Chapter 6
Usually Larry felt lost when he came home and didn’t find Bessie, but tonight he was glad there was a meeting of her first aid course at the Red Cross so that he could be alone.
On the way home from the office he had stopped at Rabinowitz’s restaurant on Second Avenue for a plate of borsch. It wasn’t the finest borsch he had ever tasted, but after a day at the Magistrates’ Court, he was glad to eat dinner at Rabinowitz’s. The discord of moving china, scraping chairs and wisecracking waiters seemed almost restful compared with the uproar of the courtroom.
If only there were some way to practice law and stay out of the Magistrates’ Courts. He was tired of the sordid bickering between client and lawyer, lawyer and judge, and lawyer vs. lawyer. Larry was afraid that he might acquire their look of stinking cigars and suits that appeared rusty even when they were new. Professional scum—that was a fair description of what practiced in the lower courts. It usually took as much work for a lawyer to represent a small client as a large corporation, and it almost always meant twice the responsibility. Every claim counted so much more to the client who started with nothing, and whose entire financial status might depend on the outcome of his law suit. A smart lawyer steered around the little cases with their whopping headaches. But Larry had always boasted that he would try any case in any court as a matter of professional pride. Lawyers should feel as great a responsibility as doctors in helping people. That had always been Larry’s belief, but after today he wasn’t as sure of his ground.
The City had slapped a violation on the bakery belonging to his client. A new Building Commissioner at City Hall was plastering a rash of violations on little properties all over town, although they often represented an owner’s sole income and might force the proprietors into bankruptcy. Like Larry’s client.
Poor sucker, he would almost certainly have to let his building go now. When Larry first heard of the case, he thought of turning it down, knowing someone high up in the administration was crusading, and anything he tried to do would be a waste of his time. His hunch had been right. In court this morning, he faced not only the Judge, but six unsolicited reporters and a battery of photographers. The minute Larry opened his mouth, the Magistrate bawled him out, and good-citizenship lecture number forty-one was delivered. What did Larry’s client mean, letting innocent men work in a death trap? Didn’t he know there might be a fire, and people might be killed? Did he want their lives on his conscience? The reporters took it down, every word, and Larry yelled back at the Judge to be certain and make it a good story. In these courts a lawyer practiced with his lungs rather than his brains. The lawyer who could outshout the bench usually won his cases.
But apparently today Larry hadn’t been in good enough voice, or it took more than vocal power. His client was fined one hundred dollars and given a six day jail sentence. The fine was bad enough—Larry knew it meant his client would go into debt—but the jail sentence was a disgrace that would torture his conscience for years.
When the next defendants drew identical penalties, Larry began to smell a rodent. Later, in the corridor, a friendly lawyer from the Corporation Counsel’s office hinted that the Magistrate had acted “on orders.” It was the sort of thing he used to hear about Tammany, Larry cynically recalled, but didn’t expect in an enlightened “reform” administration.
Larry hung around until court recessed and he could corner the Magistrate in his chambers. He had known him for fifteen years, and the Judge, a crude, bloated murderer of the language, always called him “Cons’ler.”
The Magistrate confessed quite frankly that his hands were tied by politics. Just before he had come to court, his instructions were telephoned to him. The Judge’s lumpy shoulders framed a question. With all the reporters hanging around, what could he do? Cons’ler could see for himself. Okay, he’d reduce the sentence. Three days. It was the best he could offer. And if Cons’ler kept his mouth shut about changing the sentence, he’d appreciate the favor.
It left a bad taste in the mouth, like day-old garlic. Larry decided he should have done as Bemrose suggested and put up a fight for the judicial appointment in his district. He would have made a better judge than some of those lousy punks on the bench. Bemrose had hit it on the thumb. He should have raised hell for being passed over by the organization.
Supposing they did give him the appointment, though. He would be tied down to the Magistrates’ Courts for years. He ought to stay away and try to develop a higher type of practice. It was a nice idea, if he knew where to start. Not with some of the clients who came to him for advice.
He reached across his study table for a recent biography of Woodrow Wilson, but decided he couldn’t tackle anything serious. On the way to the kitchen to fix himself a drink, he picked up a current issue of Time and put it on the arm of his easy chair, planning to look through it later.
It wasn’t only the day in that scruffy court which depressed him, Larry decided, sipping his highball. He felt blue because Janice had sailed yesterday. She called him early in the week to say that Larry’s friend, Mr. Diamond, didn’t hold out much hope of getting her a visa. He had been turned down in a similar case by his friend at the State Department. Anyway, she had been thinking over her talk with Larry and felt that maybe she had better stick around and attempt to straighten things out with Bemrose. She had tried to reach him, but his office said he was in Washington. As soon as he came back——
For a day or so Larry speculated optimistically on how a marriage with Janice might round out Bemrose’s rather Spartan professional existence and also give her a reason for taking root in the United States. The day before yesterday, when he had convinced himself that everything would work out with them, she called to say that Everett’s had received clearance for her passport and papers and booked passage for her to sail the same night. There was no possible out. She had tried but hadn’t been able to reach Bemrose. However, Larry better not tell him so. It might only upset him. When she returned, provided he weren’t tied up with any female clients, they might be able to straighten things out.
