(1969) The Seven Minutes (73 page)

‘Did you know Miss Moore was unconscious?’

‘I don’t remember if I knew it or not. I only knew she had a roommate who might be coming back soon. So I just left. I felt miserable. I wanted to kill myself… because this wasn’t me … what I’d done … it wasn’t my fault, I didn’t know what I was doing.’

‘Jerry Griffith, do you hold The Seven Minutes, by J J Jadway, responsible for your violent behavior?’

‘I do.’

‘Have you ever in your life behaved this way before?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You definitely feel the obscene passages in the book inflamed you until you were impelled to commit a criminal act?’

‘Yes, sir. I can’t explain any other reason for it.’

‘You know that Dr Roger Trimble preceded you on the witness stand. Did you follow his testimony?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Dr Trimble quoted Ernest van den Haag as stating that pornography is seductive to a part of the human personality, that “it severs sex from its human context (the Id from the Ego and the Super-ego), reduces the world to orifices and organs, the action to their combinations.” Do you agree with this?’

‘I guess so - yes, I do.’

‘Dr Trimble spoke of the relationship between pornography and violent crime. He elaborated upon the horrible Moors Case in England which concerned the torture and killing of a ten-year-old girl and a twelveyear-old boy by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, arid it was found that Ian Brady had been influenced by those writings of the Marquis de Sade which dealt with sadistic sex. Do you feel, from your own experience, there is such a cause-and-effeet relationship between pornographic books and acts of crime ?’

‘I only know … only know … what - what happened -happened to me.’

Suddenly Jerry’s hands had gone to his eyes, covering them, as if to hide the impending tears.

Elmo Duncan averted his face from this show of emotion. He looked up at the bench. ‘I have no further questions, Your Honor.’

Mike Barrett stared at Jerry. The District Attorney had passed out of his vision. The boy was left. Through wet eyes the boy stared back at Barrett, like one of the tortured Moors Case kids waiting for death.

This was it, now.

Destroy this boy. Destroy him now, along with his evidence that Jadway’s book was as lethal to the human psyche as a murder weapon.

Or use Cassie McGraw to destroy Leroux and all the rest who had sought to prove that Jadway’s book was a deliberately obscene work written by a self-confessed pornographer.

Jerry Griffith?

Or Cassie McGraw?

Which?

Distantly he heard Judge Upshaw intoning, ‘You may cross-examine the witness, Mr Barrett.’

He heard Abe Zelkin beside him whispering urgently, ‘This is it, Mike. Give them hell.’

Decision.

He came slowly to his feet. With difficulty, he found his voice.

‘Your Honor, the defense has no questions.’

He could see that the Judge could not believe the evidence of his ears. ‘Mr Barrett, do you mean that you wish to reserve your crossexamination until later?’

‘No, Your Honor, I do not mean that. As far as the defense is concerned, the witness may be permanently dismissed.’

He heard the unified gasp of the spectators behind him, and the rising hubbub that followed it. Ignoring Zelkin, who was tearing at his arm, and the Judge’s stern gavel and voice, demanding order in the courtroom, he half turned.

Maggie, dabbing at her eyes, had just risen and moved into the center aisle. Now her eyes sought him. Her face was suffused with relief and gratefulness. Then she gave a short nod, and then she was gone.

He heard Judge Upshaw announcing, ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we will now take our noon recess. 1 again admonish you that during this recess you shall not converse among yourselves nor with anyone else on any matter pertaining to this case, nor shall you express or form an opinion thereon until the matter is finally submitted to you. Recess until two o’clock!’

He heard Abe Zelkin’s bewilderment and anger. ‘You’ve blown the case, goddammit! What in the hell happened? Are you out of your mind or crazy or what ?’

Was he out of his mind or crazy or what?

He had not been able to answer his partner’s compound question at once, nor had he answered it in the twenty minutes that followed. For, with the announcement of the noon recess, there had been no privacy. Pushing their way out of the courtroom, they had been surrounded by reporters who had demanded to know the defense’s motive in not crossexamining Jerry Griffith. In the corridor of the Hall of Justice, in the elevator, in the downstairs lobby, the newspapermen around them had been joined by radio and television reporters.

No comment no comment, no comment.

Even on Broadway, where a panting Philip Sanford had caught up with them, they were not alone, but still were chased by at least a half-dozen members of the press.

No comment, no comment.

Even as the three of them strode grimly south on Broadway toward First Street, past the Hall of Records and then the Law Library, toward the Redwood Restaurant, where they had agreed to meet Leo Kimura for lunch, two stalwarts of the communications media, one a wire-service man, the other the television broadcaster Merle Reid, had stayed doggedly at their heels.

