After the Absolute
The Inner Teachings of Richard Rose
By David Gold with Bart Marshall
The Krishnites (Early History of New Vrindavan)
When I was first getting started in my practice Rose never asked me to do any legal work for the group. It was not until Lou joined me that Rose began to request our professional services. Either Rose waited until I had help in the office to ask, or it was actually Lou himself who inspired his confidence. At any rate, it was also about this time that Rose's feud with the Krishnas--or "Krishnites," as he called them--started heating up. Rose never expressed outright regret over his decision to lease his "back" farm to Keith Ham and Howard Wheeler, even though they lied to him about their intentions and eventually turned it into a sprawling Hare Krishna empire that pressed against his farm from all sides. The New Vrindaban Community, as it was called, used their lease on Rose's farm as a base to buy up most of the other farms in the area, and build the "Palace of Gold," a huge structure featuring two hundred tons of white Italian and blue Canadian marble, and a dome covered with twenty-four-karat gold leaf.
"In some ways the Krishnites are better to have around than the hillbillies," Rose said once. "At least they don't get drunk and steal the radiators out of your trucks."
But over the years the tensions had been building. There were minor disputes over fences or livestock, and as the wealth and power of New Vrindaban increased, the leaders became more confident and arrogant.
Once, when Rose inquired about some missing goats, Ham--who by then had legally changed his name to Swami Kirtanananda Bhaktipada--said, "Even if we took them, there's nothing you can do about it. We've got you surrounded."
Gradually, Rose began asking me to intervene in these disagreements, and I made some calls. But the Krishna's attorneys shrugged off my threats to sue and almost dared me to take their clients to court. As the word got out that I was the opposing attorney in these disputes the Krishna devotees would scowl at me when they saw me, and began calling me a demon to my face. These border skirmishes turned out to be just the preliminaries.
As the incidents increased Rose turned more of his attention to the Krishnas. Almost every evening in the kitchen he talked about the problems he was having with them, or brought out some new piece of information he'd picked up about what was really going on inside the New Vrindaban organization. Rumors and stories of prostitution, drug smuggling, child molestation, and other crimes were commonplace. More than once I asked if he wanted Lou and me to do something about legally getting his farm back, but I never got a definitive answer. He'd say something like, "I know you guys are busy," or, "Well, if you get the time someday, maybe we can look into it."
Then one day as I was working at my desk in the office I heard a familiar voice out in the reception area.
"Are Lou and Dave here?" It was Rose. I was dumbstruck. He'd never been to the office before, and in fact made it a point to stay away, saying he didn't want his reputation as a loose cannon to rub off on our practice. I jumped up from my chair and was in the outer office before the receptionist had finished asking him if he had an appointment. Lou must have done the same thing. We arrived simultaneously.
Though it was a moderate fall day, Rose was wearing a long wool coat.
"I was out and about the town and thought I'd drop in on you guys," he said. "I took a bath today and didn't want to waste it."
Lou and I laughed nervously. Our receptionist looked puzzled at the whole scene.
"Come on in, sit down," Lou said.
We went into Lou's office, which was more spacious than mine, and sat down--Lou behind his desk, Mister Rose and I in the visitors' chairs. Rose glanced around Lou's office, taking in the few pieces of artwork Lou had put up to add interest to an otherwise dull and unremarkable room.
"Nice place you got here," Rose said, nodding approvingly.
"We're comfortable," Lou said, "but it's more or less a dump."
"Not compared to the places the lawyers in Marshall County used to have," Rose said. They really were dumps. Second story walk-ups that smelled like booze and cigarettes. Half the time you'd have to sober them up to talk to them. Then right away they'd put on their professional mask and look down on you like you were some kind of bug, like maybe they'd agree to save your miserable life if you proved to be worthy of their time--and if you took out a mortgage on your farm to pay them a huge fee..."
He paused and looked around the office again. "I tell everyone you guys are different."
We sat in silence for a few moments. It was time for him to tell us why he'd come.
"I was at the store yesterday and ran into Bob Burkey," he said. The Burkeys had a farm near Rose's. He and Bob Burkey had been friends for years. As we sat there, Rose proceeded to recount the long history of his friendship with Bob, even though we'd heard it several times before.
"Anyway, you already know all that. The thing is, though, I got to talking with Bob about the Krishnites and that back farm of mine. And he said, 'You ought to hire those new lawyers in town and see if you can get your farm back.' I told him I thought it was a good idea and I'd check into it."
He paused a moment and looked us over. "So what do you think? Should we take a shot at it?"
I experienced a moment of confusion and self-doubt. Surely he knew I would jump at the chance to help him and the group. Or did he? And why did he choose this time and this way to ask? Had he forgotten the occasions I'd volunteered to help get his farm back? Was it a lack of skill, determination, or trustworthiness on my part that had kept him from accepting my past offers? Was his past reticence somehow tied to his long-standing refusal to accept food--or anything else I offered--from me?
But these thoughts passed quickly. "Absolutely, Mister Rose," I said eagerly. "We can get to work on it right away."
"Good. Where do we start?"
Lou took out a legal pad and spoke in his usual methodical manner. "Just tell us the story from the beginning, Mister Rose, and we'll ask questions to fill in what we need."
We had heard the story before, but there was something about being in the office--lawyers and client--that brought a sense of order and chronology to it.
"It was about 1967, I guess when I placed an ad in the San Francisco Oracle. It had been probably twenty years or so since I'd had my Experience, and I'd almost given up hope of ever finding anyone to pass it on to. Outside of a few old ladies in the Steubenville group, and an occasional nut Bob Martin and I might meet, there was nobody to even talk to about spiritual matters.
"Then in the Sixties, the zeitgeist changed. I had always brought young kids from town out to the farm so that they could get the city out of their hair--the country is a beautiful place to a kid. But what started happening in the late Sixties is that young people--college-age kids, some maybe a little younger, started gravitating out to the farm on their own. I didn't put the word out or anything, but of course I didn't discourage them either. Before you know it we were having regular gatherings on the weekends. Nothing formal, just sitting around, shooting the bull about philosophy. If circumstances were right, maybe I'd read a mind or two.
"I became really curious about why these kids were suddenly so open and aware about esoteric matters. Eventually, I realized that it was dope--LSD in particular--that was opening up their heads. They saw other dimensions that seemed just as real as this one. And what's more, acid seemed to give them an artificial intuition--they understood me.
"Well, I figured, maybe the time has come. With the Experience comes an obligation. So I ended up putting an ad in a couple of underground newspapers in New York and San Francisco, letting people know I was looking for sincere seekers who wanted to take part in a philosophic ashram." Rose smiled. "I didn't know what I was getting into."
"I heard you had a lot of bums and drifters show up," Lou said.
"Yeah, when I was lucky," Rose chuckled. "Most of the people who came around turned out to be dope addicts just looking for a place to crash. Once a couple of gypsies came and stayed in a trailer on my place. Told me they'd been students in a Gurdjieff group, and I thought maybe I'd finally found some people with potential. I discovered later they were running a prostitution business outside of town. I kicked them out, but before they left they burned down my trailer."
He laughed at the memory and spoke without animosity or, apparently, regrets.
"Is this when Ham and Wheeler came," I asked.
"Yes, it was about this time. They told me they'd previously been in the Krishna movement, but had given it up. They said the Krishnites were too closed-minded, and that they were looking for some kind of non-dogmatic ashram, a place where people of different beliefs could come and meditate and exchange ideas. And of course, this appealed to me because this is what I was trying to do, too.
"So anyway, I had the back farm, and since I had the family in town and was raising cattle on the other farm, I couldn't keep an eye on the place. The hillbillies were breaking the windows out of the house, and it was growing up like a jungle, so when Howard Wheeler suggested I rent the farm to them, I thought, sure, why not. Maybe something good would come out of it."
He opened his old black satchel and handed me a three-page legal document. "This is the original lease between Howard and me," he said.
Rose continued talking as I read. "I went to Lawrence Evans," he said, referring to an older, impeccable lawyer whose office was just a few doors down from ours. "I knew him from the naval reserves. I told him, 'Lawrence, be fair to both sides.' That's why I went to him. I knew he'd be fair."
As I read through the lease I was impressed by its efforts at impartiality, and disheartened by the vagueness and lack of landlord rights that resulted. Rose had given Wheeler a ninety-nine year lease on the property for a very fair price, with an option to purchase for one dollar. And while Rose unquestionably knew what he was after when he specified that it be used as a "non-dogmatic, open-minded spiritual ashram," I wondered if a judge or jury would have the patience or desire to draw the distinction between what Rose envisioned and what Ham and Wheeler had created. It was true, of course, that his two tenants had, in Rose's words "put on bedsheets and began chanting gibberish" the day after the lease was signed, but it would be difficult to prove that such action legally constituted fraud.
