The Devil Amongst the Lawyers (41 page)

“All right, Henry. You’re packed. I’m not, but I decided not to keep you waiting for dinner. Besides, the dining room might close. Is that whiskey? God, I could use one. Have you ordered? No? Well, let’s take care of that so that we can talk without interruptions. We have to get out of here, Shade.”

“But I told you, Rose, we don’t have the verdict yet.”

“Uh-huh. Henry and I are past caring. We’ll fake it from home. Henry, you need to ask a porter to bring down your luggage.”

He nodded and patted her hand.

Shade stared at them for a few moments, but Henry was oblivious, and Rose, who had snatched up the menu, was running her finger down the list of entrees. “All right,” he said. “I can see that Henry has had a bad time of it. That is evident. But what has made you so hell-bent on leaving?”

She peeped at him over the top of the menu. “It’s personal.”

He sighed. “It always is. If it was a news story, you’d be shouting it from the rooftops. So this personal business—nothing that can be fixed from here?”

“No.” She closed the menu, and her eyes filled with tears. “It’s Danny.”

Shade felt a momentary twinge of guilt that he had been flippant. “I’m sorry, Rose. Was it a crash?”

She shook her head. “No. He has been arrested. He tries so hard to be smart at business, but he’s . . . well, it’s like he’s tone-deaf, ethically. He really can’t tell the difference between a bit of sharp practice and something that the feds will put you in jail for.”

“Maybe he just thinks he won’t get caught, Rose.”

“Oh, he’s not a crook, Shade. Not really. He’s just single-minded. It’s all about that plane of his. About flying. When somebody waves money at him, Danny doesn’t stop to think if it’s risky or not. And of course the more money they offer, the more likely that the job is
illegal, and the less likely he is to pass it up.” She dabbed at her eyes again. “I wish I had been around.”

“What has he done now?”

“An old guy wanted to go back home to New York, so Danny flew down south and picked him up, and took him back to the city. At least, that’s how he looked at it. But the homesick fellow was a big-time gangster, wanted for a couple of murders, and Danny brought him back from Cuba. Him and his suitcase full of drugs. It’s a million to one chance that the cops would catch them when he landed, but they did.”

Shade sighed, wondering who was the bigger fool, Danny for his moral myopia or Rose for her romantic blindness. Call it a tie.

“A million to one? I wouldn’t give you those odds. The way I see it, somebody in the syndicate would have been glad to see the big guy out of the way so they could take his place. I don’t suppose they were too pleased to hear he was coming back. An anonymous phone call to the cops is a small price to pay for job security.”

Seeing the tears glistening in Rose’s eyes, Shade stopped talking. Danny would never think of anything so inconvenient as a rival mobster tipping off the cops to his passenger’s arrival. He always seemed to think that the universe would order itself in such a way that he would attain his heart’s desire—preferably without any prolonged effort on his part. The idea of receiving an exorbitant fee just for taking a passenger on a flying jaunt was exactly his idea of working. But there was always a catch in Danny’s good fortune: unforeseen difficulties, unreliable business associates, or legal troubles. He would never change. He would try to sail through life on his looks and charm, expecting a free ride and wishes granted, and, only because he was so handsome and affable, somebody would probably always be there to clean up the messes he made. Shade was very much afraid that person would turn out to be Rose—at least until she caught him pursuing some chorus girl incarnation of his “heart’s
desire.” Rose Hanelon was useful to Danny, and Shade thought that he was probably fond of her and flattered by her devotion, but he didn’t suppose that Danny’s gratitude would extend to fidelity or even commitment.

He sighed. “So you’re going back to New York to get your Prince Charming out of trouble? Can you do it?”

“For Danny there isn’t much I wouldn’t do. I can call in a few favors with some of the cops I know. And I can get him a good lawyer, who can cut him a deal for his testimony, maybe. Danny is hopeless. He can’t handle this on his own. Don’t you see? I have to go. Funny, I was always so afraid that Danny would die in a plane crash. But this—this is the kind of trouble I can fix. I know I can.”

