Decision

by Allen Drury

  There was a long silence during which Regard’s secretary, sitting at the receiving end of the bug that had been placed in the cell during one of the suspect’s sleep periods, had time to check her shorthand notes and correct a couple of haste-induced errors. Debbie finally spoke, in a low, intense voice.

  “All right, Earle Holgren! All right! I’ll stay with your case but it’s only because—only because—”

  “Only because what?” he demanded, rolling back over with another carefully calculated wince. “Because you agree with my ideals or you love my big hairy macho bod, or what? I’d really like to know, so I can understand our relationship. It’s got me damned puzzled at the moment.”

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. “You are so—so—”

  “I’m just me,” he said with an amiable grin. “Just poor little old Earle Holgren, fighting the people’s battles and holding off the dragons of greed and exploitation. That’s who I am. And who are you, Debbie Superstar? What keeps you hanging around?”

  “Well, it isn’t your big hairy macho bod!” she said angrily and his grin broadened.

  “Oh, now? But you don’t get very many of those, do you, Deb? There’s always a chance with me, though. I’m available any old time. Maybe we can have a legal conference sometime soon without the room being bugged—” he stopped and shouted, “WITHOUT THE ROOM BEING BUGGED” and Regard Stinnet’s secretary, fifty yards away, yelped and yanked the earphones off “—and then, Deb old girl, we’ll see what happens.”

  “You’re impossible,” she said, but with a sure instinct he could hear the first intimations of an agonized excitement growing in her voice. “Just simply impossible!”

  “And I forgot also,” he agreed amicably, “I’m a psychopath and a murderer and a dreadful, dreadful person. To hear you tell it. So that wouldn’t do at all, now would it? Plus the fact you shouldn’t sleep with your lawyer, it just causes complications. Which reminds me,” he added with a sudden dark scowl, “my folks tried to send around some smooth-talking legal fat cat from New York during the night. I guess they want me to accept him as my lawyer.”

  “And are you going to?” she asked, hating herself for the sudden anxiety in her voice, but, he noted with delight, evidently unable to stop it.

  He shook his head scornfully.

  “I told him to fuck off,” he said. “And I told him to tell them to do the same. Hell, I haven’t seen them in fifteen years. Why the hell do they want to come crawling around now? What have they ever done for me, except disapprove? It’s a fine time for them to be sucking up to me now.”

  “Maybe they love you.”

  He snorted.

  “Do yours?”

  “Well—” she began, paused and flushed. “That’s neither here nor there.”

  “I thought so,” he said with satisfaction. “They made us what we are today and now they want to come crawling back to beg forgiveness when we’re in the trouble they created for us. At least that’s what the fashionable theories say.” He grinned suddenly, a cruel expression without humor. “And I don’t mind telling loudmouth Stinnet,” he added, raising his voice again, “that that’s sure as hell a mighty good defense nowadays. Especially when it’s true. Right, Debbie Superstar?”

  She gave him an alarmed look and said primly, “It is something to consider.”

  “You bet it is,” he said, “and so’s this.” And fixing her with his jolly Santa Claus stare, he ran his hand abruptly up inside her leg until it could go no farther, where it then got very busy.

  “Oh!” she cried and jumped up and away, blushing furiously.

  “Don’t say, ‘how dare you’!” he suggested with a chuckle. “You know how I dare, right, Superstar? Oh yes,” he added dreamily, “we’ll have a lot of things to consult about, one of these days. Won’t we now?”

  “If I take this case—” she began breathlessly. “If I take this case—”

  “Well, God damn it,” he said impatiently, “are you or aren’t you? I’d for sure as hell like to know.”

  “I—”

  “Are you?”

  “Well,” she said, voice trembling. “I—yes, I guess I am. Yes. I am.”

