The Court

by William J. Coughlin

  Hank shrugged. “Hey, what’s it all matter anyway? You thought you were doing right, I thought I was doing right, and it split the family in one angry instant. I don’t think that was exactly the way our old man would have wanted things to turn out.”

  “I agree.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about it the other night, but I just couldn’t find a way to bring it up.”

  Green nodded. “I felt the same way.”

  “Good, then that’s over.”

  “Adele is still angry.”

  Hank shrugged. “Listen, sport, she’s always angry. You know women. She was in Europe along with me. She didn’t trust me there alone. Anyway, the camp thing affected her too. But as you know, women never forgive nor do they forget. That’s something I can’t change.”

  “I can live with it.”

  “If we see you once in a while, she’ll get over it.”

  “Probably.”

  Hank stood up. “God, I feel terrible.” He quickly sat down again. He took a cigarette from a pack on the table and lit one. “Before you decide to divorce the broad you married, you ought to bring her here for a visit. I’d like to be able to say that I at least met all my brother’s wives.” He grinned. “Any other problems beside domestic?”

  Jerry Green shrugged. “You spoke of integrity and courage a while ago. I have a job to do and I suppose it will come down to just that, whether I have basic moral integrity, and maybe even courage.”

  Hank laughed. “That’s heavy stuff to lay on a drunk.” He blew out some smoke. “But I’ll tell you what, Jerry, you can’t go wrong if you just follow one rule.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Figure out what our old man would have done, then do it. If there was one person in this wide world who had both integrity and courage, he was it. The older I get, the more I appreciate that. Man, he had to take a lot of crap, and he had to use his noodle, but he just didn’t merely survive, he had dignity. Right down to the day he died he had dignity. And courage. I never knew him to be afraid, did you?”

  Jerry Green shook his head.

  “Anyway, that’s your big brother’s advice: figure out what the old man would have done then follow his example. You can’t miss, believe me.”

  Jerry Green saw the conviction burning from his brother’s reddened eyes. He meant every word, and believed it. All these years had just increased his faith. Hank had never found out, and it would destroy him now if he knew. He had conferred a kind of saintliness upon the memory of their father.

  Jerry Green stood up and extended his hand. “Watch the drinking, Hank, it can catch up on you.”

  His brother grinned up at him. “You try being married to Adele for a while, then I’ll take your advice.” He started to get up, then sat back down. “Listen, I’d walk you to the door, but I don’t think I’d make it.”

  “I’ll let myself out. If I don’t see her, square it with Adele, okay?”

  “Going back to Washington?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know.”

  Jerry Green quickly retrieved his coat and boots. He didn’t really want to see Adele or have to do any additional explaining. He hurried out to his car and sped away, spinning a bit on the slick pavement.

  Hank Green had been in Europe when it happened. Jerry Green had been in Washington. Hank was teaching at Penn State. They saw their father infrequently. Both men believed he had a full life at the university. Green fought the car out of another spin and realized he was going too fast. He felt his eyes fill with tears. He was surprised, he thought he was over it after all these years.

  Dr. Connolly had called him in Washington and he had immediately flown home. Connolly had been a lifelong friend of his father’s and his personal physician. Green vividly remembered every detail of the room where Dr. Connolly had tried gently to break the news to him, to tell him the actual facts. He already knew his father was dead. A heart attack, Connolly had told him that over the telephone. But it wasn’t true. His father was dead all right, but he had poisoned himself. A lonely old man, with practically no teaching duties—professor emeritus was his title—his father had an office, someplace to go, but that was about all. So he had ended it. The note was in his handwriting. “There are no more dreams.” That was all, just five words. Old Connolly had certified the death as cardiac arrest despite the obvious evidence of suicide. Jerry Green, the smart young Washington lawyer, quickly had his father’s body cremated, partly to conceal the ultimate sadness of the suicide, but more importantly, to protect Dr. Connolly, who had acted out of kindness.

  When Hank arrived the next day, he had gone berserk, and a yelling, screaming fight had ended their relationship as brothers. But whatever neglect their father had suffered, at least now his memory was enshrined forever in Hank’s household.

  The blare of a horn behind him angrily informed him the light had turned green. He drove on, blinking away the tears in his eyes.

  He found it difficult to concentrate. He thought of his brother’s advice, what would Pa do? Kill myself, he wondered, instantly ashamed at the thought. He remembered his father, a kind, gentle man with soft eyes. The eyes seemed to melt into the eyes and the face of Regina. Romance was never real, that’s what Hank had said—maybe he was right, but he could be wrong too. Then he thought about the dean, and it seemed in his imagination as if his own face was looking back at him. There was a knowing look in those eyes, a look that said I know what you’re going to do. But were those his own eyes, or the dean’s?

  He pulled into his motel’s parking lot. He was headed for his room when he noticed that the motel’s cocktail lounge was open. He went in, hung up his coat, and took a seat at the small bar.

  There was no one else in the place except the young jacket-clad bartender back of the bar.

  “Yes sir?” The bartender looked genuinely pleased to see a customer.

  “Scotch and soda.”

  “Heavy or light Scotch?”

