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Issue #4 by Steve Crosby
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“WAR CRIMES - Part Two: A Fair and Speedy Trial”
We met in a nice clean diner I frequent for breakfast, Bernie and me. Even angry, she was a beautiful woman. And that morning, binging on grapefruit and wheat bread, Bernadette Rosenthal was very angry.
“At this point I don’t know why you bothered to see me for advice. Was I speaking Greek or something?”
“If you were, I understood every word you said,” I told her over my own breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausage, fried potatoes, a bowl of cereal with a dab of milk, two slices of ham, a stack of blueberry pancakes, a tall glass of orange juice and a large grapefruit. One of the drawbacks of having a perfect body was that I had to eat a lot of food and do a lot of exercise to maintain it. Thankfully a good friend had gotten me into ballet a number of years ago. A single workout can be felt in every single one of my muscles. “It was good advice, Bernie. I just wasn’t sitting on my hands while you went through the proper channels was all.”
“No, you just posted your whole story on the internet, got the accusations picked up by every major news outlet and got sued for libel.”
All I could do was shug, so I did. “It was like you said, Bernie, there was no way they would have been found guilty in a court of law. Too much time had passed, and my word alone wouldn’t have been enough to convince a court-martial panel.”
“That’s why I contacted the Belgian government,” Bernie explained. “We can identify the victims of Breendonk, exhume the bodies, check the bullets for any that came from a U.S. Army rifle.”
“And while you’re doing that, I’ve got the ball rolling. Now that it’s in the press, the likelihood of anything being suppressed or covered-up goes down. The Belgians have to do an investigation. The United States have to cooperate. And instead of being held behind closed doors this will be out in the open, fully viewed by the public. When all is said and done, those men will have to admit what they did.”
“Then our government will have to admit that they covered it up.”
I shook my head. “No. They would only be stating that, without my testimony, they couldn’t have gone forward with a court-martial.”
“What really happened and what people will think happened are two very different things, Steve. Something like this, especially with a war on, it’s going to hurt the administration. Why else do you think you were getting stonewalled?”
“I’d been informed.” My thoughts briefly turned to the previous conversation I had with Colonel Fury. The plate in front of me was empty almost before I realized it, so I pushed it aside and slid out of the booth. “Are you finished? We can continue this outside.”
Bernie gave a brief look of surprise. But her plate was empty as well, and I knew what a busy woman she was. “Yeah, okay. I’ll get the check.”
She’d started for her pocketbook, but I had already laid several bills onto the table. “Don’t object,” I told her. “We both know I’d end up paying for this one way or another.”
There was a brief pause before she gave a slight shrug and tilt of the head in full agreement.
Outside, we were just leaving the diner as I noticed two men briefly engaging each other at the corner. One was known to me enough that I was aware of what was occurring. Once Bernie got onto the street I let go of the door and excused myself.
“Steve, don’t,” she urged as I turned and walked down the street. I waved off her protest however and continued towards the two men.
One of the two men on that corner was in his late twenties, a kid from the neighborhood who had dropped out of college less than a year ago. The other was an older black man, unknown to me but there was a sense of pride around him. That older man walked away from the drop-out and started towards me. As we neared one another I reached my hand into the left pocket of my jacket. Just as he was about to pass me I stopped and held out the card to him.
“When you’re ready to stop being a slave to that white stuff, call this number,” I said to him with heartfelt compassion and not a hint of patronization. “They have a good program. You’d get the help you need.”
For at least five seconds, that guy on the street was dead silent. His body language spoke volumes, however. From that pride, more than a little anger was brimming.
“What did you just say to me?” he asked.
Bluntly I answered, “You heard me. Was I wrong?”
As quickly as it had fanned that anger, pride was driving it away. Without another word he snatched the card out of my hand and that man walked quickly down the street. Bernie stepped back as he past her by, all the while shooting me a look of complete amazement. I wasn’t paying much attention to her, though. My eyes briefly met the younger man’s annoyed gaze, and then he turned away. Satisfied that I’d done what I could, I turned around and went back to Bernie.
“What did you just do here?” she asked, exasperated. “I can’t believe what you just said to that guy!”
“I hope he thinks about it and seeks treatment,” was all I replied with. “At least one customer did so far, that I know of.” Before she could respond, I changed the subject back to our original conversation. “Give me a call when the deposition is scheduled. I’ll be in my new place starting today, but you can still reach me at my cell phone and, of course, at the mansion.”
