Ordinary Heroes (12 page)

Yet none of that mattered once he started talking. Leach's voice wobbled, just like his long hands on which the fingers were knobbed from arthritis, but his mind moved along quickly. He remained fully connected to this world. To say Barrington Leach still took great joy in life would be not only hackneyed, but probably inaccurate. The Justice's wife and his only child, a daughter, were both dead of breast cancer. His three adult grandkids lived in California, where they had been raised, and he had resisted their heartsore efforts to move him from Hartford. As a result he was largely alone here, and he suffered from Parkinson's, among several othe
r a
ilments. I doubt he found life either comfortable or amusing most of the time.

But none of this inhibited his intense curiosity about human beings. He was a gentle wit, and full of a generous acceptance for people's foibles as well as reverent wonder at our triumphs. I come easily to envy, but with Barrington Leach, when I mused, as I always did, about why I couldn't be more like him, it was with pure admiration. He was inspiring.

My first order of business with Leach was to set the record straight, not about my mother and sister, naturally, but rather about what to call me. He had written to me as "Mr. Dubin," but in 1970, I had reverted to the name my grandfather had brought from Russia and have been known as Stewart Dubinsky throughout my adult life. The story of that change, too involved to repeat here now, made a fairly poignant introduction to my relations with my father. Leach asked several searching questions before going on to inquiries about my work, my parents, and the course of my father's life. He was so precise, and cautious in a way, that I feared at first that he knew I'd lied about Mom, but it turned out he had something else in mind.

"You know, Stewart, I think you mean to honor your father's memory, but I would be remiss if I didn't issue a caveat. If you go forward, you could very well discover things that a loyal son might no
t e
njoy finding out. I've always believed there is great wisdom in the saying that one must be careful what to wish for."

I assured him I had reflected about this. After hanging around courtrooms for a couple of decades, I knew that the odds were that my father had been convicted of a serious crime for a reason.

"Well, that's a good start," Leach said. "But the particulars are always worse than the general idea. And that assumes you even have a general idea. You may find, Stewart, you've been running headlong with blinders."

I told him I was resolute. Whatever happened, I wanted to know.

"Well, that's one problem," said Leach.

"What are the others, Justice?"

"Bear' is fine." I was never sure if the nickname had to do with his physique as a young man--he was anything but bearlike now--or, more likely, was merely a convenient shortening of his given name, adopted in an era when being 'Bare' would have been too risque. "I confess that I've spent quite a bit of time, Stewart, since you contacted me, wondering what call I have to tell you any of this. I feel a good deal of fondness for David, even today. He was a fine young man, articulate, thoughtful. And it was his wish not to speak about this with anyone, a wish he apparently maintained throughout his life.

Furthermore, wholly aside from personal loyalties, I was his attorney, bound by law to keep his secrets.

"On the other hand, I have things of your father's, Stewart, a document of his, as I've mentioned, that belongs to you as his heir. I have no right to withhold it from you, and therefore, as to the matters disclosed there, I believe I am free to speak. That, at any rate, will be my defense when the disbarment proceedings begin." He had a prominent cataract in one eye, large enough to be clearly visible, but it could not obscure the light that always arose there with a joke. "But you and I must reach an understanding to start. I can't go beyond the compass of what's written. You'll find me able to answer most of your questions, but not all. Understood?"

I readily agreed. We both took a breath then before I asked what seemed like the logical first question, how Leach had been assigned my father's case.

"It was roundabout," he answered. "Throughout the war, I had been in the sanctuary of Eisenhower's headquarters, first in Bushy Park outside London, and then later in 1944 at Versailles. These days, I'd be referred to as a 'policy maker.' I had been the District Attorney here in Hartford and certainly knew my way around a courtroom, but my exposure to court-martials was limited to reviewing a few trial records that came up to Eisenhower for final decision, hanging cases most of them. However, your father's commanding officer, Halley Maples, knew my older brother at Princeton, and Maples made a personal appeal to my superiors to appoint me as defense counsel. I had very little choice, not that I ever regretted it, although your father as a client came with his share of challenges." That remark was punctuated with a craggy laugh.

At ninety-six, Bear Leach had been what we call an old man for a long time, at least twenty years, and he had grown practiced with some of the privileges and demands of age. He had been asked about his memories of one thing or another so often that, as I sometimes joked with him, his memoirs were essentially composed in his head. He spoke in flowing paragraphs. As we grew friendlier over the next several months, I brought him a tape recorder in the hope he would use it to preserve prominent stories of his life. But he was too humble to think he'd been much more than a minor figure, and the project didn't interest him. He was, as he always said, a trial lawyer. He preferred a live audience, which I was only too happy to provide.

"It was late April 1945 when I first came to Regensburg, Germany, to meet your father. Officers facing court-martial were traditionally held under house arrest pending trial, and your father was in the Regensburg Castle, where the Third Army was now permanently headquartered. This was a massive Schloss occupied for centuries by the Thurn and
Taxis family, a palace as Americans think of palaces, occupying several city blocks. Its interior was somewhat baroque, with pillars of colored marble, Roman arches with lovely inlaid mosaics, and classical statuary. I walked nearly twenty minutes through the castle before getting to your father, who was restricted to a suite the size of this sitting room, perhaps larger, and full of marvelous antiques. In this splendor your father was going to remain jailed until the Army got around to shooting him. If you have a taste for irony, you can't do better than the United States military, let me tell you that." Leach smiled then in his way, a gesture restricted by age and disease, so that his jaw slid to the side.