As they turned into First Street, the wire-service man had abandoned them, but Reid had remained as adhesive as a leech. He had continued to pepper them with inquiries until they reached the brick exterior of the Redwood Restaurant, that luncheon refuge for attorneys and judges working in the Hall of Justice and the County Law Library, and there Merle Reid had partially blocked their way, insisting upon some explanation.

No comment.

‘Well, maybe I’ve got a comment!’ Reid had blurted out, eying Barrett unpleasantly. ‘It looks to all of us like Luther Yerkes has made a new acquisition. He already owns the prosecution. Maybe now he’s bought the defense. Now do you want to comment?’

Barrett’s first impulse had been to slug him, but the defense had enough troubles without adding an assault-and-battery charge. He’d given himself a second to simmer down. At last reason had prevailed. ‘I have one comment,’ he had said. ‘Beat it, you phony.’

And with that he had shoved past Reid and gone through the restaurant entrance, followed closely by Zelkin and Sanford. Inside, the affable manager had been expecting them, and he had quickly led them beyond the lunch-counter area to a white-covered table in the rear dining room, where Kimura was already seated in a red-upholstered chair, thumbing through his portable file. Not until they had settled in their places, and the dark-eyed waitress in the white blouse and black skirt had left them their menus and gone off to fill their beer orders, had they been able to consider exchanging their first words since leaving the courtroom.

Now, trying to maintain calm in the eye of the storm, Mike

Barrett was packing his pipe as he watched Phil Sanford lean toward Kimura and whisper something, and he was aware that a flushed and still furious Abe Zelkin was continuing to glower at him.

‘Goddammit, Mike, you still haven’t answered,’ Zelkin began harshly. ‘What in the hell happened to you back there, letting Duncan and that kid cream us, letting them go unscatched? What happened - did you flip your lid or what?’

Barrett lit his pipe, then put it down. ‘I was waiting to tell you and Phil, and you, Leo, in private. That’s why I told Ben Fremont to eat someplace else. Now I’ll explain.’

‘It better be damn good,’ said Zelkin.

‘I made a deal,’ sa;d Barrett tersely. ‘I traded off the crossexamination of Jerry Griffith for an examination of Cassie McGraw.’

‘Cassie McGraw?’ said Sanford with astonishment. ‘You mean she’s alive?’

‘That’s right. She’s alive, and she’s on our side, and we’ve got an opportunity to use her. We’ll have our star witness at last’

‘Wow!’ exclaimed Sanford. ‘Jadway’s mistress, Cafhleen’s prototype, with us, in the flesh. Well, now, I’d say that puts a new light-‘

‘Never mind that, Phil,’ interrupted Zelkin curtly, his narrowed eyes holding on Barrett from behind his thick glasses. ‘Okay, Mike you made a deal.’ He paused. ‘Who’d you make the deal with?’

Barrett shifted uncomfortably. This was the moment that he had anticipated and dreaded. ‘With Maggie Russell.’

‘I thought as much,’ said Zelkin, unrelenting.

Barrett was annoyed. ‘Now, wait a minute -‘

‘You wait,’ said Zelkin, his voice rising. ‘If you won’t cross-examine in court, at least let me have the chance to do it here. So it’s that Russell dame, and it’s a deal. Well, first off, this business of your doing things on your own is beginning to be a habit with you. What is this, a one-man show ? Because if it is, then I’m -‘

‘Cut it out, Abe, will you ? You know me better than that. We’re partners and we’re in this together. Only -‘

‘Then why didn’t you consult me or inform me about it before making any goddam deals?’

‘Because looking at it on paper, based on cold one-dimensional facts, I knew you’d turn it down. There would have been no possible way for me to convey to you what cold facts can’t convey - the feeling you get from knowing someone as well as I know Maggie Russell - the feeling that is built not only on facts but on an emotional understanding which gives support to instinct, to hunch. And my knowledge of Maggie told me to consider her offer and finally convinced me to accept it. There are some decisions a person has to make on his own.

Zelkin would not have it. ‘You’re not defending yourself in that

courtroom, Mike. We’re all in this together, and we’re in there defending not ourselves but Ben Fremont and every book vendor in America, and Phil Sanford and every book publisher in the world, and a piece of our Bill of Rights as well. Not one of us here has the right to act unilaterally, or go off half-cocked on his own because of some emotional -‘

Sanford cast aside the spoon he had been toying with. ‘Hold it a minute, Abe. I think we should at least allow Mike to explain.’

