First Papers (73 page)

“I’m Garrett Paige,” he said. “I was told you asked for me.”

“That’s right.” He reached into his pocket and drew forth a card with a small snapshot of himself on it, impressed with an official seal. “Federal Marshal, from the U. S. Commissioner’s Office,” he said, restoring the card before Garry could more than glance at it. “I have here a warrant, sworn out by the United States District Attorney, under powers defined in the Wartime Espionage Act of June fifteen.”

“For what?” Garry instinctively reached his hand forward, as if to receive a document. The man merely patted his breast pocket. “It’s all in writing in here,” he said, as if that were enough.

“What’s in writing?” Garry asked. “I have the right to see what the charge is.”

“Come along,” the other said shortly. “They’ll tell you when you get there.”

“Get where?”

“The Federal Building, New York City.” He put his straw hat on, and motioned to the curb.

“One minute,” Garry said vigorously. “I want to see that warrant, and I want to phone my lawyer.”

Somebody passed them on the way into the building, and Garry nearly shouted at the unknown back, “Get Molloy to phone my lawyer,” not wanting to say, “my father.” But the Federal Marshal cut that short by speaking even more briskly.

“This isn’t any nice little civil action, bud. This is a Federal charge under the Wartime Espionage Act of June fifteen. I’d advise you to come along easy.”

He put his hand on Garry’s arm. Garry shook it off. “You won’t need any of that,” he said. “I’m not trying to escape. I do have the right to call my lawyer first.” Ridiculously, he added, “And I’ve got a car in the lot there, I can’t just go off and leave it.”

“Better leave your keys,” the Marshal said, “so somebody can drive it home for you, if you’re held up a while.” But he put his arm through Garry’s and unceremoniously propelled him toward the curb. “You can phone when you get there.” Garry did not try to break away; he knew too well what that would do. At the curb, a black sedan was waiting, with a small insignia on the windshield that said U. S. Department of Justice.

Fear came slowly. Anger held it at arm’s length throughout the ride over the familiar bridge, and then as they started down the length of the city to the Federal Building. His anger was the immediate, specific kind, that was in itself holding at arm’s length a larger anger which would come later. Now he was angry that he had been refused the telephone call to his father, that he had not been permitted to turn his car keys over to somebody, even that the man had called it the Espionodge Act. He was angry that he had been denied any proof that this stranger did have authority to force him to go with him, except for the flash of an official card and a pat on a breast pocket to indicate the presence of a proper document.

He clenched his fists. His hands were dry now, but he suddenly remembered the moist harsh grit of them when he was about to unlock the compartment and get out his letter. The letter and the carbon with it were still locked away, inviolate, with the keys still in his pocket. The Marshal had forced him to keep the keys; unwittingly the man had protected his letter.

An extraordinary confusion swept him. In an instant it was gone. So often had his father and he discussed what might happen when his letter was acted on, so fully had they discussed it without prettifying it, using words like arrest, arraignment, even jail—so often, that his sudden arrest had hooked itself into the letter itself, meshed gears with the letter, engaged with it in some marvel of efficiency. An efficiency that was all wrong, he saw, as his confusion departed. His letter was locked in his car. It had not been delivered; it had not been seen, not even by his father. No official had received it, none had judged it, none had acted on it.

Then why had they arrested him?

For something else. For something he did not know about, for something he had never discussed with his father. But what? What had he done?
This isn’t any nice little civil action, bud. This is a Federal charge
—

Fear began at last, gritty too, and grinding. To be an objector was not a crime, yet he had been taken into custody for something. He glanced at the Federal agent beside him: he was absorbed in his driving, his eyelids lowered against the glare of the sun through the windshield. He would not tell him anyway.

By now they were speeding downtown, the light flickering through the ties of the elevated tracks above them, off—on, off—on, light—dark, light—dark, as maddening as the third degree.

A
S
E
VANDER
P
AIGE ENTERED
the outer office, the girl at the reception desk said, “Please call the switchboard, Mr. Paige.”

“Is anything wrong?”

“She said, ‘emergency.’ I hope it’s not too bad.”