The flabbergasted expression on Bernie’s face was priceless. “Um, yeah. Okay, I’ll talk to their lawyers and see if we can arrange a time.” She glanced past me at the young drug dealer on the corner. “Uh, I’ll follow you down the street here. Circle the block.”
“No need,” I told her. “It’s fine to go down that way, Bernie. He knows you’re with me.”
# # # # #
Somehow the press camp had tripled in size between breakfast and lunch. As she had promised, Cathy Webster was standing at the front stoop, ready to help me.
“You do know that these guys will just follow us and camp out at your new place, right?” she asked me more as a point of fact than as an actual question.
“I’ll be the only tenant there at the moment,” I quietly replied to her. “This will die down eventually.”
“Until you piss somebody else off,” muttered Cathy as she followed me inside.
Very few of my belongings were being transferred. The rest I had planned to donate to charity. Of what I was holding onto including items of emotional significance or work related. With somebody helping me it only took one trip to clear the apartment of these effects.
Fire streaked past my shoulder, igniting two of the boxes I’d just set down on the sidewalk. Somebody was on the roof. Instinctively I rolled away while taking a quick glance upwards. No, it wasn’t some crazy but regular guy with a flame-thrower. I’m Captain America, and that means people have to put on a costume to go after me.
“Die race traitor!” he screamed at me. At least I think that’s what he said. From over six floors up, he was hard to make out.
“I got him.” Cathy had made the jump before I could respond, and cleared the first two rows of windows from a standing position. Her climb up the face of the building was rapid, and soon she had reached the fifth floor ledge where she made another jump.
It had taken a few minutes, but I had finally recognized the costumed pyromaniac. So many of them would wear the exact same red and orange color scheme with goggles. The one who had attacked me on that particular day was known as Commander Blaze, formerly a member of a super-human group known as the Supremacists. For a number of years the Supremacists had operated in Angola, fighting to maintain a government led by white racists. After the civil war changed governments, the Supremacists had disappeared.
It was fortunate that Commander Blaze was there alone. A prolonged fight with his teammates could have injured more than a few of the bystanders.
Flames poured over the airborne Free Spirit, but Cathy moved as though she were affected at all. She fell on top of Captain Blaze, grabbed the front of his uniform with one hand, and smacked him hard across the face. For all his power over fire, Captain Blaze had the body of a regular man. After a blow like that, he was like a wet rag hanging from Free Spirit’s arm.
Casually, she tossed him off the roof. He fell limp into my arms, as weak and pathetic as his ideas. Without a second thought I dropped Captain Blaze to the ground. Some coats and sweaters were in one of the boxes that hadn’t lit afire. I grabbed one and held it out as Free Spirit jumped back onto the ground.
“Thanks.” A great deal of her clothing had been burned away. Around us, cameras were shooting. “This is one way of making the front page,” Free Spirit commented.
“Maybe the tabloids. The Times and the Post wouldn’t waste space on another so-called costumes brawl. Come on. Let’s get these across the street and you can shower.”
Free Spirit ran a hand through what remained of her hair as she followed me across the street. “Dammit, I’m going to have to shave my head. My new look for the next few months is going to be butch, as if people don’t already think I’m a lesbian.” She glared at several reporters, as though daring them to write her comments down.
“I don’t.”
“Well, no, but only because of that one night when I was drunk off my-”
“We both agreed that never happened.”
Across the street from my old studio apartment was a four story converted warehouse that took up three lots. Over the past few months had been sectioned off into my new apartment and space I still haven’t managed to lease off. Maybe in another couple months, if the building isn’t blown up by terrorists.
I held the door open for Cathy, something that wasn’t easy with arms full of smoking boxes. She didn't exactly say thanks as she walked in and started up the stairs.
“Tell that to the scores of reporters outside who heard you. Not to mention you just invited me in here for a shower.”
“That was a lie. I won’t have running water for the next few days.”
The door into my apartment was open. She hadn’t taken more than a few steps inside before Cathy dropped the one box she was carrying and clasped a hand to her impressive chest in mock surprise. A forced gasp escaped her lips. “My word! Captain America has told a lie! Doesn’t that afford the same punishment as swearing?”
“No soap either,” I confessed. “Until I’ve settled in here, the mansion is where I go to freshen up.”
