(1969) The Seven Minutes

by Irving Wallace

  When he was done, he searched her porcine face for some sign of understanding.

  Suddenly she smiled broadly and bobbed her head.

  He knew then. She understood.

  Now the last step. ‘Mrs Vogler, you know what I’m after. I want your cooperation. I want you on the witness stand for the defense. I want nothing from you, at any time, but the truth about what you saw and heard first hand during your employment by the Griffiths. I want you in court not to seek revenge for yourself, but to help me seek justice by exposing the true facts. We’ll pay you for your time and information, of course. While not a fortune, certainly it will be as much as you could earn in three or four months of day work. Enough to get you a little closer to Topeka. What do you think? Will you help me?’

  ‘First, I better ask - will my appearing for you get me into any kind of trouble?’

  ‘Not if you confine yourself to the truth. No, Mrs Vogler, the worst I can see happening to you is that maybe Frank Griffith won’t ever hire you again.’

  She burst into gurgling laughter, and her cheeks andehins shook. That’s a good one, that is!’ She climbed to her feet, and her face was pink with excitement. ‘I like doing this, Mr Barrett. I’m sure on your side as a witness. I’d almost be ready to do it for nothing, except that I need the money so. I can’t wait to make my speech to the public about what that holier-than-thou Griffith has done to his son. That’ll be a great day for me.’

  ‘Excellent, Mrs Vogler. You’ll never regret this.’ He took her plump arm. ‘I’ll show you to the elevator. Meanwhile, as I told you, the trial is about to begin. So we’d better have a meeting, plan on conferring for an hour or two, either tomorrow or the day after. I’ll call you first to be sure you’re home. You will be home, Mrs Vogler?’

  ‘I’ll be out only once, Mr Barrett. I’m getting me a new hat for my first personal appearance in public. I’m taking me to Ohrbach’s store and getting me the sincerest hat that’s ever been made.’

  Immediately after Isabel Vogler’s departure, Mike Barrett hast-tened back to his apartment and the living-room telephone. He felt, like singing. For the first time in days, he had cause for optimism Now he was eager to transmit the news of Mrs Vogler’s enlistment to Abe Zelkin, whose own morale was sorely in need of a booster.

  He put through the call to the office, and when he asked urgently for Zelkin he could hear Donna’s astonishment,

  ‘Mr Barrett, where’s your memory?’ she said. ‘Did you forget? Mr Zelkin is over at the Hall of Justice - Department 101 of the Superior Court - Judge Nathaniel Upshaw’s courtroom. They’ve been making the selection of the jury out of the pool of veniremen. Mr Zelkin checked with the office during the last recess, and he said to be sure to tell you it’s going very smoothly. He thinks they’ll have a jury impaneled and sworn in by late tomorrow, and that means the trial will start Monday morning.’

  Barrett had forgotten, of course. He and Zelkin had spent a long session together debating the advantages of waiving a jury and letting their entire case ride on a hearing by and the decision of a judge. In the end, they had agreed that their chances were better if they argued their case before twelve dissimilar men and women rather than before a single individual, because this way an extra verdict was possible. From a judge there would be the possibility of only one of two verdicts, guilty or not guilty. From a jury of twelve citizens there was not only the possibility of those two verdicts, but an additional one, disagreement -a hung jury, which in a sense would be a victory for the defense.

  Attentive to Donna once more as she ticked off the telephone calls and mail and visitors of the morning, Barrett realized that his workload had increased nearly twofold. In these next few days he would have to fulfill his own duties and Abe Zelkin’s as well. Perhaps some of the work could be diverted to Kimura, but not much, since Kimura had enough to worry about already.

  Then Barrett heard Donna mention Kimura’s name. ‘He phoned to tell me to remind you that if you’re out of the office today, even for lunch, he wants to know where you’ll be so he can reach you if he has to.’

  ‘Is he on to something?’

  ‘Sounded like it. He didn’t say what.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be over pronto. I’ll have lunch in the office.’

  ‘One more thing, Mr Barrett. Your lady’friend called about fifteen minutes ago. Miss Osborn asked if you could phone her the moment you were free.’

