Decision

by Allen Drury

  “Don’t worry,” the Justice said. “I’m going to be on my way just as soon as I can get everything cleared up in my office. I still have some things to take care of.”

  “Hope it won’t take you long, in this weather,” the guard observed. The Justice nodded.

  “It’s a bear, isn’t it? But then, Washington in summer always is. I think about a week more, and then I’m going to get out of here. Anybody else still around?”

  The guard had told him that as far as he knew, there wasn’t.

  “Not tonight, anyway. You’ve got the building to yourself, almost.”

  “Good,” Justice Barbour had said. “Then I can really get a lot done.”

  He had gone off along the Great Hall, past the busts of the Chief Justices, and disappeared around the corner. In mind’s eye the guard could see him going along the empty corridor that paralleled the chamber and then around to the back corridor, and so along to his own chambers. He was going to be a good man on the Court, the guard thought and chuckled. He’d certainly started out with a bang!

  Twenty minutes later there had been this researcher, and he too seemed pleasant: a youngish sort of fellow, clean-shaven, with a good tan, carrying a couple of yellow legal pads under one arm; curious himself about who was in the building, after he’d explained that his North Dakota Senator had sent him. The guard didn’t see anything wrong in his curiosity, it was a natural thing in such a famous place, but he’d shrugged it off with an easy smile and a “Nobody of any importance.”

  “Oh,” the researcher said, sounding disappointed. “I thought I saw Justice Barbour come in a few minutes ago.”

  “Must have been a look-alike,” the guard said comfortably. “No Justices tonight. Sorry.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” the researcher said. “I’ve got a lot of stuff to dig out in the library, anyway. Shouldn’t stand around sightseeing. Which way,” he added politely, “is the library?”

  “You haven’t been here before?” the guard asked, a little surprised though he shouldn’t have been, they got a lot of strangers in all the time to use the Court’s more than 200,000 volumes. “I’ll call somebody from the guardroom to come and show you up.”

  And he started to pick up the intercom, but the researcher smiled and said, rather quickly, “Oh, no, don’t bother anybody. Just tell me. I’ll find it.”

  “Afraid we have orders,” the guard said with pleasant firmness, and put in a call. But that was just the moment, he found out later when it had happened and the Court was again the focus of the world’s shocked attention, that his buddy had decided to go to the men’s room. So after the phone had rung a couple or three times he shrugged, turned and gestured and said, “Well, you go down to the end there, turn right, and just around the corner there’s a little elevator you can take up to the third floor, which is the library floor. There’ll be a guard there who can direct you on in.”

  “Thanks a lot,” the researcher said, and added casually,

  “Where are the Justices’ offices?”

  “They turn left where you turn right to the elevator,” the guard said. “But the public isn’t allowed back there.”

  “Oh, I know,” the researcher said amicably; and casually asked one last question:

  “Many guards on duty tonight?”

  “One or two on each floor,” the guard said. He smiled. “We had eight or ten last week in the midst of that Holgren business, but it’s all calmed down now.”

  “I hope they catch the bastard,” the researcher said. “I see where he’s got out. And they think he maybe killed that Regard Stinnet, too.”

  “Yes,” the guard said somberly and added with some vehemence, “I hope they catch him. He deserves everything he gets!”

  “He sure does,” the researcher said with a sudden smile. “He sure does. Well, thanks a lot. See you later.”

  It was only after he too had disappeared at the end of the Great Hall that it occurred to the guard to wonder idly why, if he had been close enough to the building to see Justice Barbour enter, he had asked about him; and why it had taken him twenty minutes before he himself had come in. Then he dismissed it with a shrug and forgot about it. It didn’t seem to have any significance at the time. Nor did he call up to the third floor, as he was to regret bitterly later, and alert the guard there that a researcher was on his way.

  Official Washington, even now, is not really a very careful city. It is still an essentially good-natured and trusting place in which an Earle Holgren, comfortably presumed to be fugitive in the South, can enter a casually guarded Supreme Court without arousing alarm.