We could not count on any sympathy from the courts, either. While it was true that the locals harbored no love for the Krishnas, their opinion of Richard Rose was not much better, especially since they blamed him for letting the Krishnas get a foothold on the ridge in the first place. And though my experience as a Marshall County lawyer had been relatively brief, I'd seen enough to know that the Krishna's vast wealth had produced a formidable influence in the court system.
The one ray of hope was a rather straight-forward provision that required the tenants to pay the taxes on time or forfeit the lease. Rose, who was meticulous with all his paperwork, had original receipts which irrefutably demonstrated that the Krishnas were often years late in the payment of the taxes.
"They intentionally pay the taxes late," Rose explained, "hoping the property will come up for Sheriff's sale so they can buy it."
"The lease is pretty clear on that point," I said, handing the papers to Lou. "We should win on that point alone if we get a fair shake."
Lou began reading the lease. "Around here, that's a pretty big 'if,'" he said slowly.
Two weeks later we filed a lawsuit seeking return of the property on four grounds: that Ham and Wheeler defrauded Rose when they said they were no longer Krishnas; that they did not pay the taxes on time as required by the lease; that they engaged in criminal activities on the property; and that Wheeler's assignment of the lease to New Vrindaban Community Inc., the Krishna's landholding corporation, violated the non-assignment provision of the lease. We had a good case, and by the time our court date arrived I was feeling almost confident, in spite of the powers arrayed against us.
But it was over in ten minutes. The Krishna's lawyers immediately moved for a pre-trial dismissal of the portion of our lawsuit dealing with the taxes. The judge not only quickly granted that motion but went ahead and threw out our entire suit as well. It would not be the last time we had reason to suspect that Krishna money and power had pre-empted justice in Marshall County.
Not long afterwards I received an unsolicited letter from an attorney for the Krishnas, offering to trade Rose's family farm for another tract of land a comfortable distance away from "Hare Krishna Ridge." The farm Rose would receive was almost twice as big, and, according to the letter, twice as valuable. I knew the offer would make for lively kitchen conversation and presented the letter to Rose that evening like I'd brought home a trophy fish.
After the usual search for his reading glasses, he sat down at the table and slowly read over the letter.
"They gotta be kidding," he muttered, slipping the offer back into the envelope and tossing it disdainfully in my direction. "They already offered me a million bucks for the place and I turned 'em down. Tell them to go to hell. Better yet, just ignore 'em."
There was also an interesting sidelight to this case that took on greater meaning many years later. In an early phase of the suit, we had a meeting with the Krishna's lawyers and they asked Rose a series of questions. At a certain point it appeared that the questioning was over. Then one of the lawyers asked Rose about his ex-wife, Phyllis. I thought it was a legitimate question since Phyllis' name also appears on the lease. But Rose took it as a direct threat to his family and came up out of his chair ready to do battle. Lou and I quickly worked to calm the situation, and although I played the part of Rose's loyal lawyer at the time, I secretly felt he had missed the mark and overstepped. I chalked it up to the "West Virginia mountain man" part of him and let it go at that.
But Rose might actually have sensed something deeper in the lawyers words that day. Years later, when the Krishna empire began to crack, I was told by one of the assistant U.S. attorneys that they had uncovered a Krishna plot to kill Rose in the aftermath of the suit we had filed to get his farm back. Though they had easily won the first round, the Krishnas apparently were fearful that Rose might persist and someday actually succeed in regaining the property that now had become the center of New Vrindaban.
As the enmity increased between Rose and the Krishnas, Rose became someone to whom local people would tell their stories about problems they were also having with the "Hairy Critters." And Lou and I, as the legal arm of Rose's feud, became the law office of choice if you had a beef with the Krishna's. Some of our cases were on behalf of Mister Rose, some were for other clients. One was somewhere in between.
"There's a woman out here to see you," my secretary said one day.
"Do I know her?"
"No, I don't think so. But she's with a friend of yours."
I walked into the waiting room. Mister Rose was there, sitting next to a gangly woman in her thirties, with short curly brown hair. Rose still tried to keep his distance from the office, and I wondered why he would bring this woman by unannounced.
When we got back to my office, he introduced her.
"This is Cheryl Wheeler. Howard Wheeler's wife."
"Soon-to-be ex-wife," she emphasized.
At Rose's urging, Cheryl began telling me her story. She had been initiated by Krishna founder Prabhupada in California during the Sixties. When Prabhupada decided that Howard Wheeler needed a wife, Cheryl had dutifully followed her guru's orders and moved to West Virginia where she and Wheeler were married. Years later they separated and Cheryl moved back to California where she filed for divorce. The divorce judge in California granted Cheryl temporary custody of her children, including an eight-year old son, Devin, who still resided at the New Vrindaban Community in West Virginia. She handed me a copy of the California court order, and continued to talk as I read.
"I came to Mister Rose," she said, "because I remembered him from when I first came here and the farm was just a broken down house. I don't know, it just seemed like he'd be a friend to somebody who needed help."
"From a purely legal standpoint, this is pretty straightforward," I said, looking up from the court order. "Based on this, a local judge should issue a Writ of Habeas Corpus, commanding the child to appear in Marshall County Circuit Court. Unless there's some compelling reason not to, the judge there would defer to the California order and your son can go home with you."
"This is not just any child at the commune," Rose said. "Ham will fight it with everything he's got."
"What do you mean?"
"My son is Keith Ham's protégé and constant companion," Cheryl said. "They eat together, travel together, and...sleep together." Her mouth tightened and she turned her head away for a moment.
I fought back feelings of anger and revulsion, but I wasn't shocked. I was aware of Keith Ham's long-standing homosexual relationship with Cheryl's husband, Howard Wheeler, and stories of child molestings at the commune were not uncommon. It came as no surprise that Ham's twisted mind would choose Wheeler's young son as the object of his perversion.
The next day Lou and I walked over to the judge's office and presented our Habeas Corpus Petition, which included a request for an immediate medical examination of the child to determine physical or sexual abuse. The judge impatiently scanned through our petition until he'd read enough to suddenly realize what it was about. Then he recoiled like we'd handed him a rattlesnake.
"Come back in fifteen minutes," he growled after regaining his composure. "I've got to think this one over."
We returned exactly fifteen minutes later, expecting the worst. The judge was gone, but surprisingly, his secretary calmly handed us the order we had presented, duly signed by the judge. Lou took the order to the Sheriff while I went back to the office to get Cheryl, who was to accompany the deputies when they picked up her son.
An hour passed, then two, with no word from either the officers or our client. Late in the afternoon Cheryl returned, alone.
"They knew we were coming!" she cried, slumping into a chair. "Someone tipped them off, and it had to be recent, because they didn't even have time to get their stories straight."
I called one of the deputies and he filled me in on the details.
"They had a bunch of stories, all of them bullshit," he said. "One teacher told us the boy was there a few minutes ago. Someone else said he hadn't lived there for years. Somebody else said he was out of town for the weekend. I'll tell you this," the deputy concluded, "that boy was there this morning, but you can be damn sure he's out of the state by now."
Over the next few days the Krishna community offered three different official explanations to the newspapers concerning the child's whereabouts at the time of the attempted pick-up. Everyone in Moundsville knew the Krishnas had hidden the boy, but nothing could be done. Without physical possession of the child, our Habeas Corpus petition was useless.
Matters did not improve when we began the process to have Marshall County recognize our client's right to custody of her son. Cheryl Wheeler, already distraught over the disappearance of her child, was dumbfounded at the treatment we received in court during the first scheduled hearing. The judge routinely granted every motion made by the Krishna's lawyers, and disdainfully overruled every request Lou and I made, repeatedly referring to us as "boys" in the process. It did not go well.
After the hearing, Cheryl vented her frustrations to a newspaper reporter. She expressed her belief that her child had been sexually molested, and said that the judge in the case was obviously partial to her son's kidnappers. Her interview appeared in the paper the following morning.
When Lou and I arrived at the office the next day, our secretary had already heard from the judge. He wanted to see us. Now.
Awaiting us in the court chambers were the Krishna's team of attorneys, a court reporter, and one seething judge.
"So your client thinks I'm a crook?" he said in carefully controlled tones, his lips tightening around each word.