  ‘All right. I’ll call her now. Then I’ll be in.’

  Hanging up, he wondered why Faye had telephoned him. He had intended to.call her to postpone their dinner date. With Zelkin occupied challenging potential jurors, with the trial looming immediately ahead, he’d have to burn midnight oil tonight, tomorrow night, and over the weekend.

  He dialed the Osborn residence, and it was Faye who answered the phone.

  ‘I knew you were busy, but I just wanted to hear your voice, Mike.’

  ‘My voice ? Are you auditioning me for something ?’

  ‘No, truly, darling, I just wanted to know if you sounded angry. I mean, about those things I said last night about that book.’

  ‘Everyone has a right to say anything they want about any book.’

  ‘This is special, and this is us. Maybe my timing was bad and I came on too strong. Especially when you’re so emotionally involved in the damn thing. I was afraid I’d upset you. But I made it up to you, didn’t I, darling?’

  ‘I wasn’t upset,’ he lied.

  ‘But I showed you I loved you, didn’t I ? You can see that how I feel about the book has nothing to do with how I feel about making love.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Perhaps tonight I can prove it again.’

  He remembered why he had been going to phone her.‘You’re sweet, Faye, but it’ll have to be a rain check, I’m afraid. Abe is tied up in court picking a jury, and I feel like I’ve been buried under a landslide. Paper work, interviews, phone calls. My libido’s going to be wholly diverted to Things Legal tonight and the next few nights. Will you forgive me? I’ll try to catch up with you after the weekend.’

  The other end of the line was silent. Then Faye spoke. ‘I was just trying to make up my mind whether you’re ducking me tonight because of your work or because you’re still peeved about my critical judgment of Jadway.’

  ‘Honey, I’ve forgotten our discussion. Believe me, it’s the work. I’m happy to say everything’s looking up. This morning we got ourselves a devastating witness, a real dilly, someone who may be of real help in blunting Duncan’s contention that the book alone was responsible for the Griffith boy’s act of violence.’

  ‘I’m pleased for you, Mike, but I don’t understand. What more can be said about why Jerry Griffith committed that rape ? He’s said it all himself. It was the book.’

  “That doesn’t necessarily make it true, Faye. Most men don’t fully understand the influences that drive them in one direction or another. They may think they know, but that’s merely surface causes. The real influences may be buried deep in the subconscious; Look, honey, I’m too busy for Freuding in depth right now. Suffice it to say that someone came out of the woodwork - the Griffiths’ own woodwork, mind you - with firsthand evidence that Frank Griffith is anything but a paragon of virtue at home. The old man may have unwittingly done more harm to Jerry than a dozen pornographic books. I know Griffith is a friend of your father’s, but I guarantee you that neither your father nor anyone else has the faintest idea what Frank Griffith is like in private.’

  ‘It sounds dreadful. Who would have such thoughts and have the nerve to tattle about it ? It could only be that Maggie Russell. Is she your turncoat witness? It must be. No one else lives full time in the house.’

  He was annoyed with her again. ‘What are you dragging Miss Russell into this for? Of course it’s not Maggie Russell. Other

  women have lived in the house before she did. Like for instance Isabel Vogler.’

  ‘The fat one ? I remember seeing her there a couple of years ago. Now, isn’t t
hat finky of her?’

  ‘Anyone who, for a change, has some truths to tell isn’t a fink in my book. Believe me, our witnesses won’t be cornering the market on finkiness. Wait until you see the characters our upright Elmo Duncan parades before the public next week.’

  ‘Can you trust someone like that?’

  ‘You mean Mrs Vogler ? Why not ? As much as any witness. She knows she’ll be under oath. One lie and they’d slap her with perjury.’

  ‘Not lies, but…’

  ‘Exaggerations? Don’t worry, Faye, our District Attorney is as much a seeker of truth, when it benefits him, as I am. And as you are right now, for that matter. Why this sudden concern about my witness, Faye? Are you afraid the exposure of the real Frank Griffith will upset your father or rock the establishment?’

