Джеймс Кейн - Galatea

All in all, I piled a few points up, as she did, since she hadn’t talked under oath, and perjury wasn’t involved. And of course she was who she was, a big point in her favor. But the total tote was bad. Arizona caught on with the papers, and then there I was, by wirephoto from the West, all posed up in trunks, no good in southern Maryland, where they don’t think much of boxing. Her “hunger strike” caught on too, to hurt us most of all. I of course knew the reason. She was terrified to be tried looking as she had looked, and the strike was to get proper food brought to her there in the jail. But in print it was wacky, and not only got laughs, but lost her a lot of the ground her family had given her.

So that’s how it stood, there outside the courtroom, when Brice ran the cops down the hall, and I saw the top of her head. She came upstairs fast, a young officer at each elbow, dressed completely in black, but I was shocked at the change in her looks. From being soft, plump, and pretty, she almost verged on thin, with hollows in her cheeks and no color at all. Her eyes were big as saucers, and though she let them cross mine, to tell me we still had our love, they also told me we didn’t have much else. She went in the courtroom, and the police bearers picked me up. They carried me down the aisle, past a mob that was there, to a table inside the rail, and set me down on top of it. She was a few feet away, at another table, where Brice sat down beside her. The prosecutor, Mr. Lucas, a small, neat man around forty, with a pink face, sat at a table facing her, one or two assistants beside him. Outside, beyond the rail, on the first row of benches, were police, people I’d never seen, and Lippert. Behind them were Bill and Marge, and Mr. and Mrs. Hollis, Bill and Holly’s parents, that I’d seen just once at Waldorf. From behind the bench came a judge, and everyone but me stood up. An old geezer said this honorable court was now in session. The judge sat down. The people sat down.

Coming up for the bell, round one.

Allowing for every point that could be counted, it was ten times worse than I’d feared, as it had nothing to do with my caper back in the spring, the confession, boxing, her hunger strike, or anything of the kind. Mr. Lucas was quiet, but once the jury was picked, he put it right on the line, and said he would prove we had fallen in love, that we had decided to kill Val “as a convenient way to get rid of him,” that we had hit on the water tower as a way of doing it, that she had “enticed him up” after letting the tank run dry, and that I had climbed up under him and compelled him at gun’s point to jump. He said the scheme had backfired, as I had fallen too, but insisted that “clumsiness of execution is no mitigation of guilt, and sets up no reasonable doubt.”

Never mind the Valenty sisters and what their brother had told them, or the neighbors and what they had seen, or the cops and what she had told them, or Lippert and his two cents’ worth — or all the rest of the stuff that put us in love, which a blind man must have seen. The first jolt to our button was the bags all packed up — mine in the cottage, hers in Waldorf, all ready, as Mr. Lucas put it, “for the projected honeymoon.” Next came the light man, who had asked her why the meter reading was low, and been told of “restricted use of the pump on account of the drought.” He had warned her, he said, just in a friendly way, to gauge the tank, and had been “struck by the interest she showed.” Next was a colored boy, who had been on 5 that night, walking home to Clinton, and heard “a shot, a bop, and a screech.”

Mr. Lucas let him tell it, “in your own words,” and they sounded to me like the words of some Indian around Tonopah. But they made it plain enough: “Was walkinny road, pass Hollis Hill, walkinny road home. Den I yeared talkinny air. Uppinny air talk, talkinny woman crying. Stopinny yeared a shot. Shottinny boppinny screech. Uppinny air, yeared woman screech.”

“Go on, what next?”

“I run I did.”

“But tell the jury why.”

“Cause yockommy hant, loping.”

“Object!”

Mr. Brice was red as he jumped up and cut it off. He said he was amazed the prosecution would offer such shady evidence. He said every member of the jury knew the legend of this hant at Hollis Hill, and knew also the presumption of wrongdoing the hant’s presence would set up. He said this was Upper Marlboro, Md., not Salem, Mass., in the seventeenth century, “when superstition was law.” The judge said: “I’m inclined to agree,” and told the jury to disregard stuff about hants. When Mr. Lucas said: “Your witness,” Mr. Brice acted as though such a witness wasn’t even worth cross-examining, and asked no questions at all. He had hurt us, though, that boy. He had put her up on the tank, where she hadn’t mentioned being, in any statement to the cops.

And finally there were the shells, the one in the living-room, ejected when Val shot at her, the other outside, both with my fingerprints on, which was natural enough, as I’d loaded the clip in the spring. But no prints were on the gun, to show who had done the shooting, as it was caked with mud when found. That night, when Mr. Brice came to the hospital, he admitted he was sunk, “as low as I ever get.”

I said: “Wouldn’t the truth help, Mr. Brice?”

“Well, what is the truth?”

I told it for maybe an hour, as well as you can tell anything to a man who flinches in pain and all but cuts his throat at everything you say. It went on like that till I got to Sickles, when all of a sudden he grabbed me. He said: “What was that? What was it? Wait a minute, Webster, start over again!”

I did, putting in Lippert’s part in it, the stuff Val had told me, there in the living-room, and then the rest of it, what he had said on the ladder. When I finished, he kept staring, and I said: “Listen, Mr. Brice, it was a big case they had here, several years ago.”

At that he burst out laughing, and said: “Webster, it’s terrific. Why — it even convinces me. Until now I had thought — well who wouldn’t? — that you and she did it, as Lucas says.”

“But you took our case?”

“You’re entitled to counsel.”

He explained, for quite some time, that no matter who did it, we had to be represented, and that if every lawyer in the county declined, the court would still appoint one for us. But still the smile was there, until I said: “Well, what’s so funny? First you groan and then you laugh — I’d like to know the joke.”

“I don’t think I’m telling you. I think I’ll leave it there, something you don’t know, that could make trouble for Lucas if he accidentally stumbles into it. All right, then, Webster? You’re willing to spill it all?”

“I’ll do what has to be done.”

“I want nothing held back. I don’t have to put you on, but if I do, the only witness that’ll help is an absolutely reckless witness. One that’s not only willing to talk but anxious to talk — that kicks all immunities aside and cuts it loose.”

“I got nothing to hold back.”

“The holdup?”

“I hate it but I’ll tell it.”

“You’re on, first thing in the morning.”

So I tore in, but found out right away how important counsel is, as he asks the questions. The holdup was in, but in front was restitution. The gun was in, but in front was the deal that had been made, so it had been given to Val. The love I bore her was in, but Mr. Brice called it “devotion,” which made it seem slightly different. All of it was in, but from our angle, and in a way to prove we meant to break it clean. On Sickles we took off all wraps, and I really let go, especially Lippert’s part in it, which Brice figured he probably hadn’t told Lucas, thinking it died with Val. It hit the court like a bombshell, and I knew I had landed solid, because the gasps that came from the courtroom were like the roar of a crowd at a hook. When I came to my flying tackle, I all but used blueprints, showing where I was, where Val was, and where she was. Mr. Brice went into the moaning, which I described, and the scream she was supposed to have given, which I said I didn’t hear. A mumble went around, so the judge tapped on his desk, and I knew the people were putting it together my way, reasoning that naturally I wouldn’t hear her, as I was already knocked out.