The Just And The Unjust (43 page)

'You didn't tell me and Mr. Coates, and Lieutenant Dunglison, that you took part in it?'

'No.'

Bunting said, 'Is Lieutenant Dunglison in court?' Where he sat over by Kinsolving, Dunglison raised his hand and said, 'Yes, Mr. District Attorney.'

'Oh. All right, thanks, Lieutenant.' Bunting came back to the table. Abner said, 'Want to put Dunglison on?'

'No,' said Bunting. 'Just give Harry a chance to drag out some cross-examination. Let him go.' He looked at Howell and said, 'That is all.'

Judge Vredenburgh said, 'Will you want to offer anything in rebuttal, Mr. Bunting?'

'No, your Honour.'

'The defence rests as to Howell,' Harry said. 'Mr. Stacey?' said Judge Vredenburgh. 'Yes, sir, I rest, too. Defence rests as to Basso.' On the stand, Howell said, 'Could I be excused a minute, Judge?'

'Yes. You may. Sheriff, take out the defendant. If you have points to submit for charge, Mr. Wurts, you may submit them now. The jury will be withdrawn.. Mr. Bunting, come to side bar, please.'

Abner looked across at Harry Wurts who was snapping the loose leaf binder on the sheets of his trial brief. George Stacey's blond head was bent, asking Harry some long anxious question. Hugh Erskine, down from his seat, came over to Basso, touched him on the shoulder and spoke to him. Basso shook his head. Howell, with Max Eich, seemed to be waiting to speak to Harry; and Harry, now on his way to join Bunting at the end of the bench, stopped, facing Howell. Abner could not hear what Howell said; but Harry answered, 'No. We've closed. It's all over. I'll see you in a minute.'

Harry walked on, and Howell convulsively made a movement. Max Eich tapped his arm, and Howell turned, as though to back away. Right behind him he found Warren Lyall, who had come along the front of the now empty jury box. Warren stood stock still, and said, 'Take it easy, Bud!' He was so close to Howell that Howell could not move without touching him; and, crowded together, they stood an instant, nothing spoken, nothing done. Howell let himself relax then, swinging his pinched face from side to side. Max closed a hand on Howell's left coat sleeve, deftly, neatly, so it was hardly noticeable, snapping on the handcuff. Abner saw the instant's wink of the bright steel and heard the little click.

They moved off then, and Abner found that he had been holding his breath. He shifted in his chair uncomfortably. It was one of those moments, fortunately rare, in which you saw, under the forms, the human facts; the terrified prisoner; the stout burly guard with the ready manacles; the young tough impassive deputy-sheriff. Warren spoke his hard, but not harsh or brutal, word to the wise; with a delicacy, with a consideration almost incredible when you saw Max's beefy face, Max understood and mitigated all he could the shame of the steel chain, the guerdon of a dog. In Howell's heart, even despair must have died, and they marched the man out to relieve himself.

Bunting made his way clear of the empty seats of Nick Dowdy and Joe Jackman and came back to Abner. 'Well,' he said, 'that could have been worse. In fact, it was a damn good case. I'd like to get more like that.'

'Nice going,' said Abner. 'Surprised when he lied to you?'

'The first time. When he said he hadn't told us about knowing they were going to kill Zolly. Not the second time.' Bunting smiled. 'The Judge had just finished telling him to lie. I was watching him while the Judge explained to Harry and George what it would mean. Right then Stanley changed his mind. Well, I hope we cooked his goose. I think we did.'

'I think you did,' Abner said. 'They got it, all right, when you asked if Dunglison was there.'

Bunting said, 'It's not the kind of thing I like; but, if you don't know it already, take a tip. Never give anyone like Harry any opening of any kind. The way those smart alecks get to a jury is just on some foolish side issue. Let's grab a cigarette.'

SEVEN

1

JOE JACKMAN said, 'Well, Marty, another day, another dollar!' He held up his right hand, flexing the fingers. 'I wish it was! I suppose we'll be here all night with the arguments.' He, looked at the end of his middle finger. 'I was cutting some roses for my wife this morning before I came over, and damned if I didn't run a little bit of a thorn in there. It's exactly where it catches the stylo. Boy, is that sore!' Bunting said, 'Why don't you just take a knife and cut the finger off?'

