The Just And The Unjust (39 page)

Everitt coughed and said, 'Got to be getting back up there. Can't start without me! Think it will go to the jury this afternoon?'

'I hope so.' A plate bearing the sandwich rattled down on the counter in front of Abner. 'What's your hurry?' he said, feeling that he had not been very cordial to Everitt, whom he liked. Everitt patted his back gently, turning away. 'Don't move as fast as you do', he said. He made a gesture with the old umbrella that had been leaning against his stool. Peering out the wide window, he said, 'Looks to me like it's easing up.'

Following him five minutes later, Abner found that the rain had stopped. The warm air was grey and still, almost as wet as rain. Water ran in the gutters of Broad Street, and Abner looked at the weathervane, an elaborate little iron banner, on the cupola of the county office building. It remained pointing south-east, so the rain was probably not over. Abner crossed behind the courthouse and walked up under the silent, dripping trees to the door at the arch.

In the depressing gloom of the hall, Hugh Erskine methodically chewing a tooth pick, waited by the bars of the passage to the jail. 'Ab,' he said, 'that Field business was a rotten thing! I never would have thought it of him! Warren says he only got a year —'

Hugh wheeled around, hearing steps in the passage. Unconsciously he touched a hand to his left armpit; and by the mechanical gesture he showed that there under his coat was strapped a holster with an automatic pistol. Hugh did not ordinarily bother to go armed; but it might have occurred to him that these prisoners of his, whom he was about to acknowledge taking into his own hand, were in as desperate a case as men can be. The grill opened and the warden came out carrying his book. He and Hugh bent over the open page on the radiator top while Hugh signed.

Abner went up the passage to the door of the Attorneys' Room. It was crowded. Joe Jackman sat in the corner with Bob Fuller, thumbing over the pages of a thick brief. Pete Van Zant was still there, talking to John Clark. Abner saw George Stacey and Mark; and Jake Riordan telling them something. Mr. Servadei was speaking to Bunting by the fireplace. At the telephone by the lavatory door were two city reporters. A hubbub of conversation arose. 'Suppose you had to bring five or six separate suits —'

'I ought to go over to the office, but if I do my girl will have something —'

'That on for argument? I thought I saw —'

'I always found him a very fair fellow to deal with. Can't control his client, I guess —'

'Yeah, but won't equity leave them where it found them —'

'If that's constitutional, I give up —'

'John, you're the attorney for Saratoga Township, aren't you. Well—'

'You don't know how they're going to construe the crazy thing —'

'Listen, that's setting up a new statute of limitations—' Mr. Servadei in his soft somewhat accented voice was saying to Bunting, 'Mr. Bunting, I want to tell you how much I appreciate —' The reporter at the telephone, the receiver pressed to one ear, his hand covering the other, proved to be expostulating loudly, 'No! This is Duffy; Duffy, at Childerstown courthouse! Now, give me the city desk —'

In the lavatory Abner found himself face to face with Harry Wurts who was drying his hands on a paper towel. 'Ah!' Harry said, 'don't think nobody saw you! Making peace?'

Abner said, 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'And how was Mr. Gearhart this fine morning? His usual candid upright self? God damn, boy, you must want to be the county's chief hired assassin bad!' He threw the crumpled towel in the waste basket. 'Oh, now you're getting to know him, I suppose you find he's been cruelly misjudged? Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace? Well, has the hugging started?'

The morning had been a trying one; and Abner could feel, like bruises in his mind, numerous sore points at which the touch of a thought made him wince. Harry's taunting tone, provocative both because Harry meant it to be, and because, in ways Harry probably never dreamed of — that trick of quoting verse or something made you tired — stirred anger. Abner thought a moment of giving him a short hard jab in the mouth; but to do that he would have to let his temper go and, as his sore and subdued mind could tell him, bruise himself farther and make himself more trouble. With a great effort, Abner said indifferently, 'Not yet.'

Abner had seen how impossible it was to start a brawl here, with the next room full of people, and with court about to resume. He saw now from Harry's expression that Harry had thought of it, too; that Harry, for reasons best known to his secretive, sensitive self, hoped Abner would start something. Harry was ready to take a sudden punch in the jaw as the price of getting Abner into an absurd and humiliating position.

