(1969) The Seven Minutes (33 page)

Quickly Barrett went through the inert boy’s jacket pockets, until at last he located the ignition key. With haste he forced Jerry’s body away from the wheel toward the passenger side of the front seat. Once the body lay slumped against the opposite door, Barrett settled himself behind the wheel and started the Rover.

Only when he had swung the car out of the dirt parking area, and onto Melrose, did Barrett wonder whether he was bringing a corpse to Dr Quigley - or a resurrected star witness to District Attorney Duncan.

Forty minutes had passed since Barrett and Dr Quigley had carried the body of Jerry Griffith into the physician’s house on North Arden Drive. Barrett had explained how he had found Jerry, and the physician had made no comment.

After leaving the boy on the daybed in the physician’s study, Barrett had handed the doctor the empty prescription bottle.

Dr Quigley had glanced at it. ‘Nembutals,’ he’d murmured. He had taken up his black bag from beside his desk and pulled a chair up beside the boy.

‘Is he alive, Doc?’ Barrett had asked.

Dr Quigley had not looked up. “We’ll see. You can wait in the living room, Mike.’

That had been forty minutes ago, and Barrett, tensely seated on the sofa, leafing through the same magazine he had unsuccessfully been trying to read all this time, reasoned that the length of time was a good sign. Had Jerry been dead on arrival, Barrett felt, he would have been so informed before now. The length of time meant that the doctor was working to save his patient.

Barrett had again tried to concentrate on the magazine, when he heard Dr Quigley’s cough. He stood up as the physician, still in his blue bathrobe, came tiredly into the room, removing his spectacles and rubbing his eyes.

‘He’s all right, Mike,’ Dr Quigley announced.

‘Thank God - and you.’

‘He took enough sleeping tablets to kill an army. You must have caught him just as he lost consciousness. Lucky you brought him right over. Another five minutes and he’d have been gone. I administered some strong antidotes. He responded and he’s cleaned out now.’

‘Is he conscious?’

‘Fully. But weak, very weak. However, hospitalization won’t be necessary. Especially considering his general situation. I think he can be taken home in about an hour. A sound night’s sleep, and some rest tomorrow, and he’ll be fully recovered. These youngsters have remarkable recuperative powers.’ Dr Quigley felt inside his

robe pocket and extracted a prescription slip. ‘Here’s a number you’re to call. He says that the only person he wants to know about this is a cousin named - it’s on here - Maggie Russell.’ Dr Quigley gave the slip to Barrett, adding, ‘That’s her telephone number, the private number of a phone she has in her bedroom. Jerry says keep trying it until you get her. He says she’ll come by for him.’

‘I’ll take care of it.’

‘Very well. I’d better get back to my patient.’ He hesitated. ‘Frank Griffith owes you a lot, Mike. You should have his gratitude.’

‘He’ll never know,’ said Barrett. ‘Anyway, my only interest is in the boy.’

‘Have it your way.’ The physician coughed into the palm of his hand. ‘There’s an extension phone in the diningToom.’

Dr Quigley left. Barrett went into the dining room, flipped on the overhead light, took the telephone off the marble-topped sideboard and brought it to the dining table. He placed the presciption slip beside the telephone, considered it, and then dialed Maggie Russell’s private number.

The telephone rang and rang, without answer. He would give it a few more seconds, he decided, and then try again in a little while. Sooner or later she would return to her room. As he listened to the continuing ring, it suddenly ceased and a breathless feminine voice came on.

‘Hello?’

‘Miss Russell?’

“This is she.’

‘Mike Barrett. Sorry to disturb you, but -‘

T thought I told you I didn’t want to hear from you again.’

‘Hold on. I’m not calling for myself. I’m calling for Jerry.’

‘Jerry?’

‘Your cousin. I’m with him now. I -‘

‘I don’t understand. You can’t be. He’s not allowed to leave the house.’

‘He left it early this evening, no matter what his orders were. Without wasting words, let me tell you what happened. But first you’d better let me know, can anyone else listen in on this line ?’

‘No - no, it’s my own.’ Her voice had become anxious. ‘What happened? Is anything wrong?’

