The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss

by Louis Auchincloss

  “I hate to think that.”

  “Then think this,” Forrest said grimly. “In any other period of American history I could have looked forward with some confidence to ending my career as one of those nine men. Not now. And yet some deluded folk think I’ve had a successful life. Why, I’ve been the unluckiest man of my era!”

  It was rare that our talks struck so emotional a note. Gridley Forrest was not often given to dramatics. Even when the day came that he offered me a front-row seat to the greatest of dramas, you’d never have guessed it from his tone.

  It was on a Saturday at noon, after our usual round of golf, over our usual whiskey. As I think back, perhaps he was a bit graver than usual. I had been talking about my score, a record for me, when he suddenly interrupted.

  “I assume, because you are involved in patent law, that you have read the decision in McFarley against Baker Thermos?”

  “Oh, yes. A surprisingly good opinion. For Judge Freer.”

  “You agreed with it?”

  “I did. Although the question was certainly a close one. It must have been a happy day for the thermos company.”

  “Very happy. An adverse decision would have bankrupted them.”

  “I didn’t know old Freer was so expert in patent law. Did you assign him to the case?”

  Forrest’s stare now became almost hypnotizing. “I did,” he replied in a rather gravelly tone. “And I even gave him some assistance in the opinion.”

  What was I supposed to say to that?

  “That surprises you?” he continued.

  “Until you have explained it.”

  “Preston Saunders is president of Baker Thermos. He paid me—shall we call it a retainer?—to assure the decision. I gave Freer twenty percent of it.”

  What do you feel when you are face to face with history? A curious numbness. I saw a picture with Forrest in it, and with myself in it. I was a person quite apart from myself. I heard a voice droning somewhere behind me. The voice seemed to be telling me that this was the greatest judicial crime in the history of the United States. But it wasn’t real, or if it was real, it was something flat and ordinary. There was not, it seemed to me, so much difference between fact and fiction, or even, for that matter, between crime and innocence. There was simply the judge and I, and our golf game, and now his sale of justice. His simple, matter-of-fact sale of justice.

  “You are speechless. It isn’t surprising. You see a desperate man before you, Mario. Everything I have is tied up in real estate. I had to do what I did to avoid foreclosure on the key parcel. I saved myself in the nick of time.” As I simply continued to stare at his impassive countenance, he went on in a brisker tone: “You wonder why I am telling you. Because the case is on appeal. To my court, of course. And Saunders couldn’t keep his mouth shut. What corporate executive can? He blabbed to one of his VPs. And now that VP has sent me word that if they lose the appeal, he will expose me. So there you are, Mario. If the decision in the district court is not affirmed, you will see me prosecuted, convicted, imprisoned and forever disgraced. My name will become a symbol of infamy in the history of American law.”

  How could a man take it that way? How could he sit there, surrounded by all the showiest trappings of an American success story, and so resolutely face his own annihilation? For a moment the little girl on her pony preparing to take a jump in the ring beneath us was blurred. Then I saw her again. She was on the other side of the jump. She had cleared it nicely. I recalled somebody’s theory that no moment of time is ever lost, that they are all recorded somewhere, in an infinite library of tapes. Surely this moment would endure as long as any.

  “You are still speechless. Do you think I am pulling your leg? Or do you think I have taken leave of my senses?”

  “No, no. I believe you. You couldn’t joke about such a thing.”

  “Good. Then, to the point. Will you help me? If not for my own sake, for the reputation of the bench?”

  I gazed at him in surprise. Then I nodded. “For your sake, Gridley.”

  His answering look betrayed nothing. He might or might not have been touched by my personal concern and affection. But I suspected that he took these things, like everything else, for granted. Which did not mean that he did not value them. “Very well. I accept your kindness. Indeed, I must. I have discussed the case with Judge Tobey. He is adamant for reversal. He considers himself an expert on patents. That leaves Judge Isaacson. I think he might be persuaded. But I shall need to show him a draft of my proposed opinion affirming the decision of the lower court. It must be very persuasive. It can be written only by you.”