Lou and I said nothing.
"You boys think you're going to try this case in the newspapers? Okay, we'll just put the newspapers into the trial."
He then read the entire newspaper article into the record, which he said would be sent to the State Bar Disciplinary Committee immediately after the hearing. Then he tossed the newspaper in our direction.
"Where's your client? I have a few words to say to her, too."
"She's in hiding because she fears for her life," Lou said, looking directly at the Krishna's lawyers.
"Well I can't answer to your client's fears, but I'm the judge here, and I'm running this court. I want to know the whereabouts of your client. Now."
"That's privileged information and we're not at liberty to disclose it," I said.
The judge picked up the phone and spoke to his secretary. She appeared a few moments later with a copy of the Attorney Cannon of Ethics. The judge opened it and read into the record the part that said an attorney must obey the mandates of the court.
"Now," he said, leaning forward in his chair until he was just a few feet from our faces, "I'm ordering you as attorneys practicing before the bar of this court to tell me where your client is."
"We can't do that," Lou said.
The judge slammed the book shut. "Make a transcript of these proceedings," he snapped to the court reporter. With that the hearing was adjourned.
I got in my car and drove straight to Benwood to tell Rose what had transpired. When I entered the kitchen I got the impression he'd been waiting for me.
"Well, what happened?" he said.
I didn't bother to ask how he knew that something had happened, I just launched straight into a blow-by-blow description of our inquisition, and its possible ramifications. The longer I talked the madder Rose seemed to get. Encouraged, I kept on talking. If there was to be a "round two" with the judge it appeared I would not only have God on my side, but a wrathful and vengeful God to boot. When I stopped talking, Rose spoke evenly, but with great force.
"You lost."
I was stunned. "Lost? What...?"
"You let that big bloat intimidate you, and then you just walked away with your tail between your legs, worried about what else he might do to you." He shook his head. "I would have expected more out of you."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
"What the hell else could we have done?" I cried out, forgetting myself in my emotions.
"If you're in the right, you don't just run away. Even if it's hopeless, you force yourself to fight. When you're in the right there are no minor battles, no occasions for retreat. You fight with everything you have, every time. That way the power of your conviction will deter opponents with weaker motivations than yours. You fight, or you die in shame. Or worse--you live the rest of your life as a coward."
There were more words, lots of words, but I didn't really hear them. I felt as if my allies were attacking me. I didn't know how or where to make my stand.
"I don't understand, Mister Rose," I finally replied. "I just don't understand."
"Yes you do," he said. "You were right and he was wrong, but you're the one who ran away. You understand that don't you?"
"He's a judge, for godsake..."
"I don't give a damn and you shouldn't either! If you can't stand up to an earthly phantom in a black robe, what makes you think you're ready to become the Absolute?"
The next morning Lou and I asked for a private meeting with the judge--no court reporter--which he quickly granted, thinking, I'm sure, that we'd considered the possible consequences and were now willing to tell him what he wanted to know. Instead we told him what we should have told him the first time.
As he sat stunned behind his huge desk, his face becoming more flushed with each word, we told him that we not only agreed with and supported everything our client said in the newspaper, but that we strongly suspected him of being corrupt. We said we knew he was the one who tipped off the Krishna's in time to have Devin Wheeler kidnapped, and that we would do everything in our power to prove it. We told him several other things and when we were finished we stood up and left, solid on the outside, shaking to the core.
Cheryl Wheeler never regained custody of her son. We found out later that after Devin was whisked away from the commune that day, he was taken to a Krishna compound in Mexico where he remained until Cheryl Wheeler gave up her efforts to be awarded custody. Then he was brought back to New Vrindaban where he again became Keith Ham's--Swami Kirtanananda's--constant companion.
As a footnote to this case, twelve years later when Ham was indicted on federal racketeering charges the indictment also accused Ham of kidnapping Devin Wheeler to prevent the authorities from taking Wheeler into custody and thereby discovering Ham's sexual relations with the boy. During his testimony, Ham admitted receiving a phone call warning him that the authorities were coming to pick up the child, but the United States Attorney who was cross-examining Ham never asked him who had made the call or provided the information.
As time went on and word got out about the Cheryl Wheeler case, our office became a beacon for disaffected Krishnas from all over the country. Over the years we were phoned or visited by dozens of devotees with a cornucopia of complaints, from petty disputes over land or money, to desperate people like Cheryl Wheeler with tales of sordid sex, beatings, even murder. These visits ceased to be novelties and eventually grew into burdens. The disaffected devotees who appeared in our waiting room--and scared our other clients--were always short of money and equally short of the resolve necessary to withstand the demands of legal process. Eventually we grew tired of being used as weapons of revenge, but we never closed our doors to them, hoping that someday someone would come in who could crack the stranglehold that the Krishnas held on the legal and political community. One day that someone finally showed up. His name was Steve Bryant.
_________________
Murder (The Killing of Chakradhari)
I had been out of the area for a couple weeks in late October and when I returned I went in to see Lou. He was uncharacteristically animated.
"Did you see this article?" he said. The Wheeling News Register was spread out on his desk, and I wondered what that particular paper could have to say that would excite anyone, let alone phlegmatic Lou.
I walked over to his desk, and was startled to see the headline at the top of the second section: "Former Krishna Devotee Claims Swami Bogus." The Wheeling paper, whether through inclination or intimidation, was extremely pro-Krishna, and rarely printed anything negative about them. Sometimes we would read of a Krishna murder or defection in the Pittsburgh, Columbus, or even Philadelphia paper, but there would be no coverage in the local news.
"It's Bryant," Lou said.
"Who's Bryant?"
Lou looked at me quizzically, then realized that I really didn't know.
"Steve Bryant. That's right, you weren't here when he first came to town."
Lou filled me in. Bryant, a disenchanted Krishna devotee had dropped by the office in early August while I was on vacation.
"He was off the deep end, of course," Lou said, "but in a coherent sort of way. While he was talking it occurred to me he could probably make it in the real world."
Lou went on to tell me that Bryant had kicked around a number of Krishna communities, then had settled in New Vrindaban a year or two before. Bryant imported and crafted Indian jewelry, and his Ford van served as a kind of mobile metal shop and crafts store. Most of his customers were in California, and earlier in the year he had traveled west on a business trip, leaving his wife, stepson, and two toddler children at New Vrindaban.
"Anyway, while Bryant was in California, Ham initiated his wife," Lou went on. "That really made him angry. Bryant spent an hour explaining to me why it was such a big deal to him. Apparently, in the Hindu culture a wife's primary master is her husband, and the guru is supposed to work through the husband if he wants to bring the wife into the fold. That's all he really wanted to talk about. He just kept quoting Prabhupada on the letter of the law and rambling on about Ham going too far this time."
"So where did you leave it with him?"
"Nowhere, really. He was pretty manic, and didn't have any real goal in mind, so I just tried to get him out of the office as soon as I could. But it looks like he's back." Lou held out a pink message slip. "You can talk to him if you want to."
I shrugged. "Doesn't sound like he's got much to go on."
I took the message anyway and read it. Bryant had called our office from the county jail and asked for me.
"What's he doing in jail?"
"Protective custody," Lou said with a slight smile. "Read the article. I think you'll find it interesting."
I returned to my office with the newspaper. I expected the News Register to paint Bryant as a fanatic, but the writing was surprisingly even-handed. It confirmed the reason for his disenchantment with the Swami, and reported that Bryant had returned to Moundsville to expose the Swami as a false guru. Most of Bryant's accusations were doctrinal: the Swami was untrue to Vedic teachings and the directions of their beloved deceased guru, Prabhupada. But at the very end of the article, almost as a throw-away, there were additional allegations. Bryant claimed to have evidence of "drug dealing, child abuse, and murder." I put the article in my pocket and quickly headed for the Marshall County Jail.
I was led into the attorney visiting room and a few minutes later Bryant was brought in, wearing the standard blue jumpsuit all inmates were issued. The overall impression I got was one of incongruity. He looked like neither a Krishna devotee nor a convict. He was tall, blonde, and fairly good looking. What kept him from being truly handsome was a touch of goofiness in his face and smile, the same quality of expression that made him look out of place in jail.
I introduced myself and he seemed pleased and amused that I'd come. He placed the bulging manila envelope he'd brought onto the table, then offered me his long, slender hand. As a rule, I avoided shaking hands with inmates. I didn't like to extend a hand in friendship before I knew what kind of client I was dealing with. Besides, I was just squeamish enough to worry about where those hands might have been a few minutes before. But there was something about Bryant that made me let down my guard and shake his hand.
