The Best Defense (17 page)

He wanted to meet “their client”: She said the words in her head with satisfaction. And then he wanted to see the Canby Ranch.

“I’ll go with you,” she had said quickly. Without hesitation he had nodded. And they had agreed that neither of them would go out there alone, not until something was done about Royce Gallead.

Now, at the office, she looked into the waiting room and said hello to her three student researchers, already at work. They had identical loose-leaf notebooks open;

newspapers were spread on the table some on the floor, another batch on an end table by an overstuffed chair. She closed the door softly and went on to Sam Bixby’s office, where his secretary, Marjorie Newhouse, greeted her.

Marjorie sometimes said she wished Sam would retire so she could. She was near seventy and would not even consider turning him over to someone else.

“He’s waiting,” she said with such a neutral look that Barbara braced herself.

Today Barbara was in jeans, a T-shirt, and walking shoes, prepared for the Canby Ranch, and comfortable enough with Sam Bixby that her clothes wouldn’t matter.

He had seen her in a bathing suit, in shorts, slacks, formal wear. No doubt, she had told herself that morning, in times that memory mercifully had erased, he had even seen her bare-assed. Now she wished she had chosen something else to wear, something more appropriate for a business office.

She tapped on the door and opened it.

“Good morning,” she said, entering, closing the door behind her.

“Ah, Barbara. Good morning, my dear. Please, take a chair. Would you like some coffee?”

She shook her head, but did take the chair opposite his desk, hating the feeling that she had been called to the principal’s office.

“Barbara, you know your father brought up the matter of the Kennerman case with us, of course. And we were opposed for many different reasons, but, Barbara, it made me start to think of the somewhat irregular position you seem to be in at present.”

“Barbara” three times, “my dear” once; it was worse than bad, she knew, and held herself very still.

“Barbara, my dear, this is very awkward for both of us, I’m afraid.”

Her heart sank even lower. With the window behind him, the drapes open, his expression was impossible to read, even to see, but the slope of his shoulders, the way he was shuffling a few papers around, that was enough. Light reflected off his head as if it were made of porcelain. She waited, aware that her silence was making it more difficult for him. At the moment she didn’t care. His conference, let him run it.

“My dear, I really think that it would be in the best interests of all of us if you simply offered to resign from the firm. Unless, of course, you choose to come back as a real member.”

She let out a long breath.

“Have you talked this over with Dad?”

“Of course not. I would hate to cause a rift in our partnership after so many years. I think it’s best to handle this just between the two of us.”

“I see. Of course, I’ll resign, Mr. Bixby. You want a statement in writing, I suppose?”

“It’s going to be Mr. Bixby now? Barbara, I—” “I think I should be on my way,” she said, rising.

“I’ll send in the letter this afternoon.”

His shoulders slumped even more, but he did not get up from his chair.

They both turned to look when there was a pounding on the door and it flew open. Frank strode in and kicked it shut after him.

“Oh, Lord,” Sam Bixby muttered.

“You’re damn right, “Oh, Lord!” What’s this chickenshit? When’s the last time one of us fired anyone without talking about it first? You yellow-bellied slinking lowlife!”

“Dad, he didn’t fire me!”

“The hell he didn’t!” He had come across the wide office to the desk, where he grasped the edge and leaned forward and said in a grating voice, “You got a few phone calls and turned chicken! Didn’t you?”

“Calls and letters! I told you this was explosive! We don’t need it!”

“Crap! Dodgson waved a stick and you ran like a yellow dog, whining, yelping, looking for cover.”

“It wasn’t Dodgson. Some of our clients, your clients and mine, damn you. People are hot, Frank, and there’s no moral ground to stand on.”

“We faced them down during the McCarthy witch hunts didn’t we? Both of us together. We lived through those years. Now you’re like a fat cat cringing at shadows.

What have you turned into, Sam?”

“I’m protecting what we built! I’m not going to let it all go down the drain for a baby killer. I’m not going to lose everything we’ve worked for—not for your daughter, not for your grandstanding. My God, I’m sick of the kind of people you’ve dragged through these offices over the years, and if you think I’ll sit still and let your daughter do the same, you’ve lost what little sense you ever possessed. Maybe it’s time for you to retire, too!”

