Buffalo Federal Detention Facility
Batavia, N.Y.
The scene is black and white, classic film noir, 1940s fedoras and trench coats. The movie was filmed in Jim Kopp’s old hometown, San Francisco, the action couched in fog and the dark corners of the Tenderloin district. In the final scene, hard-boiled detective Sam Spade, played by Humphrey Bogart, looks into the woman’s teary eyes. She had murdered Spade’s partner, tried to get away with it. And Spade had almost taken the rap for it—almost. And now he was confronting her.
Jim’s mind returned to the present. But not for long. Thoughts overwhelmed him at times, crowding his mind, bouncing between places and people and events he had known, common connections, books, songs, Bible verse, Mother Teresa, pre-born babies, his family, Mom, Dad, Anne, Marty, Mary, Walt. The garish pink walls of Mary’s bedroom where she taught him to read “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Back to the present, looking into the face of a visitor on the other side of the glass of the prison visitor’s booth. Picking up the black phone to speak to the visitor. Was the FBI listening today? Of course they were. He looked beyond the visitor’s face, into the corridor. Who is that woman walking around out there? She looks like a federal prosecutor. What was she doing here? He picked his glasses up off the table, pressed them to his face, trying to make her out. No. It wasn’t her.
The visitor mentioned Loretta Marra. Kopp had been overjoyed when he first heard that she had been freed in Brooklyn. Oh, to have been there to see it, he thought, to hear the music in the air—what a scene that must have been! As always, he was preoccupied by movies, novels. How would his own life, his story, unfold? What was the next twist, the next irony? And how would it end?
So many of his reference points were related to pop culture, Hollywood. He pointed out that Novato, a town north of where he had lived in California, was where his mother and sister and grandmother were buried—and was next door, practically, to filmmaker George Lucas’s Luke Skywalker Ranch. And the hospital where he was born, South Pasadena Hospital? That was where a scene from the movie Pay It Forward was filmed.
He loved Pay It Forward, which starred Helen Hunt and Kevin Spacey. He thought about it all the time. You have to see it, he urged. The film had polarized critics. Some applauded it as feel-good and well acted. Others ravaged it as sappy, sentimental and ultimately manipulative. The story is about a teacher who challenges his young students to come up with an idea that can change the world. It is meant as a motivational mental exercise. You can’t really change the world with an idea. Can you? But one boy, Trevor, takes the challenge seriously. He comes up with the “pay it forward” concept: he performs three acts of unsolicited kindness to three people, the only requirement being that each passes on the goodwill to three others. His teacher says it’s a utopian idea. But it catches on—all these disparate people, with no connection, suddenly coming together, and humanity is redeemed.
Jim Kopp thought of the movie as the story of his life. But why? Pay It Forward has a surprisingly dark ending. Trevor is famous, the movement spreads. One day, he comes to the aid of a smaller child who is being picked on by schoolyard bullies, and is himself stabbed to death. Cue the candlelit vigil, soft music. Kopp had always seen himself as a victim soul. Suffer for the cause, for God, die, painfully. But Kopp was now almost 50, and still alive. But for how long? He was certain he still might face execution. Impossible, wasn’t it? France and the United States had long ago signed the extradition deal in his case. There would be no death penalty. He grinned at that bit of conventional wisdom. His case was still wide open. The trial on the federal charges was still to come. They would make an example of him. He had seen this letter, signed by Jacques Chirac, the French president. Read it with his own eyes. It proved that nothing is in stone, and the needle was still on the table. He was sure of that.
But back to more immediate concerns. Goodness, how solitary confinement compressed his already busy mind, squeezed it all together! The federal trial was still weeks, months, away. And he did not want a date set any time soon. What was he planning to do at that trial? He had confessed already to shooting Dr. Slepian. But that meant nothing for the new trial. The government would need to prove his guilt all over again. Would federal prosecutors bring up his pattern of behavior to prove his crime? Not only had he shot Dr. Slepian, but he had very likely shot Dr. Hugh Short in Ancaster, had cased out the property at least a week in advance?
Canada was part of Jim Kopp’s story. The visitor mentioned Ancaster to Kopp—Jim, they have your DNA from Dr. Short’s backyard. They can put you at the scene. Kopp put his hand over his mouth as if gagging himself, shook his head. No, don’t talk about Canada. Anything but that, he replied. He’ll be on a slow boat to Siberia if he does—nothing against Siberia! It’s better than prison!
In the movie that was his life, how did the next scene look? For him, for Loretta, for pro-life? Jim Kopp would have a surprise for everybody before he was done in court. Was he not a lawyer’s son? The reporters, the prosecutors will all end up looking like idiots. He had even written it out.
“Imagine a letter, the very existence of which would send any number of lawyers, etc. etc. all scurrying and fussing yak yak.”
What did that mean?
The black-and-white images returned. San Francisco. The cold dark heart of Bogart’s Sam Spade, who, true to nothing or no one but his own code, is telling Brigid that her number is up. She is the real killer.
“Yes, angel, I’m gonna’ send you over,” Spade said.
“Don’t, Sam,” she replied. “Don’t say that even in fun. I was frightened for a moment there, you do such wild and unpredictable things.”
“You’re taking the fall. I hope they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck.”
“You’ve been playing with me, just pretending you cared for me, to trap me like this. You didn’t care at all! You don’t love me!”
“I won’t play the sap for you,” he snapped.
“It’s not like that! You know in your heart that in spite of anything I’ve done, I love you.”
Spade stared at her, his eyes hard, unrelenting.
“I don’t care who loves who,” he said. “I won’t play the sap. You killed Miles and you’re going over for it.”
“How can you do this to me, Sam?”
“Chances are you’ll get off with life. If you’re a good girl, you’ll be out in 20 years. I’ll be waiting for you. And if they hang you, I’ll always remember you.”
A classic scene. If Kopp had one “hot tip” it was to watch that final scene from The Maltese Falcon. He’d been thinking about it an awful lot lately. Anyway. If Jim Kopp could just finish the latest draft of the essay he was writing about Dad, his mind would be eased considerably. Still need to clean up a few things for publication. The reference to General Douglas MacArthur, for starters, as “Dugout Doug.” Don’t think that derogatory label would be appreciated by military types. But it should be a good read. He’d come to terms with his father. Dad had beaten his drinking near the end of his life, had made a comeback. Oh, and he still needed to find a new bridge in the narrative of the novel he was working on. Perhaps use a “sunset piano” touch. Sunset piano, he reflected, was the part that comes two-thirds of the way through every movie—every “classical” movie, not the dumb action stuff. There is a sunset, and gorgeous music washing over all of it. Yes.