and looked me off with malevolence.

    Rudolph was laughing. He had picked up another piece of paper, a yellow pulpy sheet ragged at the bottom.

    'Know who finked on you? I love this. Guess.' I decided not to oblige him. I realized by now I was getting the treatment. 'Your mom.' I didn't answer.

    'Yep. Good old Mom. Apparently one of your neighbors reached her after the agents came out. Mom was real upset. Agent here in his teletype says he cut a deal with her. She tells us where you are, we take your prints. You clear, you go. You don't' - he lifted a hand - 'you don't. Standard deal,' he said. The greenish eyes lingered again, trying to measure my pain. 'Don't be mad at Mom. Sounds to me like she tried to bring you up right.'

    Michael's mom was buried in Idaho. I was getting the entire picture now.

    'So here's the deal, Mike. You wanna do like Mom said? Gimme your prints and see if we can clear this right now? Or you wanna go back to Frisco and face the music there?'

    'You mean I can just go back to San Francisco?'

    'No. Not exactly. Look, here's what I'm saying. You gimme your prints right here, I'll send them to DC. See what comes out in the wash. Maybe it all straightens itself out. Otherwise, I'm gonna wake up an Assistant US Attorney and tell him how you decided to play Bob Hayes in that parking lot and that I think I oughta arrest you. Unlawful flight. Then I'll take your prints anyway. You'll probably get bail within a couple days. Clark County jail isn't too bad at all.' He scratched his cheek as he watched me, without blinking.

    'You're telling me I have no choice?'

    'You make your own bed, bub. Can give Mom a call if you like.'

    'What if I want a lawyer?' He took a while with that.

    'Do what you want. You play your card, I'll play mine. You call your lawyer, I call mine. That's the AUSA. You'll have to go to jail overnight. I'm being straight with you, Mike. Believe

    it or not. This is just how it is. You're three times seven. You figure it out.'

    I thought with some meager confidence about calling my parents for bail money. Then I realized everything that meant - what I'd have to tell them and maybe the FBI - and I felt my soul sink. I continued trying to deliberate, but I got nowhere. Eddgar had calculated all of this coolly, perfectly, shifting the chess pieces eight and nine moves ahead. I seemed to be able to get no further than gut instinct. All I wanted to know was what he'd been thinking. But his intentions, as ever, were unfathomable to me.

    Rudolph took me to another area, a smaller room, more government issue, white walls and grey filing cabinets, to do the printing. He got a blue card and made me sign it. Michael hand-lettered his signature - he said he'd decided as a child that he didn't want to have a name he couldn't actually read, an early manifestation to my mind of the kind of pure-minded logic he always followed. I did my best imitation, then Rudolph inked my fingers with a stamp pad and rolled them across. He bore down on each digit somewhat painfully. One finger smudged and he threw the card out and started again. When we were done with that, he inked each palm and made me press them to the bottom of the card. He took me to the John, so I could wash my hands, then I followed him back to his desk, where he began to fill out papers. He spoke to me as he worked.

    'Frisco says you live in the same apartment building with the chief suspect. Isn't that a funny coincidence?'

    'A lot of people live in that building.'

    'Didn't think anybody'd notice, I bet. Six hundred employees. Lots of names. Lots of suspects. Computers, you know. Great things. Pigs aren't always as dumb as you guys think.' He'd looked up again, the way he'd been doing, stabbing a little and hoping to see me bleed. 'Funny thing,' he said. 'All you great revolutionary heroes ain't so great or revolutionary when you see the inside of a cell.' Cleveland had rolled over. I knew what that meant. He'd rolled over and pointed at a white guy. Rudolph grinned, big as the Cheshire. This was one of the parts of his job he really liked - you could see that much.

    After he finished his paperwork, he explained the next step. The pouch would go to DC on the first plane out in the morning. He would send a teletype ahead. If I was lucky, they'd do the comparison before the end of the day.

    'We got a cot room, Mike, if you want to try to close your eyes.'

    'You mean I have to hang around here?'

    'Well, look who's surprised. If you were me, son, and we'd begun our acquaintance - let's call it that - with you chasing me through a parking lot, would you be lettin go of my tail feathers so fast? I think not.'

    'You said I wasn't busted.'

    'Look, Mike. We can do this your way, or we can do this my way. I thought we already had this discussion. Didn't we? Now you get some rest. And maybe if you're lucky, this'll work out.'

    The cot room, so called, was really a closet. I lay there, on a coarse blanket fitted over a narrow army cot which betrayed every spring. I felt lost in my life. To my amazement, I fell into an enduring sleep, broken only by dreams of a man in a long dark coat. I thought it might be my father. Perhaps it was Eddgar. When I awoke, the vast room, formerly empty, was full. Purposeful people slipped back and forth, gossiping with each other. Phones pealed randomly, ten, twelve rings, often unanswered. A few men walked about in white shirts without their jackets. They were wearing pistols, shiny chrome most of them, peeking out from worn leather shoulder holsters. I could have gotten shot last night, I thought. That was what Rudolph had said.

    A woman in her fifties was typing near where I stood. 'Coffee's over there if you like. Just feed the kitty.'

    There were vending machines next to the pot. I bought cigarettes to have something to do and a package of Twinkies for food.

    'You Rudolph's?' A man stood in the doorway. I'd just shoved a snack cake whole into my mouth and I could only nod. 'He said to tell you that he'd be back around 5:00 to figure out where you stand. He left some money to get you something to eat. Hamburger okay?' It was about 9:30 according to a clock I had seen.

    I spent the day there in what was called the witness interview room, a small, plastered space without a window. There was a 13-inch TV, a black-and-white, with a cream-colored chassis coated in grime. One of the rabbit ears was broken and mended with a fantail of aluminum foil. I watched soaps until I finally found someone's discarded newspaper in the John. I was stupefied by the headline: 'kent state students killed by us troops. Nine Others Wounded.' National Guardsmen at Kent State University in Ohio had opened fire on unarmed student protesters. The Guardsmen claimed they had heard sniper fire. The war had come home.