(1969) The Seven Minutes (20 page)

Barrett closed the novel, set it on the night table, and took up the report of the London trial. Opening it, he came upon a Cambridge lecturer and biographer of D. H. Lawrence who was telling the court, “The sexual passages to which objection is taken I think cannot occupy more than thirty pages of the whole book. The book is some three hundred pages in length…. No man in his senses is going to write a book of three hundred pages as mere padding for thirty pages of sexual matter.’

Only thirty pages of sexual matter, and 270-odd pages of other matter, and yet Lawrence’s Lady had caused years of furor. Had the other matter been of enough social importance to redeem the explicit sexual scenes? Barrett turned back the pages to the opening statement of the defense:

“The author has again, it is clear from the book, had in mind certain things in our society - that is to say, our society as it was then in the twenties, in the years of the depression - of which he wholly disapproved…. He thought… that the ills from which society was suffering were not going to be cured by political action; and that the remedy lay in the restoration of right relations between human beings, and particularly in unions between men and women. One of the greatest things in fife, he thought, was the relationship of a man and a woman in love, and their physical union formed an essential part of a relationship that was normal and wholesome and not something to be ashamed of, something to be discussed openly and frankly.’

Redeeming social importance. And only one page in ten devoted to explicit sex.

Yet here was Jadway’s The Seven Minutes, a book in which not merely one page in ten, but, rather, every single page, 171 out of 171 printed pages, was given over to sexual intercourse. But, dammit, that wasn’t what it was all about, just animal fucking, or else why had he felt so purified as a person, and so enlightened about women, when he had finished the book? The protracted sexual intercourse had been beautiful, and a device through which to speak of understanding between the sexes, and of love and pity and tenderness and dreams and the meaning of life and death. Cathleen’s behavior needed no redemption, but if the law demanded that Jadway’s portrait of her passion required redeeming social importance, why, it was there, it was there in page after page.

Still, Barrett could see, there were other problems, many problems, including the author’s motive and intent. How he wished that Jadway had lived, to explain not only why he had written the book, but to solve many mysteries in its pages. But there was only Jadway’s legacy, the book, to speak for him at its trial. Yes, there were serious problems, but whether the novel was obscenity or literature was not one of them, at least not to Barrett.

If the book was not obscene, there should be someone to stand up and protect it. Just as there should be someone to stand up and protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights against those who would make a mockery of its guarantees.

He remembered Zelkin’s obsession and Chief Justice Warren’s concern that the Bill of Rights - including the portion of the First

Amendment, ‘Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press’ - might not be passed as a law today. Then he remembered that another lawyer, Edward Bennett Williams, a great trial attorney, had once written about this. Williams had felt that not only would the Bill of Rights fail to be passed as a law today, but that it would not even get out of committee and onto the floor of Congress for a vote.

‘We have allowed an erosion of individual liberty and freedom to take place in the last three decades,’ Williams had stated, ‘not as the result of the overreaching of big government, nor as the result of the calculated assaults made upon liberties and freedom in the last decade, but rather because of collective lethargy and a cavalier attitude of unconcern. I think we have made a substitution in our national ranking of values - an evolutionary substitution that is only now reaching its culmination. We have placed security in a position of primacy and subordinated individual liberty to it.’

If a man could not speak out on sex today, then one day he might not be able to speak out on religion, on politics, on public institutions, on poverty, on racial equality, on representation.on justice. One day that man, who embodied all men, would be mute. The Bill of Rights would be suppressed, banned, held seditious.

It could begin with a book.

Shaken, Barrett stared down at The Seven Minutes.

His mind was made up.

He looked at his bedside clock. It was three hours later in New York. It was seven-thirty in the Philip Sanford household.

Phil Sanford would be awake, and he might be waiting.

Barrett took the receiver off the telephone, then dialed Sanford’s area code number and then his home number.

Sanford was wide awake, but his voice had been made almost inaudible by his anxiety.

‘I don’t know how I’ll make out with Osborn,’ Barrett said, ‘but I do know how I feel about The Seven Minutes. I’ve just read it, Phil, and it deserves to be defended. I have no idea what’U happen to it or to us, but we’ve got to stand up and be counted. If we buckle under here, show the white flag to the censors, then freedom of speech has no future. They’ll overrun us. We’ll be silenced forever. This is the moment, and whatever the consequences, I’m ready to go all the way.’