Barbara watched them, speechless. They had argued over the years, many times, but never anything like this.

Sam Bixby was on his feet yelling, her father was livid.

They were saying things that wouldn’t be forgotten or forgiven, she thought in despair. She reached for her father’s arm; he shrugged away from her without a glance.

“Maybe it is,” he said in a much lower, much more menacing voice.

“And the firm goes down with me, Sam. I’ll see that it does. Think about that while you’re planning some goddamn tax dodge for one of your fat cats.”

“You don’t know a goddamn thing about corporate structure. You want a fight? You think I’m not ready for a fight? Is—” Barbara snatched up a book and slammed it down on the desk. It sounded like an explosion.

“Stop this! Stop it this minute! Both of you!” They both froze.

“Look at you. Look at what’s happening to you. First, Dodgson came between us. Dad. He did. On his high moral ground taking potshots here, there. Now he’s between you two. Sniping away. And we’re all playing right into his hands, doing exactly what he wants us to do!”

Abruptly Sam Bixby sat down again and Frank straightened, took a step backward. Sam reached for the papers on his desk; his hands were trembling. He looked at them for a moment and then folded them together

“We should discuss this at a later time,” he said faintly.

“Now,” Frank snapped.

“How many letters, how many calls?”

“Enough,” Sam said.

“Four calls, one letter. All from clients who have been with us for years, all protesting the same thing, and the last caller said there would be others. I believe him.”

“So do I.” Frank grunted and sat down in one of the comfortable chairs facing the desk.

“They’ve got a data bank,” he said after a moment.

“My God, that man’s got a data bank that includes our clients!”

Sam looked stricken.

“You don’t know anything like that.”

“He probably sent out a questionnaire,” Frank went on, ignoring his partner.

“Who’s the family doctor, the dentist, lawyer, what’s the church affiliation? And people obligingly filled in the blanks. A goddamn data bank.”

“I tell you, Frank, it isn’t like that. People are taking a stand. They’re picking sides.”

“And we can’t be on both sides of the fence. Let them choose. Come on, Bobby, we’ve got some work to do.”

“What do you mean?” Sam cried.

“What do you mean ‘we’?”

“Forgot to mention it, I guess,” Frank said caustically, “what with all the yelling. I’m her assistant on this one. She goes, and there’s no choice: I gotta go where the boss is.”

“Oh, Lord,” Sam moaned.

Frank took Barbara’s arm in a firm grasp and propelled her from the office. He closed the door gently be hind them, smiled genially at Marjorie Newhouse, who looked petrified, and walked Barbara from the offices out into the sunlight. He was humming under his breath.

It sounded like a cat purring.

On the way to the jail, she said, “Dad, I’m really sorry. I wouldn’t have had that happen for anything. I didn’t want you to get involved.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. He laughed and added, “It takes a fight with an equal to keep the blood circulating, keep the brain cells functioning. Sam liked it as much as I did. Or he will when he cools off.” He laughed again.

He was cheerful when they met Paula Kennel-man, who regarded him with wariness when Barbara explained that he would be working on the case, too. He might come around to ask questions, and it would be exactly as if she, Barbara, were asking them, she told Paula.

“Except I might ask harder questions,” Frank added.

“Harder than hers?” Paula asked with a faint smile.

“I doubt you can think of anything harder than she has.”

“Well, I’m meaner than she is.”

Paula’s look said she doubted that, too.

“I wrote out everything I could think of,” she said, and handed a sheaf of papers to Barbara.

“Good. That will be helpful,” Barbara said. The handwriting was very legible; it looked like a schoolgirl’s report. She avoided her father’s glance; he knew as well as she did that she had to keep Paula thinking about the death of her child, talking about it, writing about it, or when the trial started, she might collapse when others began to talk about it.

In the car a few minutes later, Frank said, “I like her.

Of course, when the moon is full she could turn into a raving homicidal maniac, but right now I like her.” It was his firm belief that most killers could be very nice people as soon as the impediments to happiness were removed.

He drove past the Dodgson Publishing Company, exactly as she had done on her first trip, and then headed toward the ranch, but he continued past the turnoff, and they scanned the few houses on the left side of Farleigh Road as they drove by them. The marshy ground ended at a low ridge that followed the road for nearly a mile, and there were four houses in clear view on the ridge.

