The Inglorious Arts

by Alan Hruska

  “And the AG won’t unless Stapleton signs off.”

  “Probably right,” Kane says, relapsing a bit in his chair. “So that’s where you come in again. You must also talk that man into it!”

  “Tough sell, Judge. Stapleton can’t lose before Ettinger.”

  “Which means only he can’t lose this round.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you?” Kane says, leaning into Alec’s face. “Do you understand fully what I mean when I say ‘this round’?”

  “Of course.”

  “You can’t say I said it, but you can nonetheless stress the point, because it’s the conclusion any reasonably astute person would come to.”

  “Yes,” Alec says.

  “And you should understand why I’m doing this. Eustace Ettinger is a disgrace to the court. He is a disgrace to our system of justice. The judges in this courthouse agree. We want it to end.”

  “So do we all.”

  “So now it’s on you, Alec. I’ve given you the means. Make it happen!”

  The door to Ben Braddock’s office is always open, and Alec strides in. “We need a meeting. You, me, and Jack, with Lee on the phone.”

  Braddock looks up slowly from the pages he was apparently editing. “You going to tell me how it went in Washington?” Without waiting for a response, he directs his secretary on the speaker box to ask Jack Stamper to join them.

  “Reasonably well. Stapleton will let us know.”

  “And then you dashed off to see our chief judge.”

  “You been leafing through my telephone messages?”

  “Don’t have to,” Braddock says. “Your secretary, Miss Gottsen, keeps mine informed. And I assume—since you wish to bring in Stamper and Lee Norris—that Rivvy Kane wants to know something about the Computer Corp. case.”

  “He already knows more than he likes. He wants to take it away from Ettinger.”

  “Reassign it? Ha! He doesn’t have the power.”

  “He wants it arbitrated,” Alec says. “Before Walter Mansfield.”

  “What?” Braddock lets out a yelp of a laugh. “And he wants you to talk the government into it?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Oh, my! Now I truly have heard everything.” Wiping his eyes, Braddock tells his secretary to get Lee Norris on the phone. Then, to Alec, “You knew Norris, right? Before he became attorney general?”

  “He was my constitutional law professor at Yale.”

  “But you haven’t worked with him since he became Computer Corp.’s general counsel?”

  “No.”

  Jack Stamper walks in. “Whatever this is,” he says, “I’ve got a room full of people.”

  “You’re in recess, right?” Braddock says.

  “For a few days. The government’s been given the right to depose our next witness—again—before we put him on the stand.”

  Braddock holds his hand to his head in a mock gesture of suffering. “Still going on, is it? Depositions in the middle of a trial? Ettinger ended the deposition schedule almost a year ago.”

  “For us,” Stamper says. “Not for the government, apparently.”

  “Well this is certainly the day for odd shit,” says Braddock.

  They fill in Stamper on what they’ve already started to call “the Kane initiative.” “Great for us,” Jack says, “but Stapleton will never buy it.”

  “Probably right,” Alec says. “But there’s no downside to making the offer.”

  “Time,” Stamper says. “I don’t have a day to waste on a fool’s errand.”

  Alec looks at Ben Braddock. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

  “Why?” Stamper says. “You feel we’ve got to do this just because the chief judge proposed it?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Stamper laughs. “Maybe. Yeah. But what the fuck do you need me for? Do it yourself. Take Lee.”

  “Okay,” Alec says.

  “Knowing you, you’ve got something else going in Washington, anyway.”

  “We’d be telling the entire Antitrust Division that the Court of Appeals has already decided to throw out whatever opinion Ettinger writes. Can’t help their morale.”

  “That’s it?” Jack says dubiously.

  “Of course not.”

  “You want another shot at him on Allis-Benoit.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Alone, without the circus, yeah.” Then Stamper says, “Today didn’t go so well?”

  “Hard to tell. Stapleton is thinking about it.”

  “Then push him, Alec. End that damn case. I need your help.”

  Back in his office, Alec finds Lee Norris on his line. “What’s going on?” Norris says. “I call Ben, get transferred to you.”

  Alec relates his meeting with Kane.

  “Weirdest goddamn thing I ever heard of,” Norris says.

  “And?”

  “No reason not to go for it,” Norris says. “No legal or ethical problem. And Walter Mansfield, if he had the case, would throw it out in ten minutes. I don’t see Stapleton agreeing to it, however. He might not even give us the meeting.”

  “He will if I say you’re in on it.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Norris says.

  “You have a history?”

  “We do.”

  “Should I know about it?” Alec asks.

  “No need. Just call him. See what he says.”

  “I have another reason to see him.”

  “Your Allis-Benoit case?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not a problem,” Norris says. “Of course I assume”—and he laughs—“you’re not planning some trade-off.”

  “Correct assumption.”

  “Okay, then. Just let me know when. If he gives us a date, I can move anything.”

