Isaac patted my knee absentmindedly. “Well, well, well, well. But he died in his sleep, and since he was so convinced he wasn’t mortal, it's nice he never found out he was wrong.”
“Whooo.” I rubbed my eyes fast. “Almost hard to believe he couldn’t work a deal on this one too. How’d you hear?”
“Professional courtesy. He kept a drawerful of lawyers by the bed. Could there be an ashtray hidden in all this machinery?”
I said, “It's a virgin. Those vile cigars are probably what killed Cadmean.”
“He was ninety-one. Why blame cigars?” Rosethorn fluttered his thick fingers down the ruffle on my rented tuxedo shirt. “Slim, hope he rests in peace, swine that he undeniably was. So, how was the Confederacy Ball? You leave a glass slipper, I hope?”
“If I did, it's still sitting on the steps, unless it got tromped under somebody's galoshes. Lord, Cadmean dead.” I looked toward all the squares of light in the black brick wall of Dollard Prison. The sleet had lightened to a drizzle of rain now. Jordan offered Coop a thermos cup of coffee that he didn’t want. I said, “Julian Lewis never showed at the dance, but I guess you already figured that. What else could he be here for but the Hall case?”
“Maybe.” He threw his cigarette out the window. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
“Maybe, wait and see? Jesus! And you jump all over me about forgetting the ‘main business.’ Seven years, I can’t get you interested that a racist judge and jury railroaded George Hall into—”
“It's not necessarily racist, Slim, to take exception to a white policeman's getting shot through the eye by a black assailant. Not necessarily racist. People have strong feelings about eyes.”
“I bet you could have pulled off self-defense.”
“With that jury? I don’t think so.”
“At least murder two, Isaac, manslaughter; not first degree. But, okay, you’re not interested. Then five weeks before the man's scheduled for execution, you suddenly volunteer to represent him—”
“The Hall Committee offered me a moderately substantial fee to represent him—”
“Don’t tell me about money, Isaac. Money's not worth dick to you. And don’t tell me about the Halls, and don’t even tell me about capital-J Justice. Tell me the idea you decided might be interesting.”
He smiled with a sweet bogus incomprehension. Over the decades, Isaac Rosethorn had been preserved not just by some alchemic mix of tobacco, alcohol, and animal fat, but by an avoidance of all major human emotions, except a cupidinous curiosity. Whenever I thought I’d detected in those deep round eyes some mild stirring of anger or envy or hurt, it always slid behind the cloud of abstracted serenity now floating over his face. He took law cases because they “interested” him, variously outraging acquaintances both on the left and the right, who had decided he was one of them. A full pardon for George Hall wouldn’t have satisfied Isaac; what he wanted was a new trial. Stopping the execution was a necessary first step. I said, “‘Maybe’ what? Tell me.”
The spaniel pouches under his sad beautiful eyes crinkled. “Tell me, tell me, tell me, ever since you were a skinny kid with ears out to here. What kind of food did they have at this fancy dance?”
“Aww, shit.”
“Did you meet anybody you liked?”
“Isaac, you’ve been trying to find me the right girl since the day I met you.”
“Don’t exaggerate. You were five years old then.”
“Don’t you. I was nine.”
I’d met Isaac the day he’d tapped me on the shoulder in the drugstore and hired me to run to the library for some book nobody’d checked out since 1948, that I had to beat the dust out of like an eraser. For the next decade I ran to the courthouse for his messages and to the corner for his newspapers. Isaac Rosethorn never ran anywhere, or did much walking either. His right leg dragged a little—from polio, he said. Sometimes it seemed to work almost fine, sometimes it limped along downright pitifully—depending on the jury. He’d lived then where he lived now, in the Piedmont Hotel, and if he ever went any farther, he drove a Studebaker that I know an antique auto show would love to get its hands on. He went to visit his sister-in-law every Saturday, and every Sunday he went to the cemetery to visit somebody called Edith Keene who’d died at twenty and had “Gone to a Better Place,” which first I thought maybe meant that she’d had the sense to get out of Hillston—since a better place was where my daddy had always wished he could go, out of Hillston, “this armpit.”
