Defending the Truth, page 11
“Did the ones you spoke to know any names of demonstrators that Hanna didn’t?” Joshua asked.
“Yes. Three names.”
“Good,” Joshua said. He turned to Roy. “We need your help with these visits to their homes. Solomon isn’t going to get too far with them alone.”
“They probably won’t even open the door,” Collins said. It wasn’t meant as a joke. “Okay, but I can’t start until tomorrow morning, after the FBI guys leave for Washington. A state court murder case isn’t in my jurisdiction, and Holmes and Schlesinger will have me up before a Bureau review board if they get wind of me being involved. Anyway, they think they have the killers, at least five out of forty of them.”
“Do they really?” Joshua asked.
Collins nodded.
Joshua was chagrined. “What’s Essert think?”
“Who knows what’s on that prick’s mind?” Roy said. “I don’t think he’s ever concerned about whether somebody’s guilty or innocent. To him it’s just charges. If you have any evidence, you bring charges. Then let the judge and jury take a crack at the defendants.”
“A real prince among prosecutors.”
“Well, he’s Big Bill Maitland’s kind of guy,” Roy said. “When Eisenhower wins the election, all the Democrat U.S. attorneys are out on their asses, including Dillan Hopkins up in Phoenix. Word is that Barry Goldwater’s going to give Maitland the choice, kind of a bone from the senior senator to the junior one, and Essert’s just his kind of guy.”
“At least it’ll get him out of Tucson,” Joshua said.
Roy nodded.
Big Bill Maitland had run for the Senate in the midterm elections of 1950 and had won by a landslide, campaigning against Commies and pinkos and all those shadowy subversives in American society whom nobody ever really saw, but who everybody knew were undermining the very soul of the greatest nation on earth. Pinkos were poisoning the Truman administration, compromising the State Department, destroying the army. And it seemed as though every Jew in Hollywood was accused of being a closet Communist. Arizona now had two of the most conservative and pro-McCarthy Republican senators in the country: Barry Goldwater, elected in 1948, and William Maitland, elected in 1950.
“So we start Thursday morning?” Solomon asked Roy.
“Yes. I’m taking the guys to the airport at seven-thirty. Come on over to my office at about nine o’clock.”
Chapter 8
“Ya gotta come over right away,” Edgar said.
“What’s going on?”
“Cain’t talk on the phone.” He hung up.
Joshua drove to the BIA. It was ten o’clock Wednesday morning, and the sun had already reached blast furnace proportions. Mid-June was always very hot in Tucson, and it was at least 105 degrees, promising an afternoon bake oven of at least 110. It hadn’t rained for weeks, and every plant by the road was withering, even the weeds.
Edgar’s face was colorless. He pushed a sheet of paper across his big walnut desk. Joshua picked it up and read it.
“I don’t get it,” he said slowly.
Edgar didn’t seem to hear him. “Friday. The som bitch wants me there Friday.”
“What does the Senate Select Committee on Communism in Government want with you?”
“Joe McCarthy’s on that committee.”
Joshua was suddenly somber. “Damn,” he muttered.
“It’s that fuckin’ Essert. He called me yesterday morning, told me I had to fire you for representin’ Livinsky ‘n Moraga, that you was violatin’ the McCarran Act, ‘n that if I kept ya on, I’d be violatin’ it, too.”
Joshua studied Edgar’s mottled pink face.
“I tor ‘im to eat shit ‘n die,” Edgar said. “An’ now I’m the sucklin’ pig for McCarthy’s next barbecue.” His voice displayed none of its usual humor.
“How in hell did we get so important out here?” Joshua asked. “I figured nobody in Washington would even give a damn what happened in this pissant little town.”
“Well, nobody there does. But Bill Maitland does.” Edgar breathed deeply and frowned. “I just called Harry Coyle in DC. He says Maitland called ‘im ‘n said he wants to clean out all the pinkos in the BIA, specifically us down here in Tucson. Harry already knows all about Hanna bein’ arrested for that protest at the courthouse and how her daddy is defendin’ her and that Commie professor.”