"You're becoming something of a celebrity in these parts," I said.
His smile broadened. "Yeah, I've been getting the word out. The TV crews were here this morning doing an interview. One of the guards promised he'd tape it for me tonight."
"What did you tell them?"
"Just the highlights. Whatever I could think of that would get Kirtanananda worked up if he saw it." He smile disappeared. "There's no way I could tell it all in a short interview. I know things you wouldn't believe."
"About the Swami?"
"Swami?" he spit the word out like a bitter seed. "What a laugh. He doesn't have a spiritual bone in his body. He's a phony, an impostor. He's gone directly against almost every one of Prabhupada's mandates. He's doing more harm to the Krishna movement than any outsider ever could."
Bryant then launched into a diatribe against Swami Kirtanananda that went on for fifteen minutes. As I listened I became aware that there was definitely something different about him. I had talked with a lot of disgruntled Krishna devotees over the years, all of whom had tossed out various insults and accusations about the Swami. But regardless of how angry or disillusioned they were, they still referred to Kirtanananda in tones of respect, even awe. In contrast, Bryant spoke without fear or reservation.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked him.
"Because he stole my wife."
"I didn't think Ham was interested in women."
"He isn't. He's a queer. He hates women and encourages all the men at New Vrindaban to beat their wives. He didn't want my wife for sex. He wanted her for money. And power. That's his game. That's all women are good for in his eyes--tools to get money and power. Sex he wants from men.
"He has other uses for women. If they're ugly he puts them to work in the fields, like mules. If they're pretty he sends them out on the "pick" to beg for money. If they're really pretty he'll use them as rewards for his cronies. That's what he did with my wife. He gave her to someone else--a gift from the guru." Bryant's tone, while bitter, remained composed.
"Kirtanananda quotes scripture about why its okay to abuse women, and why they're second-class citizens. But he violates scripture whenever it serves his ends. That's how he talked my wife into initiation."
Bryant proceeded to tell the story of being away on business in California and learning that Ham had initiated his wife into the Krishna faith. Evidently, "initiation" is a crucial and sacred step in the Krishna movement, and one that should never be made without the husband's knowledge and consent. When Bryant learned that Ham had initiated his wife, he called him in a rage.
"Ham told me the same thing he told my wife, that a woman's line to God is through the guru, which is not what Prabhupada said at all. Prabhupada made it clear that the woman's link is through her husband."
Bryant picked up the large envelope he'd brought as if it held the proof of what he was saying.
"If a guru initiates a wife without the husband's consent, the wife is now devoted to the guru instead of her husband. The chain of command flows directly from her spiritual teacher, and the husband is cut out of the loop. She becomes the guru's slave, and he can do what he wants to with her. That's how Ham got my wife to divorce me and marry Raganuntha.
"And he couldn't have chosen a worse mate for her." Bryant's voice rose and he began pacing. "Raganuntha is a pervert. That's why he couldn't get a woman on his own. But his parents have money, and Ham didn't want him to leave. So he gave him my wife! And you know what that son-of-a-bitch said when I called him about it? He said I should surrender myself to him."
Bryant sat back down in his chair.
"Surrender," he repeated quietly. "Total, complete surrender." He fell silent, then contemplative, as if Ham's directive had a ring of Krishna truth that even Bryant could not deny. Surrender to the guru. Surrender to the guru--even though he steals your wife and gives her to a pervert. Bryant studied his hands in silence for a moment then stood up abruptly, the force of his sudden movement sending his chair flying backwards.
"Bullshit! There's no way I'll surrender to that faggot!" he shouted. "Maybe he can con a soft-headed woman, but he's not going to make a punk out of me."
I let him go on for a minute or so, then tried to steer the conversation into more concrete areas. "What's next,?" I asked him. "What's your plan?"
His eyes flashed. "I know the truth about Kirtanananda, and I'm going to bring him down."
"How?"
"Everyone believes Ham is a great Vedic scholar. He was with Prabhupada from the beginning, and claims to know all the sacred writings inside and out. I knew he was wrong when he initiated my wife, so I got my hands on everything Prabhupada ever wrote. I learned a lot about Vedic doctrine, but I also learned a lot about Kirtanananda.
"Everyone figured that Ham was Prabhupada's chosen successor. But right there in his writings were all kinds of warnings about Kirtanananda. Prabhupada said he was arrogant and ambitious, and that he didn't trust him. The people in the movement need to know this."
"But why did you call me? What do you need a lawyer for?"
"You've got to understand, Kirtanananda is considered to be like a God. Infallible. Above reproach. Nobody questions him. People are in awe of his power. But when I started showing this stuff to other devotees I found out everybody had their own story to tell. Everybody had some dirt on Kirtanananda. It's just that they were either too scared or worshipped him too much to talk about it before. Drugs, people getting killed, kids getting molested. And that case you had about Wheeler's son? Everybody knows the truth. Kirtanananda's been diddling that kid since he was out of diapers. When you and his mother tried to get him out of there, Ham had him taken to Mexico."
I tried to hold an objective, lawyerly pose but inside my heart was pounding. The Cheryl Wheeler case still ate at me, and the prospect of restoring some kind of justice or balance to the situation truly piqued my interest.
"I've dealt with disgruntled Krishna's before," I said. "They all have stories, but they won't follow through, or they want to remain anonymous."
Bryant picked up the bulging manila envelope he'd brought and emptied the contents onto the table. He separated the papers into two large piles.
"Here are some of Prabhupada's writings and commentaries," he said, placing his hand on one stack. "I've highlighted all the places where Kirtanananda has directly disobeyed the Vedic doctrines."
I was impressed with his research, and maybe it would help him break up the Krishna's from the inside, but to me that stack was legally useless.
"What's in the other pile?" I asked.
"Letters from my friends," he grinned, pushing the pile toward me. "I figured I could use some references for the battle."
I picked up the first letter and began reading. It testified to Bryant's good character, then it went on to say that the writer was aware of numerous women who had been beaten at the commune. The next letter contained similar testaments to Steve's sound mind and strong moral character, then the author, a woman, told how Kirtanananda had intentionally destroyed a number of families so that he could use the women for the street begging operation.
The next letter was from a man whose daughter was molested at the ashram school. Another man said Kirtanananda had encouraged him to beat his wife. Another writer, who remained anonymous, said he was ordered to smuggle heroin from Thailand and turn over the proceeds to Kirtanananda. Someone else reported that they knew who the killer was in an unsolved murder at New Vrindaban. I was elated.
"These are dynamite," I said. "We've heard rumors about stuff like this for years, but no one has ever been willing to step forward, let alone put anything in writing. Can you get any more of these?"
"Sure, all you want."
"If you can do that, you've got yourself a lawyer."
A week later, Bryant handed me twenty-four letters. All contained allegations and sometimes eyewitness accounts of physical abuse, dope smuggling, child molestings, even murder--and all were signed. I began to think we might have a chance.
But Kirtanananda must have thought we had a chance, too. Six months later Steve Bryant was murdered in California. Federal and state indictments in the case accused Kirtanananda of giving the orders.
Shortly after I had met him in jail Bryant was released from protective custody. For awhile he kept on the move, calling me every week or so from different hotels or different towns. Often he would call twice within a day or so, first to let me know where he was, then again the next day to say he thought he'd been discovered and had to move on. Once, when I thought he was in Missouri he dropped by the office wearing a false beard that was so cheap and phony looking I broke out laughing while he was telling me how much he feared for his life. During those few months, in a strange way, we became friends.
Bryant had produced a flyer entitled "Jonestown in Moundsville?" and printed a couple thousand copies. Part of his plan was to distribute this flyer to Marshall County citizens, and thereby, he hoped, incite an uprising that would bring down the Swami. But by the time he came back to Marshall County to expose the Swami once and for all, Kirtanananda had made a few moves of his own. Some of which Steve had anticipated, some which he had not.
One key miscalculation was that Bryant thought the Sheriff was on his side, and so he kept him informed of his moves to keep ahead of the Krishnas. In reality, Kirtanananda and the Sheriff were on the same side of the table.
Shortly after Bryant's return, Art Villa, the president of New Vrindaban, sought and received a warrant from a Marshall County magistrate charging Bryant with assault for threatening the Krishna community. The warrant was granted even though verbal threats are not a crime in West Virginia. And because Bryant had been telling the Sheriff of his moves, the arresting deputies knew just where to look for him--in a small boarding house just south of the Moundsville city limits.