  At his back, and all around him, the guard had the comfortable feeling of the silent building: its interior lights burning low, its atmosphere hushed, a few people working, the night lengthening on, the powerful atmosphere of the law going forward at its own inexorable pace—a sense of power, serenity, stability, peace.

  “I hoped you might be home,” he said over his private line, “but I didn’t dare think I’d be so lucky.”

  “And why not?” she asked, sounding very pleased. “Actually, I ought to bawl you out and refuse to speak to you. You said you’d call me for sure last night, not tonight. Have you any concept of what I’ve been through in the past twenty-four hours?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, quickly serious. “I really am. I do know, because I’ve been through it too. But it hasn’t exactly been my fault. That is, it has but it hasn’t, if you know what I mean.”

  “Well, not exactly, no,” she said with a chuckle. “Am I supposed to?”

  “If you’re going to be a Justice’s wife,” he said. “It’s really taken me all this time to come to terms with myself and really decide once and for all that I did the right thing. Now I’m sure.”

  “Do you mind,” she said carefully, “if we back up for a minute? Did you say, ‘If you’re going to be a Justice’s wife’?”

  “That is what I said.”

  “I thought that’s what you said.”

  “It is what I said. Really, now, what a ridiculous conversation!”

  “I am going to be a Justice’s wife?”

  “Well, of course,” he replied lightly, “if your honor wishes to reject appellant’s request—”

  “How come appellant is in a position to make the request?” she asked, an excited amusement beginning to run under her words. “Is she actually going to give you a divorce?”

  “She is actually going to give me a divorce.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “Believe it.”

  There was a pause. For just a panicky moment he wondered if for some wild unknown reason she might say No. He dismissed it at once but decided he had best plunge on.

  “Therefore, as I say, appellant does request, if your honor pleases—”

  “Yes,” she interrupted with a shaky little laugh, “my honor does please. And so does all the rest of me.”

  “Good,” he said, sounding so relieved that she began to laugh, wholeheartedly.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, puzzled.

  “You sound so like a little boy all of a sudden. As though you thought I might not.”

  “Well,” he said cautiously, “I didn’t know.”

  “Well, now you do. The decision, unanimous, is yes. All right?”

  “All right,” he said humbly. “And thank you.”

  “Oh, my dear,” she said, trying to sound light and bright and fashionably uncaring, but not really succeeding at all. “Thank you.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you … where are you, incidentally? I haven’t even asked. At home?”

  “At the Court.”

  “At the Court!” she exclaimed with a sudden genuine dismay. “Haven’t you heard that Earle Holgren has escaped?”

  “So?”

  “What do you mean, ‘So?’” she demanded sharply. “He’s killed Regard Stinnet—”

  “We don’t know that for sure, yet. There are plenty of
fanatics running around loose on both sides of that issue.”

  “But—”

  “Anyway, he’s in the South somewhere, he isn’t up here. And we have guards on duty. The Court’s safe. Everything’s back to normal.”

  “I know you have guards,” she said impatiently, “but he’s psychotic, and if he’s set out on some jag to murder everybody connected with his trial that he can lay his hands on—”

  “Cathy, Cathy!” he said. “Stop being so melodramatic! They’re after him, they’ll get him. He wouldn’t do anything so obvious as try to kill me in any case. After all, why should he? I only spoke for the Court. And I saved his life, didn’t I? I could have voted for the death penalty.”

  “But he doesn’t reason like that. He’s crazy!”

  “Well, I assure you he isn’t here,” he said firmly. “The place is practically deserted, the guards are on the job—”

  “I’m worried,” she said bleakly. “And I think you should be too. I think you should have your own special guards—”

  “Oh, Cathy! That would be ridiculous.”

  “You men are so—so—stupid sometimes,” she said. “So phony-brave-macho. I’m scared, can’t I get that through to you?”