‘Okay,’ said Zelkin. ‘Let’s have your facts, Mike. You tell us the deal you were offered and decided to make on your own. Go ahead/

Before Barrett could reply, the waitress had reappeared with a tray of beers. She asked for their orders. None of them had looked at their menus, but now they did so hastily. Two Reuben sandwiches and one hot turkey sandwich. Barrett had no appetite, but to prove he was not upset he ordered a Smokey Joe’s barbecued beef on a French roll.

The waitress had gone. Determinedly, Barrett met Zelkin’s challenge. ‘All right. If you’ll listen, I’ll tell you what happened and on what I based my decision. First, as you know, I’ve been seeing Maggie socially. Through her, I’ve got a better picture of Jerry’s condition.’

‘We knew enough about Jerry’s condition before,’ said Zelkin, ‘and I had the apparently mistaken impression that we were honest attorneys out to expose his condition in court, not physicians who were expected to treat it in private.’

Barrett kept his temper, because there was a logical reason for his partner’s anger, hurt, and skepticism. ‘Okay, Abe, you know the boy’s condition. Self-destructive, and absolutely paranoid about facing a hostile interrogation. Now, that’s not the issue, and certainly not the one that influenced me. But I’d better fill you in on Maggie’s relationship with the boy and with Frank Griffith, so you can know why she was driven to offer me a deal that might save the boy and ruin the Duncan-Yerkes-Osborn-Griffith axis. And then I’ll tell you exactly what happened the night before last.’

He told them. Without any interruption, except when the waitress delivered their sandwiches, he related the essence of what he had learned of Maggie and Jerry, of Maggie and Frank Griffith. He began with his first meetings with her at the STDL lecture and ‘at Ell’s coffee shop after Jerry’s attempted suicide, and ended with his last meeting with her Saturday night at Chez Jay in Santa Monica. Then he recounted the details of Maggie’s offer, and now he told them what she had to trade.

‘Frank Griffith has his own secretaries to handle his business mail at his advertising agency,’ Barrett went on, ‘but the personal mail that comes to Frank Griffith or Ethel Griffith, that comes to their house, is opened and screened by Maggie. She’s not only a relative and her aunt’s companion, but she’s also a sort of social secretary for the Griffith family. Well, because of all the publicity

our case has been getting, with Griffith and his boy receiving a fair share of the attention, there’s been a steady stream of mail to the Griffith house, mostly supportive of or favorable to Griffith and his fight against the book. Maggie has been going through this mail daily. Well, two weeks ago, a little more now, the usual morning mail arrived, and Maggie was seated at her uncle’s desk going through it, when suddenly there it was - a postcard for Frank Griffith signed “Cassie McGraw.” ’

‘Just a postcard?’ said Sanford.

‘Just a postcard,’ repeated Barrett. ‘Hell, you can put the Ten Commandments, or the Golden Rule, or “Eureka! Eureka! I have found it!” on a simple postcard, also. Maggie couldn’t believe her eyes, but there it was, mailed from Chicago, with a return address. On the card written to Frank Griffith, Cassie said she had read about the trial in the newspapers. Apparently she had read some kind of strong statement to the press by Mr Griffith attacking The Seven Minutes and accusing Jadway of ruining his son. Anyway Cassie had seen something like that and she was moved to reply, to tell Griffith who she was, that no one knew Jadway as intimately as she had known him, and that she would swear on her daughter’s life that he had created the novel with the purest motives in mind, with the hope of liberating new generations, and that Lerdux’s testimony had been a pack of lies.’

‘All of that on a postcard,’ said Zelkin with sarcasm.

‘Why not ? Look what people have written on the head of a pin. Somewhere at home I’ve got the Lord’s Prayer -I picked it up in Mainz, Germany - published in a book less than half a square inch in size.’

‘What made her think it was from the real Cassie McGraw?’ said Zelkin. ‘It could have been sent by a crank.’

‘I was coming to that. Maggie wasn’t sure, at first. It just read like it was for real. She allowed that it might not be. But on the chance that it just might be genuine, she separated it from the rest of the mail and hid it from Frank Griffith. She figured that if it was authentic, it could lead us - the defense, that is - to Cassie, and this would give us a powerful weapon and do irreparable harm to Duncan’s case as well as help Jerry in the long run. So she chose to hold it back to bargain with Griffith, to make him go easy on Jerry, to keep him from forcing Jerry to face us on the stand. But finally she decided her uncle was beyond reasoning with, and so she decided to approach me. Actually, what made her approach me was something I had told her that confirmed the authenticity and value of the card.’