16 

Double-parked in the City of God

“Candor, stop that!”

Peter Helm ranged the antechamber of the arena, trying to marshall his formidable thought processes. Trying to make Lance concentrate, difficult since the tarnished White Knight had retreated to escape mode and kept re-running his funeral in Wichita. When Helm looked at his client, he was as liable to see a flag-draped casket as the unhappy young man whose case he now had to pull out of the fire. Not a gambler, Helm still found them useful as weathervanes. From 3-1 odds in his favor, handicappers were now quoting 7-5 against.

Again he saw the casket, rattled by the newest volley of shots Bred over Lance’s grave. “Stop that.”

Reluctantly Lance tuned out past glories and gave his attention to Helm. The treacherous Speed had shattered him, and Sherry was just too much at the wrong time, love her as he did. But the reporters came; the trial was about him again. Throughout the proceedings and the arguments he could barely understand, he’d begun to feel irrelevant to the whole business and nagging doubts about his own motives, all made clearer through living with Sherry. Now that he wasn’t horny all the time, his mind worked in ways he once would have called backsliding, Speed’s line of attack brought home one indisputable fact of omission: he had never considered for one moment that what he strove for to save America was against its deepest principles. He could always pronounce his religious aims and the Pledge of Allegiance in consecutive breaths. Not that Speed had changed his mind, just it was something to think about and maybe talk over with Sherry. Was it that he believed so strongly to begin with or that belief made him feel like part of something that appeared to be moving? That question took considerable mental gymnastics, but for the first time in his life or death, the mind of Lance Candor asked him just what he did believe and stood there with arms folded, waiting for an answer.

But they laughed at him. People like himself. That hurt. What kind of people would laugh at a man who gave his life for the President? Just because his wife didn’t like sex and forced him to look somewhere else. Well, if the cat was out of the bag, at least the cat stood up for him.

Staring up at furious Helm, Lance didn’t care how mad the little bastard got or much about what happened now. What ever Helm or Speed or even Letti thought, that was tough darts. Something had snapped. There was a phrase he’d read somewhere, something about personal priorities. Lance was now groping these neglected considerations into some kind of order.

“I knew what Speed would do to you on the stand. Now I’ve got to repair the damage you’ve done. I told you. I gave you clear orders not to see that woman again.”

“I know, Mr. Helm. Except you didn’t say why”

“Didn’t – Candor, can’t you hear me?”

“I mean you never asked why I might want to see her.”

Helm stopped pacing. He was once and might be again a supreme spiritual leader, not used to explaining orders. The fuzzy, dreamlike quality in Candor’s voice annoyed him but rang no warning bells. “You are not important in this.”

“I know.”

“You were never important except as an image on which we displayed an issue. Painful as that may be.”

“No. Not anymore.”

“Good. When I put you on the stand, answer exactly as questioned and no more. Volunteer nothing, do you understand? How long has this been going on?”

“How long has what been going on?”

“Candor, you strain belief.”

“Well, try harder!” Lance shot back with a new aggressiveness that surprised both of them.

“That – description fails me – that motley-hued companion of yours.”

“What’s it matter? You said I wasn’t important anymore.”

“I must be prepared for any attack on you.”

Lance got up, straightening his tie. To Helm’s amazement, he simply brushed the question aside. “I’ll handle that, Mr. Helm. What are you going to ask me?”

“Quite simply if you admit your guilt and repent of it.”

Lance’s expression, an erstwhile open book to his lawyer, was now opaque. “Oh.”

“Are you ready?” Helm opened the door. “Do you hear them out there? I must put them back on your side. Do you think that is easy? Yes, you do: they’re your kind of people, howling along with you after Coyul. But remember an interesting habit of wolves, Candor. If the quarry wounds one of them, they slop to tear that unfortunate apart. Call them believers or what you will, they are a pack, a mob I must sway, and they are far less interested in your gossamer motives than your adulterous bed.”

“I’m learning that.” Lance peered closely at the little lawyer. “Who are you, anyway?”

“How should you know me when you can’t even recognize Joshua Speed?” Helm ventured a slight smile in which one might sense centuries. “I’m on your side.”

“I wonder. What side is that?”

“Come.”

“No, wait. Don’t tell me what to say out there.”

“Candor, I am losing patience.”

“I mean it. No matter what he said, I’m an American and I have rights.”

“Do you?” Helm challenged delicately. “You waived those rights gladly when you proclaimed the law of God superseded the Constitution in toto. Which it does. God is not a democrat. You can’t have it both ways. Come along, Mr. Candor – and if you must admit feet of clay, try to keep them out of your mouth.”

Lance was nervous waiting to take the stand, jiggling loose coins in one hand. He scanned the audience to find Sherry. They’d have a lot to talk about tonight. At least he could talk to her. As for Letti, she still hadn’t come to see him and he guessed she wasn’t about to now. Tough darts, he decided, liking the go-to-hell phrase and the heady new sense of liberation. His gaze drifted across the court space to Speed, whose head was bowed over his notes. The gaunt head came up suddenly. Something in the profile plucked a chord of memory in Lance. He rattled the coins and considered Helm’s instructions. Then —

The coins.