With reluctance Larry agreed not to say anything, although it was a damnfool promise on the face of it. When he heard from Bemrose, he knew how stupid it was to let her talk him into it. Bemrose was put out because Janice had sailed, and suspicious because she had talked to Larry, not to him. Hadn’t she left a message for him or her address?
Larry lied down the line, handing out the death sentence. The pinched, off-key voice at the other end told him Bemrose was suffering. Larry would have shaken Janice, if she were there, for causing him unnecessary pain. She could have reached him long distance if she had really been interested. Maybe she was just piqued, and that whole performance at his office had been an act.
Lousy. The situation seemed tied in a package marked nonreturnable. Bemrose’s routine must have been to wait until Janice came around. When she hadn’t turned up all these weeks, he apparently had decided to forget his injuries and go to her. Now that she had refused to wait and gone ahead with her own plans, it might make him angry enough to——
All Larry hoped was that Bemrose wouldn’t try to get even on the rebound. He tried to explain to him that Janice’s orders had come suddenly, without Everett’s even bothering to warn her. In the rush of departure, she had probably forgotten to leave a message when she called and found that Arthur was out of town.
What made Larry think she had phoned him, Bemrose wanted to know, pouncing on this information.
Larry eased his way out by saying it was only natural that she should call, no matter whether or not they had been seeing each other. She wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, he lied, angrier and angrier with Janice as he tried to cover up for her.
It was a dangerous trip and it was wartime, he explained to Bemrose. She wouldn’t just leave. She would try to reach him and say that she was going overseas.
Her safety must have worried Bemrose, too, Larry figured, because he was quick to pooh-pooh her danger. The authorities wouldn’t allow her to travel unless it were safe, he contended. But Larry knew that Bemrose realized no one could be safe in a combat zone.
It was going to be difficult for Bemrose to live with himself for the next few weeks. If he were in love with Janice and had been waiting for her to come round, he must detest himself now because he had waited too long and she was out of reach. He must realize, Larry knew, that a letter, a cable, or a transatlantic phone call could hardly be expected to change the situation. There was too much to explain. Janice Baldwin had let him bluff the hand. While Bemrose held the chips, he had lost.
As Larry considered what must be Bemrose’s mood of hating-himself-and-the-world, he slumped deeper in his chair and the copy of Time fell to the study floor. A man in Bemrose’s situation might turn around and do some damnfool thing to get even. There was nothing new about a man, driven by jealousy, acting irrationally against his own interests.
Larry stood up, contracted his shoulder blades until they almost touched, and shut the window. He felt chilly in spite of the warm May night. He might be catching a spring cold. Whether it was that, or his day downtown, or the pigheadedness of Janice and Bemrose, his spirits were clammy.
On his way to the bathroom for an aspirin he stooped to pick up the magazine. The hollow rooms further depressed his spirits. He began to wish that Bessie’s class were over and she would come home.
Bed looked good to him as he walked through the bedroom and saw the turned-down sheets. He undressed, built his pillows into a wall so that he could read in bed, and made up his mind to turn out the light as soon as his eyes felt heavy. Skimming the foreign news, he turned to Time’s section on national affairs and saw Bemrose’s picture. The story, captioned “Transatlantic Braintruster,” credited him with the basic plan for Lend-Lease. His clear mental blueprint had enabled a government lawyer to draft the Lend-Lease bill in an hour and forty minutes, the story said.
Bemrose, 43, whose recreation is poker, has an agile, trained mind (Columbia Law and Columbia) which makes him a favorite of New York utilitymen and statesofficials.
Tweedy, mustached, no socialite but an Albany truck driver’s son, he wears easily the mantle of his erudite fosterfather and former law partner, Judge Winthrop Haynes.
Bemrose made a softspoken, backdoor entrance to diplomacy through his intimate, Attorney-General Newton. His suave handling of British bigwigs will result in future liaison assignments, it is said.
Larry let the magazine slide off the bed. So that’s what had kept Bemrose too busy to see him these past weeks and too preoccupied to straighten things out with Janice. They had called him pigheaded while he was figuring ways to keep the British on their feet.
Larry dialed Arthur’s number, jubilant at the news and anxious to congratulate him right away. The old closed-mouth. He’d like to punch him for becoming an international figure and keeping it quiet, for doing his heavy thinking solo, and pretending to hand Janice an option on the war. The so-and-so.
A Negro houseman who had worked for Judge Haynes answered. “Sorry, sir, Mr. Bemrose is in Washington tonight. He’s dining at the White House.”
Larry snapped the light and slid under the covers, determined to fall asleep before Bessie came home and asked him what kind of day it had been.