The Bride Wore Crimson and Other Stories (15 page)

Mrs. Kirkendall, Mr. Eggers and his daughters all describe his reaction as “stoic”—so stoic, in fact, that Mrs. Cook worries about him. “I think he's the kind of person who might be more hurt than he would ever let on,” she says. “He's going to hold his head up and go on, because that's the kind of person he is. But I think about him. I'm concerned. I don't want him to be sad.”

Financially, Mr. Tower isn't without help in picking up the pieces. Almost immediately after the Senate vote, Robert Maxwell called from London, offering him back the board positions at Brassey's, the
Armed Forces Journal
and Maxwell-Macmillan. He accepted them. And although the pressures of the past two years had forced Mr. Tower to abandon work on his scholarly book on foreign policy, he has signed a new contract with Little, Brown for another book on the same subject. He's at work on it now with his collaborator, Washington free-lance writer Kathy Maxa.

“It's going to deal with the struggle between the Congress and the executive branch on national security and foreign policy matters,” Mr. Tower says. “It'll go into congressional activism in the field, which pre-empts presidential prerogative or traditional authority in the area. But unlike the other book I was working on, it'll have a lot of anecdotal material in it. My own experience will be woven into the book, including the confirmation experience.

“In the post-World War II period, there was pretty much of a bipartisan approach to foreign policy—not just bipartisan in the sense of Republicans and Democrats, but bipartisan in the sense of legislative and executive. That began to deteriorate during the Vietnam War, and with the erosion of the seniority system and the loss of a sense of discipline in the Congress. The old saying was ‘Politics ends at the water's edge.' And back in my early days, in the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s, I was rarely critical publicly of the administration's foreign policy, even under a Democratic administration. But that's all changed now. And it's a dangerous change for the country.”

What should be done to correct it, he says, is “a long story, which we'll be writing.” The book is going well, he says. “My collaborator is very diligent.”

National security policy also is the topic of the speeches he makes to trade and professional associations, academic audiences and conclaves of corporate executives. Not long after the Senate vote, his agent, Joe Cosby, told a reporter that Mr. Tower was being paid $20,000 and up per appearance, but Mr. Tower says it isn't so. “My fee is pretty well fixed, and it's not that high,” he says. “I don't want to discuss it… I also do some pro bono speaking in addition to what I do or a fee.”

And perhaps more important for the long run, the firm of Tower, Eggers and Greene has been reincorporated and is open for business again. This time, however, there will be no full-time consulting arrangements with defense companies. “I just don't feel like I want to go back to that,” Mr. Tower says.

Mrs. Kirkendall, who has worked for Mr. Tower for 27 years, thinks the Senate hearings effected that decision. “He very strongly resisted any identity as a lobbyist,” she says. “He never wanted to be a promoter on behalf of his clients and their interests with the government. He knew his role to be as an adviser. But his motives were impugned. And to go back to doing the same thing now, even though he would still have honorable motives, would just be read wrong.”

The firm now, Mr. Tower says, is “largely in the business of marrying up investors with investment opportunities. And we're getting involved in some business opportunities that might give me a chance to gain some equity in something, instead of always working on a retainer basis.”

One of the industries in which the firm is becoming involved is communications satellites, Mr. Eggers says, but neither he nor Mr. Tower will reveal more than that. “The company will have varied interests,” Mr. Eggers says, “and John will now have something he's never had before—an interest in some assets that will make money for him, and someday for his children.”

The only thing Mr. Tower hasn't recovered since his Senate ordeal is his lectureship at SMU. Almost immediately after Mr. Tower went to Washington to join the Bush administration, the university gave the lectureship to Bob Krueger, the former Democratic congressman who in 1978 almost ousted Mr. Tower from the Senate and may have contributed to his decision to retire. “Bob has the reputation of being a very fine teacher,” Mr. Tower says.

