(1969) The Seven Minutes (7 page)

He had wanted to telephone Faye immediately, and then her father, and make his acceptance formal. Instead, he had called Abe Zelkin to make a lunch date, not having the courage to tell him on the phone what had happened. He still wanted to telephone the Osborns, but his sense of order, of chronology, of first things first, would not permit him to do it. He must see Zelkin first, get that unhappy task over with, clear the decks, and then he would be truly free.

And here he was with Abe Zelkin.

Barrett slowly opened his eyes to the present, and to his surprise there was Zelkin, in the booth across from him, grinning at him.

‘I was wondering when you’d come out of the trance,’ said Zelkin. ‘For a guy with only good news, you sure looked stricken. Or were you in yoga meditation, and was that the face of ecstasy ? Well, 1 tell you, I feel good, Mike.’ He picked up his knife and fork and dug into the hamburger steak. ‘It’s sure taken us long enough to get together.’

‘Abe, let me -‘

‘Okay, I’m. sorry. You were going to tell me how it happened.’

‘Yes, let me tell you the whole thing.’ He picked at his salad without eating it. ‘It goes back to that day when I first met Faye Osborn. You remember, I told you about that.’

‘Great girl, Faye.’

‘Yes, but that’s not the story. The story is her old man. Now, don’t bust in, Abe. Let me tell it all, because that’s why I’m here.’

Carefully, sorting and rearranging the events that he had just reviewed in his memory, Barrett began to relate the growth of his relationship with Willard Osborn II. Eventually he came to the point where Faye had told him that her father wanted to see him privately. Then he began to recount the meeting with Osborn in his library the night before last, and he tried not to watch Zelkin when he quoted Willard Osborn’s offer of seventy-five thousand a year and a vice-presidency.

He tried not to watch, but he could not help seeing Zelkin’s pumpkin face come up from the hamburger and go taut beneath the fat. Zelkin ceased eating.

It was no use avoiding the hurt eyes. Barrett looked up. ‘I’m seeing Osborn tomorrow night. I’m going to accept his job. I’m sorry, Abe, but I have to. I don’t feel there’s any choice. Much as I have wanted to go with you, something like this Osborn thing

comes up once in a lifetime. I can’t let the brass ring pass. I’ve got to grab. I hope you’ll try to understand.’

Absently Zelkin touched the napkin to his mouth. ‘Well, what the devil, what can I say ? I can’t say what I offered you is better as far as material things go. I mean, our law office could give you only crumbs compared to this. You could work thirty years and still never see seventy-five thousand dollars in three years, let alone one. And, while I got us some nice attractive offices, they’d be like storage rooms compared to what Osborn can give you. And clients -well, you know, we’d have the helpless and the dregs alongside the big shots you’re going to be meeting with now. The question is… what you’re after.’

Barrett would not allow himself to weaken. ‘I know what I’m after, Abe.’

‘Do you ? I never felt you were certain, even after you threw over the Good Government Institute to play Get Rich Quick. After all, you were considering going in with me.’

‘I was. That was sincere. But that was before this Osborn position came up. That’s the one I’ve spent years waiting for.’

Zelkin shook his head. ‘I’m still not convinced that’s what you want. Forget the do-good part of you. Technically, you can do good for the rich, too. Like A. J. Liebling once put it about the columnist Westbrook Pegler. He said, “Pegler is a courageous defender of minorities - for example, the people who pay large income taxes.” Forgive me, Mike. I didn’t mean to say it to shiv you. I meant it as a funny. Only it came out bitter. Let me put it this way, Mike. You are an attorney, and what you’re going into isn’t law, it’s business. You’re going to become a businessman. Granted that in the eyes of the world you’ll be a big success. But in your own eyes, Mike, you’ve got to see sooner or later that the challenges won’t be the same as in our kind of law. The people won’t be the same as real people, and they won’t need the kind of help only you could give the clients who’d come to us. What’s there in it for you ?’

‘Money,’ said Barrett bluntly. Nobody, not even Zelkin, was going to cast him as some goddam Benedict Arnold. ‘Honest money, honestly earned. As Milton put it, “Money brings honor, friends, conquest, and realms.” Aptly from Paradise Regained.’

