Allegiance (19 page)

“And my access to the Court?”

“That's more delicate.” Hoover pushes his chair back and stands. “Come here, Mr. Harrison.”

I walk to the desk. When I reach his side, I am surprised to realize that I have a good four inches on him. He looked taller in the papers. Perhaps it was that Tolson, trailing a few feet behind, was always on a lower step as they ascended the stairs. But he seemed taller from the couch, too. For the first time I realize that his desk is elevated, and the chair also. “Are you going to give me a badge?”

“Not quite, Mr. Harrison.” He opens the desk drawer and retrieves a small box. There is a brush, a tray of powder, clear tape, and paper. It looks like a makeup kit, and for a moment I wonder how a disguise could fit into Hoover's plans. Then I understand. “Lifting prints is not difficult,” Hoover says, opening the box. “Men are oilier creatures than you might think, even such as you and I. It is always on our hands. The human stain.” He passes the brush across the tray. “Quite a break for law enforcement. You take the appropriate powder—dark for a light surface, light for a dark one—and spread a bit about. A hard surface, of course; that's the only one that will hold a print.” He dabs the coffee mug on his desk. “You brush it gently until you see the pattern emerge, like this. Lift it off with clear tape, then transfer
it to one of these cards.” He presses the tape onto the mug, then the paper. A powdery design remains. “My thumb, it looks like. Try it at home a few times. And then perhaps see what you can turn up in Murphy's chambers. What do you say?”

I am silent a moment, considering. It is possible; I am sure of that. Once you are inside the Justices' part of the Court, there is little security. Only the marshals who smile and greet me by name. I am one of the trusted ones, the angels who can walk heaven unmolested. What Hoover asks is a betrayal of that trust, of course, but there has been a greater one, and I seek to cure it.

“Okay.” I nod. “I'll do it.”

Hoover smiles, looking beyond me. “You see, Clyde? Didn't I tell you he'd cooperate?”

Tolson has been silent, blending sphinxlike into the wall, but now he comes briefly to life. “Yes, Director.”

Hoover pushes the box across the desk to me, along with the paper containing his thumbprint. “A souvenir for you,” he says. “And one more thing. You have my prints now. And I must have yours.”

“What?”

He removes an inkpad and a card from the desk drawer. “I am going to take your fingerprints. They will undoubtedly be in Murphy's chambers. We must be able to eliminate you. Your hands, please.”

I hold them out, first the right and then the left. One by one Hoover takes my fingers in his soft hands, rolls them over the inkpad, and presses them into labeled boxes on the card. As he leans over his work I see a roll of fat above his collar at the back of his neck. From the wall, Tolson watches with an intensity that is almost angry. Looking at him, I am no longer so confident I could take him one-on-one.

“There,” says Hoover, straightening. “Now you're mine.” He licks his lips. “If they'd let me do all the clerks we'd know more. Do you have any questions?”

“No,” I say. “Well, maybe one.”

“What is it?”

“Have you been following me?”

The expression of surprise on Hoover's face appears genuine. He is the
director of the FBI, but I do not think he is much of an actor. “No. Why would we do that?”

“I don't know,” I say. “But someone was.”

Hoover's eyes flit to Tolson. “Nobody today, Mr. Hoover. Not when we got him.”

“Did you notice anything today?” Hoover asks me.

“No,” I admit. “Not for a while now. But before.”

Hoover gives a barely perceptible nod. “We'll look into it, Mr. Hoover,” says Tolson.

“Very well,” says Hoover. “Thank you, Mr. Harrison. For your time and your assistance. Your country is grateful.”

For a moment I think Tolson is going to seize my arm again as we leave Hoover's office, but he does not. He simply walks me out to the hallway and stops.

“Can I go now?” I ask.

“The washroom first,” says Tolson.

“What?”

“Your hands,” he says. “You will want to clean them.”