'Huh!' said Jackman. 'Feeling good, are you? You 'd better wait till you find out what the jury says. You never should have let Genevieve Shute on that jury. She likes to be a mother to bad boys.' How about you, Nick? You think they ought to have another chance, don't you?'

'You fellows!' Nick Dowdy said. 'This Basso doesn't care, I guess. Stanley Howell, he'd like to have another chance; he'd like to do something to this Leming, I guess. We going to get through to-night, Marty?'

'I don't see why not. I don't see how they can argue very long. They haven't anything to argue. The charge may take some time, though.' Nick Dowdy said, 'Judge Vredenburgh was in the library here last night working on it, dictating to his daughter.'

'Annette?' said Joe Jackman. 'My God, does she know how to do anything?'

Bunting said to Abner, 'What was it at Newmarket?'

'LaBarre,' Abner said. He suppressed a feeling, not, certainly of satisfaction, for he would have preferred to find that Mason's story was true; but, perhaps, of self-justification. His suspicions, of which Marty had made him feel ashamed, would seem to have been well founded. He went on, 'It seems that Mason didn't get it quite straight. LaBarre was there at the time, and one of his officers saw the accident happen. What did the report say?'

Bunting said, 'It came up after I left this morning. I haven't had time to go back to the office. I haven't seen it. I thought Pete Wiener told you it was the other fellow's fault.'

'He did. I don't know why, unless LaBarre and his man didn't get over to Pete's office right away. They may have sent Mason over with someone else. They had the dead man to take care of, and I suppose it was a fine mess. Pete may have called me without waiting for them, as soon as he talked to Mason.'

'Well, we'd better see the report —'

Malcolm Levering pushed the door open and said, 'Judge wants you, Mr. Bunting.'

'All right,' Bunting said. 'Ab, phone Theda, will you, and ask her to bring that report up. We'd better see how we stand.'

Malcolm, who had withdrawn his head, now put it in again. 'Mr. Jackman, he wants you, too. Jury's coming back, Nick.' Left alone, Abner called Bunting's office. When he had finished, he dropped in another nickel. At the high school there was no answer, and the operator gave him his nickel back. Probably Bonnie had gone home; and he hesitated, not particularly wanting to talk to Cousin Mary; but if he didn't call now, he might not get another chance.

It was Jared, junior, who answered, his voice sharp and impudent. 'You got the wrong number,' he said. 'Come on!' said Abner. 'Hurry up.'

'What do you want her for?'

'None of your business,' Abner said. 'Oh, so you won't talk, huh? G'by —'

The telephone was taken away from him, and Bonnie said, 'Jared, if you don't stop trying to be funny —'

Jared said faintly, 'It's just your boy friend. He wants you to come over and pitch some woo —'

'Jared, when mother comes home, I'll —'

'Bonnie's mad,' yelled Jared more faintly, evidently leaving the room, 'and I'm glad —'

Bonnie said, 'Hello. Are you through?'

'No,' said Abner, 'and I don't know when we will be. But I want to see you to-night.'

'I don't know whether I have to go back to school or not. They're having another meeting at eight'

'Well, will you do something?'

'What?'

'If we aren't through, or if we are, and it's gone to the jury, we'll recess by six. Will you come over here and wait?'

'Where can I wait?'

'In the courtroom. Just sit up by the door, and when we break, I'll be able to go out and eat with you.'

'All right. I'm sorry I lost my temper at noon.'

Taken by surprise, Abner said, 'You look good that way. You'll come?'

'All right Oh, damn it Jared, go away!'

Before she hung up Jared could be heard yelling, 'Oh, Bonnie's swearing, Bonnie's swearing —'

Abner went into the courtroom and took his seat by Bunting. He thought of Jared with loathing.

2

Harry Wurts said, 'Ladies and gentlemen —' He arose, it was plain, not to exhort or harangue the jury, but to counsel with them in a friendly way and to ask them to consider with him some problems which, by the grave, even worried, expression of his face, troubled him.

Abner was not sure that you could call it guile. Harry was cynical about other men's motives, and quick to spot the pretence or the assumed role; but his own motives were so urgent, the importance to him of persuading or wheedling or winning so profound, that Harry always spoke when arguing for what he wanted with complete sincerity. It could not be said that his troubled frown was faked; this was a tough assignment; he frowned at its difficulties. He was troubled by the problem of how to phrase and arrange the few things he could say to give himself every chance, no matter how remote or small, of getting at just one juror, of giving just one man or woman some scruple or sentiment that, catching in the simple or the over-complicated mind, would stay there, resisting the consensus, immune to sense or reason, only hardened in obstinacy by the arguments or expostulations of the others.

