In short, the perfect case for Clarence Darrow’s comeback.
Shaking my head, I said, “Defending the rich again, C.D.? Shame on you.”
A chuckle shook his sunken chest. “Your father would be disappointed in me.”
“He didn’t mind when you represented Loeb and Leopold.”
“Of course not. He was an anti-capital punishment man himself.”
With one exception, I thought.
His smile was gone now. He was gazing into a sweating water glass as if it were a window on the past. “Your father never forgave me for supplementing my efforts on behalf of coal miners, anarchists, Negroes, and unionists with clients of…dubious distinction.”
“Gangsters and grafters, you mean.”
He raised an eyebrow, sighed. “A hard man, your father. Moral to a fault. No one could live up to his exacting standards. Not even himself.”
“But the Massie case…if what I’ve read is even close to true, you’d be a natural for the other side.”
A frown creased the craggy face. “Don’t insult me, son. The case does not exist in which Clarence Darrow would stand for the prosecution.”
But if one did, it would be the Massie case.
I asked, “How are your friends at the NAACP going to—”
“I have friends in organizations,” he said curtly, glibly, “but no organization is my friend.”
“Swell. But isn’t this Mrs. Fortescue…is that her name?”
Darrow nodded.
“Isn’t this Mrs. Fortescue from Kentucky or Virginia or something?”
“Kentucky.”
“And she orchestrates a kidnapping that results in the fatal shooting of a colored man who raped her daughter? Doesn’t that put the Great Friend of the Colored Man square on the side of lynch law…?”
“That’s uncalled for,” he rasped. The gray eyes were flaring. “I have given more of my time, and money, to the Negro cause than any other white man you, or anyone, could name. Don’t question my convictions on the race issue.”
Darrow was getting touchy in his old age; he’d always been testy.
“Aren’t you raising the question yourself, C.D., just by taking this defense?”
He sighed, shook his big bucket head, the gray comma over his eye quivering. “What you fail to grasp, Nathan, is that I don’t blame those who have been embittered by race prejudice. Bigotry is something that’s bred into a man.”
“I know, I remember. I heard you lecture often enough, when I was a kid. And back then it sounded pretty good to me—‘No one deserves blame, no one deserves credit.’ But me, I like to pretend I have some control over my life.”
“Nothing wrong with pretending, son. It’s healthy for a child’s imagination.” He waved a red-jacketed waiter over. “Would you tell Mother Sardi that Mr. Darrow would like two cups of her special coffee?”
“Yes sir,” the waiter nodded, with a knowing smile.
Then Darrow turned his attention back to me. “When I was first approached with this matter…frankly…I did turn it down because of the racial issue—but not out of moral indignation.”
“What, then?”
He shrugged; not so grandiosely, this time. “I was afraid that if my clients expected me to argue on their behalf by invoking the supposed inferiority of the colored races, they would be…disappointed. I let my prospective clients know that I would not allow myself to argue a position in court that was at variance with what I felt, and what I had stood for, over all these years.”
“What was their response?”
Another little shrug. “They wrote me that they thought I was right in my position on the race question, and that they wanted me to maintain that attitude in court. And that, furthermore, complete control over their defense would be mine; I would call all the shots.” And yet another little shrug. “What could I do? I took the case.”
The waiter brought over two cups of steaming black coffee. Darrow smacked his lips and snatched his cup right off the waiter’s tray. I sipped mine; it had something in it, and I don’t mean cream or sugar.
“Brother,” I whispered, and tried not to cough. “What did they spike that with?”
“Something brewed up last night in a bathtub in Hell’s Kitchen, no doubt.”
Funny thing about Darrow: I didn’t remember ever seeing him take a drink, before Prohibition. Back in the days of the Biology Club, the “study group” Darrow and my father belonged to, jugs of wine would be passed around and Darrow always waved them off. Liked keeping a clear head, he said.
Once the government told him he couldn’t have a drink, he couldn’t get enough of the stuff.
I took another sip, a more delicate one this time. “So—where does a Chicago cop fit in with your Hawaiian case?”
“You’re on leave of absence, aren’t you?”
“Not really. On assignment is more like it.”
His eyes narrowed shrewdly. “I can get you on leave of absence. I still have a few friends at City Hall….”
That was an understatement. He’d defended crooked politicos in both Mayor Thompson’s and current Mayor Cermak’s administrations, and plenty of administrations before that.
“I thought you hated detectives,” I said. “You’ve done your own legwork, ever since…”
I let it hang. Back in 1912, Darrow had nearly been convicted of bribery on the evidence of a private dick he’d hired to (if the dick’s testimony could be believed) buy off jury members. Many of Darrow’s leftist pals had dumped him, thinking he might have plea-bargained his anarchist defendants out to soften the blow of the inevitable bribery trial.
My father was one of the few friends who had stuck by him.
Ever since that time, Darrow was widely known to do most, if not all, of his own investigative work. He liked talking to witnesses and suspects himself, gathering evidence, gathering facts. He had a near-photographic memory and could interrogate casually, conversationally, without taking notes, before or after the fact.
“I told you,” Darrow said gently, “my legs aren’t what they used to be. Neither is this, I’m afraid….” And he tapped his noggin with a forefinger. “I’m afraid that, out on the street, my mind might not click with the old vigor.”
“You’re looking for a leg man.”
“More. A detective.” He leaned forward. “You deserve better than a life on the…” And he spoke the words like bitter obscenities. “…police department. You deserve a better destiny than that shabby circle can give you…. When you were a boy you wanted to be a ‘Private Consulting Detective,’ like Nick Carter or your precious Sherlock.”
“I make out all right on the force,” I said, trying not to sound as defensive as I felt. “I’m the youngest guy who ever made plainclothes….”
And I let that hang.
We both knew how I’d managed my quick promotion: I’d lied on the witness stand to let a Capone-selected patsy take the rap for the Jake Lingle shooting.
“I’m not a judge,” Darrow said gently. “I defend. Let me be your defender. Let me parole you from a life sentence of empty corruption.”
I swallowed. That eloquent son of a bitch. I said, “How?”
“Walk away from that graft-ridden pesthole of a department. Your father hated that you took that job.”
“He hated me for it.”
He shook his head, no, no, no. “No, I don’t believe that, not for a second. He loved his son, but hated this bad choice his son made.”
I gave him a nasty smirk. “Oh, but C.D.—I didn’t make that choice, it chose me, remember? Environment and heredity ganged up on me and made me do it.”
The smile he bestowed on me in return was plainly patronizing. “Ridicule me, if you like, son…but what you say has truth in it. Outside forces do shape our ‘destiny.’ So, all right, then—prove me wrong—make a choice.” He leaned forward and there was fire and urgency in the gray eyes. “This case, this Massie matter, it’s no isolated instance. My lovely Ruby doesn’t know it yet, but her husband is getting back in the game.”