Fear at First Glance

Prologue

As the tumultuous ’60s, rife with racial and political unrest, came to a close, Detroit’s nickname Motor City was being dubbed Murder City in mainstream newspapers and on late-night talk shows.

The Wayne County District Attorney’s Office, the State Police Investigators Bureau, and the FBI formed a task force to deal with the deadly nature of the times.

Arthur Javits III was a partner in the offices of Krueger, Javits, Stolp and Associates. KJS and Associates was a three-button firm with an aggressive criminal defense approach. Javits, known as Mr. Trips around the office and behind his back, was on a first-name basis with the hard cases who had carried on the infamous traditions of organized crime in Detroit in the decades after the supposed end of the Purple Gang. These modern day hoodlums defied categorizing in any racial, ethnic or socio-economic sense. Trafficking in every known vice, the only adjective that applied to all of them was vicious.

One carry-over from the bad old days was a particular Dial-a-Murder approach which had remained a fearful reality. If there was a union chief who needed to disappear, they’d do that without a qualm; if some drug lord wannabe needed to be an example, they were just as happy to splash his remains the length of Woodward Avenue

What had become known as The Murder City Task Force had its eye on middle-aged gang banger Jerry Stahl. Stahl owned a bar at the corner of Michigan and Trumble – right across from then Tiger Stadium. Home Plate was generally known around town as a perfect place to cop a Stroh’s and lay a bet on that day’s game or any game.

Stahl was born to the Stalingal family which had been instrumental during prohibition for making suitable trucks available to the Purple Gang for the purpose of making unregistered trips into Canada. It was also generally known that Jerry Stahl’s father, Armand Pappy Stahl, had made his bones as a 12-year-old when a government agent focusing on the driver of one of the Stalingal Family trucks took his eye off the innocent-looking youngster pretending to be asleep in the passenger seat. The dead agent was only the first of Stahl’s victims.

Now the current Stahl was at the center of the investigation of a string of murders that were originally thought to be racially motivated, but were now, since an undercover officer had infiltrated the Stahl crew, believed to be connected to a serious problem with the handling of the book on the Detroit Tigers’ 1968 World Series victory against the St. Louis Cardinals. The organization people behind the double cross were being eliminated one by one, but each time one of the gang members died, a member of a Black Power group was also being killed in what appeared to be retaliation. It was greed, not race behind the murders.

When the police arrested Stahl in his bar on a June Saturday afternoon with the Yankees in town for a four-game set, Javits was in Ontario fishing for walleyes at a fly-in camp.

His young assistant had graduated top of his class out of Michigan Law and had sailed through the bar exam, spent his first two years as an associate doing research, and the past five years as Javits’ number one assistant.

At the time of the arrest, the assistant had his own aide named Melanie Deal. Melanie lived with her husband and two children in Ferndale, a 30-minute commute in those days from the KJS & Associates downtown offices.

When Jerry Stahl was granted his one phone call, he dialed Javits, but reached the young assistant who raced to the police station to meet his client. He made his presence known to a desk sergeant upon arrival, but it was several hours before he finally willed himself to make enough of a ruckus to gain entrance to the interview room. He had the book-learning to know how to handle this situation, but the dose of reality as he listened to an assistant DA go through the litany of charges facing his client left him wide-eyed and confused. When he heard his client sarcastically respond to each charge with, As if, right; as if, right; as if, right... he was hit with the grisly realization that his job was to save a killer.

Before an arraignment judge, as the litany was repeated by the clerk – murder seven counts; conspiracy to commit... the list went on and on. The young lawyer’s mind was a blur as he heard the prosecution ask for remand because of the nature of the audio and video evidence they had and the defendant’s affinity for traveling abroad.

His client nudged him with an elbow as the judge looked at him as if to say, Well?

Your honor, Mr. Stahl is a lifelong native of this city and state, owns property here – both a business and his home. His connections to this community are many and long-term; there’s no reason to doubt his appearance at trial...

Nice try, counselor, the laconic judge interrupted. No bail; defendant is to be held until trial; next!

The lawyer was still in a daze when he returned to his office. The first person he saw in his office was Melanie Deal and her first words were an acknowledgment of fear, Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.

