(1969) The Seven Minutes (2 page)

Fremont frowned. ‘This book was banned because - yes, I guess you might say it was banned in every country in the world because it was considered obscene. Until one big publisher in New York finally had the courage to say, Maybe the world’s grown up a little, at least some people, and maybe now’s the time to bring it out -because, whatever this book has been called, obscene or whatever, it is still a masterpiece.’

‘How can a book be obscene and still be a masterpiece?’

‘This one is. It’s both.’

‘Do you think the book obscene, Mr Fremont?’

‘Who am I to say? That’s only another word. There’s a four-letter word some people think is dirty and other people think is beautiful. So there we are. Some people, maybe most people, will say this is dirty, but there’ll be plenty of people who’ll say it’s worthwhile.’

‘Sophisticated readers, you mean.’

‘That’s right. They don’t give a damn about obscenity if in the end they have some great reading that gives them new insights and understanding into human nature.’

‘And this book does that ?’ asked Kellog.

‘It sure does.’

‘Despite those bannings ? What’s there about it ? I mean, what’s it about?’

‘Simple, very simple, like all great art,’ said Fremont. ‘A girl, young woman, is lying in bed thinking about love, that’s the essence.’

‘And that’s what the fuss is about ?’ said Kellog. ‘You almost had me interested, but when you put it that way - that sounds pretty dull.’

‘Dull ? Wait a minute, listen to me. I said she’s lying in bed, sure, but while she’s lying there she’s getting laid, I mean really laid. And all the while she’s thinking, on her back thinking, and Jadway shows us what’s in her mind about what’s happening to her down

below, and what’s in her mind about other men she’s had or ones she wished she’d had. The way it’s done - it’s enough to drive you crazy.’

Kellog grinned. ‘Sounds a little better now. That’s more like it. And you think this is the sort of thing my wife would enjoy ?’

Fremont grinned back. ‘It’ll sure take her mind off her kidney stone.’

‘How much is it?’

‘Six dollars and ninety-five cents.’

‘That’s a helluva lot of money for such a little book.’

‘Dynamite comes in small packages,’ said Fremont. ‘This is dynamite, guaranteed. The book’s not even out yet, officially, until next week. We get our shipments here on the Coast early, and so we had to unpack and put our copies right out because there was such a big demand since the advance advertising. Already Jadway’s our biggest seller.’

‘Wrap it up. You’ve sold me.’ Kellog had his wallet out. ‘Here’s a ten. Can you change a ten?’

‘Sure thing.’

Kellog waited as Ben Fremont rang up the sale, made change, then placed the receipt and the copy of The Seven Minutes in a striped paper bag.

‘I’m sorry I was such a tough customer,’ Kellog said apologetically.

Fremont smiled as he handed the striped bag across the counter. ‘I like a discerning customer. I don’t mind being challenged. Keeps me on my toes. And don’t worry about the book. It’ll help your wife get on her feet fast, believe me. Good day.’

The second that he was out in the sunlight once again, Kellog slid his hand inside his sport jacket and flipped the lever on the box beneath his armpit. Hastily he headed in the direction of the waiting Ford coupe, and as he did so he hoisted the striped paper bag above his head. Immediately Ike Iverson stepped out of the car, carrying a similar bag, and strode over to join him in front of the jewelry shop.

As they met, Kellog asked, ‘How did Eubank do in the back seat?’

‘Came in loud and clear,’ said Iverson. ‘Sa-ay, you were in there long enough.’

‘Those literary conversations take a little doing,’ said Kellog with a wink. He shook his purchase. ‘But it’s in the bag. Duncan’ll be happy. Well, we’d better start comparing.’

Kellog removed his copy of The Seven Minutes from the striped bag. He opened the book, found the loose end paper at the front of the book, located his pen, and carefully signed it with his initials and the date. When he finished, Iverson was beside him, also holding a copy of The Seven Minutes.

‘Ready? Let’s get it over with,’ said Iverson. ‘Same jacket and

title, right?’

‘Check.’

‘Same publisher, publication date, copyright, correct?’

‘Check.’

‘Same number of printed pages, right?’

‘Exactly, check.’

‘Let’s compare the marked passages in my book with the same pages in the book you just bought.’

‘Okay,’ said Kellog.

Working quickly, the two men compared a half-dozen pages.

