Allegiance (37 page)

Hall's expression suggests that the distinction has not yet occurred to him. “Well,” he says doubtfully, “it's still the higher-ups.”

I change tack. “So what were they doing?”

“He'd ask me questions sometimes. About clerks, what their status was, whether I could move up the induction date. I looked into it.”

“Did you ever get any questions about me?”

The smile returns to Hall's face. “Come on, Cash. You know I'd look out for you. But no. No one pushed on you.”

“And who was pushing on Gene?”

“I told you, they use code names. Cato, Brutus, the Farmer.”

“But you met this man. The one who calls himself Cato.”

“He was in the Fly Club with me,” says Hall. “No one you'd know.”

“Karl Bendetsen?”

Hall actually laughs. “Bendetsen's not a Harvard man. And he's not clubbable anyway.”

“I'd club him,” I say. “Or punch him. Whatever you do at Harvard.”

“Yeah, soldiers,” the comic repeats. “Seen that Pentagon? Can't really miss it. Am I right?” There is a shouted expletive from my left, but whether it is directed at him or the navy is unclear. The comic wavers. “A woman gave birth in there once,” he says. “Couldn't get out in time.” His voice gains force again; this must be one of his better jokes. “Guard says to her, ‘Lady, you shouldn't have come in here pregnant.' She says . . .”

He does not finish. The controversy over the WAVES has reached a boiling point. At the adjacent table the debaters burst to their feet. Others join in; the crowd swells and flows across the floor. Men stumble past us, locked in struggle. Bodies collide with tables and chairs. Hall and I hunch down, protecting our drinks. Someone's elbow hits the back of my head and I hear Hall gasp in surprise and pain.

The house lights dim and with a rustling flap a large American flag unfurls above the dance floor. The spotlight swivels onto it, and the band launches into “The Star-Spangled Banner,” presto e forte. The Double Door management evidently has a plan for these occasions.

And it works. The men on the dance floor leave off pummeling each other and snap to attention. Those still at the tables rise and salute. Without conscious intent, I find that I am on my feet too, hand over heart. Only Hall is sitting, holding his glass. “Christ, John,” I say. “You're the one who's in the War Department. Can't you stand for your flag?”

He turns his face to me. There is something desperate there, a plea rising from the bones and up through the skin. He puts his hands on the table and pushes himself halfway to a standing position. “Help me, Cash.” It's a phrase I've never heard from him before, and he seems puzzled himself to be using it now. One hand reaches out for me, and without its support he goes facedown on the scarred wood. Now I can see the bloodstain spreading across his back. “Help me, Cash.”

Men are pouring into the room. The Navy shore patrol is here, the military police. The flag flutters under its spotlight. I notice a small electric fan providing the breeze. The colors sway gently as the music fades. At my side, John Hall twitches once and is still.

THERE IS A
shivering unreality to the air as I walk from Main Justice to the Court, the chill of approaching fall. It is the same walk I took after meeting Hoover for the first time. After the first of my friends was killed. A strange thirst grips my throat. Fall does not seem like a renewal now. I flit about on my investigations, but something is waiting.

On the street are portents. A bird has stunned itself against a window and lies trembling on the sidewalk. “He's dead,” a man says as I stoop over it.

“It's breathing. Its feathers are moving.”

“That's just the wind.” He walks away. The small body shakes. One eye blinks at me. Can it understand that I mean no harm, that I want to help? I wrap it in a newspaper and carry it to a secluded spot, a soft patch of grass under a tree. When I try to lay it down, it rolls out with its feet curled, obviously dead. There are tears in my eyes. For the bird, for Hall, for me. I cannot save them; I cannot even understand why they die. Gene Gressman poisoned, John Hall struck down in a dirty bar, a sparrow that saw only sky.

Outside the Court I stand still for a moment, composing myself. There is work to be done. Then I go to the Maryland Avenue entrance where Frankfurter's new clerk is waiting. He is not as trusted as Phil Haynes, it seems, for he ushers me to the Justice's chambers and then leaves us, shutting the door behind him.