Shade nodded. He never thought that Danny would die in a plane crash. That finale would have been too neat and too romantic, leaving Rose with a beautiful memory and little lasting harm. Shade was afraid that Danny would go on for years in his charming, feckless way, entangling himself in financial binds and legal scrapes from which Rose would be forced to save him, and, through it all, she would stick with him, growing older and plainer as the years passed, until all chances of a happy family were lost to her. And then he would dump her. Shade closed his eyes to keep from seeing her tears. It was almost enough to make you wish for another Great War. You couldn’t beat a war for getting rid of reckless jackleg pilots.

Henry stirred out of his reverie and straightened his tie. “I have had enough of this place. I want to go home.”

Rose shrugged. “It wasn’t very interesting here, anyway. No outlandish yokels in overalls or women in pioneer dresses riding in buckboards. We might as well have been in New Jersey.”

“Maybe you should say that in the story, Rose.”

“It’s not what America wants to hear. They want this place to be a storybook kingdom peopled with . . .” She made a face and mimicked, “. . . our
frontier ancestors.
We aim to please. So, look, there’s a
train station in the next town over, Shade. You could take us there in the morning, and we could write the stories when we got back.”

“I suppose you want me to cover for you in court.”

“Please, Shade. It’s a matter of life and death for me. It’s Danny. In trouble. And look at Henry. You can see he’s in no shape to remain here. There was a
fire
in his room, Shade!”

Shade wondered if Rose knew why Henry was terrified of flames. He wouldn’t put it past her to ask him. Not that it mattered. But she was right. Henry was a wreck. But that didn’t change the fact that there was a job to be done. “You’ve hardly interviewed anybody. You haven’t even talked to the lawyers, have you?”

Rose waved away his objections. “It’s a bunch of hicks, Shade! Who cares? At the Lindbergh trial we played it by the book, didn’t we? But these people don’t matter. We’ll just make it up when we get back. You stay here and call us when the verdict comes in. You’re going to need an after-verdict photo for the front page, anyhow, so you have to stay.”

Henry struggled to his feet. “I must go and see the accused before we go.”

They gaped at him. “But your dinner . . .” said Shade. “Maybe you should rest a bit more.”

Rose glanced at her wristwatch. “And at this hour? Henry, they’d never let you inside the jail.”

He drew himself up to his full height. “Of course they will. I am Henry Jernigan. And Shade is right. We have barely scratched the surface of this story. At least I want to see the prisoner face-to-face, to see what I think of her.” Before they could muster further arguments to dissuade him, Henry laid his napkin across his empty plate and strode away.

IN THE HALLWAY
of the courthouse, Carl was pacing. Nora had been downstairs in the jail for nine minutes now, which he took as a
good sign. She must have been allowed to see the prisoner, or else she’d have been back by now. He hoped that Erma Morton had said something that he could use, or, failing that, maybe Nora would get some sense of what had really happened to Pollock Morton that night in Pound. The Bonesteels knew things. They couldn’t prove those things, and would not have bothered to try, but like as not they saw to the heart of the matter.

The click of footsteps on the marble floor made him turn. Henry Jernigan, looking pale and ill, was heading in his direction, obviously making for the door that led to the jailhouse stairs. Carl hurried forward. “Are you all right, Mr. Jernigan? Would you like to sit down?”

Henry blinked at him, and passed a shaking hand over his forehead. “Do I know you?”

Carl hesitated. “We have met, sir. But that doesn’t matter. It’s just that you look unwell.”

Henry was not looking at him. His gazed seemed to be fixed somewhere in the distance, and he kept licking his lips, as if some question had been posed to him and he did not know the answer. “I have had a shock,” he said at last. “It is nothing germane to the matter at hand. A jolt to my system—personal, but of no consequence. Nevertheless, I must attend to my duties as a journalist. I have come to interview the prisoner.”

Carl realized that Henry Jernigan had mistaken him for an officer of the court, an attorney, perhaps. It crossed his mind to repay him for the slight back in Abingdon when he had mistaken Carl for a hotel porter. It would be easy now to take advantage of his mistake by telling him that the prisoner was unavailable, and Carl might have done it if Henry Jernigan had not looked so disoriented and ill. As it was, he decided that the great man had enough to worry about without any pettiness on his part.

