He looked offended. Easily hurt, but quick to recover, he said, “I never looked at it in quite that way before. What a splendid observation.” He clicked.
“Who would know in the beginning, for instance, why Gandry did what he did,” I explained. “Time should pass before you look for a motive. Then beyond motive there’s motivation. For example, I know that Gandry’s thinking he’s invincible now because of his triumph over me. But that’s now. If he kills now, I’ll know that he knows to squeeze harder and longer on his victim’s throat rather than risk being identified by a half-dead victim. He’s got the same motive, but more motivation.”
He looked inside the court replica and poked a few pieces of furniture with his long finger before looking up.
“You just answered your own question about Professor Bliss’s motive.”
“You mean he’s assassinating the whole court because of some case that got tossed out.”
“Not some case that got tossed out, man.” He was very disappointed in me. “The exclusionary rule,” he half shouted.
“Your hero would make nine men a target over a legal rule?”
“A target of nine,” he clicked. “Target Nine, a good title. Yes, all nine.”
“Aren’t any of them against the exclusionary rule?”
“Indeed, four of the nine are, but not militantly enough, that is, to suit Professor Bliss, a man who never once compromises with evil. As Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver was fond of saying, ‘If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.’ ” His eyes were burning a hole in the Oriental carpet.
“Sinners in the hands of an angry God,” I said.
“Precisely,” he said and clicked his lower lip and clapped his hands once for double emphasis. “Do you see these little metal caps?” He pointed at the caps in a rapid darting fashion. They were the size of a pencil eraser and resembled the bottom of a silver bullet. They were attached to the foot of nearly every wall in the model. “They are standpipes for the connection of fire hoses.” He lifted one of the caps. It was on a miniature hinge, and it stayed up, creating a tiny hole in the wall. “In my research, I have personally lifted open each and every one of these standpipes at the court any number of times.”
“Dynamite?” I asked.
“With timing devices. The horizontal pipe continues under the marble flooring behind the walls. Minimum damage to only those bystanders standing near the standpipes themselves — acceptable losses, if you will — but incredible damage to the building. You see, in my final scene, while the explosions burst at the justices’ feet during oral argument, Professor Bliss stands tall in the visitors’ gallery and fires from a nine-shot revolver made of white metal, the kind used on car door handles, the kind that can pass through a metal detector undetected. His bullets are laced with live rabies virus.”
“I can’t wait to read it.” I grinned.
He looked as if he were about to drop a few sticks of miniature dynamite into the teeny-tiny standpipes.
He obviously wanted to tell me more, so I said, “However, I am curious, how does Professor Bliss get away after the shootings?”
“He doesn’t.” He brightened. “It’s what I believe would be properly termed a kamikaze mission. He makes the supreme patriotic sacrifice. He is motivated to atone for an act of cowardice, draft dodging during World War II and hiding out in South America.”
“Not Brazil, I hope.”
“I haven’t decided yet,” he said softly. He blinked his eyes tightly and instantly transformed his body into a relaxed state, as if he did it with the flick of a lighter switch. He looked as if he had just had sex. He even took a deep breath. “Perhaps some day you will be kind enough to tell me about Brazil. Perhaps I may use Brazil in my novel.”
As I drained the last drops of my scotch, he went to the booze table and poured me a cognac. It tasted fifty years old. Smooth as water and not smoky like the scotch. The taste disappeared in your mouth like a bubble. The glass snifter had a fox-hunt scene on it that you wouldn’t find on a glass in Mrs. Lloyd’s house or in Mrs. Smotz’s, rest her soul, or in Mary Whitney’s.
He poured himself one from the same bottle but didn’t put the bottle down. With bottle and glass in hand he led me to the south parlor, which was opposite the library.
