Mark the Sparrow

by Clark Howard

  Cloud sat back on the couch and read:

  Dear Mr. Cloud:

  Recently we met briefly on two occasions—just before I was convicted and again on the day I was sentenced to die. Both times you seemed to have more than a passing interest in my case. Ordinarily I do not trust the motives of newspaper reporters, but in this instance I felt that perhaps you were concerned with the lack of justice in my conviction, rather than how many lines of copy I was worth.

  If I was mistaken, you can throw this letter away without reading further. On the other hand, if my judgment of you was correct and your interest was sincere, then I would like to invite you to visit me here on San Quentin’s condemned row. My purpose for extending this invitation is to discuss a project which you might find both interesting and profitable. You can see me any weekday between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.

  Sincerely,

  Weldon Whitman

  Cloud was at once annoyed and pleased. His annoyance stemmed from Whitman’s caustic comment about newspaper reporters collectively; at the same time he could not help being pleased that the condemned man had made him an exception.

  Cloud put the letter on the table before him and pondered it as he drank his coffee. A month ago to the day, he had listened to Judge Lukey sentence Whitman to two deaths and more than three lifetimes in prison. Cloud didn’t know how fast the California Supreme Court operated, but he doubted if enough time had passed for a review of Whitman’s sentence. He had seen something about it in the paper, and he could not have missed it; Hoskins made him proof every line of the news section every day.

  Cloud lighted another cigarette and slowly read Whitman’s letter a second time. He tried to visualize the condemned man. To his mild surprise, he was unable to piece together a complete face for Weldon Whitman. Cloud recalled nothing about Whitman’s hair, nothing about the shape of his face. He could not remember Whitman’s ears, his eyebrows, his cheekbones—nothing except the eyes and the hooked nose and the imagined sneer.

  Odd, he thought. Here he was, a newspaperman trained to observe and mentally record everything that passed before him, yet he could not picture the whole of Weldon Whitman’s face, not even after seeing him three times, up close in well-lighted rooms, and twice talking with him face to face. Yet other people, the victims of the Spotlight Bandit, who had seen their assailant only briefly in darkness, had positively and without hesitation identified that same face under oath in a court of law.

  Cloud leaned his head back against the couch. His mind was troubled and he seemed to be searching for something: unidentifiable, elusive, but relentlessly vexing.

  An explanation, perhaps, that was far too slow in coming.

  Chapter Six

  The plane gradually lost altitude after it crossed the mountains, and finally slipped out of the high cloud formations.

  Robert Cloud looked out the window at the patterns of cultivated land patches. He had been out of bed less than four hours and airborne for slightly less than an hour, but it seemed as if much of the day should already have passed.

  At seven-thirty that morning he had been sitting again on the couch with a cup of black coffee, studying Weldon Whitman’s letter. Tired after a night of restless sleep, he had not noticed the fatigue; he had been concentrating, almost grimly, on a way to settle in his mind once and for all the plaguing thoughts of Weldon Whitman. He had finally decided that the only way to do it was by seeing Whitman and talking with him. On Death Row. Today.

  Cloud committed himself to the decision with two brief phone calls: one to leave word that he would not be in to work today, and the other to reserve a seat on the nine-thirty commuter flight to Oakland.

  The flight upstate took barely an hour; Cloud had just finished the morning final of the Ledger when it was time to fasten his seat belt for landing. He had made a return reservation on the four-thirty flight and had no luggage, so when the plane landed he went immediately through the terminal and found a taxi to take him across the bay to the prison.

  Cloud saw the prison the first time from a distance as his taxi cruised across the Golden Gate bridge. Leaving the bridge, the taxi followed the edge of the bay to the prison compound’s front gate; through the fence Cloud could see the big wall. He was impressed, not so much by the physical appearance of the institution, as by thoughts of the mass of humanity being kept there. It was the first time he had been so close to a penitentiary, and he viewed it with mixed feelings of awe and curiosity.

