“Perry Mason!”
Blue opened his eyes and looked at me. “Just what do you mean by that?”
“I mean you’re as big a sucker for mysteries as I am. You wanted to be Perry Mason.”
“I suppose so.”
“Well, what happened? Tell me about it.”
“It isn’t very complicated. A certain man—a professional criminal—wanted me to defend him. I took the case, even though I felt sure he was guilty of worse crimes if he was innocent of the one he had been charged with. I needed the money, and after all everyone is entitled to counsel, guilty or innocent.
“At the trial I did the best I could for him, but it became increasingly clear that he would be convicted. He asked me to bribe the judge—not to find him not guilty, which would’ve been impossible anyway since it was a jury trial, but to give him a light sentence.”
“Why didn’t he do it himself?”
“He was out on bail, but he was being watched by the police—more and more closely as it became apparent that the verdict would go against him. The few associates he had whom he could have trusted with something of that sort were being watched as well, some because they were his associates and some for other reasons. He insisted that I do it. He was a very forceful man, strong physically and strong of will. Someone once said that all strong men are goodnatured—or that if they are not, the people around them are, which comes to the same thing.”
“So you did it?”
Blue shook his head, a very slight shake this time; I don’t think the end of that sharp nose moved half an inch. “Not then. I told him he would have to find someone else if he wanted to go through with it, and that if he did I didn’t want to know about it. And then that if he continued to try to force me into it, I would have to resign the case.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t just go out and hire himself a crooked lawyer.”
“There are never enough of those to meet the demand,” Blue said. “Besides, most of them aren’t as crooked as people think. They are small crooks, who might hint to a juror’s wife that her husband would soon have a better job if things went well. This was serious. It involved a judge who needed money, and a great deal of cash in unmarked bills.
“Then too, Holly, you have to understand that most crooked lawyers aren’t very good lawyers. That’s why they’re crooked, basically—they can’t earn much of a living otherwise. I was a good lawyer, or at least I thought I was, and my client thought so too; he wanted me for his crooked lawyer. That’s one way in which lawyers are made crooked, you see. Once I had tendered that bribe, he would have me in his pocket for the rest of my life. I would have to do whatever I could to pull him out of any legal difficulty he got into, because if he thought I had not done enough and he went to prison, he would tell; then the judge and I would both have been finished.”
“But you said no.”
“Yes, I told him no. Two or three nights later—I forget just how long it was—I received a telephone call. It was a woman’s voice. The woman said she had information relating to another case of mine. She would not come to my apartment, but she offered to meet me in an all-night drugstore not far from where I lived. As I was walking toward the drugstore, a man in a raincoat came toward me. When we were close, he opened his raincoat.” Blue paused, and the little smile came back. “I remember that I wondered for an instant whether he was a flasher—whether he intended to expose himself. What he actually had beneath his raincoat wasn’t an erection but a sawed-off shotgun. He fired at my legs, and the next thing I knew I was lying facedown on the sidewalk, bleeding.”
“I dig it,” I said.
“Yes, you’ve been there yourself, haven’t you? The judge granted a continuance, of course, and my client came to visit me in the hospital. He was very friendly. He told me that he had not wanted to do what he had, but that if I refused to do as I was told he would kill me. And it suddenly came to me that the whole system of the law, which I had studied and supported, had done nothing and would do nothing to protect me from this man. As soon as I was able to hobble about, I went to see the judge.”
“And?”
“He wouldn’t take it. It was that simple. By that time he had found the racehorse thing—though I didn’t know that at the time—which was far safer and got him all the money he required. He told me to come back with the cash, and when I did there were two FBI agents in the next room videotaping everything. He was a federal judge; I should have told you that. My client went to prison, and so did I. So did the judge himself, about two years later.”
“That was the judge you went to see at Garden Meadow, then. You said he’d been in jail.”
Blue nodded. “He feels he owes me something, because he turned me in when he was acting dishonestly himself. I don’t agree, but I value his friendship.
“At any rate, all that is another story; I set out to tell you about my studies. It’s possible to do college work in most of our prisons, and I did. I knew I would need a new profession when I was released, and the only things I could really learn where I was were penology and criminology. Anything else would have been a matter of acquiring a theoretical background without practical experience. By devoting my studies to criminology, I turned my prison time to my own benefit, if you like.”
I asked him how it had felt, majoring in criminology while he was surrounded by criminals, and we talked about that till my father came.
How My Father Got Smart
It was really hell when my father came home, because I wanted to jump up and run out and kiss him, and I couldn’t. I heard the Caddy’s tires crunch the gravel, then the front door rattle, then the deep growl of his voice when he said hello to Mrs. Maas, and finally the scrape of his shoes on the stairs, and all that time I had to sit there like a dummy.
Then the door opened, and there he was. I yelled, “Daddy!” and held out my arms and he came over and gave me a squeeze, and just for a second there I caught the spicy smell of his aftershave. He looked like he always had, only maybe a little more tired and worried.
Aladdin Blue was starting to stand up to shake hands, so my father said, “No, no. Keep your seat.” But Blue got up just the same and they shook.
“Mr. Blue is a criminologist,” I said.
“I know. Mr. Blue called me at the Plaza, I believe.” My father looked at Blue. When he doesn’t want you to, you can’t ever tell whether he likes what he sees. “You aren’t associated with the police?”
“No,” Blue said. “As I told you then, I’m associated with the crime. I was at the Fair, chatting with your daughter, when the explosion occurred.”
“I know,” my father said again. “Your leg …”
“That’s an old injury.”
I said, “He was shot by gangsters,” which I still think was a diplomatic thing to say under the circumstances, although Blue gave me a look that would have set fire to a pile of bricks.
“You weren’t injured by the blast, Mr. Blue?”
“I was lucky. Your daughter was sitting by a window, and wasn’t equally lucky. I was also stupid. I ran—as near as I can come to running—out of the building without realizing she had been hurt. A shard of glass wounded her; she can tell you about it.”
“I’m sure she will, but I’m keeping you standing.” My father turned to me. “Holly, I see some crutches in the corner. Can you walk?”
“A little,” I said.
“How did you get upstairs?”
“Bill carried me.”
“If Bill could carry you up, I can carry you down. I want to continue this in my study, where Mr. Blue and I can sit down, and I can offer him a good cigar and a drink. I’d like a drink myself.”