Trail of the Twisted Cros (2 page)

The Cuban demonstrators, too, had tried an advance, provoked by Eschenroeder’s little blitzkrieg, but, like the Jews, they
had been held off by a spontaneous posse of young storm troopers.

Eschenroeder stood now in triumph atop the sound truck, staring down at the photographer he had assaulted, his whip still
menacing, should his victim be so doltish as to rise in defense. His Iron Cross gleamed on his chest. His lips were curled
and snarling, and he looked not unlike a bull gorilla after some successful jungle battle, slapping his leathery chest in
feral exultation. A proud portrait of Aryan supremacy, Eschenroeder thought himself, a visage of victory fully worthy of the
benighted pages of
Das Schwarze Korps
, if the old putschist did say so himself.

But Frederico Eschenroeder’s moment in the sun was nearly over, and the show of this day had to go on.

Hoffman, bullhorn in hand, was now alerting foes and the faithful that the main event was finally at hand.

“He is here!” Hoffman screamed. He pointed stiffly to the entry drive of the penitentiary, sealed off by a police line from
the huge crowd, all straining for a look at the American
Führer
.

As if connected, all eyes of this highly divergent crowd, human and camera, were pinned on a dark green station wagon that
pulled up to a stop at the penitentiary check-in point. The bulky outlines of four men, including the driver, could be seen
through heavily tinted, bulletproof windows.

Shimmers of heat rose from the steel of the car, whose doors weren’t opening. Instead, it sat there, enclosed and secured,
as members of the press were let systematically past the guard units protecting the occupants.

The chanting started again… “Heil, Johnny! Heil, Johnny! Heil, Johnny!”… and that part of the mob which hated Johnny Lee Rogers
went quite mad with howling and wailing.

The man who had caused all the day’s intensities, who was now causing untold numbers of cracked ribs and blackened eyes as
club-wielding policemen acted to keep a tenuous order, sat in the rear seat of the station wagon, nearly oblivious to the
commotion and the heat outside.

Rogers’ guards, a pair of Federal marshals seated on either side of him, had permitted him a comb and a small mirror to prepare
for the gauntlet of photographers en route through the prison gate. Then, of course, he would have to be chained once again.

Rogers worked the comb through his long, layered dark-blonde hair. He patted his temples with his fingers, and then combed
this shorter length into wing-tips. He then fiddled with the knot of his silk necktie, and brushed the lapels of his navy
blazer.

“Ready, Johnny?” one of the marshals asked him. His tone was neither respectful nor mocking. It was friendly, as if the marshals
were escorting an unlucky fraternity brother to the slammer. Definitely an attitude on the part of the marshals that was quite
substantially a departure from the norm.

But it was so difficult not to like Johnny Lee Rogers—no matter his conviction for conspiring to murder the leader of a Cuban
refugee camp at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Somehow, this pleasant, seemingly guileless young man seated between the marshals
was unconnected with such heinous goings-on.

There he sat, combing his hair and making self-deprecating jokes about being a television creature…

“Not quite ready, gents,” he said. “This may seem awful damn silly-ass to you guys, and it does to me, too—but you know, I
got to look good for my people.” And with that, he fished a jar of Max Factor Ultra-Blush liquid makeup from the pocket of
his blazer and blotted out the slight rash on his neck, covered the beard portion of his clean-shaven face, and filled in
the large open pores of his nose and forehead.

“… you don’t use this stuff, and you wind up looking like old Tricky Dick on the tube, you know,” Rogers said.

The other marshal, sensing that it might be his last opportunity to dare a personal question of the young prisoner as the
media flocked about the station wagon, turned quickly to Rogers and asked, “Johnny, how about it… tell us, did you do what
they said?”

Rogers issued a smile befitting the president of a Jaycee chapter somewhere in Indiana and then answered:

“Gentlemen, I’m not going to tell you I’m pure as the driven snow, ‘cause I am not. I’m about as pure as the driven slush—”

The marshals laughed heartily, and Rogers gave them another flashing grin.

“But gentlemen, I want you particularly to know—you men who are entrusted with enforcement of our legal system—that whatever
I’ve done, I’ve done in the simple interest of hard-working white men and women of this country.

