“I’m in charge of the committee that is supposed to be running the whole show. About two minutes ago I appointed myself head of the hiring subcommittee. In that position, I’m offering you the job of head coordinator of the habeas corpus litigation team. What do you say?”
“Whoa, let me catch my breath here,” she replied. “There are going to be petitions for writs of habeas corpus filed for all the people, Jews, held at that Army base, or whatever it is, on the cape. The argument is that they are being illegally detained because of their religion. On the other side the government would be defended by”—a smile crossed her face—“by the United States Attorney for the district in which they are detained, which would be Massachusetts. Arnie Anderson. Is that right, Mr. Shapiro?”
“Ben.”
“Yes, of course, Ben. That sounds an awful lot like what I wanted to talk with you about in the first place. I’ll do it. And I’ll enjoy doing it.”
Shapiro thrust his hand across the table. She placed her hand in his and squeezed, firmly. He was slow to let go. She was even slower. The tips of their fingers dragged against one another as they withdrew their hands.
This is going to be interesting, Shapiro thought.
“I’ll resign this afternoon,” Katz said. “I don’t feel like I’ve got to give Arnie more notice than that. He’s already told me in the best way he can he doesn’t want me working for him. So, what happens next?”
“Come to my office at eight tomorrow morning. You’ll work from there. I’ll find a space for you,” Shapiro said. “We’ll try to get something done tomorrow. I leave for Washington pretty soon after that. I can’t miss the march.”
“You’re going to that big march in Washington,” she said, laughing. “Of course you would go. You’re one of those 1960s-wannabe guys, aren’t you, civil rights and marches and all that.” She looked him in the eye and spread a mile-wide smile at him. “I just love ’60s guys.”
This woman is so young, Shapiro thought.
“Are you planning on going?” he asked.
“My grandmother asked me to go with her. Her entire canasta club is going; actually I suspect her entire congregation is going. Nana told me to go. You have to fight the Nazis, she told me. Even should they kill you, you fight them, she said. I was shocked. My nana telling me to fight. I didn’t know how to respond. I told her I couldn’t go, blamed my job.”
Her next words chilled the smile from Shapiro’s face.
“She was in the Warsaw Ghetto,” Katz said, surprised at the pride in her voice. “She escaped. Her husband, my grandfather, died fighting.”
Shapiro did not know what to say. Judy continued.
“I hadn’t even thought about going. Didn’t seem like a good career move for an Assistant United States Attorney, but that isn’t my career anymore. I suppose the head habeas coordinator really should be there. Sure, why not? Sure, I’ll go. I’ll make reservations this afternoon.”
Shapiro shook his head. “I’m pleased you’re going, but there are no reservations to be made. Every flight is booked. The trains are booked. I even heard the Greyhound buses are booked. Most people are going on charter buses. Do you belong to a synagogue? I’m sure it has a bus or two going.”
“No, I’m not much of a joiner,” she said sheepishly. “How are you getting there?”
“I waited too long, too. That’s how I know there are no reservations. I’m driving, although I don’t know what I’ll do with the car when I get there, or where I’ll be staying. I expect all those details will work out. The important thing is being there.”
“Could you fit a passenger?” Katz asked, looking him in the eyes.
“Sure,” he said softly. “Big car, lots of room.”
“And if we can’t find a place to stay we can always camp out in the car,” Katz said. “Your car has a back seat, doesn’t it?”
“Sure does,” Shapiro answered. “A big soft one.”
“Great,” she answered enthusiastically. “One thing, though. What was that about a security clearance?”
“Just the Justice Department jerking us around,” he said. “You know how that’s done, I’m sure.”
She nodded. “I wrote the memo on jerking around defense counsel.”
“They’ve told us no lawyer goes to Edwards unless he’s got a top secret security clearance, just like at Guantanamo,” Shapiro said. “And the screening process takes six months. I’ll pay a bonus on top of the pro bono salary you won’t be getting if you’ve got a security clearance.”
She nodded. “No problem on that. Let’s just say,” she said, glancing at his left hand, “the United States government certifies that I can keep a secret.”
CHAPTER 35
The Jewish March on Washington was all over the news. Boston stations reported that local synagogues had chartered virtually every available bus. Sam Abdullah and Alfred Farouk watched the news in Sam’s room, when Al supposedly came over to work on a history project.
The ABC News reporter described the security precautions in Washington as “unprecedented.”
“The FBI is saying that as many as a million American Jews are expected to descend on the city this weekend,” the carefully coifed reporter said with a concerned expression. “And other law enforcement sources predict that several hundred thousand counter-demonstrators may attend, angry that there have been no prosecutions for the murders of ten Coast Guard officers and two FBI agents by Jewish terrorists in the Boston area. The law enforcement presence here is overwhelming.”
Al jammed his thumb on the remote control to turn the television off.
“A million Jews all in one place,” he said. “Imagine what a little bit of bomb would do there. There’d be Jew-meat splattered all over the place.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t sound like there’s any chance that’s gonna happen,” Sam responded. “It looks like every cop in the world is gonna be there to protect the Jews. Wouldn’t you know it, they’re the ones who killed people and yet it’s our taxpayers’dollars that keep anybody from getting back at them. It shows that no matter what the Jews do, they get away with it, no matter how bad it is. They can do anything.”
“You’re right, man,” Al said. “Just let some Muslim set off a bomb or highjack a plane and they get the Special Forces and all after them. Jews set off an atom bomb in the middle of a Muslim city and we still let them all get together for the biggest picnic in the world on the front lawn of the fucking White House. What does it take before this country gets pissed off at Jews for a change?”
The two young men sat in silence for several minutes, infuriated at the waste of their tax dollars, neither acknowledging that they had yet to actually earn enough money to have to pay any taxes.
Sam spoke first.
“What if the Jews did something bad this week, just before their big march, something that really got the government down on them? Wouldn’t that screw up their march?”
“Probably. Maybe,” Al responded cautiously. “But that would be pretty dumb of them, right before they hold what they say is gonna be a super peaceful demonstration, to do something that would get people pissed at them. One thing everybody knows is that Jews are smart. It would be dumb to fuck around right before they go to beg the government for sympathy. They’re not that stupid, man. But it would be cool if they were.”
“It sure would be cool. It would be better than cool,” Sam said. “It would totally mess up their peaceful giant march. Mess up that march, man, and there’s no way even that Jew-lover Quaid is gonna go into Palestine and bail them out.”