Death Sentence (17 page)

“You keep saying you want to see a program. I never knew you to be a television addict.”

“It's the Cavender interview. He's going to be grilling Vic Mastro. I want to see what our famous cop has to say.”

“What time does it begin?”

“Nine.”

“Then there's plenty of time. Stop looking at your watch every half minute.”

Around the house a frigid gale shook the windows. A wood fire burned on the hearth. Chisum measured out cognac and passed the goblets around; then he led the way into his parlor and seated Irene in an easy chair facing the television set. It was an antique console, a bulky block of walnut with a small screen set into it and a pair of tarnished rabbit ears perched on top.

Irene made a gesture toward Paul, lifting her glass an inch; he warmed to her private signals—he nodded and smiled before he tasted the brandy.

Chisum eased himself slowly into a wooden rocker. “How many did you have to turn loose this week?”

She was very dry: “It was a short week. We only inflicted half the usual dose on the public.”

“Something's got your dander up, my dear.”

“Gehler sentenced one of my prosecutions to a six-months suspended. The man's got an incredible record—he's been up the river as many times as an anxious salmon, and this was an open-and-shut burglary. Red handed. But Gehler let him off with an SS.”

“It's one of the things we've got to do, isn't it?” Chisum said. “Take the discretionary power to set sentences out of the hands of the judges. It's no good having one judge who regards robberies by poor people as legitimate readjustments of economic inequities, while another judge treats every crime as a grave threat to the stability of the society. To the one, any sentence is too heavy; to the other, most sentences are too light. How can we expect anything like ‘equal justice for all' under those circumstances?”

The fire made a good smell. Paul relaxed on the leather couch: it was old leather, deep red gone almost black, the crow's-feet of age creased into it. An office couch—likely it had come out of the professor's law office when he'd retired. Chisum had run a vigorous criminal practice, he'd learned, before turning to writing and teaching. He'd been a prominent defense attorney for several years. Paul had been keenly surprised by that revelation. Now Chisum glanced at him and resumed the subject:

“You're still baffled, aren't you.”

“I confess I am. You don't make noises like a civil libertarian.”

“I'm not. I believe in discipline. It's the mortar that holds society together. Without discipline there's chaos.” He smiled gently at Irene. “There was a time when this young lady thought me a fascist.”

Paul said, “How do you reconcile that with your record as a criminal lawyer?”

“Easily. I believe that for all its grievous faults, there's no better juridical system than the adversary process where both sides are allowed to present their cases with the greatest vigor. There are dangers in it—chiefly the danger that the better of the two lawyers may win the case regardless of its justice—but in spite of those risks, I don't know of any system in all history that's proved better. If a fact is in dispute, you can only arrive at the truth by a vigorous examination of both sides of the story. That's what our system was designed to do, and when it works properly it's a splendid example of human achievement.”

“When it works properly,” Irene echoed, not without sarcasm.

“Every case brought before a criminal court deserves an intense prosecution,” Chisum said. “But it also deserves the best possible defense. Defense attorneys, after all, are officers of the court, the same as prosecutors and judges. They're all components of one system, and the purpose of that system is to arrive at the truth of each case. If you don't have first-rate defense lawyers you may as well not have a trial at all.”

“Forgive me if I'm impertinent,” Paul said, “but that sounds to me a lot like the kind of rationalization you hear from big-time shysters when they try to explain away the fact that they're on some mobster's payroll.”

“The argument's a valid one, no matter who uses it in his own defense,” Chisum said. “It breaks down, of course, in cases where the mobster's lawyer is himself a member of the mob and a party to its illegal acts. That kind of syndicate mouthpiece is common enough, I'm afraid, but his existence shouldn't be used to try and discredit the whole fraternity.”

