The Touch of Treason

by Sol Stein

  “Who is dead?” she asked.

  The newspapers were out. He had to tell her.

  “Martin Fuller.”

  The voice said, “Oh my heavens, oh my dear God.” Then, “Ed worshiped him. Ed’s a scholar, not a killer. It must be some mistake.”

  “I hope so. My name is George Thomassy. Please have your husband’s lawyer call me back at once.”

  “Where is Ed.”

  “Here with me.”

  “May I speak to him?” Her voice was coming under control.

  Thomassy looked up at the kid in the doorway. “Your mother wants to talk to you.”

  Ed Porter shook his head.

  “Talk to her,” Thomassy said, his hand over the mouthpiece.

  Porter took the phone.

  “Hello, Mom.”

  Thomassy did not give the kid privacy. His eavesdropping presence kept the pressure up.

  “Professor Fuller died in an accident,” Ed said, his voice cracking. “His bathrobe caught fire from a kerosene heater. Some crazies are trying to hang it on me. You know I wouldn’t do anything like that, Mom. Please do as Mr. Thomassy says.”

  *

  Thomassy closed the door of his office on himself and Ed, assuring Alice with a nod that everything was all right.

  “You don’t use your father’s name,” Thomassy said.

  “There’s no law against that, is there?”

  “It raises questions.”

  “My occupation is focused on raising questions. I don’t see why people should know my father’s rich as Croesus. You think I want some kidnapper sending him my ear for verification? If you knew who he was, you’d probably have asked for a higher retainer, right?”

  “Why did you tell your father that cock-and-bull story?”

  “Because I know about his heart condition.”

  “Well, if you scared him enough, maybe he’d pop off and you’d inherit his money instead of having to crawl to him for it.”

  “Are you trying to provoke me?”

  Thomassy waited him out in silence.

  Then, Porter, his voice calm again, said, “My father says he cut me out of his will.”

  “Did he? Or did he just say so?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know! Why are we getting off the subject?”

  “We’re dead on the subject, which is you. I want to know what I’ve got to defend.”

  Alice was at the door. “It’s a Mr. Franklin Harlow, calling at Mrs. Sturbridge’s suggestion.”

  That was quick. Thomassy went around to his desk. Harlow said, “I just had a brief talk with one of my former law partners who practices in Westchester now, Mr. Thomassy. He says you’ve got quite a reputation for making the DA’s office work overtime.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Mr. Thomassy, the Sturbridge family is profoundly shocked by what they just heard. Is there any truth to the charge?”

  “I don’t know. Yet. Ed was one of three overnight guests at the Fuller home. It could have been any one of them, or a fourth who didn’t stay overnight. Or it could have been an accident. The police claim they have a button of Ed’s that they say was found in the garage. Some circumstantial evidence perhaps. I don’t know enough yet. I can’t tell why they’ve focused on the Sturbridge boy.”

  In a stern whisper, Porter said, “Don’t call me that.”

  “I hope this can be quashed at the earliest possible moment, Mr. Thomassy,” Harlow continued.

  “This isn’t just a local police matter,” Thomassy said. “There were federal agents there before the police. At least one of them quite high ranking. Fuller was apparently engaged in some very important national security project.”

  “I see,” Harlow said, which is what people of his class and station said when they did not see. “I’ll have a check sent by Purcolator. Will you be good enough to keep the family posted through me if possible?”

  *

  When he got off the phone, Thomassy asked Porter, “Where’s my silver dollar?”

  Edward Porter Sturbridge laughed.

  Thomassy repeated, “Where is my silver dollar?”

  “On that bookshelf,” Ed said, pointing.

  Thomassy looked. Sure enough, it was there. He put it back on the phone table, on the message slips. “Why did you move it?”

