Establishment (29 page)

“Not so fancy,” Dan said. “I've had it at Gino's.”

“I don't believe that,” Barbara told him. “It's absolutely delicious. You are an incredible woman,” she said to her mother. “You keep amazing me. In all the years we were kids, did you ever cook anything?”

“It's really none of your business,” Jean said. “No, if you must have an answer. The first time I ever tried was the night your father got the award from the Maritime Commission. I took him home with me, and I scrambled eggs for him. I toasted bread too. It's no great trick. You buy a book and you follow directions. Of course, you have to be rich.”

“Why?”

“Because you throw it away the first three times, and the fourth time it's edible. Bobby, I haven't reformed. I hate cooking, and next week I am going to find us a cook. I'm not so different from the girl your father chased up Nob Hill thirty-eight years ago. I wish I were; then perhaps I'd understand why you're doing this.”

“We've been through that.”

“Yes, and I think I can guess who those eighteen people are. Nothing will happen to them. They did no wrong. They gave some money to what they felt was a good cause.”

“It has very little to do with them, if the truth be told,” Barbara said. “It's a matter between myself and my God, whoever my God is. In my own peculiar way, I have to go on living with myself.”

“Was Tom one of them?” Dan asked.

“Are you serious, daddy?”

“I suppose so.”

“No, Tom was not one of them. He is my brother, and I'm sure I have some feeling for him, but I don't think he'd bleed even if he cut an artery.”

“Aren't you being a little hard on him?”

“I try not to be. It isn't easy. In a way, Tom is a new acquaintance of yours. He's been your son only since you got sick. He's been my brother for a long time. It's not that he's bad or nasty or rotten or anything like that. He just has the good fortune to be utterly devoid of any sense of right and wrong. Perhaps that's what they call a psychopathic personality. Anyway, it's a popular syndrome in America today.”

“I would hate to think you're right,” Dan said unhappily.

“Bobby's had a hard few months,” Jean said to him. “I can understand the way she feels. On the other hand, my dear,” she said to Barbara, “it's not all black and white. Tom bought Dan's shipping line. He made him an offer Dan couldn't refuse, and the deal has just been concluded.”

“You mean you gave it all up?” Barbara asked her father. “Why?”

“Because the whole thing bored me to hell and back. I just stopped caring. And he wanted it. You may be right about him, Bobby, but he's my son, and it's the first time in my life he ever came to me for something he wanted. He wanted those seven tankers the way a kid wants a new bike. Hell, that's a stupid analogy, but it sort of fits the case.”

“What will you do now?”

Dan shrugged. “I'll find things to do. Maybe I'll get to know your mother. It's about time we bummed around together for a bit. We're not too old for that.”

***

Barbara had just fed Sam, and she was dressing him for a morning's stroll in the park when the doorbell rang. “Finish up, Anna,” she said. “I'll get the door.” She left Anna to pull on his sweater and went to the door and opened it.

A stout man in a dark suit stood there. “Are you Mrs. Barbara Cohen?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

He took out his wallet and opened it to show her a badge and an identification card. “Simmons, United States marshal. I have a warrant for your arrest.”

For weeks now, from day to day, Barbara had been expecting this, yet it still came as a shock. It took a long moment for her to gather her wits and to face the fact that it had actually happened. “Please come inside,” she said as calmly as she could. “I'd like to make a telephone call, and then I'll go with you. I have a child, so I'll have to make some arrangements about him. Where will you be taking me?” Listening to her own voice, it was all very strange and improbable. Everything was so matter of fact. Was this indeed the way people behaved when they were arrested? “Won't you sit down,” she said to the marshal.

He looked at her strangely and shook his head, then looked around the room and at her again. “I guess you can take a few minutes. Then we'll be going down to the federal courthouse at Seventh and Mission.”

Barbara went upstairs and told Anna that she would be gone for a few hours. “Take him to Huntington Park, Anna, but for heaven's sake, hang on to him. He's getting very frisky and cocky. I think you'd better use the halter. He hates it, but it's good for my peace of mind. If I'm not here when you come back, give him his lunch—one boiled eggy, a slice of bread, and some fruit.” She then went downstairs and called Harvey Baxter's office.

