Allegiance (20 page)

“I do,” I say. Relief swells like a tide. He is letting me off easy. But why should I be feeling guilty? He is the one Hoover suspects; his is the name written in red. As the fear fades, I am discovering things other than relief. Anger, even hate.

“There may be those who come for other reasons,” Frankfurter continues. “You know that Hoover's men have been sniffing around. If you see anyone you do not recognize, you should alert the marshals.”

I hesitate. I am not entirely sure that Frankfurter has not just threatened my life, and it might be unwise to press him further. But it seems a natural question for anyone to ask. “But Justice, why shouldn't the FBI be allowed to investigate?”

“Investigate,” says Frankfurter. “There would be no matter if they wished to investigate. But all Hoover wants is to gather information to put in a file for his own use. When he heard that something had happened in Murphy's chambers I'm sure he salivated at the opportunity. He would love to get something on Frank.”

“What could he get on Justice Murphy?”

Frankfurter frowns at me. “I did not mean to suggest Murphy in particular. But there is always something. Can you say you have no secrets?”

I realize that the fingerprint kit is still in my hand and slide it into my pocket under the desk. “No, Justice,” I say.

“Anyway,” Frankfurter says. “There is nothing to investigate. It is a tragedy. But natural causes, the examiners agree.”

This is what I expected him to say, and I have thought about how it might afford an opening. “That almost makes it worse, I think. The feeling that nothing was gained with the sacrifice. Do you feel that way? Or do you think there might have been some purpose behind it?” I pause and swallow, intending to suggest deep sorrow. It is harder than I expect; I am choking on rage. “It would be easier,” I say, “if I thought we'd gained something from the loss.”

Frankfurter looks at me oddly for a moment. Then his face clears. “God's purpose perhaps, but not man's. I am afraid all I can draw from it is the admonition to enjoy the time we have. It is as Holmes said.” He reaches across the desk. I expect him to grip my arm, or pat my shoulder, but instead he tugs my earlobe with his fingers. I look at him, baffled, still trying to hide my anger. “On his 90th birthday,” Frankfurter continues. He smiles faintly. “Death plucks my ear and says ‘Live, for I am coming.' ” He stands before me a moment longer, the smile draining from his face. Then he leaves.

I sit there in the empty room with my dead friend's fingerprints in my pocket. And I wonder, for the second time, whether Felix Frankfurter has just threatened my life.

• • • • 

Black is in and out of chambers the next morning. Stone is calling more conferences, something to do with the Pledge of Allegiance case. Black gives me a hard look as he leaves. “You read that Jackson draft yet?”

“Today,” I say. “I promise.”

“I expect to see you tonight.”

I nod. “Yes, Judge.”

I use my lunch hour to make the walk to Main Justice.

“I'm not getting anything from Frankfurter,” I tell Tolson. “But I collected some prints.”

He inspects the sheets of paper, the strips of tape. “Well done, Mr. Harrison. You've a bit of the agent in you, after all.”

I do not much like Tolson, but despite myself I feel a flicker of pride at his words. “I'm sure they're mostly his, though.”

“Most of them are, of course. But we managed to take his prints at the medical examiner's office. We can exclude him. And if there are foreign prints, we can try to match them.”

“Against what?”

“Our files. Mr. Hoover has hundreds of thousands of prints on file.”

“Whose?”

“Criminals,” says Tolson. “People of interest. Subversives, when we can get them. You.” He smiles. “But we will exclude you as well. We will compare any foreign prints to our registry. It is a time-consuming process, but we will let you know if anything results.”

“And what should I do in the meantime?”

“Talk to Frankfurter if you want. It might help. But Mr. Harrison?”

“What?”

“Try not to get in the way of the real agents.”

No, I think as I start the walk back, I do not much like Clyde Tolson.

• • • • 

Later that afternoon I take a bus to Black's house. “Virginia,” the driver announces as we cross the river. “Coloreds to the back.” There is little rearrangement; the passengers have anticipated the shift. We do not do that in Philadelphia, I think. There is something more to the city than the Assembly, than Fish House Punch and jokes about the Scrapples eating biddle. Of course, they do not do it in Washington, either. Vaguely I remember reading something about a sit-in by Howard students in the morning paper.