“Oh how you must suffer,” she snorted. “Having to go commute to a great big mansion to have all your needs fulfilled. One of these days I should invite you over to the hole in the wall I live at that gets passed off as student housing.”
“My childhood was during the Depression. That trumps you every time.”
“No no no.” Cathy was shaking her head. “I’ve done the math. Technically you spent your teenage years during the Depression. Before that you were living it up in the Roaring Twenties.”
“How is that better?” I asked her. “Adolescence is bad enough under the best of circumstances.”
She tried to think of a response to this, some way to further argue her point, but in the end she conceded. “Why do you win at everything?” She queried at last.
She had to know the answer, but I told her anyway because it needed to be said. “For the same reason that the press will eventually give up on me and report on the real story. Because I’m Captain America, and when I say that American soldiers killed Belgian POW’s during the liberation of a camp, it happened.”
“Even when I didn’t?” As soon as she’d said this, Cathy raised her hands telling me to wait on my response. “Not saying that. Just that if you did say something that wasn’t true, people would believe you.”
I thought about what she said and shrugged. “You tell me. Did you think you were going to take a shower here.”
“Actually, yeah, I did. Way to ruin your credibility.”
“Not hard to do at this point. My lawyer said that my word alone won’t be nearly enough to win the case at trial.”
Cathy settled herself into my vintage easy chair and fixed on me an expression that was almost sympathetic. “Bummer. You going to settle?”
“Admit I was wrong when I know that I’m right and then pay large amounts of money to murderers? What do you think?”
“Hunh,” she replied. “Guess you should have thought of that before you made your story public.”
Before I made a statement in response, I rummaged through one of my boxes and pulled out and electric shaver. Cathy caught it in the air when I tossed it to her. “Here. I’ll sweep up the hair after you leave. And yes, I did think it through. One of them is going to roll over.”
Cathy stood up and walked away from the chair. “How you going to make that happen?” Blades whirred. Hair fell in clumps onto the floor.
“I won’t. Nobody can live with that kind of guilt without telling somebody. If not one of them, somebody they told will come forward.”
“You have that much faith in human nature.”
“Of course. I’m Captain America.”
# # # # #
It wasn’t until a few days later that I met with Cathy Webster again. With the deposition over, she and a few others had started calling me, asking how it went. Eventually I agreed to meet with Cathy and another friend, Jack Flagg, at a bar near the Empire State University Campus.
It not being a game night, the crowd in the sports bar wasn’t very large. Jack I saw right away, sitting at a table with an attractive young woman. Her hair color and features seemed familiar, and I remembered what Cathy had said about her sister moving into the city.
“Danielle, right?”
She nodded and accepted the hand I’d offered here. “Yeah, hi. Are you another one of Cathy’s friends?”
“I’m proud to say that I am. Call me Steve.” There were two other chairs at the table, empty. I took one and sat down across from Jack and Danielle. I wasn’t exactly curious to know if anything had come from Cathy setting the two of them up, but I couldn’t help what was right in front of my eyes. They appeared friendly enough with each other, but not exactly comfortable the way a couple would be.
“Steve? As in Rogers?” All of a sudden, Danielle’s eyes went as big as saucers. “Oh wow, you’re Captain America.”
“We all know,” Jack replied. He was grinning at Danielle’s reaction. Everybody besides me seemed to enjoy that. “What we don’t know,” he continued, turning to look at me, “Is how that deposition turned out.”
“Boring and pointless,” I said straight away. “They’re lawyer jumped the gun, gave me a prelude of the sort of questions he’d ask in the trial.
The way I said it, I must have appeared calm and unshaken. But the fact was that those questions had gotten to me.
“He went straight for your credibility and memory?” Danielle asked. When I nodded, she shook her head in disapproval. “The man must not be very good. It’s one of the first things we’re taught at law school.”
“My lawyer said as much herself afterwards. But she disagreed and said it was smart, that they’re pushing for a settlement and wrapping everything up before this can go to trial.”
“How much are they asking?”
Before answering Danielle, I motion to a waitress and order a club soda. The other two already have bottles, but Jack’s was almost empty and he requested a new beer. As soon as the waitress was at the bar, I answered the question. “Some money, but what they’re really pushing for is a retraction.”
Just then somebody entered the establishment, making a lot noise. It was Cathy, late but happy, whooping and waving a newspaper. She slammed it against the table, and I failed to suppress a weak groan. There was a large picture of her on the front page of a weekly Brooklyn newspaper, a large portion of her body blurred. She took a seat next me, grinning broadly in triumph and running a hand over the peach fuzz on her head.
