Authors: Allen Drury
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary, #Genre Fiction, #Political, #Contemporary Fiction
Decision (26 page)
He didn’t want any of this two-, three-, four-year lag on this one.
He wanted justice and he wanted it
now.
“Justice NOW!” he muttered to himself.
“Enough is enough.
Justice NOW!”
The two thoughts made a nice combination.
Hell, they made a damned good pair of slogans for a nationwide organization.
Rapidly he sketched his ideas for its seal on a memo pad.
That, he told himself with satisfaction, made a mighty effective sign. Harassed men and women throughout the nation could rally around that one. They could also rally around its founder and leader, who suddenly saw himself in mind’s eye standing on endless flag-draped platforms stretching into infinity while millions beyond number roared their approval and in gratitude began to talk, in a great ground swell that would not be denied, of higher things.
Well—he snorted and stopped himself short. There’s a long way to go yet, Regard, boy, he thought dryly; y’all better stop sellin’ those chickens before their mammies have even laid the eggs. Right now you’ve got to organize. And you’ve also got to send that boy Earle Holgren right back to his Maker the fastest possible way you know how.
And that, he reminded himself in sudden glumness, is not going to be easy.
He picked up the eavesdropping stenographer’s notes, which he had read already several times, and ran through them once again. Illegal as hell, he couldn’t use a damned bit of it in court, but it was enlightening and helpful, anyway, even if it did leave a lot of things unanswered. At least he knew the nature of his opponents better. One of them was a cold-blooded killer absolutely beyond conscience and morality. The other was a wide-eyed, tensed-up female ideologue, innocent and idealistic on the one hand and on the other a shrewd, sharp, calculating little legal whiz kid who would be like a terrier in her defense of what she saw as her client’s “statement.”
“You want to ‘join it,’ sister,” he said aloud with another snort. “You want to ‘join it’! Well, by God, aren’t you the one, though.”
But that didn’t mean the calculating part of her wouldn’t be a damned tough legal barrier. Particularly when, as he knew full well, she would have behind her the support of a number of famous well-heeled people and organizations and very likely a substantial share of major media as well. Not that any of them would condone outright or even indirectly what Earle Holgren had done in taking three lives and possibly destroying a fourth: but they would be inclined to sympathize with what he had done to the plant, and they would be very anxious that his “legal rights” be protected, and they would be very hypersensitive to anybody who seemed to be critical of what they conceived to be a sincere, if misguided and possibly even extreme, social protester.
Who was this mysterious guy in New York Debbie mentioned who had called her in? She hadn’t named any names, but Holgren obviously knew at once whom she meant. His personal lawyer, maybe? Some left-winger who kept an eye on cases like Holgren’s and stood by to help out when needed? Maybe even some Commie, which wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility at all according to the FBI reports Regard had received in the past three hours, covering the Sixties and Seventies when Holgren had been getting in deeper and deeper. Or maybe even Holgren’s rich old man, who feared and despised everything Holgren stood for and abhorred what he had done but nonetheless might have answered the call of parenthood in an emergency, as so many of the poor pathetic abandoned bastards did when their kids who hated them got into trouble.
A lot of possibilities. So far the FBI hadn’t come up with it and maybe they wouldn’t; but it was something to hammer on, anyway; something to throw Miss Deb off balance, perhaps. Something to speculate about in the media, most of whose members might despise what
he
was doing, but could be trapped by a clever man into using their own news channels to distribute his claims and allegations nationwide.
Yep, the evening news was where it was going to be fought out, equally with the courtroom: because he was going to make damned sure that the evening news came right inside the courtroom. He had his move on that all planned. The evidence so far might be all circumstantial but the conclusions to be drawn by the public could be crushingly decisive if he played them right. He damned well intended to.
He looked for a thoughtful moment at his freehand seal of Justice NOW! Any able draftsman could whip it into shape in ten minutes. By nightfall of this very day coming up, stickers, decals, T-shirts, ashtrays, banners, placards, you name it, could be streaming off assembly lines. He had a friend right here in Columbia who was in the novelty business: they saw eye to eye on the crime situation, and Regard bet he’d be willing to contribute most everything at a quarter cost, if not even right-out free. And he’d also bet that his friend Ted Phillips in California knew or could quickly find similar resources out there. In a week they’d have the country blanketed from one side to the other. Given the state of mind people were in about the situation, Justice NOW! could very well be the fastest-growing organization ever dreamed up in America. The confirming thing was that there had been no necessity to dream it up: it was there full-blown, a natural, a child of the times.
He glanced at his watch: three-thirty. It was half-past midnight in Sacramento. He dialed the home number Ted Phillips had given him. A drowsy young female voice answered. In a moment Ted came on.
