(1969) The Seven Minutes

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(1969) The Seven Minutes Page 69

by Irving Wallace


  ‘Cassie McGraw,’ he said.

  She did not acknowledge her name or his presence.

  ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’

  Without waiting for her answer, Bainbridge placed the box of candy on the table, threw his light raincoat across the back of the chair, and sat across from her.

  ‘I am Thomas Bainbridge,’ he said. ‘You don’t remember my name, do you?’

  She was interested in the yellow ribbon on the gift wrap of the candy box. She tried to touch it. He took up the box and offered it to her. She patted the bow, but did not accept the box.

  ‘It is for you,’ he said. ‘Would you like me to open it?’

  She smiled sweetly.

  He tore off the ribbon and the wrapping, and opened the box, and held it before her. ‘Will you have one?’

  She looked down at the candies, but made no move to choose one.

  ‘What will it be?’ he said. ‘Would you like a soft one?’

  She nodded.

  He found a chocolate with a cream center, and he placed it in her hand. She brough t her hand to her mouth, then put the candy in her mouth and chewed it absently as she continued to smile at him.

  Now, he told himself, now.

  ‘Cassie,’ he said, ‘I am here on a special errand, a mission, one-might say, for a man you once knew and loved, and who loved you and has not ceased loving you to this day. I’m here on behalf of J J Jadway.’

  He waited for her response to the name, but she did not appear to have heard him. She was fascinated by his gold tie clip. She chewed her candy and fixed her eyes on the glittering tie clip.

  ‘Cassie,’ he resumed urgently, ‘I know that newspapers are sometimes read to you, and that occasionally you watch and hear the news on television. I’m sure you’ve been informed of that trial in Los Angeles over Jadway’s book - that book he wrote, you must remember, The Seven Minutes. Well, Jadway - I’m sure you know that he is alive -‘

  But then he was not sure, and he waited for some recognition of the fact from her. There was none, but her gaze had finally gone from the tie clip to his face, and he thought perhaps she might be ready to listen.

  ‘You remember how you stayed behind in Paris, and did what he told you to do,’ he was saying, ‘and how he came back to get you at Cherbourg, and you both returned to New York together? You and he had arranged it. He was to be declared dead. But you and I -and Sean - we knew he was not dead. It was our secret. But now this Los Angeles attorney who saw you yesterday, he’s found out Jadway is alive, and he wants Jadway to stand as a witness at the trial. It was a terrible decision for Jadway to make. But he made it. He could not appear at that trial, Cassie. Because the Jadway you and I once knew, he is no more, and he saw no value in destroying the present in order to save something of the past. He had only one concern after making his decision, and it was for you. One day you might learn that the trial had been lost, and that he had not been there to defend his past and yours and all that both of you hadstood for. He wanted you to know that that past could not be revived -that a part of it would always live inside each of you, but it could not be made all of you, consuming all of the present. He wanted you to know, Cassie, and he wanted you to understand.’ Bainbridge paused. ‘I only want to tell you, for him, so that you do understand and can forgive Jadway.’

  She had swallowed the last of the candy, and now her lips moved.

  “Who is Jadway?’ she asked.

  He sat straight and unmoving, and then he sagged slightly. He thought, Now cracks a noble heart. He thought, Good night, sweet princess…

  Who is Jadway?

  His head went up and down. “That’s right, Cassie. Who is Jadway ? He is dead, isn’t he ? He died in Paris long ago. You are right, and he is right, to let the past stay buried.’

  She nodded blankly and smiled.

  Bainbridge rose and lifted his raincoat off the chair.

  ‘Goodbye, Cassie,’ he said gently.

  He could not be sure that she had heard him. Her wasted hand had already reach for the ribbon on the candy box.

  Quietly he turned away.

  When he came into the corridor again, he was grateful that Mr Holl iday was not to be seen. He walked to the reception desk, pulled out the long envelope, and gave it to the receptionist.

  ‘It is a check,’ he said. ‘Please apply it to Mrs Sullivan’s account for the balance of the year.’

