Mark the Sparrow

by Clark Howard

  Whitman, sitting on the floor outside his cell, looked up from the book he was reading. “What’s your problem, Stiles?”

  “Well,” the muscle-bound black replied with a straight face, “see, there’s some motherfuckers around here who tryin’ to put me in the fuckin’ gas chamber.” The others in the corridor, listening to the put-on, laughed. “You got any advice for me, babe?” Stiles asked above the laughter.

  “Yeah, daddy,” Whitman replied. “Learn to hold your breath. For a long time.”

  Stiles broke up and joined the others laughing.

  Milo, the stickup man and cop-killer, did not take the article as lightly. “Hey, Whitman, who is this guy Cloud who wrote this bullshit?”

  “Why do you want to know?” Whitman asked.

  “I’m thinking about having some friends of mine lace him a little. The son of a bitch called me a cold-eyed, psychopathic killer.”

  “Well, let’s face it, Milo,” Whitman said almost absently, “that’s just about what you are.”

  “Why, you fucking pervert,” Milo growled, “I’ll tear your fucking balls off—” He pushed himself up from the floor and started for Whitman.

  “Don’t start anything, Milo,” warned the deputy guard patrolling the corridor outside the bars.

  “Fuck you!” Milo snarled, continuing toward Whitman.

  Whitman laid down his book and got quickly to his feet. From his shirt pocket he took an ordinary wooden pencil with its lead sharpened to a fine point. “Which eye do you want this in, Milo?” he asked tensely.

  Milo stopped and fell into a crouch like a cornered animal. The corridor guard blew his whistle to signal trouble on the Row. The control-room guard at the end of the corridor turned to a console and immediately began pressing buttons. All cell doors closed. Two backup guards hurried from a nearby dayroom with riot sticks. Within forty seconds, the elevator door opened and six more guards poured out and lined up at preassigned spots along the bars.

  “I’ll get you, Whitman,” Milo threatened. But he did not move.

  “You’ll lose an eye doing it,” Weldon Whitman warned.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” stormed another voice. Captain Dukes strode through the guards and signaled for the separating door to be opened. The barred door slid back to admit the big guard captain into the prisoners’ area. “Well, what have we here now?” he said with an open sneer. “A little disagreement of some kind? You both must be having your period at the same time.”

  “I’ll rip your balls off, Whitman,” the coiled cop-killer said. “I’ll get you good—”

  “The only thing you’re going to get is your ass in an isolation unit,” Captain Dukes said. “Now you back up to your cell and face the door.”

  Milo did not move. His eyes were riveted to Whitman.

  “Do it now!” Dukes shouted, advancing a step. Milo backed away, his eyes shifting now from Whitman to Dukes to the backup guards. “Move!” Dukes ordered when he saw the first indication of a retreat. “Move! Move! Move!”

  Milo moved.

  “Open the cells,” Dukes instructed. The cell doors slid open. “Get in,” he told Milo. The cop-killer stepped into the cell. “Close and lock twenty-nine,” the captain said. He turned to the patrol corridor. “Duty officer?”

  “Yessir,” the patrol guard said, stepping forward.

  “Who started it?” the captain asked.

  “Milo, sir.”

  “All right.” Dukes nodded to the backup guards. “Secure,” he said. He stepped over to Milo’s cell. “You start any more trouble in this section, cop-killer, and I’ll have your ass in an isolation cell until the day they gas you.” He stalked away from the cell and over to Whitman. “What were you going to go for, an eye or the throat?” he asked, nodding at the pencil.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Captain,” Whitman lied easily. “I just happened to have the pencil in my hand when I got up.”

  Dukes smiled his steel-hard smile. “You’re a lying son of a bitch, Whitman. You know, I would have let Milo tear off your balls except for one thing: I don’t think you’ve got any.”

  Dukes left the cell corridor. The duty guard began patrolling again. The Row inmates gradually went back to what they had been doing. With a weary sigh, Weldon Whitman took his law book and pencil-weapon and returned to his cell, where he might find at least a modicum of privacy.