  “All right, then,” he said, rolling back to the wall again. “I think they’re going to indict me tomorrow—or maybe it’s the next day—I’m beginning to lose track of time—anyway, soon—so I think you’d better go now, and get everything in order. Maybe you’d better talk to the press, too. Get the thing rolling. If old Regard is playing for the headlines with his Justice NOW! maybe we’d better start our backfire. Justice for Earle Holgren NOW!—that’s us. Right?”

  “You still,” she said from the door to his impassive back, “don’t realize what we’re up against. ‘Justice NOW! for Earle Holgren’ for a hell of a lot of people is hanging Justice NOW! So don’t kid yourself. It isn’t going to be easy.”

  “Fuck ’em,” he said drowsily, either feigning or actually drifting off to sleep even as he talked. “Got a good case and we’re going to win it, Superstar. We’re … going … to … win … it…”

  “We’re going to try,” she said, dark little face suddenly ablaze with determination. “We’re going to do our damnedest.”

  “That’s good …” he said in a muffled voice; and in a moment as she stood earnest and intense by the door, the sound of a faint snore reached her ears.

  “Oh—!” she said angrily, but the only response was another.

  She stood for a moment irresolute, convinced that the snoring was play-acting. Her eyes widened in thought. For a second she looked genuinely afraid. A sudden involuntary shudder, prompted by genuine fear, passed over her body.

  “What am I getting myself into?” she whispered to herself. “What am I getting myself into?”

  But then, true to her beliefs, her idealisms, the “culture” she had belonged to ever since college, she raised her head in a rigid challenge, stepped out, nodded curtly to the guard and walked briskly down the hall to the room where the press was waiting. She flung open the door and strode in, head high, expression stern.

  The handful of reporters who had greeted her at her first press conference on the night of Earle’s capture had grown substantially.

  “May we call you Debbie?” Henrietta-Maude suggested. “After all, we’re probably going to be seeing a lot of each other.”

  “Certainly,” she said. “I will have to apologize if it takes me a little while to remember you all by name. You have me a bit outnumbered. But it will come. What can I do for you?”

  “Tell us about your case,” Henny said. Debbie smiled, rather bleakly, and seated herself on a table crowded with microphones, one leg dangling casually, the other drawn up under her.

  “It is a case based on the obvious, I suspect,” she said, while the forty or so reporters in the room, some of whom she did recognize by name from national television, watched and scribbled intently. “It is based on (a), lack of proof; (b), the potential dangers to human life and society posed by atomic energy; (c), the First Amendment, which guarantees the right of the citizen to protest those things he believes to represent such dangers; and (d), the personal background and upbringing of the suspect, which may conceivably have some bearing if the state is able to prove that he actually committed the crimes which the attorney general of South Carolina is attempting to claim he committed.”

  “Aren’t you being unusually candid in tipping off opposing counsel about your strategy?” someone inquired. She shot him a scornful look.

  “We have nothing to hide,” she said flatly. “It’s all right out in the open. I will never lie to you.”

  “Are you satisfied in your own mind that your client did not commit these crimes?” someone asked. She did not hesitate for a second.

  “I am satisfied no proof has been produced, or will be produced, that will link Earle Holgren directly with these crimes.”

  “That wasn’t the question,” someone else pointed out, persistent but not hostile. “The question was—�
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  “I know your question,” she said crisply. “Would I be defending him if I did not believe in his innocence?”

  “You might,” Henrietta remarked. “Lawyers often do. You’re different?”

  “I haven’t made up my mind yet,” she said, immediately gaining further points with her candor. “My inclination is to abide with traditional American jurisprudence which holds that a man is innocent until proven guilty. Do any of you ladies and gentlemen have proof that Earle Holgren is guilty? I would certainly like to know it, myself. And so, I assume, would Mr. Stinnet.”

  There was laughter and someone said dryly, “Yes, I expect he would… So at the moment you’re taking the case on the assumption that you have an innocent client. How did you happen to come into the case, anyway?”