Joshua shook his head gravely. “How did the committee get you subpoenaed so fast.”
“Harry says Maitland called Tail Gunner Joe,’ and America’s greatest patriot authorized a subpoena to be issued out of Maitland’s office in Phoenix. Maitland sent it down here yesterday afternoon, and a coupla FBI agents I never seen before handed it to me an hour ago.”
“Tail Gunner Joe” had been McCarthy’s nickname since he first ran for the Senate in Wisconsin. He claimed to have spent the war years in the marines as a B-24 tail gunner in the South Pacific and to have shot down a dozen Japanese fighters. No one seemed to know the truth, since his military records had somehow disappeared.
“You going to testify?”
“I ain’t got no choice. I’m a gov’ment employee. Harry says I gotta get my ass on a plane tomorra mornin’ and show up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in front a the committee on Friday.”
“Too bad Jake Lukis isn’t still senator.”
Edgar nodded. “Yeah, this Maitland is some piece a work. Harry says Maitland tol’ ‘im he wants to put his own kind a people in the BIA.”
“What’d Harry say?”
“Shit! Harry ain’t far enough up the totem pole to say nothin’ to a senator. All’s he does is call me up ‘n ream my ass.” He grimaced. “I kinda feel like that senator from Texas, what’s his name, big guy?” He paused a moment and pondered, squinting his eyes closed. “Lyndon Johnson, that’s it. He says that servin’ in public office is just about like bein’ a dog out in the country. When ya run, they’re always a snappin’ at yer ass. When ya stop, they fuck ya to death.”
Joshua erupted with laughter. Edgar didn’t smile, and Joshua quickly sobered.
“Well, I’m sorry,” Joshua said, realizing how inadequate his words were. “I wish I could help.”
“Ya can.” Edgar stared hard at him. “Drop Livinsky.”
“Even if I do, what about Hanna and the four other students. Do I just walk away?”
Edgar shrugged. “Guess ya don’t.”
“I can’t. Anyway, Livinsky isn’t a subversive, and he doesn’t deserve what’s happening to him.”
“What’s deserve have to do with it? This character Maitland wants to be the biggest Commie baiter in the country next to his idol, the tail gunner. He don’t need to have real Commies, and he don’t need to have real evidence. Alls he needs is some Roosian Jew jackass teachin’ at the University a Arizona who opens his fat mouth when he should oughta keep it shut tight, and a idealistic moron Jew lawyer who thinks the guy got the right to say any damn thing he pleases, long as he don’t advocate the overthrow.”
“I plead guilty to that.”
“Yer prob’bly gonna be pleadin’ guilty to a whole lot more ‘n that ‘fore this mess is over. This Maitland’s got a lot a juice.”
“We got juice, too, Edgar.”
“Oh, yeah? What?”
“The truth. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Look what happened to me three years ago, and I didn’t do a damn thing wrong neither.”
Joshua frowned.
“Best thing that could happen to us is that Livinsky ends up in a chair starin’ out the window with a needle in his arm.”
“Come on, Edgar, quit being an asshole.”
“I’m the asshole? You need an anatomy lesson, Josh boy.”
“Okay, okay. Enough of Edgar Hendly, boy philosopher. So what are you going to tell the committee?”
“Reckon it depends on what they ask me.”
“You shouldn’t have any trouble. Just throw some of your famous poetry at them, maybe a few quotes from the Bible that aren’t really there.”
“Ya mean like ‘Thou shalt not spread malicious rumors and injure the innocent and the righteous, for the Lord thy God shall not justify the wicked.’”
“Well, I think that one is in there.”
“So why don’t God keep his word and strike down those wicked bastards, Maitland ‘n McCarthy, ‘n leave us alone?”
“I think the trick in all this is that you have to strike down the bastards yourself, because if you wait for God to do it, you might just turn into a puff of smoke like about six and a half million Jews.”
Edgar’s voice was humorless. “The Pentecostal minister Frances drags me to ever’ Sunday mornin’ says that God takes care a folks like me ‘n you, ya know, the poor and the oppressed. But I ain’t seen much evidence of it.”
