Mark the Sparrow

by Clark Howard

  “Gen,” he said quietly, “I’m going to leave with Carla, if you don’t mind.”

  He face clouded at once. “Oh that’s great.”

  “Look, I know you don’t like her—”

  “You apparently do.”

  “I don’t know if I do or not. I’ll probably find out tonight.”

  “I’m sure you will. Meanwhile you walk out and leave me with young Kildare and old Dr. Gillespie there.”

  “I’m surprised at you, Gen,” he said, taken aback. “A few months ago you wouldn’t have dreamed of saying a thing like that.”

  “A few months ago I didn’t know the things I know today,” she countered. “Look, just run along if you want to.” “Not if it’s going to upset you.”

  “It isn’t going to upset me.”

  “You sound like it is.”

  “Will you just go,” she said through gritted teeth.

  Borden White walked back over to them, smiling, and Cloud rose and said goodnight.

  “Glad you and Carla are hitting it off so quickly,” the lawyer said. “She’s a fine girl.”

  Cloud exchanged amenities with his host, who also uttered high praise for Carla Volt, and they all promised to meet later in the week for further discussion of the Weldon Whitman Foundation.

  Once they were in her car, everything happened very quickly. She put the key in the ignition but did not turn it on. She merely sat behind the wheel, looking straight ahead at the windshield, waiting for him to touch her.

  Cloud turned partway toward her, resting his elbow on the seat back. Her profile was etched as clearly in the gray night as if it were on a coin, and Cloud studied her with growing desire. His hand, when it finally moved to her, stroked the straight fall of her hair where it covered her neck.

  “Your hair is incredible,” he said. “It’s like the wing of a big, shiny blackbird.”

  “Poetic,” she said, tuning toward him for the first time.

  Cloud’s fingers parted the thick drape of hair and found her neck. He slid his hand lightly around and gently pulled her forward until their mouths touched. Their lips parted and their tongues slipped together.

  “We mustn’t stay here,” she said when their kiss was over. She started the car and drove away from the house, down the long drive toward the boulevard. “Where do you live?” she asked. He told her. “That’s too far,” she said. “I live closer than that and my place is even too far for the way I feel right now. I’m a strong believer in seizing special feelings, special moments, when and where you can seize them.”

  They came to the gate, she slowed, then turned into the wide boulevard and drove toward the lights of the business district that preceded the freeway.

  “Too often a special feeling comes and goes without being taken advantage of,” she said. “Then it’s gone forever.”

  Like a hard-on, Cloud thought. He decided that he could wait no longer. He had to know if she had any tits at all. He slid over next to her and put his right hand on her right breast. It was small, barely filling his palm, but firm and coned, like the breasts, he remembered, of teenaged girls, but the nipple, he could tell, was large, the areola large. He massaged the breast; there was nothing between it and his hand except the jersey blouse.

  Carla pulled into the first motel that had its vacancy sign on. She drove past the office, parked next to the pool area, and turned off the headlights.

  “Walk back and register,” she said. “Try to get one of the back rooms.”

  Cloud got out of the car and went back to the office. He used the Los Angeles address on his driver’s license, and signed them in as Mr. and Mrs.

  They drove down on Room 128 and parked in front of the door. Cloud opened the motel room door and she went in ahead of him. She turned on the lights and looked around.

  “This isn’t bad,” she said. She walked back to the closet, unbuttoning her shirt blouse as she walked, and took it off. With her naked back to him, her inky hair streaking it in black, she calmly put her blouse neatly on a hanger and hung it up. Then she slipped out of her long shirt, folded it with equal care, and draped it over a trousers hanger. Finished, she turned to face him. He was still fully dressed, standing by the door.

  “You’re not shy, are you?” she asked.

  “No,” Cloud said, shaking his head. He looked at her tall, thin body, clad at that moment in shoes and pantyhose. “You don’t wear much, do you?”

  “Only what’s necessary.” She sat down on a corner of the bed and smiled at him. “You are shy.”