More like a glimpse of hell, he stammered. I feel like such an idiot; do you realize who we’re defending?

What? You were with Mr. Stahl, right?

But do you know who he is, really? And then he proceeded to tell her everything he’d heard, and all he’d thought on his way back to the office. I didn’t sign up for this shit.

For the next eight months, the defense of Jerry Stahl consumed every working moment for Art Javits and his staff at KJS and Associates. And while his assistant hid it from his boss and his co-workers, he spent most nights at home wondering how he could have been so naive as to think that not much, but most if not all, of his life’s work would be spent helping career criminals and psychopaths.

It was a dark time for him, and it wasn’t any better for Jerry Stahl.

The government’s case was air tight. The warrants for the phone taps were as perfect as the warrants for the video and granted by a judge based on the investigators’ assertion they had infiltrated the group with an agent who gave eye-witness testimony to Stahl’s activities. They also presented copies of notes Stahl had received from a higher-up ordering the cover up killings.

The Detroit Free Press announced the verdict in a Page 1 headline:

Task Force puts end to death spree.

It was a dark time for Art Javits as well. Over and over the elder Stahl insisted that the real cause of his son’s conviction had to have been a leak by either Javits’ young assistant or his secretary, that Deal woman.

Things were darker for Javits after a grand jury indicted the elder Stahl for conspiracy, and it went black when Pappy too was convicted and sentenced to life. As he was seeing his old client off to prison, Javits heard the old man over and over again – despite Javits’ repeated protests to the contrary – that his assistant, or Deal, or both of them, had turned state’s evidence, undermining Javits’ best efforts.

We’ll all sleep better when we know those two are not causing us trouble, and you know it, the old crook whispered into Javits’ ear as he was being led away.

Javits was troubled by Stahl’s final comment, and he was thoughtful as he drove to his office. Once there he called an emergency partner’s meeting. As soon as it was over, he called his assistant into his office and informed him that the firm would no longer be needing his services.

The younger man was dumbfounded. But, why?

I think you should carefully consider a change of professions and a change of scenery. Maybe move out West or at least up North. Lots of folks are trading Murder City for places like Cadillac, Traverse City, Alpena... who knows, maybe you should give that some consideration...

Did I do something wrong, Art? I had been led to believe I would be up for junior partner this year. Now I’m gone?

I think you should go down to Alice’s office; she’ll explain the severance package the partners approved, and I think you’ll find it satisfactory, even generous, perhaps. But I would like you to go quietly, son. Today.

Thirty minutes later the ex-assistant was standing on the sidewalk, watching traffic working north and south on all eight lanes of Woodward Avenue. He looked at his watch and realized he wasn’t accustomed to commuting at the height of the daily rush.

When he pulled into his garage, he closed the automatic door and sat, listening to the tick, tick, tick of his engine cooling off, and he thought the sound might be his life clock, ticking away the final minutes of his legal career.

After he had told his wife of the news by handing her the crumpled letters he’d received from Alice the office manager, he was brought out of his shock when she asked, Did that Stahl character make threats against you or us?

The question hit him like a handful of ice water. What do you mean?

He was taken to prison this morning. I saw it on TV. Mr. Javits was there as they put him and others on a bus. Then you receive the velvet axe?

What’s velvet...?

Did you look at that check?

Not really. I read some of the recap, but I couldn’t focus...

Honey, they gave us half... a... million... dollars!

And from that day forward they prepared to move away. They notified their son that he’d be part of finding their new home and his new school, and then they turned to making the house ready for sale while doing careful research on locales and business opportunities in the Northern Lower Peninsula.

In June, after school was out, they took a vacation that was really a prolonged site visit of the prospects he’d uncovered using the phone and the mail. They traveled up I-75 past the Thumb and up the eastern coast along Lake Huron. They toured around Alpena, Rogers City, and Cheboygan and on up to the straits and then worked their way down the Lake Michigan coast past Harbor Springs and Petoskey, Charlevoix, and, following U.S. 31 along the coast, down to Traverse City. Each of those big city stops involved poking around the smaller towns inland.

The east side of the state is just too flat, he concluded as they sat near the pool at a motel in Traverse City and watched their son joyfully splashing alone. I like this side of the state better.

