(1969) The Seven Minutes

by Irving Wallace

  ‘Ready? Let’s get it over with,’ said Iverson. ‘Same jacket and

  title, right?’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Same publisher, publication date, copyright, correct?’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Same number of printed pages, right?’

  ‘Exactly, check.’

  ‘Let’s compare the marked passages in my book with the same pages in the book you just bought.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Kellog.

  Working quickly, the two men compared a half-dozen pages.

  “The same,’ concluded Iverson. ‘Well, Otto, the books are identical, agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Guess we’d better pay Mr Fremont another visit.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kellog, returning his book to the bag.

  ‘Otto, don’t forget your Fargo unit.’

  Kellog reached into his sport jacket, found the switch beside the microphone of his portable Fargo F-6Q0 intelligence unit. He pushed the lever. ‘It’s on.’

  Briskly, striding in step, the two returned to Fremont’s Book Emporium and entered it.

  Once inside, Kellog saw that Ben Fremont was still behind the counter next to the cash register, busy pouring a Coke into a large paper cup. Kellog led the way, with Iverson right behind him.

  Fremont had just brought the soft drink to his lips when he recognized Kellog. ‘Why, hello again -‘

  ‘Mr Fremont,’ said Kellog,’ - you are Ben Fremont, proprietor of Fremont’s Book Emporium, aren’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean ? Of course I am. You know that.’

  ‘Mr Fremont, we’ll have to introduce ourselves officially. I am Sergeant Kellog, assigned to the Vice Bureau of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office.’ He held out his badge, then returned it to his pocket. ‘My partner here is Officer Iverson, also of the Sheriff’s Vice Bureau.’

  The bookseller appeared bewildered. ‘I -I don’t get it,’ he said, setting his Coke down hard and spilling it. ‘What’s going on with - ?’

  ‘Ben Fremont,’ said Kellog, ‘we are placing you under arrest for violation of Section 311.2 of the California Penal Code. The Code states that every person who knowingly offers to distribute any obscene matter is guilty of a misdemeanor. Under Section 311a, “obscenity” means that to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the predominant appeal of the work in question, taken as a whole, is to prurient interest. That’s to say, the work goes beyond customary limits of candor in its descriptions, and is utterly without redeeming social importance. The District Attorney believes that the book The Seven Minutes, by J J Jadway, would be found obscene if taken to court, and therefore

  you are to be put under arrest for selling that book.’

  Ben Fremont, mouth agape, face ashen, gripped the counter’s edge, trying to find words. ‘Wait a minute, wait, now, you can’t arrest me. I’m just a guy who sells books. There are thousands of us. You can’t.’

  ‘Mr Fremont,’ said Kellog, ‘you are under arrest, absolutely. Now, for your own sake, don’t cause any trouble. We want all your invoices from Sanford House for purchased copies of this book. We’ve got to confiscate every copy of The Seven Minutes on the premises, and take them into our custody. We’ll also have to take that advertisement from the window, and any other promotional materials concerning the book.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘I thought you remembered the procedure. Never mind. We have a police vehicle outside. You will have to accompany us to the Sheriff’s Office on West Temple Street for booking.’

  ‘Sheriff’s Office ? For what - for what, dammit, I’m no criminal!’

  Kellog became suddenly impatient. Tor selling an obscene work. Didn’t you yourself tell me ten or fifteen minutes ago -‘

  Iverson hastily came forward, placing a restraining hand on Kellog’s shoulder. ‘One minute, Otto. Let me tell the gentleman his rights.’ He addressed himself to the bookseller. ‘Mr Fremont, everything you said before your arrest and everything you are saying now is being recorded by a wireless transmitter attached to Sergeant Kellog’s person and relayed to a magnetic tape recorder in our pohce vehicle outside. You did not have to be apprised of your rights before your arrest. Now that you are under arrest, it is my duty to warn you that you need answer no questions, that you have the right to remain silent, that you have the right to the presence of an attorney. Now you’ve been fully informed. If you want to ask questions, answer questions, that’s up to you.’

  ‘I’m not saying another word to either one of you, goddammit!’ Fremont shouted. ‘I’m not saying anything until I have an attorney!’