“Now why does that sound so bad? Why does it sound so bad to say I’m working for
white
people? If I told you I was working for
black
people, it’d sound just fine and dandy, am I right?

“If I’m guilty, like they say I am, I’m guilty, too, of saying out loud something that this cockeyed society of ours is saying
we should be ashamed of saying. Why? Why should we be ashamed of being white men, any more than a black man should be ashamed
of being a black man?”

Rogers waited, and received the response he wished. The two marshals were nodding their agreement, involuntarily. What Rogers
said made sense. How does a nice young man like this get himself convicted of murder conspiracy?

“Let me tell you something, too, on the QT, okay?”

The marshals nodded.

“I’m not long for this place. One way or t’other.”

Then Rogers beamed again. Someone yanked open the back door before the marshals could wipe the confusion off their faces.

“Get him cuffed!” a guard said to the marshals.

Johnny Lee Rogers, never one to be recalcitrant, extended his arms to the marshal who had allowed him freedom of movement
for a few seconds. His wrists were clamped together.

When he stepped out of the station wagon, the cameramen stampeded toward him, encircling him, shielding him from the tumult
his presence inspired.

Rogers searched the huddle of newsmen about him for a familiar face. Hoffman’s face.

“Karl,” Rogers managed, his face stuck full of microphones, “it’s nice of you to be here.”

Hoffman inched his way through the pack of photographers and reporters. When he neared Rogers, he gave the American Nazi leader—an
unlikely leader in his proper navy blazer and gray gabardine slacks—a flat-palmed salute in the classic manner of the Third
Reich greetings.

As is so often the case with press stampedes, the clutter of reporters surrounding the famous personality didn’t know what
to ask beyond, “What’s it feel like now, Johnny?”

Rogers would be happy to help them get what they needed in the way of a capper for the film sequence.

“Would it be all right with you boys,” Rogers asked the marshals who held him lightly by each arm, “if I just said something
quick to these reporter fellows so we can get on with our official business here? You know they’ll just keep pestering us
if I don’t.”

“Sure, sure,” the marshals said. Then, to the assembled press members, “Short, okay? Then we got to get our man inside and
processed.”

It was a deal.

Rogers and the marshals waited while the television cameras, in particular, were settled into the most favorable positions
to capture this moment. When the lights went up, Rogers spoke:

“My movement is unashamedly opposed to opening up this country to the sort of scum sent us from Cuba by Fidel Castro. This
Communist leader in our hemisphere sent us perverts, whores, alcoholics, homosexuals, criminals, and the profoundly retarded.
It was a trick, and we bit on it. We bit on it because we’re supposed to ignore perfectly normal racist instincts.

“That is, we whites are supposed to believe that our little brown brothers are noble savages, one and all.

“I hope, finally, that we’ve seen the light with this crowd of Cuban refugees, this crowd of misfits.

“Our economy is in bad shape, our white workers are losing their jobs, and what does the government do? We spend God knows
how much feeding and clothing and housing and employing this batch of scum from Cuba.”

Rogers paused. He had issued his tirade without the slightest rise in his voice, calmly and deliberately, thoughtfully. He
well knew the responsive chords he would touch that night at seven.

“Now,” he continued, “that is our position. That is my position.

“You may not agree with our position.” Rogers flashed his most winning grin. “I don’t suspect the press does, that’s for sure—”

The press laughed on cue.

“—but I know the press agrees with me that I have the right to freedom of expression, just as much right as any reporter.

“And because of my exercising that right, just as I’ve done now, I found myself indicted by a United States grand jury for
the crime of homocidal conspiracy. Yes, that’s all a grand jury requires, ladies and gentlemen. Johnny Lee Rogers ‘would tend
to have motive,’ says the grand jury, and bingo, I’m indicted.

“Then comes the trial. All circumstantial evidence. Not a single eye-witness to anything, and bingo, I’m convicted. All nice
and neat. Lock up the Nazi.

