Decision (60 page)

Chapter 2

Superstar,” he said when she flew down at his request to see him late that afternoon, “I guess your friend let us down a bit, didn’t he?”

She thought he looked suddenly older, and tired, but still as strangely serene and confident as ever. His arrogant tone and chiding words incited her to immediate anger as they had so often before.

“He isn’t my friend!” she said fiercely. “I don’t consider him my friend or the friend of anyone who believes in true liberalism in America!”

“Well!” he said with mock concern. “I don’t know about that. But he sure as hell isn’t my friend, that’s for sure. I thought you told me he was going to set me free.”

“I didn’t tell you any such thing,” she retorted. “I told you consistently that you’d be lucky to get off with a life sentence, and that’s just what you got. But I did think the least he could do would be to condemn the death penalty.”

“Almost promised you as much, didn’t he?” he asked, studying her closely.

“I thought so,” she said, aggrieved.

“Yes. So much for one shifty bastard. And the television thing, too,” he added. “Don’t forget the television thing. He’s a real fraud, isn’t he? All these big liberal pretensions—and then it’s Wallenberg who comes out and says it right. I told you to go to Wallenberg in the first place.”

“What did it matter? You got your delay and you got your hearing by the Court. At least Tay Barbour did that for you, even though he did let us down later.”

“The whole damned majority let us down,” he said, suddenly genuinely angry. “I didn’t deserve any damned life sentence! I deserve to be free! Yahoo and his phony witnesses including my old lady didn’t prove one damned thing! A lot of noise! A lot of circumstantial evidence! No proof! No proof at all! In addition to which,” he added as the guard, attracted by his rising voice, looked in for a moment and then moved on, “your precious Tay and his friends didn’t even stand by the Constitution they’re supposed to be such big-deal upholders of. They didn’t even protect my rights. They had grounds to throw out the whole damned thing, the way I was treated, and they ducked it. They ducked
it
and they fucked
me,
I’ll tell you that. They sure did that, Superstar. And your precious friend led ’em on.”

“He isn’t my friend,” she cried again angrily, “so will you stop repeating that damned nonsense, please? You should have heard what I said to him after the decision. I really let him have it.” She paused and looked into some far distance of lost ideals; and when she spoke it was with a cold and final contempt. “I hate him now as much as you do.”

“Do you, now!” he said with a softness that broke in on her mood and made her shiver suddenly; and suddenly he was very quiet, and in his eyes was the light that had made Boomer Johnson’s mother, back there in the courtroom, so glad to get Boomer safely home. “Well, do you now! Then I tell you what, Superstar: I tell you what.”

“What?” she asked, afraid though she could not say exactly why: he just looked so
intent,
somehow.

“I have me an idea, Superstar,” he said, dropping abruptly into a cautious whisper, no longer the amiable bearded teddy bear of the surface but now the coldly calculating inhuman force that lay, always waiting, fearfully exciting, just underneath. “You want to help me, don’t you? You’ve always wanted to help me?”

“I wouldn’t have come here in the first place,” she said, voice trembling a little, “if I hadn’t wanted to help you. And I did help you. I helped you all I could. It isn’t my fault that the Court didn’t let you go. I did
my
best.”

“Oh, I know you did,” he whispered, leaning forward. “I know you did, and I’m grateful for that, I really am. But now you can help me some more, Superstar, you really can. Will you do that for me now? Will you help your client a little more?”

“I don’t see what—” she began; but suddenly his voice had sunk to a crooning whisper and his hand was taking on a life of its own as it moved swiftly and surely to where it had been once before.

“Oh, I’ll tell you,” he whispered. “Just listen to me, Superstar, and I’ll tell you all about it. After all, we both hate the bastard Barbour and all the other bastards, don’t we?”

“All right,” she gasped. “All right, all right, all right—” while his hand kept moving, moving, moving, ever so gently, and he told her, quickly before the guard could return, all she needed to know of what he had in mind.

And that, the attorney general of South Carolina told himself that evening with a happy satisfaction as he surveyed the front pages of a dozen of the nation’s leading newspapers spread before him on his desk at home, was how victory could be snatched from the jaws of defeat, to coin a phrase. Here in front of him was the proof that Justice NOW! had become
the
major organized political force in the United States of America at this particular time, and if he had his way, for a long time to come.

