Necessity

by D. W. Buffa

  He was right. It was a secret. Tangerine had told her lawyer, but she had not told me.

  SOMETIMES THE easiest way to hide was not to hide at all. Tangerine met me when I got off the ferry from the city and we walked along the streets of Sausalito like just another pair of out of town visitors. My name might have been reasonably well known, and my picture had been in the papers a few times, and anyone who had been following the trial on television would have seen me often enough, but dressed as I was in an oxford shirt with a sweater thrown around my shoulders, a baseball cap, and dark glasses, no one gave me more than a passing glance. Tangerine was a different story. Even with her hair pulled back in a schoolgirl ponytail, wearing sandals and a simple summer dress, every one stopped to notice. The attention did not bother her. I suppose she was used to it, something that was always there wherever she happened to go. Distant, unapproachable, beautiful beyond description, a woman no man would be fool enough to make a pass at, and no woman would even think to envy or resent. All anyone wanted to do was look. It made them feel better, knowing that someone could really look like her. I suggested it might be more appropriate if I walked three steps back. She slapped me gently on the shoulder and said two would be enough.

  We walked along a path that led across a small grass park. A few young children scampered along under their parent’s watchful gaze. A couple of wizened veterans of the place, with gray stubbled faces and stiff curly hair, with strange tattered hats and mongrel dogs with tired legs and tired eyes, lay stretched out under the late day sun, resting up for another night of endless drinking. We were holding hands and I could not remember when we had started. The path now ran close to the rocks which, just a few feet below, were beaten by the tide. A few minutes later we were inside the Spinnaker, a restaurant on wooden pilings with glass-sided walls looking out over the water. We had reserved a table at the far end, on the side that faced the city. It was a place I had always liked. San Francisco floated like an island in the distance. If you stayed here long enough, you could watch the city melt away in the golden darkness of the night.

  “Do you ever think of me during the trial? Probably not, you have too many other things on your mind.”

  “Yes, I have too many other things on my mind. No, I don’t think of you at all during the trial, not even once.”

  She did not quite believe me.

  “Not even once?”

  “Nope. Not once. Not ever.”

  I could have drowned in her eyes. I wanted to laugh, and she knew it, but to my own astonishment, I discovered that I was serious. I had told her the truth, but the truth had a meaning that I now found fascinating, and perhaps a little…not terrifying, that would be too strong a word, but hazardous, a chance venture into the unknown.

  “I don’t think about myself while I’m working. I don’t wonder how I’m feeling, or what I might do later, while I’m in court. That’s why I don’t think of you. It’s strange, I can’t explain it, but you’ve somehow managed to become more a part of me than I am myself. If that makes any sense.”

  It made perfect sense to her, and so she laughed and told me I was mad and that she would love me forever. Her voice was now an echo in my mind, words were lost, a silent look all that mattered.

  We finished dinner and were drinking coffee when I remembered what had been, until the moment I saw her waiting at the ferry landing, the first thing I was going to ask her.

  “I understand you’re starting divorce proceedings. Rumor has it you want to marry some lawyer.”

  It did not surprise her that I knew. Nothing ever did. Whatever happened, she always seemed to be expecting it.

  “My lawyer is one of Albert’s many good friends. I knew he would tell him, and I knew Albert would tell you. I didn’t need to say that I wanted a divorce so I could marry someone else. I didn’t need to say it was you. But this way you would have a chance to deny the rumor and steal away into the night. Great headline, don’t you think: ‘Trial Stopped. Lawyer Can’t Be Found. Chased Away by Woman He Only Just Met.’”

  “Is that true?” I asked. “Did we only just meet? I can’t remember when we didn’t know each other.”

  “That’s because,” she said, finishing the thought in that breathless voice of hers, “you and I both came to life in the same moment. We met and life began. It’s as simple, as wonderful, as that.”

  And I knew, as well as I had ever known anything, that she was right.

  We left the restaurant, and because our only destination was each other, found an empty bench in the park we had walked through earlier, and for a long time sat in silence, watching the sun set the sky on fire as it slid slowly down to the sea. We stayed there until darkness came and the lights on the seven hills across the bay began to glisten like a dancing girl putting on her bright bangled sequin shoes.

  EVELYN PATTERSON SMILED at the jury. She seldom smiled at anyone else, and almost never at a lawyer in her courtroom, unless it flashed with caustic contempt at what she thought a failure of the deference owed her. It was, now that my head was full of the history of revolutions, like the way so many kings and queens had tried to put their aristocracies, all those privileged noble powers, in subjection: encourage all the forces of democracy with promises of fair treatment and in that way win their gratitude and loyalty. The courtroom was her kingdom, a place where, she insisted with her friendly, watchful eyes, she, and not some paid for lawyer, would tell them what to do and how to think. She, and she alone, would decide what was evidence and what was not. The queen would determine what was good for them to hear.