Isaac said, “I hope you aren’t going to argue with me that your own efforts to find the right girl have been terribly successful.”
I said no, I wasn’t going to argue with him.
Outside the car, the drizzle had slowed, almost stopped. Behind us, Jordan West, checking the rain's pause with an upturned palm, pulled thick white candles from her canvas purse, lit them in the fire, and passed them around to all the vigilants, who moved out in a line from under the gate ledge to take one each. Then they began singing, clapping the beat. “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around, turn me around.” The guard in the cubicle, licking glaze from his fingers, clearing a circle of steam from the window-pane with his forearm, stood up to watch them. “Walking down that freedom road.” Their voices sounded eerie, disembodied, in the outdoor night.
Bubba Percy broke away from Molina and trotted up to my car, looking excited, his new Burberry trenchcoat flapping. When I rolled down the window, he stuck his head all the way inside. “That guy says Briggs Cadmean died! Tonight!” We nodded back at him. “And here I am all the fuck out here like an asshole!”
“That's strong, but factual,” I said. “Just stop eavesdropping on police business, and you won’t get led so far astray.” Behind the waves of Percy's auburn pompadour, I saw a second prison guard opening the long gate. A man walked out with an umbrella, raised it, then lowered it, then Julian Lewis stepped out behind him, tucking his scarf inside the velvet collar of his coat. As soon as they saw him, Coop's little group grabbed up their signs and ran over, chanting, “Free George Hall! Free George Hall!”
“Bubba,” I said, “on the other hand, eavesdropping just made your day. The lieutenant governor's about to give you an exclusive.” I turned his soft pink cheek with my forefinger. Percy spun around and took off, probably before he even believed Lewis was there. “Come on,” I told Isaac; but instead, settling his wide buttocks down in my upholstery, the old man pulled a bag of pistachio nuts out of his pocket. I walked off after Percy, who’d already wedged himself between Lewis and his assistant.
Like most of Justin's Dollard relations, Julian D. Lewis was good looking, personable, and not too bright—not dumb, just not bright; he was also as tan in December as he was in August because he represented the state at a lot of winter conferences in warm golf resorts. He was also polite, not to mention wanting to be governor himself if he could beat Andy Brookside, so when a newsman with a circulation of 110,000 asked him what he was doing at Dollard Prison at midnight, he stopped to answer, though I could tell the circling crowd made him nervous: he kept his back to the limo and his eye on the guards by the gate.
“Free George Hall!” yelled the vigilants again.
Looking solemn, Lewis held his bronzed hand up, then combed it briskly through his hair, like he was revving a motor. “I’m here on behalf of the governor…to inform Warden Carpenter…that the governor has decided to grant…a stay of execution to the prisoner George Hall.”
There was a second of pure quiet, then Jordan screamed, leaping up and down against Coop, who stood still as a rock, like he couldn’t feel her. The candle slid out of his fist into the mud.
Behind them, Molina raised both arms and silently shook them. Jordan ran to the young protestors, who threw away their signs, cheered, and pounded each other on the arms and backs. Lewis forced a smile, but at least he didn’t wave. I pushed through so I could hear.
Bubba Percy, hopping from foot to foot, jerked out a little spiral pad. “You mean
, the governor pardoned Hall?”
Lewis shook his head. “No. Governor Wollston has granted a stay of four weeks in response to petitions regarding the case.”
“Is there new evidence?”
Lewis's assistant, wearing an exact replica of his boss's clothes, leaned over to whisper at him. Lewis nodded at the chauffeur, who opened the back door of the Lincoln. Then he replied, “I’m simply here to convey the governor's decision; that's all.” Coop Hall jammed his hands in his jacket and pushed through the cheering group to Jordan; I was standing next to her, and held out my hand, but he never looked.
His voice was hoarse. “Get to a phone and call Mama.” Jordan hugged his arm as he spoke to the group behind him; he had to yell over their whoops of pleasure. “Okay, everybody. Hey! Come on! Pack up and go get some sleep. Okay? And, listen! Be in Raleigh tomorrow, just as planned.”
