Evidence on murder and attempted murder was heard first. Anzug’s initial instinct had been to exclude all testimony on spousal rape, but Sister Angie’s threat to try her case in the newspapers and make a mockery of his trial presented him with a dilemma: He could not try a man for a crime that did not legally exist yet could not deny that the woman had been violently, sexually assaulted, brutalized far outside any acceptable definition of matrimony. Happily, Hilda had shown him the way out.
The defendant’s lawyer was a shifty veteran public defender named Albie Goodman, known to many Hall of Justice denizens, but not to Judge Anzug. Judges have their reputations and rankings, and Anzug, unlike Goodman, was at the top, never assigned to the kind of divorce, bunko, hustle, traffic trials where Goodman made his living. In the five miles of Hall of Justice corridors, never once had their paths crossed. Goodman was as surprised to find himself at the center of a national murder trial as Anzug was to find him in his courtroom. Along with District Attorney Pitts, the judge summoned the defense attorney to his chambers early the first morning to inform them of part of what he (and Hilda) had decided.
“After we empanel, we will hear the murder and attempted murder charges. When that phase is completed, we will hear the plea for spousal rape brought by the plaintiff. I do not expect the second phase to last long, but I’ve decided it’s better to hear what the plaintiff has to say inside the courtroom than outside. Any questions?” Pitts could not move the judge to change his mind. Goodman said nothing. He’d waited for something like this all his legal life.
Empaneling took a full day. Pitts wanted women, and Goodman men, and that it ended up six to six was no surprise. The murder phase lasted three days, and arguments could not have been simpler: For the state it was premeditated murder. The man lay in wait for his prey, fell on them, murdered the Rev. Mull and attempted to murder Sister Angie l’Amoureux, who miraculously survived. For the defense it was justifiable homicide. Gil l’Amoureux, in an understandable fit of passion, killed the man who had stolen his wife. Goodman put to the jury the question he had rehearsed in front of the mirror in his office, posing as he rehearsed, preparing for the newspapers:
“Which one of us, confronting our wife’s ravisher, would do any less?”
Blessed with a weekend for research and Sunday newspapers that titillated the public with a preview of what was coming, Goodman was fully prepared for the next phase of the trial. Sitting beside the accused, who was clothed, shaven and combed to look better than he ever had or would, he counseled his client to sit quietly, hands in his lap, with an expressionless face glued on the witnesses—not on his wife. Above all, he ordered, “do not smirk.” The jurors, mesmerized by the gruesome acts and injuries described by police, doctors and nurses, never let their eyes stray far from the defendant as they listened to the witnesses.
When Angie, pretty, petite, fragile, dressed entirely in white, took the stand, Gil began to fidget, nervous hands starting to tap the table. There were gasps and groans in the courtroom as Angie described each kick and punch. She had never lost consciousness, remembered every minute of every horrible hour. She described him carrying her limp and bloody into the bedroom. “My Calvary,” she said, invoking the image of Jesus. “This man tried to destroy my body and my soul. He sought to torture and kill me. I prayed to die.” She turned to the jury. “Look at him sitting there content with himself.” Then softly: “Use your imagination.”
The defense called no witnesses. After Angie stepped down, Goodman took a book from the table in front of him and walked to the jury box. “There is no such crime as spousal rape,” he said, flatly. “This trial should be over, but since the judge is allowing testimony on this business, I have brought this book to show you.” He held it up “Do you know this book? Of course you do. It is The Book of Common Prayer, one of the foundations of our society, of our religion, of our law, called the Common Law.”
He turned to show the book to the judge and audience. Taking his time, commanding the stage as he hoped to be doing many times after this, he thumbed the book, coming to his page. “Our wedding vows come from the Book of Common Prayer, do you know that? Let me read from them in case you’ve forgotten.” By now, some in the audience knew what was coming, and murmuring was heard. “The woman’s vow is familiar to us all,” he said, “and I will read the last words of it to you. Yes, here it is. The bride promises at the altar—and I quote—‘to love, cherish and obey my husband till death us do part.’”
Murmuring broke into shouting, and the judge gaveled for silence.
“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the word ‘obey’ is in the vows, and I have circled it here in red. And that is why there is no such crime as spousal rape. It simply does not exist—anywhere, in any law book, in any jurisdiction, in any land. It is a complete fiction and a waste of our time here in court. The fact of the matter is this: it is the woman’s duty to obey her husband.”
At this, dozens of women sprang to their feet, shouting, gesturing, refusing to be silenced by Anzug’s vigorous banging and repeated warnings that he would clear the courtroom. The judge had suspected something like this from Goodman and berated himself for not warning him in advance, as Hilda had suggested. He hated courtroom theatrics. With order finally restored, he glared his message at the public defender.
Ignoring the judge, Goodman continued: “Is it the prosecution’s position that legions of women with chronic ‘headaches’ can now come traipsing through this courtroom accusing their husbands of rape for the simple assertion of their conjugal rights?”