I AM LATE
back from lunch, and Black has already gone. He has placed a note on my desk.
You may be scared of my forehand, but you can't hide forever
. I tuck it inside the drawer, feeling a little rush of affection. We have played more tennis these past days, and I know if I show up later this evening there will be a steak waiting.

Black has also left on my desk Justice Jackson's draft of a majority opinion in the Pledge of Allegiance case. I should read it; I should jot down my thoughts and take them across the river to Black's house tonight. I should eat my steak and drink a beer and listen to Black talk about the old times in Birmingham. But I have other tasks today.

The Justices usually leave the main door to their chambers open, and Murphy is no exception. Inside there is one room for the clerk and one for the secretary, then the door to the Justice's office. Rose clucks sympathetically when she sees me. “I need a book,” I say.

“Of course.”

I walk to Gressman's desk. There is no way to start dusting for prints now; I could be interrupted at any moment. Instead I open the top drawer and take the door key he kept there. I slip it into my pocket and shake my head sadly at Rose on the way out. “No luck.” Then I go back to Black's chambers and wait.

At six I decide that I may as well make some use of this time, and I start reading the draft opinion in the pledge case. Jackson is a stylist, Black has
told me, and the draft proves that true. The government cannot compel citizens to express belief, he writes.
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess, by word or act, their faith therein. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

They are pretty words, but there is a real graveyard in my thoughts and fine phrases cannot compete. I put the pages down and watch the light fade out the window. I practice with Hoover's fingerprint kit. The brush, the powder, the tape and paper. At seven I go out and buy dinner, half a roast chicken. Back to Black's chambers, back to waiting. At ten, I think that the last clerk has left. I take out the box again. There is nothing wrong in what I am doing—indeed, it is surely the right thing. And yet I feel a twist within me as I slide it into my pocket, and as I walk down the hall the bright faces of the marshals light a fire of shame.

They are on the night rotation, only a few posted in the corridors, a few more walking rounds. No one is standing near Murphy's chambers. The sergeant gives me a sympathetic smile as he passes on his patrol. I nod my head, silent agreement with his unspoken comment: yes, we're both working late tonight. Then he turns the corner and I fit the key into the lock, slip inside, and shut the door behind me.

I stand motionless for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the dark. I know the layout, of course, but there are unfamiliar piles of books and papers about, and I do not want to betray my presence by stumbling over them. After a minute I walk carefully to Gressman's desk and turn on the lamp. I sit down in his chair, rest my hands on the edge, and take a deep breath.

Some of the papers are new cert petitions, carefully stacked and bound, never to be opened. Murphy is not reading the certs himself; he has started borrowing memos, often mine. The books are case reporters, the records of the Court's decisions. And then there are folders, with the dates of recent terms. I open the closest one. It is filled with Murphy's conference notes, his account of the Justices' meetings, their decisions on the merits of the cases, and also whether to grant or deny the cert petitions. Gressman wasn't just working on
Hirabayashi
these past weeks, I realize. He was spending those
late hours trying to figure out who was manipulating the Court. Helping me again, the charity that might have cost his life.

I open the top drawer. It is stuffed with papers, organized according to no discernible pattern. Gene believed that the materials for his current, most recent, and next upcoming project should all be within arm's reach; that was all. I sift through the layers. Here is draft after draft of the Murphy concurrence, comments written in the Justice's hand. Here are copies of Stone's opinion, with Gressman's savage criticisms in the margin. Letters from Douglas, Rutledge, Frankfurter, newspaper clippings describing the evacuation. And some handwritten sheets that have nothing but names.

I look more closely. There are names of cases from past years, linked by arrows to names of justices, linked in turn to other names, which must be clerks. Some of them I recognize; they are the replacements that fill my chart. Then, radiating arrows like the beams of the sun, is one name written in red.

Felix Frankfurter
.

