Decision (62 page)

Chapter 4

The great white building stood serene and untroubled in the hot, steamy night, once more looking as majestic and pure as it had before the throngs of Justice NOW! had seen fit to desecrate its lampposts and paint graffiti on its outside walls. All traces of its recent riotous days were gone, removed by crews from the Capital’s Department of Buildings and Grounds, working around the clock until the task was done. Now the edifice seemed the same as ever. Softly lighted, stately and beautiful, it stood again as it had stood for five decades, the high and impressive citadel of the law, its dignity jostled for a second or two in history’s long passage but not, seemingly, in any fundamental way dislodged.

All was peaceful around it now, on this typically breathless late June evening; and never had the words EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW seemed more impressive, or more unassailable, to the casual passers-by.

Of these there were not many as the last shreds of Washington’s slow twilight faded finally into night. An occasional tourist couple sightseeing arm in arm, careful to walk close to the streetlamps whose pools of light shone down comfortingly through the thickly bending trees; an occasional slow-moving taxi, its occupants on the same sightseeing mission; a few late students and researchers hurrying nervously to their cars from the neighboring Library of Congress, feeling fortunate if they had been able to find parking space in a lighted area, walking with an extra quickness if they had not; an occasional late-working law clerk emerging from the building itself to make the same quick, uneasy progress to car, taxi or bus. Not a very good area to be in at night, for all the building’s beauty; and deserted accordingly. Not many people … not much traffic … not much doing at the Court, this night.

The guard at the desk just inside the tall bronze doors was half-sleeping out his shift, from time to time leafing idly through the pages of the final edition of the
New York Times,
which he had already perused a dozen times. Things were back to normal again. The big excitement was over and everybody at the Court, thankfully, could go back to the routine as usual. It was a good routine, he reflected, and he liked it: not too fast, not too slow, just enough to keep a man interested, not make him too bored but not ask too much of him, either. These last few days had been exciting, he couldn’t deny that, and it had been fun for a little while to have everything tensed up so you didn’t know from one minute to the next but what some crackpot might try to break in the door or cause an uproar in the chamber. But that wasn’t right, for this place; that wasn’t the Court. He liked it just the way it always had been as long as he could remember, and that’s how it was once again, right now. He hoped they’d seen the last of the hectic times. A few days of that were enough to last a long, long while, as far as he was concerned.

Tonight, for instance, had been typical so far of what he usually found on this shift, now that it had all simmered down and things were back to normal again: a few outgoing law clerks and staff people; a few incoming, to catch up on piled-up work; now and again a late researcher to use the library, authorized by a Justice or sometimes, in a courtesy occasionally granted by the Court to its fellow branch, by a member of Senate or House. This evening he had admitted two or three of those, a couple of women and one fellow who said he had a pass from one of the North Dakota Senators. The Congress was out of town for the Fourth of July recess and there wasn’t any way to check this. The fellow had looked reliable and seemed to be intelligent and knew what he was talking about, so the guard had waved him on in.

Usually there were two or three of the Justices, sometimes more, working late; last week they had all been in, at all hours, working on the Holgren case. But now they were in recess, too, and he didn’t know how many were actually still in town. Most times they cleared out as soon as the term ended and skedaddled for their summer hideouts; nobody saw ’em until sometime in mid-September when they began to drift in to get ready for the October term. Right now, as far as he knew, the only one left around was Justice Barbour, and the only reason he knew that was because the Justice had come in, not very long ago—about half an hour before the last researcher, as a matter of fact—and had stopped to chat a bit before going to his chambers.

“Thought you’d be on vacation, Justice,” the guard had remarked with respectful familiarity, and the Justice had smiled, though in a rather preoccupied way. He must still be burdened down with the Holgren case, the guard thought.

“Don’t worry,” the Justice said. “I’m going to be on my way just as soon as I can get everything cleared up in my office. I still have some things to take care of.”

“Hope it won’t take you long, in this weather,” the guard observed. The Justice nodded.

“It’s a bear, isn’t it? But then, Washington in summer always is. I think about a week more, and then I’m going to get out of here. Anybody else still around?”