‘Well, as Thackeray put it,’ said Zelkin softly,’ “We often buy money very much too dear.” ’

Barrett was suddenly exasperated. ‘Abe, to quote nobody but myself, please don’t give me any more of that crap. Let me tell you something, something that I’ve never told you about completely. My mother scrimped and pinched pennies and deprived herself to put me through Harvard, through law school. She and the old man came over on immigration boats, steerage, when they were kids, and grew up scared and alone, and we pushed around because they were poor. After they met up and got married in Chicago, my father worked twenty-five hours a day to keep his head above

water and set aside a few bucks for a rainy day. And when he keeled over, there was that sum in the bank, a pitiful sum by our lights, to keep my mother and me alive.’

‘Mike, I know about such things,’ said Zelkin. ‘It wasn’t so different with my parents.’

‘All right, then it should be easier for you to comprehend the rest. Because when I got out of high school, my mother wouldn’t play it safe with her little loot. She knew what it was all about in little golden America. It was money talks, and if you want to learn the language you’d better go to school, and it better be the best school around. And then if you make it, you’ll be somebody and you can be independent and nobody can push you around. So she shot what was left on her son, so he could go to Harvard and make it. So far, so good, and some of that you already know.’

‘Of course I know, and I can appreciate -‘

‘You can’t fully appreciate what I’m saying, Abe, because there’s something you don’t know. And after you hear it, Abe, don’t give me any of that Freudian twaddle about mothers and sons and why my mother did it and what that’s done to me and that crap. Look, I’m as grownup as you and I’m a big Freud man. but I’m sick and tired of a whole smart-ass generation that makes you some kind of neurotic nut if you say something good about your mother, or defend her, or say you owe her something. Well, dammit, I say the way Confucius say that I owed her plenty. She did nothing for me in order to get paid back. She did it for the pleasure of knowing I might be more than she and my father had been by society’s standards. But I owed her plenty, and when it was time to pay back, when she was in need, I couldn’t pay her, because 1 didn’t have the legal tender of the realm. I had only the counterfeit scrip of idealism.’

‘Mike, I didn’t mean -‘

‘Let me finish,’ Barrett went on, harshly. ‘I’ll make it short and sour. After school, I passed up some good opportunities to take that job with the Institute and make the world more humane for humanity. It was just about the time I met you. My mother came down with a serious illness, serious. I’ll spare you the medical details. To stay alive, she needed the best surgeons, the best care, the best of everything. She needed money. Where was the money ? I’m talking about life-and-death money now, not luxury money. Where was it? No more rainy-day fund. That had been invested in me. And me, I was too busy doing good to save a dime.’

‘You were busy doing what you had to do, making your way. You were only beginning

‘Abe, don’t give me any prefab apologies for my guilts. What 1 was doing was copping out, turning my back on realities and responsibilities, indulging myself in my little anarchy and pretending there wasn’t a great big real world out there that had to be dealt with. Look, Abe, the facts. I needed fast money, and I didn’t have

it. I had praise and merit badges, but they weren’t legal tender. Money was legal tender, and I determined to get it. Do you know where I went scratching for it ?’

‘I have no idea, Mike,’ said Zelkin quietly.

‘I had only one hookup with the world of affluence. Phil Sanford. I went to him. Long before this, he had once begged me to come into his family’s publishing house with him and make some real dough, and I’d treated his invitation like I’d been invited to work in a house of sin. I was an attorney and I belonged outside, busily attorneying. Now here I was, hat in hand, saying I had changed my mind and I wouldn’t mind taking a better-paying job with Sanford House. Well, I’ll always give credit to Phil for this. He may be a lightweight and insensitive in some areas, but that day I went to him his third ear was on my wave length and his perceptions were keen. He sensed trouble and he insisted on knowing why this drastic change of heart about my choice of career. At first 1 wouldn’t tell him, but after we went out and belted a few drinks I spilled my guts, told him the whole thing. Well, he wouldn’t have me diverted from my profession by my need for money. “Why, if it’s only money,” he said - only money - and he pressed the money I needed on me. A loan. With it I bought the best surgeons, and they saved my mother, and with it I was able to give her the best care possible in her remaining days. That should have been my lesson. Money talks. Money saves. Money shall make you free. But one lesson is not enough when you’re young. It wasn’t until my mother had another crisis - and this part you know about - and they began treating her with that drug which, we found out later, should have been banned, that I learned my second lesson. After the drug killed her, I learned the do-gooders wouldn’t do good if they had to fight one of the sources of their income. No, not until then did I get lesson number two and the full message. That’s when 1 made my vow. I’m a slave, I told myself, and only money can set me free, and if the Main Chance ever comes, I vow to take advantage of it. That’s why I have to go with Osborn Enterprises.’