‘Jerry’s fine now, but it was nip and tuck for a while. Let me make it brief. Sometime after seven, I had reason to drop in on a teenage hangout on Melrose Avenue …’ He quickly described Jerry’s arrival at The Underground Railroad, what he had witnessed of Jerry’s confrontations with George Perkins and Darlene Nelson, and his discovery of Jerry’s unconscious body in the Rover. Then he gave her Dr Quigley’s good news. ‘Jerry wanted someone to get in touch with you. He didn’t want anyone else to know.’

‘No one must know,’ she said urgently. ‘But he is all right ? The

doctor said that, didn’t he?’

‘Absolutely. By the time you get here, Jerry will be able to go home with you.’

‘I’ll be right over.’ ,

‘Let me give you the address.’

He gave it to her, and then she hung up.

Returning the telephone to the sideboard, Barrett wondered whether he should stay until Maggie Russell arrived. There was no reason to remain, except to see her once more and to ingratiate himself with her. He didn’t like that. He also didn’t wish to embarrass her with his presence. Despite what he had done for the Griffiths tonight, he was still the enemy.

This brought his mind back to the impending trial. There was so much to do, and there was so little time left. Faye Osborn would not be at his apartment until eleven o’clock. There remained a stretch of several useful hours during which he could research the legal precedents in previous censorship trials.

He would tell Dr Quigley that Maggie Russell would be along shortly, and let him know that he could be reached at the office should he be needed further, and then, after summoning a taxi to take him back to his own car, he would be on his way.

In the night quiet of his office, Mike Barrett had devoted himself not to a study of legal precedents in earlier censorship trials but to a folder that contained both popular and scholarly writings on censorship that had appeared in American and British magazines during the last dozen years. These were largely articles by authors, critics, publishers, scholars, clipped by Leo Kimura, to give Zelkin and himself an up-to-date background on censorship arguments in the literary field.

He had read nine or ten of these articles and was skimming one written by Maurice Girodias for the London publication Encounter, when a single paragraph arrested his attention. Girodias had been saying that most human beings were born from an act of unromantic lust, and that the species were still being propagated through lust, and that most human beings were as preoccupied with sex as they were with food and sleep; yet, even though sex was basic to each person’s life, its practice had been complicated and its image distorted by conventional hypocrisy. As a matter of fact, Girodias went on, every man and every woman were involved daily in acts of rape. It was this paragraph that Barrett reread carefully.

‘Rape,’ Girodias had written, ‘is held to be the most uncivilised form of assault on anyone’s privacy. And yet the colourless family man, the sedate and faithful husband whose only memorable feminine conquest was performed through marriage, usually rapes dozens of girls a day. The possession, of course, is only visual; a quick appreciative glance is all there is to that micro-rape, which is always furtive and often even unconscious. But the action is there

and it does yield a tiny dose of sexual satisfaction…. As to the faithful wife of the same man, does she resort to fashion, jewels, perfumes in order to seduce her own husband ? Not at all: she uses all those classical artifacts because she wants to offer herself to the whole race of males, to seduce and be raped by all - visually, of course. The vestigial impulses of prehistoric man are still at work.’

How true, Barrett thought.

His own feelings testified to it. He possessed one woman all but legally. He had Faye. Yet yesterday the inner barbarian hiding beneath the civilized veneer had forced him to commit rape at least twice - first the rape of a young girl in a bikini emerging from the Beverly Hills Hotel swimming pool, later the rape of an attractive young woman named Maggie Russell whom he had followed into the bar of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. The only difference between Jerry Griffith and himself, between Jerry and most other men, was that Jerry had forcibly violated another with his penis, while Barrett and most men violated women with their eyes. Jerry’s act was criminal, and his own was harmless, true enough. But both kinds of rape were inspired by the same savage and natural drive. The difference was merely that Jerry had been too ill to control his impulse, whereas the vast majority of men were rational enough to channel this impulse in one socially acceptable way or another. The point was, no man should hold himself as being better than his fellow men in his attitude toward sex, or believe he was wholly without blame.

How many visual rapes did Elmo Duncan, protector of public morals, commit every day of every week ?

Shaking his head, Barrett resumed his reading. Having finished the article, he was about to pick up the next one, when the telephone at his elbow rang out. He snatched at the receiver.