“Well,” says Felix Frankfurter. He stretches in his chair. “You need feel no
regrets that you are shirking danger in this job.” He stops. “I am sorry. I knew John Hall. He was a good man, as good a man as he could be.”

I suppose that is true. Hall was never a very close friend, and despite all he said, our working relationship was basically adversarial. Still, we were boys together, and part of my childhood is gone with him. The innumerable Merion afternoons we spent lashing the squash ball against the wall exist in my mind alone now, and what lives in only one mind has a weak claim to reality.

“We've learned something, though,” I say. “We know they were drafting clerks. We're on the right track.”

“Yes,” says Frankfurter. “But we suspected that already. And we knew that to do so they must have a presence in the War Department. It is confirmed, but we do not know who they are.”

“Hall said they used code names. They sounded Roman. They didn't mean anything to me.”

“That is a clue. Can you remember?”

“Cato,” I say. “That was the Army man. Brutus. And something else. It wasn't a name. The Planter?”

Frankfurter looks at me oddly. “The Farmer?”

“Yes, that was it. How did you know?”

“I know those names.” He is frowning. “They are the Anti-Federalists, from 1788. You've heard of the Federalist Papers, of course, the writings in favor of the Constitution. These are their foes. The pseudonyms of men who argued against ratification.”

“What does that mean?”

Frankfurter is still frowning, but now he begins to nod. “They feared the power of the federal government. Of course. They warned it would become a tyrant. It makes perfect sense.”

“How does it make sense?”

“It is as I said. These are the enemies of the New Deal. They think that Roosevelt has proven the Anti-Federalists right, that he is on the road to dictatorship. So they take the names of their prophets to fight back.”

He is right; there is a sense to it. “But how does that fit with the Japanese cases? If you're worried about government tyranny, that's got to fit the bill.”

“Tyranny over people like you,” says Frankfurter. “They are not so concerned with the liberty of the enemy within.” Bitterness enters his voice. “The unlike, the other.” He waves a hand, dismissing it. “I have never believed those cases are as central as you think. This plan has been long afoot, and it has focused on the rights of capital. They may have no involvement with the Japanese at all.”

“I think they do,” I say. “I think that's why they killed Gene.”

“Did John Hall confirm that?”

“No.” In fact, I think, he suggested otherwise. The machinations he described in the Japanese cases were those of the War Department alone. “But he did say they wanted him gone.”

Frankfurter shrugs. “We have discussed this before. Mr. Gressman was an inconvenience for multiple reasons. We will not know which was the motive until we find the killers.”

“And how do we do that now that Hall's dead?” The information was there with him all along, within my reach on any of those afternoons at the Metropolitan Club. I burn with regret for the lost opportunity, and then shame for missing it and not Hall himself.

“John Hall was your liaison,” says Frankfurter. “I am sure there is a way you can learn who he was talking to.”

• • • • 

I am sure there is, but as I make my way back to Main Justice, I cannot think of it. Instead, a new question has entered my mind, calling my attention like a tap on the shoulder.
Hey,
a voice says.
Hey, pal, why wasn't it you?

You need feel no regrets that you are shirking danger
, Frankfurter said. He was trying to make me feel better about failing the physical, about not being in uniform. But it has made me feel worse, or understand why I feel bad. John Hall did not just die helping me, like Gene Gressman did. He died instead of me; he took my place.

Hall was killed for giving me information, to stop my search from progressing. But there is an easier way to do that, more direct, more certain, and more permanent. If my prying about is the problem, why kill John Hall? Why not me?

Dark suits course past me on the sidewalk. The sky is an uninformative blue. I shake my head. I can see why they struck at Gene Gressman. He was the threat; he was the obstacle. But now, surely, it is me. Hall by himself was no danger to them. In fact, he was useful.