“Jackson can turn a phrase,” Black says about the opinion. “
Any fixed star in our constitutional constellation.
People will be quoting that long after we're dead.” A flicker across his face; he regrets the choice of words. “A hundred years from now,” he says. Another flicker, a look at me. “So we don't need to worry about it today. Come on. The sun'll be setting soon. Let's swing a racquet.”

Exercise and food distract me. Josephine is with us at dinner, motherly in her attentions. I feel closer to her now; we are both haunted by absent young men. I understand—oh, how I understand—the pain of being unable to help, and I am glad I can give her someone to care for. “No reason to go home unless you want to,” says Black. “I reckon that suit's got another day in it.”

Sterling's room has not aged since he left for college. It holds a seventeen-year-old's life, and the fascinations of 1939. His bed is slightly short for me. It might not fit him either now, I suppose, nor would the room be appropriate for an Army captain. But I can understand why Josephine preserves it, the chrysalis that held a younger form. To step inside is to see that vanished boy, and I am in a mood to retrieve the irretrievable.

Seventeen-year-old Sterling was a jazz fan, like Gene, and after Black and Josephine have gone to bed I put on one of his Billie Holiday records. I turn the volume down low and lie on the floor with my head next to the turntable, looking at the ceiling. I lie there and I remember the music drifting out of Murphy's chambers and Gene bobbing his dark head, lamplight winking off his glasses. Billie's voice is cool and melancholy, teardrops you'd take for diamonds till they wet your hands.
No, no,
she says,
they can't take that away from me.
Frankfurter was wrong, I think. There is plenty of time to mourn.

THE LAST WEEKS
of the term crawl toward their conclusion. I look at Gressman's diagrams from time to time, but their sense still eludes me. I do not speak to Haynes, or any of the clerks. Frankfurter continues to engage me in conversation, gripping my arm when we pass in the halls. He tells me he is still staying up past midnight writing his dissent in the Pledge of Allegiance case.

“You look as though more than that weighs on your mind, Justice.” I am fishing, of course, but it is true. Frankfurter has a haunted look. It is afternoon, and the sun streams through the windows in shafts of rich gold, but on his face there lingers, like a memory, the wan light of early morning, of moonglow and streetlamp.

Frankfurter sighs and lets his head droop. With one hand he braces himself against the wall. “Kermit Roosevelt is dead,” he says. “You will have the news in a few days. The second of T.R.'s sons fallen in war. I fear not the last. I knew the Colonel. I thrilled to his speeches; I was ready to quit my job with Taft to go Bull Moosing. T.R. himself talked me out of it. You were not yet born, of course; you cannot understand the excitement we felt. The older people thought it was just rhetoric, but we who were young felt a real moral urgency. We sensed that this was something new.”

Frankfurter is gathering momentum; I can tell he is on the verge of going airborne, into anecdote. But I have heard this story already.
We stand at
Armageddon and we battle for the Lord.
I weigh my options and decide to interrupt. “He died in war, at least,” I say. I doubt I will do any better this time, but there is no harm in trying. “There was a purpose to it.”

Something in my words seems to pain Frankfurter, and when he speaks his voice is cold and slow. “It was his heart.”

“Oh,” I say. I am determined to forge ahead. “Like Gene Gressman.” My single-mindedness must arouse his suspicions, I think, but am I not entitled to the obsessions of grief?

“Very much so,” says Frankfurter. His tone is still cold, but now there is an edge to his voice. Then he looks up, and it is gone. “Nothing ages a man like the death of a friend. I am old now, and we have a different Roosevelt in the White House. Perhaps even a better man. He has, of course, intellectual limitations. But no defect of character I wished the President of the United States did not have.” The words gather speed. Talking seems to burn off Frankfurter's melancholy. “Most families peter out, even the Adamses, but they are going strong. And here we are on his Court, and I must say we are making a mess of things.”

“How's that, Justice?” I ask, and he rounds on me severely.