  He went outside. The limousine was waiting, and the chauffeur had leaped from his seat to open the rear door.

  Then he noticed that another car door was opening - the passenger door of a taxicab parked immediately behind his limousine. A pretty young girl, dark bouffant hair and gray-green eyes, vivacious and alive and eager as Cassie had once been, had stepped down to the sidewalk and seemed to be hurrying toward him.

  A few years from the limousine, she intercepted him.

  ‘Senator Thomas Bainbridge,’ she said, with no question in her voice.

  Bewildered, he nodded. ‘Yes, I’m Senator Bainbridge.’

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you out here for the last fifteen minutes,’ she said. ‘My name is Margaret Russell. I flew in from Los Angeles to see you. It is about the censorship trial that is ending in Los Angeles this afternoon. No, Mike Barrett did not send me. It was Jerry Griffith who sent me.’

  ‘Jerry - ?’

  “The boy who testified that it was Jadway’s book that drove him to - to violate the girl, the girl who died yesterday. You know about that?’

  ‘Yes, of course I know.’

  ‘Weil, I’m here for Jerry, because you’re the only one left who can help him.’

  ‘Young lady, how can I possibly help him?’

  ‘By making J J Jadway come to Los Angeles today, this very day, to meet with Jerry, and then -‘

  ‘Young lady, I have no idea who you are. And I can see no possible reason for trying to persuade Mr Jadway -‘

  ‘If you’ll listen to reason, my reason - no only for Jerry’s sake, but for Cassie’s as well - Please, Senator, won’t you even listen?’

  He stared at her, and he saw the same face and dedication that Jadway must have seen in the Cassie of so long ago.

  ‘All right,’ he said gruffly, ‘you can ride with me to the airport. But, whatever you may have to say, I think I can promise you that you’re on a fool’s errand. Now get in. I have to catch a plane.’

  In Los Angeles, the trial had been temporarily adjourned and the lunch recess had just begun.

  On the sixth floor of the Hall of Justice, inside the District Attorney’s personal lounge adjacent to his office, the four of them had cheerfully gathered to enjoy a noonday meal that an expansive Luther Yerkeshad had catered by Scandia Restaurant.

  Yerkes had arrived early, before the recess and before the press and the spectators had emptied out of the courtroom. Now, sporting a new auburn hairpiece, blue-tinted glasses, a capacious light-blue sport jacket with medallion buttons, and navy summer slacks, Luther Yerkes squatted like a festive Buddha on the gray linen-covered sofa and devoted himself to the dish of Kalvfilet Oskar -veal cutlets with crab legs - set on the marble-topped coffee table in front of him. Reclining in armchairs on either side of Yerkes, their plates in their laps, were Harvey Underwood and Irwin Blair. Only

  Elmo Duncan was not seated. He had consumed but a small portion of the Kalvfilet Oskar and had then restlessly returned to his stapled notes lying atop the walnut radio console.

  Chewing steadily, Yerkes watched the District Attorney concentrating on his notes. ‘Elmo, you ought to finish eating -‘ Yerkes began.

  Duncan looked up from the notes. ‘Too much food slows me down,’ he said. ‘1 think we’ve got a big afternoon ahead.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got nothing to worry about,’ said Yerkes. ‘You’ve been magnificent. It’s in the bag.’

  Duncan sauntered to the center of the lounge. ‘It’s in the bag when the foreman says Guilty.’ Then he smiled. ‘But I think we’re in good shape. They’
ve about run out of witnesses. I’m sure Barrett will rest the defense’s case this afternoon. I’d better be ready for my summation to the jury.’ He tapped his notes. ‘I know you’ve already heard me rehearse this two or three times -‘

  ‘Four times,’ agreed Irwin Blair with a grin.

  Duncan ignored him. “There are a few more points I’d like to work in. Mind if I try them out on you?’

  ‘Love to hear them,’ said Yerkes, patting his mouth with his napkin. ‘Every syllable is pure gold to me. Speak on, Demosthenes.’

