(1969) The Seven Minutes

by Irving Wallace

  Observing Jerry’s frantic exit, Barrett remained rooted to his spot at the bar. One thing was evident. Jerry’s friend George knew Darlene, or at least knew what she looked like. Jerry, on the other hand, plainly had not known Sheri’s friend Darlene before. But what had he said to her, and what had she said to him, that had so infuriated him, finally crushed him and made him flee? That instant, Barrett decided that he must find out. A confrontation with Jerry was not only in order but essential.

  Barrett pushed himself from the bar, but before taking three steps he was brought to a standstill by a noisy bevy of teenage girls who had just entered the club. Trapped in their midst, he found it difficult to escape. And now one little Kewpie-doll blonde in sweat shirt and shorts had discovered him.

  She reached up to bring him closer. ‘Girls,’ she shrieked, ‘look what I found - the genuine thousand-year-old man, the missing link! Ain’t he the cutest ?’ She planted a kiss on Barrett’s chin, imploring him, ‘Dance with me, link, come on, let’s dance.’

  Her arms were wrapped tightly around him and she shimmied in semblance of a dance.

  ‘Honey, I was just on my way to the men’s room,’ Barrett protested. ‘Give a guy a break.’

  She grinned up at him. ‘That’s more fun than girls ?’ She released him. ‘At your age, I guess it is.’

  Barrett broke away. By the time he had reached the sidewalk, breathless, he knew that he had lost five minutes. He looked up and down Melrose, but no one resembling Jerry Griffith was in sight. There were more youngsters in line, waiting to get inside the club. Barrett approached them. He explained to the ones at the head of the line that he was searching for someone who’d left the club a few minutes earlier. He tried to describe Jerry Griffith. He found he could not do so effectively. The only outstanding describable feature that Jerry had might well be his neatly combed hair. Even that brought no recognition.

  ‘Well, he came out of the club on the run,’ added Barrett. ‘Does that ring a bell?’

  ‘He was running?’ chirped a long-tressed girl. ‘Yeah, there was one kid who came out fast, ‘cause I remember saying, “Maybe the Chant scared him.” ‘ The others in line laughed, and then the girl said to Barrett, ‘I think he went thataway.’ She pointed west, and there was more laughter. Barrett thanked her and started up Melrose toward La Cienega Boulevard.

  He walked and walked, poking into open stores, crossing and recrossing the street, but nowhere was Jerry Griffith to be seen. After fifteen minutes, he was back where he had started.

  Disconsolately, Barrett acknowledged defeat. He headed into the darkened dirt parking area. Nearing his convertible, he realized that in his frustration and haste he had overlooked the most obvious lead to Jerry’s whereabouts. This parking lot. If Jerry had not left the neighborhood in a rush, his car would have still been parked here when Barrett had come out. He could have waited by the lot entrance until Jerry came by to get the car and drive home. By now he had probably long since taken his car and left.

  Yet, small hope, maybe the boy’s car was still here. Barrett tried to recall the make of the vehicle. He had seen it noted in his office file folder on the Griffith boy. It was a British automobile. Definitely. At once it came back to him. A recent-model white Rover sedan.

  He halted and glanced about. There was a gray Thunderbird, and there was an old dirty white Jaguar, and there was a recent-model white Rover sedan. His hope quickened. Probably dozens of newish white Rover sedans were out tonight in Los Angeles. Nevertheless, this might be Jerry’s own.

  Barrett moved toward the Rover. As he came up behind it, even in this poorly lit corner of the parking area, he could see that there was someone in the front seat. He circled the car cautiously, in case the person were two persons and they were making out.

  Arriving at the rolled-up window of the front door, he could see

  that it was one person. It was a young man, and he was slumped over the steering wheel, very still, as if in sleep. The hair, the side of the face - enough to tell him that it was Jerry Griffith.

  Barrett hesitated, then a terrible thought entered his head, and he hesitated no longer. He rapped on the glass. The figure draped over the wheel did not move.

  Hastily Barrett tried the front door. It opened, and as it opened, Jerry Griffith’s limp form slid off the wheel and began to fall sideways. Barrett caught him and with an effort shoved him upright. The boy was unconscious, his eyes closed, his face as ashen as a mask of death.

