Allegiance (22 page)

“Most of the time I am,” says Frankfurter. An element of self-satisfaction enters the smile; he is pleased with the line. I am not. I give him a flat look in response, and eventually the smile fades. “Well,” says Frankfurter. “I did not agree with him on every issue. But we can all agree that outside influences are to be resisted. We can all agree that none of our family here may be touched. That is what they have done. And we must bring them to justice. Or bring justice to them. You could be quite helpful.” He stops. “But I forget.”

“What?”

“You are going back to Philadelphia.”

In the excitement of the conversation, I have forgotten too. “Oh,” I say. Once again I am standing on the street outside the Beta house, pulled abruptly back to earth, feeling the halter around my neck. But not this time. This is my decision; this is my friend. I shake my head side to side. The rope strains, snaps, slides away. “No,” I say. “That's not what I'm doing.”

• • • • 

“I don't understand,” says Suzanne. “What are you saying?”

“Gene Gressman really was murdered. Justice Frankfurter agrees with me. And we're going to figure out who killed him.”

“That's . . .” Suzanne seems to be struggling to find the right word. “That's absurd.”

“Look,” I say. “Someone needs to get to the bottom of this. And I think I'm the one with the best chance.”

“First you wanted to volunteer. Now you're going to be a detective.”

“If I have to.”

“And you think you have to.” There is a depth of bitterness in her voice that I have not heard before.

“Gene was my friend,” I say. “I owe him.”

“Cash,” says Suzanne, and now I can hear the sorrow, too. “I know he was your friend. But he's dead. You can't bring him back.”

“I'm not trying to bring him back. This is my duty. Because of what he did for me.” Suzanne is silent. “It's a principle,” I say. I am in Judge Skinner's library, eight or nine years old, and he is showing me a sheet of paper.
See how it bends, Cash? But put a crease in it and it will bear weight; it will stand on its own. That's what principles do for a man
.

“What he did for you,” Suzanne repeats. There is a breathy syncopation to her words that I am pretty sure signifies tears. “Your duty. That's what you think this is about. Your honor.”

At first I think she's stressing the second word, and I want to respond: of course. Of course it's a matter of honor. And then I realize her focus is on the first, that there's a different question hanging in the silence between us.
Your honor
, she is saying without words.
What about mine? What about what I did?
Agonizingly, it is like Pearl Harbor again. The things I have forgotten in my selfish rush.

“This isn't about us,” I say.

“What does that even mean? I'm not worth thinking about?”

“No,” I say. In my mind is tearing paper, the crackle of flames. I don't know how to explain. That duty fights with duty, that one honor tarnishes another.

“I was wrong,” Suzanne says. Her voice has the same tone of discovery it did when we huddled together under the trees of Bear Island in the rain. “Thinking I could count on you. I was wrong, wasn't I?”

“Of course not.” Pictures flash through my mind. Suzanne laying her hand on mine on the dock, tan and childlike; raising it to my shoulder at Merion, white-gloved and elegant. “I have to do this.” Her smile, her skin. I am silent a moment, flayed by memory. Her murmurs, her cries. I had not expected this pain. “I can't be someone who sees his friend murdered and decides to let it go.”

“So who will you be?”

“I don't know,” I say. “I think this is how I find out.”

There is a silence so long I think the connection has been lost. Then another voice comes on the line.

“Cash, what's this I hear?” It is Sam Skinner. It is the Judge.

“I have to stay in Washington,” I say. “I don't know how much Suzanne has told you. But there's something I have to do.”

“Your friend who died.” The familiar deep voice wraps Gene Gressman in its folds. I imagine him borne heavenward on a dark velvet bier.

“He was killed.”

The Judge is silent a moment. “If that is true, I would think it is dangerous for you to stay.”

“That may be,” I say. “But I'm not going to run from danger.” And even as I say the words, I know my feelings are stronger. I am glad of the danger, I realize. I welcome it. For once in my life I am risking something.

“Philadelphia is not only safer for you,” he says. “It is where your friends are. Those who love you. And we can help.”