  A month passed. Clayton, the college student who had killed the ranch family, was granted a stay of execution pending an insanity appeal. His lawyers claimed that he had become demented since arriving at San Quentin and could not legally be executed because he would not be fully aware of why he was being punished.

  Following Clayton’s stay, the next man with a date was Franklin, the short, balding, ordinarily rather mild wife-slayer.

  “You’ll beat it, don’t worry yourself,” Captain Dukes told the little man. “I’ve been on this block a long time. I can pick’em, believe me I can. I can smell the ones who are dead already and I can tell you the ones who’ll beat it. You’re one of those who’ll cheat the old gas house, Franklin. Wait and see.”

  Dukes was right. Ten days before he was to go, the governor commuted Franklin’s sentence to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. Franklin was transferred to the general inmate population.

  The next man up was Whitman. His date was five weeks away.

  “You’ll go,” Dukes delighted in telling him every day. “You’ll definitely go. There’s no way you’re going to beat the gas pill, pervert.”

  Whitman had been practicing day and night on his new typewriter and was up to nearly forty words a minute. He fired off several letters to Niebold and White, inquiring about the new state appeal. To each letter he received a carefully worded reply from Carla Volt to the effect that the firm was still researching the matter. When Cloud visited him, Whitman raised hell about the situation.

  “What is that bitch giving me with this research bullshit?” he demanded. “I’m down to less than a month and they’re researching.”

  “They claim they’re doing the best they can,” Cloud said. “Anyway, I thought you told Genevieve that you were sure of getting a stay from the federal court because it wouldn’t have time to rule on an old appeal before your date.”

  “That’s not really the point,” Whitman practically snapped at his friend. “I get the impression that things have bogged down, that the whole movement is in some kind of a rut. I don’t like the feeling.”

  “I think it’s a mistaken impression, Whit. Everybody’s working for you just as we always have. Niebold and White are handling the legal end; Genevieve is grinding out mailing pieces in that printshop of hers every day, and still making three or four speaking engagements every week; and I’m right down to the wire on Judgment in Anguish: it should be ready to go to New York in another couple of weeks. On top of all that, donations are still rolling in and we’ve got a nice healthy bank balance—”

  “Okay, okay,” the condemned man said restlessly. “But I want some pressure put on those goddamned lawyers, Rob. I want you to bug those people, every day. Especially that little researcher who keeps sending me form letter number twelve or whatever in hell it is. If she can’t find anything in all her research, tell her to come up here and talk to me. If we start kicking the thing around we’re bound to come up with something.”

  “I’ll work on them,” Cloud promised.

  A week passed. Niebold and White failed to come up with grounds for a new state appeal. At Cloud’s insistence, and much to Genevieve’s chagrin, Carla Volt visited Whitman at San Quentin. They talked for two hours, with Carla making copious notes on all the ideas Whitman had. She returned to Sacramento and began researching the ideas. Another week passed. Nothing came of any of Whitman’s ideas. Then the bomb fell. The federal court, instead of granting a stay, handed down a unanimous opinion based on virtually the same grounds stated by the California supreme court majority.

  Whitman’s appeal w
as denied. The previously scheduled execution date remained in effect. Weldon Whitman had eight days to live.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cloud and Genevieve descended on the offices of Niebold and White like avenging angels. But the only person they found there, besides clerical help, was Carla Volt.

  “They’re in Washington,” she said. “Arguing a constitutional-law case they’ve had pending before the U.S. Supreme Court for four years. It involves the question of police authority over juvenile offenders—”

  “I don’t give a damn what it involves!” Genevieve Neller stormed at her. “What do they intend to do about Weldon? He’s due to go to the gas chamber a week from tomorrow!”

  “There’s no need to shout, Genevieve,” Carla snapped at her.

  The two women faced each other across the desk with open hostility: Carla, lean, angular, her too-wide mouth drawn down at the corners, her long, glossy hair almost sepulchrally black; and Genevieve, her once-radiant features now looking slightly haggard from the pressure and worry.