  ‘Jerry,’ Barrett whispered to him, ‘Jerry, can you hear me?’

  There was no answer.

  The inert form remained lifeless.

  Barrett bent into the car, trying to determine whether the boy was breathing and whether any pulse beat could be detected in the wrist. Doing so, he realized that the open door had lighted the car’s interior, and for the first time he could see what lay on the front seat beside Jerry. There was an empty pill container. On the car floor, an empty soda bottle, the chaser.

  Jerry Griffith had attempted suicide.

  Had he succeeded ?

  Still not sure, Barrett pressed his ear against Jerry’s chest and listened for a heartbeat. He could hear none over the sounds of Dylan’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ seeping out of the rear of The Underground Railroad. Barrett concentrated on the pulse again. At first his fingers felt nothing, but then there was a tiny jump, and he couldn’t be certain whether it was from the boy’s pulse or was due to his own fingers’ nerve ends.

  Instantly Barrett’s brain received and sorted the alternatives for his next act. He could summon the Fire Department’s emergency squad or he could try to resuscitate the boy himself by getting him on his feet and inducing him to vomit or he could speed him to a private doctor.

  Each possibility provided a risk. The Fire Department offered the most expeditious help - and the guarantee of a second scandal visited upon the boy, a second death without dying, presuming he was still alive. An attempt to resuscitate the boy by himself was the fastest kind of first aid, but it was also the most amateurish and inadequate. A private doctor was the slowest but the safest course -and immediately Barrett’s mind was made up, for he had thought of a physician who was near and would help. Doc Quigley, his own physician ever since he had made his home in Los Angeles, had his residence on North Arden Drive, in Beverly Hills, just a quick, short drive away. He had called Doc Quigley only last week and set up a dinner date, because he had wanted to ask the Doc some questions about the pathology of rape. Quigley had made the d ate, busy though he was, working long evenings at home on a professional paper he was soon to deliver. More likely than not, he would be at home. And, no matter what happened, he would be discreet.

  Quickly Barrett went through the inert boy’s jacket pockets, until at last he located the ignition key. With haste he forced Jerry’s body away from the wheel toward the passenger side of the front seat. Once the body lay slumped against the opposite door, Barrett settled himself behind the wheel and started the Rover.

  Only when he had swung the car out of the dirt parking area, and onto Melrose, did Barrett wonder whether he was bringing a corpse to Dr Quigley - or a resurrected star witness to District Attorney Duncan.

  Forty minutes had passed since Barrett and Dr Quigley had carried the body of Jerry Griffith into the physician’s house on North Arden Drive. Barrett had explained how he had found Jerry, and the physician had made no comment.

  After leaving the boy on the daybed in the physician’s study, Barrett had handed the doctor the empty prescription bottle.

  Dr Quigley had glanced at it. ‘Nembutals,’ he’d murmured. He had taken up his black bag from beside his desk and pulled a chair up beside the boy.

  ‘Is he alive, Doc?’ Barrett had asked.

  Dr Quigley had not looked up. “We’ll see. You can wait in the living room, Mike.’

  That had been forty minutes ago, and Barrett, tensely seated on the sofa, leafing through the same magazine he had unsuccessfully been trying to read all t
his time, reasoned that the length of time was a good sign. Had Jerry been dead on arrival, Barrett felt, he would have been so informed before now. The length of time meant that the doctor was working to save his patient.

  Barrett had again tried to concentrate on the magazine, when he heard Dr Quigley’s cough. He stood up as the physician, still in his blue bathrobe, came tiredly into the room, removing his spectacles and rubbing his eyes.

  ‘He’s all right, Mike,’ Dr Quigley announced.

  ‘Thank God - and you.’

  ‘He took enough sleeping tablets to kill an army. You must have caught him just as he lost consciousness. Lucky you brought him right over. Another five minutes and he’d have been gone. I administered some strong antidotes. He responded and he’s cleaned out now.’

  ‘Is he conscious?’

