Five Smooth Stones (79 page)

"It's my first capital case. Can't say I like 'em."

Brad came out, somber and slow-walking. "Ready, David?" He turned to the sheriff. "There was only one thing Martinez wanted. Or didn't want, I should say. Wanted to know if it could be fixed so his mother would stay the hell away from him."

"We can't fix it so she'll stay away, but I'll pass the word along that he doesn't want to see her. Can't anyone force him to see a visitor he doesn't want to see. Can't say I blame him after hearing her on the stand."

After Brad had put Rita Martinez on the stand, David realized it was this move that would have the greatest effect on the jury. Brad had been without semblance of mercy. There was not even a hint that he regarded her as a suffering, anxious mother, grief-stricken over what her son had done. He flirted dangerously with the possibility of a challenge that he was treating her as a hostile witness while he cut through the layers of self-pity like a surgeon cutting through layers of fat with a keen scalpel to get at vital organs; once the vital organs had been reached he revealed them as diseased and corrupt.

"Your son was identified by his stunted arm. Was this congenital?...Then how did it happen?... And the scar on his forehead. Was this injury also inflicted by his father?... Then if not his father, who was the man?... Please speak so the judge and jury can hear you.... Just a friend? Did you make no effort to save a small boy from these drunken beatings?...
Objection!...
Your honor, I am attempting..."

The prosecution had wisely avoided cross-examination, even though, as Brad pointed out to David, they might have brought out the fact that the boy was incorrigible. "Once upon a time it might have been possible to justify a broken arm and a head cut open by a belt buckle by pleading incorrigibility and the need for stern punishment. But not today. That's why I hung in there till I got a reasonably young jury with a better than average education. 'Child psychology' isn't a foreign phrase to them. A busted arm as the result of punishment for bed-wetting? They won't buy it."

While they had been sweating out the jury's deliberations, Brad said: "By the way, I've made arrangements for Rita Martinez to sell those diamonds. They're in our safe. I'll sit in on the sale."

"Yeah? How'd you do it?"

"Told her a few days ago I'd pull out of the case. Even Rita couldn't face what her conscience would do to her if she let her son burn so she could keep some jewels. She's too dumb to know I couldn't have done it in midtrial."

"Would you have? I mean if you could ethically?"

"Hell, no."

***

"Hey brat! Slow down and turn around; you just passed the house—"

Peg Willis must have already learned the verdict on the noon radio news and been waiting for them, because as David swung the car into a U-turn in front of the house she ran down the steps and across the sidewalk. It was when he saw Peg under circumstances like this, rather than when she had been drinking, that his sympathy for Brad was deepest. There was a kind of satisfaction in just looking at her tall handsomeness, the red-gold hair invariably swept back in loose waves from the. broad forehead, the warm dark beauty of her eyes. At times like these there were few indications of the inner drives of tension.

Now she leaned through the open window of the car, and drew Brad's head close, her kiss landing on the corner of his eye. "It was grand! I just heard it—"

"Hey! You passing those out?" David leaned forward, laughing up at her.

"Come in for coffee and I will."

"Lobster?" said Brad.

"Idiot! I don't keep them on hand—"

"Want to drive down to Stickney's for some? We're starving and restless."

"Love it, darling. Give me four minutes."

David watched her hurry into the house, and said, "Any other woman would have to do a jillion things—makeup, change clothes—"

"She'll make it in less than four minutes." Brad tapped nervous fingers on the window ledge of the car door. After a moment he said, "There's got to be an answer somewhere, David."

"Sure there has. One of these days it will show itself."

"I wonder. I can't help feeling that somehow it has something to do with me."

"That's a lot of bull and you know it. The pattern was there when you were married. It goes back beyond the time Peg even knew you."

"I'll grant the cause does. I'm talking about the effect, and overcoming it."