  “Heavy.”

  The young bartender made a graceful movement with the bottle as he poured the Scotch, a sweeping, theatrical gesture.

  “Are you a student here?”

  “Yes sir. I’m an English major.”

  “Read much Shakespeare?”

  “You bet, it’s required,” he said, as he deftly added ice and soda to the glass.

  “He wrote ghost stories.”

  “Pardon me?” The bartender snapped out a paper napkin and placed the completed drink before his only customer. He beamed, pleased with his own professional performance.

  “Shakespeare wrote ghost stories,” Jerry Green said. “Macbeth, Hamlet, Julius Caesar; he had this thing about ghosts.”

  The young man occupied himself with some busy work behind the bar. “It was probably the times,” He said cheerfully. “You know, the end of the Middle Ages, superstition and all that. He was just writing for his audience, that’s all.”

  “Dickens, too,” Green said, sipping his drink. “You can’t find a better ghost story than old Scrooge and his friends.”

  The bartender eyed him carefully, obviously wondering if this was just idle conversation or whether he had a drunk on his hands, or worse, a nut.

  “You’ll find it all through literature,” Green said, smiling. “Ghosts populate some of the very best stories.” He sipped the drink again. “Even today the paperback racks and the movies are preoccupied with hauntings of all kinds.”

  “Man by his nature is superstitious,” the young man said, now a bit wary.

  “Did you ever see a ghost?” Green asked. “I mean it, on the level, did you ever have anything to do with ghosts in any form?”

  The bartender’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “No. I’m afraid I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “How about hauntings? Ever been haunted?”

  “Only after too much booze.” His was an empty, professional laugh.

  “You may not have even realized it,” Jerry Green said, finishing his drink. �
��I’ve been haunted for years and I’ve just found out about it.” He got up and put a bill on the bar. He winked at the young man.

  The wink relieved the tension.

  “Keep the change,” Green said collecting his coat.

  “I hope your ghosts don’t bother you too much,” the bartender called after him.

  “Me too.” The words were spoken softly and couldn’t be heard by the young man. Green thought again of his father. “Me too,” he repeated in a whisper as he headed toward his room and the telephone.

  It would be the most significant telephone call of his life.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Sister Agatha Murphy knelt in the quiet chapel. Only a few other nuns were scattered about in the otherwise empty pews. Sister Agatha Murphy made a habit of spending the hours of the late afternoon in the chapel. However, she was not praying. Not that she didn’t pray, she did. She prayed upon arising, at morning mass, at noon, at evening services, and just before she retired. But she didn’t pray in the chapel in the late afternoon. Being there served two purposes. First, the other nuns believed she was praying and this external mark of extra devotion shielded her against some of the reproving looks of her colleagues. They, she knew, felt that through prayer she would eventually see the error of her ways and admit to God, and to the Mother General, that she was indeed guilty of murder. The second purpose was to have a nice quiet place, free of distraction, where she could plan her new hospice, the one she hoped to build and operate, providing she was absolved by the Supreme Court.

  As she knelt, her eyes fixed devoutly upon the altar’s stark crucifix, she planned in exquisite detail exactly how it would be. In her years of overseas service she often had to do without pen and paper and had been forced to develop her powers of concentration and memory. She used that ability now. Besides, she didn’t wish to commit any of her plans to writing for fear that they might fall into unsympathetic hands. She used her precise mind like a steel file cabinet, filing away ideas and thoughts on the efficient use of space, work schedules, and even the right chemical mixtures to send her beloved patients to Almighty God when the pain became too much to bear. She planned it all very carefully.

  * * *

  Herbert Mennen, the man who paid for Sister Murphy’s legal expenses, also planned, and at the very same time of day. But he was not quiet, nor contemplative. He was talking loudly on the telephone, as he always did no matter how good the connection. He was discussing his plans with a reluctant funeral director in New Jersey, a man who headed a statewide group of cut-price morticians. Mennen was outlining the probable profits for a mortuary owner who had the good sense to get in on the ground floor and tie in with his proposed system of hospices, and thereby obtain a steady stream of customers for funeral arrangements. As soon as the high court ruled for Sister Death, Mennen told the man, the hospice operation was ready to go, and it would be nationwide.

  But the mortician seemed to be resisting, raising the problem of possible local suits and criminal actions, despite a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on the legality of assisted suicide. The funeral director didn’t believe the states would obey such a ruling.

  “You think not,” Mennen bellowed in reply. “Listen, let me tell you a true story. That fucking Supreme Court couldn’t make up its mind on obscenity, right? So there was no nationwide rule. But they had another fucking porno case before them, but it hadn’t come down yet. Anyway, one day I’m walking to a business meeting at a local bank. I happen to walk past a sidewalk kiosk, you know, one of them stands with papers and magazines. Like always, all I see are tits and ass. The whole display was magazine covers, tits and ass in high gloss. Well, I’m in the bank maybe three hours, then I walk back.

  “I pass the same kiosk and all the dirty girlie magazines are gone. They had been replaced with sports magazines, that sort of thing. The afternoon papers had come out. They all had the same headline: Supreme Court rules on obscenity. I didn’t have to read how they decided, just one look at the change of the magazine display told the whole story.