  When they hang up, Alec takes a moment. He has met only two truly great men. Not Tom Dewey, whom Alec had once taken to dinner, then offered up to a City Bar roast. Certainly not Richard Nixon, against whom Alec had litigated. And not even, surprisingly, Harry Truman, as much as Alec enjoyed the man’s company the night he spoke at the Law Journal banquet. But Thurgood Marshall—no question, he had all the attributes of greatness. Thurgood judged the law school moot court finals, when Alec, then third-year, also sat on the panel. A friendship formed that night lasted through the years. And then there was Lee Norris, another hero of the civil rights movement. A powerful man with a towering intellect and an immense capacity for humor and love, he moved everyone with a soft voice, and, in government office, achieved astounding victories with honor intact. If Eric Stapleton couldn’t recognize Lee’s greatness, had to be something wrong with Stapleton.

  Alec’s secretary buzzes. None other than Stapleton is on the line.

  “I just received a very strange call,” Stapleton says. “Supposedly from the chambers of the chief judge of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. I was told to expect your call, Alec. I was told you’d ask for a meeting. And I was instructed—by a fucking clerk—to grant that request. Was that a joke?”

  “No joke. Your call anticipated mine by a few seconds.”

  “Really?” he says. “You’re on intimate terms with the chief judge?”

  “Simply a messenger. But it’s a message to be delivered in person.”

  Stapleton could be heard flipping pages, presumably of his calendar. “I have an opening for 3 p.m. tomorrow.”

  “I’d like to bring Lee Norris.”

  “Norris. You don’t say. So this is a Computer Corp. thing?”

  “It is.”

  “You’re on that case now too?”

  “Peripherally.”

  “And in collusion with the Court of Appeals?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Ha!” Stapleton says. “That was a joke.”

  “I understood it as such.”

  “Tell me this, Alec. This Kane initiative—”

  “Funny, that’s what we’re calling it.”

  “Does it have anything
to do with Judge Ettinger?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  Silence on Alec’s end.

  “That’s all you’ll tell me?” Stapleton says.

  “Until tomorrow.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  No sun this afternoon on St. Mark’s Place. Jesse sits on a bench in front of a church as streaked and bleak as the sky, which looks like emulsions of pewter and ash. Pigeons flock to her feet as if she had something to offer. Like me, she thinks, traveling to three different film sites, tracking three indie producers. All men, of course. And no job as a result of it. She’s simply not willing to work for no pay. Much less to come into their “honey wagons” to talk about it.

  Her original plan was the basic fantasy, but one that others had achieved. Take a paying job doing most anything, save some money, write a film script, make it herself, get it into a festival, catch a wave. Events intervened. Sarah intervened. Sarah and Alec. Yes, right, mostly him.

  She can’t talk to Alec about money. She obviously needs some, and he obviously knows that. She found a checkbook in her handbag, with a note that said, “Let me know when this runs out.” The bank teller informed her that the “this” was $1,000. So she imagined the conversation she needed to have. “If I’m to stay here, doing whatever for Sarah and you, I have to be earning something. It needn’t be large, since you’re covering my room and board, but we should have a formal arrangement. We should….”

  It’s too cold to be sitting here. The last guy she interviewed was the one with the “honey wagon” trailer. Unimaginable luxury for an indie film. “Let’s get warm,” he said. “Get to know each other better.” Hitting on her with those stupid code words. My situation, she thinks, is ridiculous. I’m actually living with the man I want and can’t have him. It’s a line of thought she’s traveled down repeatedly, and is tired of. She says aloud, “I have to move out or in!” Fortunately, she thinks, no one hears me. Here or there.

  Alec arrives home dead tired. Sarah is in her room doing homework. Jesse is waiting up. “If this is a pattern,” he says, “I could get used to it.”

  He’s standing at the doorway to the kitchen, still in his suit. Jesse, in her bathrobe, is seated at the island with a novel. She looks at him distractedly, seemingly deep in thought about something else.

  “What are you reading?” he says.

  “Nothing. Nothing important.” She gets up and takes his hand.

  “You want to talk?” he says, a bit off-balance.

  “Yes,” she says. “I have something to say to you.” Not letting go of his hand, she leads him out of the kitchen and to his bedroom, where she closes the door and sits on his bed. Now totally mystified, but certainly interested, Alec tosses his jacket and tie on a chair and joins her on the bed’s edge.

  “So this is what I want to tell you,” she says, looking down to the bedspread. It’s as if she’d summoned the courage to tell him her feelings but not to look him in the eye.

  He says, “Jess, whatever it is—”

  She bursts out in a rush, as if afraid he will take her off course. “This will seem to you like a total reversal… but it’s not. Not of my feelings. Not of my own state of mind.” She has to stop to gulp air. It’s not going as she rehearsed it. It’s already going too fast. “I know you want to make love to me,” she says.

  “Of course I do. How could I not?”

  “Easily, but don’t interrupt me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I want it too,” she says, face burning, forcing her gaze to return to the pattern on the bedspread. “To be brutally honest, which is what I’m trying to do here, I’ve wanted it since we met. I also think you want us to be a couple.”

  “Yes. That too.”

  “Right,” she says, taking another hard breath. “I stayed in Ireland, even after Carrie died, because—though I didn’t know your situation—I thought, if I came back, I’d be drawn to you and eventually we might… happen. And be happy for a while,” she says with a strain in her voice. “And then… crash.” She raises her eyes. “For the reasons I’ve already told you.”