  ***

  I went to work immediately to write a legal memorandum, or what really amounted to a brief, that Forrest could offer Judge Isaacson, presumably as his own work or that of his law clerk, to persuade him to sustain the opinion of the lower court. I knew that the argument would have to be short and to the point; it would have to be in the form of a note, or series of notes, that Forrest might have dictated to his secretary in order to set down on paper the ideas that had occurred to him in reading the briefs of opposing counsel. In preparing my paper I was resolved to use no assistants, neither a junior partner nor an associate nor even my secretary. I would not so much as ask the librarian to bring me a reporter: I was determined to get all the books for myself.

  “No, Mrs. Millis, I want to see if I know where everything in the library is,” I told that loyal but bewildered lady. “The trouble with us older partners is that we get too dependent on helping hands. And I’m going to work right here at this table, if you don’t mind.”

  “But can’t I get Miss Stairs to take down your notes, sir?”

  “And bother everyone in the library with my dictation? Certainly not. I shall write out my own notes like anyone else.”

  Some of the younger partners, alerted to the senior’s “mysterious research,” came in to offer to help me, and I had to try my darnedest not to betray my irritation.

  “We have really come to a pretty pass,” I could not help retorting testily to one of these, “when the presence of an older partner in the library, reading a Supreme Court opinion, is news that rings from one end of the office to the other!”

  What I was doing was attempting to encapsulate my crime, so that nobody else would be in the smallest degree contaminated. I take no great credit for this; it seems to me that it was only elementary decency. But I never believed that I was doing a thing that was morally wrong; indeed, I believed that it was morally right. Which does not mean that I was under any illusion as to how my conduct would appear against the canons of legal ethics. I knew that I was engaged in assisting a bought judge to persuade an innocent fellow judge to sustain a bought decision. I did not even try to persuade myself that it made any difference that the brief I was writing might have been submitted with perfect propriety by counsel for the litigant for whom I was indirectly working, or that I was not being paid for my efforts. I knew that, even had I been the innocent counsel of the bribing appellee, my clear duty on learning of the hanky-panky in the tribunal below would have been to alert the appellate court. Disbarment would be the inevitable and deserved result of my being caught.

  Yet I was actually exhilarated! I was strangely clear in my mind and heart that I was not only justified but praiseworthy in my act of judicial subornation. I say “strangely,” not because I have changed my opinion today, but because, in view of all the horror that ensued, it does seem curious that I should not have had more doubts. I think I may have felt some still unsettled debt to the great nation that had rescued my family from the sad poverty of its origin. I had believed in the American system, in hard work, in getting ahead, in a society that at least tried to be fair to the individual if that individual had only some respect for it. I had prospered in that society, and now there was something I could do to show my gratitude.

  A coverup, the listener will shriek. How could anyone feel that way about a coverup? But remember that the term has been give
n a particularly foul name by Watergate. Who knows how many of the heroes and inspiring events of our history do not owe some of their luster to coverups? Are we absolutely sure that secret tapes in the White House would not have told us some very disturbing things about Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln? And be frank now, you who hear this tape. Supposing—just supposing—it had been possible to cover up the Watergate break-in and spare the world a knowledge that has disillusioned millions with the very concept of democratic government. Would you not have done so?

  The basic moral question is whether or not he who covers up believes, with any basis of reason, that the criminal will not repeat his crime. I believed, certainly, that Forrest had taken only one bribe and that he would never take another. And I accepted—and still accept—the principle that the concealer of a crime must be condemned, legally and perhaps even morally (though the latter may seem illogical), if his attempt fails. His is a lonely decision. He has taken the law into his own hands. He must not complain if he is caught. He has elected to be his own judge and jury. He has sentenced himself.

  But I refuse to hang my head; that’s the point. Even today.

  Pussy, who always seemed indifferent to my enthusiasms, was extremely sensitive to my anxiety.