  It was a measure of how habit replaces thought, that you could search for years in all the textbooks ever written and nowhere find a statement of what was obvious to anyone who had spent time in an American courtroom. The jury was the only purely democratic element in the American system of government. No one was elected to the position, no one ran for the office, no one was appointed. No one was given the job because they had contributed to someone’s campaign for governor or mayor. Jurors were chosen the way office holders had been chosen in ancient Athens: the random chance of names drawn from among the citizens. That was the only qualification - citizenship. There were no others. College educated, people who had never read a book, everyone, every citizen, was qualified equally in the eyes of the law to decide the life or death of anyone accused of a crime.

  But they were never allowed to exercise this power by themselves. There was always a judge to give them guidance, which, during the course of their service, was absolute. Her decision was final. She ruled the courtroom like a master ruled her slaves. She might be gentle, she might be forgiving, or she might be vengeful and vindictive, but, either way, she never had to explain. Praise you, thank you, or damn you all to hell. If you were a lawyer in her courtroom, you could only stand and listen, and then, when she was finished and you were permitted to speak, say, “Thank you, your Honor,” and like a chastened schoolboy sit back down. Kevin Fitzgerald, the man I was defending, had confessed to killing the president because the president’s actions had been, or were about to become, tyrannical. Watching Evelyn Patterson, I thought I knew what Fitzgerald must have felt.

  The smile for the jury turned to a baleful glance when she turned to Raymond St. John.

  “Is the prosecution ready to call its next witness?”

  “The prosecution calls Carson Youngblood.”

  Fitzgerald touched my arm. He knew the witness.

  “He’s the one—”

  “I know,” I whispered back. “You told me. I believe you.”

  He had told me about Youngblood, what Youngblood had done, and I had never doubted that what he said was true. But he had never quite believed me. Some things are too incredible to be believed all at once, if they are ever believed at all. It did not make any difference how many times I said it, he could not quite shake the feeling that I had the same kind of doubt he would have had if someone had told him that story.

  The witness was sworn in. St.
John stood at the far end of the jury box, two steps away from where Fitzgerald was sitting.

  “Would you state your full name for the record?”

  “Carson Allen Youngblood.”

  “How are you employed?”

  “I’m with the Secret Service,” replied the witness in an understated manner.

  St. John, ready with the next question, hesitated.

  “You’re the head of the Secret Service.”

  “Yes,” said Youngblood with what seemed almost a show of indifference.

  The job, not the position, was what mattered. You could see it in the way he held himself, the absence of almost any movement, like a bent coil, ready on the instant to spring forward. He never looked at the jury, the way prosecution witnesses are taught to do. His eyes stayed on St. John, the better, as it seemed, to react to whatever the prosecutor might decide to ask.

  “Were you with the president when he flew out here to San Francisco?”

  “No, I was in Washington. I was not part of the president’s detail.”

  “When did you find out that the president had been killed?”

  “Within minutes of when it happened. Probably less than a minute after agent Todorovich entered the president’s cabin and found him lying dead on the floor.”

  “What did you do when you learned what had happened?”

  “I flew right out.”

  “To take charge of the investigation?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “Isn’t that a little unusual? Wouldn’t the FBI, not the Secret Service, conduct an investigation into the death of the president?” asked St. John cautiously, as if there were something that neither he nor the witness wanted to reveal.

  “That’s right; normally, they would have. Our job is to protect the life of the president. The president had just been killed. I had to find out how that could have happened. There wasn’t any mystery about who had done it. That wasn’t the kind of investigation that had to be made. We weren’t looking for the killer. He was already in custody. He had already confessed. We needed to make sure that everything was put on record; we needed to make sure there were no unanswered questions.”

  St. John moved immediately to the central question, the only one that seemed to count, the one that would leave the jury no alternative but to convict.

  “Did you conduct the interview with the defendant, Kevin Fitzgerald?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And did he make a full and voluntary confession? Did he confess to the murder of the president, Walter Bridges?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  St. John walked across the front of the courtroom to the court clerk’s desk. She handed him a document which he then handed to the witness.

  “Is this the confession, the written confession, that, in your presence, Kevin Fitzgerald signed?”

  Holding it in both hands, Youngblood read it over and assured St. John that it was.

  “Would you please read it aloud for the jury?”

  Lethal in its consequences, it was as simple and uninspiring as a grocery list. There was a date and time, Youngblood’s name as witness to Fitzgerald’s signature and three short sentences, the bare recital of the facts of murder. Fitzgerald had stabbed Walter Bridges in the throat and in the chest and stomach. He had meant to kill him. He was not sorry that he had. It was “the only way he had left.”

  “The only way he had left?” I asked as I got up from my chair at the counsel table and began my cross-examination. “The only way he had left to accomplish exactly what?”

  Even on cross, Youngblood did not look at the jury. He looked at me, not as he had with St. John, to be quick with his response, but to take my measure, to determine how best to evade telling me anything he did not want me to know.