Nevertheless, he plans still to lecture on foreign policy matters at SMU from time to time. And, since he's still a member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which monitors the government's intelligence operations and makes recommendations to President Bush on how to improve them, he's not entirely exiled from the corridors of power in Washington.

“I still have many friends in government. I'm still socially acceptable in Washington,” he says with a shadow of a smile. “And if some board or commission were created for some temporary purpose, something like the so-called Tower Commission, I might go back in that capacity. But for the time being—and for the foreseeable future—I'll be trying to build some business that will sustain me in my old age and give me something to pass on to my children. I want to help revive the economy of my state. I believe Texas and the Southwest are the wave of the future. Despite our recent travail over the decline of the price of crude, the decline in the value of commercial real estate and the accompanying decline of our financial institutions, Texas will come back.”

In Austin, a reporter asks Mr. Tower how old he is.

“Sixty-three,” he replies. “I don't look it, do I?”

He's joking, but the veteran pols talking about him in the corridor aren't. “He's still young,” one of them says. “I wouldn't be surprised if he ran again for something.”

“How about governor?” his friend says. “In 1990?”

Mr. Tower smiles at the suggestion. “There's enough good candidate material in the Republican Party that we are in the happy position of not having to recall and retread older politicians,” he says.

But he's home, and he intends to stay busy.

“Daddy isn't one to wallow in self-pity,” says his daughter Marian. “He just wants to put it behind him and live on. He's very strong.”

August 1989

A FAMILY NIGHTMARE

Of all the crimes of which a man can be accused, none is as slimy as sexual molestation of a child. So when one of my oldest friends sat across the table in a restaurant one morning and told me he had been accused of molesting his neighbor's little daughter… Of all the stories I've written during some 30 years of journalism, this one was the most difficult
.

I
N
THE
FRONT
PEW
OF
THE
COURTOOM,
THE
ACCUSER
—
BLOND,
NOT
quite four years old, pink ribbon in her hair, still clutching her doll and a bag of jelly beans—had fallen asleep in her father's lap. Beside them sat her mother and her grandmother and grandfather.

They had sat there nearly all the time since Judge Thomas Thorpe turned the case over to the jury at 11:07 a.m. on the fifth day of the trial, a Friday. Except for the intermittent comings and goings of bailiffs and clerks and lawyers concerned with other cases in the judge's court, the family was alone in the courtroom. From time to time, one of the adults would turn to another and say something in a low voice, but most of the time they were silent, gazing into the middle distance like parishioners who had arrived too early for a church service.

Just outside the courtroom, on a bench beside the door, the accused—slightly balding, just turned 40, wearing a suit that his wife had bought at a garage sale and a tie he had borrowed from his lawyer—was sleeping, too, sitting upright, tie still straight, coat still buttoned neatly.

About him buzzed the voices of a dozen or more relatives and friends—some from distant cities who had come to Dallas at their own expense to testify to his good character and reputation, some from his neighborhood who had taken off from work to be with his wife, Michele, and his mother, Thelma, when the verdict came in. Just under the surface of their casual words lay a dull edge of fear.

About 4 p.m., April 27, 1990, five hours after the jury had retired to reach its verdict, Darryl Hughes, a private detective who worked for the defense attorney, turned to me and whispered what nobody else in the corridor had dared say: “I don't like this. I'm getting a real bad feeling.”

On the afternoon of June 20, 1989, the day his nightmare would begin, James took his mother, who was visiting from out of town, to see the Sixth Floor, the exhibit about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. While they were gone, a stranger came to the house in North Oak Cliff where James and Michele live and work.

Michele, who was nursing her infant son when the stranger knocked, handed the child to the babysitter and answered the door. The stranger identified herself as Alice Umbach, a caseworker for the Texas Department of Human Services. She asked to talk to Michele in private. When they were alone, Ms. Umbach said: “Your husband has been charged with sexually molesting your neighbors' daughter, Sally.”

