by Larry Crane
Do you really want to go through with this? It seemed a decent idea when Gavin proposed it—confront this guy in prison eyeball-to-eyeball. Or was Gavin really painting a picture he knew you’d never go for? Buckley’s description of the prison gives you the creeps. But, what did you expect? Are you going to shrink up and blow away before you even communicate with the man?
She read from the blurb appearing on the front jacket flap:
Brief Against Death is Edgar Smith’s firsthand account of his arrest, interrogation, trial, imprisonment, and 4,000 day battle, through the fourteen appeals and thirteen stays of execution, to set aside the verdict and establish his innocence. It is a story of a man without status, with no money, with little formal education, who was connected circumstantially to a horrifying crime, interrogated without counsel by the police for nearly twenty consecutive hours, prosecuted on the basis of an unsigned statement in which he confessed to no crime whatsoever, tried in an atmosphere of inflammatory press coverage and public furor, convicted in the face of strikingly contradictory evidence—and who has found within himself the resources of mind and courage to fight his case through the labyrinthine machinery of the courts.2
How could anyone feel anything but compassion for the man after reading that? The book got some kind of a literary award, and the royalties from sales were put together with the money raised by Buckley toward hiring attorneys from Washington to push his appeals through the courts. Marcella turned the book over to read the blurb on the back flap:
Strong circumstantial evidence linked him to the crime. But at the trial the coroner’s testimony for the prosecution indicated that the time of the murder was at least two hours after Smith had arrived in another town with his wife and baby, to spend the night with his in-laws. Incredibly this and other glaring inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case failed to save him from conviction.3
Marcella continued on. If it isn’t against the law to simply state untruths and publish them like that, it should be. It was circumstantial evidence, sure, but the coroner, Dr. Gilady, was inarticulate in his testimony about the time of death. The prosecutor could have pressed him to be more definitive, but he didn’t. So, it was left dangling for anyone’s interpretation. No matter what he said, the truth was that he couldn’t say what time of day her death occurred. Is the law the truth or not? End of discussion. So, shut up about it.
Brief Against Death Dust Jacket Blurb
In the eleven years of solitary confinement he has undergone–Edgar Smith, learning the mazes of the law, fighting for his life, has managed almost miraculously to widen his horizons, to educate himself, to initiate and direct the series of legal appeals that have again and again postponed his sentence of electrocution. The man himself is remarkable, and he tells his story with a remarkable objectivity that intensifies the reader’s response to his ordeal. His book is a unique human document—one of utmost importance to all who are concerned with the workings of the criminal justice system in America.4
My god, you’re up against a unique human document. Who are you to dispute Alfred A. Knopf? But, you made your bed. Now sleep in it. You ran away from home, took your clothes and your Royal. There was no living with it, the lies, the fog. The girl was dead and Smith is alive and well. You know what you have to do. Get out there and do your job.
Dear Edgar Smith, September 3, 1971
I am a huge fan. I’ve read your books and the articles written by William F. Buckley, and I’m waiting anxiously for the latest news from the courts that will certainly exonerate you. Yet, I feel there are lots of people out there who still have their doubts, and would just as soon have you languish another fourteen years in prison or even longer.
I write for Carnival Magazine and as a freelance. I would like to offer to write articles or a book that together support your contention that you are innocent. Even if you are freed through the efforts of your lawyers, there will be those who have their doubts. I want to dispel those doubts. That is the ultimate justice for you. Isn’t that what you want in your deepest heart of hearts? Justice.
I want to meet with you and carry this forward. If I don’t hear from you, I will arrange for a visit nevertheless, and we can discuss it further.
Sincerely, Marcella Armand
As she sat on the edge of the bed the night before she was to drive to Trenton, her mind was reeling as it had been for the past three days. My god, you’re flip flopping all over the place. Simmer down. So, you’ve set the whole thing into motion with a gigantic lie. Live with it. It’s your truth. You closed the door of no return when you ran out of the house. Don’t freeze up now.
