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
“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
“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
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