The guard had told him that as far as he knew, there wasn’t.

“Not tonight, anyway. You’ve got the building to yourself, almost.”

“Good,” Justice Barbour had said. “Then I can really get a lot done.”

He had gone off along the Great Hall, past the busts of the Chief Justices, and disappeared around the corner. In mind’s eye the guard could see him going along the empty corridor that paralleled the chamber and then around to the back corridor, and so along to his own chambers. He was going to be a good man on the Court, the guard thought and chuckled. He’d certainly started out with a bang!

Twenty minutes later there had been this researcher, and he too seemed pleasant: a youngish sort of fellow, clean-shaven, with a good tan, carrying a couple of yellow legal pads under one arm; curious himself about who was in the building, after he’d explained that his North Dakota Senator had sent him. The guard didn’t see anything wrong in his curiosity, it was a natural thing in such a famous place, but he’d shrugged it off with an easy smile and a “Nobody of any importance.”

“Oh,” the researcher said, sounding disappointed. “I thought I saw Justice Barbour come in a few minutes ago.”

“Must have been a look-alike,” the guard said comfortably. “No Justices tonight. Sorry.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” the researcher said. “I’ve got a lot of stuff to dig out in the library, anyway. Shouldn’t stand around sightseeing. Which way,” he added politely, “is the library?”

“You haven’t been here before?” the guard asked, a little surprised though he shouldn’t have been, they got a lot of strangers in all the time to use the Court’s more than 200,000 volumes. “I’ll call somebody from the guardroom to come and show you up.”

And he started to pick up the intercom, but the researcher smiled and said, rather quickly, “Oh, no, don’t bother anybody. Just tell me. I’ll find it.”

“Afraid we have orders,” the guard said with pleasant firmness, and put in a call. But that was just the moment, he found out later when it had happened and the Court was again the focus of the world’s shocked attention, that his buddy had decided to go to the men’s room. So after the phone had rung a couple or three times he shrugged, turned and gestured and said, “Well, you go down to the end there, turn right, and just around the corner there’s a little elevator you can take up to the third floor, which is the library floor. There’ll be a guard there who can direct you on in.”

“Thanks a lot,” the researcher said, and added casually,

“Where are the Justices’ offices?”

“They turn left where you turn right to the elevator,” the guard said. “But the public isn’t allowed back there.”

“Oh, I know,” the researcher said amicably; and casually asked one last question:

“Many guards on duty tonight?”

“One or two on each floor,” the guard said. He smiled. “We had eight or ten last week in the midst of that Holgren business, but it’s all calmed down now.”

“I hope they catch the bastard,” the researcher said. “I see where he’s got out. And they think he maybe killed that Regard Stinnet, too.”

“Yes,” the guard said somberly and added with some vehemence, “I hope they catch him. He deserves everything he gets!”

“He sure does,” the researcher said with a sudden smile. “He sure does. Well, thanks a lot. See you later.”

It was only after he too had disappeared at the end of the Great Hall that it occurred to the guard to wonder idly why, if he had been close enough to the building to see Justice Barbour enter, he had asked about him; and why it had taken him twenty minutes before he himself had come in. Then he dismissed it with a shrug and forgot about it. It didn’t seem to have any significance at the time. Nor did he call up to the third floor, as he was to regret bitterly later, and alert the guard there that a researcher was on his way.

Official Washington, even now, is not really a very careful city. It is still an essentially good-natured and trusting place in which an Earle
Holgren, comfortably presumed to be fugitive in the South, can enter a casually guarded Supreme Court without arousing alarm.

At his back, and all around him, the guard had the comfortable feeling of the silent building: its interior lights burning low, its atmosphere hushed, a few people working, the night lengthening on, the powerful atmosphere of the law going forward at its own inexorable pace—a sense of power, serenity, stability, peace.

“I hoped you might be home,” he said over his private line, “but I didn’t dare think I’d be so lucky.”