"Your father was an impeccable man, nearly six feet as I recall, and the very image of an officer and a gentleman. He had a perfectly trimmed line mustache above his lip, like the film star William Powell, whom he resembled. From my initial sight of him, the notion that David Dubin had actually engaged in any willful disobedience of his orders, as was charged, seemed preposterous. But establishing that proved one of the most difficult propositions of my career.

"Because?"

"Because the man insisted on pleading guilty. Nothing unusual in that, of course. There are persons charged with crimes who understand they've done wrong. But your father would not explain anythin
g b
eyond that. Any questions about the events leading up to his apparent decision to release Major Martin were met only with his declaration that it served no point to elaborate. He was very courteous about it, but absolutely adamant. It was a bit like representing Bartleby the Scrivener, except your father said solely 'I am guilty,' rather than 'I would prefer not to,' in response to any request for more information. I was forced to investigate the matter entirely without his cooperation. I learned quite a bit about your father's wartime experiences, but next to nothing about what had gone on between Martin and him.

"Eventually, I had an inspiration and suggested to your father that if what had transpired was so difficult to speak about, he at least ought to make an effort to write it all down, while matters were fresh. If he chose not to show the resulting document to me, so be it, but in the event he changed his mind, I would have a convenient means of briefing myself. He did not warm to the proposal when I made it, but, of course, he had little to do with his days. He enjoyed reading--he soon had me bringing him novels by the armful--but I took it that he, like many other soldiers, had been an inveterate writer of letters and that that outlet was no longer very rewarding for him. As I recollect, he had disappointed his fiancee, and had then horrified his family with the news of his current predicament. Apparently, producing a written account of what had led t
o t
hese charges provided an agreeable substitute, and after his initial reluctance, he took up the task with ardor. Whenever I visited him in quarters he was chopping away on a little Remington typewriting machine which sat on a Louis XIV desk, yet another priceless antique, that wobbled with his pounding. About a month along, during a visit, I pointed to the sheaf of pages stacked at his elbow. It was over an inch by now.

"That's getting to be quite a magnum opus,' I said. 'Are you considering showing any of it to me?' I had been waiting for him to reveal the material in his own time, but with the hearing coming closer, I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to assimilate what clearly was turning into an imposing volume, especially if it opened up new avenues for investigation.

"Some days I think yes, Colonel,' he said to me, `and some days I think no.'

"And why "no"?'

"I don't believe it's going to help me.'

"Because I'd think poorly of you? Or accept your judgment of your guilt? You know well enough, Dubin, that nothing would prevent me from making a defense for you.' .

"I do. Reading this, Colonel, might satisfy your curiosity. And it will prove I'm right to plead guilty. But it won't change the result. Or make things any easier for you. More the opposite.'

"In weaker moments, I sometimes considered sneaking in and stealing the pages, but he was right that it was his ship to sink. But I kept after him about letting me see it. Each time he seemed to give full consideration to my points, and then, after due reflection, rejected them. And so we went to trial. David tendered a plea of guilty at the start. The trial judge advocate, the prosecutor, had agreed to drop the most serious charge in exchange, but he still went on to prove his case, which was commonplace in serious court-martials. This, of course, was a decided contrast to the usual criminal matter, where a guilty plea avoids a trial, and I couldn't quite accommodate myself to the difference. I cross-examined with a fury, because none of the accounts were consistent in any way with a soldier who would willfully abandon his duties. Very often, I retired for the night, thinking how well I had done, only to recall that my client had already conceded the validity of the charges.

"The Manual for Courts-Martial at that time--and now, for all I know--gave the accused the right to make an uncross-examined statement to the panel, immediately preceding closing arguments. The night before the hearing came to an end, I made my last effort to get your father to share his written account, urging him to consider submitting his memoir, or portions of it, to the court. My heart leaped when he came to the proceedings the nex
t m
orning with what I judged to be the manuscript under his arm in two portfolios, but he kept them to himself. He made a brief statement to the court, saying simply that in releasing Martin he had meant no harm to the United States, whose service remained the greatest honor of his life. Only when the evidence was closed did he turn the folders over to me. It was meant as a generosity on his part, I think, to repay me for my efforts on his behalf, so that I could accept the result with peace of mind. He told me to read it all, if that was what I liked, and when I was done to return it to him. He said forthrightly that he was then going to set fire to the whole thing.

"Even at that stage, I remained hopeful that I'd find something recorded there that I might use to reopen the case. The court was recessed on Sunday. I spent the whole day reading, morning to night, and finished only instants before I arrived for court at eight a
. M
. on Monday,"

"And what did it say?" I was like a child listening to campfire tales, who wanted only to know what children always do: the end of the story.

Bear gave a dry laugh in response.

"Well, Stewart, there aren't many tales worth telling that can be boiled down to a sentence or two, are there?"

"But did you use it?"

Most assuredly not."

"Because?"

"Because your father was right. He was a good lawyer. A very good lawyer. And his judgment was correct. If the court-martial members knew the whole tale, it would only have made matters worse. Possibly far worse."

"How so?"

"There were many complications," he said, many concerns. As I say, I was fond of your father. That's not just prattle. But a trial lawyer learns to be cold-blooded about the facts. And I looked at this as trial lawyers do, the best case that could be made and the worst, and I realized that nothing good was going to come from revealing this to the court. Your father's cause, in fact, could have been gravely prejudiced."

"You're not being very specific, Justice. What was so bad?"

Bear Leach, not often short of words, took a second to fiddle with his vintage necktie, swinging like a pendant from the collar of his old shirt, which, these days, gapped a good two inches from his wattled neck.