Mom Meets Her Maker

by James Yaffe

  She paused to let this sink in. Then, just as amiably, she went on, “It’s the perfect solution, gentlemen. There won’t be any trial. No outburst of anti-Semitism. No black eyes. No public scandals, real or so-called. Nothing to discourage outside business interests from locating in Mesa Grande. And best of all, Dr. Madison, the spiritual health of our community will be as safe as it’s ever been.”

  Ann beamed around the table. Nobody beamed back at her.

  At last Arthur T. Hatfield got to his feet. He wasn’t very tall, but somehow he gave the impression of towering over everybody. “All right, Mrs. Swenson,” he said, his raspy voice quiet and controlled. “Let me tell you what happens now. When your client goes on trial, the district attorney will demand the full penalty of the law—as you probably know, this state has just reinstated the death penalty—and every responsible person and institution in Mesa Grande will join the district attorney in this demand. Incidentally, you may be sure that will include The Republican-American. That’s right, the full force and influence of my paper will be devoted to getting this vicious killer convicted and sent to the gas chamber.”

  Hatfield gave a nod at the rest of them, turned, and marched out of the room without another word.

  The other two, though not quite so briskly and positively, got up, mumbled their goodbyes, and straggled after Hatfield.

  Ann and I sat there for awhile. The big cut glass chandelier was catching the light and smearing it over the surface of the table. There was nothing for us to say.

  * * *

  It was a little after three, just time for us to grab a cup of coffee before our four o’clock appointment. We went to the Richelieu Coffee Shop, and while I toyed with a Danish, Ann told me about the second Big Bad Wolf.

  We were on our way, she explained, to the Unitarian Church. Its pastor, Gene Morgan, had called her a few minutes after Hatfield and asked if she would be willing to meet with him for some further discussion of the matter they had discussed earlier. Ann told him that she hadn’t changed her mind, she still had no intention of withdrawing from Roger Meyer’s defense and turning him over to the ACLU.

  “I do understand that,” Morgan had said, sounding nervous. “But the fact is, Mr. Kincaid is still in town—Victor Kincaid, the lawyer. Well, he’d very much like to talk to you himself. He thinks he can find an argument that might persuade you to reconsider your position.”

  “In other words,” Ann said to me, “the great man figures he can bully this poor, small-town female shyster into knuckling under to him.”

  “But why are we meeting them at the church?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be better strategy if you made them come up to the office? To fight them on your home turf?”

  “I considered that,” Ann said. “But I decided there’s one thing I can do on their turf that I couldn’t do in my office.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I can make an indignant exit.”

  We finished our coffee and drove downtown again.

  The Unitarian Church is an old stone building in a middle-level residential neighborhood, halfway between Mesa Grande College and the downtown shopping center. Its color is a mellow, somewhat mildewed brown, clumps of ivy cling to its walls, and it has a small belltower. In fact, this building has been through a lot of pious hands. A hundred years ago, shortly after Mesa Grande was founded, the Baptists built it; fifty years ago it belonged to the Methodists; a few years before I came to town, the Unitarians took it over.

  On the front lawn was a signpost with the usual announcements that churches go in for, in dignified block letters, behind glass:

  UNITARIAN CHURCH:

  EUGENE GRANT MORGAN, PASTOR

  CHRISTMAS MORNING SERVICES

  PASTOR MORGAN WILL DISCUSS:

  “IS CHRISTMAS OBSOLETE IN A WORLD OF DIVERSITY?”

  We went through the tall oaken doors into a vestibule with a wooden bench against the wall. On the wall were framed photographs. I didn’t get a chance to examine them at leisure, but they seemed to show Morgan sitting at various tables gazing earnestly at celebrities; among these I recognized Senator Edward Kennedy, Shirley MacLaine, and Bishop Desmond Tutu.

  A door opened from the vestibule, and Francesca Fleming emerged. “Thanks for coming!” she bawled at us. “You’ll have to wait a minute or two, I’m afraid. Victor’s on the phone, it’s long distance to Washington, D.C. Actually I think it’s somebody on the Supreme Court. Sit down, make yourselves comfortable.”