  Cloud paid the driver and followed signs to the visitor’s section of the administration building. There, he filled out a short form required of visitors, sat down in a neat, sunlit lounge while his request was processed, and gazed out a large window at the manicured lawn and rows of bright flower beds spread richly before the administration building. Almost a pleasant place, he thought. Except for the wall. Looking up, he saw one corner of that massive barrier; perched upon it was a sterile-looking steel tower with ominous gun ports opening at intervals around its frame.

  Cloud had just lighted a cigarette when the clerk came over and asked him to please accompany a uniformed service guard to the deputy warden’s office.

  “Anything wrong?” Cloud asked.

  “No, sir,” the clerk replied. “Just routine. All first visits with condemned inmates must be approved by the deputy warden. Then your name will be put on the regular visiting list, so there won’t be this much red tape next time.”

  Cloud nodded. Next time, he thought. Would there be a next time?

  He followed the guard and presently was ushered into the office of the deputy warden.

  “My name is Harvey Lewis, Mr. Cloud,” a pleasant, well-groomed black man behind the desk said, rising to shake hands. “Won’t you sit down?”

  “Thank you.” Cloud took one of three chairs that faced the desk in a neat, prisonlike row. He watched Lewis shuffle several loose papers into a stack and put them aside.

  “I’m sorry to detain you like this, Mr. Cloud,” he said, smiling and folding his hands. “The visiting regulations for condemned inmates are naturally somewhat restrictive.”

  “I understand,” said Cloud. Lewis leaned back in his chair and studied the form that Cloud had filled out.

  “I see you’re a reporter, Mr. Cloud. Ordinarily the various papers notify us in advance when they want to interview a condemned prisoner. That gives us the opportunity to clear the interview with the inmate involved.”

  “I’m not here as a representative of the paper,” Cloud said. “This is a personal visit.”

  “Oh.” For just an instant the deputy warden’s brow pinched in a tight little wrinkle directly over his nose. Then he smiled again, quickly. “I see. May I ask whether Whitman knows that you are coming?”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Cloud said. “However, I am here at his request.” He showed Lewis the letter Whitman had written him. Lewis read it thoughtfully, his brow pinching again and remaining furrowed throughout the reading. When he finished he handed the letter back to Cloud.

  “Since you aren’t here on newspaper business,” Lewis said, “there’s no question of authorization for a press pass. I’ll just have an ordinary visitor’s pass made out for you.” He rose and extended his hand again. “Nice to have met you, Mr. Cloud.”

  Five minutes later Cloud was with another service guard, walking briskly across the very wide prison courtyard toward the Condemned Row building. Set off by itself in a far corner of the yard, as isolated as possible from the main body of the prison, the building housing the condemned was made of dull red brick laid in rough gray cement. Three stories high, narrow, with no ornamentation whatever, at first it seemed like a bleak, old-fashioned warehouse. Only after approaching it more closely did Cloud realize that its bleakness was not an illusion; only then did the uniqueness of the building come to the surface. Only then was it clear that the structure truly was designed for the living dead—for this place, Cloud suddenly realized, had no windows, no windows at all. He stopped and stared at the build
ing.

  “It’s always the same,” said the guard. He had been watching Cloud carefully. “Always the same with every first-time visitor. They always notice that part of it last. And most of them stop and stare.”

  “What’s the reason for it?” Cloud asked. “Why aren’t there any windows?”

  “Don’t know.” The guard shrugged. “But there must be one. They say there’s a reason for everything in here.”

  Cloud silently followed the guard into the main floor of the building. He waited in a small reception room just inside the entrance while his escort passed his visitor’s permit to an admittance guard across the hall. He felt an odd awareness of his surroundings, as if being as close as he was to death was somehow precarious and threatening. He was almost physically relieved when a correctional officer arrived to take him upstairs.

  They rode to the second floor in an elevator electronically operated from a master control inside the armory. Cloud stepped from the elevator directly into the visiting room, and another correctional officer closed the door of a second elevator beyond the wire grille and ran it up to the stairless third floor.

