Saturday, September 25, 2010

Ned McAdoo and the Molly Maguires, Chapter Six

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CHAPTER SIX (Now)
The 1987 trip out West had so enamored my Old Man to mini-vans, that when we got home he had traded in his old Caddy for one of our very own, and he had stayed with vans ever since then. The one in which we careened north on Route 476, alias the Blue Route in Philadelphians' parlance, toward Norristown now was a '06 Ford Windstar. It was a bright --- some unkind soul with a measure of good taste might have said "garish" (precisely what my wife Judy had said when she first laid her eyes on it)--- shade called "electric blue." There was a bright yellow stripe down the length of each side. And Pop loved it.
But this morning he took none of his usual pleasure in driving it. Instead, he maneuvered it rather erratically back and forth, crossing and re-crossing the three northbound lanes, weaving in and out of the tail end of the Monday morning rush. He steered with his left hand, while flipping channels on the AM/FM radio with his right, trying to pick up some news about John Larkin's arrest.
"Arch, maybe you ought to let me handle the radio. All right?" My pulse rate had barely returned to normal from my jog over to my ancestral home from the office a few minutes earlier. Now it was starting to race once again as a result of Archie's rather wild driving, which the distraction of the radio dials only aggravated.
"Okay," replied Pop. "See if WKYW has anything. It's almost 9:30. Do they do headlines on the half hour?" Archie was perspiring profusely, his face a shiny moon, his big, watery blue eyes having become virtual pools. I was wondering how he could even see well enough to navigate the Windstar when, sure enough, he swept the back of his now free right paw across both eyes and blinked a couple of times as if to clear his vision.
I had no luck getting any further news from the radio concerning our client. In another five minutes the big, blue Windstar, still traveling at warp speed, blasted off the Blue Route onto the exit ramp, where Archie had to hit the brakes hard to avoid hitting the line of traffic waiting at the light to turn left and head toward Norristown.
"Better take it a little easy, Arch," I ventured. "He'll still be there whenever we arrive."
Archie turned his head and looked at me. He seemed to be so distracted he was having trouble processing my simple suggestion. Finally he said, "Yeah, you're right. Don't want to be arrested too, huh? The media would really love that. 'Accused terrorist and his attorneys share jail cell.' Can you imagine?"
As if the very thought of it had magic powers, a cop was conjured up at that exact instant, his lights flashing as he came up the exit ramp and stopped right behind us. Just then the light turned green. Nobody on the exit ramp moved, all of us expecting (hoping?) the state trooper would swing around the line and proceed ahead. Instead, after a few seconds, the policeman gave a short blast of his siren. Archie looked into his rear view mirror.
"I think he's signaling us to pull over," Archie observed ruefully.
"Better pull over, then," I replied, noting that the rest of the traffic must have reached the same conclusion as Archie, since the cars in front of us began proceeding through the light.
Archie maneuvered the Windstar onto the right shoulder. Sure enough, the police car pulled off behind us and the trooper got out of his vehicle, allowing the lights on its roof to continue flashing. The officer was a tall, powerfully-built man of about my age. His hat, similar to what Smoky the Bear wears, was cocked forward, nearly covering his forehead. The rim cast a shadow across the upper half of his face, making him seem somewhat sinister.
Archie's agitation, seemingly somewhat abated a few moments before, was now visibly headed toward its all-time high of the morning. He was not sufficiently composed to open the window. So when the officer reached the front of the Windstar, he had to tap on the pane to get Archie to open it. Meanwhile, what my Dad had done absent-mindedly was shut off the engine. Since the electric windows won't work without the power being on, nothing happened when Archie fumbled with the window button.
"Open the window, sir," the young officer said, loudly enough to be heard through the closed pane.
Archie nodded, sweating and looking sort of guilty, I guess. His right hand went to the steering column, intending no doubt to turn the key the one notch needed to engage the electrical power from the van's battery, so that he could operate the power windows. Instead he turned the key all the way. The van's almost-new engine leaped to life. A little startled, the cop stepped briskly back from the side window.
"Turn off the engine and open the window, sir," he said, his voice considerably louder and less even now than a moment before.
Eager to comply, Archie took hold of the keys again and turned off the engine. Turning them all the way in the opposite direction again, he discovered to the mutual chagrin of himself and the policeman that the window still would not open. I thought I saw a little steam coming out of the cop's ears.
Reaching over, I turned the key the single notch necessary to engage the battery.
"Try the window again, Dad," I instructed in a rather firm voice.
This time the windows worked. But Archie, being still overwrought, opened only my window. Seeing this, and probably thinking he was dealing with either a wise guy or someone whose profuse sweating indicated a mind under the influence of something, the patrolman's disposition grew visibly worse with each passing second of continuing delay.
"Other button, Dad," I coached.
"Oh, yeah, right," replied Archie.
At last the driver's side window came down. Struggling to maintain control, the 'statey', whose Monday may well have started off as rocky as my own had, asked, "May I see your driver's license, owner's card and insurance certificate, sir?"
"Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure you can," said Archie, struggling in his seat belt to shift his fat fanny so that he could get at his wallet. When his meaty left hand finally fought its way between his large left buttock and the car seat, he discovered that he had left the house in such hurry that he'd forgotten his wallet.
"Umm... I don't have my billfold, officer," Archie stated, shifting around to face the impatient policeman.
"You don't have your billfold," the officer repeated. "How about the owner's registration? Or maybe your insurance card."
"Aren't they in the glove compartment, Pop?" I inquired, loudly enough for the trooper to hear me, and in a tone that I hoped sounded cooperative and friendly.
"What? Oh, yeah, Ned. Yeah. Try the glove compartment," said Archie, who had begun, more or less randomly, to search the pockets of his coat and suit jacket, places where we both knew he never carried his wallet. Whether this was for the cop's benefit, Archie hoping to underline his innocent surprise at not finding the wallet where it normally would have been, or whether he was so distraught that he rather madly imagined he might have put it into some other pocket, I don't know.
For my part, I squeezed the stainless steel buttons and opened the Windstar's glove compartment. And out fell a pair of big leather winter gloves. These were succeeded by a pair of pliers, several pens, a pocket calculator and some Jolly Rancher candies. The whole mess landed on the floor between my feet.
Having vomited forth all this stuff, the compartment still contained a pile of papers large enough to fill it halfway up. I extracted the whole batch with my left hand, painfully aware of the policeman's eyes boring into the side of my head. As I flipped through the pile, I tossed things onto the floor, figuring that some more debris at my feet wouldn't matter much.
Owner’s manual... road maps for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and (incongruously) Colorado... a set of hand written directions to heaven only knew where... a ticket for a free carwash at the White Glove on West Chester Pike (which I absently noted was already expired)... and at last, an auto insurance card.
I handed it to Archie, who passed to out the open window to the officer, neither the Old Man nor I looking at it very closely. The officer took the card in his right hand and held it up to his face, as if he were perhaps a little bit farsighted. He starred at it for a full ten seconds, then said, "I'm sorry, sir, but your insurance seems to have expired last month."
"What?" replied an incredulous Archie McAdoo. "That's not possible. Karen always keeps it current." Turning to me as if seeking some support, he said, "Your mother always keeps the car insurance current."
"Well, sir, maybe so," said the 'statey.' "But this card is not current." His studied self-restraint was evident, and under the circumstances, rather admirable, I thought.
Working a bit now at keeping calm myself --- after all, this Monday had gotten off to a particularly rocky beginning, especially for people like Pop and me, who usually make a very serious effort to ease ourselves into a new week's labors --- I continued to flip through the Archie archives which had been stacked like fossil layers going back to the Jurassic Age in the glove box. I wondered, as I tossed a 1993 Philadelphia Phillies schedule onto the van floor, how such ancient junk could have migrated into an almost brand new car. I found the van's original registration form for last year, apparently provided by the dealer, but not the new one needed for 1997.
"All I've got is this, Dad," I gave him my most sympathetic look as I handed across the '96 registration. Archie proffered it to the policeman as if it were a rain-check to the wrong make-up game, demonstrating by his demeanor that he did not really expect it to be accepted.
And, of course, it wasn't.
"Sir... Mr. McAdoo, is it?" Archie nodded mutely. Despite the chilly air which now filled the van from the open window, I noted that he continued to sweat profusely. I realized that he was, far more than me, in an agony to get to the courthouse and learn what had occurred with his client. Instead we seemed to be caught in a set of rather silly circumstances calculated now to keep us from our destination for quite awhile. "Well, Mr. McAdoo, I'm afraid you're in a little bit of trouble here. First, and foremost," the trooper explained in patronizing tones, as if to a small boy, "I have you clocked going 81 in a 55 zone. Second, you're driving without a license... or any ID for that matter. And third," he continued, as he looked at the two expired documents --- the outdated auto registration and the expired insurance card --- in his right hand, "you are not carrying the vehicular information required by law."
"Look, officer," Archie began, sounding genuinely contrite, but with a note of urgency in his voice. "I'm sure the new registration and insurance card are at home. Karen, that's my wife... his mother," he added, rather irrelevantly, jerking a thumb in my direction, "no doubt forgot to put them in the compartment, as she normally does.
"As for my driver's license, well, this is something of an emergency, and I'm afraid I ran out in such haste that I just forgot to bring my wallet. So why don't you just write your ticket and let us get to where we are really needed. Okay?"
Although Archie's voice had started out humbly enough, the mix of anxiety and frustration swirling up inside him apparently caused the rise in volume, which at the end of his statement must have come across somewhat arrogantly to the police officer.
