Mark the Sparrow

by Clark Howard

  Cloud shook his head. “It’s hard for me to believe that Niebold and White aren’t going to make some effort for a stay of execution.”

  “I could be wrong,” Genevieve said quietly, “but I don’t think I am. I truly believe that they will make no further effort to save Weldon.”

  Cloud could not help feeling a growing resentment over the possibility that Morris Niebold and Borden White might have arbitrarily decided to terminate Whitman’s legal help. Niebold and White did not know, as Cloud knew, that Whitman was guilty of the Luza crime. As far as they were concerned, he might very well be totally and completely innocent of all the charges against him. It galled Cloud to think that they might have decided between themselves that Weldon Whitman had lived long enough.

  There was always the possibility, of course, that Genevieve was mistaken; she had admitted that herself. It had been barely a day since the court’s ruling had been handed down and the new execution date set. Perhaps Niebold and White were planning some last-minute legal maneuver and had not made Genevieve aware of it because, as she had also admitted, she was prone to disagree with them on most matters. With a total of only three days to prepare and file an appeal for a stay of execution, they would certainly have no spare time for arguing.

  “I’m going to talk to Morris or Borden or both of them,” he said, sitting down and turning her phone around to face him. He dialed the number.

  “Niebold and White Law Offices,” a female voice answered.

  “Morris Niebold, please,” Cloud said.

  “May I tell him who’s calling, please?”

  “Robert Cloud.”

  “One moment, please?”

  While he waited, Genevieve reached over and lightly touched his mustache. “You look so different,” she said again. “So much older.” Cloud snapped at her fingers as if trying to bite them, and she jerked her hand back. He grinned under his mustache as the female voice returned to the line.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Niebold is not available right now.”

  “Connect me with Borden White then,” Cloud said.

  “Mr. White is not available either, sir.”

  Irritation rose quickly in Cloud. “What about Carla Volt? I’ll bet she isn’t available either, is she?”

  “No sir, she isn’t” The female voice was beginning to sound slightly embarrassed.

  “Well, if any of them should become available,” he said coldly, “please say I called. Robert Cloud. I’ll be at the Whitman Foundation.”

  “I’ll give them your message, Mr. Cloud.”

  “Thank you.” Cloud hung up, silently fuming.

  “Welcome to the club,” Genevieve said.

  Cloud looked at his watch. It was two o’clock. Genevieve put on a kettle of water back in the deserted printshop and made instant coffee. They sat in her office, drinking the coffee and talking. Their conversation flowed from generalities of the past to specifics of the present. Genevieve told him virtually everything of significance that had transpired while he had been gone—and not once did she ask where he had been, with whom, or why. He briefly considered fabricating some kind of story for her, leaving out any reference to the existence of Carol Carter; subsequently he considered telling her about Carol but not telling her who Carol was; but finally he decided to simply tell her nothing. Anything he told her would, for her sake, have to be a lie—and at that particular point he did not think he could stomach lying to her. Somehow to lie to her at such a time seemed almost obscene.

  Three o’clock came. They talked some more. Genevieve showed him samples of all the printed material the foundation had done since he had been gone, as well as the news-clippings file of articles on Whitman done by Eugene Terrier. Cloud admired the design and layout of the brochures even though he did not agree with the aggressive approach taken by the copy. He even reluctantly admired the writing style of Eugene Terrier in the clippings, though he almost cringed at some of the quotations attributed to Whitman and accusations made by the foundation. The tone of all the writing, with its blatant indictment of the state government and state judiciary, left no doubt in Cloud’s mind as to the motive for the swift setting of such an early execution date.

  Four o’clock came. The minutes began to pass more slowly. Conversation between Cloud and Genevieve slowed, dragged, had to be forced. At four-thirty Cloud called the offices of Niebold and White again. He was handled in the same manner: Mr. Niebold, Mr. White, and Miss Volt were still not available. His earlier messages had been given to each of them. Cloud left another message. Stronger this time.

  “This is an urgent matter,” he said, with no further pretense at courtesy. “I expect one of them to return my call just as soon as possible!”