DIVIDED COURT GIVES HOLGREN LIFE! DUCKS DEATH PENALTY, TV ISSUE, RIGHTS. MINORITY CHARGES BETRAYAL OF CONSTITUTION, FLAYS BARBOUR OPINION. JUSTICE NOW! BURNS COURT IN EFFIGY. STINNET PLEDGES FORCES WILL CONTINUE FIGHT FOR TOUGH CRIME CRACKDOWN.

And all the front pages featured pictures of the burning, some of them, such as that in the
New York Times,
completely filling the front page above the fold. “The Court” and “Two-Faced Tay” danced from half a dozen lampposts in their shrouds of smoke. At their feet triumphant citizens of the great Republic cheered and jeered.

It was enough to make some people shiver but it disturbed Regard not at all; because he knew, just as he knew the Justices and all members of the legal establishment knew, what lay behind the pictures and the headlines. The practical fact of it was that while the Court might have denied Justice NOW!, the death penalty for Earle Holgren, it had also carefully shied away from criticizing the death penalty as such; and far from condemning the television proposal, the majority had simply avoided it. What is not specifically condemned, Regard had discovered long ago in law school, is implicitly approved; and what is not specifically denied is by implication allowed. There would be a death on prime time yet. The Court, while pretending to decide and in actuality closing its eyes, had made this inevitable. Of this he was certain.

Justice NOW! had done exactly what its creator and its now well over ten million members had intended. It had greatly speeded up the judicial process. It had cut through a swamp of circumstantial evidence to force guilt and conviction upon the individual who in obvious common sense deserved them. And it had imposed upon the Supreme Court itself a popular discipline such as that proud body had not known in many a long decade. The Court might pretend differently, it might render its opinions with all the majesty of the High Bench, but in actual fact it knew, and the whole world of politics and jurisprudence knew, that it was running scared. Essentially, it had yielded; and through this first crack in the facade Regard was certain he could lead his millions to the eventual triumph of what he and they believed to be true law and order.

And why shouldn’t he? he asked himself. It was a goal the overwhelming majority wanted. It was an aim worthy of the United States of America. Swift, certain, no-nonsense justice—the execution of murderers—the ruthless elimination of the criminals who were terrorizing every city and most neighborhoods in America—what was wrong with those objectives? And what was to prevent him from riding them in due time all the way to the top?

He thought for a contemptuous moment of Taylor Barbour. Poor old wishy-washy Tay, who would have loved to give in to his instincts and join in the elimination of Earle Holgren, yet whose lifelong dedication to the law—and to his own reputation, Regard thought spitefully—had forced him instead to seek the clever, evasive way out. And it was clever, Regard gave him credit for that: it was a sidestep but it was a plausible one. It could be justified; it made sense. It removed Earle Holgren from society, even if it did not make him the decisive public example Justice NOW! had hoped. Tay might even believe in it, for all he knew. But it was a patch-up, a stopgap. They would meet again over the issue of death and television, of that he was quite sure.

In fact, he decided on the spur of the moment, he would call an impromptu rally here in Columbia tomorrow and review the whole thing, give it another push, exhort his followers, keep up the pressure. The television networks, chagrined by the decision, were on his side now: they’d give him all the exposure he could possibly desire. He knew this because several discreet telephone calls from New York during the afternoon had told him as much. It was time to announce regional councils, open an office in Washington, hire full-time lobbyists, start putting the pressure on Congress, begin preparations for the congressional elections next year when Justice NOW! and its millions could be focused on many a shaky seat. Justice NOW! could actually be a major force in deciding control of the House, where the Administration’s hold was paper-thin. Calculating swiftly as his mind ranged the national map, Regard thought it might even decide as many as fifteen Senate candidacies … of which his own might well be one.

He was dreaming happily of the possibility, which suddenly did not seem at all outlandish, absurd or impossible, when the phone rang and he received the news that was to change the lives of a good many people involved with the case of the Pomeroy Station bomber. It would also, he realized instantly, furnish an ideal springboard from which to launch his upcoming rally. It might even launch his candidacy. And it would certainly give him another crack, not under such restraints this time, at Earle Holgren.

