Then hostilities will begin in earnest, partisan warfare, politics as blood sport, all that matters is that our side wins, at every level, all the marbles-executive, legislative, and judicial.
When it’s over, all the eminent talking heads will wax eloquent, telling us that now, with a new president elected, America and Americans, Democrat and Republican, will once again return to the great tradition of unity, binding up their differences to work together for the common good.
It might have sounded comforting coming from a network anchor a quarter of a century ago or more, but to hear it today is to wonder what weed the speaker is smoking and where he got it. In case you haven’t noticed, the toxin of partisan politics that was once trapped inside the asylum on the Potomac and bottled up in a few other political hot spots around the country has suddenly been pumped, undiluted, into the national vein.
Cable news, much of it political and almost all of that partisan; talk radio, some of it virulent; the graceless decline of network news, until it stood undisguised, naked and seemingly unashamed in its ideological partiality; and major metropolitan newspapers, too many of which have given up the ghost of objectivity in their reporting to become obvious and open house organs for political parties-these were the forces that pushed the plunger on the syringe.
Having been flushed from our lives of political indolence, we suddenly discover that it is no longer possible to cast a vote and run for the sidelines. So we choose up sides, pin on labels-conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican-and become emotionally invested in the only thing that is important: winning.
And of course the contest, as always, is all or nothing, a tug-of-war to see if we can rip the nation down the middle.
I watch the silent happy-warrior faces on the screen and wonder. In the age of e-mail and the Internet blogger, how long can we survive before those at the polar lunatic edges drag us all to a future where differences in politics and social ideology are settled Beirut style?
The phone rings. I reach over on the side table and answer it. It’s Harry.
“I didn’t call,” I say. “I didn’t think you’d be up yet.”
“Houston, we’ve got a problem,” says Harry. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” The line goes dead. Harry must be calling from his cell phone in the car.
We huddle over my kitchen table, and Harry tells me about the state’s two witnesses, Carl’s friends from skinhead heaven, Charlie Gross and Walter Henoch. Actually, the problem pertains to only one of them, but it’s big enough to go nuclear if we play it wrong.
The bad news came in a sealed envelope from the prosecutor that was delivered to our office yesterday afternoon. If Harry hadn’t gone back there, we wouldn’t have seen it until Monday morning.
Gross and Henoch were the two confidants that Carl decided to go backslapping with at a bar where the three of them entertained each other with funny stories of how they might drag Scarborough from his hotel room out to a shooting range in the desert and pin him to a target. They also discussed the ease with which they could kidnap Scarborough. All these alcohol-fueled plots and plans were of course facilitated by the fact that Carl worked at the hotel and presumably had access to the victim. The author had been kicking up dust his whole way across the country, and because racial discord was his theme, he’d drawn the attention of groups that Gross and Henoch ran with, in particular the Aryan Posse.
Ordinarily Harry would be digging for dirt on the two witnesses, Henoch and Gross, looking to see if they have criminal records or charges pending that the cops might have traded away to get their cooperation, their statements against our client.
Charlie Gross has a rap sheet showing three felony convictions in the last ten years. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that Walter Henoch has another first name. It is “Agent,” as in FBI. Henoch was in fact wired, and unless we can catch his secretary making typographical errors in the transcription of the tape, every word emanating from our client’s mouth during his meetings with Henoch is, as they say, gospel.
Harry and I both knew as soon as we saw the typed witness statements that it was highly likely that one of the two witnesses was wired for sound. We figured it was Henoch, because his signed statement reads like a screenplay, with everything but stage direction. We were hoping that at worst we might be dealing with a snitch, a member in good standing with the local Nazi club who was rolled by authorities and agreed to wear a wire. An FBI agent is another matter.
“It’s bad,” says Harry, “but there may still be some wiggle room.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it all night. I almost called you last evening, but I figured I would let you sleep.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” he says.
“So what’s your point?”
“The disclosure by Tuchio in the sealed envelope delivered late yesterday. Why do you think he waited so long?”
“I don’t know. Tell me.”
“Tuchio has to know we’re going to raise hell with the judge,” says Harry.
“You bet. First thing Monday morning,” I tell him.
“So why didn’t he lay it on us earlier?” says Harry. “We guessed there was a wire. He had to know there was an agent.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I don’t think Tuchio knew until very late in the game, maybe as late as yesterday, whether the FBI would cooperate.”
These are the kinds of tea leaves most people might try to read. Harry, it seems, can smell them.
“Think about it,” he says. “You’re the FBI. You got your man burrowed deep in the bowels of some hate group. He’s taken a lot of risks, and you’ve taken a lot of time and effort to get him there. Suddenly a local prosecutor, with a dead body in a hotel room, discovers some of the affiliations of his principal suspect.”
“Carl and the Aryan Posse,” I say.
Harry nods. “It wouldn’t be hard for a diligent prosecutor to find out that, say, a local state-federal task force had penetrated the group.”
“Go on.”
“Tuchio was throwing the dice. Can you imagine the smile on his face when he found out how lucky he was, that of all the people in the local chapter of the Third Reich, Walter Henoch had selected our boy Carl to take under his wing in the bar that day?”
“True enough,” I say.
If Tuchio was having any second thoughts about his rush to judgment in charging Arnsberg, Carl’s chat with Henoch and his enthusiasm for kidnapping and target-shooting at the victim would have eased his conscience.
“Hell,” says Harry, “I’m surprised after reading Henoch’s statement that Tuchio didn’t file a motion to skip the trial, go right to execution, and ask for an order shortening time.”
“But you’re thinking the FBI was not hot to trot?”
He’s shaking his head. “Murder isn’t a federal rap,” says Harry, “even if it takes place in the Presidential Suite of a five-star hotel. Their job is protecting their agent and making sure their investigation stays on track. So here they sit, the FBI and Tuchio, eyeball to eyeball. The feds have a tape and a transcript of three men talking, two possible witnesses. You can be sure they tried to feed Charlie Gross to Tuchio. They would have offered him the transcript of the tape and Gross’s testimony.”
“But the transcript wouldn’t come in,” I say.
“Right,” says Harry. “Because Gross couldn’t lay a foundation for it. He couldn’t testify as to the wire, because he wasn’t wearing it and he didn’t know about it. So if that became the deal, the best Tuchio could do was try to have Gross memorize what was in the transcript, vomit it up in court, and hope we didn’t find out about it. Or he could rely on Gross’s memory of the conversation in the bar. Of course, Gross was probably drunk that night, and being a three-time loser, you have to figure he’s likely to have the IQ of a paper clip.”