“And where was Jones?”
“Mrs. Fortescue told him to wait outside and see that we weren’t disturbed. I pulled back the slide of the gun and let it click in place—I wanted to scare him. I said, ‘Do you know who I am?’ He said, ‘I think so.’ I said, ‘You did your lyin’ in the courtroom but you’re going to tell the whole truth now.’ He looked nervous, tremblin’. He said, ‘I don’t know nothin’.’ I asked him where he was on the night of September twelfth and he said the Waikiki dance. I asked him when he left the dance and he said he didn’t know, he was drunk. I said, ‘Where did you pick up the woman?’ He said, ‘We didn’t have no woman.’ I told him he’d better tell the truth. Who kicked her? ‘Nobody kicked her.’ I said, ‘Tell me how you drove home,’ and he rattled off a bunch of streets and I don’t know their names but I let him go on awhile, then I said, ‘You were a prizefighter once, weren’t you?’ And he nodded, and I said, ‘Well that explains how you knew where to hit a woman one blow and break her jaw.’ He looked really nervous now, he wet his lips, he was squirmin’ and I said, ‘All right, if you’re not goin’ to talk, we’ll make you talk. You know what happened to Ida out at Pali?’ He didn’t say, but he was nervous, tremblin’. I said, ‘Well, what he got was nothin’ to what you’re going to get if you don’t tell the whole story, right now.’ And he said, ‘I don’t know nothin’,’ and I said, ‘Okay, Lord, go out and get the boys. After we work him over, he’ll talk all right.’ Kahahawai started to rise up and I pushed him back down and said, ‘Ida talked and told plenty on you. Those men out there, they’re comin’ in and beat you to ribbons.’”
Tommie’s voice began to quaver.
“Kahahawai was tremblin’ in his chair,” Tommie said, “and I said, ‘Last chance to talk—you know your gang was there!’ And he must’ve been more afraid of a beatin’ than the gun I was holdin’ on him, ‘cause he blurted it out: ‘Yeah, we done it!’”
Darrow paused to let the courtroom savor the moment. Finally he asked: “And then?”
“That’s the last I remember. Oh, I remember the picture that came into my mind, of my wife’s crushed face after he assaulted her and she prayed for mercy and he answered her with a blow that broke her jaw.”
“You had the gun in your hand as you were talking to him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you remember what you did?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you know what became of the gun?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you know what became of you?”
“N…no, sir.”
Tommie swallowed hard; he seemed to be holding back tears.
Darrow stood before the jury box, arms folded, shoulders hunched. He gave his client a few moments to compose himself, then said, “Do you remember anything of the flight to the mountains?”
“No, sir.”
“What’s the first thing you recall?”
“Sittin’ in a car on a country road. A bunch of people were comin’ up to us, sayin’ something about a body.”
“Do you remember being taken to the police station?”
“Not clearly.”
Darrow sighed, nodded. He went over and patted Tommie on the arm, then ambled toward the defense table, saying, “Take the witness, sir.”
Kelley rose and said, “Are you proud of your Southern heritage, Lt. Massie?”
Darrow almost jumped to his feet. “Objection! Immaterial, and intended to imply racial bias.”
“Your Honor,” Kelley said, “if the defense can explore the defendant’s state of mind, surely the prosecution has the same privilege.”
“You may do so,” the judge said, “but not with that question—it is misleading as it presupposes all Southerners are bigots.”
Kelley moved in close to Tommie. “Do you remember Mrs. Fortescue telling a reporter that you and she ‘bungled the job’?”
“Certainly not.”
“Did Joseph Kahahawai seem frightened?”
“Yes.”
“Did he plead for mercy?”
“No.”
“Did he put up a fight?”
“No.”
Kelley began to pace slowly up and down in front of the jury box. “Later, did Mrs. Fortescue or Jones or Lord, did any of them tell you how you behaved, or what you did, after the shot was fired?”
“Mrs. Fortescue said I just stood there and wouldn’t talk. She took me into the kitchen and tried to get me to take a drink, but I wouldn’t.”
“What did Jones say about what you’d done?”
“He wasn’t very complimentary.”
“Really?” Kelley’s tone was boldly arch. “Why? Because you only shot Kahahawai once?”
“No. He said I acted like a damn fool.”
Kelley feigned shock. “An enlisted man spoke to you in such a fashion?”
“Yes—and I resented it.”
Kelley sighed. Paced. Then he turned back to Tommie and said, “Did any of your fellow conspirators tell you why they took you along on the ride to Koko Head?”
“Yes…Mrs. Fortescue said she wanted me to get some fresh air.”
Kelley rolled his eyes and waved dismissively at Tommie. “This witness is excused.”
Tommie stepped off the stand and walked with head high over to the defense table, where Darrow smiled at him and nodded as if he’d done a wonderful job. Some of it had been pretty good, but the little-boy business about resenting his enlisted-man accomplice’s remark, and the lame notion that he’d been along on the corpse-disposal run to get some “fresh air,” were not shining moments.
In fact, Darrow would need to follow up with something remarkable to make the jury forget those lapses.
“The defense calls Thalia Massie,” Darrow said.
16
When the courtroom doors opened, Thalia Massie stood framed there as flashbulbs popped in the corridor, the packed gallery turning its collective head toward the surprisingly tall, astonishingly young-looking woman in the black crepe suit. Judge Davis didn’t bother banging his gavel to silence the stirring, the whispering; he allowed it to run its course as Thalia moved down the aisle in an awkward slouch, her slightly pudgy, pale, pretty face framed by fawn-colored hair, her protuberant blue-gray eyes cast downward, advancing in the uncertain manner that witnesses had reported of her as she walked along John Ena Road one night last September.
Her husband met her as she moved between the defense and prosecution tables; she paused as Tommie took and squeezed her hand. A murmur of approval rose from the mostly female, predominantly white spectators; I caught Admiral Stirling (seated with a woman I assumed to be his wife) casting his approving gaze on the noble couple as they exchanged brief, brave smiles.
But even smiling, Thalia had an oddly glazed, expressionless look, the vaguely wistful cast of someone mildly drugged.
She approached the stand stoopingly and was fumbling toward the chair when the judge reminded her there was an oath to take. She straightened momentarily, raising her hand, swearing to tell the truth, then settled down into the seat, knees together, hands in her lap, shoulders slouched, a posture at once prim and reminiscent of a naughty little girl sent to sit in the corner.
Darrow, his demeanor at its most grandfatherly, approached the witness stand and leaned against one arm. He pleasantly, calmly elicited from her the mandatory points of identification: her name, Thalia Fortescue Massie; her age, 21; age at the time of her marriage, 16, to Lt. Massie on Thanksgiving Day, 1927; they had no children; she would say they were happy, yes.
Thalia’s voice was a low, drawling near-monotone, nearly as expressionless as her face; but she was not emotionless: she twisted a handkerchief nervously in her hands as she answered.