  ‘Fully. But weak, very weak. However, hospitalization won’t be necessary. Especially considering his general situation. I think he can be taken home in about an hour. A sound night’s sleep, and some rest tomorrow, and he’ll be fully recovered. These youngsters have remarkable recuperative powers.’ Dr Quigley felt inside his

  robe pocket and extracted a prescription slip. ‘Here’s a number you’re to call. He says that the only person he wants to know about this is a cousin named - it’s on here - Maggie Russell.’ Dr Quigley gave the slip to Barrett, adding, ‘That’s her telephone number, the private number of a phone she has in her bedroom. Jerry says keep trying it until you get her. He says she’ll come by for him.’

  ‘I’ll take care of it.’

  ‘Very well. I’d better get back to my patient.’ He hesitated. ‘Frank Griffith owes you a lot, Mike. You should have his gratitude.’

  ‘He’ll never know,’ said Barrett. ‘Anyway, my only interest is in the boy.’

  ‘Have it your way.’ The physician coughed into the palm of his hand. ‘There’s an extension phone in the diningToom.’

  Dr Quigley left. Barrett went into the dining room, flipped on the overhead light, took the telephone off the marble-topped sideboard and brought it to the dining table. He placed the presciption slip beside the telephone, considered it, and then dialed Maggie Russell’s private number.

  The telephone rang and rang, without answer. He would give it a few more seconds, he decided, and then try again in a little while. Sooner or later she would return to her room. As he listened to the continuing ring, it suddenly ceased and a breathless feminine voice came on.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Miss Russell?’

  “This is she.’

  ‘Mike Barrett. Sorry to disturb you, but -‘

  T thought I told you I didn’t want to hear from you again.’

  ‘Hold on. I’m not calling for myself. I’m calling for Jerry.’

  ‘Jerry?’

  ‘Your cousin. I’m with him now. I -‘

  ‘I don’t understand. You can’t be. He’s not allowed to leave the house.’

  ‘He left it early this evening, no matter what his orders were. Without wasting words, let me tell you what happened. But first you’d better let me know, can anyone else listen in on this line ?’

  ‘No - no, it’s my own.’ Her voice had become anxious. ‘What happened? Is anything wrong?’

  ‘Jerry’s fine now, but it was nip and tuck for a while. Let me make it brief. Sometime after seven, I had reason to drop in on a teenage hangout on Melrose Avenue …’ He quickly described Jerry’s arrival at The Underground Railroad, what he had witnessed of Jerry’s confrontations with George Perkins and Darlene Nelson, and his discovery of Jerry’s unconscious body in the Rover. Then he gave her Dr Quigley’s good news. ‘Jerry wanted someone to get in touch with you. He didn’t want anyone else to know.’

  ‘No one must know,’ she said urgently. ‘But he is all right ? The

  doctor said that, didn’t he?’

  ‘Absolutely. By the time you get here, Jerry will be able to go home with you.’

  ‘I’ll be right over.’ ,

  ‘Let me give you the address.’

  He gave it to her, and then she hung up.

  Returning the telephone to the sideboard, Barrett wondered whether he should stay until Maggie Russell arrived. There was no reason to remain, except to see her once more and to ingratiate himself with her. He didn’t like that. He also didn’t wish to embarrass her with his presence. Despite what he had done for the Griffiths tonight, he was still the enemy.

  This brought his mind back to the impending trial. There was so much to do, and there was so little time left. Faye Osborn would not be at his apartment until eleven o’clock. There remained a stretch of several useful hours during which he could research the legal precedents in previous censorship trials.

  He would tell Dr Quigley that Maggie Russell would be along shortly, and let him know that he could be reached at the office should he be needed further, and then, after summoning a taxi to take him back to his own car, he would be on his way.

  In the night quiet of his office, Mike Barrett had devoted himself not to a study of legal precedents in earlier censorship trials but to a folder that contained both popular and scholarly writings on censorship that had appeared in American and British magazines during the last dozen years. These were largely articles by authors, critics, publishers, scholars, clipped by Leo Kimura, to give Zelkin and himself an up-to-date background on censorship arguments in the literary field.