When the deputies pulled into the boarding house parking lot, Bryant waved to them and stepped down off the porch. He had just seen the same deputies earlier in the evening, and filled them in on his plans. He thought they were merely stopping by for another chat. Instead, they placed him under arrest for assault. During the patdown search they found the loaded .45 he carried for protection, so they also charged him with carrying a concealed weapon.
The Sheriff got a search warrant and seized all of Bryant's papers. Then he invited the Krishnas to come down and look through them, and encouraged them to make copies of anything they thought might be of interest to the Swami. Included in these papers were correspondences between Bryant and me in which I had urged Steve to collect as much dirt as he could on the Swami. Any doubts Ham might have had about my intentions and methodology were now removed.
I went to see Bryant in jail. He was crushed, truly defeated. The Sheriff had betrayed him, and everything had gone terribly wrong. He thought he was on a holy crusade, but now he'd been arrested and painted as a killer, not a savior. He said he didn't want to live if this sort of thing could happen. He said he was going on a hunger strike, and for a few days he did.
At Bryant's hearing we got the bogus assault charge thrown out, but lost on the gun charge. We appealed and Bryant was freed on bond. His case was to be reset in Circuit Court sometime later that summer.
In the meantime, Bryant went back to California, followed by Thomas Drescher, Krishna devotee and hit man. Drescher had been trailing Bryant under orders from Kirtanananda for several months. His opportunity finally came in California when Drescher followed Bryant's van home one night. Bryant pulled up in front of his house and shut off the engine, but stayed in the van to do his chanting ritual before going into the house. Drescher came up quietly from behind the van and shot Bryant twice in the face through the side window.
Bryant's murder was the beginning of a long downhill slide for Swami Kirtanananda, mainly because it happened in California, beyond the reach of his millions. The two investigators assigned to it, Paul "The Stump" Tippin, and Leroy Orozco, were experienced Los Angeles detectives who had worked on several high-profile murders. There would be no cover-up.
The trail first led to Drescher, and finally back to Ham. The detectives even stirred up some dust about a 1981 murder in Marshall County, West Virginia, the murder of Chuck St. Denis, which undoubtedly would have stayed unsolved had it not involved the same suspects as Bryant's highly visible, out-of-state murder. The FBI even jumped into the St. Denis investigation, so a lot of rocks got turned over, and pressure was put on members of the New Vrindaban Community to come forward and talk.
Gradually the details of the murder of Chuck St. Denis came out. Dan Reid, a devotee, had gone to Kirtanananda with a story that St. Denis had raped his wife. Ham listened, then suggested Reid talk to Tom Drescher about it. Reid knew what that meant and was delighted. Reid went to Drescher and told him what Ham said. Drescher, too, knew what it meant when Kirtanananda sent someone to him with a problem, and he began making plans.
Then one night, when he was ready, Drescher told Reid to lure St. Denis to Reid's artist studio in the woods by offering him cocaine. It worked. When St. Denis arrived Drescher and Reid emerged from the darkness and leveled .22 pistols at him. They told him to get inside the house but St. Denis turned and ran. Both men fired at St. Denis repeatedly until he went down. He was hit twelve times.
The killers lowered their empty pistols and approached the prone figure of St. Denis. Suddenly, St. Denis stood up shakily and stumbled towards his car to escape. Drescher ran after him and tackled him, then yelled for Reid to get a knife. While Drescher and the wounded St. Denis struggled, Reid ran inside the house and returned with a knife. Drescher took the knife and held it poised high above St. Denis' chest.
"Chant!" he screamed at St. Denis, "Chant!"
In his mind Drescher was doing St. Denis a favor. In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says, "Those who remember me at the time of death will come to me." St. Denis knew this too, and even as he continued to struggle he began to chant.
"Hare Krishna, Hare..."
Drescher plunged the knife deep into St. Denis' chest.
St. Denis screamed but continued to chant as he coughed blood and tried to throw Drescher off. Drescher plunged the knife into him again and again until the blade hit a rib and broke.
"Krishna, Krishna..." St. Denis would not die and still tried to fight back. Reid, almost in a panic by now, ran into the house and came back with a screwdriver. Drescher took it and began stabbing St. Denis with it. St. Denis screamed in agony, but still he would not die. Reid looked around and found a hammer. He handed it to Drescher. Drescher hit St. Denis in the head with it as hard as he could, crushing his skull. St. Denis finally went limp.
Drescher, exhausted and arm weary, climbed off St. Denis. He and Reid stood for a moment looking down at the mutilated body, catching their breath. Suddenly from the bloody mouth of St. Denis came a high-pitched shriek of agony that froze the insides of the two killers. Then there was only silence.
"Help me carry him over there," Drescher said to Reid.
The day before the murder, Drescher had prepared a way to hide the body. He'd diverted a nearby stream with a makeshift dam, then dug a shallow grave in the stream bed. St. Denis was a big man and it was a struggle for the two killers to carry him to the grave site. When they finally arrived and dropped the body, Reid collapsed in exhaustion.
"Get up! Let's go!" Drescher hissed.
Reid pulled himself to his feet and they rolled the body onto a large sheet of plastic and began to wrap it up. As they were about to cover his bloody face St. Denis opened his eyes again.
"Don't do that," he said calmly, "you'll smother me."
Reid screamed in terror and fell backwards. Drescher kicked St. Denis then rolled him into the hole and shouted at Reid to help him. Panting and muttering they quickly shoveled in the dirt, stomped it down and covered it with rocks. Then they broke up the dam and the stream returned to it's natural course, covering the grave. Somewhere in the process, St. Denis finally died.
__________
The Gun (Tirtha Das Plans to Kill Attorney Dave Gold)
One several occasions the guys who lived at the farm suggested I carry a gun when I was out working with them or staying in my cabin. But despite all the stories and evidence of violence the Krishnas had engaged in, I never actually feared them or felt physically threatened. My battles with them were relatively sanitary affairs, conducted through the medium of the law and their phalanx of attorneys. Occasionally when I was at the farm there would be a face to face confrontation over a missing goat or something, but these were brief and, while distasteful, never held a threat of violence. In general I felt comfortably insulated from the sordid realities of the cases I was involved with.
I did, however, have a psychic uneasiness that seemed to accompany each case I pursued against the Krishnas. The closest I can come to describing it is that it felt like I was opposing a powerful negative force, perhaps even pure evil. Whenever I was involved in a case against the Krishnas things began going wrong in my life. Once my sister became very sick. Another time so many things on my car broke at the same time I had to sell it for junk. On another occasion I had to be hospitalized for emergency surgery.
One night in the kitchen I told Rose that it felt like I was fighting an unseen intelligence when I had a case against the Krishnas, that my life invariably became more troublesome and complicated, while the Krishnas seemed to effortlessly maneuver around every legal trap I tried to set for them.
"There's two kinds of magic," Rose said. "White and black. White magic is what I call between-ness, and I recommend everyone learn how to use it. But there's black magic, too, and the Krishnites are dealing in it, whether they know it or not."
"How?"
"By attracting certain types of entities. Different kinds of entities are attracted to different kinds of human acts. Entities gain energy from our actions--our expenditures of energy. Sex is the primary release of energy the entities feed on, and some feed on particular kinds of perversions. Keith Ham and his outfit are feeding the pederastic entities. Naturally these entities want to protect the Krishnites so they can continue to get fed."
Rose also went on to say, however, that these entities would eventually turn on the Krishnas and bring about their downfall. This, he said, was the price one inevitably paid for dealing with the dark side. I took some solace in thinking that the Krishnas might someday be on the short end of things, but in the meantime I was not comforted by the thought that "pederastic entities" were interfering with my personal life.
So it was psychic protection I felt more in need of than physical protection, and consequently I never thought seriously about owning or carrying a gun. I came from a strictly pacifist household. My father never touched a gun in his life and he passed this aversion on to his children. I was thoroughly intimidated by guns, and firmly convinced that if I carried one there was a far better chance I'd accidentally shoot myself than come up against a situation where it might save my life.
Everyone who lived on Rose's farm, though, did carry a handgun, partly to shoot feral dogs who occasionally attacked the baby goats, but mostly as a symbol of readiness against the Krishnas. Somehow the farm residents managed to carry their weapons with a casual mindfulness that did not seem to conflict with the high spiritual purpose that supposedly brought them together. I found myself simultaneously disgusted and fascinated by their machismo. It was appropriate enough for the situation to make me look hard at my own aversion to weapons, and to face it as a possible fear and weakness, not as an expression of principle.