  Cloud smiled back at her. “No, I’m not, really. I’m just fascinated by you.”

  “I’m not moving too fast for you, am I?” she asked in her throaty voice. “I wouldn’t want to frighten you away.”

  “You won’t,” Cloud said.

  He tossed the room key onto the bureau and began undressing.

  One week later, the Weldon Whitman Foundation was formally established in Morris Niebold’s richly appointed law office near the capitol.

  “Here is the original document incorporating us as a legal nonprofit foundation,” Niebold said from his chrome wheelchair behind his specially built U-shaped desk. “Essentially what it says is that we will use whatever funds are at our disposal to press a perpetual fight against capital punishment for crimes in which no life was taken. Naturally, our primary efforts in that direction will be in behalf of Weldon Whitman, who has graciously consented to the use of his name as founder.” Niebold handed the bound document to Carla Volt, who stood near his side. “My dear, pass this to Genevieve, please.”

  Carla came around the desk and gave the document to Genevieve Neller who, along with Robert Cloud and Borden White, sat facing the big desk. As she stepped over to hand the papers to Genevieve, Carla’s leg brushed lightly against Cloud’s knee, and they exchanged quick glances.

  “Genevieve, as we all agreed, is unanimously elected president of the foundation, and is also employed as a general fund-raiser and speaker at a salary of twelve thousand dollars per annum. Genevieve, if you will sign in the appropriate place there on the front page and then pass the document to Robert—”

  After Genevieve had signed and given the papers to Cloud, Niebold asked that he put his signature beneath hers. “Robert is elected vice-president of the foundation and is hired as an investigative reporter and publicity writer, also at a salary of twelve thousand dollars per annum.”

  The last person to sign before notarization of the document was Borden White.

  “Borden will serve as treasurer of the foundation and chief legal counsel, at a retainer of one dollar per year. The three of you, along with myself, will constitute the board of directors of the foundation, and I will serve as chairman of that board, if there’s no objection, with a vote, but not as an officer. Carla here, who will now witness and notarize the signatures, will serve as the foundation’s official secretary, also at a salary of one dollar per year.”

  When all the formalities were over, Niebold leaned as far back as he could in his wheelchair and smiled a wide smile that spread thin his naturally pouting lips and puffed up his round cheeks slightly.

  “Thank you all,” he said in a pleased tone. “I think we have taken a very important step here today, one that will well serve both Mr. Whitman and the cause of true justice in California.”

  “I’ll second that remark,” Borden White said cheerfully.

  “So will I,” said Cloud.

  The three men looked at Genevieve Neller. She pursed her lips slightly, then said, “Forgive my pessimism, gentlemen. I prefer to reserve my enthusiasm until the foundation has done something positive for its namesake.”

  Morris Niebold pounded his desk exuberantly. “Well said, young lady!” He chuckled loudly. “Every board needs a stabilizing influence, and it looks like you’re going to be ours. You’ll keep us in line, all right! And you’ll see something positive being done for your Mr. Whitman too, I’ll guarantee that!”

  When they were ready
to leave, Cloud and Genevieve walked out to the reception area and Cloud asked her to wait a moment for him. He stepped to an office just down the hall and stuck his head in the door. Carla was back at her desk.

  “Hello, Miss Volt.”

  “Hello, Mr. Cloud.”

  “You going to be home tonight?”

  “You coming over?”

  “Like to.”

  “Then I’ll be home.”

  “Okay. See you.”

  She smiled. “I imagine you will.”

  He hurried back down the hall where Genevieve waited. They walked out to the parking lot.

  “I don’t think you’ll be sorry about the foundation, Gen,” he told her. “I think you made a wise decision to give your approval.”

  “A reluctant decision,” she said. “And one in which I really had no choice. After you decided to join with Niebold and White, it was three to one in favor of the foundation.”

