(1969) The Seven Minutes (5 page)

‘A bookstore owner in your city got arrested a couple of hours ago for selling The Seven Minutes. Maybe I’m overreacting, making too much of it, because I’m on edge. It’s probably just a little matter. Still, 1 want to make sure that’s all it is and nothing more.’

‘Okay, tell me.’

‘Our Coast salesman got a desperate call from a bookstore owner - let me see, I have everything written down - a Ben Fremont, he owns Fremont’s Book Emporium in Oakwood, wherever that is.’

‘Oakwood’s an upper-middle-class community, fair-sized, in West Los Angeles, between the Westwood and Brentwood areas and the city of Santa Monica, about ten minutes from where I am. It’s unincorporated, not part of the city of Los Angeles, but in the county of Los Angeles. All right, what happened next?

‘Fremont’s a good account, but he’s not big, and he doesn’t have an attorney. So he phoned our salesman for help, for protection, and of course we’ve got to give it. The salesman called me and I called you. Apparently there’s a group out there in Oakwood called the STDL, the Strength Through Decency League - those self-righteous names - and their president, a Mrs St Clair, read the book and registered an immediate protest with the District Attorney of Los Angeles. I guess this comes under his jurisdiction - ‘<

“That’s right. The D.A.‘s Office and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office are in charge of the unincorporated areas.’

‘Well, the District Attorney got Mrs St Clair’s protest, and he in turn sent a letter to the Sheriff asking for an immediate investigation, and once the District Attorney had his full report he prepared a criminal complaint, and he had two deputies of the County Sheriff’s Vice Bureau go in and arrest Ben Fremont this morning. They confiscated all copies of The Seven Minutes Fremont still had on hand. About eighty copies.’

‘Go on. Was there anything else?’

Sanford quickly recounted the few fragmentary facts about the arrest that Fremont had relayed to the company salesman. ‘Fremont’s been in jail several hours now, waiting to be bailed out,’ Sanford went on. T want him bailed out at once. We’ll stand good for that, and for any other costs. I’d send one of our own attorneys out, but that takes time and, besides, our attorneys don’t know California law. Ineed someone in Los Angeles who can act immediately and who knows his way around out there. And someone who understands what I’ve got at stake. Mike, I can’t have this little matter blown up out of proportion. I want it settled quietly and at once. Then the book trade will know we are standing behind every bookseller and behind the book. Then everyone will go ahead and sell it without being worried. There may be one or two other small arrests like this. We’ll have to back them up just like this. What we have to do is give the book a chance to start selling in the big stores and chains in the largest cities.. After a few weeks or months, once it has had its wide public acceptance, no law-enforcement agency will bother to get in our way. We’ll be safe. That’s why I want to quash the little nuisance arrests at the outset, before the big stores panic. I want this settled right away, quietly, as little as possible in the newspapers. Of course I thought of you, Mike. I know you have a job, but if you could…’

‘I left Thayer and Turner this morning, Phil. I have something much bigger coming up. I’ll catch you up on it another time. But it just happens I am free. I’ll be glad to pitch in.’

‘Great! That’s great, Mike. I needed someone I could trust, someone who knows what this means to me. I’m sure you can wrap this up overnight.’

Barrett had found his pen and a pad of scratch paper. ‘You say this Ben Fremont’s down at the central jail? We’ll have to put up bond, bail him out today. How do you want to plead?’

‘Do you mean guilty or not guilty?’

‘Yes. If he pleads not guilty, that means a trial.’

‘God, no. I want to get him out of this fast and quietly, to assure other bookmen they don’t have to worry, yet get him out with a minimum of publicity.’

“Then we’d plead guilty. Now, as far as I can remember, if you’re convicted for purveying pornography in California, and it’s a first offense, that’s a misdemeanor. You can be fined a thousand dollars plus five dollars for each unit of obscene material on hand. Fremont had eighty books, so that’s four hundred more - fourteen hundred dollars. And you can go to jail for six months. A second offense means a felony - two thousand dollars fine, plus the four hundred, and into the clink for one year. This is Fremont’s first offense?’

‘It’s his second, Mike, his second. He was arrested once before-I don’t know how many years ago, even he’s forgotten - when he had a smaller shop in downtown Los Angeles. I believe it was a magazine thing then. If this is a felony, that means a full year to jail ? I can’t let a bookseller selling our book go to jail for that long.’

