Allegiance (41 page)

“I'd think you'd be happier,” I say. “He all but asked them to hold detention unconstitutional.”

“It doesn't matter,” Ennis says. “Roosevelt's going to let them go after the election anyway. Detention's not an issue. What matters is whether they can go home without getting lynched. Fahy stood up there yesterday and said the government had good reasons to think they're disloyal. And that's what the Court's going to say, and California's not going to take them back.”

I nod my head. He's right about what matters. But maybe what the Court says can still be changed.

FROM THE FRONT
row of the balcony, I look out over the Uptown Cinema. The red velvet seats are emptying, the credits scrolling up the screen. Ginger Rogers married a Nazi, but Cary Grant got her out of it. Their ship is sailing to America; sun burns away the fog and the wind blows free. Now they are gone and I am coming back to reality, breathing a harsher air. It is how I always feel when a movie ends. I want to linger in that other world, to stay with the beautiful giants, the figures of light. Silly giants; it is so clear what they must do, and it takes them so long to figure it out. Still, there is comfort in watching the process. Perhaps when the lights come up they will show our lives as equally simple, with a swell of strings letting us know the moment has come. But the beautiful giants are gone, the little world still quiet and obscure.

The seats next to me are empty, and I cannot help thinking of Gene Gressman, how he sat beside me two years ago watching Cary. That's what gave me the idea, of course, but I've done him one better. I look from side to side, then turn all the way around in my seat to scan the back. Meeting after the movie, when everyone else has gone, will make us even harder to tail. An older couple is shuffling for the exit. And there she is, in the far left corner, rising from her seat, a black dress flowing down her like water.

“So,” Clara says. “You talked me into a movie after all. For reasons of security.”

There is half a smile on her face as she walks toward me, and for a moment
my breath is gone. But this is business. “I need to talk to you about
Korematsu
.”

Clara stops. “That's what this is about? I shouldn't even be talking to you. If Douglas found out . . .”

“Wait.” I take her hand before she can turn. She looks down but does not pull away. “No one knows we're here.”

“I am not so sure about that.”

Perhaps she has spotted her FBI minders. I consider telling her that I have arranged protection, then change my mind. “Please. Sit down.”

Tension gathers itself in her lips and flows away. “You asked me this before,” she says, tucking the dress under herself as she sits. “You know I can't do it. There are rules.”

“It's different now. Charles Fahy lied to the Court. The Final Report is false. They have to know that.”

“Ah,” says Clara. She nods. “Someone else broke the rules and now you can too?”

“I want to help the Court.”

“So much care for a marble building.”

“It's for the Japanese.”

Clara tilts her head and looks at me curiously. “Americans,” she says. “So, you had a Eureka moment.”

I remember Kuwabara and his stories. Hunting Easter eggs, getting called for his physical. “Yes.” Fumiko's voice rises in my mind.
Thy liberty in law.
“And Tule Lake.” Something occurs to me, an angle that might work. “This must be personal for you, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“You must wonder why you're not in a camp.”

“What?” She sounds almost alarmed.

“Because your parents are German,” I explain. “Like you told Cissy.”

A stillness folds around her. “Yes,” she says softly. “Why I am not in a camp. That is what I wonder.”

I curse myself for bringing up that night. “Justice Black won't go along with this if he knows the truth,” I say.

Clara nods. She speaks as though from a vast distance. “If he only knew, he'd do the right thing. That's what the Nisei think about Roosevelt. The way
a child feels about his father. It must be a mistake. If only people knew what was happening, they'd do something. No one would let this go on.”

“I have reports I want you to give him. From the FBI and the FCC.”

“That's against the rules.”

“I don't care.”

“But I do.” She turns her head toward me, present again in the theater, returned from whatever far-off place she's been. “Rules protect people. They protect the weak. Only a rule could have stopped this, something that couldn't be balanced away.”

She has a point. That is what Fahy was doing in the courtroom, when he wasn't lying about the Final Report; that is the argument I prepared with him. The interests of the individual must be weighed against the needs of national security. And who can do that better than the experts, the agencies, the army? They know what must be done. But still . . . “They don't protect you if the other guy doesn't follow them.”

“I'm quite aware of that.” A flash of anger lights her eyes and is gone. “Your reports won't do anything.”

“I know Black.”

“Do you?”

“What does that mean?”

“I can't help you, Cash. I'm sorry.”

“I'm sorry, too. I helped you. I saved your life.”

“So you think. Does yours need saving now?”

“Maybe.”

Clara frowns. “Tell me about that.”

I tell her about the Anti-Federalists, Hall's murder, how it must connect back to Gene Gressman. How they've kept me alive because they think I can make Black vote for the government.

She is frowning more severely. “Perhaps. But if that's so, aren't you putting yourself in danger by doing this? By writing the brief to lose?”

“You noticed that?”

“Of course.”

“Oh. Well, yes. I guess I am.”

She looks at me with something like respect. “So aren't you worried?”

“We're about to find them.” I explain about Haynes and the fingerprint. Frankfurter will have called him back by now. He may be sweating on the carpet as we speak.

“And that's what you're counting on? That he'll tell Frankfurter who his bosses are?”

“Sure,” I say. “Why not?”

“You're putting a lot of faith in Felix.” Clara tilts her head. “And what if Haynes decides to run instead?” There are silvery lights in the green and gold of her eyes. “I think you should try to figure it out yourself.”

“There's no way to figure it out. I've tried everything.” I know what the government has done, holding innocent people, fabricating evidence against them, manipulating the cases. But it does not lead to murder. And I know what Richards and the Anti-Federalists have done, stocking the Court with their conservative clerks, fighting the New Deal. But again it does not take me to Gene or John Hall. I am thinking now that it must be someone else altogether.