“I told you! This is the fifth one I’ve seen so far. And Jack told me Drake found these all over the internet. Hey,” Cathy directed at Jack, “Did he change his mind yet?”
“He’s not giving you the names of those web hosts,” Jack told her flat out. I gave Cathy a look of horror, and she shrugged.
“What? Only so I could ask them nicely to take down the pictures. I swear only a few broken bones would be involved. “Hey sis.” Cathy gave her sister a brief nod. “What do you think of your little sister being an internet sex siren?”
“A little jealous, to tell you the truth.” She turned to me. “Up until she went to college, I was always the attractive one in the family.”
At this, Cathy rolled her eyes. “Aw shucks, now you’ll just have to settle for being the one that mom and dad are most proud of. If you didn’t want to compete with this,” Cathy placed a finger on the newspaper, “then you shouldn’t have moved into my city.”
“Right, I should have just rejected that offer from one of the city’s top law firms.”
“Exactly! And you know that mom and dad would have blamed it on me anyway.” Before Danielle could respond, Cathy raised her hand to stop her. “Enough of this family drama. Steve,” I emptied the contents of my glass and started out. “No! You are not leaving until you tell me what happened!”
“Ask Jack.” Cathy grabs at my arm, but I shake her off and kept walking. “When the trial starts, you can get a seat in the courtroom and enjoy the amusement live.”
“Hey! Steve, wait!”
Cathy, Danielle and Jack all call after me, but I ignore them and leave the bar. I had thought a night out with friends would get my mind off things, but all they wanted were juicy details. There’s nothing romantic or exciting about what I’ve gone through. Children died, minds shattered and close friends turned into bitter enemies. Other people might find it thrilling but only because they haven’t lived it.
Later I would hate myself for leaving the way I did. Jack’s suffered in his life, and Cathy likes to put on an act, try to make her personality appear as strong and outgoing as her body when she’s really afraid that deep down she’s the same shy girl as before. Before the deposition I had put on a similar act for Bernie, made light of the situation. She didn’t buy it, of course. In that deposition she saw what I was doing, knew why I was doing it, and had left afterwards without saying a word.
Why had that old man accompanied his lawyer to the deposition? I did what I did, I won’t ever make any excuses about that, but there wasn’t any reason for him to be there. Like I had told Bernie, the case was shaky with my testimony alone, and my credibility after ten or sixty years could have been unraveled by a kitten. One of those men has to come forward.
A lot my answers weren’t within the scope of the question. Half the time I hadn’t addressed the lawyer; hadn’t once even looked at the lawyer. The entire time my eyes had been trained on that old face, that man who had not been much older than I was when he committed murder. Not once did he look at me, but he did wince. At my words he winced.
# # # # #
At four o’clock the next morning there was a knock on my door. Twenty minutes earlier I had already woken up and had just finished morning sit-ups when the building’s security sensors had alerted me to Bernie’s arrival. After the first knock I opened the door, fully clothed in sweats.
A lot of things had run through my mind before I opened that door. Of course I had figured Bernie was coming to see me about the case, but a piece of me had hoped there was another reason. Of all the things I had anticipated, a slap in the face had not been one of them.
She’d taken me by surprise. My head turned with the slap, and the sting of her hand remained. After slapping me, Bernie just stood there, stared at me with teary eyes that made me think about how I had looked at somebody days earlier.
“At 12:01 this morning,” she told me in a shaking but strong voice, “retired Army Colonel Carter Manning died in full uniform of a gunshot wound to his temple.” Something was in Bernie’s other hand, a crumpled up sheet of paper. She glanced down at this before looking back up to glare at me. “I’ve just been sent a copy of his suicide note, in which he gave an account of the Breendonk incident that fully supports your recollection.”
“Bernie,” I said softly. “I never-”
The second slap I did expect. That didn’t make it any less painful.
“I’m obligated to represent you throughout this proceeding.” The tremor in Bernie’s voice was gone. There was only acid. “Once this matter is settled, I never want to see you again.”
With all the poise of business and legal professionalism, Bernadette Rosenthal turned her back on me and walked away. I didn’t stand there to watch her leave. One hand rubbed at the mark on my cheek while the other pulled the door closed.
I had a workout to finish.