‘Well, it’s that or a not-guilty plea and a public trial,’ said Barrett.

Sanford groaned. ‘That’s just as bad.’

‘There is one more possibility,’ said Barrett. ‘If this arrest doesn’t get too much publicity -‘

‘I don’t think it will.’

‘Well, if it doesn’t, I might be able to get the whole thing over with quickly and quietly. Enter a guilty plea, pay the fine, and arrange for the sentence to be suspended.’

‘That would be perfect!’

‘I think I can swing it. We have a District Attorney here now -his name is Elmo Duncan - who’s a very decent, straight sort of person. But he’s a realist. He knows where to give and where to get, and so I’d guess he’s the kind of man you can talk to. I know him socially. I’ve met him two or three times at parties at the Willard Osborns’. If 1 went to him, he’d remember. He’d also remember I’m going out with Osborn’s daughter. I think I can persuade him to be reasonable.’

‘Mike, you don’t know how much I appreciate this favor -‘

Barrett wanted to interrupt and tell Sanford that this was no favor, merely the smallest down payment on a debt that he had long owed Sanford, and which he had not forgotten. But he said nothing. He allowed Sanford to go on.

‘ - because I was really worried about this, but now I feel better, much better. Mike, you’re a miracle man.’

‘Not yet,’ said Barrett wryly. ‘Not until I get cooperation from our District Attorney. 1 think I can manage it. Tell you what. I’ll phone Elmo Duncan and try to make an appointment for this afternoon. Then I’ll get hold of a bail bondsman I know down on Hill Street, and I’ll see that he springs your bookseller. Then I’ll look in

on your bookseller - ‘ he was making notes on his scratch pad now - ‘Ben Fremont in Oakwood, right ? - and I’ll find out exactly what happened and learn what he said and calm him down. Then, hopefully, I’ll be seeing the District Attorney. As soon as I have something definite from him, I’ll telephone you. It might not be’ until tomorrow.’

‘Whatever you say, Mike. Just as long as I know you’ve taken over.’

‘I’ve taken over. In forty-eight hours we’ll be able to talk about other things.’

“Thanks, Mike.’

Til be in touch,’ said Barrett.

After hanging up, he thoughtfully finished his root beer. Putting the empty glass aside, he realized that he was hungry. Then he remembered his lunch date with Abe Zelkin. They had agreed to meet at the Brown Derby in Beverly Hills, a convenience to both of them since it was twenty minutes from Barrett’s apartment and only fifteen minutes from Zelkin’s new office, a suite in a recently opened high-rise building on the east side of Beverly Hills.

Before making his calls to the bondsman and to the District Attorney, Barrett decided to telephone Zelkin’s secretary. He would request that she have Zelkin make the lunch date a half hour later, and that Zelkin bring along a photocopy of the section of the California Penal Code fhat dealt with the purveying of obscene matter. At least that would give him something else to talk to Zelkin about before he faced the moment of truth. It was going to be tough, this meeting. He wished that he could simply explain the facts of life to Zelkin: Abe, listen, honest and poor is good, very good, but believe me, Abe, honest and rich is better, far better.

He wondered whether Zelkin would understand - or, at least, would forgive him.

They were sitting in a comfortable semicircular booth, beneath the framed caricatures of show-business personalities, finishing their drinks, and had not talked very much at this point. The Brown Derby was crowded and noisy, and they were among the silent few. Mike Barrett, pretending to reread the photocopy of the censorship section of the California Penal Code, could see Abe Zelkin across from him, sipping a martini, absorbed in the large menu. He looked relaxed and cheerful, which increased Barrett’s guilt. Of course, as Barrett knew, Zelkin always looked relaxed and cheerful, and like an innocent - deceptively so, for nature’s face masked a tiger, especially when he was tracking evidence for a case in which he believed. Barrett had once thought, and was now reminded, that Abe Zelkin’s head had the appearance of a small, happy pumpkin, if the pumpkin were adorned with an unruly sprout of black hair and a tiny egg of a nose upon which were perched oversized black-rimmed bifocal spectacles. He was short, potbellied, and there was

always a trace of cigar ash on his lapels. Big men wanted to protect him, and big women wanted to mother him, unaware that this lovable toy-sized human had a brain one part missile detector, one part rocket launcher.

