The Devil Amongst the Lawyers (30 page)

“Yes, you did.”

“I might be able to sell you a couple of pictures out of the family photograph album. Say, fifty bucks apiece?”

Carl looked for a moment at the milling crowd at the counter. They seemed a little too studiously casual, and no one ever looked directly at their booth, which meant that those within earshot were
listening intently to his conversation with the brother of the defendant. He chose his next words carefully. “Look, I know you have a deal with that newspaper syndicate, but it seems to me that you might be making a mistake in that. If those big-time reporters put people’s backs up, the jury just might convict your sister out of spite. Well, not exactly that, but they won’t look too kindly on her for bringing down all this ridicule on their heads. Maybe you should try to soothe their feelings.”

Harley Morton looked amused. “You think we should knock ourselves out trying to please those twelve old farmers in the jury box, do you? Well, I’ll tell you something: they’re not the last word in this business. It’s like any other transaction.” He pointed to his empty plate. “It’s like this meal here. If I hadn’t liked the way it tasted, I would have called the cook over to complain. And if I didn’t get satisfaction there, I’d go to the manager, and then the owner. You just keep on asking for the fellow that outranks the one you’re talking to, and you keep going until you get what you want.”

“So you don’t care if she’s convicted?”

“Well, it doesn’t mean she’s guilty. That’s the way I look at it. Those jurors just give their opinion, don’t they? So, if you don’t like what they come back with, you take the matter elsewhere. Higher courts, and so on. Just keep asking for the next man higher up in the chain.”

“But—but—while you’re doing that, your sister will be in jail.”

“I reckon Erma trusts me to do what’s best for the family, and if sacrifices have to be made—well, I reckon she’s used to that. We Mortons are a tough bunch.”

“But why put her through all that when you could just try to have a quiet trial and an acquittal?”

Harley Morton tapped a forefinger to his temple. “In the big time, you got to think out all the angles. I’m good at that. And if you ever want to get off that one-horse newspaper of yours, you’d better
learn how to play the game, too. They’ll eat you for breakfast if you don’t.”

But what’s the point of dragging it out while your sister goes to prison?
The words stuck in his throat, because, suddenly, looking at the smirk on Harley Morton’s weasel face, Carl thought he already knew the answer to that question.

If Erma Morton got acquitted, she would go back to the rustic obscurity of that little house in a forgotten mountain town, and nothing much would be achieved, because verdict or no verdict, many people would still believe she was guilty. She would live under that shadow until the day she died, perhaps even in poverty, because few men in these parts would be brave enough to marry a murderess, and certainly no school board would allow her to teach their community’s children. The Morton murder case would be a nine days’ wonder, and when the notoriety faded, she would be ruined, and, by association, so would her kinfolks. They would have spent thousands on lawyers, endured a hammering of publicity, only to put the family and Erma herself back to square one, but worse off than before.

It was like a chess game. You had to think a couple of moves ahead.

What if Erma Morton were convicted?

Well, she would go to prison, but as far as her supporters were concerned the case would not be over. She would become a martyr, and the public would not forget her—would not be allowed to forget her. An imprisoned Erma Morton would generate more articles, more petitions, more demands for lectures and public appearances by those who represented her. The photographs from the family album would continue to sell. Perhaps Hollywood would make a movie about her, which would mean more money for her family, hired on by the film company as “consultants.” And in turn, the motion picture would generate more sympathy, more press, more offers. Her fame would grow.

Then, after a few years, when the money-spinner had ceased to
generate great profits, Erma’s fame would be useful in persuading some powerful figure to grant her clemency. She would have so many supporters that her release would be a popular political move.

Carl stared at Harley Morton in horrified fascination. Was the man really smart enough to have worked all that out? Well, not all at once, maybe, and certainly not in advance of the arrest. But presented with the opportunity of his sister’s dark celebrity and the national interest it had generated, Harley had studied all the angles, and he might have figured out that there was no percentage in an acquittal—not for him, anyhow.

It was a chess game with one pawn.

Finally Carl stammered, “You want a conviction.”

With a pitying smile, Harley Morton slid out of the booth and shrugged on his topcoat. “Convicted? Now what kind of brother would I be, if I was a-wanting that?” With the practiced ease of a city dweller, he threaded his way through the lunch crowd and out into the street.

WHEN HE HAD SEEN
his package of photographs safely onto the afternoon train at the Norton depot, Shade Baker headed back to the rented Ford, knowing what he had to do next, but trying to decide how best to go about it. As he stepped into the parking lot he came face to face with Luster Swann, looking doleful in his cloth cap and grubby raincoat. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, and he was carrying his valise.

“I’m off.” He said it simply because Shade was blocking his path, and some exchange seemed to be called for.

Shade stared at him, wondering if all the work he had just done on the trial photos had been a waste of time. “Is the trial over, Swann?”

Swann took a deep drag on his cigarette and answered on a
cloud of exhaled smoke. “No. I’m just fed up with being here. That other town was more my style.”

“Abingdon?”

“That’s it. I’m going to hole up there.”

“But how can you cover the trial from there?”

“As easy as here. They won’t let me talk to the girl anyhow. And now I’ve had a look at them, seen the town, so I don’t need to be here, do I?”

“You’re going back to the city?”

“Nope. I told you. Abingdon. The paper wants me on location, so I’ll stay here in ‘them thar hills,’ all right. I fixed it up with one of the locals so I can telephone them every night for the dirt.”