The voice he heard belonged to Maggie Russell.

T had expected you to be at Dr Quigley’s when I got there,’ she said. ‘He told me you went on to your office.’

‘Is everything taken care of?’

‘Jerry’s fine now. I got him into the house unnoticed.He’s asleep. I… I wondered if I might see you for just a moment?’

‘Of course,’ said Barrett with genuine enthusiasm. ‘But there’s no need for you to come all the way out to this stuffy place. As a matter of fact, I was going back to my apartment in a little while, and I thought I’d stop off in Westwood for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Think you could join me?’

‘Anywhere you say. I won’t take much of your time.’

‘Let me see. I know -just off Westwood Boulevard there’s a little coffee shop, sandwich place called Ell’s. It’s -‘

‘I know it.’

‘Let’s say fifteen minutes.’

Exactly sixteen minutes later, Mike Barrett drove into the filling station next to Ell’s, left instructions for a tank of gas and a quart of

oil if required, and hastened to the restaurant.

Entering, he saw that she had arrived before him. She was seated at a table in the rear, thoughtfully smoking, unaware of his entrance.

He moved past the counter and the stools toward her, keeping his eyes on her. Her shining dark hair, seductive wide-set gray-green eyes, full lower lip were as attractive as he had remembered. All that he could make out of her attire above the table top was the diaphanous white silk blouse she was wearing, which clung provocatively to her pointed breasts, and the Outline of the lace half-bra beneath was visible.

Another rape, he thought, and could not help but smile.

But then, nearing the table, he could see how serious she was, and, remembering what had occurred earlier in the evening, and how it must have affected her, he became serious, too. Coming here, he had not speculated at length on her motive for wishing to meet him, although he had guessed that motive. And seconds after he had greeted her, taken the chair across from her, and ordered melted-cheese sandwiches and coffee for each of them, she confirmed his guess.

‘I had to see you, to apologize for being so rude on the phone,’ she was saying, ‘and to thank you, which I neglected to do on the phone, to thank you for what you did for Jerry and… and for me. I don’t know how we can ever repay you.’

‘Miss Russell, I did what any other person in my place would have done.’

‘Not any other person, and certainly not every lawyer,’ she insisted. ‘I’m sure there are plenty of shyster lawyers who would look in another direction and let an opposition witness die in a similar situation, just because it would strength their position in court. There are plenty of those, I’d wager.’

‘Miss Russell, you’re speaking of subhumans. I was speaking of people.’

‘Yes,’ she said. She waited for the waitress to pour the coffee, then she went on. ‘Anyway, forgive my behavior on the telephone. I took a cab to Dr Quigley’s, and on the way I realized how cold I’d been to you, but then I expected you to be there so I could ask your forgiveness and tell you of my gratefulness in person. Dr Quigley told me you’d gone to your office. So, once I’d sneaked Jerry up to bed, I got up the courage, and it took some, to phone you.’

‘I’m glad you did. I’ve already told you what I saw at The Underground Railroad. I still don’t know what sent him rushing out of there the way he did. I wonder if he spoke of that ?’

‘No. He was too ill and exhausted to speak of anything much. I doubt if he’ll tell me about that. I know I won’t ask him.’

‘I didn’t mean that you should. But this is a very serious matter. When a boy tries to kill himself, I think it’s a good thing to know why. I suppose he said nothing about that either?’

‘Nothing. Nor would he explain why he had those pills on him.’

‘It could have been that his troubles and problems had come to a boil and were ready to explode. I just wondered what set it off. The way George Perkins treated him ? Something Darlene Nelson said to him ? Or something that happened during the day, this morning, this afternoon ?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. Her eyes met his briefly, and then she looked down at the table. ‘Or maybe I know one thing, something that happened today. Perhaps I should tell you. You’ve involved yourself enough with Jerry to - to save him, so I suppose you’ve earned the right to know something. But before I do tell you, I have one question, one thing I wanted to ask you.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘I wondered what you were doing at that club, of all places, while Jerry was there. Were you following - shadowing him, as they say ? I suppose that’s one of the things lawyers have to do to get evidence.’