Overruled

by Hank Davis

  “Oh, very well! Get him up here.”

  “Here? My dear lady!” Haskell was shocked at the suggestion; Weinberg looked amazed. “It would not only cause any action you bring to be thrown out of court if it were known that you had consulted this man, but it would prejudice any Briggs enterprise for years.”

  Mrs. van Vogel shrugged. “You men. I never will understand the way you think. Why shouldn’t one consult a shyster as openly as one consults an astrologer?”

  * * *

  James Roderick McCoy was not a large man, but he seemed large. He managed to dominate even so large a room as Mrs. van Vogel’s salon. His business card read:

  J. R. McCOY

  “The Real McCoy”

  Licensed Shyster—Fixing, Special Contracts,

  Angles. All Work Guaranteed.

  Telephone Skyline 9-8M4554

  Ask for Mac

  The number given was the pool room of the notorious Three Planets Club. He wasted no time on offices and kept his files in his head—the only safe place for them.

  He was sitting on the floor, attempting to teach Jerry to shoot craps, while Mrs. van Vogel explained her problem. “What do you think, Mr. McCoy? Could we approach it through the SPCA? My public relations staff could give it a buildup.”

  McCoy got to his feet. “Jerry’s eyes aren’t so bad; he caught me trying to palm box cars off on him as a natural. No,” he continued, “the SPCA angle is no good. They’ll be ready to prove that the anthropoids actually enjoy being killed off.”

  Jerry rattled the dice hopefully. “That’s all, Jerry. Scram.”

  “Okay, boss.” The ape man got to his feet and went to the big stereo which filled a corner of the room. Napoleon ambled after him and switched it on. Jerry punched a selector button and got a blues singer. Napoleon immediately punched another, then another and another until he got a loud but popular band. He stood there, beating out the rhythm with his trunk.

  Jerry looked pained and switched it back to his blues singer. Napoleon stubbornly reached out with his prehensile nose and switched it off.

  Jerry used a swear word.

  “Boys!” called out Mrs. van Vogel. “Quit squabbling. Jerry, let Nappie play what he wants to. You can play the stereo when Nappie has to take his nap.”

  “Okay, Missy Boss.”

  McCoy was interested. “Jerry likes music?”

  “Like it? He loves it. He’s been learning to sing.”

  “Huh? This I gotta hear.”

  “Certainly. Nappie—turn off the stereo.” The elephant complied but managed to look put upon. “Now Jerry—‘Jingle Bells.’” She led him in it:

  “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way—”, and he followed,

  “Jinger bez, jinger bez, jinger awrah day;

  “Oh, wot fun tiz to ride in one-hoss open sray.”

  He was flat, he was terrible. He looked ridiculous, patting out the time with one splay foot. But it was singing.

  “Say, that’s fast!” McCoy commented. “Too bad Nappie can’t talk—we’d have a duet.”

  Jerry looked puzzled. “Nappie talk good,” he stated. He bent over the elephant and spoke to him. Napoleon grunted and moaned back at him. “See, Boss?” Jerry said triumphantly.

  “What did he say?”

  “He say, ‘Can Nappie pray stereo now?’”

  “Very well, Jerry.” Mrs. van Vogel interceded. The ape man spoke to his chum in whispers. Napoleon squealed and did not turn on the stereo.

  “Jerry!” said his mistress. “I said nothing of the sort; he does not have to play your blues singer. Come away, Jerry. Nappie—play what you want to.”

  “You mean he tried to cheat?” McCoy inquired with interest.

  “He certainly did.”

  “Hmm—Jerry’s got the makings of a real citizen. Shave him and put shoes on him and he’d get by all right in the precinct I grew up in.” He stared at the anthropoid. Jerry stared back, puzzled but patient. Mrs. van Vogel had thrown away the dirty canvas kilt which was both his badge of servitude and a concession to propriety and had replaced it with a kilt in the bright Cameron war plaid, complete to sporran, and topped off with a Glengarry.

  “Do you suppose he could learn to play the bagpipes?” McCoy asked. “I’m beginning to get an angle.”