  “I didn’t exactly join with them, Gen—”

  “It amounted to the same thing,” she said firmly, stopping and facing him. “I know you have to do what you think is right, Rob, but I want you to remember one thing: Weldon is my main concern; as a matter of fact, he is my only concern. I don’t intend to let anything or anybody—or any foundation, for that matter—jeopardize any chance he may have for freedom. I’m going to see him out of that place, Rob, do you understand me?—out!”

  “Gen, relax, will you, please?” Cloud said urgently. “We all want Whit out; and nothing we do is going to jeopardize him in any way. The foundation is a good idea, Gen. Please try to believe that.”

  “I want to believe it, Rob, Very much so. But I can’t help feeling that the foundation might survive and Weldon might not. It’s like naming the thing after him because he’s already dead, or because they know he’s going to die. I just have a cold, creepy fear that this foundation is looking for a built-in martyr and that it’s picked Weldon for the honors.

  “That’s not so, Gen,” Cloud said. “You’re mistaken—and as soon as we all begin to function as a team, you’ll realize that you’re mistaken.”

  “I hope so,” she said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The occupants of cells twenty through twenty-nine were in the corridor for recreation.

  Franklin, the mild-mannered wife-killer, was playing chess with Rimm, an Imperial Valley farmer who had shot and killed his neighbor and the neighbor’s two brothers over a property dispute.

  Milo, the bushy-browed stickup man and cop-killer, was sitting on the tiled floor, reading that morning’s San Francisco Chronicle. The paper belonged to Clayton, a former University of California student who had unaccountably murdered a family of five on whose ranch he had been living and working during summer vacation.

  Near the far end of the barred corridor, Henry, the black rapist-killer who lived in Cell Twenty-seven, and Stiles, another black, who. had stabbed to death his ex-wife, her new husband, and his own seven-year-old son, were exercising, using the steel bars for tension. They had been exercising together on the bars for forty months. Henry remained rail-thin while Stiles had a magnificent physique, but oddly enough they were of equal strength and proved it often in dead-heat arm wrestling. Each of them was easily stronger than any two other men on the Row.

  At the opposite end of the corridor were two rap partners: they had killed and been convicted together. Caldwell was a psychopathic white man with a long and varied criminal record. Jones was an illiterate mulatto who had been a petty thief all his adolescent and adult life. They were homosexuals; once each month, just for the record, Captain Dukes would catch Jones in the act of orally copulating Caldwell, for which both would be written up and lose three days of privileges. The rest of the time Jones sucked off his partner and sweetheart anytime he wanted to, as he was doing this morning in Cell Twenty-three, Caldwell’s cell. Their crime had been the kidnapping off the street and cold-blooded execution-murder of a uniformed policeman in southern California.

  The ninth and last occupant of the Twenty Section was Weldon Whitman, and as usual he quietly walked the length of the corridor studying one of the growing stack of law books that was now occupying a corner of his hole, as the inmates called their cells.

  Whitman had been on Death Row for seventeen months. He had gained eleven pounds, most of it around his middle, and his thick black hair had receded a little at the temples, emphasizing his already severe widow’s peak. He was beginning to suffer periodic headaches—the result of eyestrain from the many months of poring over the seemingly endless columns of copy in a seemingly endless procession of thick law books; he was to see an ophthalmologist from the California Health Department early the following month.

  Fifteen minutes before the Twenty Section was to be locked back up, Captain Dukes came with the daily announcements.

  “Somebody holler into Twenty-three and tell Jones to get up off his knees,” the captain ordered easily. “Caldwell, too. Tell him to button up his pants and join us on the patio.”

  Moments later, looking not in the least disturbed, the two cop-killers stepped into the corridor and sat side by side against the bars of Caldwell’s hole.

  “All right, boys and girls,” Dukes said when he had their attention, “the movie for Sunday night is Last Train from Gun Hill. It stars Kirk Douglas and it’s the story of a fellow who thinks he can get away with rape and murder in the Old West. Naturally the sheriff can’t put up with that kind of thing, so he blows the criminal’s head off with a shotgun. I’m sure you boys and girls will all enjoy it. Might even teach some of you a lesson.”