He did not wait for her last words. Standing at his desk, holding the telephone upright along his body, he heard that Mr. Molloy of Synthex had been trying to reach him for half an hour. “But it’s not an accident, Mr. Paige, he said to be sure to tell you.”

“Thanks, Elly, please get him.” No accident, he thought, but an emergency. The vertical rod of the telephone clicked against his vest buttons.

“Mr. Paige, this is hard news,” Molloy said a moment later. “It looks as if Garry was arrested. Somebody from the District Attorney was here and took him off in an official car.”

“Arrested? Are you sure?”

“It looked that way. It was five minutes before I arrived, but there were people watching the whole thing. They saw the fellow flash open a wallet and they heard Garry demand a look at the warrant and say he wanted to call his lawyer.”

“He was refused?”

“He never did come inside. The man took him off in the car. Garry’s Ford is still here in the lot.”

“Took him off where?”

“Nobody knows, but while I was waiting for you to call back, I checked with the local precinct here, and he’s not there.”

“Was it a police car? A Black Maria?”

“No, just a car. Somebody saw a seal that said ‘U.S.A.’ or ‘U. S. Justice.’”

“Then it looks as if they’ve taken him downtown to the Federal Building on Park Row. That’s a big help, Mr. Molloy. Thanks—I’ll let you know.”

He was hanging up but Molloy’s voice rang in the receiver. “Mr. Paige, are you still there? Mr. Paige—”

“Yes, still here.”

“I don’t like to say this, now, but as head of this business, I do have to think of the reputation of Synthex, and if the newspapers—”

After part of a second, Evan said, “I’ll do what I can to keep Synthex out of it.” This time he hung up quickly.

At once he called an assistant district attorney he knew in the Federal Building, but was told he was in court. Was there a message? He tried another, but he was out too. He called the building’s Information clerk, but the line was busy and stayed busy. He tried office after office, but nobody could get the first fact he needed: whether Garry was really there, and if so on which floor, in which room or office, and in whose custody. Through all his years as a lawyer, through his earlier years of parole work, his dealings had been with district attorneys and judges and commissioners of New York City or New York State; his answer now could come only from a United States District Attorney or Assistant, and he knew none of these well enough to say, “Drop everything and do me this favor because it’s my son.”

Two of his partners were also putting in calls to officials downtown. “Mel,” Evan finally said to one of them, “I’m going down there myself. If Garry does get to a phone first, tell him I’ll phone back here at eleven sharp for his message.”

“I’ll go with you,” Melvin Levy said.

“Better not. But line up a bondsman, will you?”

Downstairs, the wide street was brilliant with light and heat, with flags, the navy-blue of sailors, the khaki of soldiers, the sudden brightness of foreign uniforms. Evan half-ran to the subway station on Lexington Avenue; seated in the train, he felt as if he were still racing. He was raw with the news and shock, already taut with delays and setbacks.
Is there any message? Information Desk is still busy. Mr. Jones just left for court.

And the actual infringements.
Demand a look at the warrant. Wanted to phone his lawyer. He was refused? He never did come inside.

He closed his eyes and was back in San Diego—the bland police, the refusals and evasions, the vigilantes in a ring under the high crescent moon. He wrenched away from the memory, but it held him; his muscles strained again against the country road, he was vowing again to fight them up and down the courts of California and in Washington and at home, he was hearing again the grand jury’s indictment of thirty men, but not one Ernie, not one Herbie, not one Bobbo.

The subway jolted and then stopped. Once more Evan was half-racing through the crowded familiar streets, toward the corner of City Hall Park and the building which housed the offices of the Department of Justice. This was Park Row, not San Diego. This was New York; here in the several buildings clustered together in a vast complex of the machinery of justice, county and state and Federal, he had many times served as counsel in many kinds of crises. Faces and names here were part of his life, city and state district attorneys and assistant district attorneys, judges, commissioners and deputy commissioners and parole officers. His fellow lawyers of the old Free Speech League, and of the new Civil Liberties Bureau, knew them too. This time he wasn’t a stranger on a visit; this time he was in his own proper sphere.

But this time it’s Garry, he thought. And this time we’re in a war.