  “Why, I don’t know. What’s your idea?”

  McCoy squatted down cross-legged and began practicing rolls with his dice. “Never mind,” he answered when it suited him, “that angle’s no good. But we’re getting there.” He rolled four naturals, one after the other. “You say Jerry still belongs to the Corporation?”

  “In a titular sense, yes. I doubt if they will ever try to repossess him.”

  “I wish they would try.” He scooped up the dice and stood up. “It’s in the bag, Sis. Forget it. I’ll want to talk to your publicity man but you can quit worrying about it.”

  * * *

  Of course Mrs. van Vogel should have knocked before entering her husband’s room—but then she would not have overheard what he was saying, nor to whom.

  “That’s right,” she heard him say, “we haven’t any further need for him. Take him away, the sooner the better. Just be sure the men you send over have a signed order directing us to turn him over.”

  She was not apprehensive, as she did not understand the conversation, but merely curious. She looked over her husband’s shoulder at the video screen.

  There she saw Blakesly’s face. His voice was saying, “Very well, Mr. Van Vogel, the anthropoid will be picked up tomorrow.”

  She strode up to the screen. “Just a minute, Mr. Blakesly—” then, to her husband, “Brownie, what in the world do you think you are doing?”

  The expression she surprised on his face was not one he had ever let her see before. “Why don’t you knock?”

  “Maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t. Brownie, did I hear you right? Were you telling Mr. Blakesly to pick up Jerry?” She turned to the screen. “Was that it, Mr. Blakesly?”

  “That is correct, Mrs. van Vogel. And I must say I find this confusion most—”

  “Stow it.” She turned back. “Brownie, what have you to say for yourself?”

  “Martha, you are being preposterous. Between that elephant and that ape this place is a zoo. I actually caught your precious Jerry smoking my special, personal cigars today…not to mention the fact that both of them play the stereo all day long until a man can’t get a moment’s peace. I certainly don’t have to stand for such things in my own house.”

  “Whose house, Brownie?”

  “That’s beside the point. I will not stand for—”

  “Never mind.” She turned to the screen. “My husband seems to have lost his taste for exotic animals, Mr. Blakesly. Cancel the order for a Pegasus.”

  “Martha!”

  “Sauce for the goose, Brownie. I’ll pay for your whims; I’m damned if I’ll pay for your tantrums. The contract is cancelled, Mr. Blakesly. Mr. Haskell will arrange the details.”

  Blakesly shrugged. “Your capricious behavior will cost you, of course. The penalties—”

  “I said Mr. Haskell would arrange the details. One more thing, Mister Manager Blakesly—have you done as I told you to?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean—are those poor creatures still alive and well?”

  “That is not your business.” He had, in fact, suspended the killings; the directors had not wanted to take any chances until they saw what the Briggs trust could manage, but Blakesly would not give her the satisfaction of knowing.

  She looked at him as if he were a skipped dividend. “It’s not, eh? Well, bear this in mind, you cold-blooded little pipsqueak: I’m holding you personally responsible. If just one of them dies from anything, I’ll have your skin for a rug.” She flipped off the connection and turned to her husband. “Brownie—”

  “It’s useless to say anything,” he cut in, in the cold voice he normally used to bring her to he
el. “I shall be at the Club. Good-bye!”

  “That is just what I was going to suggest.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll have your clothes sent over. Do you have anything else in this house?”

  He stared at her. “Don’t talk like a fool, Martha.”

  “I’m not talking like a fool.” She looked him up and down. “My, but you are handsome, Brownie. I guess I was a fool to think I could buy a big hunk of man with a checkbook. I guess a girl gets them free, or she doesn’t get them at all. Thanks for the lesson.” She turned and slammed out of the room and into her own suite.

  Five minutes later, makeup repaired and nerves steadied by a few whiffs of Fly-Right, she called the pool room of the Three Planets Club. McCoy came to the screen carrying a cue. “Oh, it’s you, sugar-puss. Well, snap it up—I’ve got four bits on this game.”

  “This is business.”

  “Okay, okay—spill it.”