“Mr. Helm.”

“Don’t tell me. You cannot need to go to the lavatory.”

“No.”

Helm went on writing in his minute hand. “What, then?”

“Nothing.” Lance contemplated the face on the coin in his palm. The stamped profile was idealized, majestic as that fuller image he’d once revered as he’d read the words on the flanking marble panels. Lance stared at the coin, then thoughtfully returned it to a pocket as Helm rose to address the court.

“Your Honor, Defense desires only cross-examination of the Defendant before summation.”

“I see. Plaintiff?”

“Plaintiff has no more witnesses to produce.”

“Defense may proceed.”

“I recall Lance Candor to the stand.”

No one applauded this time as Lance took his place on the stand. The jury looked bleak and the acres of people around him seemed to send a very different message to Lance now. Out of the vast, rustling sibilance he heard smothered sniggers and boos. When he thought about it – and today Lance was thinking with unaccustomed clarity – that seemed unjust. They cheered him yesterday. Before they laughed. He recalled Helm’s admonition on the social habits of wolves and his eyes went again and again to the homely giant seated next to Coyul.

Helm’s normally cool manner was now warm and solicitous. “Mr. Candor, after the emotional bullying inflicted on you yesterday, I will be as brief as possible. I hope you were not too distressed by my colleague’s tactics, and I can only hope for the remainder of this trial that he will not resort to them again. I daresay every Christian spirit in this church is with you; how could they not be when everything you did or said was from convictions shared by them? Mr. Speed would introduce secular confusion into consideration of God. A faith that relies on fallible thought incorporates doubt, and I am sure you had none.”

“Your Honor.” Speed elevated his lanky frame from the chair. “I was under the impression my colleague wished to cross-examine, not summarize.”

“I too,” Aurelius said. “Which will do much to explain why I so strongly lean toward hearing that summation in the Void. Defense will cease oration and return to his stated purpose, that of cross-examination.”

Helm stood corrected most graciously, and addressed his remarks directly to Lance. “Did your actions throughout stem from your religious beliefs?”

The answer was barely audible. “Yes.”

“Do you still believe in the sanctity of your purpose?”

Lance’s hesitation was apparent. “Yes.” He shifted restlessly in the witness box, eyes always drawn to Speed, surer than ever now. The yes felt wrong somehow. He didn’t know what he truly believed anymore, not with such a man against him.

You can’t have it both ways.

“You were given no chance to explain yesterday. Do you deny the allegation raised by my colleague regarding the woman known as Scheherazade Ginsberg?”

“I – no, I don’t deny it.”

“Thank you.” Helm turned slightly to face the jury. “A simple, manly admission of guilt. In all the years of your marriage, was this your only adultery?”

“Adultery?” On television, Lance looked as if he were backing away from the word. “This... this was the only one.”

“The only one. Remembering God’s forgiveness and your hopes as one of His Elect, do you sincerely repent?”

Nancy Noncommit admired the image on her monitor; Lance struggling with conflicting emotions on unfamiliar terrain, “I don’t feel sorry for the little S. O. B., but Helm’s a bigger one.” Then her practiced eye caught a totally alien nuance in Candor that suffused the boyishness. He looked directly at Helm.

“I feel dirty.”

“Of course you do. And you repent of this woman?”

“I feel like I got sold.”

Helm shot him a look of veiled venom. “Please answer the question as put to you. Do you repent?”

“Why?” Lance burst out suddenly, full of anguish. Helm took a moment to realize the why was not an insolence to him but a plea to Joshua Speed. “Why, sir? Why did you do this to me?”

“The witness will answer the question!” Helm demanded.

Lance ignored him, eyes riveted to Speed. “You were my hero. I can’t understand why you’re against me. What have I done?”

“Mr. Helm is examining,” Speed reminded him. “I can’t answer while you’re his witness.”

“Witness will answer,” Aurelius ruled, then added an afterthought. “Unless he chooses not to where answer might be prejudicial to his case. Refresh me, Mr. Speed. Does not your Constitution include such an amendment?”

“It does, Your Honor,” Speed responded from his chair with an encouraging smile for Lance. “Number five.”

“That’s right,” Lance remembered. “The Fifth Amendment. No, I decline to answer under my rights – and I would like to be excused.”

“Call the Hilton, leave a message,” Cataton ordered Benny, “I want an interview with Candor.” She remembered the ploy Nancy used to get at Ginsberg first, and that time was ripe to do unto others.

Below, Peter Helm exhibited his meager equivalent of apoplexy, a slight but definite reddening about ten-to-two eyebrows, “You little viper” – under his breath at Lance – “you utter turncoat, what are you doing?”

“I’d like to be excused,” Lance requested of the court with dignity. To Helm, with more determination than the lawyer would have guessed in him: “I don’t know just what it is I do repent, sir.”

“What?”

“I mean, didn’t you say this was the House of God? If it is, I can pray here and I can find answers, and I sure as green apples can be confused here without God minding or the roof coming down. I am confused, and I wish you’d let me go home.”