“The same,’ concluded Iverson. ‘Well, Otto, the books are identical, agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

‘Guess we’d better pay Mr Fremont another visit.’

‘Yeah,’ said Kellog, returning his book to the bag.

‘Otto, don’t forget your Fargo unit.’

Kellog reached into his sport jacket, found the switch beside the microphone of his portable Fargo F-6Q0 intelligence unit. He pushed the lever. ‘It’s on.’

Briskly, striding in step, the two returned to Fremont’s Book Emporium and entered it.

Once inside, Kellog saw that Ben Fremont was still behind the counter next to the cash register, busy pouring a Coke into a large paper cup. Kellog led the way, with Iverson right behind him.

Fremont had just brought the soft drink to his lips when he recognized Kellog. ‘Why, hello again -‘

‘Mr Fremont,’ said Kellog,’ - you are Ben Fremont, proprietor of Fremont’s Book Emporium, aren’t you?’

‘What do you mean ? Of course I am. You know that.’

‘Mr Fremont, we’ll have to introduce ourselves officially. I am Sergeant Kellog, assigned to the Vice Bureau of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office.’ He held out his badge, then returned it to his pocket. ‘My partner here is Officer Iverson, also of the Sheriff’s Vice Bureau.’

The bookseller appeared bewildered. ‘I -I don’t get it,’ he said, setting his Coke down hard and spilling it. ‘What’s going on with - ?’

‘Ben Fremont,’ said Kellog, ‘we are placing you under arrest for violation of Section 311.2 of the California Penal Code. The Code states that every person who knowingly offers to distribute any obscene matter is guilty of a misdemeanor. Under Section 311a, “obscenity” means that to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the predominant appeal of the work in question, taken as a whole, is to prurient interest. That’s to say, the work goes beyond customary limits of candor in its descriptions, and is utterly without redeeming social importance. The District Attorney believes that the book The Seven Minutes, by J J Jadway, would be found obscene if taken to court, and therefore

you are to be put under arrest for selling that book.’

Ben Fremont, mouth agape, face ashen, gripped the counter’s edge, trying to find words. ‘Wait a minute, wait, now, you can’t arrest me. I’m just a guy who sells books. There are thousands of us. You can’t.’

‘Mr Fremont,’ said Kellog, ‘you are under arrest, absolutely. Now, for your own sake, don’t cause any trouble. We want all your invoices from Sanford House for purchased copies of this book. We’ve got to confiscate every copy of The Seven Minutes on the premises, and take them into our custody. We’ll also have to take that advertisement from the window, and any other promotional materials concerning the book.’

‘What about me?’

‘I thought you remembered the procedure. Never mind. We have a police vehicle outside. You will have to accompany us to the Sheriff’s Office on West Temple Street for booking.’

‘Sheriff’s Office ? For what - for what, dammit, I’m no criminal!’

Kellog became suddenly impatient. Tor selling an obscene work. Didn’t you yourself tell me ten or fifteen minutes ago -‘

Iverson hastily came forward, placing a restraining hand on Kellog’s shoulder. ‘One minute, Otto. Let me tell the gentleman his rights.’ He addressed himself to the bookseller. ‘Mr Fremont, everything you said before your arrest and everything you are saying now is being recorded by a wireless transmitter attached to Sergeant Kellog’s person and relayed to a magnetic tape recorder in our pohce vehicle outside. You did not have to be apprised of your rights before your arrest. Now that you are under arrest, it is my duty to warn you that you need answer no questions, that you have the right to remain silent, that you have the right to the presence of an attorney. Now you’ve been fully informed. If you want to ask questions, answer questions, that’s up to you.’

‘I’m not saying another word to either one of you, goddammit!’ Fremont shouted. ‘I’m not saying anything until I have an attorney!’

‘You can make a call,’ said Kellog, controlled. ‘You can call your attorney and have him meet you at the Sheriff’s headquarters.’

Instantly Fremont’s anger vanished, and what was left was fear. ‘I don’t have an attorney. I mean, I don’t even know one. I’ve only got an accountant. I’m just a -‘

‘Well, you can have the court appoint -‘ Kellog began.

‘No, no, wait,’ Fremont interrupted. ‘I just remembered. The publisher’s salesman, the Sanford House salesman out here, when he sold me the books he said - he said if there was ever any kind of trouble, to call him right away, because they were standing behind their book, and young Sanford, he’s the publisher, he’d pitch in, he’d get any one of us an attorney. I’m going to call their salesman. Can I call him?’