“I’ve got me an idea,” Regard said without preliminary. “Listen to this.”
“That’s great!” Ted Phillips enthused when he finished telling him about his plans to make Earle the symbol, and about Justice NOW! “That—is—
great!
I don’t see how it can miss.”
“Want to be vice-president?”
There was a pause of several seconds: Regard knew what was happening. Ted Phillips was calculating all the political angles, just as he had himself. He was confident of the outcome. Popular concern was so great that there could only be one.
“I think it’s the best way to channel this threat of vigilantism into constructive and useful channels,” Ted said slowly. “This is the compromise solution we have all been seeking, between unbridled public vengeance and the slackness and inadequacy of the present criminal justice system. This is the answer. This is the middle ground. Justice NOW! will lead the way.”
“Save that,” Regard said jovially, “and use it. The answer, in other words, is yes.”
“The answer is yes,” the attorney general of California said, “and I couldn’t be happier to sign on. What about a national convention? The sooner the better, I’d think.”
“That’s a damned good idea,” Regard agreed. “We’ll tie it right in with the case. I’m not standin’ for any delays in this matter. He’s got him a shrewd little biddy who I have the feelin’ is a pretty good little lawyer, but I’m not puttin’ up with any nonsense. We aren’t goin’ to drag
this
case out for the next five years. We’re goin’ to move and
move fast.
The whole country is goin’ to demand it—except that, God damn it, I’ve got my work cut out for me to prove he did it. Wish me luck.”
“I do that,” Ted Phillips said. “If I think of any way to help, I will. It’s good to get
moving.”
“Justice NOW!” Regard remarked.
“Enough,” Ted rejoined cheerfully, “is
enough.”
And enough of this damned hectic night is about enough for me this very minute, Regard told himself as he sent his compliments to Mrs. Phillips and bade his new friend and colleague good night. It was now nearing 4 a.m. and he had been up for almost twenty-two hours straight, the last eight of them on the merry-go-round of what he was already capitalizing mentally as
State of South Carolina v. Earle Holgren.
He had damned well better get on home and get at least three or four hours’ sleep. The new day was going to be equally busy.
First, though, he decided he had better draft his formal statement to the media while everything was still fresh in his mind. He decided he would call a formal conference for 10 a.m. to start the ball rolling and at that time would put the whole thing in perspective. Wearily, yet with a final surge of strength that came from an iron constitution and an iron will, fortified by genuine indignation and an unwavering ambition, he began to write in the silence of his book-lined office.
“Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow Americans and friends of justice:
“As you all know, there occurred in South Carolina last night a dastardly horrible crime against lives and property.
“The property was the atomic energy plant at Pomeroy Station.
“That can be rebuilt.
“The lives were those of two young girls, a young woman and a male child of approximately six months in age.
“They can never be rebuilt.
“A possible suspect is being held pending further investigation.
“There is substantial indication that the attack was not only upon the atomic plant per se, but upon the institution of the Supreme Court of the United States. In addition to disrupting the plant, it seems clear there was a clear intention to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mossiter Pomeroy and through his death do grievous damage to the faith and confidence Americans have in their judicial system.
“Unhappily, as many Americans recognize with alarm and dismay, that judicial system is at the moment in substantial disarray. This episode makes that sad fact even clearer. Will we now have endless delays, endless legal quibbles, devious and dilatory obstructionist tactics by unprincipled lawyers—” Ah, there, Debbie! he thought. How y’all, gal? “—and a complaisant tenderness for an obvious murderer on the part of too-lenient, too-‘liberal’ judges?
“Not in South Carolina. Not in an America whose people cry out more desperately than ever in the face of these latest awful crimes,
‘Enough is enough! We want Justice NOW!’
Not when the Supreme Court, the very cornerstone of our laws and our liberties, has been directly, viciously, wantonly attacked with consequent loss of one beautiful young life, the possibly permanent damaging of another, and who knows what dark reasons for two additional deaths?
“It is time now to change all this once and for all. It is time for America to return to the concept not only of ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ which is the great motto of the Supreme Court, but to equal justice under law
swiftly rendered and speedily carried out.
“America has been patient too long.
“America has been lax too long.
“America has freed her criminals and punished their victims too long.
“Enough is enough!
“America wants Justice NOW!”
And in a separate statement, which he would dictate to his secretary first thing in the morning and release simultaneously with his spoken word, he would announce the formation of Justice NOW! Immediately after that would come Ted Phillips’ endorsement from California, and they would be off and running.