Zelkin had two eccentricities and one obsession. His eccentricities were: absolute honesty - toward others, toward himself - no matter what the consequences and total purity of language; rarely did he employ swear words (when well shaken, he inclined toward the stilted curses of penny-dreadful literature). His primary obsession was the United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and the encroachments being made upon it. He liked to echo the sentiments of Chief Justice Warren, who had once remarked that if the Bill of Rights were introduced as a new piece of legislation today, there were strong doubts that Congress would pass it into law.

A waiter had approached. ‘Are you ready to order yet, gentlemen?’

Zelkin lowered his menu. ‘What about you, Mike? Want another drink?’

Barrett cupped a hand over his glass of Scotch and water. ‘I’m standing pat. Let’s eat. What are you having?’

‘If I had my way, I know what I’d want.’ Ruefully, Zelkin considered his protruding stomach. ‘But last night my youngest crawled up on my lap, and she poked at my belly and she said, “Papa, are you pregnant?” Where in the devil she learned that world - progressive nurseries or television, of course - but I got the message.’ He shrugged at the waiter. ‘Broiled hamburger steak, medium, no potatoes, no nothing. And some black coffee.’

‘Make it two coffees,’ said Barrett. ‘And a chef’s salad for me. French dressing.’

The waiter had gone. They were alone. And Barrett wasn’t yet ready for truth. He had mentioned Philip Sanford’s call and the Ben Fremont arrest briefly when they had met. The Fremont matter was still a welcome diversion. He held up Zelkin’s photocopies. ‘This statutory definition of obscenity really makes the head swim. There’s no clear-cut guideline.’

Zelkin grinned. ‘Richard Kuh - he used to be assistant district attorney in New York - once remarked that trying to define obscenity is as frustratingly impossible as trying to nail custard pie to trees. And Judge Curtis Bok said it was like trying to come to grips with a greased pig. But I’ll go along with Justice Stewart. He once said something to the effect that maybe he couldn’t define obscenity, but, by golly, he knew obscenity when he saw it.’

‘Well, maybe,’ said Barrett doubtfully. ‘I’d prefer to go along with Havelock Ellis - how can you define a notion so nebulous that it resides not in the thing contemplated, but in the mind of the contemplating person ? You show one man a picture of a nude woman and he says Art, and you show the same to the next fellow and he says Dirty Postcard.’

‘My dear Michael, a nude woman is always Art.’

Barrett laughed. ‘You’ve solved that one. 1 wish it were as simple with a book. Here we’ve got Sanford, who, despite his commercial interest, really believes this Jadway book is the essence of purity, and there we’ve got Elmo Duncan, guardian of public safety, who by his very act this morning is saying the same book is filthy. On the one hand, Sanford insisting the book has social importance, and on the other Duncan insisting its appeal is solely to a - where’s that definition? - yes, to a “shameful and morbid interest” in nudity and sex and is “utterly without redeeming social importance.” And with that poor bookseller caught helplessly in between.’

Zelkin finished his martini. ‘Well, sometimes a good trial - and the appeals that might follow it - can be a long step toward working out a more satisfactory definition.’

‘Not this time,’ said Barrett. ‘I know Sanford doesn’t want a trial, but he doesn’t relish a guilty plea either. He just wants the whole thing quietly quashed. I guess he’s right. Anyway, I have an appointment with our District Attorney at three-thirty.’ He paused. ‘I hope he’s as agreeable behind his desk as he is at a dinner party.’

‘How well do you know him?’ asked Zelkin.

‘We’re not on a first-name basis, nothing like that. He’s been a guest at the Osborns’ several times when I was there with Faye.’

“That won’t hurt you.’

‘No - no, I suppose not.’ Barrett stared across the table. ‘How well do you know him?’

‘Duncan ? Oh, fairly well. We’re not exactly bosom friends, but after he was elected, when I was still with the Civil Liberties Union, I had many occasions to meet him in and out of court.’ Zelkin unfurled his napkin and draped it across his lap. ‘I like him. I don’t know if I can tell you anything useful. You want to know his assets ? A Vietnam hero with two Purple Hearts. Thirty-two years old. Big family man. Four children. An able attorney, honest, decent, square. A dynamic public speaker, marvelous television personality, not flamboyant but direct and forceful. But a political creature, by instinct. He knows he’s a winner. When he was elected district attorney it was by the biggest landslide in our local elective history. Elmo Duncan knows he’s better than his present job. Now the word is out that someone else, someone who counts, knows it, too. Ever hear of Luther Yerkes ?’