‘Make any call you want,’ said Kellog. ‘Only make it fast.’

Fremont grabbed for the telephone. But before dialing he stared at the officers. It was as if some new thought had crossed his mind and he was considering whether to speak what was on his mind. He spoke. ‘Listen, do you guys have any idea what you’re doing?’ he said, voice trembling. ‘You think it’s nothing. You think you’re just arresting some poor little nobody bookseller and that’s the end of it. Well, maybe you’re not. You know what you’re really doing? You’re arresting a dead author and his book - you’re arresting a book, something a man had to say. You’re arresting and fingerprinting a freedom, one of our democratic freedoms, and if you think that’s nothing, you wait and see what can happen….’

It was when he was driving along Wilshire Boulevard, halfway between the law office in Beverly Hills that he had just left forever and his three-room apartment in Brentwood, that the complete realization of what had happened to him struck Mike Barrett with its fullest impact.

After all the years of struggle, he was liberated.

He was one of the emancipated ones. He had made it.

From the corner of his eye, he could see the carton on the seat next to him. An hour ago he had filled it with the personal papers and effects that had accumulated on the firm’s walnut desk, the desk which had been his desk as an employee, for two years. The contents of the carton, in a way, represented the corpus of one frustrating, unfulfilled, second-rate legal career spanning a decade of his thirty-six years. The carton itself, the act of its removal, symbolized a victory that (on the blackest of the sleepless and self-hating nights) he had nearly given up hope of ever achieving.

It wanted a celebration, a triumphal parade, an arch, at least a garland. Well, they were all present in his head and his heart. But still, some outer celebration of independence won and success attained was required. Firmly holding the wheel of the car with one hand, he undid the knot of his tie with his free hand, and yanked the tie off. Next the shirt collar. He unbuttoned it and spread it open. Tieless at high noon of a working day. Lese-majeste in the kingdom of the American Bar Association, unless you are majeste himself. Then the Latin phrase came to him. Rex non potest peccare. The king can do no wrong.

God, what a lovely day. The sun, beautiful. The City of the Angels, beautiful. The people in the streets, his subjects, beautiful. Osborn Enterprises, Inc., beautiful. Faye Osborn, beautiful. All friends, beaut - No, maybe not all - not Abe Zelkin. Abe, beautiful, yes their friendship, yes, that too, except that it might not exist a few hours from now, and he felt guilty, and a blemish suddenly marred the face of joy.

He became aware of Westwood passing outside his top-down Pontiac convertible, and there were people, the sidewalks were crowded with people, and they were not his subjects applauding

him on this great day. They were Abe Zelkin admonishing him for selling out.

Honest Abe. Who the hell needs a conscience for a nag when he has a friend like Honest Abe?

Yet, curiously, and in truth, it had been Abe Zelkin who had planted the seed that had borne this day, the undoing of Zelkin and Barrett, the doing of Osborn and Barrett. His mind sought the beginnings, bit by bit revived them, to give him his brief before he pleaded his case to Zelkin at lunch.

Where had it begun? Harvard University? No. That had been bis friendship with Phil Sanford, when they had roomed together. No, not Harvard, but sometime later, in New York City. Not at that big factory of a law firm he had started with, because he had not liked that firm, had still been interested in defending human rights, not property rights, in retrospect immaturely idealistic, a stupid legal hick with a cowlick for a brain. It was that next place, that hothouse for the flower children of the law, the Good Government Institute on Park Avenue, where your salary consisted of elbow patches for your threadbare coats and quotations from Cardozo and Holmes on the high purpose of the law. The Good Government Institute, a foundation supported by twenty big-business corporations as a sop to their own bad consciences, where every case was derived from the overflow of the American Civil Liberties Union and where every client was the ever-present underdog. Six years of that, of living off peanuts because you felt that you were upending a few evils and many wrongs, deluded into thinking that they were the real enemies, until you learned that they were only prop windmills to keep you busy putting on a public-relations show for the Institute’s founders. Six years to learn the identities of the real enemies, to learn that your work was a fraud, that the do-gooding was a fake. Six years to learn the truth of how you’d been manipulated by the power people. When he and Abe Zelkin had learned, they had both got out.