“Work it backward,” Clara says. “Someone killed John Hall. Why?”

“To stop him from talking to me.”

“And what was he going to tell you?”

“Something about the Anti-Federalists.”

“So they're the ones behind it.”

“No, they're not,” I say. “I confronted Colonel Richards. He came clean about planting the clerks, and I believe him when he says he has nothing to hide.”

“Maybe he doesn't,” she says. “But he's not the only one. There's Brutus. And the Farmer. What about them?”

“What would they have to hide that he doesn't?”

“Killing Gene Gressman, for starters. Richards wasn't a part of that, so he's not worried about covering it up. But maybe they are.”

I lean back in the seat. It makes a kind of sense, now that she says it. Keeping the identity of the Anti-Federalists a secret was the only reason to kill Hall. Richards did not care about that, but maybe the others did; maybe they had something to hide after all. Brutus and the Farmer could have ordered Gene killed on their own, the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.

But there's a problem with the theory. It just moves the question one step back. “Why would they kill Gene?”

“To stop him from doing something.”

“What?”

“I don't know,” she says. “What was he going to do if they didn't kill him?”

That is the question. Any number of things. But what might be important enough to make them turn to murder? “He thought he was going to affect the Japanese cases. And he was trying to find out who was planting the clerks.”

Clara considers. “And which would it be?”

I shake my head. “Neither one works.” The Anti-Federalists don't care about the Japanese, as far as I know. But neither did they have any reason to worry about being found out by Gene. Take his murder out of it, and Brutus and the Farmer have no more reason to hide their identity than Richards. We are back in the realm of harmless fun.

The puzzle cannot be solved. There's still a piece missing. That, or I'm thinking about too many pieces. The patterns are interfering with each other; I can't isolate the signal. I shake my head again, staring at the blank white screen of the movie theater. I raise my hands, palms up, spreading the fingers. There is nothing for me to take hold of.

Then I feel her fingers in my hand. I close my own around them. Clara gives me one quick squeeze. “I have to go,” she says, and before I can ask why she is up from the seat and out the door, clicking down the stairs from the balcony. I give her a few minutes and head out myself. There is still work to be done.

FELIX FRANKFURTER IS
a busy man. It is two days before I can arrange an appointment, and when I enter his chambers his desk is piled high with papers. He puts down a pen as I walk in and rises to shake my hand, sleek and satisfied. “Cash, my boy.”

“Justice.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering if you'd had a chance to talk to Phil Haynes.”

“Ah,” Frankfurter says, raising his chin as though remembering. “Mr. Haynes.” His face creases with displeasure, then smoothes again. “We spoke.”

“And? Did he tell you who was giving him orders?”

“He did not indicate an immediate willingness to do so, no. And I did not press him on it.”

“Well, you have to.” I do not understand what is going on. “You have to get him back here.”

Frankfurter's tone goes distant. “Private Haynes is no longer available.”

“What do you mean?”

“How do they put it? He has been called to serve his country in another place.”

I shake my head. “I don't understand.”

“He is with the Marine combat infantry now. He should be somewhere in the Pacific, making ready for the Home Islands. They are predicting a million casualties. I do not expect that he will return.”

I blink. “You did that?”

Frankfurter sighs. “You could say I did not stop it. I might have, perhaps, but I am not sure it was my decision to make. And to prosecute him would be to shine a light on ourselves, too. This may be a simpler route.”

“To what?”

Frankfurter's smile returns. “To justice.”

I shake my head again. I imagine Haynes clutching a gunwale, tanned face gone green. The Pacific is not Northeast Harbor, and the LCI a far cry from a Lightning sloop. I see him looking up at the buzz of a plane engine, wading through shallow surf toward a coral beach. I put the picture from my mind. “But I need to find out who's behind this. I told you, I'm in danger from them.”

“I do not think so.” He sounds as if he is telling me a tie does not match my shirt. “If they wanted to harm you, they would have done so by now.”

“They're waiting for the Japanese cases to be decided. They thought I'd help.”

“No.” The same dismissive tone. “Not that your work for the government was anything but excellent.” He pauses just a moment longer than he would have if this were truly a compliment. “But the outcome there was never in doubt.”

Suddenly I am hearing Karl Bendetsen's voice in my mind. Just another James Rowe, all worked up over something that's been decided already. “What do you mean?”

Frankfurter smiles. “We must not discuss a pending case. That is what I should say to you, isn't it? But we are past that, you and I. This Court will not go against Roosevelt. You know that as well as anyone.”

“It will come out,” I say. “That these people were innocent. That there was no justification.”

“We are at war, Cash. Should we allow people to use our courts, our laws against us? To use the law as an instrument of war?”

“They're not the enemy.”

Frankfurter shrugs. His face is the face of the law, smooth and impenetrable. “Each of us has an opportunity to serve in his own way. I told you that long ago. Those who challenge the government are not helping.”

“But they're right. Isn't it your duty as a judge to say so?”

Frankfurter lifts a pen from his desk and spins it across the back of one hand. “Duty,” he says. A smile plays across his face and fades. “Would you have met with Charles Horsky if you believed in duty? Would you be here talking to me, inside the Court?”

“When I first met you, you said it was a temple of truth.”

The smile returns. “Ah,” he says. “I was politicking then. Holmes said it to FDR. We are at war, and in time of war there is only one rule. Form your battalion and fight.”

“So the government can hold innocent people?” I remember the
Endo
argument, the sad note in Fahy's voice. “You won't get five votes for that.”

“Hold innocent people?” Frankfurter sounds surprised. “No. And it does not want to. Miss Endo may go. There was never any order to detain her.”