“God helps him who helps himself.”
“Zat in the Bible?”
“No, it’s from one of Aesop’s fables.”
Edgar rolled his eyes. “Well, I hope it ain’t just a fable, ‘cause I’m a gonna take a helluva crack at helpin’ myself.”
Edgar had been to Washington, D.C., twice before, but both times had been for pleasure. The first was nineteen years ago, when Jacob Lukis had been elected senator in Franklin Roosevelt’s Democratic tidal wave. Lukis had then pushed Edgar’s appointment as BIA superintendent for Arizona through the Department of the Interior. Edgar had left the Southern Pacific depot in Tucson with the senator’s entourage in Lukis’s personal railway car, and he ate steaks and drank privately bottled Tennessee sour mash whiskey for four days, despite the Depression, despite Prohibition. It was 1932, Roosevelt had just promised a “new deal” for “the forgotten man,” and it snowed so hard in Washington the day Edgar arrived that he had been forced to take a cab directly to a haberdashery and buy the only overcoat he had ever owned in his life, before or since.
His second trip to Washington had been just four months later, to be present at Roosevelt’s inauguration. Again the private railway car, but no bonded sour mash, because Frances was along on this trip, and she didn’t cotton to her husband getting himself plastered on John Barleycorn and snoring away his drunk collapsed into a plush red velvet recliner. But the trip had been wonderfully memorable to Edgar anyway, despite his enforced sobriety, and he could still remember much of the magnificent oratory of the new president. It had infused new life into a moribund nation.
Nineteen years had passed, and the face of the world had vastly changed. Instead of unemployment and hunger, Americans now confronted the “red menace.” Instead of a visionary president with a bold iconoclastic economic miracle up his sleeve, the current administration seemed to be wallowing in a mud puddle of uncertainty, whether to win the war in Korea or lose it, whether to buy into the malicious demagoguery of those who would once again blame all the world’s ills on some transcendently malignant group of traitors, the Jews, or Communists, or “fellow travelers,” whoever the hell they were supposed to be.
“Give ‘em hell Harry” was chin deep in quicksand and didn’t seem to have a clue how to get out.
If an inauguration were to be held today, Edgar thought, the platform would have to be draped in black.
Edgar checked into the Adams Hotel, the only hotel where government employees on business in Washington could charge the room directly to their agencies. He ate stolidly at a little diner a few blocks away, trying to shake off his throbbing headache, born of fourteen hours of sitting behind the vibrating propeller engine of an airliner. Travel was quicker these days, but ol’ Jake’s railway car was a damn sight better.
You couldn’t walk into a Senate hearing room for the first time and not be overwhelmed by its aura of solemnity and consequence. Things happened here, things that changed the history of the world. Not just the kind of things that happened in Edgar’s little office in the old adobe building three thousand miles from here, a place most people never even heard of and where nothing of historic moment ever had occurred or ever would. No, no, no. Here was a place of such vast importance that dozens of men with steno pads and bright lights and cameras followed you down the aisle and shoved microphones in your face and asked questions about matters that you knew nothing about and had never even contemplated.
For those who asked germane questions like, “When did you join the Communist party?” and “Do you employ Commies and sex perverts in your agency?” Edgar had no response save for a clenched jaw and balled fists and an act of will to refrain from busting a nose or two or smashing a chin.
He sat at a twenty-foot-long table covered in dark green felt in front of a high mahogany bench with a huge seal of the United States carved into the middle. A half-dozen senators milled about behind oak-tanned leather swivel chairs, chatting idly with each other or mumbling behind their hands to fawning aides. The ceiling was high, perhaps fifty feet, and the hum of voices from the hundreds of people resonated hollowly in the poor acoustics. Edgar sat alone in the middle of the witness table and squinted uneasily at the array of microphones and cables that looked like a cluster of poised cobras.