  “I live in the area,” she said, “and since the controversy seemed to revolve around opposition to atomic energy, to which I am also personally opposed, I decided to offer my services to Mr. Holgren. He accepted them. It was as simple as that.”

  “Oh, really?” Henrietta inquired. “That was very fortunate for him, was it not? Is he paying his own fees, or is somebody else helping to finance his case?”

  “We have not discussed payment.”

  “At the moment no one is paying you?” someone asked in a surprised tone.

  “At the moment we have not discussed payment,” she repeated. “I assume we will in due course.”

  “What is your impression of your client?” a feminine voice, which she recognized as that of one of television’s larger luminaries, inquired from the back of the room. “Is he defiant? Depressed? Upbeat? Downbeat? Sullen? Happy?”

  “I think,” she said carefully, laying the groundwork for what she knew already would be one of the most difficult problems of her case, “that he is responding alertly and well to the various aspects of the matter. He is, as you have already ascertained from the academic record that has been released by Mr. Stinnet’s office, a very highly intelligent individual. As such he is sensitive and reflective of the pressures around him.”

  “Moody and unpredictable, in other words,” the television luminary remarked. Debbie permitted some annoyance to enter her answer.

  “He is naturally under great pressure at the moment,” she said severely. “His reactions are strong and positive. When he considers a subject serious and important, he reacts in such a manner. When it is amusing, he laughs.”

  “He laughs,” the television luminary repeated thoughtfully. “Does he find a lot to laugh at in this matter, which involves partial destruction of important property, the death of a Supreme Court Justice’s daughter, the very serious harming of another Supreme Court Justice’s daughter and the death of a woman and child, possibly his? These things amuse him?”

  “I did not say these were the things that amuse him,” Debbie said coldly, “and I hope for the sake of future amicable relations with the media that such words will not be put in my mouth. Actually I have had two brief talks with him and he has not laughed very much. He has been severely beaten, he was denied his constitutional rights to warning and counsel upon his arrest, and life on the whole is a very serious matter for him. As,” she said thoughtfully, “I should think it would be for the state of South Carolina and the official who has taken it upon himself to justify those actions.”

  “How does Holgren look?” a male voice asked and in a quick change of tone she replied,

  “He looks like hell.”

  “Badly beaten?”

  “Badly beaten.”

  “But his spirits, on the whole, are good.”

  “His spirits on the whole are good. He is sustained by his determination to prove his innocence and his certainty that he can.”

  “Prove his innocence or keep someone else from proving his guilt?” Henrietta inquired. Debbie smiled.

  “The burden of proof is on his accusers, is it not?”

  “And you don’t think they can do it,” a famous columnist from New York remarked.

  “If proof does not exist,” Debbie said calmly, “how would you suggest they go about it? Manufacture some? I thought those days were gone, even in the—I thought those days were gone.”

  “Do you expect to confer with Mr. Stinnet regarding plans for the trial?”

  “Of course I am available for any consultation Mr. Stinnet wishes. If, that is,” she added dryly, “Mr. Stinnet is not too busy with his extracurricular activities to tend to his primary responsibility, which is this case.”

  “Don’t underestimate Mr. Stinnet,” Henny said. “He’ll take care of this case and his ‘extracurricular activities,’ as you put it, both, and still keep you hoppin’. I suppose you mean by that, Justice NOW!”

  “I mean this reactionary, anti-democratic, so-called ‘law-and-order’ crusade that he seems to have pulled out of his hat in the past twenty-four hours,” Debbie said sharply. “I mean his vigilantism, with all its harsh and ominous threats to our democratic society and the rule of law. I will admit he’s come up with a name for it that may be appealing to many people impatient with the orderly processes of the law, but that doesn’t change its essential repugnant nature, repugnant to our whole democratic way of life.”

  “Strong words,” Henrietta observed. “You realize that as of half an hour ago his office had received over ten thousand telegrams and phone calls, and that the number is apparently increasin’ by the minute. And they haven’t even started counting the mail, yet.”