  “You know my feelings about that,” he says.

  “Yes. I do. But my thoughts haven’t changed, my rational thoughts, to the extent I still have them. Yet my feelings have… grown stronger.”

  “Jesse,” he says, gathering her hands. “I’m in love with you. I have been from the moment I saw you back here last month, even though it might have taken me a half a day to realize it.”

  “Yes.” She wraps her fingers with his. “I know you believe that. Me too with you. And I think I should stop putting you off. And we should become lovers. But—”

  He kisses her, and they stay like that for a languorous moment, lips pressed, hands entangled. Until he says, “There are no buts.”

  “Okay, one,” Jesse whispers. “We should go slowly.”

  “Even more slowly than we’ve been going?” he says with a grin.

  “No, but more slowly than you probably want.”

  He pulls back. “Why is that?”

  “I think it’s better. Slow is better, don’t you think?” Her look scarcely conveys great confidence in the proposition. “Tonight I’ll sleep in your bed, and you’ll just hold me.”

  “Okay,” he says hesitantly, getting to his feet.

  “You think I’m being ridiculous,” she says.

  “Well… quaint.”

  She feels happy and laughs. “Yes, I’m sure that’s true. But go wash up and come to bed.”

  “What were you reading tonight when I came in?”

  “Nothing serious. Nancy Mitford.”

  “Loving and light,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “Which is how you want to keep us?”

  “No, Alec. Not light. I really don’t. I’m just trying—”

  He lifts her from the bed and holds her. Wraps his arms around her and feels hers close tightly around him. They stay like that lengthily, until she steps back. “Okay,” she says, breathless.

  “Okay what?”

  “Maybe slow’s not so clever.”

  “So what do we do?” he says, smiling.

  She unsashes her bathrobe, and lets it fall to the floor. She’s wearing a nightgown, which she raises over her head and lets fall on top of the bathrobe. The shock of the real—her slim-hipped, small-breasted bare body—reduces his usable vocabulary to two exclamatory words. “You’re extraordinary,” he says.

  “I wish I could be that,” she says. “But I’ve never felt it.”

  “Then it will be my job to see that you do.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  At the Westchester Airport, Lee Norris stands waiting, his bulk curled over a cane. He hates to sit, he says to Alec, because it’s too hard to get up. Then he gives that shy look of his, which is also mischievous. It’s never only about that moment or statement. It’s as if he’s found some broader absurdity—in himself, or others, or the world—and wants you to share the discovery. When he was attorney general, and then secretary of state, that look became famous. But Alec remembers it from a much earlier time—from law school, when Norris, behind a steaming jug of coffee, at 8 a.m., reacted to all labored efforts, including his own, to make sense of constitutional law.

  They take off in a Computer Corp. jet. Once in the air, Alec asks, “What’s between you and Stapleton?”

  Norris smiles. “We both clerked for Felix Frankfurter. We didn’t see eye to eye. And didn’t much like each other, either. But we didn’t actually hate each other, like Ettinger and Kane. They once worked for the same senator, the one who got them both appointed to the bench. What flared up then smolders to this day. And it’s the reason we’re now on this plane.”

  “Kane wants only to humiliate Ettinger?”

  “No, I think he also wants to put an end to a situation that’s humiliating the court. But sinking a spear into his old enemy would be an attractive bonus. And he’s come up with a unique solution to a bad prob
lem. Trouble is, Rivvy Kane doesn’t know Eric Stapleton.”

  “Who has an aversion to originality.”

  “A deep fear,” Norris says. “Eric has risen to his current post by avoiding anything that might smack of originality. Which is why his current post is the highest to which he will rise.”

  After several minutes of silence, Norris says, “Oh, by the way, I have some news that might interest you. Ever heard of Hannah Valley Light and Gas?”

  “A public utility?”

  “In West Virginia, yeah. I happen to be on the board there. For some years, it’s been the thorn up the ass of your friend Donald Strand.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Turns out,” Norris says, his big face gleaming, “he’s been stalking them for years, but the good folks of Hannah Valley did not wish to be engulfed by the rapacious Donald. Now they’re interested. I can’t tell you why, and there’s no need for you to know. But, strangely, Strand now seems a bit wary about making a deal. It might be a bargaining tactic. It might be something real standing in his way. Like, maybe, an antitrust problem? Would you know anything about that?”

  “I might, yes,” Alec says. “Especially if Hannah Valley is a large utility.”

  “It’s quite sizable. In fact, it’s the largest utility within a 500-mile radius that Mid-Atlantic has not already acquired. Which, for Donald Strand, is like owning Broadway and most everything on the board, but not Park Place.”

  “Then maybe I can help.”

  “Good,” Norris says. “I thought I might have come to the right place on this.”

  When they land at National Airport, a company car awaits on the tarmac to drive them into town. No matter how many times he’s been to Washington, Alec, an outsider to the Beltway scene, cannot ride unimpressed past the nation’s great monuments and buildings. Norris appears not to notice. Entering the Department of Justice, however, which he ruled for nearly two years, he says under his breath, “This is too fucking nostalgic,” with that shy smile turned briefly to Alec.