  “You’re worried about something,” she said, when I was having a double whiskey before dinner on the day that I had delivered my handwritten memorandum to Forrest. “Has it anything to do with Gridley Forrest?”

  I could not help staring at her as if she were a witch. “Now what on earth gave you that idea?”

  “I had lunch with Mathilde today.”

  “You did? I thought you never lunched with her.”

  “Well, she joined me at the club. She wanted to talk to me. She’s afraid that Gridley’s having some kind of a nervous breakdown. Very moody and can’t sleep at night. Drinks more than usual.” Here Pussy glanced at my dark glass. “She thought he might have told you something about it.”

  “When?”

  “In one of your golf games.”

  “We haven’t played in two months. Perhaps he’s worried about his work. It can be a heavy burden to be a judge.”

  “It would be for me, I’m sure. But for Gridley? I should have thought he was the perfect Solomon. Utterly cold and detached.”

  “Perhaps he’s worried about Mathilde’s bills. She lives very grandly for the wife of a federal judge.”

  “Well, that’s his fault. He should put her on a budget.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t his fault,” I retorted testily. “I was attempting to explain his anxiety.”

  Pussy considered this for a moment. “Yes. It would be hateful to be married to Mathilde if you couldn’t give her everything she wanted.”

  “You’ve never really liked Mathilde, have you?”

  “Oh, ‘liked,’” Pussy shrugged. “Does one really like or dislike childhood friends? It’s a special relationship.”

  It was not long after this that rumors began to circulate in the downtown bar that Judge Forrest was on the take. The first one that I heard was from one of my partners at lunch. It was Tom Tray, a younger man, very serious, a dedicated lawyer for whose rise in the firm I had been directly responsible.

  “I know you’re a friend of Judge Forrest’s,” he told me gravely. “That’s why I wanted to be sure you know what people are saying. No matter how unfounded it may be.”

  “They’re saying he sells his decisions?”

  “They are.”

  “How can people be so irresponsible?”

  But Tom did not even shake his head. “They say his wife’s a reckless spender. Isn’t it the oldest story in the world?”

  “But a circuit judge, Tom!”

  Tom gave me what I thought was a rather queer look. “I guess they’re not all angels.”

  A week later the story broke. Gridley Forrest was indicted for bribery. The news ran in mammoth headlines. In that less sophisticated era when, to quote the disillusioned Macbeth, we were “but young in deed,” the public outrage reached a pitch almost inconceivable today. We had not seen both a President and a Vice President resign from office under fire. But my personal dismay may be imagined when I read in the newspapers that the United States attorney had selected as the basis for his prosecution only two cases of Forrest’s alleged sale of decisions. And these, according to general rumor, were but the tip of the iceberg! Forrest had apparently been seeking money wherever he could find it. To shore up his collapsing little empire of stores and warehouses in Queens and Brooklyn he had been desperately bartering justice to the first comer, receiving every kind of shady middleman in his very chambers, talking unguardedly on a tapped telephone, even committing himself to signed memoranda!

  But my dismay was equaled only by my consternation on the morning when I faced the indicted judge himself seated before my desk. Gridley Forrest was actually asking me to represent him! He was as grave and impassive as if he were having a drink at the Greenvale Club after one of our golf games. None of the tenseness of which Pussy had spoken was visible now.

  “Of course you’re pleading guilty,” I managed to articulate.

  “Guilty? Certainly not. I deny the whole ridiculous business.”

  “But, Gridley! You know what I know!”

  “Never mind what you know or don’t know. It will be your job to see that the U.S. attorney proves his case. If he can. There is no end of hurdles that can be set up. Hearsay, privilege, malicious intent to defame a judge, even entrapment.”

  “You mean you’re really going to fight this?”

  “To the end!”

  For several moments I sought words in the angry red tumult of my mind. Then I gave up. “Not with me, Judge.”

  “You mean you decline to represent me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Oh, that gray metallic stare of his! It was the last time I ever saw it. Or him.