  ‘First, the part where I review Dr Trimble’s testimony on the relationship of pornography to antisocial conduct. I’d like to shore up this part by citing at least one other authority. Something like this.’ Duncan cleared his throat and automatically assumed an orator’s stance. ‘The findings of numerous other psychiatric specialists support the opinion of Dr Roger Trimble. Among the most respected of these is Dr Nicholas G. Frignito, head psychiatrist of the Philadelphia Municipal Court. It was Dr Frignito who told a congressional committee that fifty per cent of all juvenile delinquents have access to salacious literature or similar materials. It was Dr Frignito who told the committee, “Antisocial, delinquent, and criminal activity frequently results from sexual stimulation by pornography. This abnormal sexual stimulation creates such a demand for expression that gratification by vicarious means follows. Girls run away from their homes and become entangled in prostitution. Boys and young men… become sexually aggressive and generally incorrigible.’ In this very court, you have seen and heard a young man, a decent young man, who was transformed into a sexually aggressive and incorrigible animal by a book, by a book called The Seven Minutes.’ Duncan paused, and bis tone became informal. ‘Then I’ll go on with what you heard when I rehearsed it before, and I’ll dramatize what the book did to Jerry Griffith.’

  ‘Good,’ said Yerkes.

  ‘Also, I’d like to anticipate Barrett and cut the ground from under him before he begins prattling, as he’s sure to do, about the guaranties of the First Amendment, and how we’re trying to suppress freedom of speech. Like this.’ Duncan resumed his orator’s pose. ‘In our condemnation of The Seven Minutes, we are not seeking to curb those freedoms spelled out in the First Amendment. For I want to make it clear, this foul book does not fall within the protection of the First Amendment. The fact remains that in the majority opinion on behalf of the Supreme Court in the celebrated Samuel Roth case in 1957, Mr Justice Brennan firmly stated that the First Amendment does not guaranty freedom of speech to the purveyors of obscene material. “The protection given speech and press was fashioned to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people___All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance - unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion - have the full protection of the guaranties…. But - ”’

  Duncan paused dramatically, and his last word dangled over his listeners like a swaying figure in a cliff-hanger, and then he caught the word, rescued it, and went on.’ “But implicit in the history of the First Amendment,” stated Mr Justice Brennan, still giving the majority opinion of the Court, “is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance. This rejection for that reason is mirrored in the universal judgment that obscenity should be restrained, reflected in the international agreement of over fifty nations, in the obscenity laws of all of the… states, and in the twenty obscenity laws enacted by the Congress from 1842 to 1956…. We hold that obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press.”

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, during the days of this trial we have attempted to show you that this book, The Seven Minutes, is totally obscene, utterly without redeeming social importance, and therefore is outside the protection guarantied by the First Amendment to our Constitution. We trust that we have proved that this book deserves to be censored - indeed, to be banished from civilized society forever.’ He looked at the others. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Smackeroo, the kayo punch, the flattener,’ Blair chortled. ‘Count ten thousand over Barrett and he still won’t get up.’

  ‘It’s excellent,’ said Underwood.’

  Yerkes cupped a hand over his gold toothpick. ‘I’m more interested in the tag of your closing argument. You were going to make it meatier.’

  T have,’ said Duncan. He walked to the console, dropped his notes on it, and returned to the center of the lounge, rubbing his dry hands together. ‘You ready ? Here goes.’ He drew himself up and began to address the unseen jurors. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it is the State’s belief that this book was manufactured by an author with the leer of the professional pornographer and commercialist. To support this contention, we have laid bare the

  cynical and sick mind, the sadistic mind, of this pornographer and of all other depraved ghouls like him. We have escorted you on a journey through a subterranean world where dwells, as Senator Smoot once said of the author of Ulysses, “a man with a diseased mind and soul so black that he would even obscure the darkness of hell.” This man is the pornographer whose sole vocation is to survive, even become rich, even derive pleasure, by degrading love, by extolling sin, by infecting the innocent with lust - and who, with every filthy word, continues to rape the Muse. This is the mentality that would pervert the young, mocking rhe warning of Jesus Christ that “if anyone hurts the conscience of one of these little ones that believe in me, he had better have been drowned in the depths of the sea, with a millstone hung about his neck.” This is the pornographer who, if indulged, we have been told by the most respected authorities, will turn our society into a world that is “even more coarse, brutal, anxious, indifferent, deindividualized, hedonistic.”