  “See, the government didn’t need any cops to sweep those magazines off the stands. The decision was obeyed instantly. It’s kinda like that television ad, when the Supreme Court speaks, everybody listens. Of course, a couple of months later they reverse themselves and everything is all tits and ass again. But that’s only on obscenity, they go back and forth on that one like a Ping-Pong ball. But you don’t have to worry about big issues like rational suicide. If they rule for that nun, that’s it. Sure, some local hotshots will raise a little hell for publicity, but they’ll cave in. I got an army of lawyers standing by to kick the shit out of anybody who tries to get in the way.

  “Look, if we get ready now, we can beat everybody else into the field. I got the organization and the finances. I’m doing you guys a favor, cutting you in. Now’s the time to get aboard. You don’t want to miss this bus, pal, because there’s a lot of money to be made here.”

  Herbert Mennen had no premonition about another telephone call about to be made in the midwest. Mennen had no time for any kind of abstract contemplation when he was busy selling.

  * * *

  Patrolman Charles Garcia and his partner completed the early shift. Garcia, as he had requested, had a new partner. The man was not a good street cop and had a tendency to rush into potentially dangerous situations, but he was what Garcia wanted, he was white.

  It had been a slow day, boring, but it at least insured a minimum of paperwork. This night had been selected by Garcia to do his household bills. He didn’t need any more paperwork than that. Doing the bills always upset him.

  He experienced a sharp sense of bitterness and frustration as he walked into the precinct and saw several black officers. He knew them. They had less seniority, they were younger and hadn’t invested as much of their lives in police work. Soon, depending on the court case, either he or they would be out of work.

  All their futures now depended on the color of skin, nothing else. He thought about the mortgage payment, the car loan, the kids’ dental work. It didn’t seem real that he wouldn’t be able to meet his obligations, that he would lose everything, just because he just wasn’t dark enough.

  Garcia was sufficiently objective to know that he was being affected, that his thoughts and attitudes were becoming predominantly racial. Prejudice, he thought, tended to poison its victim, manufacturing hate. The lash of racial discrimination cut the flesh, no matter what the color, equally deep.

  He quickly changed out of his uniform, talking very little with the other men of the shift. They had little in common anymore. It was his job and his career that were on the line, not theirs. And the other officers seemed to be withdrawing from him, as if he really didn’t belong anymore, as if he was no longer one of them.

  He hurried to his car and headed home. He switched on the radio to catch the news. He knew it would be months yet before the Supreme Court would act on the affirmative action case, but he had started listening to the newscasts, hoping that one day they would announce a favorable decision and he would be saved.

  Patrolman Garcia had no knowledge of the importance to him of a telephone call about to be made to the White House.

  * * *

  They had got the paper out, and the newspaper now operated with only a skeleton night staff; a few reporters and rewrite men ruled by the night city editor, plus the drama critic whose day began when most everyone else’s ended. The pace of operation was very different from the fuss and fury of only a few hours before.

  Abby Simmons reread his front page story. The mayor and the city council were at it again with charges and countercharges. To a veteran reporter like Simmons it seemed the story could be reprinted at regular intervals, word for word, because it was always the same. He thumbed through the rest of the newspaper, although he had already read it twice.

  Harry Phillips, the managing editor, stalked out of his office, on his way home. He saw Simmons and altered course, walking through the rows of de
sks until he came up to him.

  “What are you doing,” Phillips asked.

  Abby Simmons looked up languidly. “I am admiring this monument to your art. I am reading this fucking newspaper.”

  “Ah, Abby, I didn’t know you knew that word. Isn’t it funny, no matter how well you think you know somebody, you find you can still learn something new about them.”

  “What’s biting you? I’m just sitting here reading the paper. I’m on my own time.”

  “You’re sore because that piece of yours about the local bank merger didn’t run,” Phillips growled.

  “I’m not sore. You gave me a nice shot on page one with the story about his honor, the mayor. However, since you bring it up, why didn’t you run the merger thing? It was good copy.”

  “Yeah, it was. But it was marginal news. I have to pick and choose.”

  “Come on, Harry, it was better news than this shit about the mayor and the council. That happens all the time. A major merger of banks is of general interest.”

  The editor shrugged. “I checked it out with our attorneys. They think publicity might foul up the transaction. They said if we screwed up the merger and it cost the banks some money, they’d be on us like tigers. Bankers aren’t forgiving types. Just try missing your mortgage payment.”

  “Same principle as the bridge story?”

  The editor shrugged. “Yeah, more or less. Under that state law we could maybe get our ass sued. So we don’t run the story.”

  “If you had been on the Washington Post, Nixon would still be president.”

  Phillips laughed. “If that law had been in effect in Washington at the time, Nixon’s estate would now own the Washington Post.”

  Abby Simmons tossed the newspaper into a trash barrel. “That damn bridge is going to fall down, Harry. Sooner or later, it’s going to fall. And that’s a hell of a lot more important than a bank merger.”

  “If the Supreme Court knocks that law down, Abby, we’ll warn everybody about the dangers of your bridge.”