Earle Holgren, you murderous psychopath, he thought with satisfaction, you’ve started something a little bigger than you planned, boy. We’re going to use you to hang the whole kit and caboodle as high as we can haul you. From now on this country is going to be on the march. At last we’re goin’ to clean up this criminal mess from coast to coast and border to border. At last all you worthless murdering bastards, you scum of the earth, are going to meet your match. Enough is
Enough.
He picked up the phone, called the jail and told them to rouse Earle Holgren immediately.
“He’ll just be restin’ nicely,” he said. “You go in there with all lights blazin’ and start poundin’ him with questions the minute you get him awake. Don’t give him time to collect his thoughts, just go after him. Then let him sleep again. But don’t let him sleep more than an hour or two at a time. Keep up the routine as long as it takes. He’ll break one of these days. Or he’ll be damned sorry he didn’t.”
No more rough stuff whose results people could see, for Earle Holgren; but there were, as Regard Stinnet had learned in the terrifying three months he had been a prisoner of the communists in Vietnam, other ways.
He got up from his desk, started to snap off the lights. On a sudden impulse he returned to the desk, took a book from a shelf behind it, opened to a familiar picture. Across the stately white pillars and EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW he slapped the hand-drawn seal of Justice NOW!
“We’ll see, friends,” he said with a grim little chuckle. “We’ll see.”
Then he roared off home in his armored Mercedes and fell into a heavy sleep for four hours, rising fresh as a daisy, as he proudly told Carolyn, to face the excitement of the day on which Justice NOW! would be born.
***
Chapter 3
In Washington, those who lived and worked under the banner Regard had thus, in his own mind, improved upon, arose in more troubled mood. It was a Saturday morning and normally not more than three or four would have gone to their offices. Today, drawn by a compelling and irresistible urge to seek the reassurance of one another’s company, they were all in the building by nine o’clock. Shortly thereafter the Chief called them to the Conference Room.
He had ordered a wide-screen television. He adjusted the picture, reduced the sound to inaudibility and turned to face them.
“Good morning,” he said quietly. “Mr. Stinnet of South Carolina is going to be performing in a few minutes. I thought we should watch.”
“By all means,” Justice McIntosh said. “Have you heard from—?”
“Neither,” The Elph said, “and aside from my first call expressing our condolences, I haven’t tried to reach them. I didn’t think we should intrude until they want to contact us.”
“Oh, certainly not,” she agreed. “I just wondered.”
“I’ll admit my impulse has been to call every hour on the hour,” he said with a sad wryness, “but I suppressed it.”
“I expect we’ve all felt that way,” Wally Flyte said. “I still can’t believe it happened. The national evil has landed on our doorstep now, all right.”
The Chief Justice nodded unhappily, and gestured to the television screen. A reporter was mouthing something as the camera opened on a crowded press room and a tall, lanky, well-dressed individual appeared on the podium. “I think Mr. Stinnet is about to tell us everything he wants us to know.”
Hughie Demsted, seated nearest the machine, got up and increased the volume. Then they settled back attentively as the commentator said in a hushed voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, Regard Stinnet, attorney general of South Carolina…”
In a voice he made deliberately heavy and emphatic, Regard ran through his prepared statement. He had made only one significant change. He had awakened with the conviction that this really
was
the big chance. He had decided that if he was going to gamble he had better gamble and gamble big. It was time to throw the dice or call the game. He disclosed the identities of Janet and John Lennon Peacechild and he had revised the key paragraph so that it now read:
“A suspect is being held pending further investigation by the FBI, by my office and by the district police and local government officials at Pomeroy Station. The name of this individual is Earle Holgren, though he has used numerous aliases over the past few years. He is a former resident of Greenwich, Connecticut, thirty-six years of age. He was a student radical in college and has since been engaged in various underground activities and protest movements of a radical nature. There appears to be sufficient evidence to link him to the crimes at Pomeroy Station. We believe we will have enough to obtain an indictment before the day is out. Should conviction occur, I am serving formal notice now, according to the laws of South Carolina, which require thirty days’ notice of such intention, that the death penalty will be sought.”
He raised a peremptory hand to still the clamoring questions that immediately arose and went firmly on with his planned peroration concerning the sad state of the criminal justice system, the attack on the Supreme Court and, finally, the demand for Justice NOW!
He began folding his notes at the lectern as the questions, surging and insistent and featuring now famous national names and faces, rushed there from far beyond the familiar statehouse crowd in Columbia, began to besiege him. For a moment or two he appeared about to answer, his expression still earnest, open and sincere, eyes thoughtfully widened, but just then (Right on schedule! he thought with satisfaction) a telephone rang at a table off to one side of the platform and behind him an aide leaped to get it.