I agree, she said. Do you have any leads in this area?

I thought we’d check them out tomorrow, and then head back home.

They arrived back in Royal Oak the evening of the final Friday of June, full of ideas and optimism for the first time in months. The next morning the mailman brought all the mail that had been held for the past two weeks, and the former lawyer set to the task of sorting it.

He put what he considered junk in one box; bills in a different pile, and important mail in another. There was a personal letter to the boy in a school girl scrawl, and to his eye it looked to be an invitation. There were several greeting-card sized envelopes that were addressed to his wife, and he set those aside for her. And there was a letter in a familiar handwriting addressed to him.

He opened the letter, and found two pages of plain white copy paper. The top page started simply with the date. At the bottom of the second page he found, Melanie.

He found the letter difficult to decipher. It was obviously written in haste by someone who normally composed at a typewriter, leaving penmanship that often requires it to be revisited before it became unreadable even to the author.

June 11, 1972

Paul,

I’m sorry to bother you with this, but I have to share this with someone, and I’m hoping it’ll make some sense to you.

I don’t know if you know that the same day you left KJS, I was terminated in what was described as a staff restructuring and downsizing decision. I was given two months severance and a personal letter of recommendation from Arthur Javits.

It took me almost a week to find another position, with Edgar and Sons just down the street. They were tickled to have me, and I’ve found their work in real estate and probate law much less stressful than criminal work, and, believe it or not, fascinating in several unexpected ways.

That’s not why I’m writing.

Lately, I’ve been getting the strangest feeling that my family and I are being followed when we are not at home. It’s not like I’m seeing the same person too often or anything like that, it’s just a feeling that someone on the street or another vehicle is paying strict attention to me.

Then this morning, I was backing out of the driveway and who do I see sitting in a car across the street but that young tough they called, ‘Blakey,’ who was part of that strategy meeting we were in just before we were fired.

I have no idea where he belongs, but it’s certainly not on my street in Ferndale. He turned away when I noticed him, but I’m positive he was there. I drove away like nothing had happened, but I went around the block and when I came back that car was gone. When I finished my shopping, I came home and there was no one out there, but then when I went inside I had the overwhelming feeling that somebody had been in my house.

When John and the kids came home, I made John look all over the house for any sign of an intruder. He made fun of me as you might expect, but I think something’s wrong, and I wanted you to know about it. Is there something I should know?

Please call me when you receive this.

Thanks. Looking forward to hearing from you,

Melanie.

He looked up the Deal home phone number in his Day Timer, and dialed it. The phone started to ring only to go into a high pitched warble. He hung up, and rechecked the number.

He tried again, and once again the phone started to ring, then he heard the wha-wha sound of a lost connection.

He dialed the operator and asked for assistance. He gave the operator the number and she dialed it, and once again the phone went into the warble, and the operator disconnected from it. Sir? That number has been disconnected.

Is there a new number attached to it?

I’ll check, sir.

After more than a few minutes, he heard his call transferred and another voice answered, May I ask who is calling?

He identified himself, and said, I’m trying to contact Melanie Deal, and I’ve used this number in the past, now I’m told that it’s not the right number. I asked the operator to find out if there was a new number for the Deal family...

Thank you, sir. I’m the supervisor on this section, and it falls to me to tell you that the phone was taken out of order by an explosion and fire on June 11.

Oh, my God!

Yes, sir. You didn’t see anything about it on the news? It was a topic of a lot of coverage...

We’ve been away, traveling...

I’m sorry, sir.

Thank you for your help.

He hung up the phone and sat silently for what seemed like hours, the Melanie Deal letter dangling from his left hand. His eyes focused on some place no one could see as the unasked questions and the unspoken reasons fell into place for him.

He went to find his wife, to tell her he had decided on their future, and to urge her to start packing...

CHAPTER 1

It had been a quiet summer in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon in the wake of our ordeal in Missouri. While we had been trying to help schoolmates from my youth, my wife, Jan, had been kidnapped, drugged, and held captive for a week before being rescued by the local sheriff in a dramatic encounter.

While all of the physical wounds had healed, most days found my bride quiet and pensive for some period. She wasn’t quite moping, but as I tried to observe her without her knowing, I thought she looked like she was inside herself, processing some continuous loop of memory.