  There were no other visitors. Cloud chose a chair midway between two guards at the ends of the long, grille-divided visiting table. Seeing a metal ashtray nearby, he drew it over and fingered a cigarette from his package. He had lighted it and just taken his first deep drag when the door of the second elevator reopened and Weldon Whitman stepped into the room.

  Whitman walked tall and straight down the line of chairs on the other side of the grille; the condemned man had gained weight since Cloud had seen him last. Whitman was lighting a cigarette, and when he got to the chair opposite Cloud, he sat down, pulled an ashtray in front of him, and dropped a used stick match into it, all in one seemingly perfect fluid movement. Then he just sat for a long moment, staring at Cloud thoughtfully, before he finally spoke.

  “You came quick, Mr. Cloud,” Whitman said in a stiff, formal tone. His voice still had the same deep throatiness Cloud now remembered, but it had lost its hoarseness and was much sharper, much clearer of word.

  Cloud studied Whitman for a moment. The condemned man’s face was as blank as a clean sheet of paper. Cloud was not certain just what Whitman expected him to say.

  “Yes, I did come quickly,” Cloud replied neutrally. He let his words drop off into silence.

  “Would you mind telling me why you came at all?” Whitman said.

  His curt question struck a chord of irritation in Cloud. “I’ll be happy to,” the reporter replied evenly, “just as soon as you tell me why you asked me to come.”

  A faint hint of a smile crossed Whitman’s crooked lips. It lasted for only the briefest of moments, but long enough for Cloud to see it and to catch a quick sparkle of amusement in the prisoner’s otherwise cool eyes. Cloud looked back at him with a flat gaze that must have clearly told Whitman that his visitor did not share his amusement. After a moment Whitman shrugged almost shyly.

  “Once in a while,” he said, very quietly and soberly, “a guy in my position gets to where he thinks maybe everybody wants to see him dead.” He flicked the ash off his cigarette and took a quick drag. On his face now was the same puzzled, almost lost expression Cloud had seen that first day back at the county jail. Whitman wet his lips. “When a guy’s never seen more than half a dozen friendly faces in his whole life, it gets to be hard for him to recògnize one when he does see it.”

  It was a simple comment, simply stated. Yet the words, coming from Weldon Whitman at that moment, in that place, had a gut-affecting impact on Cloud.

  “All right, Weldon,” Cloud said quietly. “Let’s start over again.”

  “Listen, call me Whit, okay? Weldon is kind of a screwball first name.” His voice was eager, and he was obviously relieved.

  “Okay, Whit.” Cloud relaxed a little. “How are you getting along?”

  He shrugged. “Not bad, considering. As they say upstairs, I’ve stayed in better hotels.”

  “I guess. Have you heard anything yet on your automatic appeal?”

  “Not yet. It’s still too soon. I figure to hear around March or April. They’ll probably set my date for sometime in June.”

  “Your date?”

  “My execution date.”

  “Oh.” Cloud put out his cigarette, avoiding Whitman’s eyes for a moment. “It doesn’t sound like you expect the appeal to be in your favor.”

  “I don’t. I’ve been doing some checking on automatic appeals to the Supreme Court in death-penalty cases in this state, and I found out that for the most part it’s just a legal formality. The court is mainly interested in making sure that the defendant hasn’t been denied any of his constitutional rights. They don’t go into questions of evidence or testimony, things like that. I’m pretty sure that they’ll affirm my sentences just the way old Hangman Lukey gave them to me.”

  “How do you manage to check into things like that when you’re stuck away in here?”

  “Correspondence,” Whitman said simply. “That’s my only link with the outside world now, and believe me I intend to make the most of it. I already wrote a letter to the head librarian at the state law library in Sacramento. I explained my situation to her, told her I didn’t have a lawyer or any money, and asked if I could borrow law books through the mail. I told her I was interested in reading summaries of Supreme Court decisions on death-sentence appeals.”