“Mr. Stinnet!” he cried excitedly. “It’s for you, Mr. Stinnet! It’s Mr. Ted Phillips, the attorney general of California!”
“What the hell—?” a famous voice among the media inquired. But the networks knew, for instantaneously there appeared before the Justices in Washington and before all their many millions of countrymen and women who were watching that day, a split screen: Regard to the left, Ted Phillips to the right.
Solemnly Regard offered the vice-chairmanship of Justice NOW!
Solemnly Ted accepted.
“Thank you, my friend,” Regard said. “I know that you agree with me that
all
states should be represented on the board of this organization, as all states and all citizens are directly involved in the war against violent crime. Therefore I shall appoint all of our fellow attorneys general to serve as associate vice-chairmen of Justice NOW! Very soon I shall convene a meeting of all who desire to come.
“I think,” he said in a tone that would, he knew, make it very difficult for any to refuse, “that most of us care enough about lifting terror from the backs of our citizens and restoring true justice to America to attend. Together we will plan how best to organize to bring that justice back to America.
“Meantime”—he looked once more earnestly, directly into the cameras, “meantime, what can the honest men and women of America do? You can join us, I say to you, my countrymen and women! You can join Justice NOW! We don’t need your money—except maybe no more than a dollar apiece to help defray expenses of a small secretarial staff, because I know there are going to be so many, many millions of you that a dollar apiece will be more than ample. The main thing we need is your support—your strong, articulate, loyal, patriotic, law-loving, law-abiding, law-strengthening support, which will give us literally the strength of millions from all across this beloved, worried land.
“Send your names to me, Regard Stinnet, Attorney General, Columbia, South Carolina.
Do it today!
Together we will raise a mighty army to strike the shackles from the law! Together we will smite the transgressors and drive them from our streets and cities! Together we will do battle for the Lord and for the safety of ourselves, our children and our society! Join us!
Join us!
Together we will be invincible!
Enough is enough! Justice NOW!”
And, face aglow with mission and purpose, he replaced the telephone receiver on its hook. On the other side of the split screen, his face also appearing enrapt in vision, Ted Phillips almost reverently did the same.
For a long moment there was utter silence in the crowded press room in Columbia, in the Conference Room of the Supreme Court of the United States and indeed in most places across an entire continent within sound of Regard Stinnet’s voice.
“Whooo-eee,” Justice Demsted said softly as he got up and went to the machine. “That’s some attorney general. May I, Chief?”
“Yes, turn it off,” Duncan Elphinstone said with a little shudder of distaste; and when Hughie had done so and returned to his seat, the Chief drew a long, thoughtful breath, gave them a moody glance and said,
“Well.”
“It doesn’t look good, does it, Dunc?” Wally Flyte remarked softly. Clem Wallenberg snorted.
“It looks like bloody hell and damnation for everybody,” he said. “This is exactly what we’ve been afraid of, and now it’s come. What do we propose to do about it?”
“What can we do about it?” Ray Ullstein inquired. “It hasn’t come up to us, and it won’t for a while yet. Maybe never, if some clever advocate gets hold of it and gets this individual released.”
“I don’t think anybody will be released from this one,” Hughie Demsted said. “I think this Stinnet has the country’s mood analyzed perfectly. There’s going to be enormous pressure for a fast trial and a fast conviction, unless I miss my guess.”
“And the death sentence,” the Chief Justice said gloomily.
“And an appeal to us,” May McIntosh predicted. “And there—we—are.”
“You shouldn’t object,” Justice Hemmelsford remarked tartly. “That will give you and Clem a chance to write more brilliant opinions pointing out how awful the death sentence is. Those of us who happen to believe in simple justice won’t have a chance to be heard in all the approving uproar.”
“I don’t know that it will be all that approving,” Justice McIntosh retorted with some asperity. “If the public clamor is as heavy as Hughie thinks it will be, then we may find ourselves very much in the minority, not only here but nationally.”
“This is an anti-death-sentence Court—” Justice Demsted began. He paused. “Or is it?”
“I know you were counting on picking up Tay Barbour’s vote,” Rupert Hemmelsford said with some spitefulness in his voice, “but where does Tay Barbour stand now? It suddenly isn’t an academic question for him and Moss, is it?”
“It suddenly isn’t academic for any of us,” Justice Wallenberg growled. “And maybe it’s a good thing. We get entirely too removed and Olympian on this Court. We tend to be pretty arrogant and self-righteous sometimes. Maybe it’s good to have real life yank us down off the bench and rub our noses in the filth and unhappiness of this world once in a while. One of our brethren almost lost his life yesterday; his child did. The child of another is apparently hanging between life and death. Maybe it’s good for us to have to live with reality for a change. Not, of course, that I’m happy it happened the way it did, you understand me. But maybe it’s time we were humbled. We play God too much in this building.”