With a grim expression for the news but an inner exhilaration at what it could mean for all his prospects, he went into action with all the decisive skill and shrewd planning of his clever, ambitious mind.

At roughly the same moment in Georgetown, having finished an early supper with Birdie, the Chief Justice was getting out maps and travel guides and beginning to think about the driving trip to the Grand Tetons, the Grand Canyon, New Mexico and California that they had promised themselves earlier in the term. This year, instead of simply holing up in Eleuthera or some other pleasant place to study new appeals for certiorari, he had decided to take a complete break away from the Court for about a month and “get out and see the country,” something he felt he should do every two or three years. Birdie had strongly encouraged this, both for his reason and for her own, which included some worry about his health if he spent all of the recess, as he usually did wherever they were, preparing for the next session.

They all did this, he knew, and the thought brought an affectionate smile to his face. It was a good Court: they were good people, even if the major media
were
giving them hell at the moment and even if Justice NOW! had burned them in effigy. You couldn’t please everybody, though this time the majority seemed to have come down neatly in the middle and pleased no one. He was confident the furor would die; and he was confident that in time the majority’s wisdom would be vindicated and that it would do much to appease the national clamor symbolized and used by Justice NOW!

The problem had been simple, essentially: public pressure must not be allowed to force the death penalty in all instances irrespective of whether the evidence justified it or not; the death penalty must be neither affirmed in all cases nor denied in all cases, for each was different and stood on its own feet; public pressure must not be allowed to link up with television to put execution in the realm of popular entertainment, however noble the professed motives of “example” and “public education” might be. And finally, of course, a criminal must not be allowed to go free or remain unpunished for crimes of which simple common sense knew him to be guilty.

All of these objectives, he thought, had been skillfully encompassed in the majority opinion, and because he knew it came out of the very considerable mental and emotional anguish of Taylor Barbour, he respected it the more. Tay too was being damned by both sides but the Chief felt that he deserved much credit for finding the solution that had eluded the rest of them. He had not thought middle ground to be possible but Tay had discovered it and stood by it when it would have been so humanly easy to follow Moss’ lead and find in the law excuse for vengeance. The Chief and Wally and Rupert had been able, not easily but after long, highly emotional arguments, to persuade Moss to join them. And the majority had been put together.

Tay had done it, by being a man of the law and a man of character and by drawing on some deep reserve within himself of steadiness, decency and balance. He was the real hero of the decision, Duncan Elphinstone felt, though he knew Tay—for Tay was that kind—must be suffering many second thoughts and self-doubts about it at this very moment. Moved by an impulse of warmth and generosity he picked up the phone and dialed the Barbour house; only to be told by the gravely concerned voice of his respected junior that he had just heard a news flash that the Holgren case had suddenly exploded again, and that quite possibly all their work had been in vain.

“Ah jes’ don’ see!” the warden kept saying, shaking his head. “Ah jes’ don’ see how that bastard done it!”

“I’ll tell you how he did it, you asshole!” Regard snapped. “He did it by getting that poor little sex-starved piss-hen of a lawyer to smuggle him in some dynamite and a gun, that’s how he did it, and you stupid assholes let them get away with it! And stop shaking your God damned head or it’s going to fall off! There isn’t much there to hold it on!”

He had not seen the headlines yet, there hadn’t been time, but he knew damned well, with a searing annoyance, that they weren’t going to be so flattering now.

HOLGREN ESCAPES! undoubtedly, first off. Then, KILLER MAKES BREAK AS GUARDS CHANGE SHIFTS. And then, STINNET’S OFFICE BLAMED FOR LAX SECURITY. And finally, no doubt, a cutesy, DEBBIE AND EARLE IN ESCAPE PLOT. MANHUNT SPREADS AS LOVERS (?) FLEE.

Well, by God, you son of a bitch, he told the fugitive in his mind, the next time a lynch mob sets out to get you I won’t be around to save you, you worthless piece of crap! You’re on your own this time, pal, and I hope to hell somebody gets you
fast.