Next Issue: The matter appears to have been settled, but Captain America still needs answers. Will two Army veterans tell him what he needs to know? Plus, a scandal threatens to ruin the life of somebody close to Captain America!
“At this point I don’t know why you bothered to see me for advice. Was I speaking Greek or something?”
“If you were, I understood every word you said,” I told her over my own breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausage, fried potatoes, a bowl of cereal with a dab of milk, two slices of ham, a stack of blueberry pancakes, a tall glass of orange juice and a large grapefruit. One of the drawbacks of having a perfect body was that I had to eat a lot of food and do a lot of exercise to maintain it. Thankfully a good friend had gotten me into ballet a number of years ago. A single workout can be felt in every single one of my muscles. “It was good advice, Bernie. I just wasn’t sitting on my hands while you went through the proper channels was all.”
“No, you just posted your whole story on the internet, got the accusations picked up by every major news outlet and got sued for libel.”
All I could do was shug, so I did. “It was like you said, Bernie, there was no way they would have been found guilty in a court of law. Too much time had passed, and my word alone wouldn’t have been enough to convince a court-martial panel.”
“That’s why I contacted the Belgian government,” Bernie explained. “We can identify the victims of Breendonk, exhume the bodies, check the bullets for any that came from a U.S. Army rifle.”
“And while you’re doing that, I’ve got the ball rolling. Now that it’s in the press, the likelihood of anything being suppressed or covered-up goes down. The Belgians have to do an investigation. The United States have to cooperate. And instead of being held behind closed doors this will be out in the open, fully viewed by the public. When all is said and done, those men will have to admit what they did.”
“Then our government will have to admit that they covered it up.”
I shook my head. “No. They would only be stating that, without my testimony, they couldn’t have gone forward with a court-martial.”
“What really happened and what people will think happened are two very different things, Steve. Something like this, especially with a war on, it’s going to hurt the administration. Why else do you think you were getting stonewalled?”
“I’d been informed.” My thoughts briefly turned to the previous conversation I had with Colonel Fury. The plate in front of me was empty almost before I realized it, so I pushed it aside and slid out of the booth. “Are you finished? We can continue this outside.”
Bernie gave a brief look of surprise. But her plate was empty as well, and I knew what a busy woman she was. “Yeah, okay. I’ll get the check.”
She’d started for her pocketbook, but I had already laid several bills onto the table. “Don’t object,” I told her. “We both know I’d end up paying for this one way or another.”
There was a brief pause before she gave a slight shrug and tilt of the head in full agreement.
Outside, we were just leaving the diner as I noticed two men briefly engaging each other at the corner. One was known to me enough that I was aware of what was occurring. Once Bernie got onto the street I let go of the door and excused myself.
“Steve, don’t,” she urged as I turned and walked down the street. I waved off her protest however and continued towards the two men.
One of the two men on that corner was in his late twenties, a kid from the neighborhood who had dropped out of college less than a year ago. The other was an older black man, unknown to me but there was a sense of pride around him. That older man walked away from the drop-out and started towards me. As we neared one another I reached my hand into the left pocket of my jacket. Just as he was about to pass me I stopped and held out the card to him.
“When you’re ready to stop being a slave to that white stuff, call this number,” I said to him with heartfelt compassion and not a hint of patronization. “They have a good program. You’d get the help you need.”
For at least five seconds, that guy on the street was dead silent. His body language spoke volumes, however. From that pride, more than a little anger was brimming.
“What did you just say to me?” he asked.
Bluntly I answered, “You heard me. Was I wrong?”
As quickly as it had fanned that anger, pride was driving it away. Without another word he snatched the card out of my hand and that man walked quickly down the street. Bernie stepped back as he past her by, all the while shooting me a look of complete amazement. I wasn’t paying much attention to her, though. My eyes briefly met the younger man’s annoyed gaze, and then he turned away. Satisfied that I’d done what I could, I turned around and went back to Bernie.
“What did you just do here?” she asked, exasperated. “I can’t believe what you just said to that guy!”
“I hope he thinks about it and seeks treatment,” was all I replied with. “At least one customer did so far, that I know of.” Before she could respond, I changed the subject back to our original conversation. “Give me a call when the deposition is scheduled. I’ll be in my new place starting today, but you can still reach me at my cell phone and, of course, at the mansion.”
