The Company You Keep (33 page)

“Uh-huh. Lots of people feel that way.”

“Doesn’t stop you, though?”

An inauspicious start to the conversation, I thought, resisting the
urge to look at my watch and changing the subject as quickly as I could. “Not at all. I commune with the ghosts of the fifties. So, have you seen my father again?”

He answered quickly, agreeably, although there was something in his eye that made me think he had caught my boredom. “Yeah, we caught a Tigers game last night. Tonight we’re playing poker. He asked me to call him Dad, isn’t that sweet? And you?”

“Nope.” He was an interesting, if not exactly agreeable-looking, person: badly shaven, with full, expressive lips and black eyes. “He’s coming to town tomorrow. For the night.”

“Oh.” His full lips smiled happily and, somehow, easily. “Great. What time?”

“What time what?”

“Dinner. What can I bring?”

I smiled now too—really, he was too ridiculous. “Nothing. Including yourself. You are so uninvited, I can’t tell you.”

“But why, Beck? Dad and I are probably going to be meeting to shoot some stick after dinner, anyways.”

Beck. Only my parents call me Beck. “He doesn’t want to see
you.
Why do you think he’s ducking your calls?”

“Boy.” His smile faded, as if he were really hurt, and yet his black eyes remained steadily trained on mine, observant, expressive. “I’m not angry, you know. Just very, very hurt. Now look.”

“Uh-huh.”

He looked around the place, no doubt observing that the single waitress, a blond adolescent girl, was ignoring us, and lit a cigarette with his outsize hands. Then he leaned forward to me. “It’s ridiculous to call Sharon Solarz and Jason Sinai murderers. Sharon and Jason drove the getaway car. They were twenty-four and never dreamed ex-Special Forces Vincent Dellesandro would use his gun.”

Apparently we were on to a new part of the conversation: he was referring to the
Michigan Daily
editorial I’d written the week before, in which I argued that Solarz should serve the maximum term possible for the Bank of Michigan robbery. Okay. I can adapt, I was thinking, and I gave him a stern look.

“Oh, nonsense. A guard with a wife and two children was killed at B of M, and in this country, we punish murderers equally, whether they’re the perpetrator or the accessory. Anything else is an excuse. A liberal, paranoid, nonsensical excuse.”

While I talked, I watched his mouth, of which the wide lips, which were very red, seemed to be forming words of response even before I finished. And in fact he hardly let me finish.

“I agree, it’s no excuse. But that’s not the point. Four students were killed by the National Guard at Kent State—four
Americans
on
state
ground exercising the constitutional right to free speech, by the National
Guard.
But no one was punished for that.”

“So what? That excuses the murder, in cold blood, of a bank guard?”

“No, no, of course not. The question is, why are some murders legal if all of them are wrong?”

I was thinking, what a jerk, and perhaps I let some of that tone into my voice. “Listen, democracy’s imperfect, we all know that. Don’t give me a bunch of garbage about Vietnam. My father was nearly killed in Vietnam, and anything he did there he was required to do by the United States Army and its commander in chief. You call soldiers murderers? That’s ridiculous. I know dozens and dozens of vets, and they’re just like anyone else in this country, only they were called on to kill, and they did it. As for those kids in the National Guard who screwed up at Kent State, you think they’re proud of it? There was a civil war in this country: what’s amazing is that there were so few screwups and so few casualties.”

And now, to my dismay, he smiled, and I realized that I had just been baited. Quietly now, in a calm, very reasonable tone, as if speaking to a child, he answered. “Well, that’s my point. Jason Sinai’s mistakes had a context. He’s not proud of his past either, I’m guessing. But the context is a meaningful part of his punishment. When Clinton pardoned the Puerto Rican terrorists from the FALN, that had a context in the bombing of Vieques—same thing when Clinton let Sylvia Baraldini go to apologize for his air force cutting down an Italian ski lift. I mean, Sylvia Baraldini was convicted in the Brinks robbery, just like Kathy Boudin. But Clinton needed to appease the Italians, and so she got out, while Boudin stays in. Even Ford’s pardon of your hero Nixon had a context. I
mean, you don’t believe in the pardoning of criminal misconduct on the part of government officials, do you? But I think we all agree that there was no point in sending Nixon to jail. Please let me finish.”