Several months after Bryant's murder I received a call from Tom White, the Marshall County prosecutor. He said he had something to tell me and he wanted to meet with me to talk about it. This was an odd request for several reasons, but it was obvious he didn't want to discuss it over the phone so I agreed to come by his office the next time I was in his building.
The call itself was unusual because Tom and I were not on good terms. We were about the same age and had gotten along fairly well while we were both Moundsville attorneys. Then in 1980, to my astonishment, Rose advised me to run for County Prosecutor to get my name in front of the public. Tom White also decided to run that year and we opposed each other in the election. He was a Baptist Democrat hometown boy. I was a Jewish Republican outsider.
Running for prosecutor turned out to be one of the best pieces of professional advice Rose ever gave me. I lost badly, of course, but got more votes than anyone thought I would, and after the election I noticed a change in attitude towards me in the legal community. If I'd won I would not have fared nearly so well. The prosecutor's office in Marshall County was not a desirable job. Traditionally, candidates were attracted not by the position itself, but by one or more of it's three side benefits: it was a stepping stone to the judiciary, you got all the female divorce clients you wanted, and you could supplement your income with a little graft.
My relationship with Tom had deteriorated after the election, partly because we had been opponents, but mostly because Tom let the office go to his head. He tried to be a bigshot and get tough on petty crime in a community where no one really cared because there was a thief in every extended family, and very few people got seriously hurt. Tom went overboard trying to throw the book at some of our minor offenders and we beat him soundly a few times before he backed off.
Adding to the friction between us was the fact that he had become somewhat jaded. After the election he quickly fell in step with the local power structure and the people who had backed him. It was also obvious that the Krishnas had nothing to fear from him. Whether he was in their pocket or merely sensitive to his own compromised position, the result was the same. Children continued to get molested at New Vrindaban, bodies kept turning up, and raw sewage was being dumped into streams running through Rose's and other non-Krishna farms. Nothing was done. Several times I confronted Tom about his lack of action against the Krishnas and our conversations were not friendly. All in all, it was odd he would call and invite me over for a chat. So odd, in fact that I delayed several days before stopping by his office. I even talked to Lou and John about it, trying to figure what Tom's angle might be.
When I finally did call on Tom his secretary informed me he was out of town for the day. As I started to leave I heard someone call my name. I turned to see Fred Gardener, an assistant prosecuting attorney with whom I'd had several friendly dealings, standing behind the counter that separated the prosecutor's staff from the public. We greeted each other warmly, then he motioned for me to follow him to Tom's office.
"I know why Tom called you," he said.
When he closed the door behind us I looked around and was amazed at what I saw. Tom's normally tidy office had been turned into a war room of Krishna research. Stacks of overstuffed manila file folders were piled on the desk and floor. A sea of telephone message slips were laid out on a credenza. One wall was covered with aerial photographs, most of them of Krishna properties.
"Wow," I said. "I had no idea. I thought Tom was..."
"On their side? Yeah, I know."
"That's not what I meant, exactly. He just never seemed interested."
Fred sat down in Tom's high-back, red leather chair and leaned back.
"That may have been true at one time, but not anymore. Too much has happened."
I sat down. Fred gestured broadly to the stacks of files around the office. "We've been interviewing everyone you can imagine. The rats are deserting the ship, lining up to see who can tell the most the fastest."
"That's a good sign," I said. "Even after Bryant was murdered his closest friends still refused to talk. They were terrified of Ham."
"They should be," Fred said quietly. "So should you."
His statement brought me up short. I didn't know what to say so I just waited for him to explain.
"That's why Tom called you. We've been interviewing devotees recently about the Chuck St. Denis murder. Lots of people who are afraid of Drescher are starting to come forward now because they really think we might have him this time." Fred's jaw tightened, and I sensed how badly he really did want to nail Drescher.
"Anyway, we had this one devotee in last week, a pretty high-up guy in the organization. Been at New Vrindaban from the beginning. He had some good corroborating details on the St. Denis case, and validated a few things we already knew about the Bryant murder. I could tell he had good information so I asked him if Keith Ham had a hit out on anybody else."
Fred paused for effect then grinned. "He said, 'Yeah, that lawyer, David Gold.'"
I heard the words, then my mind froze. I could only hope I didn't look as scared as I felt at that moment. Fred seemed to scrutinize me as he continued.
"This witness said Drescher used to follow you out to your cabin."
He paused a moment to let me say something. I couldn't.
"You've got a cabin out at Rose's place, right? Dark brown wood, cement block foundation? Sits right above a little stream?"
I nodded.
"Yeah, well, that's the place Drescher described to this witness. Drescher said he followed you out there a few times."
"At night, I guess," I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but I had to say something. I thought of the many nights I had walked by flashlight through the half-mile of thick woods between the farmhouse and my cabin. Which times had Drescher been there, watching?
"Drescher told this guy, 'The only reason that son-of-a-bitch Jew boy is still alive is I couldn't find the right spot to blow him away.'"
Fred grinned at me again. Part of him was immensely enjoying my discomfort.
"At least Drescher's in custody now," I said.
"Yeah, but the Swami's not. And he's got plenty of other flunkies."
"I know." I stood up, anxious to leave. "Thanks for the tip."
Fred stood with me and gripped my hand with genuine concern. He was no longer smiling. "Watch your back, Dave."
As I stepped out of the courthouse and into the street my thoughts became more clear and I was hit with a flood of emotions. The main one was raw animal anger. I was furious. Not so much at the Krishna leaders who wanted me dead, but at all the compromised public officials whose fear, greed, and political ambition had, in effect, endowed the Krishnas with a license to kill. Then as I fumed and muttered I was suddenly stopped by an eerie, unfamiliar uneasiness. I shivered involuntarily and quickly looked behind me, then to both sides.
I hurried back to my office, eager to tell somebody about it. But the only person there was one of the secretaries, and I didn't want to scare her. I started to call Rose, but decided to wait until I saw him at home that evening. Then I remembered I wouldn't be going home until very late, probably after he'd gone to bed. That evening I was going to be on television for four hours in my capacity as president of the local bar association.
The presidency of the Marshall County Bar Association was a revolving position determined strictly by seniority. That year, it was my turn to be president. It was also customary for the local bar associations to do at least one community service project a year, and tonight was it. We had joined with the neighboring Belmont County and Ohio County Bar Associations to do a live call-in show, which was scheduled for that evening on a local station. As much as I loved having my face in front of a camera I'd have given anything to avoid going that night. But as president, there was no way I could back out.
I left the office in the late afternoon and drove to the station. The format was that a hundred lawyers would be manning the telephones and answering legal questions for free in the background, while the other two bar association presidents and I sat out front with the show's host, discussing legal issues.
At seven o'clock we went on the air. After a slow start the phones began ringing and behind us all the lawyers in the studio were soon occupied. In the foreground, the show's host did a good job of keeping us on legal topics that would be of interest to the common man. I tried to hold my attention on what I was doing, but I was still distracted by the events of the day and feeling very out of sync with the entire scene. Though I participated in the conversations, I probably spoke the least often and was the least eloquent.
I was surprised, therefore, when late in the show the floor director handed the host a slip of paper that thrust me into the spotlight. The host glanced at the message.
"It's a call-in question," he said, looking up, "and the caller asks that it be directed to Mr. Gold. Well, it's not really our format to have these gentlemen answer questions on camera, but we're nearing the end of the show so I suppose it's all right. Dave?"
"Sure," I said. "Why not."
The host read from the note. "This caller asks, 'Does the law recognize a person's right to defend his church against outside threats? You can legally kill to protect your home. What if you live in your temple?'"
I could not say anything for a few seconds and it was one of the others who spoke first. "We were expecting mostly questions on taxes and real estate," he joked.
"I, uh... I think the logic is twisted, here," I said slowly, trying to rise to the occasion and put coherent thoughts together. Whatever the true reality, in my mind I was now answering a question from a man who was planning to kill me, and who was watching me answer it on TV.
"The law does recognize self-defense when your home is physically entered or attacked," I went on. "And of course when your life is in danger. But what you seem to be talking about is a pre-emptive strike against some vague religious enemy. That's murder."
I started to say more but the host was becoming uneasy.
"Thanks, Dave," he said, quickly. "I'd like to turn now to a legal topic that many of us in middle age are becoming more conscious of--wills. Harry, when should a person think seriously about making out a will?"
I know the host was simply trying to segue to the next topic on his list, but the irony was so thick I almost started laughing. The others seemed oblivious to it and launched energetically into admonitions about how it was never too early in life for a will. I felt like I was on another planet.