The flabbergasted expression on Bernie’s face was priceless. “Um, yeah. Okay, I’ll talk to their lawyers and see if we can arrange a time.” She glanced past me at the young drug dealer on the corner. “Uh, I’ll follow you down the street here. Circle the block.”
“No need,” I told her. “It’s fine to go down that way, Bernie. He knows you’re with me.”
# # # # #
Somehow the press camp had tripled in size between breakfast and lunch. As she had promised, Cathy Webster was standing at the front stoop, ready to help me.
“You do know that these guys will just follow us and camp out at your new place, right?” she asked me more as a point of fact than as an actual question.
“I’ll be the only tenant there at the moment,” I quietly replied to her. “This will die down eventually.”
“Until you piss somebody else off,” muttered Cathy as she followed me inside.
Very few of my belongings were being transferred. The rest I had planned to donate to charity. Of what I was holding onto including items of emotional significance or work related. With somebody helping me it only took one trip to clear the apartment of these effects.
Fire streaked past my shoulder, igniting two of the boxes I’d just set down on the sidewalk. Somebody was on the roof. Instinctively I rolled away while taking a quick glance upwards. No, it wasn’t some crazy but regular guy with a flame-thrower. I’m Captain America, and that means people have to put on a costume to go after me.
“Die race traitor!” he screamed at me. At least I think that’s what he said. From over six floors up, he was hard to make out.
“I got him.” Cathy had made the jump before I could respond, and cleared the first two rows of windows from a standing position. Her climb up the face of the building was rapid, and soon she had reached the fifth floor ledge where she made another jump.
It had taken a few minutes, but I had finally recognized the costumed pyromaniac. So many of them would wear the exact same red and orange color scheme with goggles. The one who had attacked me on that particular day was known as Commander Blaze, formerly a member of a super-human group known as the Supremacists. For a number of years the Supremacists had operated in Angola, fighting to maintain a government led by white racists. After the civil war changed governments, the Supremacists had disappeared.
It was fortunate that Commander Blaze was there alone. A prolonged fight with his teammates could have injured more than a few of the bystanders.
Flames poured over the airborne Free Spirit, but Cathy moved as though she were affected at all. She fell on top of Captain Blaze, grabbed the front of his uniform with one hand, and smacked him hard across the face. For all his power over fire, Captain Blaze had the body of a regular man. After a blow like that, he was like a wet rag hanging from Free Spirit’s arm.
Casually, she tossed him off the roof. He fell limp into my arms, as weak and pathetic as his ideas. Without a second thought I dropped Captain Blaze to the ground. Some coats and sweaters were in one of the boxes that hadn’t lit afire. I grabbed one and held it out as Free Spirit jumped back onto the ground.
“Thanks.” A great deal of her clothing had been burned away. Around us, cameras were shooting. “This is one way of making the front page,” Free Spirit commented.
“Maybe the tabloids. The Times and the Post wouldn’t waste space on another so-called costumes brawl. Come on. Let’s get these across the street and you can shower.”
Free Spirit ran a hand through what remained of her hair as she followed me across the street. “Dammit, I’m going to have to shave my head. My new look for the next few months is going to be butch, as if people don’t already think I’m a lesbian.” She glared at several reporters, as though daring them to write her comments down.
“I don’t.”
“Well, no, but only because of that one night when I was drunk off my-”
“We both agreed that never happened.”
Across the street from my old studio apartment was a four story converted warehouse that took up three lots. Over the past few months had been sectioned off into my new apartment and space I still haven’t managed to lease off. Maybe in another couple months, if the building isn’t blown up by terrorists.
I held the door open for Cathy, something that wasn’t easy with arms full of smoking boxes. She didn't exactly say thanks as she walked in and started up the stairs.
“Tell that to the scores of reporters outside who heard you. Not to mention you just invited me in here for a shower.”
“That was a lie. I won’t have running water for the next few days.”
The door into my apartment was open. She hadn’t taken more than a few steps inside before Cathy dropped the one box she was carrying and clasped a hand to her impressive chest in mock surprise. A forced gasp escaped her lips. “My word! Captain America has told a lie! Doesn’t that afford the same punishment as swearing?”
“No soap either,” I confessed. “Until I’ve settled in here, the mansion is where I go to freshen up.”
“Oh how you must suffer,” she snorted. “Having to go commute to a great big mansion to have all your needs fulfilled. One of these days I should invite you over to the hole in the wall I live at that gets passed off as student housing.”