  “That doesn’t make it right,” Debbie said calmly, “and one must hope that the genuinely democratic elements in this country, the common-sense democracy of this country, will soon put it in perspective and reject the extremism which it represents. When you of the media make clear to the country the dangers that are inherent in it, I don’t think there will be any doubt of its rejection.”

  “You may not find,” the television luminary said, “that all of the media is going to be quite so unanimous against it as you seem to assume. And you may find that your client is in more trouble because of it than he might otherwise be.”

  “If I have to fight this case on the TV channels and the front pages,” Debbie retorted, “I shall do so.”

  “Where else can you win it?” Henrietta-Maude inquired; and stared back unimpressed as Earle Holgren’s lawyer flashed her a look that would have done credit to her client himself.

  “Listen!” she said. “Listen, all of you! If you think for one minute that I, or any other decent, law-abiding American is going to sit idly by and let a corrupt and decaying criminal justice system railroad Earle Holgren to his death without proof and without a fair trial, then you have another think coming. That isn’t the way America works! Mr. Stinnet talks about Justice NOW! All right, we’re going to have justice now—and it won’t be his kind of vigilante justice, either! It will be real justice, which is what all decent, law-abiding Americans want! It will be real justice for Earle Holgren! I appeal to all decent Americans to HELP EARLE HOLGREN! That’s the slogan I want to see, because it fits the facts!”

  “La Pasionaria of Pomeroy Station,” a male voice remarked in the background and amid a flutter of laughter Henrietta said clearly,

  “Isn’t it amazin’ how people can start from exactly opposite poles and arrive at exactly the same place? I thought Regard had the decent, law-abidin’ people on his side, but accordin’ to this young lady, they’re all over there with her. Well, we’ll see.”

  “You certainly will see,” Debbie said, more calmly. “If Mr. Stinnet thinks we’re going to lie down and let him walk all over us without a fight, he’d better reconsider, because that isn’t the way it’s going to be. And I don’t care how many ‘Justice NOWS!’ he fabricates.”

  “Well, I guess that tells Regard,” Henrietta said, closing her notebook with a snap. “How often do you plan to hold these performances for us?”

  “They aren’t ‘performances’!” Debbie retorted. “And your comment expresses exactly the state of mind I had expec
ted to find here regarding this defendant. It is going to make it extremely difficult to find a fair judge, a fair jury and a fair trial. This atmosphere is highly prejudiced and highly hostile.”

  “Will you try for a change of venue?” someone asked.

  “I may, though I doubt if anywhere in the state would be any better. It is something I shall have to consider carefully, however. The main thing I want to do is appeal to all fair-minded citizens all over the country to assist us with their contributions and their support. I am counting on the basic traditional spirit of fair play in America. Those who believe in it will assist. Those who do not will of course go their own way. But I don’t think we will lack for help.”

  And in this, as the day drew on, she proved to be correct, for it was not long after her press conference had ended with one more defiant blast at the criminal justice system, one more appeal to “decent, law-abiding American citizens,” that the first tentative questionings began to appear.

  By some happenstance on the evening news, the battle between the founder of Justice NOW! and the defender of Earle Holgren somehow became transformed into a contest between a big, menacing, overbearing figure and a gallant little wisp of a woman as she bravely sought to save a possibly innocent suspect from the forces of evil in a corrupt and unfair system. There were no flat assertions that the suspect was innocent, nobody was able to deny that the response to Justice NOW! was indeed unprecedented and overwhelming, but it was stressed that as nearly as could be ascertained so far, the attorney general’s case against Earle Holgren appeared to be based heavily on circumstantial evidence. It was conceded that Justice NOW!, though not yet twelve hours old, was already a major political phenomenon that inevitably would have effects “reaching far beyond the immediate case of Earle Holgren.” But there was also a genuine and openly expressed concern that it might well lead, as Debbie had asserted, to rampant vigilantism that could well upset the whole fabric of American jurisprudence.