  Cloud stepped to the side of the desk so that he was at least technically between the two women. “Now look,” he said sternly, “I want both of you to calm down.” He looked at Carla. “When did Morris and Borden go to Washington?”

  “This morning.”

  “Do they know yet about Whit’s federal appeal being denied?”

  “No. Not unless they’ve heard about it in Washington.”

  Cloud tapped the edge of the desk soundlessly with his fingertips, thinking. “When are they due back?”

  “They weren’t sure. This juvenile-offenders matter is a somewhat complicated issue.”

  Genevieve grunted contemptuously. “I hope they do a better job with it than they have in developing a new appeal for Weldon.”

  “Listen, you,” Carla said angrily, “putting together a legal appeal is a little more complicated than running a printshop and speaking to a lot of old ladies at luncheons.”

  “Don’t you tell me about that,” Genevieve retorted instinctively. “I know more about the law and legal research than you ever will—”

  “Why in the hell don’t you write the appeal then!” Carla challenged.

  Cloud slammed his open palm down loudly on the desktop. “All right! That’s enough, goddammit! Both of you knock it off!” They fell silent at once, both gritting their teeth. “Jesus,” Cloud murmured. He directed himself to Carla again. “Did either Morris or Borden give you any instructions about Whit’s case before they left?”

  “No special instructions, no. Just to keep going over old cases, the statutes, the trial transcript—anything that might give us a solid foundation for an appeal.”

  Cloud sighed. “How soon do you think you can contact either or both of them?”

  “I can call their hotel right now,” she said. “They won’t be in, but I can leave a message.”

  “Make the call,” Cloud said. “Tell the hotel that it is urgent that Mr. Niebold or Mr. White contact his office at once.”

  “All right.”

  “Do it now,” Cloud said. “While we’re here.”

  “Well,” Carla said caustically. “One would think you didn’t trust me or something.”

  “Just make the call,” Cloud said. He took Genevieve by the arm and sat her down in a chair facing the desk, then sat in a chair next to her. Carla glowered at them for a moment, then snatched up the telephone.

  “I’d like to call the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.,” she told the operator. When the hotel answered, she said, “Yes, I’d like to leave messages for two of your guests, please. Mr. Morris Niebold and Mr. Borden White. Please tell them that it is urgent that they contact their office as soon as possible. My name is Miss Volt. Thank you.”

  She hung up and looked coldly at Cloud and Genevieve. “Satisfied?” she asked.

  Cloud nodded. He and Genevieve stood up. “When one of them calls,” Cloud said, “inform them of the situation and tell them that I feel it’s essential that we discuss it at once. I’ll either be at my apartment, Gen’s apartment, or the foundation office. You have all the numbers.”

  “Yes, Mr. Cloud,” Carla said icily. Her eyes, as they met his, were as devoid of warmth as steel chisels. Cloud turned away from their coldness.

  “Come on, Gen,” he said.

  They waited two days, but no word came from Morris Niebold or Borden White. Cloud called Carla Volt a dozen times. Each time he called, she told him the same thing: neither attorney had responded to her messages. Cloud himself tried calling four times; he got no answer in either room on any of the calls. The last call he made, he placed at midnight, which would have made it three A.M. in Washington.

  “Goddammit!” he said, slamming the phone down furiously. “Where the hell could they be?”

  “Probably staying at another hotel and using these rooms as decoys to avoid us,” Genevieve said. They were in her apartment, where they had been waiting impatiently since dinner.

  “Come on, Gen,” Cloud said irritably. “Why would they do a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know, Rob. I don’t know why. All I know is that it’s being done. And we’ve used up two precious days finding out that it’s being done.”

  “We’ll hear from them tomorrow,” he said. “We’ve got to.”