Harry said, 'I think we have all been watching with something like amazement the work of the Commonwealth over the last few days. Mr. Bunting will shortly sum it up for you; and I look forward to hearing him. I think you will find that the case follows with an almost mathematical precision the lines laid down by Mr. Coates in his able opening—I refer, of course, to his remarkably detailed outline of what the prosecution was determined to prove, not to his rather impressionistic and imaginative history of the case. There, I think we all recognized a flight of fancy and took it with several grains of salt.'

Harry smiled good-humouredly and one or two jurors in automatic reaction smiled too. 'They should be congratulated,' Harry said. 'Because it is part of my business, I am a student, you might say, an amateur, of legal tactics; and nothing interests me more than to see a skilful hand taking material in itself of little weight or substance and shaping it so that the result appears as a solid and imposing structure. Of course, it is a false front; it is like stage scenery, and you must look at it from one angle only, or the sham will be apparent.' He smiled again, drew a deep breath, and shook his head.

'However,' he said, 'before we demolish the make-believe, I think we may learn something by looking at it just the way they want us to. Let us pretend that its foundations are real evidence; let us pretend that it is what it purports to be — a damning case. Actually we may see through it, but at least we must acknowledge the cunning that put it together. Here is no plain blunt tale. Every piece fits according to specifications. No sooner does the want of this or that detail appear than, like magic, it is produced. Perhaps a rubber hose or a little pressure on a drug-destroyed mind was needed to produce it; but there it is! The hat is perfectly empty; yet out pops the appropriate rabbit; in fact, a whole warren of rabbits. In the district attorney's coat-tails there must be many pockets —

'Briefly, members of the jury, what strikes us about this concoction is that it is too good. Things aren't like that in life. What we lawyers learn from experience with witnesses on the stand is exactly what you have learned yourself from your experience in meeting the everyday problems of sizing people up. Your natural common sense makes you distrust the man who knows all the answers. If I may venture a criticism, I think the prosecution would have served its purpose better if they had left just a few contingencies unprovided for; if, once in a while, one of their witnesses had seemed less than letter-perfect —'

A little edgy. Bunting said to Abner, 'And if I were to venture a criticism, I'd say he'd better cut that before somebody wakes up to the fact that when it comes to fooling people, he has a lot of ideas on the subject.' He took up a pencil and began to draw a dog on the margin of his pad.

Harry said, 'The purposes thus to be served are, I think, fairly plain. Mr. Coates, you may remember, asked you to find the defendants guilty of first degree murder with such penalty as you believed deserved. He avoided asking you outright for the death penalty, and this was an astute move. He did not want to fix in your minds the thought of the electric chair; for, as the case developed, you would then be constantly weighing what these men had actually done against what you were being asked to do to them. By now, you would almost certainly have reached the firm conviction that the crime and the demanded punishment did not balance, that here was no cool-headed and disinterested justice, but a vindictive hounding to death. It would be time enough to ask you to crown the district attorney's career with such a triumph when actual evidence and testimony were past, well-buried in words; and when an adroit summing up might manipulate them somewhat for your persuasion — though, of course, within the limits of propriety. I am sure the prosecution would not risk a censure from the Court.'

'I am not sure, Mr. Wurts,' Judge Vredenburgh said, 'that you have not been risking one yourself. I do not need to tell you that as a general rule counsel in argument must confine themselves to the facts brought out in evidence. Reasonable freedom of debate and illustration, yes. Gratuitous impugning of methods and motives, no. Proceed with that in mind.'

Harry said, 'Thank you for correcting any false impression I may have given, your Honour. I did not mean that the prosecution's methods and motives are those of malice. I meant simply to comment on what seemed to me an extraordinary zeal to convict, so that the jury might weigh the arguments with an open mind. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Stacey, for whose client I am also arguing, and I do not ask the acquittal of these men. That would not be justice. Their records show that they cannot be trusted; and while, in spite of the district attorney's efforts to make them appear to be, they are not on trial for their records, it is right for you to take into consideration the kind of men they are.