The limestone facade rises in front of me. Main Justice has its own legend over the Constitution Avenue entrance,
Lege atque Ordine Omnia Fiunt
, Law and Order Make Everything. The statues wait in the Great Hall, but I do not go in. I am not the quickest thinker, but I get there in the end. I am more dangerous to them than Hall. If I am still alive, it must be that I am also more useful. Clara was right, I think. I am one of them. Somehow I am serving their purposes even now.

It must be through my work at Justice. Now I enter the building. Nothing else I do could be of any interest to them. It is that I am defending the evacuation and detention; that is what keeps me alive. They think I can win the cases I have just decided to lose.

I wave at Edward Ennis as I pass his office, then turn into mine and take a seat at my desk. There are papers scattered across the wood and a blank sheet of paper in my typewriter. They'd be fools to think me an irreplaceable litigator. It is probably my tie to Black. They're worried about his vote; they think I know how to persuade him. As indeed I may, if I've learned anything from Gene Gressman; I've seen it done. Of course, I will be pushing from the other side.

And if they learn that, they will surely try to stop me. But even if they think I am helping them, I do not think I will long outlive my usefulness. I am an irritant that must someday be addressed. When these cases are decided, my shield will be gone.

What keeps you safe in the world? Principles, Judge Skinner told me, creases in paper. Family, my father said, one's class and one's kind. Hard work, I thought in the blooming shell of youth. Optimism and endurance. Stay positive, stay determined. Most of all, stay young. I see now it is youth that protects you, and the innocent world in which youth lives. But I am running low on innocence. Behind the bright, familiar surface of things is a dark and formless void. I can feel it reaching for me, the world beneath this one, the realm of the other. A soldier at the door, a too-familiar face on the
street. A knife in the back. The dark hand reaches out, the floor drops away.

Vertigo sweeps over me. I lean forward over the desk, my head in my hands. The only way out is to find them first, but I don't know how. And I can't slow down the cases to give myself more time. In fact, I have to move them forward. I have to write a draft of the brief by the end of the day. At least that is a distraction from these thoughts. I crank the paper down into the typewriter and try to find refuge in work.

Where is the law in Korematsu's story? Where are the bright fish? Just as in
Hirabayashi
, it is a question of whom to trust. Again I see the faces, but there are more of them now. I see Karl Bendetsen writing the brief of the Pacific states when Justice refused to stand behind his facts. I see John Hall revising the Final Report when he thought it would undermine the position of the War Department. Francis Biddle looking down, unable to meet Rowe's eyes. And what has gone on that I do not see? There are no silver glints of law here. We are in the dark caverns where sunlight cannot come and the fish are strange blind things that prey upon each other without mercy.

The main thing to do is to cast doubt on the Final Report. I insert a footnote. We endorse the Final Report as a description of the evacuation, I write.
However, the facts offered as military justification, particularly the claims about the use of illegal radio transmitters and ship-to-shore signaling, are inconsistent with information in the possession of the Department of Justice.

For the rest, I cobble together as unconvincing a defense of evacuation as I can, hoping the Court will see it for what it is. This is what Rowe did with the
Hirabayashi
brief, and it failed then, but perhaps I will have better luck. I send the draft to Charles Fahy. Now it is time to pay a visit to the Pentagon.

• • • • 

I still have nothing definite in mind as I cross the river. My first thought was to get FBI support. With a borrowed badge, I could enter Hall's office; I could pretend to be part of the investigation. But Hoover is not in a mood to do me any more favors.

John Hall's secretary is a strawberry blond holding a tissue to her nose. When I see the black dress and the red eyes, a plan starts to form. I lean close over the desk and lower my voice to a confidential tone. “I'm Cash Harrison,”
I say. “From the Department of Justice.” I give her a look at my card. “I was Captain Hall's contact there. I'm sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” she says.

I look around as though checking to be sure we're not overheard. “I have an unconventional request,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know if you're aware of this, but John Hall was no ordinary lawyer.”

Her lips part. “He wasn't?”

I shake my head. Whether this works at all depends on whether I have guessed right about Hall. “No,” I say. “He had a secret mission.”