‘Mike, I love you!’

‘From here on in, we hang together, or we hang separately - so pack your bags. I expect you out here in a week. From now on, it’s war.’

Hanging up, he had no regrets. Perhaps it had cost him his big opportunity with Osborn. Most likely not, since Faye was on his side and had promised to take care of her father. So probably this wasn’t much of a sacrifice and he wasn’t much of a courageous

advocate. But he was doing what he wanted to do. And it felt good for a change.

He took up the clock and set the alarm. He would sleep fast tonight, he knew, and he would awaken rested and strong, even after only four hours. He would rise early, because he must make another call. He would call Abe Zelkin to tell him that he had himself a partner, even if only for one landmark case.

Figuratively, briefly, there would be a shingle: Barrett and Zelkin, Counselors-at-Law and Do-Gooding.

When mike barrett returned to the Beverly Hills Hotel with Abe Zelkin in tow, Philip Sanford was waiting for them in the cool lobby. Since Zelkin and Sanford had spoken to each other many times on the longdistance telephone in the past ten days, Barrett had no need to introduce them formally. They had shaken hands warmly, and were immediately on a first-name basis.

‘Leo Kimura called from Westwood,’ Barrett explained to the publisher. ‘He’ll be a few minutes late. I told him he’d find us at the pool.’ Then, as the three of them started for the hotel’s swimming pool, Barrett added, ‘Abe and I feel more secure when Leo is late. It means he’s onto something. We couldn’t possibly have managed the pretrial preparation in so short a time without a man like Leo Kimura.’

‘Having him on our side is like having a bevy of bloodhounds, only they still wouldn’t add up to one Leo Kimura,’ said Zelkin with satisfaction.

‘And I thought most Japanese in California were gardeners or restaurant proprietors,’ said Sanford.

‘Their fathers were,’ said Zelkin. ‘Their fathers were also among the one hundred and ten thousand American citizens interned behind barbed wire after Pearl Harbor. Our own little experiment with concentration camps. Kimura’s father was stuck in the Tule Lake Relocation Center. Speak of justice, eh ? Well, our generation of Nisei hasn’t forgotten it. Anyway, Leo Kimura never forgot it, and he wanted to see that no injustice like that ever happened again, so he worked his way through college and the University of Southern California Law School. The minute I began to interview him, just after I opened my office, I saw he was for me. You know, half of the law cases that come to trial are won or lost in a law library or out in the city where legwork is being done. For you, I’m taking care of the library, and Kimura is taking care of the legwork. And Mike here does something of everything, including saving his vocal cords for the trial.’

They filed down to the hotel swimming pool. It was a balmy, windless day, and many of the obviously prosperous guests were seated around the pool in lounge wear or swim suits, and of the half-dozen people in the water three were pretty girls in bikinis. Although Barrett was wearing his summer seersucker, he felt overdressed. But then, he reminded himself, he would not be here long. This day, like every one in the past week and a half, would be a

crowded business day.

He realized that Sanford and Zelkin were being led to their reserved table, which was set back from the pool and protected by a yellow sun umbrella. Side by side, Sanford and Zelkin presented an incongruous sight. Zelkin was Zelkin - the animated pumpkin head, below which was draped an oversized greenish sport jacket and uncreased slacks. Philip Sanford was a tailor’s delight, and even the resort clothes he had changed into since arriving from the airport - a canvas beach jacket, Bermuda shorts, woven Italian moccasins - were sartorially impeccable. Sanford was Barrett’s height, but trimmer, strictly athletic club, yet all this seeming strength was reduced to weakness by his slicked-down rust hair and a chalky complexion which seemed to wash away the individuality of his features, except for his permanent expression of anxiety.

Barrett caught up with his companions and joined them at the table in time to order his drink. The captain was told that they would wait to order lunch until the fourth member of their party had arrived. This reference to the tardy Kimura again provoked a series of nervous questions from Sanford about the progress that had been made in the ten days since Ben Fremont had entered a not-guilty plea and Barrett, together with Zelkin, had taken on the case and got the trial date set. With enthusiasm, Zelkin began outlining some of the preparations for the defense.

. Barrett slipped on his sunglasses and stared moodily out at the swimming pool. Briefly his attention was attracted to a slim, ribby California-type girl, maybe twenty, who was pulling herself up out of the water. A strip of bikini bra only partially contained her abundant breasts, and Barrett was sure they would pop free any minute. But they did not, and, dripping as she stood above the pool, triumphantly adjusting the bra, she grinned at Barrett, and he smiled somewhat sheepishly and pretended to give his attention to the conversation at the table.

‘So you see, Phil, the first problem is time,’ Zelkin was saying earnestly. ‘You’ve shortchanged us on time. I understand the necessity for this, but -‘

The gin and tonics were being served. Barrett took his glass, moving his chair slightly so that he could enjoy some of the sun. Then, sipping the drink, he dropped his head back, letting the sun bathe it, and he closed his eyes.

The problem was time, he knew, or the lack of it in this critical pretrial stage. He had brought it up earlier with Sanford at the airport, but he had not pressed his argument for his own selfish reasons.

He had reached International Airport a half hour before Phil Sanford’s scheduled morning arrival from New York City. This had been fortunate, since Sanford’s jet liner landed fourteen minutes early. Barrett had wasted not a minute posing the problem, actually posing it because Abe Zelkin had implored him to do so.

The skycap had deposited Sanford’s luggage next to them on the cement walk before the terminal, and they were waiting for the airport’s valet parking service to deliver Barrett’s automobile, when Barrett had brought the subject up.

‘Phil, we’re going into this big trial, and Duncan or someone is making it a big trial - it’s becoming a carnival like the Scopes trial or the Bruno Hauptmann trial,’ Barrett had begun.

‘Incredible the way this has caught on,’ said Sanford with unconcealed pleasure. ‘Not only in the East, not only with every newspaper in America, but abroad, in England, France, Germany, Italy, everywhere. We retain a clipping service, and - ’

‘I know what’s happening, and that’s another thing that bothers me,’ said Barrett. ‘It’s bad enough to have a complicated case, but it’s infinitely worse when most of the newspapers, television, and radio media turn it into a spectacular. So, what I started to say is that we’re going into this with little more than two weeks of preparation. The only thing that makes a defense possible is that we’ve been working double time. So maybe we’ll have the equivalent of four weeks’ preparation before we go into court. Considering what’s at stake, we could easily use twelve to sixteen weeks.’

‘Your District Attorney won’t have any more time than you’ve had,’ protested Sanford, ‘and he seems eager to get into court.’

‘The prosecution is almost always more eager to get into court than the defense. The state is the aggressor. In this case, the D. A.‘s Office was at work, preparing an attack on the book, before we knew there would be an arrest. And they already have a star witness. It is to their advantage to stage their show now, while public opinion is on their side, while hysteria keeps mounting about the rape and that book. Every morning we’re greeted by a bedside bulletin from Mount Sinai telling us of Sheri Moore’s critical condition, her prolonged coma, and every bulletin is accompanied by a reiteration of what put her in the hospital - not Jerry Griffith but J J Jadway. But as Zelkin keeps reminding me, it is the defense that traditionally fights for more time, stalls, not only to allow any climate of hysteria to change, but to gain time for a thorough preparation. As the defense, we’re a step behind. We’re counter-punching, and we need time to catch up and then take the initiative. If there were less internal pressure, we could ask for one continuance after another, throw up a screen of pretrial motions and writs, delay the confrontation by as much as six months to a year. Abe begged me to bring it up with you once more. Can’t we convince you to let us try to delay the trial ?’

‘Impossible,’ said Sanford. ‘Any long delay would be as disastrous for me as losing the trial itself. All those copies of the book are out. What could the stores do with them? They’d be afraid to display them. They wouldn’t have room to stock them if the outcome of the trial were long in doubt and made that necessary. Most of the store owners would probably panic and return their shipments to us. A year from now, it is unlikely that we’d be able to revive a corpse. No, in spite of the risk, we’ve got to plunge right into it.’