Dear Hannah, September 7, 1971
Well, Sweetie. Tomorrow I meet the devil incarnate. The prison warden has officially informed me through the mail that I am authorized to visit Edgar Smith at 1:30 p.m. precisely, for exactly forty-five minutes. I’m to arrive twenty minutes early so I can be properly screened and scanned. He can receive only one non-family visitor every seven days.
I’m ragged with fear. I’ve written down the main points I want to say to him. Practiced them in a mirror. It just wouldn’t do to get all tongue-tied and flustered. My father would assure me just as he did the day of my wedding, that I can change my mind anywhere along the way and nobody would care a whit. It’s almost like getting married, Sweetie. Maybe getting married was worse.
Love you with all my heart, Mom
* * *
1 William F. Buckley, Jr., “Friend in the Death House,” introduction to Brief Against Death by Edgar Smith (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), ix.
2 Smith, Edgar, front jacket blurb to Brief Against Death (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1968).
3 Ibid., back jacket blurb.
4 Ibid., dust jacket blurb.
PART 2: September - December 1971
Chapter 22
Edgar Smith must have agreed to meet with her otherwise she wouldn’t have heard from the warden about an allotted visiting time. As to Smith’s thinking on the subject, she was flying blind. It takes an hour and ten minutes to get to the prison from Weehawken. Buckley’s description was right. The prison dominates the area, a hulking red-brick fortress with guard towers spaced along its length, and razor wire spiraling everywhere.
He sat on a plain wooden bench with his legs crossed and his arms folded across his chest—a nonchalant lay it on me demeanor—as if to say as far as he’s concerned, she doesn’t exist. There were a dozen of these benches in the open expanse of the family visiting area. Finally, he locked his eyes on her face.
“Masellamond. What the fuck’s that?” he said.
Well, okay. The shock treatment. Quelle surprise. I’ve read his books. The accolades: a jailhouse genius. But, there’s nothing quite like the real thing is there?
“Some introduction,” she said.
He shifted his weight on the bench and leaned back. He looked nothing like Calissi’s Counterpoint photos—photos of him at twenty-three, surrounded by detectives at the sandpit in Mahwah in 1957—dressed in khakis, flimsy jacket, and loafers—hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched against the cold, a Camel in his mouth. Now, he’s bulky, jowly—the orange prison jumpsuit robbing him of any credibility he thinks he has.
Cool it. Stick a cocky expression on your face, maybe even as cocky as the one he’s got on that mug of his.
“Armand’s my name, but you know that,” she said. “I’m surprised. I thought we’d be talking on phones behind Plexiglas and steel mesh.”
He sneered at her. “Plexiglas? Phones? Where have you been while the world turned? Bill Buckley wrote an article in Esquire and turned a hotshot lawyer loose to poke around, so suddenly I can have more than one visitor a week. I get every kind of visitor you can think of, and lounge around like this. Look at it—as big as a gymnasium in here. And nobody says shit about it.”
How do I respond to someone like this? Fire back with a barrage of jailhouse bravado of my own? No way. Sit back. Let him go on with it. Get it all out.
“Funny how it works. Public officials—prison wardens and such—don’t like the spotlight. But then the light goes off at the end of the day, and they park me right back in solitary where I’ve been since… but, you know that. So, it’s Marcella. Marcella, then. You’re scared shitless, Marcella.”
As soon as he mentioned Buckley, he leaned even further back and canted his body to the side, almost looking at her down the length of his nose. Already he had acquired quintessential Buckley body language no doubt from the several visits he’d had with him here. He was ready to do rhetorical combat.
“I’m not scared. It’s chilly in here,” she said. No secret. He’s succeeded in knocking me back. Now, he has to keep me there.
“Bullshit. You’re quaking in your boots. What are you doing here?” he asked.
She inquired as to when he had last spoken to another human being.
He ignored the question. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to strangle you. There are guards all over the place.”