“How's that? When a priest enters a monastery, he must leave all worldly desires behind him. And this Court has no excuse for being, unless it's a monastery. But your Justice does not think so. Really, what is the difference between Hugo Black and Louis XIV, who said ‘I am the law'? Hugo does not believe in Law; he thinks it is nothing more than manipulation of language in support of a predetermined result.” He pauses. “I give in to the temptation to speak openly with friends because I cannot speak to the outside world. I cannot speak for myself. As judge I have become an oracle; I can speak only for the law.” He grasps me—not, as usual, by the arm, but by the hand. Something beseeching is in his face. “But you can speak for me. You can tell them how I love this country, how I love Roosevelt.”

• • • • 

At Main Justice, the FBI technicians are working. “A couple of foreign prints, yes,” says Tolson.

“From the coffee can?”

There is a moment of silence over the telephone line. “Yes. Some of them.”

“I knew it,” I say. “You should work on those first.”

“We have it in hand, Mr. Harrison. And what of your project? Have you made any further progress?”

“No.” More silence. Tolson and I have not found much to chat about. And even if I had the inclination, I am not sure how to describe what I have been getting from Frankfurter. He passes on “in confidence” what he tells me are the opinions of other Justices, which he has clearly invented to flatter himself; he wanders off into irrelevant stories about Harvard and his childhood . . . it must all add up to something, but I cannot figure out what. “I'm only here a few more days,” I say. “I'm going to push him a little harder. See what happens.”

“I leave it to your judgment.”

• • • • 

I find Frankfurter in his chambers, revising a document in longhand. He seems pleased to see me. “Here, Cash,” he says, clearing his throat. “Listen to this.” As I stand before his desk, he reads me his dissent in the Pledge of Allegiance case. But I cannot listen. The thought that he may be responsible for Gene's death fills my mind, crowds out everything else. This little man with his silvery hair and steel pince-nez, who sits here and reads me his pompous absurdities. A sentence pierces my consciousness.
One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution.
Then it is gone; there is just the rise and fall of his voice, the rough edge of the German accent. Finally he stops.

“Wonderful,” I say. “Very persuasive.”

Frankfurter nods. “There are those among my Brethren who think it is too personal.”

“Oh, no,” I say. “That's its power.”

He smiles modestly. “I came to this country at twelve, Cash. I spoke no English. Walking around the neighborhood I thought that this man Laundry must be very rich, to own so many stores. I had to achieve what others claimed as their birthright. Ever since the first Pledge of Allegiance case I have had letters telling me that as a Jew and an immigrant, I ought particularly to
protect minorities. And I must put on record that such considerations are entirely irrelevant to our work.”

I strain to remember another sentence from the dissent, then realize that it doesn't matter. “Holmes could not have put it better, Justice,” I say, and his smile grows. “I sometimes think it should not be that all of the Brethren have an equal vote. When some seem to have a clearer understanding of the issues.”

“Ah,” he says. “It is not all about the voting.”

It is an opening. “What do you mean?”

Frankfurter looks at his desk, gone suddenly shy. “There is the persuasive force of the opinions, you know.” I would swear he is blushing. “As your Justice found, as Gene Gressman showed.”

So he knows that Gene was responsible for Black's changed vote in the Pledge case. One more reason he had to go, no doubt. I am suddenly burning with hatred. I try to transmute it to a fervent admiration. “But is persuasion all? Why should we stand by and let the cases go wrong? There must be something more that can be done.”

Frankfurter looks up at me, and now there is an appraising cast to his features. “There are many things,” he says, “that can be done, and should be done, but should not be talked about.”

Closer, I think. “I should like to know, Mr. Justice,” I say. “If it is not asking too much.”

“Well,” says Frankfurter. He stands and takes from his bookshelf a copy of the
US Reports
. “I write many of Roberts's opinions for him.” He opens the book to demonstrate. Passages of a Roberts majority are underlined in green, and in the margin he has noted
Written by FF
. I have been thinking of making similar marks on Black's opinions, though there would be much less underlining. Still, I am disappointed and vaguely repelled.