Gibbon's Decline and Fall (45 page)

“I shouldn't think so, Your Honor.”

“Very well. We will begin hearing this case on Monday morning, nine
A.M
.” He warned the selected jurors somewhat severely not to discuss the trial, then let them go.

Almost a year since Lolly was raped, thought Carolyn, keeping her face carefully blank as she tried to ignore the TV camera aimed at her. Jagger started to leave, then stopped to speak to an unkempt little man who turned his head and glanced at Carolyn, his face both arrogant and avid, one that slid across her flesh like an edge of paper, razor thin, making her touch her cheek, feeling for blood, as though he had thrown a knife rather than a look. Outside in the corridor the investigator was waiting for her. She drew him into a corner and gave him the two names she had underlined.

“I don't know what it is with these two. Just the way they looked at each other. It's probably too late, but I think there's something there I ought to know about.”

He promised to get on it right away, though he probably wouldn't have anything until the first of the week.

Behind her in the courtroom, Jagger and Keepe continued their conversation.

“I don't know what you mean,” said Jagger, aggrieved.

“Mr. Webster sent me particularly to remind you,” said the other with stony insistence. “He told me to catch you this afternoon and remind you, you're not to fix anything this time. Nobody is supposed to die or get injured, nobody is supposed to suddenly refuse to testify, nothing is to happen that is in any way … notable.”

Jagger snarled. “Damn it, if it's worth playing, it's worth winning.”

Keepe lowered his brows, almost scowled. “Jake, you're not getting it. You're not listening. Winning may not be the most important thing this time. At the moment we're planning for you to win, but you shouldn't have any plans at all except to do what we want you to do.”

He turned on his heel and left, not looking back, thereby missing the expression on Jagger's face. Helen would have been able to interpret that expression. If Webster had been there, face-to-face, telling Jake what to do, Jake would have done it without question, but Jake's sense of his own relationship to Webster effectively prevented his obeying messengers and flunkies. Keepe, so Jake told himself, was a flunky, and his use of the word “we” was an insult to Mr. Webster.

Besides, Jake was already committed. He'd already given Martin his instructions. The Crespin woman's house would be bugged tonight. Swinter had probably already been disposed of. It was even possible that Helen had been found and eliminated. Damn her! He could have sworn she was too well trained to bolt like that, and he knew she was too stupid to get away with it! How had she escaped? Somebody had to have helped her! If Martin hadn't found her yet, she might be trying to reach the children. Well, let her try. She'd never find the Alliance Redoubt in a million years. Jake himself knew only that it was somewhere up near the Canadian border.

From the nearby parking garage Carolyn maneuvered her way to the street. Ophy had arrived that morning, Faye was driving down from Denver, Jessamine from Salt Lake, and the others would be flying into Santa Fe during the afternoon. Stace had been invited to dinner, and she'd volunteered to come out early and help the cleaning woman get the rooms ready. Aggie, Faye, and Bettiann would get the single bedrooms; Ophy and Jessamine would share the big room that Hal had been using; and Hal would move into the little room with Carolyn, bad leg or no bad leg.

Carolyn stopped at the take-out place she used now and then, whenever the weight of a day made cookery seem impossible. Hal had offered to fix their supper, but being on his feet for very long was still painful for him. Besides, she'd ordered stuff that would keep and could be rewarmed if anyone arrived late.

She spread the provisions across the backseat and got behind the wheel once more. Though she'd resolved not to think about the case, it kept at her, nagging at her. Perhaps it was the fact that Aggie and Bettiann would arrive today. Of all the DFC they were the ones who would be least convinced of Lolly's innocence, the ones most likely to approve the blind action of the law. Not justice. No one expected justice anymore. What was justice for a Lolly? What did one do to her?

And why? Why punish an abysmally ignorant walking womb who could do nothing but get pregnant? Not read with understanding, not write intelligibly, not do a job well enough to be paid for it. Not sew, not cook, not clean a house, not plant a garden. Not do any practical thing, but only screw or be screwed, as event or lust dictated, and then bear when nature demanded. Would punishment change her? What did one do with a girl who had nothing to give a child because she'd been given nothing as a child, a victim herself, a wasted life, pitiable and sorrowful, but without a single redeeming trait? She was like a mangy cur, mangled in traffic, lying there suffering, guilty of being only what it was, but with a salvation too problematical and too damned expensive for even a passing Samaritan to contemplate. The merciful thing was to pick the pathetic thing up, take it to the vet, and ask him to put it down. Except one couldn't do that with people.