  “And she sent you the books?”

  “She did better than that. She researched the whole thing for me and sent me a Xerox copy of a legal brief outlining the way the court handles the automatic death-sentence appeals. She also broke down into percentages the number of appeals affirmed and denied during the past fifteen years, and summarized the lengths of time in each case between the date of the appeal and the actual execution. She did all that research the day she got my letter and sent the material back the very next day.”

  “Well,” Cloud said, impressed, “it sounds like you’ve found yourself a valuable pen pal.”

  “Yeah. She issued me a state library card too, and sent me a catalog of all the books in the legal section. She said she’d send me whatever books I wanted for further research.” He smiled crookedly. “I’m getting ready to take her up on it, now. I’ve got a list of a dozen law books I’m going to ask for. I plan to read up on all I can find about incomplete transcripts in civil cases. As soon as my automatic appeal is turned down, I plan to file a separate appeal on the incomplete trial transcript left by the old court reporter’s death.” Whit’s smile faded into seriousness. “That’s why I asked you to come see me,” he said. “I need help.”

  Cloud shrugged. “I’m a newspaperman, Whit, not a lawyer.”

  “I’m not looking for a lawyer,” he told Cloud. “I’m looking for a writer.”

  “A writer?”

  “Yeah.” He leaned forward, his eagerness returning. “Look, the legal end of it I think I can handle myself, at least until I can hire a lawyer to do it for me. I’ve got the help of the lady at the state law library, and I already found out that filing an appeal isn’t all that involved. But there are two other problems that I can’t handle. One is publicity, the other is money—” Whitman, seeing the skepticism cross the reporter’s face, quickly held up both hands to intercept Cloud’s words. “Now, wait a minute, please—just hear me out. Please. I’m not talking about the kind of publicity you’ve probably got in mind. I’m not going to ask you to write newspaper stories about me, or anything like that. And I didn’t get you up here to borrow money from you, either. Okay?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “All right.” He took a quick, deep breath and put out his cigarette. “I’m writing a book.” He watched to see if Cloud’s expression changed. It did not, and he continued. “It’s my own story, my own life, but I’m writing it like a novel. I think it’s a good story and I think I’ll be able to get it published. As far as I know, no one’s ever written a book from the death house before, so that’s a
big plus in my favor right there. It’s my intention to hit hard at capital punishment and to show the public just how easy it is in this day and age for an innocent man to be executed by the state.” He sat back, his eyes riveted to Cloud’s face. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a commendable idea,” Cloud answered. “Provided you are innocent.”

  Whitman’s eyes narrowed and he pursed his lips thoughtfully. For a moment he said nothing, merely staring at Cloud in the face of what both men recognized to be a potential obstacle in their association.

  “Do you think I’m guilty?” Whitman asked at last.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you did think I was guilty, do you think I deserve the gas chamber?”

  It took Cloud a long, difficult moment to answer him. He had thought about it often since he first heard of the Whitman case. It was not an easy principle to resolve.

  But Weldon Whitman had asked the question, and no one in the world had more right to ask it. Or more right to expect an answer.

  “No,” Cloud said at last, “I don’t think you deserve the gas chamber.”

  “Then does it make any difference whether I’m guilty or not?”

  Cloud shook his head. “How do you want me to help you?”

  “I need someone to edit my book. I know what I want to say and how I want to say it, but I need a professional writer to take off the rough edges, to make it readable, you know?” He folded his hands before him. “If you’ll do it, I’ll split with you fifty-fifty on whatever money it makes.”

  Cloud pursed his lips and drummed his fingertips silently on the surface between them as he considered the offer. Fifty-fifty. It was just possible that Whitman’s story could have commercial value. This might well resolve the money question that sprang up between Laurel and him every time they tried to talk about the future.

  “How much have you written so far?” he asked Whitman.

  “A hundred and nineteen pages.”

  Cloud raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Typed?”