Any one of them could hold a spy for Dodgson, Barbara thought. From those houses, the meadow, the pond, the Canby house and garden area would be clearly visible.

Anyone up there could keep an eye on the comings and goings at the ranch. She pretended unawareness of the question why? in her mind. When the trees closed in, Frank turned around and drove back to the private road and the Canby property.

He walked the same path she had walked at the ranch, and then drove the same route she had taken.

He had to see the layout exactly as she had needed to, she understood, and wondered how much he actually had taught her over the years, lessons so deeply assimilated that she no longer could recall when they had been delivered.

“

“Course,” he said meditatively as he drove, “it could well be that Dodgson feels his reputation is on the line. He declared that girl guilty, and she must be guilty, or he wouldn’t have said so. And once he’s got his own tail in his mouth, no way he can back down. And he spied on the ranch because he wanted to find cause to close it down because he doesn’t believe in letting women run out on their men.”

“Just doing the Lord’s work,” Barbara murmured.

“That, too,” he said cheerfully.

“And Kay Dodgson, home alone and terrified, called Royce Gallead to the rescue when a trespasser appeared me,” Barbara said.

“That makes as much sense as anything else,” her father agreed. Then in the same cheerful voice he said, “Honey, you’ve considered, I suppose, that all the digging and prying you do may only reveal that Dodgson’s part of a vast network that shares information about books to ban, when to come down hard on abortion, or homosexuals, or whatever the line of the day is. Just a foot soldier in the battle for the mind and soul of the country.”

“I’ve considered that,” she said glumly.

“Well, you’ve got the tiger by the tail and there aren’t a whole lot of options.”

“I know. You go for the ride, or you let go and get eaten, or,” she added, “you dig in your heels, tighten your grip, and you start swinging the damn beast for all you’re worth.”

m

* But as the days passed, as the weeks melted into each other, she had to admit that she had not yet budged the beast. Each report Bailey brought in seemed to add to the depth and the darkness of the growing cloud that hung over her head.

She had sent her resignation letter to Sam Bixby; it was returned with a scrawled Not accepted. When they met in the wide corridor of the offices, he nodded curtly and did not speak. The students finished the first part of their job and were busy grouping stories, comparing language, dates. Bailey found the spy on Farleigh Road.

“You won’t like it,” he said gloomily in her father’s office, which they were sharing for now.

“Mrs. Carrie Voight. Her husband’s the night watchman at Gallead’s range. She’s the day watchwoman over the Canby place. Three hundred plus, never leaves her upstairs rooms, which are equipped with a telescope and binoculars.

Doing the work of the good Mr. Dodgson, who was sure those women were up to no good, smuggling aliens, growing dope, something like that. She saw Angela Everts drive up the road that Saturday morning, watched her stop to chat with Mrs. Dodgson, and drive on. No one else went up that road. And the day after I talked to her, one of the D.A.“s eager beavers did likewise.

Their witness.”

“Shit,” Barbara said.

“What does she do, sit and stare out the window all day waiting for the smugglers to show up?”

“Nope, they put in a sensor with a radio signal to her room, light goes on when anything breaks the beam.”

She stared at him.

“That’s pretty heavy-duty stuff.”

“Yep.” He had helped himself to a drink from the little bar hidden behind a section of bookshelves. He swirled the bourbon around and watched it.

“You won’t like Winnie’s report, either,” he commented.

“It’s there, and a tape recording.” He pointed to a manila envelope he had put down on the desk.

“Just tell me,” Barbara said wearily.

“Right. Christina Lorenza, the woman Craig Dodgson took out on his boat a few years back. Winnie had a time getting her to talk, and she’ll deny everything.

But for what it’s worth, she was pregnant, all right, and she went after him for support, and he took her out again and they talked it over. He signed a paper accepting responsibility, agreed to pay two hundred a month for support, the whole bit, and then she miscarried. So he’s off the hook, but out of the goodness of his heart, he forked over five grand so she could go to computer school down in San Francisco, which she did. She’s a programmer now, good job, and she says he isn’t all that bad a guy. He was young, she was young, let bygones be bygones.”