Брайан Гарфилд - Death Sentence

Childress’s red round face smelled of expensive aftershave. He was very happy to meet Miss Evans. “Come and meet the rest of my sycophants.” Childress’s humor had bite; it was his defense against whatever demons he had.

“You know Jim Spalter, of course. He lives around the corner, now, fourteen blocks from his house — community property, you know.”

The drawing room was larger than the exterior of the house had suggested. Against its defiantly staid musty furnishings there were vaguely erotic paintings and gay Japanese-style lights suspended at random levels from the ceiling; Paul was sure Childress had done it all with a straight face. As they entered the room Childress was buttonholed by a compatriot and waved them toward the bar as he turned his back; Irene said to Spalter, “My God, it he always like this?”

“You should see him at convention luncheons. You’ve never seen such an earnestly broad-minded prude. Anxious as hell to have everybody know he’s a regular fellow.”

“And sneering at them all the time out of the side of his mouth.”

“That’s the cross a genius bears.”

She said to Paul, “You’re going to have fun, if you don’t cave in.” She was twinkling.

“It’s a new and different experience,” he agreed drily. “I’ve never worked for a madman before.”

Spalter said, “What’ll you have?”

“A hangover, I expect,” Irene said, “but I’ll risk a bourbon and soda.”

“Paul?”

“Scotch and water, thanks.”

Spalter turned his back and pried his way to the bar.

An old man whose neck bulged with loose folds of fat came through the crowd beaming. He wore a grey striped suit, the baggy pants of which were cinched high around his chest like a mail sack. “Irene for Christ’s sake.”

“Harry — dear Harry, it’s been so long. Paul, this is Harry Chisum. He’s responsible for the abysmal breed of lawyers Northwestern turns out every year.”

“Not any longer, dear. Professor emeritus since September.”

“Oh Harry, no! They can’t put you out to pasture.”

“But they have.”

“Harry was my mentor,” she explained to Paul. “Major professor, goad and confessor.”

Paul said he was happy to meet Professor Chisum and the old man shook his hand warmly. “Imagine a pupil of mine descending to the primeval slime of a Childress orgy. My dear I’m dismayed.”

“And what are you doing here then?”

“Ah, I’m a perverted old lecher, didn’t you know? A closet degenerate.” He leered toward an enormous oil canvas of sated nymphs. “They sold those under the counter during the Italian Renaissance. Actually John Childress was one of my first students, you know. And still one of the best, although no one remembers he was a lawyer before he turned his talents to the machinations of commercial accounting. The best — which is to say the most evil — businessmen are lawyers.”

“And the worst lawyers are businessmen.”

“It’s not fair to throw an old man’s words back at him. You’ve altogether too good a memory.”

Spalter arrived balancing the drinks, distributed them and hovered. Irene said, “I can’t imagine you playing shuffleboard. What are you doing with yourself?”

“What do retired intellectuals do? They stay out of mischief by writing books.”

“Is it a secret?”

“Not from you. In any case it’s the same book everyone’s writing nowadays. I hope to offer a thing or two the others can’t match. It’s on crime.”

“I’m dying to read it, Harry.”

“I’d be delighted to have you pick holes in the manuscript. When it’s completed.”

“You know I’d be honored.”

Spalter said, “I hope you’ve got some solutions for us, Harry. We’ve had enough experts expounding on what the problem is.”

“I’m hoping that’s the little difference that will single out my modest tome. It’s not a book of questions. It’s a book of answers.”

Irene smiled her slow smile. “Harry, you can’t just let that one lie on the floor like a piece of raw meat.”

The old man was delighted. “You’ll just have to wait and read the book, won’t you.” He nudged Paul. “I’ve got a sure sale already, you see?”

“Harry,” she said firmly.

Paul said, “If you’ve got real solutions to the—”

“Answers, I said. Not solutions. A solution is that which provides actual resolve of a problem. An answer, on the other hand, may be mere theory or hypothesis.”

“You’re still wriggling, Harry.”

“The distinction is valid, my dear. My book can do no more than offer recommendations. They are recommendations which I’m certain the politicians and the public will find unacceptable if not repellent. They won’t solve the problem, because they’ll never be put into practice.”

“My goodness. You sound as if you’re going to propound something Hitlerian.”

“Perhaps it is — if only to the extent that anything smacking remotely of authoritarianism is equated these days with Hitler.”

“You can’t kid us,” Spalter joked, “we all know you’re the vigilante, Harry.”

Paul tried not to stiffen.

“That’s Harry’s secret solution,” Spalter confined to Paul. “The Final Solution.”

“Vigilantism solves no problems,” Chisum said.

“Well it seems to be doing a pretty snazzy job with our crime rate right now, you’ve got to admit that,” Spalter said.

Irene laughed in her throat. “I’m sorry. I’m just visualizing Harry skulking in a slum alley with two guns in his holsters. ‘Draw, you varmint.’”

Paul managed a weak smile.

Spalter said, “I’ll tell you one thing. Real or phony, this vigilante has stirred up the public consciousness like nothing you’d believe. Nobody talks about anything else. He’s got a lot of sympathy out there. You talk to people around town, you begin to realize their feelings about things. Right or wrong, this vigilante is making people feel there’s some kind of justice in the streets for the first time in memory. God knows it’s a sudden justice, but all the same it’s—”

“It’s not justice,” the old law professor snapped. “Whoever these vigilantes are, they’ve gone far beyond justice. They don’t want justice. They want blood.”

“They?” Irene said.

Spalter said, “It can hardly be the work of one man. Not all of it. New York and Chicago at the same time?”

Paul spoke, because it would have been strange if he hadn’t. “You’re suggesting he’s — they’ve — got a thirst for blood. A hunger for violence and killing. I don’t think that answers it, not completely.”

Irene said, “I think Paul has a point. Revenge is a very personal thing, while justice is a social thing. But the vigilante — he or they, whatever it is — the vigilante has made a public issue of it. Deliberately. These murders are a public-relations campaign, in a way, and whoever’s doing it wants to make it far more than just a private vendetta. He’s trying to arouse the entire citizenry. He’s trying to focus public concern on a crisis, and if you ask me he’s doing a bloody brilliant job of it. No, I can’t agree at all that it’s pure blood sport or private vengeance.”

Chisum shook his head; the folds of wattled flesh shook beneath his chin. “These men, the vigilantes, they’re trying to act out their own personal fantasies of an ancient myth. The vigilante sees himself as some kind of reincarnation of the traditional American hero. I’m sure of that. He’s got an image of himself as a messianic reformer, trying to resurrect the kind of heroism that forged our national identity in the Wild West. The frontiersmen who killed and got killed until the wilderness was mastered. But it was a false image then and it’s false now. It wasn’t the gunslingers who tamed the country. It was the settlers. In the same way, it can’t be the vigilantes who’ll solve anything today. They only add fuel to the flames.”