Finally at eleven o'clock the director gave us the "All clear," and the lights dimmed. I left the studio and headed towards my car. I walked quickly, occasionally stealing a glance behind me or up ahead into the darkness. When I got to my car I jumped inside and locked the doors. Then, as I put the key into the ignition another thought hit me. I paused, then held my breath and turned the key. When the next sound I heard was the engine roaring to life, I exhaled deeply and told myself I'd seen too many gangster movies.
By now I was hoping Rose would be in bed when I got home. The small black and white TV in the kitchen only got one channel--the one I had been on all evening. I was sure that Rose had seen me, and undoubtedly had passed the evening poking fun at my posturing and ego for the benefit of my housemates. But as I climbed the steep cement steps that led from the street, I could see the light still on in the kitchen.
Rose was sitting alone at the table when I came in, working a crossword puzzle. When he saw me he stopped what he was doing and set the puzzle aside. Over the years I had seen him go through several puzzle phases, where he would work the crossword in the evening paper every night for a few weeks, then drop it and not do another one for a year. Once he started a puzzle, though, he would refuse to become distracted until he had completed it. The way he put the puzzle aside when I walked in told me that it wasn't part of a phase. He was just passing the time waiting for me.
"What's new," he said in a tired and friendly drawl. I did not see the familiar hint of mischief in his eyes that would indicate I was about to get the kidding I expected for posturing in front of the cameras. Instead, I sensed concern.
"We did that call-in show tonight. For the Bar Association."
"I know. I saw it. You have something on your mind."
"Tom White called a few days ago and asked me to stop by--said he had something I needed to know about. I went over there today."
"What's up?"
"One of the Krishnas they're questioning about the St. Denis case told him Ham put out a contract on me."
Rose raised his eyebrows but made no comment.
"Drescher bragged about following me out to my cabin. He said the only reason I wasn't already dead was he couldn't find the right spot to shoot me."
Rose remained motionless in his chair and seemed to be lost in thought. I continued to ramble on.
"So, I mean, Drescher's in custody now but who knows how many other nuts the Swami has floating around that would be..."
"Get a gun," Rose said, suddenly interrupting. His voice was matter-of-fact but his tone was firm. It was more than a suggestion.
"I've thought about it Mister Rose, but I don't know guns. I don't think..."
"Get a gun," he said again. Then he dropped the subject and went on to talk of other things, including how ridiculous I had looked on TV that night. We had a few laughs at my expense then went to bed.
It never occurred to me to ignore Rose's advice, even though I knew that with or without a gun I would still feel absolutely defenseless. If a Krishna hit-man was lying in wait for me at my cabin or in a dark Wheeling alley by my car, a handgun in my pocket or glove compartment wasn't going to do me much good. I felt incapable of protecting myself against such a circumstance, and strongly believed the only protection I could hope for was intervention from a higher power. But Rose had told me to get a gun, so I started shopping.
The best consultants I could think of were the guys on the farm, but I wasn't sure how to approach them about it. Although I counted them among my closest friends, there was always a gulf between us. Real or imagined, I felt they regarded me as something of a sissy. I spent my days in comfortable offices and ornate courtrooms, while they perched on rooftops and hung from ladders. I spent almost every week-end with them at the farm, cutting firewood, clearing pasture, repairing buildings, or shoveling out the goat sheds. But no matter how well I kept up, I sensed that to them I would always be a week-end warrior.
The Krishna threat against me apparently boosted my stock with them, though. Rose had evidently made it clear that he regarded a threat against one of us as a threat against all. I didn't have to ask them for advice about guns, they came to me.
The following weekend I went out to the farm as usual to help with the endless chores. It was October and the weather was brisk and stimulating. We worked hard all morning, cutting and hauling firewood from the back end of the farm. Afterwards, Chuck, Larry, Mark, Jake and I were relaxing in the farmhouse, fixing lunch. Larry walked into the dining room with an iron skillet half-filled with something unrecognizable he had fried up for breakfast, or perhaps even last night's dinner.
I watched him for awhile, unable to resist smiling at his every move. Larry was one of the funniest people I'd ever met, and his sense of humor was magnified by the comic lifestyle he'd adopted at the farm. He had accumulated a rather eclectic wardrobe over the years by picking through Goodwill bins, and now kept all his clothes in a pile in the corner of his room. Each day he dressed in whatever shirt and pants his hand touched first--a selection method that invariably produced harlequin-like combinations of plaids, stripes and bizarre color combinations. He came from a rough rural town on the northern outskirts of Pittsburgh. He was tall and wiry, and before he met Rose his life was a perilous series of scrapes and jams and misadventures--often involving women.
As I watched, Larry placed his skillet on the table, then went to the refrigerator and pulled out a quart of goats milk, a stick of margarine, and a large jar of a generic-brand grape jelly. He held up the jelly and pretended to read from the label.
"'This product has grapes and leaves and bird shit all clumped together, but it's suitable for normal everyday use--as long as you feed it to someone else.' All right!"
He sat down and piled an enormous slab of margarine on a piece of bread, then spooned a heap of his jelly-substance in there with it. He took a huge bite and shook his head in satisfaction like it was the best thing he'd ever tasted. Then he started on the nameless food in his skillet. After a few bites he looked up at me.
"So our neighbors want to thin out the Jewish population around here, huh?"
"Yeah, they're driving down the property values." Chuck said. He was stomping around the kitchen and dining room putting together his lunch, looking sullen as usual. His perpetual scowl was an accurate reflection of his mood about half the time. The rest of the time he was indifferent to life. No one had ever seen him happy. His communications with people were very direct and literal, and he had little use for the formalities of social convention. Sometimes, however, he did show flashes of humor. During the time he was building my cabin he had occasion to phone me a few times at the office. Once my secretary asked if she could say who was calling.
"Yes," he told her.
After a long awkward pause my secretary said, "Well, who is calling."
"Chuck Carter."
"May I tell him what this is concerning, Mr. Carter?"
"Yes." Another long pause.
"Well, what does this concern?"
"It concerns my wife," Chuck said, his voice rising. "I want him to stay the hell away from her!" His call was put right through.
Now, as I watched Chuck gather the materials for his lunch in his deliberate manner, I realized how little I actually knew about him--how little any of us knew about him.
"Whoa, boy," Chuck whistled, looking in the refrigerator and spotting the smoked fish I had brought. "If it's open season on Dave Gold let's shoot him now and take his lunch."
Every week-end I brought out something to share, and every week-end we went through the same ritual. If it was something Larry liked he dug right in and ate as much as he could as fast as he could. Chuck, however, would always act surprised and wait for my invitation before eating any of it. He would take a minute portion, to show he wasn't greedy or obligated to me, then later go back for seconds, and thirds, and keep eating until the food was gone or he had made himself sick, whichever came first.
Chuck took the smoked fish out of the refrigerator and set it on the table. Larry picked it up by the tail, brought it up to his face and stared at it, eyeball to eyeball, for several seconds.
"He blinked first," Larry announced triumphantly, then tossed the fish back onto the white wrapping paper and turned to me. "So what kind of gun you looking for?"
"I don't know yet."
"Get one like this," Larry said, pulling his gun from his back pocket and putting in on the table.
Chuck stopped what he was doing and put his gun beside it. "I got one almost like it," he said. "They're good guns."
Hearing the turn in the conversation, Mark and Jake came in from the living room where they'd been eating and put their guns on the table, too. I stared at the four weapons like they were lit sticks of dynamite. Larry and Chuck extolled the virtues of their aluminum alloy Smith and Wesson .38 specials.
"You can walk around with it in your pocket all day and not even know it's there," Larry said.
Chuck's gun was identical, except that his trigger was rounded. "That way it doesn't get hung up on your pocket if you need to pull it out in a hurry," he explained.
Jake picked up his gun from the table. It was a smaller caliber gun but had a longer barrel.
"Those snub-nose things are only good for sticking in people's bellies," he said with an odd laugh. "I can hit a tin can at fifty yards with this."
"Yeah, but it's got no stopping power," Mark countered. "You may hit someone at fifty yards, but they're going to hit back. Now this," he said, lovingly picking up his black steel .44 magnum, "this will settle an argument."
I picked up Larry's gun. It was the first time I had ever touched a handgun. It felt foreign, unpredictable, dangerous. I remembered all the horror stories I'd heard of gun tragedies, and was almost overwhelmed with revulsion. I felt like I was holding a snake and fought off the urge to throw it down. But as I picked up and handled each gun in turn I began to feel less and less intimidated, and by the time I picked up Mark's cannon, I was almost intrigued by what I held in my hand.