  ‘Don’t be disagreeable, Mike. That’s not it at all, and you know it. It’s you, the kind of nasty people you’re becoming more and more involved with over an unworthy piece of trash. There I go again, and I’m sorry, but I’m just worrying about you - and about us. I can’t stand seeing you, of all people, immersed in that muck and surrounded by those ratty dregs of humanity.’

  He contained his temper. ‘Faye, there’s nothing to contaminate me. But I do appreciate your concern.’

  “There you go. I could feel the freeze. Oh, darling, please, let’s stop this bickering. Why can’t it be like it used to be before that damn book came into our lives? Mike, I do want to see you tonight. I know we’ll both feel better after being together.’

  ‘Faye, I really can’t. I’ve got to get to the office now. I’ll try to call you later. Tomorrow for sure.’

  His growing irritation with Faye tagged along with him throughout his drive to the office. It amazed him how the appearance of a single object in their lives - in this instance a mere book - had so vividly laid bare the differences in their natures Until this happened, he had regarded Faye and himself as compatible and their relationship as harmonious. They had both paid lip service to the cliche that they were meant for each other. Recently, most definitely last night and this morning, he was less than certain.

  Driving, he continued to ruminate on the matter of Faye and himself. She loved him, or thought she did. More likely, she could love no man beyond her father, and after much trial and error, while experimenting among many men, she had settled upon Barrett as the one to whom she could offer affection (the boiling point of her passion never exceeded affection) and the one best qualified to join (as husband) the other necessities that decorated her life. As for Barrett, he loved her, or thought he did. More

  likely, since his past relationships with women had been shallow and unstable, he was capable of liking her more than he had liked other women and of loving those things Faye represented which were status, culture, wealth, and all the other crummy golden calves that he had genuflected before in his rise from rags toward riches.

  It was odd, he thought, how the Jadway book, to most at best only a bit of glimmering erotica, had become for him so powerful a searchlight aiding self-examination and self-revelation. Under its merciless glare no inner deception could hide truth. To Faye it must have exposed, for the first time, her inability to give love. Unable to face this truth, she had turned on the instrument of exposure and rejected it as defective and warped. For Barrett, it had exposed to him the ugly truth that in Faye he sought not love but success, and the uglier truth that his goals in life were empty and that by achieving them he would find nothing that could sustain a lifetime of remaining years. Unlike Faye, he had been able to face his truths, but he had not been able to act upon them.

  Damn that sonofabitching book, he thought, it can be destructive. At least, destructive of peace of mind. Unless a man has license to ignore some truths, and live some lies, he cannot have peace of mind. And most of all what Mike Barrett wanted this day was peace of mind.

  It was at least an hour after he had reached his office and settled behind his desk before he was finally absorbed enough in his work to exorcise the unsettling specters of Faye-love and self-hate.

  He was deep in a legal brief when Donna’s insistent buzzer brought him out of it and back into the workaday world of communication.

  The caller was Leo Kimura. The lack of precision in Kimura’s speech betrayed his unnatural excitement.

  ‘Good news, very good news, Mr Barrett,’ Kimura was saying. T found him, I tracked down Norman C. Quandt.’

  ‘Quandt?’ repeated Barrett, his head still stuffed with the legal brief he had been studying. Then he remembered. Quandt had been the mail-order publisher of hard-core pornography, the one who had originally acquired the rights to The Seven Minutes from Christian Leroux and had later resoldthem to Phil Sanford. After being tried and found guilty of mailing obscene matter, Quandt had escaped a jail sentence when the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the lower court. He had disappeared completely, until Kimura learned that he was now in the motion-picture business in Southern California. Their hope had been that Quandt might produce some valuable information about Jadway’s character and his writing of the novel. And now Quandt had been found.

  ‘Leo,’ said Barrett, ‘you mean you know where he is?’

  ‘I’ve just come from seeing him,’ said Kimura triumphantly. ‘I hurried over to the nearest gas station to call you. He operates an

  organization called the Arts and Sciences Cinema Company. Impressive?’

  Til say.’