Since they were looking each other in the eye, Harry probably realized that Abner had grasped his intention. He looked sheepish; and Abner, baffled a moment, knew then from the sensation on his own face that he himself was looking the same way. In fact, it was no more Harry's nature to pick a quarrel than Abner's; and if Harry felt like quarrelling, there was a reason; and the reason could only be that Abner was himself provoking — no doubt because of those qualities, or some tricks of manner or attitude derived from them, which Judge Coates had mentioned last night.

Harry said in a not-quite-natural voice, 'Kidding aside, Ab, you going to run for D.A.?'

'I honestly don't know who's running,' Abner said.

'If Jesse knows what's good for him, he'll run you. Hell, Ab, don't let the racket get you down! Onward, Christian soldiers!' He turned to the door.

'Thanks for the kind words,' Abner said, conscious of a considerable triumph, if not over Harry, over himself. 'But if you're marching as to war, you'd better button your fly, hadn't you?'

8

'Oyez,' said Nick Dowdy, 'oyez, oyez —'

He crouched, bent forward over his desk, supporting himself by the gavel with which he had just struck the block, blinking up at all the people on their feet. 'The several courts this day holden are open in their entirety!' He let himself plump the short distance into his seat and smiled contentedly at Abner.

Judge Vredenburgh who had been standing, too, straight and stiff, now held up his glasses, polishing them, and said, his chins down, his eyes up, addressing Joe Jackman, 'Note that the defendants and their counsel are in court.'

To Everitt Weitzel, he said, 'You may call the jury.' He put the glasses on and sat down, looking about the well of the court, where in renewed movement everyone else was sitting down. 'Mr. Wurts!' he said, and beckoned to Harry, who came up to side bar where they whispered to each other a moment.

Turning, Harry said, 'Stanley Howell, take the stand.'

During the recess Howell had slicked his hair with water. His cheap and badly fitting brown suit seemed to have been brushed or somehow made a little neater. With a qualm at the futility of it, Abner supposed Howell had done what he could according to a reformatory boy's forlorn idea of recommending himself. Above the buttoned coat, under the plastered hair, Howell's furtive, unfirm little mouth and wild sick-looking eyes made the effort repulsive and unconvincing.

Harry, waiting while the jury was seated, compressed his lips with ironic resignation. Harry meant (and perhaps he was right) that, given anything like an even break, he could get his man off; but who could get Howell, a person like Howell, off? Harry fingered the cropped hairs of his smudge of reddish moustache. He looked at the jury with an appraising eye, marshalling his faculties for an engagement that he was too wise to expect to win. Whoever had advised Howell to get Harry—Abner suspected that it was Mr. Servadei's firm had not advised Howell badly. Howell had to fight. There was nothing to be gained by throwing himself on the mercy of the court; for that chance was open only until Leming had taken it. There was nothing the Commonwealth wanted from Howell but his life; and, Howell's choice was between pleading guilty (a plea which would not be accepted) and throwing his life away at once; or pleading not guilty and forcing them to come and take it. They were coming; and Harry had found no way to stop them; but Howell for his last money had bought the only chance; and if, in the long run, it did him no good, in the long run money saved would be no good to a dead man, either.

Harry turned a cool reprehensive gaze on his client. Raising his voice so that the sounds fell strong and clear, struck out like the round opening notes of a solemn composition, he said, 'What is your full name?'

The jury had settled itself and grown as quiet as it is possible for twelve human beings to be. For them, the name might be Cain; and since they could feel no reasonable doubt that they looked at a participant in murder, Harry's distant, level manner was the right one. To pretend to be defending an innocent man only invited scorn, if the jurors believed him sincere, because he was such a fool; and if they believed him insincere, he invited their anger, because he showed in that case that he thought he was smarter than they were. Harry's tactic was to put it to the jurors that he was a shrewd man, and they were shrewd, too; and they all disliked Howell; but more than they disliked Howell, they loved justice, he and they. Harry phrased his formal questions — where Howell had been born and raised; where he lived; how long he had known Leming and Basso and Bailey; just when he moved to the Rock Creek bungalow; and who was there.