The voice has the force of something massive. It advances with a slow relentless logic, and there is nothing impressive until you try to stand in its way. Then it sweeps you aside like you were never there. “I know,” I say. “But it wouldn't be the same. I don't want to hurt Suzanne—”

“Suzanne will collect herself,” he interrupts. “She is upset. She has been lonely. Since her mother died, since Bob went away. Since you left. It is one thing age teaches us, that the world shrinks. But she is young for that lesson. I had hoped she might learn that families can grow as well. That I might learn it myself.”

“I think I should do this.” I cling to that proposition as the slow avalanche tosses me like a twig. “Gene was my friend. He got killed because he was trying to help me. And I think I'm needed.”

“There are people here who need you as well. I count myself among them. We are your people, Cash. We are your family. Is this really your fight?”

They are my family. Philadelphia is my home. Washington is an alien city, it is true. But I think of my long evenings in Black's garden with him and Josephine, of Gressman knocking on the chambers door with yet another Witness joke. Who will I be? I don't know, but I know that Gene deserved better than he got. And I cannot make it right, I cannot give him the life he should have had, but I can show that his death was wrong. If I don't, no one will. “It is now,” I say.

For a few seconds the Judge says nothing. I know that he is probably on the phone in Suzanne's room, sitting on the white bedspread embroidered with blue flowers. But I see him amid his books in the library, where law glints like a bright thread in man's dark tapestry. “We owe duties to the living as well as the dead, Cash,” he says. “And it is only the living who can
repay.” The avalanche has moved on, and astonishingly I find myself in the same spot as before.

“Can I talk to Suzanne again?”

There is a pause, and a sadness in the voice when it returns. “She tells me no, Cash. I do not think she wants to hear what you have to say. And for myself, I can only say that I hope you change your mind.” It is the slow protest of an old tree in high wind, the sorrow of the mountains. Then there is the creak of shearing wood, the rumble as rock moves. “Before too long. Before it is too late.”

I put the phone back in its cradle. Another image rises in my mind. Once again I am watching Suzanne dive from the dock that day after she first took my hand. It comes to me, vivid and unbidden, the faint splash as water falls back on the spot where she entered, the glass-clear drops rejoining the green sea. I have replayed that scene hundreds of times in my mind. Next comes the moment when the bubbles rise, then her white hands and shoulders, breaking the surface like a seal.

But this time it does not. Like a balky projector, my mind cannot advance past that frame. I see the drops fall and the water grow still, and there it stops. And I think the Judge was wrong; I think it is already too late. She may have kissed John Hall, but I am the one who betrayed her. And that is how my thoughts end. Suzanne lifts her hand from mine; she dives into the water and vanishes and does not return.

• • • • 

“Well,” Frankfurter says. “It is time to consider our next move.”

“I could get a job with the War Department.”

He nods his head and looks meditatively at the ceiling. “The War Department certainly has a stake in the Japanese cases,” he says. “And if our enemies are removing clerks through the draft, they must have some influence there. But from the Department of Justice you would have a broader perspective. You would be able to keep an eye on every case before the Court.”

He is still thinking of the soldiers of capital. But it makes sense; even Gressman suspected something afoot in the business cases. And with Francis Biddle in charge I will likely have a greater freedom of movement, the opportunity to pick my work.

“After all,” Frankfurter continues, “it is Justice that defends the evacuation program in court. If that is what this is about, it is as good a place as any to start.”

The reference to my theory of the plot is a sop, and I feel patronized. But he is right. If Gressman was killed to protect the evacuation, those who defend it must be my first suspects. I nod in my turn. “Agreed. We need to be looking here, too. At the clerks.”

“I have been thinking that myself,” says Frankfurter. “Whoever was behind the murder is probably gone already. But if we screen the newcomers carefully, we may identify the bad seeds before they sprout.”

“Justices who don't choose their own clerks,” I say. “Clerks who weren't the first choice. Justices who can be swayed. That's what we need to look for.”