Most of the men on the platform were elegantly attired, silk being the fabric of choice, shades of gray and blue the predominant colors, crisp white shirts with French cuffs and gold links. Edgar had bought a new white shirt for this event, although it had button cuffs since he owned no cuff links. He had worn his best suit, medium gray wool herringbone only slightly shiny at the elbows, which looked appropriately somber with the black silk tie that Frances had carefully washed to remove the food stains.
The senators slowly took their seats at the raised bench, their names displayed on small wooden plaques in front of their microphones. They were important men, men of substance and honor, protectors of the faith, avengers of treachery, men who brooked no insolence and gave no quarter to the defilers who sat before them in this righteous inquisition.
Despite the fact that Joseph McCarthy was not even an official member of the committee, he had become its most visible and powerful participant. It had provided him a forum from which to promote his message that American politics and society were perforated by Communists seeking the overthrow of their own government, and that he was his country’s savior.
A small, thin man in back of him bent forward, whispered something in his ear, walked behind the senators, down the steps, and handed Edgar a sheet of paper. It had the title: Tydings Committee Witness Protocol:
Senate Resolution 231 authorized the creation of a select committee to investigate charges by Senator Joseph McCarthy, which he made in a speech on the floor of the Senate on February 20, 1950, that there are “57 card-carrying communists” in the Department of State. The chairman of the select committee is Millard Tydings (D-Md). A witness may not speak except in direct response to questions from any committee member. Failure to respond to the satisfaction of the majority of the select committee may result in the initiation of proceedings for contempt of the Senate. Senator Joseph McCarthy has previously testified before this select committee and has asked to be made a nonvoting member, and his appointment has been approved. At the formal request of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the scope of inquiry of this select committee has been broadened to include an investigation to determine the State Department officer or officers responsible for hiring sexual perverts.
Edgar Hendly was jarred by the rapping of a gavel.
He looked up, and Senator Tydings was speaking into his microphone. His voice echoed in the now quiet hearing room.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The Senate Select Committee on Communism in Government is called to order.” He smiled pleasantly at Edgar. “Please state your name and address.”
“Edgar Hendly.” His throat was tight and his voice squeaked. He heard several snickers behind him and cleared his throat loudly. “Edgar Hendly,” he said again, distinctly, “Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Agency Road, Tucson, Arizona.”
“I recognize the distinguished senator from Wisconsin,” Tydings said.
There was nothing distinguished about McCarthy, as far as Edgar could see. He was hardly a man whose demeanor or appearance presaged a vast and sweeping intellect or charisma. He was balding and overweight and wore a baggy charcoal-gray wool suit. Small blue eyes peered at Edgar from under curved black eyebrows, in a phlegmatic, flabby face. He had a long, meaty nose and a slightly cleft chin. His voice was of medium pitch and monotonal. He shuffled papers in the file before him.
“This select committee has issued its subpoena to you to receive your testimony concerning your association with known Communists,” McCarthy said.
“I have no such associations.” Edgar’s voice was strong, and his usual Southwestern twang was reduced almost to nonexistence. Here, in this Senate hearing room, before these people of substance, he would try not to sound like Gabby Hayes. He took a pack of Camels out of his shirt pocket, shook one out, and lit it with a match. He inhaled deeply and held the cigarette in his right hand between his forefinger and middle finger. His hand was shaking just enough to send the stream of smoke zigzagging upward. He realized that it was betraying his nervousness and snuffed it out in the ashtray.
McCarthy shuffled papers in his file. “You employ for the BIA a legal adviser by the name of Rabb, Joshua Rabb. He’s also the head of the Office of Land Management for southern Arizona.”
“That’s correct.”
“How long have you employed him?”
“He’s been part-time, fifteen hours a week—though he most always works longer than that, but he only gets paid for fifteen hours—since the summer of 1946.”
“How long have you known that he is a Communist fellow traveler?”
“I don’t know that, and he isn’t.” Edgar stared steadily at McCarthy.
“I have a report here from the distinguished junior senator from Arizona, William Maitland, that says he is.” He held up several sheets of paper and rattled them at Edgar.
It wasn’t a question, and Edgar didn’t respond.
“Well?” McCarthy said.
“I ain’t got an idea in the world what report ya have, Senator.”