This last part was in response to my trying to interrupt. When I stopped—trying to interrupt, that is, although I was more than a little outraged—he went on, enunciating clearly.

“When those…those
children
robbed the Bank of Michigan, the context was that it seemed to a great many reasonable people in this country that a real, genuine coup was going on, a coup against the Constitution by the Nixon White House. Such gross illegality was going on at the highest levels of our government that the president had to resign over it to avoid being impeached. This country was at war with itself. I’m not saying they were right to rob the bank. They were, in fact, wrong. That’s a given. But that war’s never ended, it’s just gotten deeper and more bitter.”

This time, when he finished, I thought before I answered. “So we were at war. Great. Then the murder of that cop was a war crime, a crime against humanity.”

He nodded now, letting a thick shock of brown bangs fall over one eye, then brushing it back. Pleased with himself. “That’s exactly what I think. Our law doesn’t account for war crimes. South Africa has a Truth and Reconciliation Council; Argentina has the same. For God’s sakes, after World War II we even reconstructed our enemies’ countries. But Nixon only ended the war in Vietnam—the war
over
Vietnam’s still going on. Clinton and Gingrich are fighting it today, Gore and W are going to fight it next election! Nothing in our constitutional law encompasses the idea of reconciliation: we are a country adamantly opposed to ourselves.”

“Listen.” I sat back now, and nodded. “I understand what you’re saying. It’s interesting, it’s perceptive, it’s maybe even true. But to go from there to defending Jason Sinai and his crew is a leap you’re not going to get anyone to make.”

He too lowered his tone. “I’m not defending him. If Sinai’s complicit in manslaughter, he should be convicted. Then he should be pardoned in the name of national reconciliation. We don’t call soldiers murderers, fine. But William Calley served
three years
for murdering a village full of
women and children at My Lai. All I ask is that we pardon someone who made a mistake in the context of what we now understand was a patriotic duty to fight against the war in Vietnam. Calley served three years? Between Kathy Boudin, David Gilbert, and Judy Clark—I’m speaking only about accessories, now, the helpers, not the shooters—you know how much time’s been served for the Brinks Robbery?
Sixty years.
Hard state time in maximum-security prisons, and no one expects any paroles to be handed out, ever. What should Solarz and Sinai get for driving the getaway car in a misguided robbery gone wrong? What should Mimi Lurie get for participating in it? How about double Calley’s sentence? Would you be happy with that, counselor? How about six years apiece?”

2.

Now apparently Ben had been foolish to think that his smoking would go unnoticed, because it was during this last speech that a man came out of the kitchen and suggested that we leave, immediately. But such was the heat of our discussion that neither of us really paid any attention. We walked together out of the café back into the light of the afternoon, me holding my books to my chest—I was wearing a tank top and a short cotton skirt—and he fell into step beside me, his head exactly at the level of mine. For a time we argued on. And only after some time did the conversation fall to a more normal decibel level.

“So, what’s your dad think of this Jason Sinai thing?”

“Thinks it’s a pain in the ass. I think,” I answered absently, because something was beginning to disturb me.

“They gonna catch him?”

“If Sinai’s stupid enough to come to Michigan, they are.”

“Uh-huh. Not that they have any great track record, of course.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I was unwilling to go on in this vein; strangely unwilling. “Hey, mind if I don’t defend the whole FBI this afternoon?”

He didn’t answer, walking next to me with his big hands clasped behind his back and his head bent down toward the pavement. Finally, I asked, “And you? What do you think?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t even know who Jim Grant was till I figured it out.”

“Then why did you help the FBI out?”

He looked at me now, surprised. “Because I’m a reporter. And he’s a criminal.”

“A criminal you sympathize with.”

“Hey, don’t simplify. I’m just talking. I don’t sympathize with anybody.”

We were at the door of the diner where I worked now, so I stopped and turned to face him. We were almost exactly the same height. And I still felt disturbed—enough so that I was willing to put an end to this relationship before it started. I spoke without the hint of a smile.

“You know, Ben, you don’t fool me with all your East Coast liberal bullshit. This isn’t about the war in Vietnam, for God’s sake. It’s about a bank robbery, a shooting, and a dead cop. A quarter century of evading the law. Oh, and then that finicky legal issue about being an accessory to a crime carrying all the weight of being the primary perpetrator. I’m just a country girl, I guess, ’cause it’s all so simple to me. You can romanticize the left all you want. It’s still a bunch of damn criminals.”

He answered me with the same seriousness. “Think so? Me, I think the left can use a little romance, after the beating they’ve taken the last twenty years. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you the cosmopolitan, liberal, Jew perspective on it tonight, over dinner.”

“No, you won’t.” We were standing face-to-face, talking quickly, now.

“And why not?”

“Because I work tonight.”

“After work then.”

“After work I have a date.”

“I see. The bozo?”

“The bozo.”

“Okay, then, we’re on. You cancel the bozo, and I’ll defend Jason Sinai, Mimi Lurie, and Sharon Solarz against the charge of accessory to murder. And I’ll throw in Kathy Boudin, David Gilbert, and Susan Rosenberg too.”

And suddenly the root of my discomfort crystallized for me. The
problem was, do you know how many people in 1996 had any idea who Susan Rosenberg was? Robert Bruner didn’t. None of my friends did. In fact, outside Jed Lewis and my parents, I doubted there was a single person I knew who did.

But this guy—this funny-looking guy with his full lips and big hands, staring straight across a few inches of space into my eyes—he did.

I answered more slowly this time. “No. Tonight’s out. And my dad’s in town tomorrow. Friday night. I get off work at ten. I’ll meet you at the Del Rio. Now tell me, where are you staying?”

He answered without a beat. “Me? Good God, you move fast, Beck. Gimme an hour, I’ll run out and get a waterbed, a Lionel Richie CD, and a gram of cocaine.”

I put on a patient voice, now—the kind you use for children. “You do that, Ben. I, meanwhile, will go to work, and then out with Robert Bruner.”

“And meet me after up at my hotel? The bottle of Grand Marnier’s a given, don’t worry.”

This time, to my slight surprise, I found myself poking him in the chest with my forefinger. “Friday. And don’t let me see you before then. Is that clear?”

For a moment we watched each other. And then, with what I can only describe as a grin, he turned on a heel and walked away.

3.

So, as for Ben, I don’t know what he did for the next few days. I admit, at the time, I was kind of conscious of him, at a distance, waiting to see me again. I didn’t give it much thought. My attitude was, maybe he’d disappear, which would simplify my life.

As for me, when later that night I met Rob—the squash team Rhodes scholar bozo—for drinks, I found myself pretty attentive. I watched him carefully over the little table in the Del: his amazingly handsome face with its evening shadow over the jaw; his strong neck with its tanned, warm skin; his beautiful hands gesturing as he spoke, with passion,
about the job he was going to take in the Justice Department. I watched him and thought about the fact that we had known each other most of our lives, he a few years ahead of me in school, our parents friends. It was when he came back from Oxford in the early spring that, for him, I’d become something other than a local girl. Watching him, I tried to remember when that change had occurred, and whether he knew, then, that I was also about to become an FBI agent with every reason to expect her career to take her high up into the administration, a powerful wife for a Washington insider lawyer. When we stood to go, I looked at the pure solidity of his chest and shoulders, just like my father, and when, on the sidewalk outside my house in the summer night he kissed me, I felt that strength as if pierced right through my breast to a spot in my back just below my shoulder blades. I gently stepped back, and for a moment, although I did not know it, a great deal of my life balanced. Then I said good night, quickly, and walked into my house alone. Not pronouncing to myself why I had just done what I had just done.

Of secondary importance to me, but much more, I suppose, central to our business at hand, was the next evening, which I spent with my Dad.

Daddy, as is usual when he has business downstate, stayed with me, and as usual, I cooked for him—my father does not like restaurants, he likes to be in a house, and preferably a house where he’s had the chance to check the security himself, as—I suppose—befits a man who has arrested dozens and dozens and dozens of people throughout the state of Michigan.

He’s a good eater, being enormous and active, and I get a kick out of cooking for him. I suppose, Iz, you’ve realized already that I adore my father about as much as possible. As for Daddy, I think he got a kick out of being cooked for, as Mommy had stopped doing much cooking since being named to the appellate bench: she was by that summer Judge Osborne and got home too late to cook. Whereas my dad ran what had to be one of the sleepier FBI stations in the country, and hadn’t really worked through dinner since Vincent Loonsfoot went on his little spree up north.