“Just over there to the right, sir. There’s a door that leads down to the jail. Do you need any help? The stairs are steep.”

Before Henry could answer, the door opened and Nora came out, looking, much to Carl’s relief, as solemn and composed as ever. She spotted him and started to smile, but then she looked over at Henry Jernigan and froze.

Carl saw her take an involuntary step back, as if she wanted to rush back down the stairs, and he wondered what she was seeing that made the confines of a jail seem preferable to her. After a moment, though, she composed herself. Then she gave him a look and a little tilt of the head that meant, “Make yourself scarce.” Carl nodded and hurried away, pretending that he had just remembered some important errand. He would wait for her just inside the big glass front doors.

WHEN CARL HAD TURNED
the corner of the hallway, Nora Bonesteel took a deep breath and approached Henry Jernigan, who was looking at her with a puzzled expression, as if he were trying to place her.

“You don’t know me,” said Nora. “But you look as if you’ve had a shock.”

Henry wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Thank you, young lady,” he said gravely. “I am on the mend.”

“Yes, sir. But if you’ll pardon my asking, does your trouble have to do with a little girl from the Orient? She has glasses and a red-flowered robe.”

Henry took a step backward, and staggered. “Were there no witch trials ever in these hills?”

Nora blushed. “I don’t hex folk, sir. I can’t help but see things.”

“I wish I could see her. At least . . . how does she look? Is it . . . terrible?”

Nora reached for Henry’s hand. After a moment she said, “She’s all right. By the time the flames got to her, she had already died from the—I don’t know what you call it. Bad air?”

Henry nodded. “Asphyxiation? The fire was—I had heard that it burned away the air. I hope it was peaceful for her.”

“It’s over for her, anyhow.” Nora was looking not at him, but a little to his right. Gently, she smiled.

“I must believe you,” said Henry. “You could not know. I never speak of it. Even Rose . . . Well, why then? Why, after all these years, is Ishi with me—here on the other side of the world?”

“Because . . . it is not over for you.”

THE JURY WAS FILING BACK
into the courtroom, carefully keeping their faces devoid of expression as juries always do. Shade Baker had secured a seat in the second row, as close to the defendant’s table as he could get. When the verdict was read, he would need a photo of Erma Morton’s reaction. So far he had abided by the court rules barring photos, but today was all-important, so he had slipped five bucks to the bailiff, who promised to act surprised and eject him from the courtroom only after he had got his shots.

If he himself were on trial, Shade resolved that he would accept the verdict without a flicker of emotion, in order to deprive the vultures of the satisfaction of seeing his pain. But professionally, of course, he had to hope for more visual drama: a horrified scream as the defendant fought off the approaching officers, or floods of tears as she collapsed on her lawyer’s shoulder. A dead faint, while crowds circled her, shouting.

He was trying to watch everyone at once: the stern old judge; the two fidgeting attorneys, trying to conceal their eagerness for the verdict; the defendant, who already seemed stupefied by the immensity of the decision she would soon hear; and the jurors, standing there like so many wooden Indians, relieved to be done with the onerous task of deciding the fate of a young girl with so few facts on which to base that decision.

He had promised to report all this by phone to Rose and Henry, who might have made it back by now, and he tried to anticipate the questions they would ask about the scene. Rose would have to be told in detail what Erma Morton was wearing. He would have to ask somebody; he was no hand at telling one fabric from another, or naming colors by degree. Shade supposed that Henry would want him to have a word with one of the jurors, to see how they arrived at the verdict. He had been worried about having to report on the outcome.

As they had braced from the wind on the platform of the train depot, Shade made one last-ditch attempt to prevent them from going. “But don’t you want to see how the case ends?”

“How it ends?” Red-cheeked with cold, Rose peered at him over her fur collar. “Shade, what does it matter? She’s a beautiful girl.”

“But they still might find her guilty.”

“Yes, but so what? Like I said, she’s beautiful. So there will always be pie-eyed saps who are willing to make a crusade on her behalf. If she goes to prison, they’ll make a cause of her. They’ll write letters to all the newspapers, badger the governor, the attorney general—heck, the Pope, if they think of it—until they get her out, whether she did it or not. There are always people willing to rescue pretty faces.”