  Thursday came. By noon they still had heard nothing. They ate a miserable lunch, saying little. The early afternoon mail brought a frantic note from Weldon Whitman:

  What in the hell is going on!!! Will both of you please come down here at once! 1 am scheduled to go to the gas chamber on Tuesday!

  Genevieve almost cried. “God,” she said in an anguished voice. “Rob, what are we going to do?”

  “Why don’t you hop in the car and drive down to see him? Try to reassure him—”

  “I can’t even reassure myself, much less Weldon. No, I couldn’t face him. Anyway, that’s not what I meant. I meant what are we going to do? I think we should retain another lawyer. Today.”

  “Can we do that? I mean legally?”

  “Of course. We have the money to do it—” She paused to briefly bite on a knuckle. “No, we don’t. We don’t even have that. Borden White is the foundation’s treasurer. He has to sign all checks.”

  “Goddamn,” Cloud said quietly.

  They were sitting silently, caught up in the dull gloom of the situation, when the telephone rang like a fire alarm. Cloud got to the phone first.

  “Mr. White just called,” he heard Carla Volt say. “He and Mr. Niebold will be returning late tonight. They will see you and Miss Neller in Mr. Niebold’s office at nine tomorrow morning.”

  “Did he say anything about what we’re going to do?” Cloud asked eagerly.

  “He said exactly what I told you. he said,” she replied icily. “Nothing more, nothing less. Goodbye.”

  She hung up, leaving Cloud with a dead receiver in his hand. He turned to Genevieve.

  “Morris and Borden are coming back tonight. We’ll meet with them first thing in the morning.”

  Genevieve finally let herself go and cried.

  In Morris Niebold’s office the following morning, the two factions gathered like enemies. Genevieve Neller, by then fully cried out, resumed her former posture with the foundation board and was again the most belligerent among them.

  “Today is. Friday,” she said as soon as the meeting was called to order. “On Tuesday morning at ten o’clock Weldon Whitman is scheduled to die. I would like to know for the record why nothing is being done about it.”

  She was looking at Morris Niebold, but it was Borden White who answered. “Nothing is being done because at this point nothing can be done,” he replied in a crisp, businesslike voice. “Our firm is continuing diligent legal research in an effort to find grounds for an appeal strong enough to merit being filed. And since we’re speaking for the record, let it also show that this firm is of the opinion that were it not for the contrary attitude of the president of this foundation—you, Miss N
eller—we might already have found such grounds.”

  Genevieve felt as if she had been slapped. Her lips parted and she sat stunned by the lawyer’s words. Robert Cloud, however, was not so stupefied.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean, Borden?” he asked harshly.

  “Just this,” Borden White said, whirling to face him. “We asked months ago to have Whitman assume a stronger, more forceful position in this matter. We asked to show the public—and the courts—a bolder, more vociferous Weldon Whitman: a Whitman who was determined to wade in and fight with both hands. It is the opinion of this firm that if we had begun building a dynamic Weldon Whitman who was going to have to be dragged into the gas chamber, today we would not be faced with the problem confronting us. We have to find today an extremely strong appellate position, because we have a very weak appellant. If we had created a very strong appellant, as this firm suggested, then today we could very easily go into court with a much weaker appeal, because we would have a great deal more public sentiment on our side and we would have a certain amount of psychological leverage with the court.” White was standing very straight, very proper, like a New England missionary of another time. “So, for the record,” he concluded, “let me remind you that it was Miss Neller who voted against our proposal, and it was you, Mr. Cloud, who supported that vote, and by doing so dead-locked the proposal.”

  “That is the most preposterous goddamned excuse for failure I have ever heard,” Cloud said in a tightly controlled voice. “You are actually trying to blame Genevieve and me for the great constitutional law firm of Niebold and White not being able to come up with an appeal that will keep an innocent man, not convicted of a killing, out of the gas chamber. What unadultered bullshit!”

  White’s lip curled. “Let the record accurately reflect Mr. Cloud’s crude and gross language.”

  Cloud started out of his chair. “White, how would you like the record to reflect a few of your teeth—”