  She motioned at the bench, and Ann and I sat down.

  Francesca stayed on her feet and went on talking. “Would you believe it, Christmas is on top of us once again! It seems like only a few days since we got over the last attack of it. You two doing anything special for Christmas Eve?”

  “I thought I might take a look at the tree-lighting ceremony,” Ann said.

  “Really? That sort of thing amuses you, does it? Our beloved mayor spouting platitudes and all the yokels drinking it in and feeling like the Wise Men at the manger!” She laughed, but a little nervously, I thought. “Well, I shouldn’t really be so snotty and superior. There are chinks in my armor too. I’ll be glued to my TV tonight, watching It’s a Wonderful Life. My yearly indulgence in slobbering sentimentality—”

  She couldn’t go on because Gene Morgan appeared at the door at that moment.

  “Good of you to come,” he said to Ann and me. “Mr. Kincaid is off the phone, he’d very much like to meet you.”

  Morgan ushered us into a small oak-lined room, with four or five armchairs in it. Sitting in one of them was a figure familiar to me from a hundred newspaper pictures and TV talk shows—the flaring nostrils, the deep burning eyes, the shock of thick white hair sweeping back from his forehead and down his neck, like snow on the ski slopes. That hair, I remembered, had been just as white when he was in his thirties as it was now in his fifties.

  He jumped to his feet, strode up to us, and shook our hands briskly, applying a lot of pressure. Then he popped back into his chair, gesturing for the rest of us to do the same. Morgan was the last one down; it always took him awhile to fold his long loose body into a chair.

  “Okay, let’s get down to cases,” Kincaid said. “Ms.—Swanson, is it?”

  “Swenson. And it’s Mrs.”

  “Mrs. Swenson, fine. I’ll remember it from now on. Mrs. Swenson, the minister here and Ms. Fleming tell me a very strange thing. They tell me you turned them down flat when they offered to get me to defend your client on this murder charge. Frankly, I couldn’t believe them. I figured there must be some failure in communication. So as long as I have to be here in Mesa Grande today anyway—on an entirely different matter—I figured the thing to do was talk to you face to face. I’ve got—” He looked at his watch. “—half an hour or thereabouts before I have to get back to the hotel and start dressing for dinner. It’s a vital meeting with some of the people I came out here to do business with. So that should give us plenty of time to clear up this whole misunderstanding.”

  He came to a stop, but he kept those intense eyes fixed hard on Ann’s face. She managed to look right back at him without a blink. “No failure of communication, Mr. Kincaid. Mr. Morgan and Miss Fleming understood me perfectly.”

  Kincaid gave a low warm chuckle. “By God, that’s what I was afraid of! I did a little research on you, before I came here. Talked to a lot of people who know you, either personally or by reputation. They all told me the same thing. She’s a feisty lady, they said. She’s got a mind of her own. And a strong will to match. And by God, they turned out to be right, didn’t they?”

  Ann lowered her eyes, her modest demure act. “It’s nice of them to say so.”

  “Okay, you’ve proved your point,” Kincaid said. “You’re not some kind of wilting flower. You’re somebody. You have to be reckoned with. Well, I respect that. Believe me I do. I’m going to try and talk you out of your decision—I don’t believe in playing games, I’m laying my cards right on the table. I’m going to give
you one powerful unanswerable reason why you should change your mind.

  “Before I get to that, though, there’s one thing we ought to establish from the start. It would be sheer madness if you and I didn’t cooperate on this. We’re on the same side, aren’t we? We’ve got the same values. We hate the same people. These goddamned religious bigots, all that hellfire and brimstone crap, with people killing calves, and being dead and coming to life again, and feeling guilty because they slept with harlots, and God knows what else—playing on the superstitions of poor ignorant slobs—”

  “I’m sorry, Victor, I just can’t go along with you there,” Morgan broke in. “I feel no impulse whatever to make fun of those people. Their religious orientation may not be mine—Christianity is above all the religion of reason, it’s a distortion of the whole idea to reduce it to emotionalism—but their religious feelings are just as genuine in their own way as yours or mine.”

