(1969) The Seven Minutes (13 page)

“Those last words, I’m sure they’re not his own,’ said Barrett. “The word “incited,” that’s not a boy’s word. That’s a police word or press agent’s language. It sounds to me like the boy is being coached.’

‘But he did it, he plainly did it, and there was our book in his car.’

‘I’m not questioning that. I meant something else. I meant how the facts are being handled. Never mind. Anyway -‘

‘Mike, I think we’re in the soup. I’m worried. I don’t mind publicity for the book. Hell, I want it. But not this kind. It’ll turn everyone against us. Wesley R. has been trying to get me on the phone all morning. One of the few times my …. my … my father has ever acknowledged I’m alive. I won’t answer. I make them say I’m out.’

‘The boy, the one who violated the girl, what’s his background ?’

‘Ideal background, the best kind of upbringing. Do you want me to read you the stories ?’

‘I think you’d better. At least the wire stories.’

For the next five minutes, in an unsteady voice, Sanford read the newspaper stories to Barrett. When he had finished he said, ‘There you have it. I don’t know why it’s getting such a play, except maybe because the boy is Frank Griffith’s son - prominent family.’

‘No,’ said Barrett, ‘that’s not it. It’s the coincidence of a rape following the arrest of a bookseller for purveying an obscene book. Each act, separate, isolated, would not be news. In juxtaposition, tied together, they appear to make real news and they appear to refute the well-known pronouncement once made by Mayor James J. Walker.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Jimmy Walker was supposed to have said, “I never knew of a girl who was made pregnant by a book.” Actually, I think the verbatim version is “I never knew a girl who was ruined by a book.”’

‘Yes, I’ve heard that.’

‘Well, here there seems to be an actual situation that refutes that statement. The press has put a case together. Very neat. The cause - a book inciting a boy to attack a girl. The effect - a girl ruined by a book. That is news.’

Sanford had become increasingly agitated. ‘All I care about is how this affects us. What does it do to that arrest of Ben Fremont you were going to settle? You did see your District Attorney, didn’t you?’

T did, but one question at a time,’ Barrett said calmly. He was trying to think it out. ‘First, as to how this affects our efforts on behalf of Ben Fremont and your book. I stated that the press was trying to couple two separate events and make them one. I stated that that is what made it news. True. It is news, but it is not evidence. One crime has nothing to do with the other, in a strictly legal sense. Forget the press. Let’s concern ourselves with the law. Ben Fremont was arrested for purveying obscene reading matter. That’s one thing. Jerry Griffith was arrested for forcibly violating and injuring a girl. That’s another thing. Under the law, Jerry Griffith’s reading habits have nothing to do with the charges against Fremont. The fact of Griffith’s reading The Seven Minutes is not relevant and is immaterial to the charge that The Seven Minutes is of prurient interest only and therefore violates Section 311 of the California Criminal Code. The Fremont case will be determined on its own merits, as far as the law is concerned.’

‘But we’re not up against the law alone,’ protested Sanford. ‘What about public opinion?’

There was the big question, Barrett knew, and he had considered it and anticipated it. But it was too early to answer that one. Perhaps he would have the answer later, even later this day, but he did not have it yet.

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,’ he said. ‘Right now let’s confine ourselves to the law, which is what we have to contend with. This brings me to your second question. Did I see District Attorney Elmo Duncan about the Fremont case? I did, Phil. He was friendly and cooperative. He agreed that the whole censorship business and the arrest were a nuisance, and he made it clear he was no more interested in a costly, time-consuming trial than we were. He wanted to know what would satisfy us, and I told him. He found our request acceptable. We were to have Ben Fremont plead guilty, and then it would be arranged that Fremont be fined the twenty-four hundred dollars and be given a year’s sentence which would be suspended. Your book would not be sold in Oakwood, which is an unincorporated area in Los Angeles County, but you’d be free to place the book on sale elsewhere in Los Angeles County.’

‘Was it settled, then?’

‘No, not quite. That’s why I postponed calling you back. I wanted it all wrapped up. It’s virtually settled. When I left the District Attorney, he asked simply for time to discuss our compromise with his staff, as a gesture of courtesy. He told me to call him today and he’d make his acceptance official. That is where we stand.’