Mark smiled at me. "We just might make a man out of you yet."
I decided on an aluminum .38 special, like Chuck's and Larry's, and began my search the following week. The first place I tried was Sullivan's Gun Shop on the outskirts of Moundsville. I had defended a juvenile who had broken into the store years before, and more recently I'd represented a member of the Sullivan family in a personal injury case. I thought I would feel more comfortable taking care of this unpleasantness with people I knew, but the reverse was true. As soon as I walked in my antipathy to guns returned in the form of embarrassment. I felt uneasy and nervous, like a small-town teenager about to buy condoms from the family pharmacist. I was almost relieved when the clerk told me they had no aluminum .38's. I drove to Wheeling and tried several gun stores and pawn shops there, but none had the type of gun I was looking for. I began to wonder--even hope--that maybe I wasn't meant to own a gun.
The following week my other law partner, Jon Turak, returned from vacation. I was anxious to discuss all this with him. Jon was one of Augie's younger brothers. He had joined Lou and me in the practice several years before and had since become one of my closest friends, and definitely my most trusted confident. In some ways he was like Augie--and the other nine Turaks I eventually became friends with. He was gregarious, charismatic, loyal, and very family-oriented. But he was different from Augie in some fundamental ways. There was none of the domineering manipulation or bombastic diatribes that made Augie both an effective leader and a difficult taskmaster.
All of the Turaks were soft-hearted, but most had also developed an emotional armor that allowed them to protect their own feelings when necessary. Jon had not. He wore his affections and vulnerabilities very close to the surface, and seemed to get along just fine that way. Though he was not a student of Rose's, Jon had a profound understanding and respect for Rose and his teachings. He was close enough to the group to share its values and far enough away to give me an objective perspective when I needed it.
His first day back, I gave him a few hours to literally get his feet back under the desk, then about noon I went into his office and sat down. Jon was leaning back in his red leather chair, eyebrows furrowed, perusing a thick legal document.
"I can't believe it." He shook his head in bemused exasperation. "Bill Lemon has really outdone himself this time."
Bill Lemon was the prosecuting attorney for neighboring Wetzel County, and a throwback to the justice systems of a hundred years ago. He viewed us as bleeding heart crusaders and took special pleasure in trying to railroad our clients.
"Do you remember the Littleton case I have with Bill?"
I nodded. Some stolen farm equipment had turned up on the Littleton's property in rural Wetzel County. Lemon charged the son with stealing the equipment. I took the son's case, which we got dismissed. Lemon got mad about it and then charged the mother with Receiving Stolen Property. Jon took the mother's case and filed a Bill of Particulars, requesting discoverable information about the State's case against the mother.
"Listen to this." Jon leaned back again and read from the document. "Here's question 14 in my Bill of Particulars: 'State with particularity all evidence which the State intends to rely upon to prove that Sandra Littleton knew that the farm equipment which appeared on her property was stolen.'"
John put down his document and picked up the State's response. "Answer. 'Sandra Littleton received the farm equipment from her son, Ronald Littleton, and everyone in Wetzel County knows that all the Littletons are thieves.'"
Jon roared with deep, relaxed laughter, then tossed the papers aside.
"So what's new around here?" he said.
I leaned my chair back until it was balanced against the wall.
"Tom White called me right after you left."
"Let me guess. He wants you to represent him in his divorce."
"Not quite." I told Jon the whole story and realized as I spoke how much I'd been looking forward to talking with him about it. When I finished he was silent for a few moments before speaking. I knew what he was thinking. Jon had been involved quite visibly in some of the Krishna cases himself. Just because there was currently no evidence of a contract on his life, did not mean one didn't exist. There was no reason to believe he would be immune.
"You've talked to Mister Rose about it, right?"
"Of course."
"What did he say?"
"He told me to get a gun."
"Did you?"
"Not yet. What do you think about all this?"
Jon sat in thought for a moment. He was two years younger than me, and remarkably handsome, with boyish good looks and charm. At the moment, however, he looked old.
"We didn't ask for this," he said finally. "We just did what we thought was right, and this is where it dropped us off."
"So what are our choices?"
"None," he replied, smiling again. "Like Davey Crockett says, 'Be sure your right, then go ahead.'"
We sat in silence for several minutes, then Jon spoke again.
"You know," he said with a grin, "if you walk around with a gun in your pocket there's a good chance you'll just end up blowing your balls off."
"It's crossed my mind."
Jon leaned forward in his chair and spoke more seriously. "I know a guy, an iron worker I did some title work for. He's also got a federal firearms license. I could give him a call."
The next morning, Jon walked into my office, followed by a rather smarmy man with flabby arms and a thick mustache in need of trimming. He got right to business.
"Jon said you were looking for a handgun," he said as we shook hands.
"Yes, I am."
The man lifted his large black case onto my desk.
"He didn't know what you were looking for exactly, so I brought a selection." He opened the suitcase and removed his guns one at a time, placing them at intervals around my desk.
"Pick 'em up," he said. "Get a feel."
I started with an unintimidating .22. I examined it, aimed it out the window.
"A good gun for target shooting but not much good in a pinch," my consultant advised.
I nodded and picked up a western style Colt .45. It was incredibly heavy, and I wondered if cowboys really twirled these things on their fingers.
"A show gun," I was told.
I moved on to a .44 magnum. The gun man smiled.
"This is the type of gun I sold to your partner here. It's fast, dependable, and will do some damage no matter where you hit a guy."
I looked over at Jon with amazement. He never told me he'd bought a gun. I started to say something, but I could see from his expression he didn't want to talk about it, at least not now.
"It's a beautiful gun," I agreed, "but I need something I can put in my pocket and forget about."
"Then this is the piece for you," he said, picking up a .38 and handing it to me. Surprisingly I felt an immediate affinity for the weapon. It was light and fit perfectly in my grasp.
"It's called The Agent," the man said. "Colt makes it specifically for the CIA. Aluminum alloy, six shots--the Smith and Wesson aluminum .38's only have five--and it can take a lot of abuse."
I stood up, placed the gun in the right rear pocket of my suit slacks, and walked around my office.
"Can't even feel it," I said to Jon.
I asked about the price.
"I'm selling it for a friend's widow. I told her I'd get two hundred dollars."
I walked around the office some more, feeling the weight of it. I took it out and looked at it, then put it back in my pocket.
"It comes with bullets, right?" I said.
"For a friend of Jon's, two boxes."
"Is a check okay?"
"I prefer cash."
I carried the gun with me for the next few days and strangely, I was more afraid than when I didn't have it. It was as if the presence of the gun made the possibility of imminent death that much more real. Constantly feeling the weight of it in my pocket made it difficult to think of anything else. I told myself I would get used to it, and that someday I would think normally again.
The following Saturday I went out to the farm as usual to help with the work. I showed my new gun around and the residents all approved of my choice. I stuck it back in my hip pocket and felt better about it being there. We had been working the last few weeks clearing a small field for cultivation. That day we worked at digging out stumps. It was cool and sunny--a beautiful day for work.
About an hour later Rose arrived and began to work along with us. We'd been working in teams of two--one man with an ax, the other with a shovel. But with Rose there, everyone converged on the same stump to be near him.
We stood around the stump, taking turns with the ax and shovel work, talking, laughing at Rose's jokes, sweating in the cool autumn sun. Rose took a turn at the ax and swung it with the power and grace of a young athlete. When he stopped he handed it to me and smiled with true warmth.
I took the ax from him and swung it with a will, exalting in the joy of pure movement. As I did, Rose spoke casually of spiritual matters and the others who stood around the stump became motionless. I swung the ax and listened--no, heard--and his words penetrated more deeply than my own thoughts. Without warning I was moved to tears. I swung the ax harder and kept my head lowered to hide my emotion from the others. And then, suddenly, I didn't care. I stood straight between swings and let my tears show. I swung the ax with a rhythm of movement so perfectly attuned to me it was almost effortless. Each time I bent to chop the root I felt the gun in my pocket press against me. Each time I stood to swing the ax again the sun touched my back. I was simultaneously empty and full. There was nothing I would rather do, no place I'd rather be. If I were killed because I chose to come to this place and learn from this man, then surely this was the reason I was born. I swung the ax and wanted nothing more from life. In that moment an immense burden left me, and although I can't be sure, I believe that for a few hours that day I lost my fear of dying.