They broke off and dutifully collected their placards. Hall moved Jordan toward the cluster of cars. “Go on. If Mama doesn’t answer, you drive on home and wait for her to get back from Greensboro. I’ll be there soon as I talk to Rosethorn.” He turned away, acknowledging her rub on his back only by a nod.
Bubba was still talking and writing at the same time. “Mr. Lewis, you were state's attorney general when Hall shot Bobby Pym, and that was seven years ago. Wasn’t that a fair trial? I mean, how much more ‘study’ of the case do you think—”
“Mr. Percy.” Lewis looked at him, hurt. “I did and do believe the first trial was a fair one. But when a man's life is at stake, naturally the state must take every—”
I didn’t wait around for the speech, but ran back to the Oldsmobile where Isaac was pouring pistachio shells into my ashtray. As soon as I opened the door, yelling, “Hot damn!” he said, “The stay, how long?”
“Four weeks. Hold it, how could you hear him say ‘stay’?”
He sucked on his lip, looking morose. “Too bad. Twelve, eight, I was hoping. Just as easy to say eight as four, the tightwad.” Stuffing all his notes in his pockets, he said, “I remember back, Governor Pat Brown in California, the State Department asked him to give Caryl Chessman a reprieve. Ike was starting that goodwill tour of South America, and there was a lot of sympathy for Chessman down there. Sixty days Pat Brown gave him. Not that it did any good. Later on, I remember, Brown said he was sorry he hadn’t pardoned Chessman. Ahh, I’m tired, I’m going home.”
I caught hold of his coat. “Okay, Isaac, who's going to South America? I get the funny feeling you knew there’d be a stay. Hummm? Is that why you hotfooted it over and had me yanked from wassailing with the upper crust when I paid all that money to rent this suit? So, okay, were you tipped off?”
Wrapping his knuckles softly on my head the way he’d done when I was a child, he rumbled his sigh of a laugh. “I use my noggin.”
Bubba was bamming on my window again; the Lincoln limo had left, and the vigilants were crowding into their cars. “Mangum,” he wheezed, thrilled out of breath, “give me a statement and I’ll print it. Wollston granted a stay!”
I said, “There was a report of a threat to disrupt a peaceful assembly. I came to check it out. That's a statement. Now will you stop trying to crawl into my car? It's crowded enough with Rosethorn spread all over the seat.”
Bubba leaned past me. “Mr. Rosethorn, your client's gotten a reprieve. How do you feel?”
Isaac said, “Better.”
“That's it?”
Rosethorn sighed. “I’ll feel even better when the state supreme court grants my client a new trial.”
Bubba switched back to me. “Look, Mangum, you’ve been involved in this Hall business from the beginning. You were just a patrolman when it started.”
“Sergeant.” I tapped on his spiral pad. “I apprehended the suspect, but I was not assigned to the investigation, nor in any other way ‘involved’ in the case.”
But Bubba had his story line already set. “Here you are trying to put criminals away, and the courts drag it out for seven years. Is that frustrating for the police?”
“The police keep the peace and enforce the law against people who break it; they don’t try people, and they don’t sentence them. Leave me alone.”
“But isn’t it frustrating, when the law said to execute George Hall seven years ago?”
“Nope, Bubba, that's what the jury and the judge said.”
“Okay, okay. You’re close friends with Savile's wife, Alice, what's her name, MacLeod, the one that keeps trying to bring up that bill in the legislature to throw out capital punishment, that says capital punishment's imposed unfairly against minorities. What do you think about that, or, say, about the death penalty in general?”
It was the question I’d worried about getting asked for a long time, worried about asking it of myself. I just shook my head.
No denying Bubba's shrewdness. He grinned at me. “Come on, Cuddy. Should a moral man accept a job to enforce the state's laws if he doesn’t believe those laws are morally right? That's my question.” He kept grinning. “No comment?”
“Bubba, please go on home and write your story before you miss a chance for a headline.”