The old man began to move back and forth in the rocker. “Adversary law is workable, we've proved that. The trouble today is that it doesn't apply in too many cases. The system to which we lawyers pledge our allegiance has become a shabby fiction. Most cases are decided by plea-bargaining, not by any genuine attempt to arrive at the truth. The guilty benefit while the innocent suffer, because a man who's truly innocent is less likely to be willing to plead guilty to a reduced charge, while a guilty man is eager to do so. No, the problem we have in our courts isn't the influence of defense lawyers. It's the wholesale breakdown of the adversary system. What we need is a restoration of the adversary process, not a further erosion of it.”

“That means an enormous expansion of the system,” Paul said. “You'd have to quadruple the number of courts and judges just to begin carrying the load. I'd like to see it happen, but who's going to pay for it?”

“We could afford it,” Chisum said. “That's one of the points I'm trying to make in my book. Actually we'd save money, in the long run.”

“How?”

“By reducing the cost society pays for crime. If we can restore our legal structure to the point where it makes the risks of criminal behavior much greater, we'll see a big reduction in crime. In the long run we should be able to reduce the size of the legal bureaucracy, but even before that happens we'll save enormous sums simply by the fact that fewer crimes will be committed and less money will be lost. Not to mention the reduction in human suffering. To build the legal and penal structure up to the necessary size will require a considerable initial outlay of money, but that expense will be recouped very quickly.”

“Then what prevents us from doing it?”

“Politics, of course.”

Irene shot bolt upright in her chair. “My program!” She rushed across to the console. “How do you turn this damn thing on?”

“The left-hand knob. No, the one below the screen on the left…”

“I've got it.”

“Your watch is fast, my dear. It's not nine yet.”

Paul heard a faint high-pitched whistle; at first he thought his ears were ringing. A dot of light appeared in the center of the screen; it became a tiny picture which slowly expanded into a wavering grey image of a newscaster speaking into the camera, reading his lines off a TelePrompter above the lens. The image lacked stability and the center of the newsman's face kept slipping out to one side, distorting him like a funny-mirror in an amusement park. Gradually the sound system warmed up and the announcer's voice became audible in mid-sentence:

“… up again for the month of November, according to figures released today in Washington. Wholesale prices increased another one and a half per cent, raising the index to thirteen percentage points above where it was a year ago at the same time. And finally, in local news, there was tragedy tonight in a West Side bakery when police responded to an alarm and found the owner and two saleswomen shot to death and a third saleswoman shot and wounded. According to the injured woman, who is listed in satisfactory condition in County Hospital, two armed men entered the bakery this afternoon and allegedly demanded all the money in the place. The owner of the bakery, Charles Liddell, allegedly drew a pistol from his belt and fired a shot at the intruders. The two robbers then allegedly opened fire at everything that moved, killing Liddell and two of his three employees, and injuring Mrs. Deborah Weinberg with two bullets in the hip and chest. The robbery suspects then fled on foot, and no money was taken. Mrs. Weinberg is reported as saying that Mr. Liddell had started carrying the pistol in his belt after hearing about the Chicago vigilante on radio news. And now, tonight's forecast calls for snow continuing into morning with possible accumulations of up to six inches…”

Paul sat frozen in his seat staring at the screen. He felt prickles of sweat burst out on his forehead. When he looked down at the goblet in his hand he saw that his knuckles were white: he had all but crushed the glass.

To cover the shock he lifted the glass to his lips. His hand shook. He drank quickly and put the goblet down.

“And now stay tuned as Channel Eleven presents the Miles Cavender Interview. Mr. Cavender's guest tonight will be Chicago Police Captain Victor Mastro, chief of homicide detectives and commander of the special squad detailed to investigate the Chicago vigilante.”

Paul looked around cautiously. Irene was watching the screen. He brought Chisum into focus. The old man looked away quickly, reaching for his cognac; but Paul was certain Chisum had been staring at him.

The program came on with a burst of electronic music and an announcement that the broadcast was made possible by a grant from an oil company. The moderator appeared on the screen, his face wavering from side to side as the weak tube groped for resolution; Paul leaned back, slid down on the couch until his head rested against its back; he forced himself to pay attention.