  ‘We know, for a fact, from the testimony of our illustrious witness from France, Christian Leroux, and our honorable witness from the Vatican, Father Sarfatti, that J J Jadway was just such a pornographer, was an admitted pornographer who set out to turn our society into a world both coarse and brutal. That he was one of the first victims of his own disreputable work is not our concern here today. What is our concern is that the obscenity that Jadway created not be let loose to seek more victims. We know, to our sorrow, that this book has only recently claimed two new victims, turning Jerry Griffith into a sex criminal against his will, destroying an innocent girl, Sheri Moore. How many more victims will you allow this monster of obscenity, this vile book, this book by J J Jadway, to claim? I implore you to save your children, your homes, your society, your very world, your world and ours, by shackling this monster while you can.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, unto your hands I commend the doing of justice in this case, in the knowledge that by your so doing, by your performing this act of justice, you will sleep all the better, because the world will sleep more safely for your verdict. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.’

  Yerkes jumped to his feet, and Underwood and Blair followed him, each of them applauding vigorously.

  Duncan, still flushed, offered a sheepish smile. Then, meeting their eyes, he said, ‘I mean it, you know. I mean every word… Well, any suggestions?’

  ‘Just one,’ said Yerkes. ‘I think we’re ready for our dessert.’

  Elsewhere on the sixth floor of the Hall of Justice, within the private quarters of the conference room that the defense had used frequently for the two-hour noon recess, the five of them sat slumped around the table in various attitudes of despondency. It was supposed to be lunch, but to Mike Barrett it was a wake.

  Gloomily Barrett, his own sandwich untouched on the plate before him, contemplated first Zelkin and Kimura, then Sanford and Fremont, who were munching their sandwiches and sipping the last of their tepid coffee or flat soft drinks.

  Zelkin pushed aside his plate. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this isn’t exactly the most optimistic victory rally I’ve ever attended.’

  ‘What’s to cheer about?’ asked Sanfor
d.

  Zelkin brought the black portable cassette tape recorder nearer to him. ‘There’s the closing argument Mike dictated in the wee hours this morning. I think it’s a dilly.’ He addressed his partner. ‘Mind if I pick it up where we left off? It might give us a shot in the arm.’

  ‘What good’s a shot in the arm,’ said Barrett, ‘when the patient’s already expired ?’

  ‘Let’s listen anyway,’ persisted Zelkin. ‘Maybe we’ll get some ideas.’

  He punched the play key, and immediately the tape began unwinding, and Barrett’s recorded summation came metallically through the miniature speaker.

  The procedure of the defense in this case has been guided by the wisdom of the most eminent legal minds of our time,’ announced Barrett’s voice from the tape. ‘It was Supreme Court Justice Douglas who wrote, “The idea of using censors to bar thoughts of sex is dangerous. A person without sex thoughts is abnormal. Sex thoughts may induce sex practices that make for better marital relations. Sex thoughts that make love attractive certainly should not be outlawed. If the illicit is included, that should make no constitutional difference. For education concerning the illicit may well stimulate people to seek their experiences in wedlock rather than out of it.”

  ‘So spoke a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Not to have sex thoughts is abnormal. To have them is normal. To use laws of obscenity to bar thoughts of sex is dangerous. To ban a work of art because it encourages thinking about sex is menacing to the health of our society. That has been the contention of the defense during the days of this trial.

  ‘Nor did Justice Douglas alone define our case. In 1957, as a consequence of the celebrated Roth case, another Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Brennan, told us the following: “Sex and obscenity are not synonymous. Obscene material is material which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest. The portrayal of sex - in art, literature, and scientific works, it not itself sufficient reason to deny material the constitutional protection of freedom of speech and press. Sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life, has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages; it is one of the vital problems of human interest and public concern.” ’

 

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