Baxter was not there, but Boyd Kimmelman got on the phone and said, “Stay cool, Mrs. Cohen, and for heaven's sake, don't get frightened. This is just a formality, believe me. You go with him, and I'll be at the courthouse when you get there. You're not going to prison or anything like that, and I expect you'll be home by noon.”

She thanked him. Simmons was looking at his watch. “Do you want to handcuff me, Mr. Simmons?” Barbara asked him.

“That won't be necessary. This is the arrest order,” he said, offering her a folded document.

“I'll take your word for it. Let me get a sweater.”

The marshal's car was parked outside; it was black, with a government shield on the license plate, causing Barbara to wonder whether black was
de rigueur
for government service, suit and car and tie, or simply a symbolic way of letting the victims know what they were in for. It was only a few minutes' drive to the courthouse, and as they pulled up in front, Kimmelman jumped out of a taxicab and ran to meet them.

“I'm Boyd Kimmelman,” he said to the marshal, “Mrs. Cohen's attorney. I spoke to Judge Fremont about this last week, and he agreed that when it happened, we could go directly to him and arrange for bail. He's in chambers now.”

“Well…” The marshal hesitated. “That ain't regular procedure. She should be booked on regular procedure.”

“Marshal, if Judge Fremont says so, it is regular procedure. If I tell him you flouted a court order—”

“Is it a court order?”

“The judge is the court, marshal.”

Reluctantly, the marshal allowed Kimmelman to lead them into the building and to Judge Fremont's chambers. Fremont was a pink-cheeked, white-haired, impish man in his sixties who stared at Barbara with undisguised masculine delight. He waved the marshal out. “Leave the warrant,” he said. “I'll see to it that the prisoner doesn't escape.” After the marshal had gone, he said to Barbara, “You know something, if I were twenty years younger—nah, ten years younger—I'd work out the escape myself. That is, in return for favors. Don't look at me like that. I'm an unregenerated, evil old man. Matter of fact,” he said to Kimmelman, “this lovely young lady is no stranger to me. I clerked with Sam Goldberg and Adam Benchly way back before the earthquake. Goldberg and Benchly—they don't make lawyers like that today.” And to Barbara, “Sam told me all about you, Dan Lavette's wild daughter. That was back in thirty-four, when you were mixed up with Harry Bridges. Sam worshipped the ground you walked on—the old man's last love. Didn't know that, did you?” he said in response to the expression on Barbara's face. “Well, if a man has juices at thirty, he's still got them at seventy. Now I'm off the record. I like you, young lady. You have piss and vinegar, if you will forgive the expression, and it's in short supply these days. It reminds me of the old times, but the old times are gone, aren't they?” He turned to Kimmelman again. “She can go home, Boyd. Bail!” He snorted. “Bail, my eye! What the devil has happened to them down there in Washington? Have they all gone crazy? I'm releasing her on her own recognizance, and if and when this idiocy comes to trial, you'll notify her and she can appear.”

Outside in the corridor, Kimmelman said, “Well, Mrs. Cohen, what do you think of him?”

“I think he's absolutely darling. And Boyd, it's time for you to start calling me Barbara.”

“O.K.—Barbara.”

“I could weep, he was so sweet and kind. But Boyd, I really don't have anything to worry about, do I?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean that when I'm put on trial, no matter what happens, I can't see Judge Fremont sending me to prison. Can you?”

“No, I can't. But you might as well face it, Barbara. The trial will not be held in this federal district. It will not be held in California at all. It will be held in the District of Columbia, because that's where the crime took place, in Washington.”

“Oh, no!”

“I'm afraid so, Barbara.”

“So much for deliverance. When will I have to go there and for how long?”