Shade shook his head, not even knowing where to begin to point out the flaws in this plan. “But what if you get it wrong, Swann?”

Luster Swann smiled. As he threw down the stub of his cigarette and ground it into the dirt, he said, “Compared to what?”

WHEN SWANN HAD DISAPPEARED
into the train station, Shade Baker started the Ford and headed out to take pictures. Gray clouds were hanging low over the valley, obscuring the hills beyond. It wasn’t raining, but a sharp wind cut through the narrow streets of Norton, sending dead leaves skittering across the road in his path. An overcast day was good for photography; it softened the shadows. He didn’t mind the weather, as long as it didn’t start snowing or come a cloudburst, but today was too cold. If he spent much time in this bitter wind, he’d be sick.

He didn’t relish the thought of having to spend the afternoon trudging around in the cold, looking for strangers to interview. If he got sick, they wouldn’t let him go home. He would have to keep doing his job, despite the inevitable chills, fever, and the deep chest cough that would rattle his teeth. He dreaded illness, not for the
discomfort, but for the implications. In every broken cough he heard his father’s voice. It wasn’t worth risking that misery just to talk to a few random locals, but he would give it a couple of hours.

Once out of the gravel parking lot, he decided to take a look at the little town of Norton. He might get lucky and find a hovel full of poor folks close to the depot. If not, he could spend the three minutes required for a driving tour of the town contemplating his next move.

Norton had not been what he expected to find in a rural mountain area. Even the modest frame and brick homes were neat and unremarkable. You could find their counterparts in any small town. They were all a sight better than the weathering wooden prairie house he had grown up in.

Farther along he found streets of stately Edwardian houses, set back on well-tended lawns, and framed by ancient chestnut trees, bare now with the coming of winter. He supposed that the local gentry and the managers of area mining operations made their homes here, and perhaps some of the grander mansions were second homes for the mine owners themselves.

If a mild sunny day ever coincided with some of his free time, Shade thought he’d like to come back here and photograph some of the grander houses. Not that the newspaper would ever run those photos, of course. Images of such prosperous dwellings would not jibe with the impression the reporters intended to convey about Virginia mountain towns. These homes would not do. Instead, they would send him out to find the most pitiful, ramshackle cabin in the area, even if he had to cover every dirt road from the deepest cove to the craggiest mountain to find it. And the newspaper would run just that one photograph of the shack, and none of the elegant mansions in town. No use confusing the salt-of-the-earth newspaper readers with mixed impressions about the local population around here. You had to tell them what to think.

Newspapers were printed in black and white in more ways than one.

It did not occur to Shade to refuse the photography assignment, or to question the ethics of it. This was his job, and, with times as hard as they were, jobs were hard to come by. If he objected to the work, there would be forty fellows ready to step in and take his place before the day was out. Of course he would find them a shack. He did as he was told. What did it matter anyhow, in the long run? This whole story was just a fairy tale to amuse the readers until the novelty wore off and they moved on to something else. Last year it had been the people living on Bruno Hauptmann’s street who had spun stories for the world about their sinister neighbor—behavior which, of course, they had noticed only after he had been arrested. Now that Hauptmann was weeks away from execution in New Jersey, it was briefly Erma Morton’s turn to writhe in the national spotlight. By April her story would be eclipsed by the spate of articles about Hauptmann’s last visitors, Hauptmann’s last meal, Hauptmann’s love letters to his wife . . . Whatever the press thought Mr. and Mrs. America wanted to read.

He sighed and turned his back on a castellated stone house. There was no use seeking man-on-the-street opinions there. When he questioned the locals, he also had to take their photographs, and he knew that the inhabitants of those fine homes wouldn’t fit the bill. Shade Baker went off in search of rustics.

HENRY JERNIGAN LOOKED WITHOUT FAVOR
at his shriveled pork chop with stringy green beans slopped over it and the runny mashed potatoes. It had been a long, monotonous morning, and he was tired. In his present mood even lunch at 21 might not suit his palate. He shouldn’t have decided to eat alone. A lively conversation with Rose would have been a welcome distraction from the cuisine. There
were people dining at nearby tables, but he didn’t feel up to the task of cultivating strangers just for the sake of company while he dined. It might be difficult to get rid of them later. Some people see journalists as a God-given opportunity to get some family curiosity—Uncle Harry’s Spanish-American war story, Cousin Matilda’s hat pin collection—into print so that the whole world can marvel over it. They never seemed to realize how commonplace such marvels are.

In his younger days, he had been more tolerant of strangers, but back then he had not been a journalist. And perhaps back then he saw people as new and interesting. Now he had met enough of them to know that meeting new people was mostly a matter of classification. He could do it almost without thinking, but he took no pleasure in it. He hadn’t seen enough of Erma Morton yet to classify her to his own satisfaction, but once she testified in court, he knew he would be able to work it out.

Sometimes, though, he missed that youthful era when for him the world was new. Perhaps one of the charms of Japan had been that the culture there was so different from his own that nothing about people was obvious to him. At first he could not even spot the social classes or the stereotypes, and so he was interested in everyone, because being ignorant of the patterns of society made him feel as ignorant as not knowing the language.

Ishi had been his cultural muse, a dark-eyed, solemn child of nine, but in a land of elfin people, she would be no one’s idea of a fairy princess. She was small, sturdy, and scholarly, with a pale owlish face that peered out from behind huge black-framed spectacles, and a black cropped curtain of hair that owed nothing to style or artifice. She blinked past the fringe that covered her forehead like a hedgehog peering out from under a leaf.