  “Well, look,” he said patiently. “Will you feel any better if I come over soon? I’ll be through in a little while. Why don’t I hide out with you for the night? Surely he won’t know how to find me there!”

  “Now you’re making fun of me,” she said soberly, “and I find I resent it. I am worried about this.”

  “Well, don’t be,” he said comfortably. “Everything is quite all right. Believe me.”

  “I hope so,” she said bleakly. “Oh, my dear, I hope so.”

  “It is,” he said firmly. “It is. I’ll see you soon. Don’t worry, now. I’ll be along within the hour.”

  “Yes,” she said, still troubled and uncertain.

  And that, he supposed as he returned to his papers, was just another example of the leftovers that would probably haunt him for a long time from the damnable case.

  It had been hard enough to come to terms with his own actions in the matter. He had finally done so; had reached serenity; and had no desire to be troubled further now by what he regarded as exaggerated, if loving, fears.

  For the first few hours after his confrontation with Debbie following the decision, the epithet Clever coward! had hung in the air, a malignant presence. He was honest enough to acknowledge that there was some truth in it—not a great deal, but enough at first to make him uneasy and far from being at peace with himself. The memory of Ray Ullstein’s advice had proved invaluable then.

  Ray had told him in a pre-decision telephone conversation that on the Court there was nothing to be gained by looking back. He had made no comment on the merits or demerits of Tay’s decision, only expressed regret that they would not be together. And he had admonished, in his usual gentle, non-judgmental way, that Tay himself should neither regret nor brood upon his decision.

  Some brooding, as Cathy had perceived in their first conversation after the decision, had perhaps been inevitable. Criticism of his stand, balanced so ironically between Justice NOW! and his fellow liberals, had been made even sharper and more stinging by the letters, phone calls and telegrams he had received from many old associates and many unknown countrymen. Approval had come from those he least respected: denunciation from those whose opinion he most valued and whose admiration he had always had. For a while, this had not been easy.

  He had taken the middle ground, for reasons humanly understandable—and to him legally valid—and neither side ever valued the middle ground. You had to go to extremes to please one or the other. And his nature had never been extreme. To that he had been true.

  It was this perhaps more than anything that had at last brought him peace of mind. In a sense it could be said that he had sidestepped the issues of the death penalty and television, but there would be other cases and other opportunities for them arising in this hectic age, of that he was very sure. And then, when the issues were clear-cut and free from personal emotion, he could take the stand so automatically expected of him in all cases but not so simple in this.

  In the Holgren case he had made a ruling consistent, as he saw it, with the commands of the law and the necessities of a stable society. He had managed to conquer his personal hatred for the defendant and render justice that he was convinced would someday, after present passions passed, be seen to be fair and evenhanded. He had been fair to Janie, constructive to his country and just to Earle Holgren.

  He had been consistent with himself.

  He went into his bathroom, sloshed hot and cold water alternately on his face, dried it, suddenly felt completely at peace. Cathy was waiting. The future was waiting. He was ready to welcome it. He felt amazingly happy.

  On a sudden impulse he picked up the phone and called his parents in California to tell them of his divorce and of Cathy. Then he called his brother Carl and his sister Anne and told them, too. Then he called Erma Tillson and told her. Everything seemed to have come full circle. The pain of Janie would never end but so much other unhappiness had rolled away. He felt suddenly very close to his family, very humbly grateful to Cathy.

  In mind’s eye he could see the beautiful valley of his youth stretched out before him in the gentle lovely light of California evening. The fertile earth conferred its old familiar solace. To it an infinite blessing had been added.

  He forced himself to remain at his desk another fifteen minutes. Then it became too much. He said, “Oh, hell!” in a laughing voice, slapped his books shut, turned off his desk light, went into the outer office, snapped off the lamps and overheads, stepped into the corridor, back to it.

  He locked his door and started to turn.

  Just behind him, someone moved.