Zelkin had been very still, staring down at his empty coffee cup. Finally he nodded. ‘I see’ he said. ‘I mean, I can understand.’

‘Just to be sure you do,’ said Barrett, ‘let me add one last thing. I’ve met some of the Hollywood entertainment crowd, and they have a popular saying, one that is crude but tells it all in a single sentence. The saying is, “You’ve got it made when you’ve got ‘fuck-you’ money.” That’s it in a nutshell. When you’ve got enough money to say, “Fuckyou, buster,” to any bastard on earth, then and only then are you your own man. I intend to be my own man.’

Zelkin smiled weakly. ‘I read you loud and clear, Mike, only -only there are many ways of being your own man.’

‘Fair enough.’ Barrett extracted his credit card from his wallet and placed it on the restaurant check. ‘Let me pay, Abe. After all,

I’m going to be a vice-president.’

‘Okay. I’ll get it next time.’

Barrett suddenly felt better. ‘I’m glad you said “next time.” I was hoping you would. I didn’t want this to hurt our friendship.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Zelkin. ‘I like rich friends, too.’

Barrett signed the credit-card charge slip, put down a tip, and consulted his wristwatch. ‘I’d better hustle.I’ve got less than a half hour to get downtown to the Hall of Justice and our Mr Duncan. You don’t mind if I rush off, Abe? Remember, it is my farewell performance as a do-gooder - a do-gooder who also wants to clean up his last debt.’

It was three minutes before his scheduled appointment when Mike Barrett strode toward the half-century-old building where District Attorney Elmo Duncan had his headquarters and exerted control over 260 lawyers in his department. Above the high arched entrance, chiseled into stone, were the intimidating words hall of justice.

Pushing through one of the doors, Barrett hastened down the short flight of steps, went past the familiar lobby arcade with its numerous food-and-drink-vending machines, and caught the elevator. On the sixth floor, he found the curved modernistic reception desk, and he was directed straight ahead through another doorway into another broad corridor. Across from the press room he came upon the door with lettering painted on its glass panel that said ‘Elmo Duncan, District Attorney.’

Inside, there was a medium-sized room with two desks. On the one to his left was a name marker for ‘Lt Hogan,’ whom Barrett knew to be the District Attorney’s driver and bodyguard. The chair at this desk was unoccupied. Across the room, past the grouping of extra chairs and beside a copying machine, was the other desk, a busier-looking one, and this one was occupied. Not until Barrett had reached the clacking typewriter did the receptionist become aware of him. She looked up apologetically as he introduced himself. Quickly consulting her appointment sheet, she nodded and told Barrett that District Attorney Duncan was expecting him in the office of Mr Victor Rodriguez,” his special assistant and chief of the Appellate Division. Mr Rodriguez’ office was at the opposite end of the corridor. She would buzz the District Attorney and alert him that Mr Barrett was on his way.

Retracing his route, Barrett continued up the corridor until he came to the Appellate Division. As he entered, the lone occupant of the room, a pretty, brown-haired girl, ceased typing and stood up. ‘Mr Barrett ? Right this way. The District Attorney can see you now.’

She held open a door to an inner office, and Barrett thanked her and walked past her. Two men were standing beside a table that was backed up against a desk, and they were deep in conversation.

Barrett recognized Elmo Duncan at once. He was the taller of the pair, at least six feet tall. He had slick blond hair, narrow blue eyes, a thin nose and a cleft chin. His complexion was light and faintly freckled. He was tastefully dressed in a tailored blue alpaca suit and a blue-and-white striped shirt. His companion, stockier, had jet-black curly hair and a swarthy face with a conspicuous nose over a neatly trimmed but full moustache.

The moment that the door had closed behind Barrett, Duncan looked up, broke off his conversation and came forward with a broad smile and an extended hand. Shaking hands, he said, ‘Good to see you, Mr Barrett. Sorry to give you all that legwork. I can only get things done when I slip out of my office. Victor and I -Oh, perhaps you two haven’t met. This is Victor Rodriguez, my assistant. Victor, meet Mike Barrett, one of our more successful attorneys.’