“Well, let me tell you out there listening to me tonight”—Rogers looked intently into the depths of all three network cameras
trained on him, hanging on his every word—“I’m innocent of murder or murder conspiracy, folks. But the point is, because I
think that scum like that Cuban refugee big-mouth should be shipped back to Havana, I was railroaded to prison.

“I’m not sorry for what I think, whether you agree with me or not, and I’m not sorry that that Cuban they say I killed was
killed. I just didn’t happen to do it, that’s all.

“Maybe you folks out there listening have strong feelings about politics. Maybe you folks talk politics that lots of other
folks don’t necessarily agree with. Do you think you should be in prison because you say what you think?

“Of course not. That would be unAmerican. This is supposed to be the land of free speech. Remember the words, ‘I don’t agree
with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.’ And remember, if I can be put away like this, eventually
you can be put away, too.

“One final thought,” Rogers said. He took a calculated breath. He could see the camera lenses moving in for a close-up, as
he knew they would. Then he spoke:

“
Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker!
”

Hoffman stepped in front of Rogers and addressed the press.

“Thank you, gentlemen. I think that should be all. The authorities have their job now,” Hoffman said.

The marshals took their cue, and cleared a path through the press throng to the prison gate. In a few seconds, Johnny Lee
Rogers had entered, the gates shut behind him, leaving in his wake a parking lot full of nearly riotous demonstrators, and
Hoffman to translate his last remarks.

“It’s from Nietzsche,” Hoffman said, the reporters scribbling this in their notebooks. “It means, ‘What doesn’t destroy me,
makes me stronger.’ “

NEW YORK CITY, 8 September, 6:07 a.m.

Like all law-abiding New York dog owners, or at least those dog owners who feel the eyes of passersby upon them, the tall
man in the Burberry coat stood at the ready with a plastic sack and a day-old newspaper for scooping while the Airedale he
accompanied sniffed at a fire hydrant on the corner of Third Avenue and East 65th Street.

A light drizzle floated in the air, swirling up from the wet curbs by the occasional passing taxicab. Otherwise, most of Manhattan
was still peacefully slumbering.

The man in the Burberry scratched at the thick salt-and-pepper beard on his face, as if unaccustomed to the foliage. He, the
dog, and a few brightly clad joggers with obsessive glints in their eyes were the only creatures at large at the dawn.

He let the dog relieve itself in the vicinity of the fire hydrant as he peered through his dark glasses down East 65th Street
to the yellow-shuttered townhouse at mid-block, number 142. When the dog had finished its business, he bent to work with the
folded newspaper and the sack.

While crouched, he noticed that finally the door of number 142 had opened. Two men, and then a third, filed out. Quickly,
he finished cleaning up after the dog and dumped the sack into a trash bin. Then he walked briskly up Third Avenue.

He didn’t have to look to know the identities of the three men who were now out on the avenue, heading uptown as well, about
a block and a half behind him.

He grinned and pulled his hat a bit lower over his dark glasses. He felt for the single sheet of paper inside his breast coat
pocket, patted it, and continued up Third toward the newsstand at East 72nd Street.

The men behind him behaved as if everything so far this morning outside the protection of number 142 East 65th Street was
perfectly safe.

Once, he was nearly tempted to turn around and look, just to make sure his quarry was following. But he resisted the urge.
He had cased this route… how many times? At least a dozen. Maybe more. Always with the Airedale in tow. A man walking a dog
is a safe man, right? Nothing out of the usual about him.

Again he congratulated himself with an inner laugh. Oh, this would be rich! Would it be kept quiet, or be made public?

Now he was almost to the newsstand. Only a half-block more…

A photographer and a newspaper reporter caught up with the three men who had exited 142 East 65th. The reporter spoke to the
man in the center, a wavy-haired fellow with a slight hunch to his shoulders, a large sloping nose, jowls recognizable by
years of cartoon caricatures, and a pair of shifting, coal-black beady eyes.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” the reporter said to the beady-eyed man, “I’m from the
Daily News
, my photographer and myself, that is… we’d like to do a story about your morning walks through the neighborhood, if you don’t
mind.”

One of the men flanking the beady-eyed man pushed forward to the reporter. His partner barked to the photographer, “No photos!”