  ‘You can make a call,’ said Kellog, controlled. ‘You can call your attorney and have him meet you at the Sheriff’s headquarters.’

  Instantly Fremont’s anger vanished, and what was left was fear. ‘I don’t have an attorney. I mean, I don’t even know one. I’ve only got an accountant. I’m just a -‘

  ‘Well, you can have the court appoint -‘ Kellog began.

  ‘No, no, wait,’ Fremont interrupted. ‘I just remembered. The publisher’s salesman, the Sanford House salesman out here, when he sold me the books he said - he said if there was ever any kind of trouble, to call him right away, because they were standing behind their book, and young Sanford, he’s the publisher, he’d pitch in, he’d get any one of us an attorney. I’m going to call their salesman. Can I call him?’

  ‘Make any call you want,’ said Kellog. ‘Only make it fast.’

  Fremont grabbed for the telephone. But before dialing he stared at the officers. It was as if some new thought had crossed his mind and he was considering whether to speak what was on his mind. He spoke. ‘Listen, do you guys have any idea what you’re doing?’ he said, voice trembling. ‘You think it’s nothing. You think you’re just arresting some poor little nobody bookseller and that’s the end of it. Well, maybe you’re not. You know what you’re really doing? You’re arresting a dead author and his book - you’re arresting a book, something a man had to say. You’re arresting and fingerprinting a freedom, one of our democratic freedoms, and if you think that’s nothing, you wait and see what can happen….’

  It was when he was driving along Wilshire Boulevard, halfway between the law office in Beverly Hills that he had just left forever and his three-room apartment in Brentwood, that the complete realization of what had happened to him struck Mike Barrett with its fullest impact.

  After all the years of struggle, he was liberated.

  He was one of the emancipated ones. He had made it.

  From the corner of his eye, he could see the carton on the seat next to him. An hour ago he had filled it with the personal papers and effects that had accumulated on the firm’s walnut desk, the desk which had been his desk as an employee, for two years. The contents of the carton, in a way, represented the corpus of one frustrating, unfulfilled, second-rate legal career spanning a decade of his thirty-six years. The carton itself, the act of its removal, symbolized a victory that (on the blackest of the sleepless and self-hating nights) he had nearly given up hope of ever achieving.

  It wanted a celebration, a triumphal parade, an arch, at least a garland. Well, they were all present in his head and his heart. But still, some outer celebration of independence won and success attained was required. Firmly holding the wheel of the car with one hand, he undid the knot of his tie with his free hand, and yanked the tie off. Next the shirt collar. He unbuttoned it and spread it open. Tieless at high noon of a working day. Lese-majeste in the kingdom of the American Bar Association, unless you are majeste himself. Then the Latin phrase came to him. Rex non potest peccare. The king can do no wrong.

  God, what a lovely day. The sun, beautiful. The City of the Angels, beautiful. The people in the streets, his subjects, beautiful. Osborn Enterprises, Inc., beautiful. Faye Osborn, beautiful. All friends, beaut - No, maybe not all - not Abe Zelkin. Abe, beautiful, yes their friendship, yes, that too, except that it might not exist
a few hours from now, and he felt guilty, and a blemish suddenly marred the face of joy.

  He became aware of Westwood passing outside his top-down Pontiac convertible, and there were people, the sidewalks were crowded with people, and they were not his subjects applauding

  him on this great day. They were Abe Zelkin admonishing him for selling out.

  Honest Abe. Who the hell needs a conscience for a nag when he has a friend like Honest Abe?

  Yet, curiously, and in truth, it had been Abe Zelkin who had planted the seed that had borne this day, the undoing of Zelkin and Barrett, the doing of Osborn and Barrett. His mind sought the beginnings, bit by bit revived them, to give him his brief before he pleaded his case to Zelkin at lunch.