Even after being in the library and the dining room, I was dazzled by this room. There were old oil paintings in gold-leaf frames, with little lights shining on the pictures. On top of the Knabe grand piano was a bust of Beethoven carved from a solid piece of wood. Other statuary in the room included a bust of Shakespeare on a black marble pedestal. If I’d known anything about the value of Oriental rugs, I’d have been afraid to step on the carpet.
Carlton sat in a high-backed wing chair near one of the three fireplaces in the room. He motioned me to sit in a matching chair, about eight feet from his, on the other side of the black marble flooring in front of the fireplace.
Carlton reached into the breast pocket of his blazer and pulled out several sheets of typing paper folded in half the long way.
“I would like to read to you the first chapter of my novel.”
I raised my glass in approval and took a sip. Carlton waited until I stopped sipping and then he began reading. I looked outside and noticed that it had stopped raining.
Since he later gave me the manuscript of this first chapter, I am able to reproduce it here as I heard it, word for word. It took about eight minutes, and Carlton appeared to have the thing memorized. Part of the time he spoke the words from memory while looking at the Oriental rug. Here’s what he read to me:
Sounds of the Rude World
by Carlton Cruset
White. Hospitals seem to be whiter than most places, thought Chief Justice Lindsey Dankworth as he pushed the lever to lower his reclining bed.
He was not going to sleep, he told himself. He was simply going to think. Occasionally, a new law clerk not knowing the legend of Dankworth would be startled to encounter His Honor flat on the deep gray carpet of his chambers. Later in the course of his year’s service with the Supreme Court the young clerk would learn what court scholars and the eight justices already knew: Dankworth worked best either reclining on the floor or standing at an antique podium desk. On the desk was a green wooden sign, a handmade gift from the first female clerk ever to labor for the Supreme Court. It said many things about both Dankworth the unpretentious man and Dankworth the lord of many domestic issues facing the American people. The sign stated: “ ‘…there is nothing so conducive to brevity as a caving in at the knees.’ O. W. Holmes.”
The C. J. craved thought. He used his mind continuously. It never rested. It burned with the fuel of his surroundings. Whatever he saw, touched, or heard made him think.
Yes, white is medicine, he thought. Blue is police. Gray is prisons. Black is crime.
Yes, that was straightened out in the orderly processes of his mind and under the influence of medication, and almost against his will he began to sleep. He snored.
If sleep had not come, the process of free association might have led to the solving of some intellectual or legal problem or the genesis of a thought new to him, as in 1972 when he had found the power to make abortion a constitutional right during one of the silent and lonely voyages of his creative and dynamic intellect. The vote at the court had been four to four, with Dankworth uncommitted, until he closed his eyes and allowed his mind to float as if it were Galileo’s feather falling from the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
As the chief justice slept on this night, a very tall and skeletal silver-haired man with a scholarly manner quietly entered Dankworth’s room at the Walter Reed Army Hospital. The man was two years younger than Dankworth, who was fifty-seven, and in keeping with the white hospital motif he wore a white surgical mask, white jacket, white slacks, and white buck shoes with red rubber soles. He noiselessly reach
ed the bed in two strides of his six-five frame.
The tall man in white who stood by the bed and stared down at Chief Justice Dankworth was Professor Andrew Bliss. His blue eyes slowly adjusted to the semidarkness as Dankworth snored softly. Although the hepatitis appeared to be on the mend, rest was important for Dankworth.
Professor Andrew Bliss reached into his white coat pocket and pulled out a pint of domestic vodka and a small can of odorless cleaning fluid, the kind sold in any drugstore. He slowly poured all of the fluid on the bedding and pillow surrounding his victim’s head. Using a hypodermic needle and large syringe he injected several ounces of vodka into the clear plastic bag of intravenous solution. He increased the rate of fluid passing through the IV by turning the black dial from 24 to 65cc’s per minute.
Dankworth inhaled the fumes of the cleaning fluid into his lungs as the vodka entered his blood stream. By morning the combination would empty his already deteriorating liver of all its blood.