She said, “All right. It’s chilly and I’m a little nervous. You’re right. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Just for kicks, let’s hypothesize. You should like hypothesizing, being a writer,” he said, unfolding his arms and grabbing the back of the bench with both hands and leaning back again. “Let’s say you don’t like this whole fucking deal. Your editor tells you to get your ass over here for an interview. You’re scared I’ll slit your gizzard with a prison shiv. You seize up tight and invent this bullshit about being cold. More likely, you’re no writer. You’re just a lunatic groupie passing yourself off as one and you’re dying to have me, a fricking convict, in your panties. Cut the shit.”
All right. At this point, I either have to say something or get up and run out like a scared rabbit.
“So, you read the letter I sent you. Good,” she said. ‘Cut the shit?’ There is no shit, Mr. Smith. I’m an expert on your case. I inhale every related scrap of written material I can find. I’ve read your books, Calissi’s book, Buckley’s articles, all of them a hundred times. I’ve driven the roads, visited the scenes, the sandpit, the bridge, Tony’s Amoco, Pelzer’s.”
“Don’t lie, don’t exaggerate—a hundred times? You couldn’t have seen the sandpit. It’s not even there anymore.”
She told him she knew what it looks like now because she had been there.
“It’s like a country club. Back then…”
“How do you know what it looks like now?” she said. Good. Fire some questions at him for a change.
“I read, sweetheart. I consume newspapers and magazines like they’re ham and eggs—by the dozen,” he said.
“That’s not seeing.” Actually, he’s right. The area is a lot different. Dirt roads and no streetlights just don’t make it in greater New York anymore. People play doubles tennis now where the fateful baseball bat was found.
“Magazines are as close as I’m ever going to get to actually seeing anything,” he confessed. He was the mimic “doing” her, just for practice, an expert at giving his audience whatever they want—giving me humility, she thought. But then, he switched back. “Ah! Now I get it. It’s as simple as this: you’re lying around the house and suddenly you get a wild hair up your ass: ‘I think I’ll go talk to Smith.’”
She told him she didn’t lie around the house. She informed him she intended to write articles—general information pieces about him and the case—because she could sense people were interested again—they wanted more information—they thought there may have been something wrong with the way things played out. Did his face soften a little? She didn’t know for sure.
“Your Carnival Magazine editor told you to get a general interest article about me because it’s the fourteenth anniversary of the case? That’s the reason you came here?”
“No. This is not for Carnival.” Why in god’s name did I ever bring up Carnival? Once again, I go with an impulse, live in the moment, and it comes back to bite me in the butt. He sees it. He’s just going to play it out. Let me dig myself in deeper.
“You got in here as a writer for Carnival, but you’re not one.”
“I am.”
“But not this time. This time, you were just sitting around the pool, thinking about life in a jail cell, and—”
“I don’t have a pool.”
“Soaking in the hot tub.”
“No hot tub. Not even a bathtub.”
“I’d like to see you in a bathtub.”
“You see yourself a lady-killer, I guess.” she said. “Oh, sorry—creepy word choice. You and William F. Buckley have brought your case to a boil again. People want to know all about it. We can build on that.”
We. That’s good. Change the whole tone. We. He quieted down a notch. He can see I’m not going to just cut and run—I’m no quitter.
“What do you know about it? What have you written?” he asked.
“You have all the questions and all the answers too. I guess you’re God.”
“Go home, bitch.”
Pick up the pace, she told herself. I don’t have any other choice unless I want to fall at his feet and beg him to forgive me for lying about writing for Carnival. He couldn’t have already researched me, could he?
“I’ve written hundreds of articles on various subjects as a staff writer at Carnival,” she said. It’s a small lie considering his.
“I don’t believe you. You got an itch to see my face for some fucking cockamamie reason. Well, now, you’ve seen it. You’re in way over your head with this writer bullshit. I’ll turn my back. Wink and the guard will come running. I know why you’re here. You’re not the first wacko female—”
“God, in person. Imagine that,” she said.
“But, you couldn’t tell me why you’re here. You don’t know why. Study up on it and come back when you know.”