  Kincaid laughed and lifted his hands. “Peace, Gene, peace. That’s a beautiful ideal. Tolerance even for the intolerant. We can all learn from you, can’t we?”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Francesca. “If I thought I had anything in common with those morons, I’d shoot myself. Such beautiful sincere Christian feelings! So they all bow down to a con man, a crook—”

  “Be that as it may,” Kincaid was turning smoothly back to Ann, “I’m confident you’re going to see the validity of my argument, Mrs. Swenson. Since you’re obviously a rational person, and a lawyer who puts her client’s interests above her own ego—”

  “How do you know I’m that?” Ann said, smiling gently.

  “Come again?”

  “You don’t know me, you’ve never set eyes on me before. Who says I put my client’s interests above my own ego? Who says I’m a rational person? I might be a monster of egotism and irrationality. The fact is, you said all those things to me because you thought I’d be susceptible to flattery. And you know what, Mr. Kincaid? I’m not.”

  Ann sat back, her smile as gentle as ever. With her Vassar education and her Harvard law degree, nobody in town could give her lessons on how to be ladylike while kicking her opponent in the balls.

  Kincaid, I could see, was still reeling from the shock. He tried his chuckle again, only it didn’t come out quite as smoothly as before.

  Francesca pushed in, making an effort to turn it all into a hilarious joke. “What did I tell you, Victor? You Easterners always underestimate us out here. You think we’re a lot of yokels, with no sophistication, no knowledge of the world. You think everybody west of the Hudson prefers Coca Cola to Chardonnay and dirty pictures to Cezanne—”

  She babbled on awhile, but her effort wasn’t having much effect. Kincaid wasn’t laughing; his face was gray, he looked as if somebody had slapped him.

  Finally Francesca ran out of steam, gave a couple of little coughs, and became silent.

  Ann spoke up again. “Now why don’t we get back to the subject of this meeting, Mr. Kincaid. What’s this one unanswerable reason you’re going to give me?”

  I could see Kincaid pulling himself together, putting on his smooth confident manner again. “First I’ll tell you what it isn’t, Mrs. Swenson. It isn’t that I’m a better lawyer than you. I’m sure you could handle this defense just as effectively as I could, and I know you’ll make a terrific impression on the jury. The reason also isn’t that you haven’t got the manpower or the resources to do a good job. From what I hear, your investigative staff is worth ten of the district attorney’s.” He gave a nod in my direction.

  I kept a perfect deadpan. I’m pretty good at that.

  He turned back to Ann, his fist pressed into the palm of his other hand. A gesture I was sure he used a lot in court. “The real question is, will that be enough? And the answer is, it won’t. The forces of religious bigotry have the upper hand in this town. They’re bound and determined to railroad this kid into the gas chamber. You don’t stand a chance against them, no matter how well you perform in court.”

  “If that’s so,” Ann said, “I should think you’d be just as helpless as me to stop them.”

  “No. For one reason. It isn’t anything I have any particular right to be proud of, it’s really a kind of historical accident—but it’s a fact, and you can’t get around it. I’m a public figure. I’m a celebrity. What I do makes news. If I’m handling this kid’s case, the establishment in this town won’t be able to sweep their dirt under the carpet, to screw him with nobody noticing, with nobody crying out against them. The media will pay attention once I announce I’m defending him. There’ll be a huge stink all over the country. Everybody will know what Mesa Grande is up to. Now that’s my reason, and I don’t think you can find an answer to it.”

  Ann lowered her head, and shaded her eyes with her hand. I recognized the gesture; she was thinking hard.

  Finally she lifted her head and gave a nod. “You’re right. Roger will have a better chance if there’s a lot of publicity. It might even be enough to get him off.”

  Kincaid grinned broadly and sat back in his chair. “Well, that’s it then.”

  Ann went on, “The only question is, would you want to get him off?”

  Kincaid stiffened a little. Then he said slowly, “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Why should you want to take over this case, Mr. Kincaid? What do you stand to gain by it? An obscure college kid, accused of killing a tenth-rate evangelist in a town that’s in the middle of nowhere. Why should you even bother?”