  “I figured it was an entrapment ploy,” Ed said. “I moved it to see how tough you were.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Sturbridge family home was just across the state line in Fairfield, Connecticut, an attractive haven to which the wealthy had once been drawn when it was income-tax free. Malcolm Sturbridge’s rationale for the move, made just before his only child, Edward, was born, was that instead of the state distributing a portion of his earnings to others inefficiently, he would retain his right to donate it as he saw fit. As a rule he gave to organizations that saw to the welfare of the kind of people he never associated with socially: the chronically unemployed, blacks, abused children and beaten wives, unwed pregnant women, and in more recent years, Haitian refugees, whom he referred to as the new Mayflower people because they crossed rough seas in makeshift boats with exemplary courage.

  Courage was like an irregular beacon to Malcolm Sturbridge throughout his life. When caught in its light he was seen to be a mountain climber in Yosemite at sixteen, a lieutenant of infantry at eighteen, an ocean-racing yachtsman at twenty-six; an American who made his way to the heights of the business community, proving himself acceptable by the definition of others. He had once set himself the goal of collecting the modem equivalent of the great library of Alexandria, not to read but to have; of course he kept this activity a secret from his business associates, who thought an interest even in collecting books an occupation for women.

  To Sturbridge’s puzzlement, his son Edward from an early age took advantage of his extensive library, actually read the books, and seemed to enjoy devouring the knowledge in them. But to Sturbridge’s dismay, the boy had no interest in displaying courage. Once, when Ed was thirteen and had four or five friends from Exeter staying over a holiday weekend at “Chateau Sturbridge” as the boys called it, a commotion in the wing occupied by them drew Sturbridge to witness his son on the bed, each limb tied to a bedpost, being beaten by the other boys. When Ed was released, he asked his father that the boys not be sent home. Later, alone with his father, he was asked, “Why didn’t you fight back?” Ed answered, “Fight whom?” That day, Malcolm Sturbridge had the impression that “whom” meant him.

  Sturbridge worried about a son who would accept comradeship at the price of brutality. Had he created a child that nobody wanted except to use him? He decided he must discuss the matter with Jenny.

  He never got around to it.

  The Sturbridges were given to parties of some magnificence, held in the grandeur of their living room for the benefit of selected charities. The room could accommodate a hundred people dancing at one time to a small orchestra. On other occasions, with the equally worthy objective of entertaining their numerous intellectual friends, the Sturbridges would have a hundred and fifty people conversing comfortably in small groups until the evening’s recital began—a well-known poet who would have been paid a suitable honorarium to read his latest work, and a quartet that could handle the later works of Beethoven. They maintained their large circle of friends because the friends liked each other’s company and the fact that they could be entertained royally with the proceeds of capitalism in the hands of a cultivated liberal with good taste.

  On those occasions, of course, the two crystal chandeliers splayed bright light throughout the room. But now, as every evening after dinner without guests, it was the recent habit of Malcolm and Jenny Sturbridge to turn the wall rheostat all the way down so that the room was illuminated only by the individual brass lights over the Rouault, the Modigliani, and the Cezanne—each given a wall to itself so that it seemed framed twice, the second time by the expanse of burnished mahogany that focused the eye on each wall’s cen
terpiece. In the large hearth—Sturbridge used to say you could roast an ox in a fireplace that size—the flamelets jumped at random from the logs providing focus to the fourth wall in front of which two matching armchairs and ottomans gave the Sturbridges a place from which they could talk in peace, safely looking at the mesmerizing flickers rather than each other.

  Of all the suitable women available to Sturbridge when he was young, he had chosen Jenny because while the others deferred to him, as was the practice of the time, Jenny never hid her sense of leading a separate life. He liked resilience in a woman as he did in negotiation. He hadn’t expected her to prove to be more perceptive than he was, perhaps even more intelligent. Even Edward at times struck him as having intellectual abilities that outraced his. Certainly Edward’s curiosity was greater.

  Whenever one of Malcolm Sturbridge’s significant stockholdings went down, he prudently bought an equal quantity at the lower price to average his cost basis. With two inches of port still virgin in his glass, he said, “We could have had a second child, Jenny.”