"I don't believe there isn't an answer and that you won't find it—my God! Here she comes. Three minutes flat—"

"That's what I said—"

***

After dinner David walked out on the wide veranda of the old-fashioned hotel near Marblehead. Stickney's was a big, rambling building, weatherbeaten outside, shabbily comfortable inside. It was in the hands now of the third generation of Stickneys. The veranda ran around three sides of the building, its easterly end overlooking the tumbling chaos of giant rocks spilling from the headland to the sea. He was alone; inside, Brad and Peg were still in the wide hallway that served as a lobby, talking with friends who had waylaid them as they left the dining room.

He walked to the eastern railing, leaning on it with his hands, looking out across an angry sea and then below at the mountainous cresting swells that rushed toward land with silent fury, finding voice at last as they spent themselves on the rocks below in a dying shout and final show of white, defiant beauty.

Brad's letdown had come immediately, as soon as they had left Pete Martinez in the jail. His own was coming now, sweeping over him in waves that grew higher as they rolled in, like the waves of the rising tide below. For him the most poignant loneliness had always followed good fortune rather than bad. I can ride out disappointment alone, he thought. I can rassle with trouble better alone, we all can. He had kidded Peg when she ran to the car and kissed Brad, but within him there had been sharp pain. Would he always, he wondered, all his life, cry out instinctively, in times like this: "Sara! Good news! Let me tell you—" then hear the cry die within him, unspoken, in desperate futility?

He tried to let the sound of the surf drown the sound of her voice that at a time like this could be within his mind soft and quick and loving, and louder than any thunder.

***

A voice just behind him said, "Don't be so sad."

He turned quickly to smile at Peg. "How'd you know?"

"You looked as though doom had just reared its ugly head right in front of you—"

"Maybe it had, Peg. Here—I'll get some chairs together."

"We can sit here for a while before the storm breaks. I love it when it's like this. You boys can have a drink while I guzzle coffee."

"Don't you mind?"

"Not in the least. I usually start wanting a drink when there isn't a drop within sight or reach. Right now it's repugnant."

Peg was being franker about what, for want of better identification, was known as her "problem" than David had ever known her to be.

"I just want a small, nonbulky drink," he said. He had been dreading for weeks any personal talks with Brad. The fact that Peg was there now he knew would not save him from a discussion of his contemplated trip to England. In fact, Brad might just be devious enough to bring it up because she was there, clearheaded and keen of judgment.

Brad came out carrying a tray with glasses and a cup of coffee. He set it down with a flourish on the wicker table in front of Peg and David. When David raised his eyebrow, questioningly, Brad said, "I know they don't sell it here, but old man Stickney has his own ideas of hospitality. His compliments, by the way."

David sipped, grinned, and said, "Gosh!"

"You don't hardly ever taste brandy like that no more," said Brad.

"No more?" said David. "I never have. I didn't grow up in rare old brandy circles."

"Never mind the rare old brandy. You're flirting with a real menace. Warm beer."

"Warm beer? Since when?"

Peg answered, laughing: "In England. I prefer it myself. Brad doesn't mind it, but you'd have a hard time getting used to it."

"I don't think I could." He turned to Brad in an effort to change the subject. "Know something, Brad? I've learned more about trial work, rules of evidence, that sort of thing, in this last trial than in all the years at school, swear I have."

"David, you're trying to wiggle off the hook," said Peg. "Brad's been saying you'd like to go to England, Oxford. Why?"

"Well, look—" He stirred uneasily. "Isn't just a desire to learn more a valid reason? Who told me that the learning of law never ends? Guy named Bradford Willis."

"Not quite, David," said Brad sharply. "You're taking what I said out of context. If you'll recall correctly I said that the learning of law is progressive, from history through statutes, all that—on up—and I said 'up'—through its application in the courts, to the needs of the people. And I said that it holds just as true in a dry-as-dust civil case as in a criminal case. What were your struggles with Litchfield if they weren't a valiant effort to fit into the framework of the law the affairs of a delightful but fuzzy-minded man who would never knowingly violate the law or hurt his fellowman but must nevertheless be bound by it? Did you have any real concept of the words 'reasonable doubt' until Mike Shea won that acquittal? Did you have any real knowledge of how the 'eye for an eye' concept of law can have its fangs drawn until the verdict this morning?"