‘Pasttense, Mike,‘said Sanford. ‘That is where we stood-yesterday. Maybe today’s another day.’

‘Phil, I can only repeat, under the law nothing has changed since yesterday. Duncan’s certainly as smart an attorney as I am, and maybe smarter. He knows that a case of forcible rape is utterly immaterial to the 311 charge against Fremont. He will deal with the Fremont affair on its own merits. And if he does so, as I believe he will, he’ll stand by our agreement of yesterday. I’m fairly confident about that.’ .

There was a woosh of air in the telephone receiver. Sanford had obviously sighed with his relief. “Thanks, Mike. I feel much better… Only one thing. My secretary keeps sticking memos under my nose. Our sales department is starting to get a steady stream of inquiries from booksellers around the country wanting to know what we’re going to do about this prosecution of the book. I’d like to be able to tell them that there’s nothing to worry about, that we got Fremont off without trouble, and now everyone can go ahead with the book. The sooner we can say that, the better. Can you settle this whole business today?’

I intend to,’ said Barrett. ‘I was supposed to phone the District Attorney. I think it would be better if I drove downtown and saw him in person for a few minutes. Besides, it’s to my advantage, too, to get this out of the way as soon as possible. I told you yesterday that I left Thayer and Turner, and that I had something much bigger coming up. Well, it’s a vice-presidency with Osborn Enterprises.’

‘Why, that’s great, Mike! Congratulations.’

‘Thanks. Anyway, I’m settling that tonight, and part of the deal is that I start right in on the new job. So I want to get this censorship nuisance out of the way as quickly as you do. And I expect to. I’ll call you later today, the second it’s settled.’

Ever since she had come to California to make her home with the Griffiths, it had seemed to Maggie Russell that the world had somehow ceased revolving on its axis. It was as if all life had come to a standstill. One day succeeded another so quickly, smoothly, without change, each new day as uniform as the last, that one hardly felt the passage of a month or of a season. While it was not truly living, she suspected, it was a peaceful way of existence that she welcomed in this period of her youth. After the frenzy and insecurity of her earlier years, losing first her father and being uprooted from Minnesota, then losing her mother and being uprooted from Ohio, and then living with relatives in Alabama, and then trying to find jobs that would support her and still give her time for a college education in North Carolina and Massachusetts, it was wonderful to have one haven where there were routine and regularity and the days came and went in a soft blur and you could wake and sleep mindless and safe. That was what made the shock greater, Maggie reflected, as she sat unobtrusively on the bench in the bay window of the Griffith living room, observing all the activity and tension going on before her eyes.

The sudden, unexpected change in the routine and life of the household was what had jolted her so. Not that it had always been so easy to adjust to others, even relatives, especially one as highly regarded and demanding as her Uncle Frank (although her Aunt Ethel and cousin Jerry were paragons of kindness and for them she had an unshakable affection), but as households went, as far as she knew or had known, this one had been a comfortable cocoon with each bright day as predictable as the next. Yet overnight this world had been turned upside down and set spinning uncontrollably.

Yesterday, at this hour, this room had been quiet and restful. Today it was a small madhouse overcharged with emotion and danger.

Or, she wondered, had it always been this way, at least in its potential, and had she shut her eyes and mind to it because she had wanted something perfect?

Besides herself, there were five of them in the living room, seated in a ragged circle, chattering incessantly. Beyond them, at the foot of the staircase and near the home elevator, which had been installed several years ago for Aunt Ethel after she was no longer ambulatory, was the empty wheelchair. Maggie was grateful that it was empty, and that her aunt had been put to bed by the doctor and heavily sedated. Her aunt would have been made more distraught by this scene - last night, with the police, later with the District Attorney, had been bad enough - as Maggie herself had been made distraught seeing Jerry, so troubled and frightened, amidst all those men, returning from the first arraignment fifteen minutes ago.

Carefully Maggie Russell studied the men in the room.