  ‘Do not be fooled,’ Kimura went on. That grand euphemism disguises a factory that grinds out low-budget girlie -I should say nudie - films. Quandt’s name isn’t publicly associated with it. I just happened to find his name on the recorded deed for the building where the cinema company is located. He is, in fact, the company’s proprietor. I called on him, and I cannot say my reception was warm. When I began to state my business, Quandt was decidedly uncooperative. It was obvious he wanted as little publicity for or public knowledge of his business, and his own connection with it, as possible. He admitted quite candidly that, should we bring up his name in court, the District Attorney would have men watching his every move from that day on. He wanted nothing to do with our trial. Nevertheless I kept right on talking, and suddenly Quandt became more interested.’

  ‘What were you saying to him, Leo?’

  ‘I told him we did not intend to involve him in any way, neither through reference to him nor by asking him to appear in person. When Quandt realized that we did not want him for a witness, and that we had no intention of bandying his name about, he was at once more friendly. It turned out he hated that St Clair woman and the whole STDL, as well as Elmo Duncan and his office, and he was willing to assist anyone who was ready to take them on. He agreed to meet with you, Mr Barrett, but briefly and in complete secrecy. He kept protesting to me that he was conducting a legitimate operation, his nudie films were proper enough to be exhibited in two hundred public theaters located throughout the country, and yet he had to be wary because the law and the Grundys liked to persecute men like himself who had once gone to the Supreme Court to overcome his censors. Between us, I have a hunch he’s a fanatic about maintaining his secrecy for another reason. Those nudie films of his are legitimate, even if borderline, but I do not think they are what afford him his real profits. I have a hunch they camouflage another operation he may have going on behind have closed doors.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Like maybe stag films. I do not know. I said hunch.’

  ‘Savory our Mr Quandt ain’t,’ said Barrett.

  ‘Still, savior our Mr Quandt may be,’ said Kimura, who enjoyed these semantic games with Barrett. ‘Because he is ready to inform you of all that he knows about Leroux and about the Jadway book. I have no idea how useful his information will be. I only know he is one person you have wanted to see, and now you can see him.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Did I not tell you, Mr Barrett ? Now, right now. You must leave this instant if you want to catch him. After today he will b
e outside

  the country for five weeks. So it must be now. Mr Quandt is expecting you, and he is waiting.’

  Barrett shoved aside his work and took up a pencil and pad. ‘Okay, Leo, give me his address. If nothing else comes of it, at least I’ll have a chance to see where nudies are born.’

  The address of the Arts and Sciences Cinema Company proved to be a weatherbeaten two-story apartment building located on Vermont Avenue between Olympic and Pico Boulevards.

  Puzzled, Barrett stood beside the peeling ‘No Vacancy’ sign near the entrance and examined the stucco front. The name of the firm was nowhere in evidence, nor was there any clue to Quandt’s cinema-business headquarters. Barrett wondered whether he had taken the correct address from Kimura.

  He stepped back to find out whether the business could be located to one side of the building. To the right was a cottage that housed a dancing school, and to the left was a driveway that apparently led to a garage in the rear where the apartment building’s tenants kept their cars. On the far side of the driveway was a vacant store that had recently been a realtor’s office.

  Barrett decided that he had better telephone Kimura and check out the address once more, but then it occurred to him that one of the tenants in the building might know of the Arts and Sciences Cinema Company.

  Enteiing the central hall, he was confronted by a cardboard sign nailed to the railing of the stairway leading to the second floor. The cardboard sign had lettered on it Make Inquiries Here, with an arrow pointing to a plain door next to the stairs.

  He crossed to the door and rapped.

  A man’s voice called out,‘Come on in!’

  Barrett opened the door and found himself in a cubbyhole of an office, windowless and dark except for a small lamp that threw a beam upon a young man with a pallid face who was busily typing a letter, using the hunt-and-peck system, on an ancient manual typewriter. The table near the typewriter stand was covered with what appeared to be mail-order catalogues. The young man did not look up until he had finished the last line of the letter he was typing. As he withdrew the letter from the machine, he acknowledged his visitor with a display of serrated teeth.