“My childhood was during the Depression. That trumps you every time.”
“No no no.” Cathy was shaking her head. “I’ve done the math. Technically you spent your teenage years during the Depression. Before that you were living it up in the Roaring Twenties.”
“How is that better?” I asked her. “Adolescence is bad enough under the best of circumstances.”
She tried to think of a response to this, some way to further argue her point, but in the end she conceded. “Why do you win at everything?” She queried at last.
She had to know the answer, but I told her anyway because it needed to be said. “For the same reason that the press will eventually give up on me and report on the real story. Because I’m Captain America, and when I say that American soldiers killed Belgian POW’s during the liberation of a camp, it happened.”
“Even when I didn’t?” As soon as she’d said this, Cathy raised her hands telling me to wait on my response. “Not saying that. Just that if you did say something that wasn’t true, people would believe you.”
I thought about what she said and shrugged. “You tell me. Did you think you were going to take a shower here.”
“Actually, yeah, I did. Way to ruin your credibility.”
“Not hard to do at this point. My lawyer said that my word alone won’t be nearly enough to win the case at trial.”
Cathy settled herself into my vintage easy chair and fixed on me an expression that was almost sympathetic. “Bummer. You going to settle?”
“Admit I was wrong when I know that I’m right and then pay large amounts of money to murderers? What do you think?”
“Hunh,” she replied. “Guess you should have thought of that before you made your story public.”
Before I made a statement in response, I rummaged through one of my boxes and pulled out and electric shaver. Cathy caught it in the air when I tossed it to her. “Here. I’ll sweep up the hair after you leave. And yes, I did think it through. One of them is going to roll over.”
Cathy stood up and walked away from the chair. “How you going to make that happen?” Blades whirred. Hair fell in clumps onto the floor.
“I won’t. Nobody can live with that kind of guilt without telling somebody. If not one of them, somebody they told will come forward.”
“You have that much faith in human nature.”
“Of course. I’m Captain America.”
# # # # #
It wasn’t until a few days later that I met with Cathy Webster again. With the deposition over, she and a few others had started calling me, asking how it went. Eventually I agreed to meet with Cathy and another friend, Jack Flagg, at a bar near the Empire State University Campus.
It not being a game night, the crowd in the sports bar wasn’t very large. Jack I saw right away, sitting at a table with an attractive young woman. Her hair color and features seemed familiar, and I remembered what Cathy had said about her sister moving into the city.
“Danielle, right?”
She nodded and accepted the hand I’d offered here. “Yeah, hi. Are you another one of Cathy’s friends?”
“I’m proud to say that I am. Call me Steve.” There were two other chairs at the table, empty. I took one and sat down across from Jack and Danielle. I wasn’t exactly curious to know if anything had come from Cathy setting the two of them up, but I couldn’t help what was right in front of my eyes. They appeared friendly enough with each other, but not exactly comfortable the way a couple would be.
“Steve? As in Rogers?” All of a sudden, Danielle’s eyes went as big as saucers. “Oh wow, you’re Captain America.”
“We all know,” Jack replied. He was grinning at Danielle’s reaction. Everybody besides me seemed to enjoy that. “What we don’t know,” he continued, turning to look at me, “Is how that deposition turned out.”
“Boring and pointless,” I said straight away. “They’re lawyer jumped the gun, gave me a prelude of the sort of questions he’d ask in the trial.
The way I said it, I must have appeared calm and unshaken. But the fact was that those questions had gotten to me.
“He went straight for your credibility and memory?” Danielle asked. When I nodded, she shook her head in disapproval. “The man must not be very good. It’s one of the first things we’re taught at law school.”
“My lawyer said as much herself afterwards. But she disagreed and said it was smart, that they’re pushing for a settlement and wrapping everything up before this can go to trial.”
“How much are they asking?”
Before answering Danielle, I motion to a waitress and order a club soda. The other two already have bottles, but Jack’s was almost empty and he requested a new beer. As soon as the waitress was at the bar, I answered the question. “Some money, but what they’re really pushing for is a retraction.”
Just then somebody entered the establishment, making a lot noise. It was Cathy, late but happy, whooping and waving a newspaper. She slammed it against the table, and I failed to suppress a weak groan. There was a large picture of her on the front page of a weekly Brooklyn newspaper, a large portion of her body blurred. She took a seat next me, grinning broadly in triumph and running a hand over the peach fuzz on her head.