On the nightstand the good and graceful professor placed a 5 × 8 index card with the following typed message:
“The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the…federal judiciary; an irresponsible body.”
— Thomas Jefferson, 1821
Carlton Cruset closed his mouth, closed his eyes, and lifted his fox-hunt snifter full of cognac to his lips. He drank a good healthy swallow.
“That’s pretty interesting,” I said politely. “Can you really kill somebody that way?”
“Certainly,” he clicked. He hadn’t snapped one off since we left the study. “Nitrobenzene is a common household ingredient. It’s found in liquid shoe polish, metal polish, dyes, and cleaning fluid. Alcohol hastens its deadly effects. People die from it accidentally all the time and it is diagnosed as hepatitis.”
“That’s pretty interesting writing,” I said and remembered too late that I had already said that.
“You don’t know what to make of me,” he said, “do you?”
I tried to stifle a yawn, covered my mouth with my hand, removed my hand, and drank some more cognac. I knew what to make of him. He shifted in his seat, waiting for me to speak, and took another swallow. I drank again.
“I’d like to see chapter two,” I said. “Don’t take offense if I appear listless. I’m still in a lousy mood and I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
He said, “That’s all I’ve done. There is no chapter two.” He clenched his fists and held them up away from his body. “Writing and talking will not accomplish much in this world.” He stared at his fists. “But I presume you know that.”
“No. I don’t know that,” I said.
“Come now. You are a man of action, not words.”
“I don’t know what I’m a man of anymore. For a long while I just wanted to be a man with no cares in a new tropical land with a lot of new things to eat and learn.”
He grunted and said, “Here, you may have this,” and handed me the manuscript.
We both stood up as Marian and Sarah entered the room. I hadn’t noticed before, but Sarah’s black hair was very long. She wore it straight, with bangs neatly trimmed. She had a lovely, graceful walk.
“I think it would be best for all concerned,” Carlton said and started walking, “if I went up to my room for the evening.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake, what’s the matter?” demanded Marian.
“I haven’t been real good company,” I offered. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“I can imagine,” said Marian.
Carlton kept walking, ignoring our conversation, as if we couldn’t say anything to change his mind.
“I’ll go up to my room too, Daddy,” said Sarah without looking at me.
Marian said, “Sarah, won’t you even say good night?”
Sarah turned and faced me. She said, “Good night,” turned again, and followed her father up the stairs.
This was harder on me than I’d expected. I’d had the right idea before I got on the plane in Belém. I should be across the street merely watching my daughter. Or I should be in an insurance agent’s office taking out a ten-million-dollar policy, with her as the beneficiary. I should be looking out for her from a distance, and I shouldn’t be this close to her new life, for my sake.
“She looks a lot like you,” said Marian as she sat in Carlton’s chair. I sat, too, and poured another cognac from the bottle. “She has a mannerism of yours. You know the way you touch the corners of your mouth with the tips of your thumb and middle finger. Sometimes she gets lipstick on her fingers from doing it.” Marian took Carlton’s glass and drank from it.
“It’s funny,” I said. “I forgot I did that. I don’t think I do it anymore. I work in dirt. Where do you suppose she got it? The time she saw me she was too young to pick up something like that.”
“Genes. She’s your daughter,” said Marian as she rubbed the edge of Carlton’s glass with her middle finger, the way people used to get music from a glass on Ted Mack’s “Amateur Hour.”
I finished off my drink and poured another inch while she fondled her glass.
“You know, Lou, you were right today on the phone. There is something I have been trying to tell you. But it’s not about Carlton, it’s about Sarah, and it’s something I’ve never told anybody. Can I walk you to your car?”
“Sure,” I said, and we went out into the foyer and through the massive mahogany front door to the outside nighttime.
When she closed the door behind us, she said, “You are interested in her well-being, aren’t you?”
“I suppose I deserve that.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that. Did Carlton talk to you at all about Sarah?”
“No.”