Aggie would say, of course, that there was no such thing as a wasted life, that every life had meaning. So try to put that idea into motion. Try to do for her! Suppose someone adopted Lolly now and gave her fifteen years of the most tender and exquisite care, would that undo the damage done in the first fifteen years? Would that give her life meaning? If it did, where was the treasury that would furnish the people and resources to make recompense for every other wasted life? It reminded her of one of Hal's favorite lectures:

“There are no demonstration projects, love. Any do-gooder can save one life or a dozen by spending
x
dollars, but that doesn't demonstrate anything unless you've got
x
dollars multiplied by the total number of lives that need saving. Stopping poverty one victim at a time is like mowing a lawn one blade at a time. The problem grows faster than the cure can be applied, and the only people who profit are the agencies who claim to be cutting grass while they're actually applying fertilizer.”

If Carolyn managed to keep Lolly out of the tanks, was Lolly any better off? Was it more ethical to keep her out or put her in? She pounded on the wheel with both hands. This was exactly the kind of endless rumination she used to go through before she retired, worrying away the miles between office and home because she'd known the day had been spent turning over the caseload, like compost, while it went on rotting. She drew in a shuddering breath, turned on the car radio,
and concentrated on her driving. Ready or not, there were people depending on her.

She stopped at the mailbox to pick up the mail, leaving the gates open for the expected guests. She was just opening the door when a dusty car nosed its way through the gate and came trundling down the drive—Jessamine, at the end of a day-long trip from Salt Lake. Ophy erupted from the kitchen door to welcome them both. There were hugs all round. Exclamations. How nice the farm looks. Here we are. Same as always. They carried the suitcases and the take-out supper inside, setting things anywhere while Carolyn made a quick clink of ice in glasses, gin and tonic, fresh limes. Stace emerged from the back of the house to be introduced. Hal stuck his head into the kitchen to be hugged; then he shooed them out onto the patio while he tinkered with the food she'd brought home.

“You look good!” said Jessamine. “Oh, you both look good!”

“We look like us,” said Ophy, waving her glasses, grinning from ear to ear. “Can't do much about that.”

“So what's happening?” cried Jessamine. “When does Aggie get here?”

“Everyone gets here tonight,” said Carolyn. “Aggie's been fetched from New Orleans in William's private plane, and she and Bettiann are landing in Santa Fe. They've got a rental car. They're bringing oysters.”

“Lovely to be so rich!” said Ophy, buttering a tortilla chip with guacamole. “Nice for Aggie, too. I told Carolyn I think Aggie's leaving us. This'll probably be the last time we see her.”

“I've been thinking that for a while,” said Jessamine. “She's been a good scout, hasn't she? She's tried with us heathen. She's getting older now, she needs her certainties.”

“She's no older than the rest of us,” said Carolyn firmly, almost angrily. “We'd all like some certainties.”

“The rest of us had other things to hang on to,” Jessamine admonished. “You and I had family, Carolyn. All three of us had careers. Faye had her talent. Bettiann had her family, and her foundation. Aggie only had her religion.”

“It's all she wanted,” said Jessamine.

“I'm not so sure about that,” mused Carolyn. “Her religion has provided every bit as much a career as any of us have
had, and I've always thought Aggie settled for renunciation as a definite second choice.”

“The first one being?” asked Ophy.

“Oh, well, it wouldn't be fair to speculate.” Though Carolyn did and had, for some time. Aggie was or had been in love with Sophy. From a distance, of course. From a vast, un-crossable distance. As they all were.

“So!” Ophy drained the last bit, crunched ice, got up to get herself a refill. “What's the agenda?”

Carolyn made wet circles with her glass. “We've got two days, just for us. The trial doesn't start until Monday. I'm hoping we can get through it in two days, let it go to the jury maybe Tuesday afternoon, or at the latest Wednesday morning, so you guys don't get held up here forever.”

