The White Road

I found that I was clutching the handle of my coffee cup so tightly that it had left a mark on the palm of my hand. I released my grip and watched the blood flow back into the white areas. “If he’s bailed, he’ll flee,” I said. “He won’t wait around for a trial.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Yes, we do.”

We were both hunched over the table, and we both seemed to realize it simultaneously. Over near the window, the two old men had turned to watch us, their attention attracted by the tension between us. I leaned back, then looked at them. They returned to watching the traffic.

“Anyway,” said Ornstead, “even Cooper won’t set a bail below seven figures and we don’t believe that Faulkner has access to that level of funds.”

All of the Fellowship’s assets had been frozen, and the AG’s office was trying to follow the paper trail that might lead to other accounts undiscovered so far. But somebody was paying Faulkner’s lawyers, and a defense fund had been opened into which dispiriting numbers of right-wing crazies and religious nuts were pouring money.

“Do we know who’s organizing the defense fund?” I asked. Officially, the fund was the responsibility of a firm of lawyers, Muren amp; Associates, in Sava

Ornstead blew out a large breath. It smelled of coffee and nicotine.

“That’s the rest of the bad news. Muren had a visitor a couple of days back, a guy by the name of Edward Carlyle. Phone records show that the two of them have been in daily contact since this thing started, and Carlyle is a cosignatory on the fund checking account.”

I shrugged. “Name doesn’t ring a bell.”

Ornstead tapped his fingers lightly on the table in a delicate cadence.

“Edward Carlyle is Roger Bowen’s right-hand man. And Roger Bowen is-”

“A creep,” I finished. “And a racist.”

“And a neo-Nazi,” added Ornstead. “Yup, clock stopped sometime around 1939 for Bowen. He’s quite a guy. Probably has shares in gas ovens in the hope that things might pick up again on the old ‘final solution’ front. As far as we can tell, Bowen is the one behind the defense fund. He’s been keeping a low profile these last few years but something has drawn him out from under his rock. He’s making speeches, appearing at rallies, passing around the collection plate. Seems to me like he wants Faulkner back on the streets pretty bad.”

“Why?”

“Well, that’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“Bowen’s base is in South Carolina, isn’t it?”

“He moves between South Carolina and Georgia, but spends most of his time somewhere up by the Chattooga River. Why, you pla

“Maybe.”

“I ask why?”

“A friend in need.”

“The worst kind. Well, while you’re down there you could always ask Bowen why Faulkner is so important to him, though I wouldn’t recommend it. I don’t imagine you’re top of his wish list of friends he hasn’t met yet.”

“I’m not top of anybody’s wish list.”

Ornstead stood and patted me on the shoulder.

“You’re breaking my heart.”

I walked with him to the door. His car was parked right outside.

“You heard everything, right?” I asked. I assumed that Stan had been listening in to all that had passed between Faulkner and me.

“Yeah. We talking about the guard?”

“Anson.”

“Doesn’t concern me. You?”

“She’s underage. I don’t believe that Anson is going to be an influence for the better in her life.”

“No, I guess not. We can get someone to look into it.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“Done. Now I got a question for you. What happened in there? Sounded like there was a scuffle.”

Despite the coffee, I could still taste the mouthwash.

“Faulkner spit in my mouth.”

“Shit. You going to need a test?”

“I doubt it, but I feel like swallowing battery acid to burn it out of my mouth and insides.”

“Why’d he do it? To get you pissed at him?”

I shook my head.

“No, he told me it was a gift, to help me see more clearly.”

“See what?”

I didn’t answer, but I knew.

He wanted me to see what was waiting for him, and what was coming for me.

He wanted me to see his kind.

6

THE MILITANT RACIST movement has never been particularly significant in terms of size. Its hard-core membership is probably 25,000 at most, augmented by maybe a further 150,000 active sympathizers and possibly another 400,000 fly-by-nighters, who offer neither money nor manpower but will tell you all about the threat to the white race posed by the coloreds and the Jews if you loosen them up with enough booze. More than half of the hard core comprises Klan members with the remainder consisting of skinheads and assorted Nazis, and the level of cooperation between the groups is pretty minimal, sometimes descending into a competitiveness bordering on outright aggression. Membership is rarely constant: people move in and out of the groups on a regular basis, depending on the requirements of employers, enemies, or the courts.

But at the head of each group is a cadre of lifelong activists, and even as the names of their movements change, even as they fight amongst themselves and shatter into smaller and smaller splinters, those leaders remain. They are missionaries, zealots, proselytizers for the cause, spreading the gospel of intolerance at state fairs, rallies, and conferences, through newsletters and pamphlets and late-night radio shows.

Of these men, Roger Bowen was one of the longest serving, and also one of the most dangerous. Born to a Baptist family in Gaffney, South Carolina, by the foothills of the Blue Ridge, he had passed through the ranks of any number of far-right organizations, including some of the most notorious neo-Nazi groups of the past twenty years. In 1983, at the age of twenty-four, Bowen had been one of three young men questioned without charge about their involvement in the Order, the secret society formed by the racist Robert Matthews and linked to Aryan Nations. During 1983 and 1984 the Order carried out a series of armored car and bank robberies to fund its operations, which included assorted arson attacks, bombings, and counterfeiting efforts. The Order was also responsible for the murders of the Denver talk show host Alan Berg and a man named Walter West, a member of the Order who was suspected of betraying its secrets. Eventually, all members of the Order were apprehended, with the exception of Matthews himself, who was killed during a shoot-out with FBI agents in 1984. Since there was no evidence to link Bowen to its activities he escaped prosecution, and the truth about the extent of Bowen’s involvement in the Order died with Matthews. Despite its comparatively small force of activists, the FBI’s operations against the Order had consumed one quarter of the bureau’s total manpower resources. The Order’s size had worked in its favor, making it difficult to infiltrate by outsiders and informers, the unfortunate Walter West excepted. It was a lesson that Bowen never forgot.

Bowen then drifted for a time before finding a home of sorts in the Klan movement, although by then it had been largely defanged by the activities of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program: klaverns had folded, its prestige had plummeted, and its average age had begun to drop as older members left or died. The result was that the Klan’s traditionally uneasy relationship with the trappings of neo-Nazism became less ambiguous, the new bloods being less fussy about such matters than the more senior members. Bowen joined Bill Wilkinson’s Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, but by the time the Invisible Empire disbanded in 1993, following an expensive lawsuit, Bowen had already established his own Klan, the White Confederates.