“I told you! This is the fifth one I’ve seen so far. And Jack told me Drake found these all over the internet. Hey,” Cathy directed at Jack, “Did he change his mind yet?”
“He’s not giving you the names of those web hosts,” Jack told her flat out. I gave Cathy a look of horror, and she shrugged.
“What? Only so I could ask them nicely to take down the pictures. I swear only a few broken bones would be involved. “Hey sis.” Cathy gave her sister a brief nod. “What do you think of your little sister being an internet sex siren?”
“A little jealous, to tell you the truth.” She turned to me. “Up until she went to college, I was always the attractive one in the family.”
At this, Cathy rolled her eyes. “Aw shucks, now you’ll just have to settle for being the one that mom and dad are most proud of. If you didn’t want to compete with this,” Cathy placed a finger on the newspaper, “then you shouldn’t have moved into my city.”
“Right, I should have just rejected that offer from one of the city’s top law firms.”
“Exactly! And you know that mom and dad would have blamed it on me anyway.” Before Danielle could respond, Cathy raised her hand to stop her. “Enough of this family drama. Steve,” I emptied the contents of my glass and started out. “No! You are not leaving until you tell me what happened!”
“Ask Jack.” Cathy grabs at my arm, but I shake her off and kept walking. “When the trial starts, you can get a seat in the courtroom and enjoy the amusement live.”
“Hey! Steve, wait!”
Cathy, Danielle and Jack all call after me, but I ignore them and leave the bar. I had thought a night out with friends would get my mind off things, but all they wanted were juicy details. There’s nothing romantic or exciting about what I’ve gone through. Children died, minds shattered and close friends turned into bitter enemies. Other people might find it thrilling but only because they haven’t lived it.
Later I would hate myself for leaving the way I did. Jack’s suffered in his life, and Cathy likes to put on an act, try to make her personality appear as strong and outgoing as her body when she’s really afraid that deep down she’s the same shy girl as before. Before the deposition I had put on a similar act for Bernie, made light of the situation. She didn’t buy it, of course. In that deposition she saw what I was doing, knew why I was doing it, and had left afterwards without saying a word.
Why had that old man accompanied his lawyer to the deposition? I did what I did, I won’t ever make any excuses about that, but there wasn’t any reason for him to be there. Like I had told Bernie, the case was shaky with my testimony alone, and my credibility after ten or sixty years could have been unraveled by a kitten. One of those men has to come forward.
A lot my answers weren’t within the scope of the question. Half the time I hadn’t addressed the lawyer; hadn’t once even looked at the lawyer. The entire time my eyes had been trained on that old face, that man who had not been much older than I was when he committed murder. Not once did he look at me, but he did wince. At my words he winced.
# # # # #
At four o’clock the next morning there was a knock on my door. Twenty minutes earlier I had already woken up and had just finished morning sit-ups when the building’s security sensors had alerted me to Bernie’s arrival. After the first knock I opened the door, fully clothed in sweats.
A lot of things had run through my mind before I opened that door. Of course I had figured Bernie was coming to see me about the case, but a piece of me had hoped there was another reason. Of all the things I had anticipated, a slap in the face had not been one of them.
She’d taken me by surprise. My head turned with the slap, and the sting of her hand remained. After slapping me, Bernie just stood there, stared at me with teary eyes that made me think about how I had looked at somebody days earlier.
“At 12:01 this morning,” she told me in a shaking but strong voice, “retired Army Colonel Carter Manning died in full uniform of a gunshot wound to his temple.” Something was in Bernie’s other hand, a crumpled up sheet of paper. She glanced down at this before looking back up to glare at me. “I’ve just been sent a copy of his suicide note, in which he gave an account of the Breendonk incident that fully supports your recollection.”
“Bernie,” I said softly. “I never-”
The second slap I did expect. That didn’t make it any less painful.
“I’m obligated to represent you throughout this proceeding.” The tremor in Bernie’s voice was gone. There was only acid. “Once this matter is settled, I never want to see you again.”
With all the poise of business and legal professionalism, Bernadette Rosenthal turned her back on me and walked away. I didn’t stand there to watch her leave. One hand rubbed at the mark on my cheek while the other pulled the door closed.
I had a workout to finish.
Next Issue: The matter appears to have been settled, but Captain America still needs answers. Will two Army veterans tell him what he needs to know? Plus, a scandal threatens to ruin the life of somebody close to Captain America!