There was startled silence for a moment. Mary-Hannah adjusted her pince-nez and looked at them thoughtfully.
“I quite agree. Here we sit in our nine separate chambers like little tin gods, above the law, above the people, even, thanks to John Marshall”—she smiled wryly—“and may he preserve us from the ebb of public support as he has for so many long, long years—above the Congress and above the President. We
are
too Olympian sometimes. We
are
guilty of too much righteousness. But how can we feel that way now, when ‘law and order’ is suddenly taking on a very grave and potentially lawless aspect? I’m dreadfully worried, myself. One unbalanced murderer is starting to shake the whole fabric of American justice—indeed the whole fabric of American society. If he’s the type he appears to be, I’m sure he’s enjoying it thoroughly. And his case
is
coming up to us sooner or later, of that I’m sure. Probably sooner. How do we reconcile our sworn duty to the country and the law with the problem he poses?”
“How do we deal with the problems Stinnet and his sidekick in California pose?” Rupert Hemmelsford inquired gloomily. “That’s the immediate issue. Like you, May, I’m worried as hell. This ‘Justice NOW!’ bit is not a very happy idea, in my estimation. They’re going to have the whole country riled up by nightfall.”
“It is already,” Duncan Elphinstone said with equal gloom. “I wish there were something we could do. I’d like to issue a statement deploring it, but that would be too much of a shock, I suppose.”
“It would only bring great criticism,” Justice Flyte said, “and anyway, how could you? Their ostensible purpose—in fact, I don’t have any reason to doubt them, I think their genuine purpose—is law and order. They
do
want to re-establish and strengthen it. They
are
genuinely appalled by the spread of violent crime. I’ll grant you Stinnet is using it to make political hay, but the bottom line is still violence, lawlessness and wanton disregard for life. That’s something every decent citizen can relate to, and millions of them are doing so, right now. And as you say, Hughie, it’s going to bring enormous pressures.
“Convict and kill:
that’s all the majority wants to do to this guy right now. There’re going to be some very fundamental issues raised by this case, I’m afraid; and I’m afraid it won’t be at all clear-cut.” He sighed heavily. “Sister and brethren, thanks to little Mr. Earle Holgren, we, like everybody else, face one hell of a problem.”
“And the biggest problems of all, of course,” the Chief said sadly, “are those faced by Moss and Sue-Ann and Tay and Mary. I only wish we could help them.” His eyes were sad and far away. An answering sadness fell upon them all as the law sank suddenly into the background and the full import of the human tragedy rushed back. “I only wish we could.…”
But whether anybody could was a question to which, Tay decided as the day wore on, there was as yet no answer. Certainly he did not seem able to find one: it was all he could do to keep on an even keel himself. He received no help from Mary. She remained closed off in her private world, and though he tried several times, he could not break through.
After their interview with the doctors and their brief talk with the Pomeroys, they had returned to the room where Janie was sleeping. A nurse hovered, and at first he suffered this, uneasily but with some patience. Mary did not.
“Would you mind getting out?” she snapped suddenly. The nurse, a kind-faced woman whom he judged to be in her later fifties, responded with a startled look.
“I’m here on doctor’s orders, ma’am,” she said politely; and added, more firmly, “and here I intend to stay until ordered otherwise.”
“I’m ordering you otherwise,” Mary said harshly. The nurse did not flinch.
“Indeed,” she said. “I meant doctor’s orders, Mrs. Barbour. Those are
my
orders.”
“Not against the wishes of the family,” Mary said crisply. “Do I have to go and get the doctor and make a scene of it?”
The nurse started to respond on the order of, “You are already,” visibly caught herself just in time.
“I shall go and talk to him myself,” she said with dignity.
“Please do,” Mary said. “And take your time about it. There’s no need for you to hurry back.”
“Whatever he says,” the nurse said coldly and went out, lips tightly pressed, hostility and disapproval in every step.
“Why did you have to do that?” he inquired automatically; he was really too tired and emotionally exhausted to care. But it seemed something should be said.
“Because I am in torment,” his wife said in a dead voice. “I am in hell. I have to let it out somehow. Would you rather I turned on you?”
“I’m more used to it than that poor woman,” he said with a sad indifference. “Go ahead.”
“Sometimes, Taylor Barbour,” she replied in the same desolate tone, “I think you have no feelings whatsoever. Sometimes I think you are composed of the law, of ambition, a reasonably large endowment of brains—and nothing. Nothing at all. There is no heart. Somewhere it got left out.”