Outrage, sheer provocation, beyond the pale, violation of every rule of decency and courtroom decorum. Half the audience, mainly women, was on its feet while Anzug pounded away. What was he to do: clear the courtroom of women? Legal suicide, Hilda would have said. Meanwhile, Goodman returned to his table for another book, this one more familiar, the Bible.
“Leviticus,” he shouted over the din, “20:10. ‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.’” His shrill voice rose over everything. “The defense charges that the wrong person is on trial in this courtroom.” Swinging around to point at Angie, he shouted: “There is the person who belongs in the dock.”
Pandemonium, this time bringing the judge to his feet. Through it all, Sister Angie sat quietly watching, hands in her lap, her stitched, scarred face never changing expression. The din subsided, she shook her head at her lawyer and quietly asked the judge: “May I respond to the defense attorney’s outrageous accusation? I will be brief.” Since they were arguing the points of a crime that did not exist, how could he refuse? Sighing, he nodded.
Back on the stand, stiff, leaning forward, long white dress covering her shoes, Angie let her eyes sweep the courtroom and rest a moment on Gil and his attorney. Her face showed no expression. When she turned to face the jury she was as composed as in any pulpit. She was fully prepared. The courtroom was deathly quiet.
“Counselor quotes from the wedding vows, which speak of the women’s duty to ‘love, cherish and obey’ her husband. Why didn’t counselor read the rest of the vows?” Her voice was rising. “Why didn’t he read of the husband’s duty to ‘love, comfort, honor and be faithful’ to his wife?” She was on the edge of the seat now. “But that would not help his argument would it? Counselor quotes from Leviticus, but I go directly to the words of Jesus to rebut him, Matthew 19:9: ‘Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, causes her to commit adultery.’” Around the courtroom women were coming to their feet, first a few, then whole rows, then the men began to stand as well.
“Yes!” Angie went on, loudly now—“causes her to commit adultery; those are the very words of Jesus Christ.” She pointed directly at Gil. “That man abandoned me, alone and penniless, while he ran off with other women. What was I to do?”
Wild cheering as Angie stepped down, and again Anzug had to use his
gavel. Order restored, his face flushed, his patience run out, he wearily turned to instruct the jury that its time had come to retire and consider the evidence against the defendant on charges of murder and attempted murder. They were not to consider the charge of spousal rape against the defendant because there was no such crime on the books—any of the books.
Booing broke out, and the judge had to ruthlessly gavel again for silence.
“However,” he began, speaking slowly, intoning each word, his eyes on the rows of newspaper reporters, “just because such a crime is not on the books does not mean that it should not be. The law must constantly grow and evolve if it is to stay in touch with the people. But that is not the job of this court or any court. It is the job of the legislatures. It is the opinion of this court that the elected lawmakers of this state and this nation should move quickly to address what this trial has shown to be a most serious lacuna in our laws.”
The boos had turned to cheers, and this time Anzug was slower to pick up his gavel. Hilda Anzug, watching from the audience, smiled.
At sentencing, Gil l’Amoureux got twelve to fifteen years for aggravated assault and voluntary manslaughter. He left the courtroom shaking his fist and vowing revenge. What Angie lost in court, she won in the courtroom of public opinion, which soon made her, next to Mrs. Roosevelt, the most celebrated woman in America, a heroine to women of every age. Newspapers that dared editorialize on the subject of spousal rape defended her, demanding that legislatures get to work to change the laws. She stepped into Willie’s shoes at the temple and didn’t take them off until the day she died—a day, unfortunately, not as far off as the Soldiers might have liked.
Chapter 22
Maggie never used her married name again. She came home from France as Margaret Sinclair Mull, just as she’d left, her passport unchanged. She moved on, coming to regard her eighteen-month marriage to Arnaud and her time in France as belonging to another person. She had loved as well as any twenty-three-year old girl can love, but when she thought back it was more about war than marriage. There was repression there, and she would talk about it if asked, though hated the word “widow,” which she associated with mauve gowns and long strings of pearls. Years later, twice a widow though without mauve gowns and long strings of pearls, she would give her Paris interlude a luster and romance she’d once denied it.
Howard Hughes hired her shortly after Pearl Harbor, though she was certain he wouldn’t. The interview had gone badly. Hughes could not have been more irritating or sexist, though as the perfect man she figured he believed he had that right. She had been prickly in return. He was so damn cocksure of himself and adamant that women couldn’t fly. He didn’t even spare Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, whom he blamed for mistakes that led to her airplane’s disappearance over the Pacific. He referred to her speed records as “women’s records,” as if speed had a gender. Maggie mentioned the planes she’d flown in Europe, and Hughes’s only interest was in the new Dewoitines when she said they could compete with Messerschmitts.
“Neither one could maneuver with my D-2s,” he said.
“I’m not sure about that,” she said, and that was the end of the interview.