  “You’ll let down a friend in need? Take care, Fabbri. The friend in need may let you down.”

  I rose. “Good day, Judge.”

  ***

  Unlike my former friend, I did not fight my accusers. When the Bar Association, acting on the evidence introduced in the trial by Forrest’s attorney of my participation in the patent case, instituted disbarment proceedings against me, I was permitted to resign as an attorney in the state of New York upon admission of the charges. Although I was not technically disbarred, my disgrace was complete. I have been able to make only a small living since as a real estate broker. But for the sale of my art collection I should at times have suffered actual need.

  The hardest part of the whole business was my family. Pussy greeted my misfortune as an early Christian might have greeted the chance to detach a centurion from a Roman legion and lead him with her to the glory of martyrdom. Her nobility in disaster was almost unendurable. The only thing that kept me from leaving her was that she left me. She was so horrified when I told her that I felt no repentance that she moved for a time to her old mother’s. But when she came back, it was to accept me, brazen and unrepentant as I was. We managed to remain on civil terms until her death two years ago.

  Tom took the drastic step of changing his name. I believe that he did this to show that he was not afraid of incurring the odium of deserting a parent in trouble. It takes guts for a gentleman to look like a cad, but Tom had those guts. He detested my crime and deplored my intransigence; he saw no alternative but to cut himself off from me forever. I simply hope that he has not regretted it. If he has, he has shown no signs of it. He is a successful physician and has a large family that I have never seen. God bless him.

  Alma accepted me and my crime. It was happy for me that in marrying she was able to shed my name without a moral problem. Her children are almost cozy with me; they think I was a “victim of my time,” whatever that means. Alma has a comfortable theory that I was confused between an Italian Catholic upbringing and something she calls “the Protestant ethic.” Between them, anyway, I am considered virtual
ly without blame, a dear old wop grandpa who is not to be taken quite seriously.

  There is a young man today, however, who is writing a Ph.D. thesis for Columbia on the implications of the Forrest case. He has been to see me several times, and I have come to like him. He has a theory that Gridley Forrest was subconsciously trying to destroy the judicial system of the United States in revenge for not having been appointed a justice of the Supreme Court. He was delighted when I supplied him with the confirming evidence of Gridley’s hatred of FDR. I do not know if I believe in his theory, but it certainly gives a dignity to my saga which is preferable to Mathilde’s shopping bills.

  PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST BY ANOTHER

  1987

  THE REPUTATION of Eric Stair, who was little known at the time of his death in the Normandy invasion of 1944, has grown steadily in the last four decades, and the retrospective show this year at the Guggenheim has given him a sure place among the abstract expressionists, although that term was not used in his lifetime. Walking down the circular ramp past those large imperial bursts of color, those zigzagging triangles of angry red piercing areas of cerulean blue which seem to threaten, in retaliation, to encompass and smother the triangles, those green submarine regions occupied by polyp-like figures, those strangely luminous squares of inky black, I wondered that there could ever have been a time when Eric Stair had not struck me as a wonderful painter. And yet I could well remember myself as a fifteen-year-old schoolboy at St. Lawrence’s in 1934 staring with bewilderment at the daubs of the new history teacher from Toronto, who had turned his dormitory study into a studio. Nothing could have seemed stranger or more out of place on that New England campus than an abstract painter who was rumored not even to believe in God.

  My bewilderment, at any rate, had not lasted long; I had soon become an admirer of the man without whose example I might never have become a professional painter at all. Not that I have become an abstract expressionist. Far from it. What, I wonder, would Eric have thought of my portraits? Would he have simply raised those rounded shoulders and grinned his square-faced grin at the sight of all those presidents of clubs and corporations, those eminent doctors and judges who make up the portfolio of the man sometimes known as a “boardroom portraitist”? “Jamie Abercrombie,” I seem to hear him saying, “may have made it into the world of art, but he has certainly carted all his lares and penates along with him!”