  Dukes flipped a page in his pocket notebook and studied it briefly.

  “Franklin, that book you requested from the prison library is no longer available. Seems that someone stole it.” Henry and Stiles, the two black exercisers, cheered and applauded this news. Dukes ignored them. “Since you’re one of the better inmates on the Row, Franklin, I’m having my wife pick the book up for you at the public library. I’ll bring it in for you in a couple of days.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Franklin replied.

  “What a fuckin’ teacher’s pet,” said Jones, the less intelligent of the two cop-executioners.

  “At least he’s not a cocksucker,” Captain Dukes said dryly. He checked his notebook again. “There’s a new magazine on the approved list. It’s called the Evergreen Review. I understand it has pictures of naked women in it, so I imagine at least a couple of you will want to subscribe to it.”

  “It has more than naked women in it, Captain,” said Clayton, the former student. “The magazine also has some very thought-provoking articles and stories.” Once again, Henry and Stiles cheered and applauded. And once again the captain ignored them.

  “Thank you for the added comments, Twenty-one,” Dukes said. “It certainly is nice to have an intellectual among us.” Referring to his notes again, he said, “Rimm, the warden has granted you a special visit next Tuesday with your aunt and uncle who have come from Germany to see you. You’ll be allowed three hours with them beginning at ten A.M.”

  Rimm looked up from his chess game and nodded. “Thank the warden for me, please, Captain. They’re old folks and they’ll have come a long way. It was nice of the warden to accommodate them.”

  Dukes acknowledged Rimm’s gratitude with a nod. “All right, that’s it for now,” he said. The big captain walked back to the electronically controlled door that separated the Row corridor from the elevator corridor. He nodded to the guard in the control room at the end of the double corridor. The barred door slid back almost silently. As Dukes started to step through the opening, he paused and looked back. “Oh, I almost forgot. There is one more item.” He turned cold eyes toward Weldon Whitman. “Twenty-two, your appeal has been denied and a new date set for your execution. You go to the chamber now on October fourteenth.”

  Whitman, standing near the middle of the Row, holding his heavy lawbook, turned pale. He stared at Dukes for a moment as the full impact of
the keeper’s words settled in his mind. Then he closed the book, tried unsuccessfully to wet his lips with a dry tongue, and walked silently back to his hole.

  Following the denial of the appeal, the wheels of the Whitman Foundation began to turn in synchronization for the first time in its five months of existence. The officers of the foundation met in Morris, Niebold’s office to plot strategy.

  “The first step from the legal point of view, of course, is to file another appeal as quickly as effectively possible,” the invalid attorney told them. “And I say effectively possible because I want our appeal to have some meaning, some substance: something for the high court to have to ponder. I want them to know that we mean business, that we aren’t simply going through the motions with routine delaying tactics. We must show them from the outset that we intend striking to the very heart of capital punishment in California, and that for our first victory we will accept no less payment than the restoration of Weldon Whitman’s right to live.”

  “Exactly what is to be the substance, as you call it, of the appeal?” Genevieve asked. For her, this was the initial test of Niebold and White, Attorneys at Law. Weldon needed them now. So now she would find out whether they were going to contribute or just try to ride along for the publicity.

  “Will you outline our plan, please, Borden?”

  “Certainly.” Borden White rose, resplendent in a brown Italian knit suit, Countess Mara tie knotted perfectly at the collar of his Oleg Cassini shirt. “Our basis for this first appeal,” he said, speaking primarily to Genevieve and Cloud, “is that it was a reversible error for the trial judge not to have appointed a private attorney to act as an advisor to Whitman in his original trial. Since he was facing capital charges at the time he elected to conduct his own defense, our position will be that even though it was Whitman’s right to act in his own defense, it was the trial judge’s obligation to appoint a practicing attorney as advisor and observer. Only with an attorney acting in such capacity would there be evert a tacit guarantee that the defendant’s constitutional and trial rights would be protected.”