  “This is his written confession, what he put down,” he said, nodding toward the document he still held in his hand. “You would have to ask him what he meant.”

  “There is scarcely any need for that, is there, Mr. Youngblood? There isn’t anyone in this country who doesn’t know what he meant. It’s been in every paper, on every news show. He told every reporter who would listen, he said it when he was first arraigned on the charge. He killed the president because—surely you heard this—it was the only way the country could be saved. But he didn’t tell you that, not once, in the whole time he was in your custody. Is that what you want this jury to believe?”

  Now, finally, he looked at them.

  “It’s his confession. What he said at the time.”

  “At the time. And just how long was that time, Mr. Youngblood?”

  He did not like being called mister. He preferred agent or director, which was the reason I would not call him either one.

  “How long, Mr. Youngblood; how long did this interview last?”

  His gaze was just coming back to mine. The answer was out of his mouth before he had time to think about it.

  “Interview? Which one?”

  “More than one, then. That would make sense,” I remarked, running my hand along the railing of the jury box. “You held him for three days before he was brought into court and from there to the jail where he has been held ever since. How many interviews did you have with him during those three days, Mr. Youngblood? Two, three…more than that?”

  When I asked a question, I looked at him, and the moment I finished, I looked at the jury as if I were ready to laugh out loud at the answer Youngblood was sure to give. I knew things, and Youngblood knew I knew them, and we both knew that he would never, even under oath, admit what had happened.

  “I really don’t know. Several times.”

  “Several times. Interviewed in the same place?”

  His only reply was a blank stare.

  “The same place, Mr. Youngblood? The ‘undisclosed location’ that your agent, Milo Todorovich, has already told us about?”

  “What about it?”

  I shot him a withering glance, daring him to continue to try the court’s patience.

  “Where was it, this ‘undisclosed location’ where you kept the defendant locked away for half a week?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “You won’t tell me that!” I shot back. I looked up at the bench. “Your Honor?”

  The queen was livid. Drumming her long, sharp nails on the hard surface of the bench, she looked down at the witness and let him know that he had no more importance in her courtroom than the bailiff, and probably a good deal less than that.

  “We will be glad to let you decide at your leisure, in a place not far from where others who ignore the law spend their days and nights, whether to ignore an order of this court to answer truthfully any question one of the attorneys thinks to ask and that I have not ruled inadmissible. There is nothing inadmissible about the question you were just asked. Trust me when I tell you that you had better answer.”

  “It’s classified!” he protested, angrily.

  She did smile at the witness, but only to underscore how ridiculous that protest was.

  “Not in my courtroom. Now answer the question.”

  I saved him the trouble, and did what I could to cause him more.

  “You had him taken to an Air Force base fifty miles from here, isn’t that correct, Mr. Youngblood?”

  “We needed a secure location, somewhere the senator could be kept safe, somewhere—”

  “Safe?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “You were concerned for the safety of the defendant?”

  “Yes, of course. After what happened, after he killed the president, you had to know there would be a lot of people who would start thinking about killing him.”

  “You mean people who thought Walter Bridges a great man, someone who should be president?”

  “Yes, and we were right. In those first few days after the assassination, the death threats—people who wanted vengeance, who wanted to get even with Fitzgerald, Senator Fitzgerald, for what he had done—the numbers went through the roof!”

>   “So your first thought was for the safety of your prisoner?” I asked, staring at him from beneath my lowered brow, trying hard, as I wanted the jury to believe, not to laugh.

  “It was one consideration.”

  “Because of all those death threats you talked about; even though, it is safe to say, not one of them had yet been sent? He was held in an airport hangar, no one was allowed anywhere near him, no one knew yet what had happened, no one knew that Senator Fitzgerald was being held, no one except the Secret Service agents who were, per your instruction, waiting for you to arrive. You should be congratulated, worried about threats that had not been made!”

  He started to speak; I waved him off and moved two steps closer. I was now halfway down the length of the jury box.

  “When your plane touched down at the airport, it went directly to the hangar where the senator was being held. He was put on that plane, and you then took off and flew to the military base where you held him until four days later he was handed over to the local authorities, here in San Francisco, and finally brought into court. Isn’t that what happened?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Three days and three nights before you released him to the jurisdiction where he should have been taken the moment he was found in the president’s cabin with the murder weapon in his hand?”

  “Look, it wasn’t like this was any normal kind of crime!” he fairly shouted. “He had just murdered the president of the United States! It was a political assassination! Do you have any idea how many questions that raises? How many questions have to be asked? So, yes, we took Senator Fitzgerald into custody, and we kept him there until—”

  “Until you got out of him everything you thought you needed, answers to all those questions you thought you had to ask. How did you ask them?”

  Youngblood blinked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how did you ask them? Did you sit across a table and ask questions the way you would if, for example, you and I were having a conversation? Did you ask them, Mr. Youngblood, the way I’m now asking questions of you? Ask a question, listen to the answer, then ask another one?”