“When is difficult to say. It might be tomorrow, though that's not very likely, and it might be a month from now. It depends on how they schedule it and how full the docket is. How long? I shouldn't think the trial would last more than three days, conceivably four. But that isn't the end of it. I mean, you mustn't think that you are tried and sentenced, if you lose, and off to the slammer. There's still the Court of Appeals, and if we can find a good constitutional issue here, there's the Supreme Court—and all that could take another year or so. And that is all predicated on your losing. We don't go into court to lose. We go in to win. And one more thing. We agreed that you ought to have distinguished counsel and that Judge Fredericks is the likely choice. He's an old friend of your father's, and I think it would be a good thing if Mr. Lavette talked to him and brought him into the case. Will you ask your father?”

“I'll ask him,” Barbara agreed.

***

Judge James Fredericks, retired, was of that small circle in San Francisco still known as the First Settlers, which meant that his grandfather, Big Bo Fredericks, had been a peace officer in the San Francisco of 1852. He had arrived there three years before on the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's sidewheeler California, having picked up the ship, along with several hundred other eager gold hunters, on the Pacific coast of Panama. He had no luck in the gold fields, so he settled for a regular wage as a peace officer in the burgeoning city that had grown in three years from eight hundred souls to over forty thousand. Now, almost a hundred years later, his grandson resided in an ivy-covered Tudor house on Pacific Heights, collected Chinese ceramics, lectured occasionally, and was unhurriedly engaged in writing a history of the California legal system. He was a slender, aristocratic-looking man, his thin white hair combed sidewise over a long, narrow skull. He had long been involved in maritime law, and he had met Dan Lavette through Admiral Land when Dan was building cargo ships on Terminal Island.

He tried to appear pleased to see Dan. They talked about old times and one thing and another, then about Barbara's case. “You see, Dan,” he said, “if I took this case, I'd be taking it under false pretenses. I simply don't have the credentials. I haven't done any trial work in thirty years. Sure I'm a specialist in maritime law, and I've sat on the bench there, but I don't know beans about federal or constitutional law. You may respect me, but in Washington I'd just be a puffed-up California lawyer parading his title. They don't like us. It wouldn't make it any better, only worse.”

“I don't know,” Dan said. “I just don't believe all this. Everywhere I turn, I come up against a blank wall. No one wants to get involved, no one. My God, this isn't the Lindbergh kidnapping. This isn't an ax murder. This is the case of one decent woman who will not be turned into a stool pigeon. Is that un-American? Is that a crime? What in hell has happened to us?”

“I can appreciate your feelings, Dan,” Judge Fredericks said, “but if you're intimating that I'm afraid, you're wrong. I am no longer on the bench and I no longer practice, and I am independently wealthy. I have absolutely nothing to be afraid of, and I have nothing but the most profound contempt for that committee. I am trying to be honest with you. I wonder whether you've been completely honest with me?”

“What does that mean?” Dan asked coldly.

“It means this, that you come here after the fact, and that passes my understanding.”

“I think you'd better explain yourself.”

“You don't know what I'm talking about?”

“No, I do not.”

“Very well. That piece of human flotsam that our state has inflicted upon the nation, namely, Congressman Norman Drake, has been bought and paid for by the Lavette interests. He belongs to you, body and soul—that is, considering he has one. He not only could have prevented this matter from coming to a vote of Congress, he could have stopped it even afterward. He could have let it be known in the Justice Department that the committee did not desire it to come to trial, and that would have been the end of it. So to put it mildly, you confuse me.”

Dr. Kellman had warned Dan against anger. “Anger,” he had said, “is uncontrolled violence done to your own body. There are other ways. Breathe deeply, think, consider.”

Now Dan remembered and fought for control. He managed to keep his voice even and quiet as he said, “You say that Drake has been bought and paid for by the Lavette interests. It's conceivable, sir, that you can't slander Drake. You can slander me, and you do. I have never met or seen or spoken to Congressman Drake, so I think, Judge Fredericks, that it is incumbent upon you to explain yourself, because if you do not there will be hell to pay. I don't think you know me very well. If you did, you would not dare stand there and say what you said.”

There followed a long, uncomfortable silence. Dan rose to his feet, and the two men stood facing one another. Finally Fredericks said, “I want you to accept my apology.”