  Jenny Sturbridge sipped from her glass. She’d always thought port too sweet for her taste, but she considered it one of the easier accommodations. She said, “I thought by giving Ed no rivals, we could help him perfect himself.”

  “You spoiled him, Jenny.”

  “Perhaps you were too severe with him.”

  “I tried to establish boundaries of the permissible. I thought that’s what children wanted, to know what the rules were.”

  “He found out, didn’t he?” Jenny Sturbridge said.

  Her husband glanced over at her to see if the edge of sarcasm he heard in her voice was corroborated by her expression.

  “He crossed every line I drew,” Malcolm Sturbridge said. “I wanted him independent, he became a rebel. I wanted him to taste the joys of mastering a scholarly field and he becomes a specialist in Soviet affairs. I thought only today, Jenny, of that first lover you took as a sophomore. You wanted to demonstrate the unshakeability of your liberalism so you became intimate with a Negro.”

  “I’ve told you a thousand times, I liked him, and we were together only for a single weekend.”

  Mr. Sturbridge’s laugh was that of a sick man clearing his chest. “You picked him for the effect it would have on others. You dehumanized him and yourself. I can’t help but think that what Edward has done all along is emulate you as a challenge to me.”

  Jenny Sturbridge, who had once loved her husband but who had now settled down to being his companion until he died, said, “Perhaps you can understand this. When Ed was a baby and a toddler I loved him unreservedly, unabashedly, fully. But as he became a person, I felt he became in stages someone I loved who was not really part of me, like an adopted child. There’s a limit to how we can fashion our children.”

  Sturbridge cut in, his voice harsh. “If I weren’t rich, he couldn’t have played with cocaine.”

  “Wrong. He would have had to steal perhaps, but he would have done what he wanted to do. Do you remember when he brought the Fullers here for a visit, the awkwardness we felt, the awkwardness the Fullers must also have felt with the rich parents of their protégé? Do you remember Fuller saying the revolution eats its children? I think our children eat at our tables until they are strong enough to push their chairs back and then they begin the natural process of eating us.”

  “Unless we have the strength to live without whatever we derive from having them.”

  “Not strength,” Jenny Sturbridge said. “Will. You had a great will once.”

  He laughed. “Sapped by age.”

  “Oh no. By accomplishment. You got what you wanted. You left the field clear for Ed to want something else.”

  Malcolm Sturbridge touched the button on the sidetable. A minute later, a manservant appeared. “Justin,” he said, “we will leave a half hour earlier in the morning. I want to stop at the police station before going on in to the office.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When Justin vanished through the sliding doors, Jenny Sturbridge said, “So you bought the gun. I thought you had agreed not to. What will you tell the police when you register it?”

  “After the Macready house being robbed, I’m sure they’re not going to ask a lot of stupid questions.”

  “You’re putting me in danger, Malcolm.”

  “What nonsense is that? I’m concerned about criminals breaking into the house.”

  “Six out of seven handguns, the papers say, are eventually used against loved ones.”

  “That means you’re safe, dear.”

  *

  District Attorney Roberts had asked to see Jackson Perry “outside of channels. Just an office visit. I have a few questions.”

  When Perry showed up in Roberts’s office, he had Randall with him.

  Shaking hands, Roberts said, “You fellows always travel in twos? Have a seat, gentlemen.”

  After the secretary brought the requisite coffee and shut the door behind her, Roberts said, “We’re on the same side of the fence. That flag in the corner isn’t a county flag or a state flag, it’s an American flag.”

  Perry had long ago learned when a nod was preferable to speech.

  “This Fuller thing,” Roberts went on, “isn’t a smoking-gun case. It would be very helpful to the prosecution if we knew more about how the security system in the Fuller house worked.”

  He had listeners who were saying nothing. He continued, “I’m particularly interested in whether, to your knowledge, anyone other than Fuller tried to get into his study before or after the killing.” Roberts’s eyebrows posed a question.