  Five o’clock came. Five-thirty. Six. Genevieve set the telephone on an answering-recording device and she and Cloud drove to a nearby coffee shop and had a supper of hamburgers and French fries. It reminded them both of the first time they had met, in the restaurant of the motel where Genevieve had been staying in Los Angeles.

  “God, we were innocent in those days, weren’t we?” Genevieve said.

  “Babes in the woods,” said Cloud. And Genevieve would never know how innocent, he thought, because she would never know how guilty Whitman was.

  “But we were right, weren’t we Rob?” she asked. “We were right to become his friends when he didn’t have anyone else.”

  Cloud nodded. “We were right,” he assured her. And he meant it.

  They reminisced throughout the meal, and when they were finished, when Genevieve had eaten the last of his French fries as she had done that first night and so many times since, they left the coffee shop and drove back to the foundation.

  As soon as they got into Genevieve’s office, she checked the answering device. The call recorder was still on zero; the telephone had not rung.

  Cloud sat down in front of the desk and dialed Niebold and White again. He let the phone ring for a full minute. There was no answer; the offices were closed. He put the receiver back in its cradle.

  “Let me borrow your car, Gen,” he said.

  “I want to go with you.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Rob, I want to—”

  “No.” He was firm. He knew he might have to tell Niebold and White things he did not want her to know. “I might want to say I haven’t talked to you yet,” he improvised. “I might want to make them think I’m on their side, to see what they’ll say.” It was a ridiculous excuse and he knew it, but to his amazement she accepted it.

  “All right,” she said. “Drop me off at home, then you can take the car.”

  She’s tired, Cloud thought. So tired she can’t even think straight.

  They locked up the foundation offices and Cloud drove Genevieve to her apartment. He let her out in front of the building.

  “You’ll let me know as soon as you can?” she said.

  “As soon as I can,” he promised.

  He drove away. Genevieve remained where she was on the curb, watching as the car went down the street. Cloud saw her in the rearview mirror. She just stood there, looking after him. Each time he glanced into the mirror, she was still there; becoming a smaller image, but still there. It was as if she felt the longer she kept him in sight, the shorter the time until he would be back.

  A maid opened the door at Morris Niebold’s big house.

  “Is Mr. Niebold expecting you, sir?” she asked.

  “Probably,” Cloud said, pushing past her. “Where is he?”

  “In the library, sir. If you’d care to sit down—”

  “Never mind.” Cloud remembered where the library was. He strode down the hall to its big double doors and walked in unannounced. Niebold was sitting in his glistening chrome wheelchair before the fireplace, drinking brandy. The flames reflected like multiple torches on the curved rim of one wheel of the chair. The invalid’s round, walnut-shaped cheeks were flushed from the combined warmth of the fire and the brandy. He looked up a
t Cloud, his expression completely neutral for the first time in Cloud’s memory.

  “Well, Robert,” he said almost resignedly. It was by no means a greeting, any more than it was an expression of resentment at the intrusion. Looking past Cloud, he saw his maid, very nervous. “It’s all right, Alma,” he said reassuringly. “Mr. Cloud and I are old friends.”

  Cloud walked farther into the room, until he was standing on the other side of the fireplace, facing Niebold. He heard the maid close the library doors behind him.

  “Brandy, Robert?” the attorney said, indicating a decanter and glasses nearby.

  “I didn’t come here to socialize,” Cloud said flatly. “I came here to find out what you intend to do to stop Weldon Whitman’s execution.”

  “Why, nothing,” Niebold said unconcernedly. “There’s -nothing to do; the Supreme Court has ruled.” He took a bare sip of the fiery red brandy and rolled it over his tongue before swallowing it. “Poor Weldon,” he said without a trace of pity. “I’m afraid he’s going to be one more victim in the long line of innocent men unjustly punished by our state’s warped system of justice.”

  Cloud’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re convinced that Whitman is innocent, yet you’re going to make no effort to keep him from going to the gas chamber?”

  “No further effort,” Niebold corrected.

  “Even though you’re convinced he’s innocent?” Cloud drove home the point again.

  “Particularly because I’m convinced he’s innocent,” Niebold admitted.