I had some concerns, but when I brought them up to my doctor during an annual wellness checkup, he gave me a look and then scoffed at my concern: She’s just coping, pal. What did you expect, some Teflon-like brain that could just be wiped dry and your woman would be unchanged by everything that happened to her down there?

Just the same, I kept a close eye on her as July and August rolled out and the sumac turned burnt orange heralding summer’s annual retreat to autumn on the mountain.

We had been up in the mountains taking advantage of the best brook trout fishing I’d ever known in this country, and we were driving back to our home in the foothills overlooking the Columbia Basin when out of the corner of my eye I saw her come to a conclusion.

There’s no other way to describe it. She had been off to somewhere I couldn’t go for hours as we trekked down the mountain. She had been a participant as we going up and as we fished, but as we were packing for the hike out, I saw her turn inward, and she’d stayed there throughout the walk back to the truck.

She’d sat through the hour-long crawl over the two-track trail back to the highway, facing out the passenger-side window, but I don’t think she was seeing anything outside of that private reel that I was sure was playing in her mind.

Then, as we were driving the familiar stretch of I-84 from La Grande to our exit, I saw her seem to shake herself like Judy, our German Wirehaired Pointer, coming out of the feeder stream in our backyard.

I loved this outing, Jim, she said quietly. I want to do this again and again.

It’s great fun, that’s for sure... I wasn’t ready to challenge her on how much she had really enjoyed the day or push her for an explanation of where she’d been for the past hours.

She was back to looking out the window, but she stretched her left hand across the console between us and I knew she wanted my hand in return so I gave it to her. She folded her fingers, palm down, around mine, palm up.

Thank you, she said without taking her eyes off the passing landscape.

I didn’t say anything, just held on to her until I needed the hand back to negotiate the exit ramp to our little gravel road.

After we’d liberated Judy and put all our gear away, I left her in the kitchen while I went upstairs to the shower. When I came down in shorts and a tee, she handed me the recipe card for bleu cheese dressing and took herself upstairs without a word.

I couldn’t help but smile; we had become quite accustomed to these quiet times. It wasn’t out of the ordinary, and if it hadn’t been for the still-fresh memories of Missouri, I don’t think it would have struck me as odd in any way.

As I collected the ingredients for the dressing and put them to good use, I reminded myself that part of the charm of my loving wife was her ability to live, love, and thrive without unnecessary words.

I had the dressing chilling in the fridge. I was sitting at the kitchen island looking out over the broad expanse of Oregon visible from our home. Judy was occupying her favorite spot at the top of the stairs where she could keep track of everyone without raising her head off her paws.

Our home is open and airy. Consisting of three floors, the basement is storage and mechanical; the ground floor houses the kitchen and great room with its grand view of the basin over a seemingly endless sea of towering fir trees. There is a combination full bath and laundry on that floor as well. The third floor houses the master and guest bedrooms sharing a massive master bath.

The loft-like space between the two bedrooms overlooks the great room and serves as our office where we manage our lives, write our stories, and keep our books.

A twelve-foot-deep deck accessible from both the great room and kitchen spans the entire west side of the house. Steps off the kitchen end lead to the backyard.

Our dinner trout were resting in the fridge, and there was a fresh salad in there. A potato which looked to be ready for the oven or the grill was sitting on the sideboard. An unopened bottle of Italian Pinot Grigio was chilling, so I decided to wait for further instructions before trying to help any more.

I retrieved three catalogs and two letters addressed to someone named Occupant from the mailbox. I didn’t recognize any of the catalogs, so the whole day’s delivery went into the recycle bin as I passed through the garage.

Jan was sitting at the kitchen island, scratching Judy behind the ears, and I almost did a double take when she smiled up at me, but I was able to keep a poker face – she was actually all there for the first time in weeks, and it took my breath away.

Hi there, she said. I noted that for the first time in more than a while her voice had a little bit of her old huskiness in it. It was music to me.

Hi yourself.

She turned away from the dog and held her arms open to me. I sidled up to her between her knees and she wrapped arms around my waist, turning her head as she hugged me.

You all right, Jan?