Mastro was a thin man with dark striking features. His glistening black hair was combed smoothly back over the small ears. He wore a police uniform with decorations on the blouse, although in the newspaper photos he'd been wearing civilian clothes. Mastro was smiling slightly as he listened to Miles Cavender's introduction; he didn't seem unnerved, there was no indication of stage fright.

“… has been with the Chicago force for sixteen years, and before that was an officer with a Military Police detachment of the U.S. Army. He has received degrees in criminology and sociology from the University of Chicago, and was promoted to the rank of captain two years ago. There's talk around City Hall of a pending promotion for Victor Mastro to deputy superintendent. Do you have any comment to offer on that speculation, Captain?”

“I'd rather not. I've had no official indications from the department.” Mastro's voice was smooth and confident, surprisingly deep for such a small man. He had an actor's resonance.

“One would assume,” Cavender said with the insinuation of overprecise enunciation, “that such a promotion might be contingent on the outcome of the vigilante case. Is that possible, Captain?”

“Sure. We're like any organization—promotions come on the basis of incentives and performance.”

“I appreciate your candor.” Cavender had a slightly effeminate voice. He didn't leer but he was the prying sort of interviewer Paul disliked intensely: subtle courtesy masking hostility.

“Captain, we're here to talk about the vigilante. First, of course, there's the question that's been spoken a good many times lately. Is the vigilante real—or is the whole thing a myth that's been cooked up by City Hall in a desperate effort to stave off the continuing increase in the Chicago crime rate?”

Mastro's eyes flashed briefly but his answer was controlled and unhurried. “It's not a phony. We didn't create the vigilante. He's real, he's out there and he's using his guns. He shot two boys on the South Side this afternoon.”

“What were the boys doing?”

“Apparently they may have been molesting two small girls who were on their way home from school.”

“‘Apparently.'…‘May have been.' Aren't you sure?”

“We've talked to the little girls, and we've got the two boys in custody in the hospital.”

“Then neither of them was killed by the vigilante. Isn't that a bit unusual?”

“These are the first victims who haven't been shot dead, yes.”

“Can you account for it?”

“Not yet. It's possible he fired from a moving car. That may have thrown his aim off.”

“How sure are you that this is the same so-called vigilante who's been blamed for the other killings?”

“The bullets appear to have come from the same revolver that was used in most of the other cases.”

“You say ‘most of the other cases.' Isn't it likely there are more than one of them?”

“Revolvers or vigilantes?”

Cavender smiled a bit. “Vigilantes, Captain.”

“We know for sure that there is one vigilante. There may be a second one, but that hasn't been established beyond doubt.”

“But the use in different cases of two admittedly distinct handguns …”

“He could own two guns, you know. Particularly today's case suggests that it's the same man. He used the thirty-eight revolver today, but he fired from his car, and that's the same pattern that's been established in two or three other cases where he's used the forty-five automatic.”

“I see. Then you're pressing your investigation on the assumption that you're looking for a single culprit.”

“We haven't closed any doors.”

Cavender shifted in his chair; it was an indication he wanted to change to another angle of attack. “Captain, the
modus operandi
of the Chicago vigilante, whether one man or two men or an entire society of men, seems to be quite simple, in a sense. That is, he simply finds a criminal in the act of committing a crime, and shoots the criminal dead in his tracks. Would you agree that's a fair summary of his pattern?”

“It's what the evidence suggests.”

“Yes. Well doesn't it seem curious to you that this vigilante seems to have very little trouble locating these people?”

“I'm not sure I understand your question.”

“What I'm saying, Captain, is that the vigilante seems to find it very easy to find out who is going to commit a crime, and when and where the crime will take place. Then all the vigilante has to do is be at the right place at the right time. Now I suppose you must have devoted some part of your investigation to inquiring into that question, haven't you?”