  “Because this isn’t just an obscure college kid. He’s a symbol. Of everybody who was ever persecuted by religious bigotry.”

  “Exactly. If you took over this case, you wouldn’t be defending a boy. You’d be defending a symbol. And pardon me if I’m mistaken, but I think you wouldn’t be shy about making the most out of that symbolism. Plenty of fireworks, angry speeches, interviews to the press, laughing at the judge’s threats to hold you for contempt, insults hurled at the jury and the town—the whole three-ring circus that you’ve staged a hundred times already. And what happens to Roger? In the end he gets convicted, while the world cries out in horror. It’s Sacco and Vanzetti all over again.”

  “Oh come on, Mrs. Swenson,” Kincaid said. “You’re overlooking some important differences. Among others, Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent.”

  “And Roger Meyer isn’t?”

  “Well, now—” Kincaid spread his hands before him. “—I haven’t had a chance to study the police records yet, but I’ve read the newspaper reports rather carefully. Once the fingerprint and shoeprint evidence is in, it’s going to be an open-and-shut case.”

  “And you’re willing to defend him even though you think he’s guilty?”

  “Of course I am. Every accused person is entitled to the best possible defense, regardless of guilt or innocence. That’s a fundamental principle. Don’t they teach that in the law schools any more? Besides, our defense will be based on the contention that, in a deeper sense, the boy isn’t guilty at all. He was provoked by the bigotry of the whole town, the political establishment, the Fascist-controlled newspaper.”

  “You expect to get an acquittal with a line like that?”

  “An acquittal?” Kincaid’s laugh was hearty. “You’re living in a dream world, young woman! There isn’t one chance in a million of getting an acquittal in this case. Our strategy has to be to keep making objections, come out with outrageous arguments, get the judge mad enough so he’ll say things that’ll give us grounds for a mistrial.”

  “And what if that doesn’t work?”

  “First of all, it will work. I’ve always been able to make it work. Second of all, if it doesn’t work, so what? The kid’s guilty, for God’s sake. He killed the guy. The worst that can happen is, one little hotheaded nobody rots in jail for awhile. He’s a lot less important than the opportunity to make people aware of what a corrupt system we’re living under.”

  Ann sat for a moment, then she quietly rose to her feet. I picked up my
cue: I rose to my feet too.

  “Good afternoon,” Ann said.

  “Hey!” Kincaid jumped up and started towards her. “You can’t walk out on me!”

  “I seem to be doing it,” Ann said, and she kept on walking, without turning around to look at him.

  “I’ll be flying out of here first thing in the morning!” Kincaid yelled after her. “But I can be back in a week, I expect you to change your mind by then!”

  Ann was out of the room, and I was right behind her.

  She was right, I was thinking. The exit couldn’t have been improved on. And she never could’ve managed it if we’d been in her own office.

  * * *

  At six o’clock sharp, Mom and I met in front of Rashomon’s Japanese Steak House. We went inside, and the waiter showed us to a table.

  “So what’s this?” Mom said. “We’re eating in the kitchen?”

  I explained to her that that’s how it was done in a Japanese steak house: there’s a grill right in front of your place, and your waiter is also a chef who prepares your meat and vegetables for you while you watch.

  “Maybe it’s not such a bad idea,” Mom said. “At least you can see if his hands are dirty and he sticks them into your food. Most of the restaurants I eat at, I’d rather not know what goes on in the kitchen.”

  We ordered our dinner from the waiter. The menu, I noticed, was specially decorated for Christmas, with little drawings of Christmas trees and Santa Claus faces. And Christmas music was being piped through the walls, instead of the Oriental music this place usually went in for.

  We couldn’t settle down to talking about the case until our waiter had performed his act, which he did with great flair and showmanship, flinging pieces of chicken and shrimp high in the air and tossing noodles from fork to fork like a circus juggler. Mom watched with a pleased smile on her face, and when he was finished she applauded.

  She tasted what was put before her and gave a nod of approval. “Delicious,” she said. “A little more salt, it would be perfect. So tell me everything that you did since yesterday.”