These monotonous facts, the bare names and dates, bored the jury. In most cases they could not or did not carry any exact earlier statements in their heads, so whether Howell gave answers agreeing with what Leming or someone else said mattered little to them. They already knew that Howell was acquainted with these people. They knew about the bungalow and who was there. They began to cross and uncross their legs, to scratch their noses and ears. A boy like George Stacey might have seen these symptoms with dismay; but Harry bore them calmly, with ease and assurance; figuring, Abner supposed, that when he got ready to interest them they would welcome it, less alert to contend.

Harry said, 'Now, Howell, before we go any further, the Commonwealth has introduced in evidence, C.X. eighteen —' He extended his hand to Joe Jackman, who searched his desk a moment, found the right papers, and gave them to Harry. 'Thank you,' Harry said. 'This' purports to be a statement made by you on May sixth, last. Will you look at it?'

Howell said, 'Yes; I guess you would have made a statement, too, if you —' Here was the chance he had been waiting for; and he snatched it with a convulsion of face and mind, his words tumbling over each other in his hurry to take his own part.

Harry said sharply, for he had to keep Howell from assuming the ridiculous role of injured innocence, 'Just answer the question!'

'That is the statement,' Howell said sulkily. Abner could see that he hated and feared Harry; and it was a hard thing when you hated and feared the man you had to cling to.

Harry said, still dissociating himself from Howell's wrong attitude, 'Don't you think you'd better read it?'

Howell took the sheets held up to him, his hand shaking, and made a pretence, moving his eyes over the first page or two. 'Well,' said Harry, 'you heard it read here in court this morning?'

'Yes.'

'And that was the statement you signed?'

'I signed it. They made me. They kept me there, the Federals —'

'Just a moment! How long were you in their custody?'

'Until, I think, the seventh.'

'The day after you signed this paper?'

'I think so. My mind was a blank —'

Harry frowned, for the phrase, as Howell offered it, would not be acceptable to anyone in his right senses. That was something he had read somewhere; and so he naturally spoke it like a liar. Harry cut in, 'Do you recall the time of day or night when you signed?'

'I guess I do!' Howell said. 'It was around one o'clock in the morning.'

'One o'clock in the morning. Now, Mr. Kinsolving expressed the opinion that you signed at one o'clock that morning of the fourth day because of the constant kindness shown you by him and his associates—'

Beside Abner, Bunting said, 'Your Honour, I think before Mr. Wurts goes on, he should ask the witness directly about the truth or falsity of his statement. I submit —'

'I am happy to ask him,' Harry said. 'You are familiar with the statement that was read here this morning by Mr. Coates?'

'I am, yes.'

'Are the facts contained in that statement true or untrue?'

'Not all the facts is true.'

'You mean that part of it is true, and part of it is false.'

'Part is truth; and part of it is just to keep them off my ear.' Howell turned an appealing glance to the jury. He twisted his mean little mouth to a sort of smile, as though asking them to appreciate this wry joke. They looked at him coldly; and Abner found himself uncomfortable; not, certainly, sympathetic; but exercised by the shame that the heart feels to see any human being caught in a weak and sickly trick, and that the head resents as a clumsy insult to all human intelligence.

Bunting said, 'I'm sorry to interrupt again; but I think the witness should be asked which parts are true and which parts are false.'

'If you please, Mr. Bunting!' said Harry. 'We will get to that. Now, Howell, what did they do to you when they brought you up there?'

'Well, they put shackles on me.'

'You mean, on your wrists?'

'No, on my legs; and then they put handcuffs on me, and then they got to working around. Bust me on the chin; twist my ears; twist my arms. Then they took my overcoat off and then they got to working on me with hoses they had.' He spoke jerkily, expelling the phrases with bitter little grunts. It had the ring of truth to Abner. The pain and panic Howell must have felt burned those moments into his mind. He spoke what he knew. Harry, seeing that he had at least evoked something genuine, said gently, 'Yes. What then?'

'They put me on the table after they took my coat off, put me on the table, like the table you got there.' Howell brought his knuckle up and scraped it with his teeth. For nerves in as bad shape as his, the memory was agitating; but Abner could see that the jury was not responding. They saw his suffering; but it disgusted them. They were moved; but with revulsion, less as though he were a wounded man than as though he were a wounded snake.