“Now you’re even telling me what I think. Shut up and listen. I want, Smitty—that’s what your grab ass buddies back in Ramsey call you isn’t it?—to do something with your story on spec for the newspapers. If I’m able to sell it, I split the money with you. Maybe I get enough material for a book. If so, it’s the same deal.”
“Call me Ed. If I wanted an article, I’d write it myself.”
“If they wanted an article from you, they would have contacted you. Articles get done because somebody gets behind the idea.”
Let it sink in. He’s thinking about that one: It doesn’t look as if she’s going to come apart at the seams. Maybe she can be of some use. It’s all written on his face.
“Forget articles. If you want to do something for me, I’ve got expenses here—typing fees. That’s right, in here. Guess what? Typist murderers have their price,” he said.
“I don’t have money. Even if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you. The book part is a speculation, granted. But, everything carries a risk, except for you. In here, you have no risk aside from being buggered or murdered, and I assume you’ve settled those issues long ago.”
“I guess you haven’t heard this either: I’ve been in solitary all this time. How long are you going to keep this up, honeybun? I’m a slimeball convict to a broad like you. So, the proposal is: you get me and I get money.”
“Money maybe,” she said.
“What else do I get?”
“Here we go again—the smutty innuendo. Good shot. What do you get? You get exposure—a re-examination. Think about it. I’m willing to come back in a day or two.”
“Do you think William ‘God Himself’ Buckley doesn’t have enough clout? You want to help Bill Buckley get the word out?”
“This is a financial transaction, period,” she said.
“I’m going to cream my drawers for a chance to have you scribble my name in your notebook?”
“Listen. I made the mistake of not telling you in advance what I had in mind. I should have been more expansive in my letter. It was not a conscious deception.”
“That’s exactly what it was though.”
&nbs
p; “I was trying to take a shortcut, that’s all. What I have in mind will be beneficial to us both.”
“You want me in your panties,” he said, deadpan.
“You know, you’ve been pegged exactly right all these years. You’re self-absorbed. I come here with an idea that can be nothing but good for you. But you’d rather try to intimidate me with filthy jailhouse macho bullshit about who I really am. I have a long drive back home.”
“You didn’t have to come here to see me just to write an article.”
“No, I didn’t, Smitty. Oh sorry, Ed. Despite everything, I’m still interested. Sleep on it, why don’t you?” she said.
He stood and reached to straighten her scarf. She didn’t flinch and stared into his eyes. Did I manage a draw at least? she thought. He took a folded piece of paper from his back pocket, handed it to her. He waited while she read it. Then took it and handed it over to the guard, who read it and handed it back to her. Was he in bed with the guards? He couldn’t be, she thought.
She read the note again in the car:
I must confess that through my own fears, ignorance, and mistrust of the police, I did much to contribute to my own conviction. When first taken into custody for questioning, I lied, partially out of fear, partially out of misplaced loyalty toward friends. It had not taken the police long, however, to see through my lies, to discover that I had been with the girl at the murder scene shortly before her death; and as I continued to lie and deny all knowledge of the events preceding the crime, the officers were more and more justified in thinking they had found the murderer. Thus when at last I did begin to tell the truth, only weeks before my trial, it was too late; the police were convinced they had solved the crime, and the prosecutor was irrevocably committed to putting me on trial for my life.1
What a weird thing to do. The note comes right out of the beginning pages of his book Brief Against Death. It was part of a paragraph that described how inflamed the public had become by the horrible wounds that had been inflicted on Vickie Zielinski, why he had initially lied to the police questioners, and how this contributed to his swift conviction. With these words for the readers of his book he introduced the idea that he had stopped lying even before his trial began, and his book would spell out the truth. Now he uses the same words to introduce himself to me on paper, exuding gentility to smooth the way with literacy, never mind the raunchy version of himself he presented to me in person. So, there are the two sides to the man. I can only guess that he accepts my credentials and with this note has taken it upon himself to help me write articles about him—or the opposite: he gives me a sample of his own writing so I can contrast it with mine and see immediately that he’s got it all over me. So, just forget the whole deal.