“And why not?” she asked, sounding very pleased. “Actually, I ought to bawl you out and refuse to speak to you. You said you’d call me for sure
last
night, not tonight. Have you any concept of what I’ve been through in the past twenty-four hours?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, quickly serious. “I really am. I do know, because I’ve been through it too. But it hasn’t exactly been my fault. That is, it has but it hasn’t, if you know what I mean.”

“Well, not exactly, no,” she said with a chuckle. “Am I supposed to?”

“If you’re going to be a Justice’s wife,” he said. “It’s really taken me all this time to come to terms with myself and really decide once and for all that I did the right thing. Now I’m sure.”

“Do you mind,” she said carefully, “if we back up for a minute? Did you say, ‘If you’re going to be a Justice’s wife’?”

“That is what I said.”

“I thought that’s what you said.”

“It
is
what I said. Really, now, what a ridiculous conversation!”

“I am going to be a Justice’s wife?”

“Well, of course,” he replied lightly, “if your honor wishes to reject appellant’s request—”

“How come appellant is in a position to make the request?” she asked, an excited amusement beginning to run under her words. “Is she actually going to give you a divorce?”

“She is actually going to give me a divorce.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“Believe it.”

There was a pause. For just a panicky moment he wondered if for some wild unknown reason she might say No. He dismissed it at once but decided he had best plunge on.

“Therefore, as I say, appellant
does
request, if your honor pleases—”

“Yes,” she interrupted with a shaky little laugh, “my honor does please. And so does all the rest of me.”

“Good,” he said, sounding so relieved that she began to laugh, wholeheartedly.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, puzzled.

“You sound so like a little boy all of a sudden. As though you thought I might not.”

“Well,” he said cautiously, “I didn’t know.”

“Well, now you do. The decision, unanimous, is yes. All right?”

“All right,” he said humbly. “And thank you.”

“Oh, my dear,” she said, trying to sound light and bright and fashionably uncaring, but not really succeeding at all. “Thank
you.”

“I love you.”

“I love you … where are you, incidentally? I haven’t even asked. At home?”

“At the Court.”

“At the Court!” she exclaimed with a sudden genuine dismay. “Haven’t you heard that Earle Holgren has escaped?”

“So?”

“What do you mean, ‘So?’” she demanded sharply. “He’s killed Regard Stinnet—”

“We don’t know that for sure, yet. There are plenty of fanatics running around loose on both sides of that issue.”

“But—”

“Anyway, he’s in the South somewhere, he isn’t up here. And we have guards on duty. The Court’s safe. Everything’s back to normal.”

“I know you have guards,” she said impatiently, “but he’s psychotic, and if he’s set out on some jag to murder everybody connected with his trial that he can lay his hands on—”

“Cathy, Cathy!” he said. “Stop being so melodramatic! They’re after him, they’ll get him. He wouldn’t do anything so obvious as try to kill
me
in any case. After all, why should he? I only spoke for the Court. And I saved his life, didn’t I? I could have voted for the death penalty.”

“But he doesn’t
reason
like that. He’s
crazy!”

“Well, I assure you he isn’t here,” he said firmly. “The place is practically deserted, the guards are on the job—”

“I’m worried,” she said bleakly. “And I think you should be too. I think you should have your own special guards—”

“Oh, Cathy! That would be ridiculous.”

“You men are so—so—
stupid
sometimes,” she said. “So phony-brave-
macho.
I’m scared, can’t I get that through to you?”

“Well, look,” he said patiently. “Will you feel any better if I come over soon? I’ll be through in a little while. Why don’t I hide out with you for the night? Surely he won’t know how to find me there!”

“Now you’re making fun of me,” she said soberly, “and I find I resent it. I am
worried about this.”

“Well, don’t be,” he said comfortably. “Everything is quite all right. Believe me.”

“I hope so,” she said bleakly. “Oh, my dear,
I
hope so.”

“It is,” he said firmly. “It is. I’ll see you soon. Don’t worry, now. I’ll be along within the hour.”

“Yes,” she said, still troubled and uncertain.

And that, he supposed as he returned to his papers, was just another example of the leftovers that would probably haunt him for a long time from the damnable case.