"And just what sort of emergency are you involved in, Mr. McAdoo?" the officer inquired, his voice not quite so polite as a moment ago.
"I have a client who's in trouble. He needs me," retorted Archie in a tone which I thought sounded somewhat self-important. I wanted to nudge the Old Man in the ribs and warn him he was heading into deeper, darker waters. But all I could do was sit holding the last of the glove compartment archives in my lap and let Pop call his own plays, if you'll forgive me for mixing up my metaphors.
"Oh, yeah?" responded the policeman, his professional politeness, impeccable up to now, beginning to slip like a mask from his face. "What kind of client?"
Archie must have decided --- unwisely in the event --- to try playing a trump card. (Whoops... the metaphors really are becoming mixed here. But, after all, I was upset, too. In fact, I get upset all over again just remembering that morning, which seems still new and fresh in my recollection.)
"John Larkin, the Elephant Man, is my client," Archie revealed with more than a hint of self importance.
The trooper stepped back, as if Archie had started up the engine again. He looked at my Father long and hard. There was brief moment of silence, while the cop considered his next move and Archie and I waited tensely.
Then: "Get out of the car." The command was curt and abrupt. Obviously Pop's revelation hadn't helped the cause.
Another longish moment elapsed while the trooper's order sank into Pop's perspiring skull.
Then: "What? Look, just give me my ticket and let us get out of here." My Pop was one of the few people I knew who could go from contrite resignation coupled with high anxiety to a state of righteous indignation in a mere heartbeat. But I'd seen it before in court, and now it was happening here. I personally wished it wasn't.
This often worked well with judges and juries, sometimes even with opposing counsel. But the blond, six foot three trooper with the now-beet-red face was having none of it.
"Sir, I am asking you again. Please exit your vehicle," he said, his voice a study in controlled rage.
Sensing that the situation was about to get irretrievably out of hand, I muttered into my Dad's other ear, "Better get out, Arch." And to try and set a good example, I pulled the handle of my door and started to swing the door open, even though the policeman hadn't asked me to "exit the vehicle."
"Stay right where you are, Ned," said my father in a voice emanating an amount of controlled anger equal to the state trooper's.
My father then pressed the button which raised his window, virtually in the trooper's face.
For a third time the officer took a startled step backwards. But he immediately regained that 12 inches of ground and said in a loud and ominous voice, "For the last time, sir, open your door and exit your vehicle."
"For heaven's sake, Dad," I chimed in, my voice rising an octave in real alarm now, "Do what the officer is telling you."
Archie was clutching the steering wheel and staring straight ahead. To my ever-increasing horror, the officer now took out his night stick --- a long black monster --- with his right hand and a little black canister that he carried on his belt with his left. In two frighteningly quick motions, he shattered the driver-side window with the night stick and squirted something --- it proved to be not mace but some sort of pepper juice --- in my Father's face from the little black aerosol can.
As Pop's hands reflexively left the wheel and covered his eyes, the trooper dropped the canister, deftly reached inside the window and unlocked the door, and swung it open with his right hand. His night stick now almost magically back in his belt, the officer hefted Archie's two hundred and fifty pound bulk out of the driver's seat and sprawled him on the shoulder of the road, face down. Whipping a set of handcuffs from the endlessly-supplied black belt, he had Archie's hands cuffed behind his back before I could collect my wits, exit my side of the van and come round to gaze in horror at my Pop, the prisoner.
"Oh, my God!" I gasped. Cars exiting the highway drove past at a snail's pace, not I think out of concern for the safety of the officer and his prisoner, but to rubber neck at the unusual drama that was unfolding there by the side of the road. Had the drivers known that it involved two rather prominent, and at the present time highly unpopular, local lawyers, they might have stopped to cheer the state policeman.
Looking me squarely in the eyes, the officer intoned, "Sir, I'd like you to get into the vehicle and move it off the ramp."
"What are you going to do with my Dad?" I asked, sounding not like an attorney, but like some teenage kid having his first scrape with the law.
"I intend to take him to the Montgomery County Jail and charge him with obstructing an officer in the performance of his duty," he replied. "Plus several motor vehicle violations."
"I'll be the last man you ever charge with anything," my father threatened from his prone position, his eyes squeezed shut and shedding great big tears.
The last I saw of Archie that morning he was riding away in the back of the state policeman's car, as I climbed into the driver's seat of his van and followed the police car as closely as I could in the morning traffic. By the time I found a parking place a couple of blocks from the county jail and walked to the main entrance, I was advised by the turn-key on duty that I'd have to take up the matter of Pop's release on bail with the court administrator a couple of more blocks down Swede Street at the county courthouse.
I confirmed that our client, John Larkin, was also locked up inside the jailhouse, then headed on foot down to the courthouse.
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