  He had read nine or ten of these articles and was skimming one written by Maurice Girodias for the London publication Encounter, when a single paragraph arrested his attention. Girodias had been saying that most human beings were born from an act of unromantic lust, and that the species were still being propagated through lust, and that most human beings were as preoccupied with sex as they were with food and sleep; yet, even though sex was basic to each person’s life, its practice had been complicated and its image distorted by conventional hypocrisy. As a matter of fact, Girodias went on, every man and every woman were involved daily in acts of rape. It was this paragraph that Barrett reread carefully.

  ‘Rape,’ Girodias had written, ‘is held to be the most uncivilised form of assault on anyone’s privacy. And yet the colourless family man, the sedate and faithful husband whose only memorable feminine conquest was performed through marriage, usually rapes dozens of girls a day. The possession, of course, is only visual; a quick appreciative glance is all there is to that micro-rape, which is always furtive and often even unconscious. But the action is there

  and it does yield a tiny dose of sexual satisfaction…. As to the faithful wife of the same man, does she resort to fashion, jewels, perfumes in order to seduce her own husband ? Not at all: she uses all those classical artifacts because she wants to offer herself to the whole race of males, to seduce and be raped by all - visually, of course. The vestigial impulses of prehistoric man are still at work.’

  How true, Barrett thought.

  His own feelings testified to it. He possessed one woman all but legally. He had Faye. Yet yesterday the inner barbarian hiding beneath the civilized veneer had forced him to commit rape at least twice - first the rape of a young girl in a bikini emerging from the Beverly Hills Hotel swimming pool, later the rape of an attractive young woman named Maggie Russell whom he had followed into the bar of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. The only difference between Jerry Griffith and himself, between Jerry and most other men, was that Jerry had forcibly violated another with his penis, while Barrett and most men violated women with their eyes. Jerry’s act was criminal, and his own was harmless, true enough. But both kinds of rape were inspired by the same savage and natural drive. The difference was merely that Jerry had been too ill to control his impulse, whereas the vast majority of men were rational enough to channel this impulse in one socially acceptable way or another. The point was, no man should hold himself as being better than his fellow men in his attitude toward sex, or believe he was wholly without blame.

  How many visual rapes did Elmo Duncan, protector
of public morals, commit every day of every week ?

  Shaking his head, Barrett resumed his reading. Having finished the article, he was about to pick up the next one, when the telephone at his elbow rang out. He snatched at the receiver.

  The voice he heard belonged to Maggie Russell.

  T had expected you to be at Dr Quigley’s when I got there,’ she said. ‘He told me you went on to your office.’

  ‘Is everything taken care of?’

  ‘Jerry’s fine now. I got him into the house unnoticed.He’s asleep. I… I wondered if I might see you for just a moment?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Barrett with genuine enthusiasm. ‘But there’s no need for you to come all the way out to this stuffy place. As a matter of fact, I was going back to my apartment in a little while, and I thought I’d stop off in Westwood for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Think you could join me?’

  ‘Anywhere you say. I won’t take much of your time.’

  ‘Let me see. I know -just off Westwood Boulevard there’s a little coffee shop, sandwich place called Ell’s. It’s -‘

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘Let’s say fifteen minutes.’

  Exactly sixteen minutes later, Mike Barrett drove into the filling station next to Ell’s, left instructions for a tank of gas and a quart of

  oil if required, and hastened to the restaurant.

  Entering, he saw that she had arrived before him. She was seated at a table in the rear, thoughtfully smoking, unaware of his entrance.

  He moved past the counter and the stools toward her, keeping his eyes on her. Her shining dark hair, seductive wide-set gray-green eyes, full lower lip were as attractive as he had remembered. All that he could make out of her attire above the table top was the diaphanous white silk blouse she was wearing, which clung provocatively to her pointed breasts, and the Outline of the lace half-bra beneath was visible.

  Another rape, he thought, and could not help but smile.

  But then, nearing the table, he could see how serious she was, and, remembering what had occurred earlier in the evening, and how it must have affected her, he became serious, too. Coming here, he had not speculated at length on her motive for wishing to meet him, although he had guessed that motive. And seconds after he had greeted her, taken the chair across from her, and ordered melted-cheese sandwiches and coffee for each of them, she confirmed his guess.