Rubbing his cheeks with his sheepskin gloves, Percy grimaced. “Shit, y’all know what the boonie Star headline's gonna say, gonna say that old fart Cadmean finally croaked. Black border and big photo. Lewis back there tells me the governor's declared tomorrow a fucking official day of mourning. Half-mast, factory whistles, the whole boo-hoo. Okay. See you assholes back in Deadtown. Basketball tomorrow.” He dodged off on tiptoe to keep his Italian boots out of the puddles.
Isaac Rosethorn and I looked at each other for a while before I said, “Be a little tacky to have executions and racial demonstrations on an official day of mourning, wouldn’t it?” He just fished around in his mouth with his baby finger for nut husks. “My my,” I shook my head. “You must of zipped out of Hillston the minute they smoothed the covers over Cadmean's eyes, and his soul soared off to South America. You didn’t by some chance kill Old Fart yourself, did you, Isaac? Pull the plug, trip over the oxygen line, anything of that nature?”
“I don’t believe in killing, you know that.”
“Well, you must have planted the ‘day of mourning’ notion mighty fast, that's all I can figure. Who with?”
Like in the old days, he waggled his fat finger at me, smug as Churchill. “To predict is not to plant. To conclude is not to cause. And four weeks is only twenty-eight days.” He pulled his gloves back on; one was black, the other one brown. “I need to ride back with Cooper. Come have Chinese with me Sunday, unless, I hope, you did meet a girl at this dance and are otherwise occupied.”
I sighed. “Make it Buddha's Garden at 7:30.”
“Interesting question, Mr. Percy's. The one about moral lawmen and moral laws.” He patted my knee as he pulled himself out of the car, and walked—his right foot dragging a line through the slush— across the empty lot toward his ancient Studebaker where Coop Hall stood waiting for him, staring up at the high brick turrets.
The old prison was settling to sleep. Lights like stars in the chinks of blackened bricks had blinked out, one by one, except for a row on the second floor. Death row is never dark; in darkness a prisoner might contrive to cheat the state, might braid a noose out of his clothes, or, while a guard yawned, fashion a razor from a bit of blade secretly broken off from the supervised shaving tools. It happened. Or almost happened. Men had been led to the chair with bandaged wrists or throat. But not often, not anymore; there were no sheets, no belts, no shoes, no metal utensils, there were head counts every few hours, there were naked body inspections whenever a guard decided to do one, there were trustees to watch the prisoners eat to make sure they didn’t choke, there was no privacy in the solitary cells, and no darkness, not even on this winter solstice, the longest night of the year.
I thought everybody had left until I saw Jack Molina still standing by the drum can, watching smoke push through the dirt he’d thrown in to smother the f
ire. I stopped my car beside him. “Come by yourself, Professor?”
“What?” He looked at me as if he were trying to remember my name; then he walked over. Molina had a lean, narrow head, all angles, except for round John Lennon glasses and huge dark eyes like a Byzantine saint. He kept his hair short now and wore a tie. In the sixties, he’d looked a lot like Jesus on a diet. He’d been a sixties star at the university. Shoved through crowds by a phalanx of students, he’d jump up on cafeteria tables or the library steps and give speeches that drove folks crazy—one way or another. After the sixties died, he’d settled for classroom forums and ghost politics; taught courses on “The Rhetoric of Mass Communication,” and wrote speeches for Andy Brookside.
Turns out he’d come over to ask me about tonight's Hillston Club ball, and whether I’d noticed the Brooksides there. I told him I had.
“Did you happen to see my wife, Debbie?” He was glancing around inside my car as if he thought I might have brought her along.
“At the dance? I don’t think I’ve ever met her, so I can’t say. Was she there?” He didn’t bother to answer me, so I asked him a different question. “You knew that Briggs Cadmean died?”
“Rosethorn mentioned it when he drove out to bring us some coffee.” His eyes weren’t paying any attention to what he was saying. “Rosethorn's quite a character.”
“No argument.”
Molina poured more dirt into the smoking trash can, and stuck his bare hand in to spread it around; I don’t know why it didn’t burn a hole in his palm. “Yeah,” he nodded, “Rosethorn defended Piedmont Chemicals in that big negligence suit in 'seventy-three. I was in the line picketing his clients at the trial. He got them off. You know the one thing all Utopias share? No lawyers.”
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