For a minute, at least, I puzzle over the papers. The cases are unfamiliar; so are some of the clerks. Sometimes all nine justices' names appear next to a case, sometimes as few as one. I can't put it into words, but I understand the structure he is diagramming, somewhere in the back of my mind. If I wait another minute it will come. The justices must be ones who voted together, the clerks the ones who worked for those justices. The arrows some sort of connection to Frankfurter. But the cases . . . why did he choose these ones? It is like struggling for a word, knowing its shape, its meaning, everything but the precise arrangement of letters. In another minute, I think, it will come. But when I catch my breath and freeze in the chair, muscles clenching tight, it is not inspiration that grips me. It is the sound of footsteps in the hall.

The sergeant on patrol has passed by before, I am sure, his regular tread not even registering. I notice these footsteps because they stop. Someone has paused in the corridor; someone is standing outside the chambers door. I wonder whether the light from the desk lamp is visible through the cracks; I am about to turn it off before I realize that this will just make things worse. I sit, holding my breath.

The footsteps start again. Shoes scuff on the carpet. They fade away, then
come back faster. The doorknob rattles. Did the door lock behind me? It did; the knob jiggles but does not turn. Again the footsteps move away.

I need to work quickly. I can't take Murphy's conference notes; they would be missed. But I collect all that I can find of Gressman's handwritten pages. Then I take out the fingerprint kit. There are plenty of hard surfaces. I try some of the handles of the drawers. Prints come up easily, some smudged but many recognizably distinct. I transfer them to a pad, noting the location from which I took them.

The collection of tangible evidence is satisfying. In a burst of inspiration, I open the bottom left drawer to find Gene's coffee stash. If he was poisoned, it seems the most likely means. The can is empty, which itself strikes me as odd, but when I dust it, prints come up on the lid and the sides. I transfer them to the pad. Somewhere here may be the trace of a murderer's hand.

But of course most of them are his. I look at the patterns I have lifted, unique and irreplaceable, and the thought that there will never be another almost brings me to tears. Gene's phonograph is gone, and his jazz records, and his books. A man's life may be summed up in many ways, but surely this is one of the saddest, a filigree of oil and dust raised from an empty desk. I sit in the desk chair, overwhelmed with emotion. And I hear footsteps coming back down the hall.

Again, it is not the regular tread of the sergeant. Who is here this late? Then I know. I hear more than footsteps; there is whistling. A key turns in the lock, and a marshal's face appears. Behind him is Justice Felix Frankfurter.

The marshal flips on the overhead light. I am caught; there is nothing to do. I sit at the desk, blinking at them. The marshal frowns in surprise when he sees me, but Frankfurter seems to relax. With a touch and a whisper he dismisses the marshal and walks toward me, holding me in his gaze.

At the edge of the desk he stops. I should stand, of course, but I find I cannot even move. My whole body tingles with shock. For a long moment there is silence. “Well, Cash,” Frankfurter says, and pauses as if in thought. “I find you working late again.”

“Yes.”

“But not in your own chambers.”

“No.”

He looks at me without comment. I decide that confidence is my best play. “I was looking for a book I lent Gene,” I say. “I'm annotating Jackson's Pledge of Allegiance opinion for Justice Black.”

“Ah,” says Frankfurter. He raises his eyebrows. “Aristotle's
Rhetoric
, perhaps.”

“What?”

“Jackson uses stylistic felicity to cloud the issues. It is a bad habit. Long years of observation of the work of this Court before I came down here have sensitized me against needlessly vague and rhetorical phrases. I am writing a dissent, you know. That is what keeps me here tonight.”

I nod, bemused by the digression.

“So,” Frankfurter continues. “Did you find it?”

“What?”

“Your book.”

I wince. If that was a trap, he has caught me out. “No,” I say. “I'm afraid the family seems to have taken it. They went so fast.”

Frankfurter nods. “The customs of a desert people,” he says. “There would be more time to mourn you.” It takes me a moment to understand the first part of his statement, and by the time the second registers he has already moved on. “But I do not think that is why you are here.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is understandable,” he says. “That late at night your thoughts would turn to this room. I think you miss your friend.”