I felt her nod. For the first time in a while, I really think I am. She clenched her arms. I’ve decided that I’ve had enough...

Enough?

I felt the nodding again, and looked down at the top of her head, resisting the urge to move. I felt my pulse rate pick up a beat, and I immediately focused on keeping it and the rest of my body at ease. My tai chi training kept me relaxed as I waited for the rest of this comment, wondering where this was going.

I know you’ve been worried, dear. I’ve been distant and preoccupied. I keep playing the events of last June and wondering how I screwed up so badly; how I put myself and all of you in such jeopardy... I’ve wondered and wondered and finally, today, up in the flowage, I came to realize that I’m letting last June ruin this August. I played the whole thing over again one more time, and then I decided...

I waited, letting my hand gently knead her shoulders and back.

Mmmm, that feels so good, she said in a purr.

What did you decide?

I’m done with it.

The memories?

No, I can’t not remember, but I don’t have to dwell. I’m ready to be back in the game, and I thank you for waiting for me.

No problem, I said resisting the urge to let my held breath out with a whoosh. I’m glad to hear that you made that decision.

She pushed me away without letting me go completely so she could look up at my face. Our eyes met and I saw the mirth in them before it hit her lips, You don’t think I can just let it go?

Seeing that gleam in her eye again gave my heart a leap, but I kept my voice neutral and off-hand, I believe we all choose our attitude at all times and every day.

Well, I’m choosing you, me, Judy, and the world I haven’t seen yet over one bad week in Missouri.

I endorse that concept.

She pushed me further away so she could rise up off the stool. Then take me upstairs and prove it.

I did my best.

CHAPTER 2

I’d be lying if I said that everything melted into a serene happy ending after Jan’s epiphany, but it was obvious to anyone watching that she was really, finally, on the mend.

Never chatty, she was taking the time and making the effort to include me or the Jensens – Shirley and Jack our neighbors down the road – into what had been her private analysis of her behavior, and she was lacing her thoughts with some of the humor that remains a key component of her open and friendly approach to life.

And she had started playing her keyboard every day, filling the house with the familiar sounds of jazz.

On the Wednesday after Labor Day, she had been down the road playing the Jensen’s piano. Her keyboard was fine for practice, she admitted, but there was nothing that could compare to the real thing.

She had stopped at the mailbox on her way in, and I heard her stop downstairs as I was proofreading another attempt at capturing the Missouri story. I looked up minutes later as she came up to the desk with a letter and envelope in her hands and a puzzled look on her face.

Jim?

I looked up at her and smiled, and she saw me looking at the open letter in her hand, What’s up?

She put her hip down on the corner of the desk. Have you ever gone to a high school class reunion?

I shook my head. Nope. Why?

She held out the letter, and I could see that it was attached to a newspaper clipping. Julie in Mineral Valley forwarded this; it was sent to me at the Record.

I looked at the letter and saw it was on Record letterhead, a note really. Jan, someone sent this to you here at the paper. Nothing else, just the clipping.

I read the clipping.

Stoney High School will cease to exist after the school year ending June, 2016, and one of the traditions that will end as well is the annual all-class reunion.

Held during home-coming week, the event features all the five and zero anniversaries. This year’s celebration, the final such celebration, will occur the weekend of October 3-5.

The Class of ’80 consisted of 83 graduates. Their 35th reunion will be their last. The class officers for that year were President: Anthony Ralph; Vice president: Margie Phillips; and Secretary: Angela Ritter.

All of those officers have moved away, but Ralph and Ritter have remained in touch over the years. Phillips came to the 10-year event in 1990, but the others lost contact with her after that.

Every effort is being made to contact the members of this class. Organizers are seeking information about these class members:

Angela Albertson, Dave Boyington, Janice Coldwell, Colin Curry, Duane Deal, Sue Deal, Marci Evers, Ronald Forrester, Frank Foster, Mary Franklin, Cora Parker, and Diana Sweeny.

Anyone with knowledge of these class members, especially their current contact information, may notify the organizers at:

Class of ’80, P.O. Box 1980, Stoney, MI 49875. or at www.stoneyreunion.org or by calling 612-469-3636

I looked at her and then read the clipping again. I turned it over