  “Why, Morris?” Cloud asked quietly. “Why have you done all this?”

  The old invalid took another slight sip of his drink and stared into the small circle of crystal that formed the lip of the glass, at the larger circle of red that was the brandy below it. Slowly he rotated the glass, tilting the red circle this way and that, moving its position within the crystal but never disrupting its perfect symmetry. His lips pursed, he studied the circle of red as if deciding whether to answer Cloud’s question. Finally he looked back up.

  “I want to see Borden elected governor,” he said simply.

  “I don’t see what it has to do with Whitman,” Cloud lied. He did see by now; but he wanted to hear Niebold say it.

  “Weldon Whitman is an innocent man,” the invalid explained. “Day after tomorrow he’s going to be gassed for crimes he did not commit. You yourself have already proved him innocent of the Calder crime, and when our detectives find the Luza girl we’ll prove him innocent of that one too. By then, of course, it will be too late. It’ll be too late to save him—but it won’t be too late to make a martyr out of him. And the person who’ll make that martyr will be Borden White. He’ll use Weldon Whitman to indict every facet of this state’s administration, from the chairman of the California department of corrections to the Supreme Court to the governor himself. He’ll carry the bloody cross of Weldon Whitman from one end of this state to the other, preaching the inhumanity of capital punishment and the fallibility of the system that wrongfully executed this innocent man. Believe me, Robert, it will be a political campaign unequaled in the history of this state. And it will carry Borden White right into the governor’s mansion.”

  Cloud stared at Morris Niebold. He said nothing, because he decided that nothing he could say would serve any useful purpose. Weldon Whitman was going to die in the gas chamber the day after tomorrow, and Morris Niebold was going to do nothing to prevent it. Because in Morris Niebold’s scheme of things to come, the execution of Weldon Whitman was an essential ingredient.

  “Robert,” said Niebold, leaning forward, “you know I have always liked you, my boy. Despite our differences in philosophy and approach regarding Whitman, I am still of the opinion that you are a much better writer than—than—” Niebold’s face wrinkled in a frown. “—whatever his name is. You know who I mean: the nigger that Borden found to pick up where you left off.”

  “Eugene Terrier,” said Cloud.

  “Yes, that’s him. You’re a much better writer than he is, Robert. He’s got a little bit of that black radical approach to things, and sometimes it shows through. I’d much rather have you back with us. How would you like to be in charge of all the writing for Borden’s campaign?”

  “I don’t think so,” Cloud replied coldly.

  “We could increase the money considerably,” Niebold said.

  “You couldn’t increase it enough,” Cloud assured him.

  Niebold’s face constricted until he resembled an angry rodent. “What you’re saying, I take it, is that you are not prepared to work for us again at any price?”

  “Exactly.”

  Cloud had had enough. He stepped away from the big fireplace and walked over the the double doors through which he had entered the room. At the doors he paused and turned back.

  “You know, Morris,” he said deliberately, “your legs aren’t the only lame part of you. You may not realize it, but your mind is crippled too. Someday you’ll have to be put away.”

  He pulled open the double doors and walked out. He left the doors open behind him, and he could hear Niebold’s shouted curses all the way out of the mansion.

  Genevieve’s reaction was one of calm. It was a sad, sick calm, but it was a calm nevertheless.

  “He’s going to die, isn’t he?” she asked in a resigned voice as soon as she had admitted Cloud to the apartment.

  Cloud stared at her without answering.

  “Isn’t he, Rob?” she asked again. This time Cloud nodded.

  “Yes, Gen, he is.”

  She went into her living room and sat down. Cloud followed but remained standing.

  “I suppose I knew it weeks ago,” she said in a tone almost conversational. “I may even have known it all along.”

  “No, neither of us knew it all along,” Cloud told her. “One thing we mustn’t forget, Gen, and that’s that we believed in Weldon Whitman. We believed in him totally: one hundred percent. And we may very well be the only two people on earth who did. That’s something we mustn’t lose. Either of us.”

  Even knowing all he knew, Cloud meant what he said. He believed in the importance of it to both of them. It was, after all, the only thing in the entire Whitman matter that separated them from people like Niebold and White and Carla Volt.