"No, I didn't. I know you're right. My God, you're both on my back, and I haven't even mentioned England!"

"No, but you would, brat," said Peg. "Sooner or later you'd have to. So why not now? We're doing you a favor, really. Saving you hours of dread about bringing it up."

"Gee, thanks," said David miserably. "Thanks a lot."

"Tut-tut," said Peg.

"I suppose Peg is right," said Brad. "She usually is. More brandy to fortify you?"

David shook his head. "I still have some. You've both had me too rattled to drink it."

"Poor lamb," said Peg. "No. I withdraw that. Sympathy's the last thing you need."

The ancient wicker chairs on which they sat creaked with each shift of their occupant's position. There was still no wind, only the alternating roar and crash and snarl of the surf below them, and the homey sound of pliant wicker complaining as it gave way to their bodies' movements. David leaned forward, one finger picking absently at a piece of broken reed in the skirt of the tabletop in front of him. He was quiet for a long time. Neither Brad nor Peg offered help by speaking.

At last he said: "I don't know why everyone's wondering about my motive. I know what Brad's getting at, but it's not for very long. Less than a year." He glanced up and sideways at Brad. "You don't think, do you, that I'm doing it as a sort of prestige thing? So that when I walk into a courtroom people will say 'There's a Negro who went to Oxford?' Like driving up to a real-estate office in a white Caddie knowing damned well they haven't got a house they'd show a Negro, but getting my licks in anyhow? Or maybe being able to thumb my nose at white lawyers— 'Yah-yah—anything you can do I can do better—'"

"Oh, God, of course we don't!" snapped Peg. "That's childish. After Brad told you about the legacy, we used to lie awake at night and picture you tossing on a bed of guilt. Another piece of 'luck' you'd figure you weren't entitled to. It wouldn't have surprised me if Brad had come home some night and told me you'd decided to give it away."

David laughed in spite of his mental discomfort. "Who, me? Give it away? But—but—hell, as long as I have the money what's wrong with using it to give myself all the leverage I can?"

Brad leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, his eyes on the weathered rafters of the veranda's roof. "It's only my opinion, of course, but I don't think that's the kind of leverage that's needed at this point. Unless you want to take the political route. And even then I think a little of the rough-and-tumble, homegrown politics with which the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is so rife would be helpful. I mean before you tackle the abstract realms of political science."

"Politics? God, no! I'd be lousy."

"Don't be so damned sure. You might need a Brad Willis and a Mike Shea—certainly a Mike Shea!—standing in the prompter's box at first. And to hand you a knife now and then—after you'd learned to use it. The climate's ripening for a young crusader like you."

"Complete with knife?" He grinned. "Anyhow, I'm no crusader."

"In your own simple way you're just that If you'd get over this defeatism."

"I'm no defeatist either, damn it!"

"Perhaps not, basically. Or perhaps only occasionally. Anyhow, Klein agrees with me. Agrees with me, hell! He's the one who made me think about it. Mrs. Hubbard also agrees —and it was her husband who made her think about it He's much taken with you."

"We've met three times—"

"He prides himself on omniscience. There are others who have their eyes on you, among them the district attorneys of Middlesex and Suffolk counties. You could rally a hell of a lot of quiet support, David, if you started laying the groundwork for a political career. Who prepared the brief for Klein to submit, the one that challenged the right of Federal legislators from the State of Alabama to hold office?"

David rose and walked to the railing of the veranda, looking for a moment at the surf and the lead-green of the sea. When he walked back to the table he said slowly; "Look,

Brad. Please, for God's sake, don't get mad. I know I've had damned near everything handed to me. Sure, I've had some rough spots because I'm a Negro, just as you have, but nothing like what most of us go up against. This may be the last thing I'll have handed to me, and as I said before, it's not for long. You think I'm going to stay over there, for gosh sake? I can't practice law in England. There's a law against it!"

"David, my dear, sit down and relax." Peg's eyes were warm and understanding. "How often have you said that the Prof used to hammer at you constantly about being honest with yourself? A lot of times. You'll feel a lot better if you admit right now why you're going."