  Where had it begun? Harvard University? No. That had been bis friendship with Phil Sanford, when they had roomed together. No, not Harvard, but sometime later, in New York City. Not at that big factory of a law firm he had started with, because he had not liked that firm, had still been interested in defending human rights, not property rights, in retrospect immaturely idealistic, a stupid legal hick with a cowlick for a brain. It was that next place, that hothouse for the flower children of the law, the Good Government Institute on Park Avenue, where your salary consisted of elbow patches for your threadbare coats and quotations from Cardozo and Holmes on the high purpose of the law. The Good Government Institute, a foundation supported by twenty big-business corporations as a sop to their own bad consciences, where every case was derived from the overflow of the American Civil Liberties Union and where every client was the ever-present underdog. Six years of that, of living off peanuts because you felt that you were upending a few evils and many wrongs, deluded into thinking that they were the real enemies, until you learned that they were only prop windmills to keep you busy putting on a public-relations show for the Institute’s founders. Six years to learn the identities of the real enemies, to learn that your work was a fraud, that the do-gooding was a fake. Six years to learn the truth of how you’d been manipulated by the power people. When he and Abe Zelkin had learned, they had both got out.

  They had quit within a month of each other. Barrett had been the first to quit. His disillusionment with the Institute had become complete due to his mother’s death. He had obtained some hints of evidence that the newly marketed drug which had been administered to keep his mother alive had actually hastened her death. And, since he could scent like a pointer, he had soon learned of other untimely deaths from aplastic anemia, a side effect induced by this same drug. Shocked, Barrett had built up his sketchy outline of a legal case, found an eligible complainant, and finally presented his memorandum to the managing director of the Institute. The memorandum was an indictment of one of America’s most renowned pharmaceutical companies. Barrett requested funds for a thorough investigation, and urged, if the findings substantiated his suspicions, a legal prosecution of the drug company or a hearing before the federal Food and Drug Administration. He was positive

  that he would be encouraged to go ahead.

  Eventually, the managing director of the Institute had summoned Barrett to a private meeting. The director spoke, and Barrett listened, stunned. Barrett’s request to proceed with an investigation, to be followed by a lawsuit or a hearing, had been turned down by the governing board. His evidence had been regarded as too flimsy, and, besides - oh, besides, it just wasn’t the kind of clear-cut case in which the Institute wished to become involved. Barrett’s disbelief and bewilderment lasted only forty-eight hours. At the end of that time, after discreet inquiries, he had learned the truth. One of the Institute’s chief backers and major contributors was the very pharmaceutical company that Barrett had attempted to indict.

  The following day, Mike Barrett had resigned from the staff of the Good Government Institute.

  Abe Zelkin, after a similar disappointment, had resigned a short time after Barrett.

  And then each of them had had to make his choice. How well Barrett remembered. Ze.kin had made his choice first: He had moved to California, been admitted to the bar, and taken a post with the Los Angeles office of the American Civil Liberties Union.

  But Barrett had been made too cynical by the realities to emulate Zelkin’s choice. So he made his own choice. If you can’t fight them, join them. He had joined the world of power, of big business, of big government. If he was to remain a do-gooder, he would concentrate on doing good for one person, himself. The name of the grownups’ game was - money. He would be a grownup, too. It was goodbye to all salaries of eight thousand a year and bonuses of to-thine-own-self-be-true. It was hello to a new life of eighteen thousand a year and a new goal, which was: to become, by whatever means - by osmosis, by training, by association - one of Them, one of the powerful ones.

  The new life began with a position as a minor associate of a huge law firm on Madison Avenue - a beehive of forty attorneys - that specialized in corporate law. It had been a dreary two years. The work had been technical, grinding, monotonous. He had rarely had an opportunity to see a client and he had not once seen a courtroom, an arena he had so much enjoyed in his Institute days. He had been expected to employ his spare time participating in New York civic and cultural affairs, as prescribed by the firm’s elders. Opportunities for meaningful financial advancement had been few. Since he had been unhappy, restless and moody, his limited social life had been unhappy. There had been two love affairs, one with an attractive brunette divorcee, the other with a bright redheaded fashion model, and, while both had been physically satisfying, they had not satisfied him otherwise. Because he had been bored with himself, he had become bored with others.