He called her back a few weeks later, early in the new year when the nation was struggling to get its footing. Any male who could fly a plane was disappearing fast into the army air force, and Hughes needed replacements. When she arrived at Hughes Aircraft, a stone’s throw from her old stables, he started pumping her about engines—priming engines, regulating fuel pumps, adjusting throttles and props, giving her a verbal diagnostic test. She longed for him to ask something about flying itself, but it was all about maintenance.
“I don’t have any female pilots at Hughes,” he said. “But I try to keep an open mind about things. Might be a need coming up. All my fliers start in maintenance. That suit you?”
She was annoyed but could hardly refuse. Men were being called up every day and she had no other offers. She was also intrigued by this cocky, clever, ambitious man whose name was in the news as much for his personal life as anything professional. He was called the richest man in the world and the most desirable, his name linked to one Hollywood actress or another. He was constantly being summoned to Washington to testify on defense contracts and always flew his own planes. He’d made a series of movies, some, like Hell’s Angels, mediocre, some, like The Front Page, prize-winners. He was tall, dark and handsome, with a wicked smile under a mustache he’d grown to cover up scars from various crashes. He had a little boy’s sense of humor. He was exciting. She understood his appeal to women. He appealed to her.
His sexism infuriated her. He insisted that women were too impulsive to be good pilots, too emotional, couldn’t keep their minds steady enough to grasp all the variables of flying. Earhart’s navigational mistakes would never have been made by a man. “How do you know that?” she demanded. “Nobody knows what happened to that plane. Anyway, the navigator was a man.”
He laughed when she said that. He dropped by the hangers from time to time to check on work on his planes, mainly the D-2 fighter he was developing for the army air force. Her supervisor apparently gave her good reports for Hughes invited her to a little maintenance get-together at his house in Hancock Park a few weeks later.
She’d been in maintenance more than a year when they rolled out the D-2 twin-engine prototype for him to take up one day. He waved to her across the hangar and invited her to come up with him. She was thrilled. By that time, she knew the plane inside and out, better than Hughes himself. She was ready to fly again.
They flew out over the Ballona Channel and banked southwest toward Catalina. Even on a routine cruise she could see he was a brilliant pilot, a man with true air instincts. Kilgore Street with its deep descent toward the cliffs was easy to spot over Playa del Rey, and she thought a moment about poor Billy Todd, who would have taken over his father’s dental practice by now. She expected Howard to invite her to take the controls, but he did not. The plane started shaking when they’d been in the air less than twenty minutes, barely half the way to the island, and they turned back with a stabilizer problem that needed fixing.
Reading her disappointment, he smiled his wicked smile. “Come see me in my office when we’re back.”
She was still in overalls. Hughes never wore overalls. Coffee was served and he explained how Lockheed had stolen the design for its twin boom P-38 from the D-2, which would prove to be the far better plane, match up better with the Jap Zeros. For the first time the conversation turned personal. He asked about her past, her time in Europe, what she had seen, whom she had seen. There was nothing improper about it; he asked nothing about her romantic life, and she offered nothing. She was struck by that. Most men are curious about a woman’s romantic past, want to know all the details, however intimate. Not Howard. It didn’t matter what she had done or with whom, but what she could do for him. She enjoyed the conversation until near the end. The offer was camouflaged but unmistakable: If she slept with him he might change his mind about letting her fly. He liked to get to know his pilots.
She’d bit her tongue and not reacted, not asked if he also slept with his male pilots to get to know them. But she was furious, and that night called Lizzie to talk about options, which came down to walking out, giving in, or putting up with ground maintenance forever. None of that was her way. Besides, there was a war on. She might be the only female pilot at Hughes Aircraft, one temporarily grounded, but she’d heard of others scattered around the country. Lizzie gave her the idea of getting in touch with the others, organizing them into a collective female unit, but they had no idea how to do it. The army air force was complaining to Congress of a serious shortage of pilots. Why shouldn’t female pilots be able to serve?
Hughes laughed in her face when she mentioned it.
♦ ♦ ♦
She met Lizzie for lunch at the Brown Derby on Wilshire, a favori
te place for the Hollywood crowd. Maggie had to call her at the Times to make the date. They had different schedules and seldom ran into each other at their Westwood apartment.
“It’s like you’ve moved out,” Maggie said.
“I suppose I have.”
“Asa?”
“He’s been pestering me since his overseas orders came. Looks like the Pacific. I suppose we’ll get married before he leaves.”
“Seldom have I heard such enthusiasm.”
“All these guys disappearing—apparently more marriages being performed than ever before. How can I turn him down?”
“Easy—just say no.”
“Did you say no to Arnaud?”
“We were in love. Are you?”
“I’m not the family romantic.”
“Ah. So suppose you get pregnant and he gets killed.”
“Did you get pregnant?”
“No, I did not. But I probably know more about that sort of thing.”
Lizzie reddened. Maggie was right but didn’t need to say it. “Anyway, we’re not here to discuss me, are we?”
“In a way, yes we are.” Maggie motioned to the waitress. “I told you something about my idea on the phone.”
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