(1969) The Seven Minutes (77 page)

He had tried to busy himself at his desk with the files on the remaining witnesses he and Abe had enlisted, but he knew they were a weak army, almost useless to the cause, and he gave them short shrift. He had then sought the file on Cassie McGraw, the savior, the miracle woman, the goddess Athena of the defense, and had tried to absorb himself.in rereading what was known of her, in preparation for seeing her. Because now, with no more than two or three days of the trial left, it all came down to Cassie. Their final victory or defeat rode on Cassie. Yet he found himself unable to concentrate on her past either, because what interested him was Cassie in the present. He had kept looking up at his open door and toward the reception room, alerted by every footstep, every creak, waiting for a door that would open and bring Cassie McGraw, alive, to him in the person of Maggie Russell. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Lifetimes, eternities. No Maggie.

And it was after she was fifteen minutes late, on the sixteenth minute, that he cast aside the folder containing Cassie past, and heaved himself to his feet to be ready for Cassie present.

Now he wandered about the room, emptying ashtrays, straightening pillows, picking up lint, bumping into furniture, listening to the hum of his electric desk clock. Twenty minutes, twenty-five, thirty minutes after the appointed time. No Maggie.

He determined to calm himself with his pipe. He found his pipe in his jacket, and then the tobacco pouch, and filled the bowl and lit it. He was irritated to find the bowl heating up quickly because of the rate at which he was smoking. Nor was he just wandering about

his office any more. By now he was pacing.

He was afraid to look at the time, but he did.

It was five minutes before six o’clock.

He stood at his high window and glumly watched the traffic, the beetle automobiles coming and going, the tiny figurines in the streets coming and going, but nowhere Maggie Russell.

He tried to conjure up reasons for her delay. There were so many possibilities. A misunderstanding about the time of their meeting. He was sure that she had said five o’clock. But maybe she had said six and in his head he had erroneously moved it up to five.

Or an accident. There were always car accidents in Los Angeles. There had been fifty-two thousand persons killed or injured in motor-vehicle accidents in this city during the last twelve months. She could have been in a smashup while driving the hellish freeway from downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific Palisades.

Or illness. She had looked fine in court this morning. But the flesh was heir to a million sicknesses, and she was rundown, and maybe she was in bed with a racking fever.

Or work. After all, she had a job, and there may have been some work that her Aunt Ethel had insisted she finish.

Or Jerry. He had been spared in court, but the mere fact of his forced appearance might have been too much for his palsied nervous system. Maybe he had fallen completely apart and Maggie, devoting herself to helping him, was heedless of the time.

Yet if it were any of these she would have called or have had someone call on her behalf. That is, unless she were unconscious or dead, which she surely wasn’t. Yet the telephone had not rung once in the past hour.

He turned from the window and looked across the room in the direction of Abe Zelkin’s office, and he wondered when Zelkin would be back, and what Zelkin would say if he found him still waiting this way.

This way. What way?

Their way. He had to face it now, at twenty minutes past six. They, meaning Zelkin, Sanford, Kimura, had as much as predicted it would be this way - which meant their way. They had called the shot at noon. And here it was the last of daylight, when reality still remained and one could not yet escape into dreams.

Zelkin had said, ‘If the postcard exists.’ He had said, ‘What I trust is what is tangible.’ He had said, ‘You still believe ?’

And now the cruel voice in his skull for the first time said, Abe, I don’t know.

Someone had appeared in the doorway. He looked up quickly, and sagged with disappointment. It was Donna Novik, her coat on one arm.

‘If there’s nothing else, boss, I think I’ll be getting home.’

Thanks, Donna. There’s nothing - ‘ But there was something, one last thing he must do. He must let Maggie know what she had

done to him and what he thought of her. ‘I’ll tell you what you can do for me before you go, if you don’t mind.’

‘Anything, boss.’

‘You have Miss Russell’s private number on your Rolodex, haven’t you ? I want you to call her, get her on the line, and then I’ll take it and you can leave. One sec. If someone else answers - they won’t, but if it should happen - don’t mention our office or my name. Okay?

‘Got it.’

Donna disappeared, and he took himself back to the window, staring absently into the darkening street. He prayed that Maggie had been in a minor accident or was mildly ill and that it was not the other, not the betrayal of the promise of what they might yet mean to each other.

He could hear Donna’s muffled voice on the telephone in the reception room.

He moved to his own desk phone, waiting to pick up the receiver. His hand hovered over the lighted key as he waited for the buzz, but suddenly the light blinked out and there had been no buzz.

Confused, he started for his open door, but Donna was already corning in with a message written on a sheet from her memo pad.

‘What happened?’ he demanded.

“Well, I dialed Miss Russell’s number, and the phone rang and rang and rang, and I was about to give up when some man answered.’

‘An old man or a kid?’

‘It was Frank Griffith.’

‘Dammit.’

‘I said that I’d like to speak to Miss Russell. He said - ‘ she consulted her memo page - ‘just this, “Miss Russell is not with us any more. She left this afternoon for New York. She’ll be making her home there.” I started to ask for her forwarding address, but he just hung up. Should I try again and ask him if she - ?’

‘No,’ he said, almost inaudibly. ‘No, that won’t be necessary. Thanks, Donna. You’d better go now.’

‘See you tomorrow, boss.’

‘Yeah, tomorrow.’

He was alone and he felt empty and cold.

He stood there, unmoving, unable to move. There was no place to go now.

After a while, he gave a little shudder and dragged the hollow man that was all that was left of him into the lounge, and absently he filled a glass with ice and poured two jiggers of Scotch.over the ice. He drank slowly, bitterly, toasting the Cassie McGraw who-never-was and Maggie Russell who had restored his faith in the faithlessness of women.

He put down the glass of cubes, worked his suit coat off the

hanger and pulled it on, and left his office to find some dark place where all failures huddle to anesthetize their brains with booze against their yesterdays and tomorrows.

Pausing at the door as he left the reception room., he reached to turn off the lights. That instant, the telephone on Donna’s desk rang out, and the light stayed on. The telephone rang again, and his heart leaped for it, and he followed in two quick strides.

He snatched up the receiver. ‘Hello?’

‘Mike, it’s L’

It was Maggie.

‘What the hell, Maggie - where are you?’

‘I’m in a telephone booth at the Texaco station a block down from the house. I couldn’t call you before.’

‘Your uncle said you’d left his -‘

‘You talked to him?’

‘My secretary did.’

‘Yes, I left. We had it out, and I left.’

‘The evidence - the postcard from Cassie McGraw - have you got it ?’ He heard his heart, and he waited.

‘Mike, let me -‘

‘Have you got it ?’ he demanded.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Listen, I’ll explain later. Please come here. I need your help. I can’t stay in this booth any longer. I’ll tell you everything when you get here. I’ll be outside the gas station. Will you come, Mike?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

And then he hung up.

But a half hour later he was on Sunset Boulevard, and in Pacific Paiisades, and he could see her out on the sidewalk beside the Texaco station. Her back was to him and she was shading her eyes from the glare of the overhead lights as she looked up the street toward the slope on which the Griffith house perched.

He had not known what was impelling him to come to her when he left the office.

Seeing her now, under the street light, her hair and slight sheath dress whipped by the wind, he knew. He was here because he was in love, and he had to know why she had betrayed that love. He was here because anyone in love is a fool, and he was the biggest fool of all. He was here because there was nowhere else for him to go, as an attorney or as a man. This was the end of the line.

He swung into the gas station, rolled up alongside the pumps, stepped out and told the service-station attendant to fill the tank.

He started for Maggie, and he was almost upon her when she saw him.

She stood there, lips trembling, and then her fist went to her mouth, and he thought that she was going to cry.

‘Oh, Mike,’ she gasped, ‘I didn’t think you were going to come.’ Then she was against him, arms around him, her head on his chest. ‘You don’t know how much I wanted you here. Thank God you’ve come.’

He pushed her from him and clutched her shoulders so tightly that she winced. ‘What’s going on with you?’ he demanded. ‘Why did you stand me up?’

‘Don’t be angry with me, Mike. It’s not my fault. I didn’t want to stand you up. It’s just that everything went wrong. You have no idea what’s gone on in that horrible house the last couple of hours, between Frank Griffith and me. I couldn’t take the time to explain on the phone, because I didn’t want to take my eyes off the house, and I couldn’t see the driveway from the phone booth. I could see it only from here, and I had to watch so I’d know if there’s a chance.’

‘Maggie, for Chrissakes, you’re speaking gibberish. Now, once and for all, will you tell me what happened? Where’s Cassie’s address?’

‘I haven’t got it,’ she said with despair. ‘Let me explain -‘

‘Explain, then.’

She looked past him, up the hill, and then she said quickly, ‘I didn’t double-cross you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I made some stops after leaving the courtroom -I was so proud of what you did, Mike - but when I got home Uncle Frank was there. He’s usually not through with work that early. But he’d been out of town, and when he got back he decided to come directly home. He was in his study, on the phone, and I couldn’t get to his desk. That’s where the postcard is -I told you, didn’t I ? - in the bottom drawer of his desk, hidden beneath the drawer lining and a batch of correspondence I was supposed to answer. So I changed clothes, stalling until he left the room, and when I came down to see if he’d gone he was just coming out of the study. Well, he was high over the way it had gone in court this morning, about your waiving the defense’s crossexamination of Jerry -‘

‘I’ll bet he was,’ said Barrett bitterly.

‘But then I still couldn’t get into his study, because he wanted to talk to me, to hear my version of what had gone on in court. Anyway, one thing led to another, and the way he started to speak of Jerry and - and of you -I just couldn’t hold myself in any more, and I guess I exploded, let him have the whole truth. Well, not all, not about our trade, the deal we made, but the truth about how you had acted as you did at least partially for me, and how he didn’t understand his son’s condition, and how Jerry had twice attempted suicide -‘

‘What did he say?’

‘He didn’t believe it. He said it was stuff you were inventing to brainwash me so I’d work to keep Jerry from appearing in court as a witness against you. We had an awful fight, Mike, absolutely dreadful. Then he gave me an ultimatum. If I wanted to stay in his

house, work for him, be around Jerry, then I had to vow never to see you again. He was adamant. I must never see you again, not even once, not even today. If I insisted on seeing you, he said, then I had to pack up right then and get out. I didn’t know what to do. It was either leave Jerry to his father’s mercy or - or give you up. I wasn’t concerned about Cassie’s postcard at that moment, Mike. If I chose to stay on there, on Uncle Frank’s terms, I could have got to the postcard and dropped it off for you somewhere - at least I think I could have done that before the trial ends. But - but that wasn’t it finally. I couldn’t -I don’t know how to say this, Mike -I couldn’t bear not seeing you again.’

He was deeply moved. It was that rare moment when feelings transcend words. He reached for her and brought her close to him, loving her warmness and softness, and returning her love. ‘I’m glad,’ he whispered. T feel the same way, Maggie.’

For seconds she remained blissfully in his embrace, but suddenly her eyes opened and she said, T almost forgot, Mike. About Cassie McGraw, I mean. Your whole case depends on that, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

She came out of his arms. ‘Mike, I’m afraid I’ve made a real mess of everything. Because when I made my decision, when I told Uncle Frank I was going to see you tonight, then he got more vicious than ever. He told me to get out of the house as fast as possible and never show my face there again. He told me to pack what I needed for now and he’d send the rest when I had an address. Pack and get out, that was the order. But the worst thing was, he wouldn’t leave me alone for even a minute. I tried to stall, said I wanted to get some personal things from the desk; but he wouldn’t allow me to touch it. He told me to pack and beat it. And then he followed me upstairs, and stood in my doorway while I took some things out of the closet and emptied my bureau and threw everything into a couple of suitcases. And then he followed me downstairs, made me give him my key, and waited until I was outside in the front drive before he slammed the door. So I lugged my things down here - they’re over there by the water cooler -‘

‘And Cassie McGraw’s postcard is still in Griffith’s desk?’

‘I’m sorry - yes. I’m really miserable about that. And when I got down here, I didn’t call you right away because from the sidewalk I could just see Uncle Frank’s driveway, and I figured I’d watch, on the chance that he’d be going out. The moment he left, I planned to rush back and steal the postcard.’