  Perry said, “Someone did try. Very soon after.”

  “That’s very helpful. Who?”

  “Our system doesn’t tell us who, just that someone is trying to get in who doesn’t know how the key works.”

  “I’d like to get a layout of the wiring,” Roberts said, “and someone, either of you or someone else, could take the stand to explain to the jury the methods by which Fuller and his work were kept secure.”

  Randall could have guessed what Perry then said. “Mr. Roberts, obviously we’d like to cooperate with your office in every possible way. What isn’t possible is to reveal the workings of a system that is in use elsewhere to protect other persons.”

  Roberts coughed into his left hand. He was always careful to do that because people didn’t like to shake hands with a hand that had been coughed into. “I would hope subpoenas wouldn’t be necessary.”

  Perry said, “You wouldn’t get anywhere. The county executive would get a call from the governor who would have had a call from the White House on behalf of the National Security Agency. Why go through the hassle? As citizens we’d like to help out any way we can in a murder case, but national security comes first.”

  Roberts felt the cellophane over his composure wilting. His forehead glistened. “The people must get a conviction in this case.”

  “I’m certain that if your evidence is strong enough, you will.”

  Roberts reached over and touched twice one of the buttons on his intercom. He wanted to say something casual to pass the seconds but he could see that Perry was not in the mood for small talk. The door opened and a young man strode in, tall with ambition. His shoulders seemed to roll with his walk. His thick tortoiseshell eyeglasses looked as if they had been chosen to look severe. “This is Mr. Perry and Mr. Randall. Mr. Koppelman is a recent addition to the trial staff. Koppelman, we’ve been talking about the Fuller case. If you had to bet your career on the evidence in your hands right now, would you go for a conviction?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Koppelman, twelve jurors need to be convinced. George Thomassy is a very crafty defender, and these gentlemen from Washington are not inclined to cooperate on the few matters we discussed.”

  Most people’s faces improve when they smile. Koppelman’s did not. He said, “That may not be as significant as we thought, sir. I think I’ve found Thomassy’s heel.”

/>   “Heel?”

  “His Achilles’ tendon, sir.”

  Perry rose. “Then you won’t be needing advice from us.”

  Roberts was not letting them off that easily in front of his new recruit. “I have a feeling you folks in Washington use national security as a big blanket.”

  Randall was about to say something, but Perry touched his arm. Then Perry said, “It covers two hundred twenty million people, Mr. Roberts. If you ever run for national office—and make it—you’ll understand.”

  They left Roberts standing behind his desk, his uncoughed-on hand unshaken, not turning to Koppelman for comfort, trying to remember who in law school had said that all the homicide corpses the entire class would have to deal with during the rest of their professional lives, laid end to end, wouldn’t cover one side of the perimeter of the cemetery in Normandy he encouraged them to visit at least once to keep local murders in perspective.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The first morning of a trial sometimes, as today, brought back memories to Thomassy of the first day of a new school year. As a boy he had viewed each upcoming semester as a body of books and lectures to be dominated so that he could go on to the following year’s dares. An affable English teacher, a man who seemed always relaxed, once said to him, “George, can’t you think of each new subject as a sport to be played, enjoyed?” “Oh I enjoy it, sir,” fourteen-year-old Thomassy had answered. “I get a kick out of tackling something new.” The teacher said, “There you go, tackling.” And Thomassy had said, “I can’t help it, sir. My father said that if an Armenian doesn’t figure out how to win, he’ll learn to lose.”

  Lawyers like Francine’s father, judges like Drewson, could afford the WASP stance: Beneath our orderly surfaces, we sit first in judgment of others and only then of ourselves. Thomassy felt the need to prospect a landscape, to investigate circumstance. You never knew behind what boulder a Turk lay in waiting. You never wanted to become a prisoner of anyone because you knew what the French as well as the Algerians did to their prisoners. Civilization was not a saving grace. He understood the terrors of a tribal world.