  While Cloud was standing there in the middle of the room, Genevieve rose and walked over to her desk. She picked up a telegram and handed it to Cloud. If there had been any way he could have avoided reading it, he would have; the premonition he had when Genevieve handed it to him was totally grim. But he had to read it, so he did. It was addressed to Genevieve and it said:

  LAST VISITING HOURS TOMORROW 7:00 TO 10:00 A.M. IMPERATIVE I SEE YOU. HAVE ONE LAST CHANCE FOR REPRIEVE. COUNTING ON YOU.

  WELDON

  “You’ll have to go in my place, Rob,” she said. Her words were like needles in his brain.

  “It’s you he wants to see, Gen,” he said weakly.

  “No, it’ll have to be you,” Genevieve said, as plainly and sensibly as if she were telling him what day or what time it was. “I can’t go because I’m not strong enough to see him when I know he’s this close to execution.”

  “If I weren’t here, you’d have to see him,” Cloud said.

  “If you weren’t here, I’d be stronger,” she replied with a nervous half-smile.

  “But what if he’s not as close to execution as we think?” Cloud said. “What if he does have one last chance at a reprieve, as he says he does: shouldn’t you be the one to pass on its merits? You know far more law than I do.” “Whatever it is Weldon’s talking about has nothing to do with the law,” Genevieve said confidently. “His legal cards have been played and replayed. I’m sure that whatever he’s talking about is more a last-ditch gimmick than anything else.” She saw that Cloud was staring at her in surprise. He obviously had not expected such a comment from her. “Oh, yes, I know Weldon pretty well by now,” she said. “I may care for him very deeply, but I’m not completely blin
d to the kind of person he is. Nor does it lessen my fellings toward him. That’s why you have to go to him in my place tomorrow.” She bit her bottom lip tentatively. “Will you?”

  Cloud nodded.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  At seven-fifteen the next morning, Cloud was escorted across one of the San Quentin yards by a service guard, on his way to the Condemned Row building where he had visited Weldon Whitman so many times in the past. It was gray and foggy out, but even in the damp, chilly air Cloud could feel perspiration moistening the underarms of his shirt. He had thought several times while living with Carol Carter that he would never again have to make this walk over to the grim, windowless red brick building which Weldon Whitman had so aptly named Hotel Death. He had told himself that he was through with everything having to do with the Whitman movement: the foundation, the lawyers, the appeals, the hustling—all of it. But he had omitted one factor: Genevieve Neller.

  Genevieve, the only one in the entire affair with no ulterior motive of any kind. Everyone else had been in it for something. Everyone else had been looking to profit from it in some way. Even he himself, with all his lofty ideals, had been bought and paid for with half the royalties from Room 22, Hotel Death. But Genevieve had been in it for principle. Sure, by now she was emotionally hung up on Weldon Whitman, but that had not always been the case. In the beginning she had become Whitman’s friend simply because he seemed to need a friend. Cloud shook his head bitterly. She was the one who cared the most—and would get the least out of it.

  Cloud followed the service guard into the Condemned Row building, went through the usual security procedures, and was passed upstairs to the visiting room.

  For some reason, he half expected the visiting room to be different this morning, although different in what way he had no idea; but sterile, windowless, it remained exactly the same.

  As he stood, hands jammed into his raincoat pockets, watching the Death Row elevator close its doors and go upstairs for Whitman, Cloud remembered the sealed envelope in his inside coat pocket. Genevieve had handed it to him last thing before he left, with no instructions offered and none needed. It was her last letter to Whitman. On his way to the prison that morning, Cloud had considered destroying the letter, not even giving it to Whitman, because in his opinion Whitman was not deserving of the words Cloud knew the letter contained: the outpouring of Genevieve’s heart. But then he asked himself who in hell he thought he was to be making such a judgment. He had no assurance that Genevieve would not feel the same way about Weldon Whitman even if she knew all that Cloud now knew; no guarantee that Genevieve would not have written exactly the same message to Whitman even if she had full knowledge of his crimes. So he stepped over to the guard at the near end of the long visiting table and handed him the sealed enevelope.