Sally is the three-year-old girl next door, the adopted daughter of Stephanie and Fred. Sally had been a frequent playmate of Michele and James' own four-year-old, Clara.

Ms. Umbach said Stephanie believed James had molested Clara, as well as Sally.

“That's not possible!” Michele said. “My husband would never do anything like that!”

“Where is your daughter?” Ms. Umbach asked.

Michele told her Clara was playing down the street.

“Well, I have to get a statement from her,” Ms. Umbach said, “or else I'm going to have to take her with me or have your husband leave the house.”

“She was real brusque,” Michele remembers. “She reminded me of, like, a bill collector.”

Michele agreed to go to the house where Clara was playing and bring her home. Ms. Umbach insisted on accompanying her. “At that time,” Ms. Umbach's report reads, “the mother seemed very, very upset, but more shocked than anything.”

They returned with the little girl, and, to be out of earshot of the babysitter in the house, they went to the second floor of the garage, where Michele and James—both of whom are professional artists—have separate studios.

“She talked to Clara in my studio,” Michele remembers, “and I went into James' studio. I closed the door. I couldn't hear what she was saying. I was so upset I could hardly catch my breath.”

Ms. Umbach reports it differently: “She was hovering very closely by, and kept walking by and poking her head into the room. I explained to Michele once again that I needed to talk to her daughter alone, but she seemed very hesitant to do so. It was very difficult to keep Clara's attention while Michele kept walking back and forth.

“Clara…seemed very fascinated with my purse. We started going through different items in my purse and me telling her what they were…. Every time I would try to get to the sexual abuse, she would quit talking, say she did not want to talk, or put her head down. I told her that I knew it was very difficult for her to talk about this, but that it was my job to talk to little girls like her and find out about these things so they wouldn't happen anymore. She still refused to discuss it.”

Michele, believing the caseworker was badgering her child, came back into the room. Ms. Umbach's report says, “I told her that Sally had already told the police and a child psychologist about the abuse, and although I had not had a chance to interview her myself, I felt very strongly that the child's statements were accurate.

“I then started to try to talk to Clara again,” the report says, “and Michele stated, ‘Go ahead, tell her that nobody has touched you like that.' I then decided that this was not going to work…. I told Michele that I realized she was very upset, but that she was hampering my investigation by insisting on being very nearby when I interviewed her child.”

At that point, James came up the stairs. He saw Michele's face and said, “What's wrong?”

Michele introduced him to Ms. Umbach. “Can you step in here?” Ms. Umbach asked. The four of them—including Clara—went into Michele's studio. Ms. Umbach shut the door. “You've been charged with sexually molesting your neighbors' daughter, Sally,” she told James.

“What?” James said. “Is this some kind of bad joke? I'll take a polygraph test!”

Ms. Umbach told James the crime against Sally had taken place in Clara's bedroom, with her also present, while Michele was taking a nap. “You put your finger in her vagina,” she said. “It was digital penetration.”

“She stated it like it was a fact,” James said later. “In a real intimidating kind of tone, a bullying kind of attitude. And Clara was standing there in shock.”

According to Michele, Ms. Umbach then looked at her and said, “I still need to get a statement from your daughter, or I am taking her with me. Maybe you can help me.”

The two women and Clara returned to James' studio. Michele took her daughter into her lap. Ms. Umbach asked Clara: “Has your papa ever touched you where you go tee-tee?”

“No,” Clara said. She laid her head on her mother's shoulder.

“Has your papa ever touched Sally where she goes tee-tee?” Ms. Umbach asked.

The child hid her face in Michele's shoulder. Then she got up and walked about the room, then came back to her mother's lap.

Michele repeated Ms. Umbach's question. “I asked her a couple more times, and so did Umbach,” Michele said later. “Finally, when I asked her again if Papa had touched Sally, she shook her head. No.”

Ms. Umbach told Michele that, based on her daughter's responses to the questions, she believed Clara had been sexually molested.