Two were strangers to her, although one bore a name that she had often seen in print and had heard her uncle mention. She had been introduced to them both upon their entrance, but this was the first time she had seen either one in this house. One stranger, the one whose name she had known, was Luther Yerkes. She was fascinated by his weird physique and dress, and by his legend. She sensed, also, his importance to her uncle from the way Frank Griffith, usually brusque and authoritative and overwhelming, now showed deference to the industrialist. She tried to gauge the motives behind Griffith’s deference. Was it because Yerkes was one of Griffith Advertising’s major accounts ? Or was it because a man of such wealth and influence had come forward to assist a business friend in an hour of distress ?

To Maggie, no Pollyanna, Luther Yerkes appeared a philanthropist with his money, but not the type who was also a philanthropist with his time. Yet she had heard him say, not ten minutes ago, that he was determined to do everything he could for Frank

Griffith’s son and everything he could to prosecute the real criminal - namely, that polluted book.

Seated beside Yerkes, speaking not at all but steadily making jottings in a black-covered notebook, was the one who had been introduced as Yerkes’ public-relations adviser. She hadn’t caught his first name - she thought it was Irving or Irvin or maybe Irwin -but she remembered that the last name was Blair. His hair looked like a rummage sale. His voice was a trombone. He was the other stranger, and she could not discern his exact role here.

In the center was one she had seen before from time to time, the family attorney, Ralph Polk, who always came with a Homburg (in California!) and wore bow ties and starched collars and was restrained and archconservative.

Then there was her Uncle Frank, usually a dynamo, now unnaturally quiet, steadily chewing the end of an unlighted cigar. Frank Griffith had cowed her from the first day of her arrival here. It was not merely his success. In the Russell family - her Aunt Ethel was a Russell, and was Maggie’s mother’s sister - it was known that Frank Griffith had been started on the road to success by his bride’s well-invested savings. Her own mother’s savings, Maggie had long ago guessed, had been largely squandered by her father, and what remained had been unsuccessfully invested, and when Maggie had been orphaned the Griffith family had had to contribute to the cost of her mother’s funeral. But Frank Griffith had used his wife’s money well, parlaying that, and his athlete’s fame as an Olympic hero, to rise and to establish the advertising agency that now had headquarters on Madison Avenue and growing branch offices in Chicago and Los Angeles. Although Maggie’s job was mainly to serve as her aunt’s social secretary and companion,she occasionally did some late-night typing at home for her uncle, and she knew that his agency had billings of over eighty million dollars a year, of which seven million dollars came from the Yerkes account.

It was not this part of Frank Griffith that had cowed Maggie from the start. It was his Herculean energy and his incredible self-assurance (he could convince you that he was right even after you knew that he was wrong). In his personal gym, among the framed photographs and tropics attesting to his physical prowess, were sets of barbells, and to these he devoted himself religiously every morning. Then there was his golf and his tennis and his horses at the ranch near Victorville and his private Lear jet plane. And his constant movement: clubs and banquets and social dinners in Los Angeles, as well as constant commuting to Chicago, to New York, to London.

It was enough to make any mere mortal, reflected Maggie, feel as small and inadequate as Toulouse-Lautrec. Physically, anyway.

She watched him now, the freshly trimmed pompadour, the beefy florid yet firm face, the husky body in a lightweight charcoal

flannel suit, the big hands with the gold signet ring dominating one. There he was, the stern, driving taskmaster in his business, the outgoing community-minded citizen in his city, Everyman’s vision of the perfect self-made success, perfect husband, perfect father.

And there he was, humbled, restrained, brought down by an heir who had been aberrant and weak and had jeopardized not only himself but the entire family’s standing. Now Frank Griffith was all concern, and Maggie posed for herself some Socratic questions: Was his concern the result of a paternal confusion about what had gone wrong with an only son so well brought up ? Was his concern pragmatic and concentrated on what this scandal would do to his business and his position in the country ? Or was it, finally, a concern that was fatherly and protective over the fate of his heir?

Maggie knew him well, but not intimately, and never had known him in crisis, so she could not know the answer for sure.

And, finally, there was the one about whom she asked herself no questions.