Frankfurter gives the ceiling another pensive glance. “Murphy is the obvious one. He thinks of the history books; he is fond of the grand phrase and does not care much what is behind its glorious fog. And I do not think they would have acted against Mr. Gressman unless they had their own man lined up. His replacement will bear watching. For the rest . . . Black can be moved, as we've seen. But your successor is handpicked, a liberal from the South. I am confident in him. Stone and Jackson know their own minds, and Roberts has his permanent pair. Reed . . . Reed is mostly vegetable. He could be susceptible to a clever young man. I will keep an eye open there as well.”

“And what about Douglas?”

“Douglas?” Frankfurter twists his mouth in displeasure. “Douglas has no care for anyone but himself. It makes him incorruptible, in a way. There is no room for another's plans. And I do not think they would send a woman.” He pauses. “Although, with Douglas that might be the only way. And he has an antiauthoritarian bent that could be useful. Do you know that he has never once voted for Internal Revenue in a tax case?”

“He was all over the place with the Japanese, too,” I say. “His would be a useful vote to nail down.”

“You are right,” says Frankfurter. “Clara Watson must be on our list. I will leave her to you, I think. I have reasons to talk to the other clerks. You have reasons to talk to her.”

“I do?”

“She does not know the city. I doubt she knows anyone here. She would welcome your company.”

I hesitate. “I'm not sure we really got off on the right foot.”

“Nonsense,” Frankfurter scoffs. He looks me up and down and smiles with approval. “Invite her to a movie. She'll be grateful.”

• • • • 

“A movie?” asks Clara.

“Yes,” I say. “I thought you might have some questions about the clerkship.”

“Indeed, I might.” There are glints of light in her dark hair and flecks of gold in her eyes. “Yes, why not a movie? And perhaps an ice cream soda?”

I allow that this too is a possibility.

“A delightful prospect,” she says, and smiles. “We will most of us end as clichés, wonder boy. But I find that starting with them is a poor idea. It leaves you nowhere to go.”

I am puzzled. “Is that a yes?”

“Did it sound like one?”

I have to admit that it did not.

“Brilliance personified,” says Clara. “You will go places in life. But not to a movie. Not with me. Not this evening.”

Now I think I understand; I know this sort of banter. “Another evening, then?”

Clara frowns. It is her turn to look puzzled. “Have I encouraged you?” She sounds genuinely confused. “I don't mean to. Let me put it this way. You will not talk me into going to a movie with you. Are we clear?”

“Fine,” I say. She has not left much room for a playful riposte. “Great.” Suddenly I am angry. More than I should be, but the invitation was not my idea, and it is doubly galling to face rejection for something I never wanted to do in the first place. “You don't have to be snooty about it. I'm just trying to be nice.”

“How generous of you,” she says. “How lucky I am that everyone wants to do me favors.”

“Okay,” I say. “No movies.”

“No,” says Clara. She allows herself a small, mysterious smile. “But still a nice suit.”

A SHEET OF
glass across the top of a mahogany desk shows me an inverted image of the upper half of Attorney General Francis Biddle. He wears a dark suit and vest, a speckled salmon tie. The neat mustache remains, and his comb-over is careful as ever, but a bald spot is emerging at the back.

Biddle smiles. “Well, Cash,” he says. “You'd like to see how the other half lives?”

The upside-down face is distracting, and his choice of words does not help, but I retain enough concentration to surmise that Hoover has not mentioned my trips here. I think it wiser not to raise them myself. “I could learn a lot from a different perspective on the cases,” I say.

“I think so,” says Biddle. “Hard to beat the view from the Court, of course. Your clerkship must have been wonderful. I remember my year with Holmes. He wrote all his opinions himself, and he did it faster than anyone else. When he was finished he would invite me on walks to Georgetown or along the canal. Weekends I knocked polo balls around on the Mall.”

Biddle evidently did not have a friend murdered. My feelings about the experience are a bit more complicated, but I simply nod and say, “Mmmm,” as though savoring the memories.