“Are we the only two you're using?” Ophy asked.

“As expert witnesses, yes, but everyone's involved. Faye made some exhibits for me. Bettiann paid for the investigator.”

“And Aggie?”

“Chief cheerleader and implorer of divine help. She has let me know that she doesn't approve of Lolly one bit. Neither she nor Bettiann think what Lolly did is at all excusable, but they don't think locking her up is going to help matters any. Or, needless to say, executing her.”

Ophy frowned. “Bettiann and Aggie have always opted for tradition, as I recall. We haven't changed much, have we, Carolyn? You and Faye were always the radicals. Jess and I were the polite ones, middle-of-the-roaders. We're all pretty much where we were when we started out, but no matter where we're coming from, we're still all working together.”

“I wasn't always radical,” Carolyn objected.

“And I wasn't always polite,” said Jessamine.

“That's not the way I remember it,” Ophy insisted. “Whenever I think about us, I see Carolyn or Faye throwing down the gauntlet, Aggie and Bettiann being offended, and me and you, Jess, trying to make peace. Well, let this time be no exception. At least we'll end up in a cooperative blaze of glory.”

“A blaze of glory, or an utter decline and fall,” said Carolyn, the words slipping out unintended.

The other two fell silent for a moment, considering failure.

“We'll have tried,” said Jessamine in a firm voice.

“We will.” Carolyn reached out to hug them both.

“I'll need to see your client,” said Ophy. “Examine her.”

Carolyn nodded. “I set that up for Sunday morning. Did Simon get the films together for us?”

“They're gorgeous,” murmured Ophy. “He got old news tapes from Boston, when they were integrating the schools—wonderful stuff that was simply swimming in matching faces, just what you ordered. A friend of Simon's is a top-flight computer graphicist, and he did the comparison overlays.”

“Looks like we're set,” said Carolyn. “Remember the phones in Hal's study and here in the kitchen are bugged. I've unplugged the extensions in the bedrooms. If it's just business or travel arrangements, go ahead and use the ones in the study or kitchen, but if you want to make a private call, use the phone in my room.…”

“What's that all about, Carolyn?” Ophy begged. “Why you?”

“I don't know, Ophy. I think Jagger just has to win, regardless. Don't let me forget to tell the others when they get here. There's a car coming. Must be Faye!”

Faye arrived. Bettiann and Aggie arrived, along with the icy keg of oysters. Faye and Jessamine carried in the maquette from Faye's van and put it on the end of the dining-room table where they could walk around it and admire it from all sides. The back of the fountain was a roughly curved stretch of rugged rock—shoreline rock on the right, mountain rock on the left, where animals laired or prowled, most of them extinct in the wild: bear and boar and deer and wolf, rabbit and owl. The male figure standing before them was long-bearded, patriarchal, a fox in the curve of his arm, an eagle on his shoulder.

“He looks like Hal,” cried Carolyn, hugging the real Hal.

“I had a picture of the two of you,” said Faye gently. “One we took the last time we were here. Of course, in the picture your hair and beard were shorter, Hal. I lengthened both. I didn't think you'd mind my using you.”

“I rather like the Noah role,” Hal rumbled. “Quite a monument. How big is this thing going to be?”

“The figures are to be monumental, one and a quarter life-size, and there'll be a surrounding shallow pool. The whole thing will stand in a semicircular recess at the edge of the plaza, and the water will actually spill out of the pool at the back, into a water stair that leads down to a smaller plaza on another street below. From below you'll see just the rugged
back side surmounted by the soaring figure of Fecundity. In this maquette I've shaped the big wave out of clay, but in the fountain itself there'll be a curved, wave-shaped surface of thick, watery glass, with pumps forcing water up along it to make the wave shape.…”

“That sounds very complicated,” said Hal in an interested tone.

“I have a hydraulics firm helping me. They did a mock-up with real pumps to get the right shape—it's really quite realistic. When the water's moving, you won't see the support inside the wave at all. The figures will actually seem to be supported by the water. The pools below will be real water, of course, with real fish swimming in them and the children partly submerged, as they're shown here.”