Those Bones Are Not My Child (62 page)

“Can we get back to the issue of the wiretaps, Judge Webber?” Spence planted his foot by the fireplace screen. “Did they begin bugging after the threat to Lubie Geter, or does the tap date back to the Terrell case, when a caller said he was holding the boy in Alabama, or did
they begin with the manager of the Cap’n Peg’s food joint getting the call from Yusuf Bell that he was about to be killed?”

With his ring finger and thumb, Webber dragged the bags under his eyes down, a gesture Spence took as a signal to continue.

“I need specific dates in order to file an FIA. We know that the Justice Department arranged a meeting between the Task Force and a sexploitation consultant from Kentucky when the Terrell case was still fresh. Was that the point when the wiretaps began?” Spence waited. He thought he might have misread the earlier cue, for now Webber sighed deeply, as if it was all too tiresome.

“You are convinced that having the wiretap reports will—”

“Having them and making them public,” Spence interrupted.

“May I refer you once again to the Nixon caper and remind you that the American public did not give a hoot about the Watergate tapes?”

“I don’t agree that people didn’t give a damn. There was outrage. There was talk of impeachment. There was a grounds well of support for Barbara Jordan’s demands for the tapes.”

“Talk.”

“All right,” Spence said, leaning toward Webber’s chair. “What’s your answer? Why didn’t Nixon destroy the tapes and why didn’t the people demand his head on a plate?”

Webber repositioned himself in his chair. The sun shone through the curly gray fringe of hair that ringed his head like a horseshoe. The freckles and skin moles on his pate looked bright red.

“Why not? Because, Mr. Spencer, of the overwhelming, all-consuming, thoroughly compelling desire of the American people not to know. They do not want to know how close we came to losing it, how close we’ll always be to losing this country, because we do not wish to know.” He waved Spence’s objection away with a frown, then started up again, sweat glistening on his forehead.

“That close,” Webber emphasized, squinching his fingers under his eyes. “Those rogues came that close to stealing the country with the cooperation of the entire intelligence community and the attorney general’s office. Did I say ‘cooperation’? I misspoke myself,” he laughed, slapping the armrest, his chest wheezing.

“I don’t laugh out of cynicism,” Webber said, collecting himself.
“Fear,” he whispered, popping his eyes wide. “So close … so close.” He shuddered.

“Of course many saw in the public’s lackadaisical response to the Watergate scandal evidence that the American character is inherently totalitarian, arguing that the American people are not particularly alarmed to discover that the country’s become what we say the Soviet Union is. Debatable. And beside the point. The point is, the majority don’t give a hoot in hell. They don’t want to shoulder the burden of knowing.

“It’s so dangerous,” Webber croaked. “And such a terrible waste.”

Spence rubbed his sweaty palms together and tried to get back on track.

“I am interested in the results of the wiretaps. The Atlanta tapes.”

“Alleged tapes.”

Spence took in a deep breath. “I don’t mean to be quarrelsome, but it’s been established that either the state or the feds or both conducted wiretaps. It’s been established by too many sources, including you, to keep up the subterfuge of ‘alleged.’ ”

When the old man did not respond, Spence reminded himself not to crowd the man. Webber might not know anything useful. But Spence had a hunch he did. If not about the GBI’s secret investigation or the FBI’s secret investigation, at least know of what was going on in the DA’s office.

As Webber took off on a rambling explanation of how various law-enforcement agencies related to each other, Spence glanced at the one photograph that remained on the otherwise empty bookshelves.

“But have you seen the LEAA memo, Judge Webber? The one that describes the mutilations? I’ve reason to believe that it does exist and that the information was gotten through the taps.”

“You do realize, Mr. Spencer, that the medical examiners’ reports lend no credence to theories of castrations and ritual stabbings. Having taken the pains to read through the depositions of the police, I would concur with the reports. The battered condition of some of the bodies could be explained by the action of rocks and debris in the water. Those currents are strong despite the seeming calm on the surface. And both in the case of the bodies recovered from the river and those found in the woods, the wildlife … dogs … the elements …” He wound his hand around in the air, not bothering to finish the statement.

“Would concur” … “could be explained.” If we both didn’t know better, Spence was thinking. He was sure that Webber could verify the existence of the rumored memo. It was even likely that he had a copy of the document in his possession. Why was he suddenly so chary? He was a wealthy, powerful person on his way out of the country. What the hell was he afraid of? Spence gripped his hands together and forced himself to take it slowly.

“I get the feeling, Judge Webber, that you’re sidestepping my question.”

“Hmm.”

Spence listened intently as Webber began talking again. Often, in otherwise innocuous answers, he inserted crucial bits of information. He was now describing favored conduits the DA’s office and others used for “leaks” either to shape public opinion or to bait other agencies into trading evidence. Surely Webber was not suggesting that the authorities had started the rumor of the LEAA memo. Nor could the two most recent public statements by the FBI come under the heading of “leaks.”

A few days ago, an agent addressing a Rotary club down in Macon had announced that at least four of the officially acknowledged twenty-three cases were virtually solved: parents had murdered their children. Considering the agent’s timing—hard on the heels of STOP’s mobilization for the D.C. rally and the peaking of on-the-street discussions about the mutilation memo—the agent’s statement seemed designed to scuttle support of STOP and to deflect attention, perhaps, from the memo. The recent statement of FBI director William Webster, countering the theory of race hatred as motive—“It may be a preference for Blacks rather than a prejudice against them”—struck Spence as a panicked attempt to defuse the contents of the memo whose secrecy could no longer be secured. Spence concluded that the old judge was directing him to monitor the conduits, alert to the fact that what was being revealed was a clue to what was being obscured.

“And what of the memo itself? Does it exist?”

“I’ve good reason to think so, Mr. Spencer, having heard repeated references to it.…”

Webber seemed about to name names and cite passages. He shifted in his chair as though to get up, but only moved to adjust his jacket. Looking ill at ease, he ran his hands back and forth along the carved armrests of the chair.

“The memo exists, Judge Webber. And it does describe mutilations. And there are secret memos about the wiretaps as well. They date back, I suspect, to the phone call the authorities refused to air—for the public. At least as far back as that.” Spence paused but was not contradicted.

“I suspect too that there was something overheard through the tap that prompted the authorities in February to put the Walker boy on the list the minute he was reported missing from Bowen Homes. And that that ‘something’ supports the evidence that the explosion at Bowen Homes back in October was not an accident caused by a faulty boiler. You’ll excuse me, but this is not an intellectual exercise for me.”

Webber stiffened.

“One final thing, if you would,” Spence said. “The Dewey Baugus case. Did the friend of the Baugus family become a suspect in the children’s case because he’d vowed revenge for the Baugus boy’s slaying? Or did the DA keep him under surveillance because the beating death of the white child in spring of ’79 is related in some other way to the deaths of the Black children which supposedly began in summer ’79? In other words, did the man murder both the Baugus boy and some of the other children? Is that it? You said on previous occasions that he was brought in for questioning and kept under surveillance. Is he a link to the killers? Does the DA think that?”

Webber ran his hands along the armrests. Spence watched the spots in the wood blur from the sweat of the judge’s hands, then gleam from the buffing of his sleeve.

“I’m hoping you realize, Judge Webber, that a number of lives depend on our ability to move. The authorities won’t. Somebody has to. If you have information and aren’t willing to share it, I hold you accountable for the life of my son.”

The judge wrenched away, but it was Mrs. Webber’s gasp that made Spence wheel around. He hadn’t been aware of her presence in the room, or of movers dawdling in the hall by the open door. The big moving man with the patch of lip hair stepped into the study as Mrs. Webber rose from her seat.

Then the four of them froze, transfixed by the sound of sirens approaching the estate. Ear-splitting, the alarm was accompanied by a blare of lights. Blue flashed from the brass candlestick to the French
doors leading to the gardens. Red spun across the wall of bookcases and lit the photograph on the shelf: the judge in a derby, swallowtail cutaway, striped pants; his bride in veil and gown, the train swept to the front in a lake of bright satin that cascaded down the cathedral steps. Motionless, they watched each other as the vehicles sped past the Webber estate to some desperate situation elsewhere.

Mrs. Webber was the first to move. She crossed to a drum of costumes and slid the lid into place. The judge stretched in his chair. Mrs. Webber nodded to the big man, who waved the other packers in. She turned and scanned her husband’s face. A dose of salts, a nap, and he’d be right as rain, she thought.

“Please clear the room swiftly,” she said very pointedly, then left the room.

“Is this a documentary or a movie movie?” someone called out in the dark.

“This is the real deal,” the projectionist explained. “The movie clips I mentioned are on another reel. This is a work print,” he added. “As you’ve no doubt already guessed.”

Horizontal lines passed through the grainy print, jumpy, rough footage of an underground garage.

“Deep Throat.”

“Quiet.”

Leaning against a silver Rolls-Royce, a woman with short auburn hair softly curled and streaked with gray was knuckling her chin as she listened to the off-camera interviewer clumsily framing his question. With her pinky, she played with the paisley scarf cowled at the neck of her hunter-green jacket and dug the point of her knuckles more deeply into her chin. Then, straightening, before the interviewer had an opportunity to paraphrase the question once again, she zipped open her briefcase and smoothed it flat on the hood of the Rolls.

“It is our task to support the growth of Freedom Focus through publications which we distribute to our various organizations. We research issues related to troublesome groups in order to provide our members with the necessary materials for helping those groups become less troubled.”

She withdrew from the accordion pocket a yellow binder and slid the pages free. The camera moved in over her shoulder. “For example,” she said, setting the yellow plastic aside, “in order to assist the Blacks in their plight, we are looking at statistics on teenage pregnancy.”

“Your purpose is to assist the Blacks?”

In profile, the woman’s face was a model of forbearance. “As it happens,” she said, leafing through the pages, “actual statistics of the past six years show a marked decrease in the incidence of teenage births among the Blacks. But the Blacks are an emotional people. They do not respond to facts or care about who’s conducting research and compiling statistics. They do, however, respond to charges of low morals and poor family life. On issues of social parity, they may be militant, but regarding domestic life, very conservative—that is to say, defensive. Predictably so. So we are looking at various figures related to illegitimacy and other perniciousness.”

“Even though, as you say, the figures show a decline?”

The camera swung around in time to record, full-face, the expression of tight, terse strain. Then it zoomed in on the loose pages spread on the hood of the Rolls. With one hand fisted, the joint of the index finger gouging the cleft in her chin, she selected pages to be placed before the lens. Tables, graphs, bibliography, study guides with questions and an answer key, directories of media people, then photos and rough sketches for posters. Pregnant Black girls, seated, standing, kneeling, photographed from an eye-level angle perspective, underwent a stark metamorphosis in the drawings, their expressions blanked, bearings slumped, surroundings made shabby in some, ridiculous bad-taste consumption in others. Girls gazing longingly through the bars of a school gate while junkies brushed past on the street. A teen seen through the window of a tumbledown shack as she folded diapers, schoolbooks abandoned in a cobwebbed corner. Several big-bellied girls in angora sweaters and glittery skirts compared jewelry in the intake office at welfare.

“Is that correct?” the interviewer persisted. “Figures for teenage pregnancy among Blacks show a decline? It’s tapering off then, not such a big problem?”

“It is perceived as a serious problem by both the American people and the Blacks themselves.”

“So your organization ‘assists’ by publicizing it as a big headache, as a drain on the taxpayer, is that it? About how much, would you say, is your particular organization prepared to spend to—”

“The American taxpayer needs little encouragement to view Blacks as a burden. The welfare system”—the camera caught in close-up the slight curl of her lip—“has been in a shambles since its inception.”

Papers reassembled, the woman slid them back onto one binder.

“Is there a contingency plan if Blacks stabilize their situation? As you say, the incidence of teen births is decreasing. So if through your organization’s assistance the issue is taken up by that community and resolved in such a way as to—”

She snapped her briefcase closed. “And how long would it take for people to perceive it so? No, we feel that the American people will see the necessity for declaring these families unfit.” She jingled her car keys.