  ***

  Chapter 5

  Here he had been wondering how to find his old pal Tay, Earle told himself with disbelieving glee as the elevator rose slowly upward, and suddenly Tay had been delivered into his hands. Suddenly the major problems were solved. He was confident now that what he had to do could be completed without much further trouble. The final details were a little hazy at the moment but he knew they would come to him. It was like a miracle. It was obviously meant to be. Earle Holgren rides again! he told himself, laughing aloud in the little cubicle. What made anybody in the world think that it was possible to stand against him?

  He had arrived in the District on a late flight yesterday afternoon, having slipped easily across the state line into Georgia not too long after his date with Boomer, and then driven like hell for Atlanta. Security seemed to be lax along the way. The hue and cry for Regard’s assassin was apparently still centered in the Columbia area, and the DO NOT DISTURB sign he had left on the motel door was apparently still successfully delaying the discovery of Debbie. He had only been stopped once and then rather lackadaisically, he thought; it had occurred because at one point he had been forced to leave back roads for half an hour and use a main highway. The officers at the roadblock had glanced quickly at the driver’s license he had thoughtfully lifted from the back pocket of the motel manager and waved him on his way.

  The fellow, who did resemble the clean-shaven Earle in a quick-glance sort of way, had responded to his call to come check the air conditioner, right after he and Debbie arrived. It was working fine, actually, but when he turned his back on Earle to check it, with Debbie’s voluble assistance, his half-out billfold was removed from his pocket and skillfully reinserted ten seconds later minus license. This was enough to get Earle through the roadblock now, and after that it was clear sailing. No particular interest was shown at the Atlanta airport. Armored in self-righteous confidence he walked through security without a hitch and was on his way.

  In Washington he had grabbed a quick hamburger at the airport and then taken a taxi into town where he found a cheap boardinghouse on Ninth Street N.W. and holed up for the night. He had spent today haunting the Court
and trying without success to find out where Tay Barbour lived. He had taken a couple of public tours of the building. (It was an odd feeling to stand in the chamber and think, This is the place where they did it to me. If he had needed any strengthening of his resolve, which he did not, that would have done it.) He had picked up the handy booklet, “The Supreme Court of the United States,” at the bookstand on the ground floor, finding in it which floor—the first—housed Tay’s chambers. He had then eaten lunch in the cafeteria along with other tourists and some younger, more-at-home characters who he assumed must be law clerks.

  He had tried unsuccessfully to pump a couple of these as to Tay’s whereabouts; had shied away when they suddenly looked a little suspicious and had gone over to the Capitol for a while, where he roamed about and saw a few things, playing Mr. Average Tourist. Finally he had plopped himself down under one of the giant oaks on the Capitol Plaza lawn and gone peacefully to sleep for a couple of hours.

  When he awoke he sat for a while thinking before going back once more to the Court. A young black couple lay entwined nearby, oblivious to the world. A transistor radio blared at their side:

  “The hunt for Earle Holgren, the escaped killer who is suspected of gunning down Attorney General Regard Stinnet of South Carolina, leader of Justice NOW!, spread throughout the South today as the pro-law-and-order group turned to its new chairman, Attorney General Ted Phillips of California, for guidance in a stepped-up drive to enforce the nation’s anti-crime laws. Stinnet was largely responsible for Holgren’s conviction on earlier murder charges. His assassination is believed likely to draw even more Americans into the ranks of the vigilante-type organization. Meanwhile Holgren’s lawyer and presumed girl friend, Debbie Donnelson, who is believed to have assisted his escape, continues missing and is believed to be with the convicted killer somewhere in the Carolinas…”

  Well, he thought with a wry grimace, she’s somewhere in the Carolinas, all right, and you’ll find her soon enough. But you won’t find your “escaped killer,” you bastards, because your “escaped killer” is just too damned smart for you. He’s a long way from where you think he is and he’s got a job to do. You think Yahoo’s death was a sensation! You wait and see what your “escaped killer’s” going to do next, you damned goofballs!