  She told him the essentials. “I’m sorry about cancelling the flying horse contract, Mr. McCoy. I hope it won’t make your job any harder. I’m afraid I lost my temper.”

  “Fine. Go lose it again.”

  “Huh!”

  “You’re barreling down the groove, kid. Call Blakesly up again. Bawl him out. Tell him to keep his bailiffs away from you, or you’ll stuff ‘em and use them for hat racks. Dare him to take Jerry away from you.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “You don’t have to, girlie. Remember this: You can’t have a bull fight until you get the bull mad enough to fight. Have Weinberg get a temporary injunction restraining Workers, Incorporated, from reclaiming Jerry. Have your boss press agent give me a buzz. Then you call the newsboys and tell them what you think of Blakesly. Make it nasty. Tell them you intend to put a stop to this wholesale murder if it takes every cent you’ve got.”

  “Well…all right. Will you come and see me before I talk to them?”

  “Nope—gotta get back to my game. Tomorrow, maybe. Don’t fret about having cancelled that silly winged-horse deal. I always did think your old man was weak in the head, and it’s saved you a nice piece of change. You’ll need it when I send in my bill. Boy, am I going to clip you! Bye now.”

  The bright letters trailed around the sides of the Times Building: “WORLD’S RICHEST WOMAN PUTS UP FIGHT FOR APE MAN.” On the giant video screen above showed a transcribe of Jerry, in his ridiculous Highland chief outfit. A small army of police surrounded the Briggs town house, while Mrs. van Vogel informed anyone who would listen, including several news services, that she would defend Jerry personally and to the death.

  The public relations office of Workers, Incorporated, denied any intention of seizing Jerry; the denial got nowhere.

  In the meantime technicians installed extra audio and video circuits in the largest courtroom in town, for one Jerry (no surname), described as a legal, permanent resident of these United States, had asked for a permanent injunction against the corporate person “Workers,” its officers, employees, successors, or assignees, forbidding it to kill him.

  Through his attorney, the honorable and distinguished and stuffily respectable Augustus Pomfrey, Jerry brought the action in his own name.

  Martha van Vogel sat in the courtroom as a spectator only, but she was surrounded by secretaries, guards, maids, publicity men, and yes men, and had one television camera trained on her alone. She was nervous. McCoy had insisted on briefing Pomfrey through Weinberg, to keep Pomfrey from knowing that he was helped by a shyster. She had her own opinion of Pomfrey—

  The McCoy had insisted that Jerry not wear his beautiful new kilt but had dressed him in faded dungaree trousers and jacket. It seemed poor theater to her.

  Jerry himself worried her. He seemed confused by the lights and the noise and the crowd, about to go to pieces.

  And McCoy had refused to go to the trial with her. He had told her that it was quite impossible, that his mere presence would alienate the court, and Weinberg had backed him up. Men! Their minds were devious—they seemed to like twisted ways of doing things. It confirmed her opinion that men should not be allowed to vote.

  But she felt lost without the immediate presence of McCoy’s easy self-confidence. Away from him, she wondered why she had ever trusted such an important matter to an irresponsible, jumping jack, bird-brained clown as McCoy. She chewed her nails and wished he were present.

  The panel of attorneys appearing for Workers Incorporated, began by moving that the action be dismissed without trial, on the theory that Jerry was a chattel to the corporation, an integral part of it, and no more able to sue than the thumb can sue the brain.

  The honorable Augustus Pomfrey looked every inch the statesman as he bowed to the court and to his opponents. “It is indeed strange,” he began, “to hear the second-hand voice of a legal fiction, a soulless, imaginary quantity called a corporate ‘person,’ argue that a flesh-and-blood creature, a being of hopes and longings and passions, has no legal existence. I see here beside me my poor cousin Jerry.” He patted Jerry on the shoulder; the ape man, needing reassurance, slid a hand into his. It went over well.

  “But when I look for this abstract fancy ‘Workers,’ what do I find? Nothing—some words on paper, some signed bits of foolscap—”

  “If the Court please, a question,” put in the opposition chief attorney, “does the learned counsel contend that a limited liability stock company cannot own property?”

  “Will counsel reply?” directed the judge.

  “Thank you. My esteemed colleague has set up a straw man; I contended only that the question as to whether Jerry is a chattel of Workers, Incorporated, is immaterial, nonessential, irrelevant. I am part of the corporate city of Great New York. Does that deny me my civil rights as a person of flesh and blood? In fact it does not even rob me of my right to sue that civic corporation of which I am a part, if, in my opinion, I am wronged by it. We are met today in the mellow light of equity, rather than in the cold and narrow confines of law. It seemed a fit time to dwell on the strange absurdities we live by, whereunder a nonentity of paper and legal fiction could deny the existence of this our poor cousin. I ask that the learned attorneys for the corporation stipulate that Jerry does, in fact, exist, and let us get on with the action.”

  They huddled; the answer was “No.”

  “Very well. My client asked to be examined in order that the court may determine his status and being.”

  “Objection! This anthropoid cannot be examined; he is a mere part and chattel of the respondent.”

  “That is what we are about to determine,” the judge answered dryly. “Objection overruled.”

  “Go sit in that chair, Jerry.”

  “Objection! This beast cannot take an oath—it is beyond his comprehension.”

  “What have you to say to that, Counsel?”

  “If it pleases the Court,” answered Pomfrey, “the simplest thing to do is put him in the chair and find out.”

  “Let him take the stand. The clerk will administer the oath.” Martha van Vogel gripped the arms of her chair; McCoy had spent a full week training him for this. Would the whole thing blow up without McCoy to guide him?

  The clerk droned through the oath; Jerry looked puzzled but patient.

  “Your honor,” said Pomfrey, “when young children must give testimony, it is customary to permit a little leeway in the wording, to fit their mental attainments. May I be permitted?” He walked up to Jerry.

  “Jerry, my boy, are you a good worker?”

  “Sure Mike! Jerry good worker!”

  “Maybe bad worker, huh? Lazy. Hide from strawboss.”

  “No, no, no! Jerry good worker. Dig. Weed. Not dig up vegetaber. Dig up weed. Work hard.”

  “You will see,” Pomfrey addressed the court, “that my client has very definite ideas of what is true and what is false. Now let us attempt to find out whether or not he has moral values which require him to tell the truth. Jerry—”

  “Yes, Boss.”
>
  Pomfrey spread his hand in front of the anthropoid’s face. “How many fingers do you see?”

  Jerry reached out and ticked them off. “one—two—sree—four, uh—five.”

  “Six fingers, Jerry.”

  “Five, Boss.”

  “Six fingers, Jerry. I give you cigarette. Six.”

  “Five, Boss. Jerry not cheat.”

  Pomfrey spread his hands. “Will the court accept him?”

  The court did. Martha van Vogel sighed. Jerry could not count very well and she had been afraid that he would forget his lines and accept the bribe. But he had been promised all the cigarettes he wanted and chocolate as well if he would remember to insist that five was five.

  “I suggest,” Pomfrey went on, “that the matter has been established. Jerry is an entity; if he can be accepted as a witness, then surely he may have his day in court. Even a dog may have his day in court. Will my esteemed colleagues stipulate?”

  Workers, Incorporated, through its battery of lawyers, agreed—just in time, for the judge was beginning to cloud up. He had been so much impressed by the little performance.

  The tide was with him; Pomfrey used it. “If it please the court and if the counsels for the respondent will permit, we can shorten these proceedings. I will state the theory under which relief is sought and then, by a few questions, it may be settled one way or another. I ask that it be stipulated that it was the intention of Workers, Incorporated, through its servants, to take the life of my client.”

  Stipulation was refused.

  “So? Then I ask the court take judicial notice of the well-known fact that these anthropoid workers are destroyed when they no longer show a profit; thereafter I will call witnesses, starting with Horace Blakesly, to show that Jerry was and presumably is under such sentence of death.”

  Another hurried huddle resulted in the stipulation that Jerry had, indeed been scheduled for euthanasia.

  “Then,” said Pomfrey, “I will state my theory. Jerry is not an animal, but a man. It is not legal to kill him—it is murder.”