  His situation was becoming clearer. He had tried to go to the

  other side -to stop fighting them, to join them -and become one of them. Oh, they welcomed every Faust with open arms, enlisted each with glowing promises, let each and every one eat cake instead of bread - and then assigned each to hard labor in the dungeon of corporate law, mergers, taxation; and then they threw away the key. Yes, it was clearer. You could serve the powerful, but not easily join them - because there wasn’t enough room at the top, because somebody had to serve them, and because their magic really never rubbed off. Or so it seemed to Barrett, in his worst despair, at the time.

  A drastic change was wanted, and one day the possibility of a change was offered. In one of his monthly letters, Abe Zelkin had written of the many big-paying positions open for able and experienced attorneys in Los Angeles. Zelkin himself had been offered several, and resisted them, although admittedly one or two had been magnificent and even glamorous. From this the lure of California had grown in Barrett’s mind, and, shortly after, he had made his decision and made the change.

  He had passed the California bar examination, and a few months later he had found himself installed in a small but beautifully decorated office as one of fourteen attorneys working for the successful business-management firm of Thayer and Turner on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. All of the clients were either celebrated or wealthy, or both, and the proximity to success had once more given Barrett hope that he might strike it rich. Yet, after almost two years - hard, demanding years in his office, in the firm’s law library, in courtrooms, and in the offices of affluent clients - during which he had gradually specialized in tax law, Barrett had slowly begun to come to the conclusion that he was not one of those fated to make it big.

  His assets were many, and he could be coolly objective about them. He wasn’t classically handsome, true, but he had a rugged, weatherbeaten face. Part Polish, part Irish-Welsh, he had a craggy face marked only by scowl lines, the faint remnants of contracting brows and puckering eyes that grew out of skepticism and disappointment (like those of a quick, slightly aging light-heavyweight boxer who was beginning to be hit more often and was still in the semi-windups). He possessed a shag of matted black hair, restless, roving eyes, a short, straight nose, hollow cheeks, square jaw. He was just below six feet in height, with supple, sloping shoulders, a sinewy swimmer
’s body. His outer demeanor was loose, casual, ambling, slouching, careless, but, like every man, he knew that he owned another man inside, and this one was alert, tense, crouching, a sprinter waiting for the gun. Only there was no gun.

  At work, Barrett was serious, dedicated, quiet, steady. On his own time he could be personable (when not moody), since he had a fair sense of the ridiculous and a strong strain of sardonic humor, along with an accurate instinct for perceiving how other people felt

  and an understanding of why they behaved as they did. He was an easy and arresting talker when he cared, which was no longer often. He was well read beyond Sir William Blackstone. He had meant to major in English literature, but he had also wanted to be practical, and law offered a broader horizon. Also, he possessed two unique qualities marvelously useful in the practice of law. The first quality was that of an almost freakish memory. Like his more illustrious predecessors, Rabbi Elijah of Lithuania, who had memorized the entire contents of twenty-five hundred scholarly volumes, including the Talmud and the Bible, and like Cardinal Mezzofanti, nineteenth-century curator of the Vatican Library, who had learned 186 languages and seventy-two dialects, Barrett’s eye was a camera obscura, forever capturing the sacred and the profane, the momentous and the trivial, and imprinting these on his brain, there stored for instant reference and recall. He could, on demand, recite most of the Code of Hammurabi, the Dred Scott decision, Shakespeare’s will, and Sir John Strange’s epitaph (‘Here lies an honest lawyer and that is Strange’). The second quality was that of a questing, trapping mind, one that enjoyed mysteries, riddles, games, all the unsolved phenomena of Charles Fort. He knew that he was suited for the profession of law, and he was stimulated by its promise of fresh challenges. Next to law, literature was merely a self-indulgence, a defrosting of the past.

  Yet, though the surface assets were there, the hidden defects, or certain lacks, were there also, no question, no doubt about it, especially when you thought about it at three in the morning. He had skill in his work, but he lacked financial and social aggressiveness. While creative, he was not sufficiently self-promoting to claim credit where credit was due. He was too thoughtful and intelligent, perhaps too self-deprecating, to define himself or his role publicly. He was neither extrovert nor introvert, but ambivert, at once intrepid and outgoing, uncertain and withdrawn. When he had fallen from the family tree, he guessed, his ego had been flawed in the accident.