“Did he say anything about me?”
“No. He just murdered Chief Justice Dankworth for me.” She laughed and said, “He thinks you’re somebody special. He’s very impressed with you and I think a little intimidated by you. He wanted me desperately to invite you tonight. He looks up to policemen, you know. He likes to be around them. That may be why he married me in the first place, a detective’s ex-wife.”
We stood by my Granada in the cobblestoned courtyard. “Reach down the back of my dress,” she said and turned her back to me. I pulled her dress from her skin, peeked in, and saw paper. I reached in and pulled out a folded manuscript similar to the one Carlton had handed me. “Dankworth,” I said and waved my own copy.
“No. Unfortunately this one’s not fiction.”
“Is what you want to talk to me about in here?”
“I don’t even want to talk to you about it. I just want you to know it. You must never let on that I gave you a copy. Please destroy it once you’ve read it. He chronicles everything. After Sarah confided in me what actually happened, I searched Carlton’s room until I found this, then I copied it and put it back in place. He’s never told me the truth of what happened, and she would never forgive me if I brought it up with him, and she’d probably never speak to me again if she knew I’d told you or anyone about it. She’s quite capable of that kind of retribution. She doesn’t know about Carlton’s written account, and she would probably accuse me of having written it myself to smear Carlton. Carlton long ago quite effectively won her over from me. Brainwashed her with his charm, generosity, and false sincerity. I can see by the way you’re looking at me that you mistrust my motives in giving you this. I am not looking for a knight in shining armor. At least I don’t think I am. I simply want you to have a better understanding of Sarah and Carlton and me in the future. I think you’ll understand when you read it.”
“Sure,” I said, shook her hand, got in my car, and wearily drove onto the highway.
29
As I drove I pictured Sarah’s intense face saying good night to me, and I thought how different everything could have been. I made a mental list of how things were. Shy’s
chalk outline. Stevie Morris’s polka-dot face. Mendez sitting nude in the steam room. Covaletzki and the mayor at the train station. DiGiacomo shaking hands with the “lawyer” from Philadelphia. Tony Landis and Clem Augrine staring at Judge Wyrostek’s floor. Honey curling up in my hotel bed. Tramp Lloyd sitting on his crushed-velvet chair. Marian standing up at the Green Room and calling my name. Gandry sitting at the defense table during his preliminary hearing and smirking. Carlton poking his finger in the cardbord Supreme Court Building. What a mess. The mess I’d left behind in 1963 was a trickle from a rainspout by comparison. I looked at my watch. It was early.
If I got to my bed by 10:30, I could get nine hours’ sleep. How can you divert youth on less than nine hours?
I pulled onto the shoulder of the road, put on the dome light, and began to read the papers Marian had handed me. Again I reproduce what was written:
The Target Manifesto
Prologue:
On September 28, 1953, six-year-old Bobby Greenlease was abducted from his Catholic school class by a woman posing as his aunt. She and her boyfriend, a morphine addict, collected $600,000 in ransom, killed and buried the boy, and raised suspicion about themselves in St. Louis by flashing big money to a cab driver and a prostitute who reported their suspicions to the St. Louis police who kicked their door in. On December 18, 1953, eighty-two days after the kidnapping, they were executed in Missouri’s gas chamber. Tempus fugit.
Episode:
You might say I was naive. It would be cruel to say I was anything more than that. One never imagines that the proper thing to do when one picks up one’s thirteen-year-old daughter after Girl Scouts at Christ’s Church, of all places, is to check the backseat floor for strangers when one returns to the locked car after being inside the church getting the girl for no more than five minutes. And so I prefer to say that as I drove away from the church, I was naive and nothing more.
The first I knew there was a problem of any sort was when he put the gun to my head and ordered me to make a right off the Kennett Pike and to head for Chester. I never did see his face clearly, but I did see and hear handcuffs on his wrists.
The Right to Remain Silent Page 16