He pushed open the front door and went to the Information desk. He showed his credentials; waited while a finger ran down a list of names; waited through interruptions and the resumption of the tracing finger down the list. At last he was in the elevator, rising toward the tenth floor; at last he opened a door, saw Garry jump up from a chair at the rear of the room, saw his lips part in the single syllable, “Dad.” Relief seized Evan and an absurd sense of accomplishment. The first step was over.

It was a Detention Room, and it was crowded. About thirty men and a handful of women were there, seated on wooden chairs arranged in loose uneven rows. Garry was in the last row but one, and he must have been watching the door each time it opened. Now he started forward but a policeman standing guard moved and spoke, and Garry sat down again. Evan made for a uniformed guard just inside the entrance.

“I have a client here,” he said, handing over a card. “He is Garrett Paige, and I am his attorney, as well as his father.”

The officer studied the card. “You’re his attorney,” he said as if imparting information. “You got the right.”

“Dad,” Garry said a moment later, and put his arm hard around his father’s shoulders. “How did you find out? Am I glad to see you!”

“And me you. Have you any idea what they’re charging you with?”

“Not one.”

“Is there anything you’ve kept back from me?”

“Nothing.”

“Then start at the beginning.” They told each other what had happened, Evan swiftly, and Garry with the detail his father insisted on. They stood together near the window at the rear of the room, inches away from the armed guard, who showed no interest in their words, though he managed an air of unfading vigilance every time either one took a step to shift from one foot to another.

“And when we got here,” Garry ended, “I asked for a phone again. They said, ‘Sure, but look at all who’s ahead?’ “

“And when you asked for the warrant?”

“Just the same. They sure make you into a zero the minute they arrest you.” He had begun quietly enough, but as he went on with the story of the morning, his control gave way to agitation.

Evan spoke with a legal calm he was far from feeling. “Don’t let yourself get too upset, Garry. We don’t even know yet what this is for. We may need a lot of patience, both of us.”

“I guess so.”

“I’ll see the warrant now,” Evan said. “We’ve got to get to a U. S. Commissioner, or to a judge, to ask him to set bail. There will be some questioning first.” He looked at Garry briefly and said, “I’ll be back.” Then he left. Apprehension had darkened Garry’s eyes, along with the anger of that “zero.” Evan forced it out of his mind for the moment; he had to be steady and clear-headed, and he had to hurry. He knew all too well how minutes could elapse in the preliminaries of any hearing, how half-hours could be lost, hours.

“… the said Garrett Paige is hereby charged, under Section Three, Title One, of the Espionage Act, with willful and repeated attempts to cause insubordination, disloyalty and refusal to serve in the military or naval forces of the United States … with willful and repeated attempts to obstruct the recruiting or enlistment services … with willful and repeated attempts to interfere with the successful functioning of the Selective Service Act…”

Evan’s heart pitched and plunged as he read. No, he thought, no, there’s a mistake, it cannot be. This is a criminal charge; this is ten times worse than anything we ever discussed. Compared to this, his letter is nothing. This could mean prison. It is not possible.

He had to think, but his mind balked. He had been kept waiting an hour before he had had his “turn” with the Assistant U. S. Attorney who was handling Garry’s case, a man named Edmonds, who examined Evan’s card, asked questions about his firm, dwelled on his relationship to “the accused,” as if any man were suspect for being not only father to the accused but also attorney. Then at last Edmonds had handed over the warrant, and he turned aside to read it.

He was still holding it, in hands gone watery at the wrists. What charges had led them to this? What evidence had they gathered, from whom, where, when? He had to think clearly; he had to hurry; the morning was all but gone. Before his turn had come, he had called the office, had heard that a thousand dollars in bail was ready for his signal, and had cautioned everybody there to let no word slip if Alida should happen to call in. He had been logical, effective. He would have to get back to being that.

He turned back to Edmonds, who was busy with another man. The pitching and plunging had halted; the ship of feeling was grounded on a dark reef of necessity. Be his attorney, not his father, he told himself. His attorney, not his father. He stared down at Edmonds’ desk, at the dossiers, documents, folders piled neatly there; they had been there before, but this time he noticed that nearly every one had a copy of a Registration form clipped to it. Garry’s would be there too, with the unadorned phrase,
CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION.