So I started parroting what I’d been taught. I spent the next twenty minutes lecturing this man on the fine points of constitutional law, trying to make him understand why the judge appointed me and why it would be better for everybody if he let me do my job.
He listened patiently, and I was sure he understood every word, so by the time I was finished I was satisfied with the job I had done and was totally convinced I had won him over. Throughout my lecture he had said nothing. Now he seemed to agree that I had a part to play in this drama.
“I guess maybe I’d better tell you the whole story, Mr. Anwalt. By the way, did you say our discussions were privileged?”
“Yes sir,” I replied confidently. “Whatever you tell me is totally secret, uh, with a very few exceptions, and I can’t repeat any of it without your prior consent. Furthermore, I can’t be compelled to reveal what you tell me.”
“What are the exceptions?”
“Well, mostly, they deal with communications that promote crimes or fraud. If I knew, for instance, that you intended to offer perjured testimony in the case I’d have to tell on you, but this is the only important exception in criminal cases.”
“I see. Does that mean I can tell you the details of my crime and you can’t repeat them to anybody else?”
I gulped, then answered. “Yes, it does.”
“Motive too?”
“Motive too,” I answered. “B-but you have to understand that guilt isn’t the only issue in a criminal trial. You also have punishment to consider, and even if you’re guilty—”
“I understand all that, Mr. Anwalt. I want you to know I’m not a total ingrate, I do appreciate that you want to do your best on your first case—”
“How did you know that?”
“The guard told me you just got licensed. Stuff like that gets around in a place like this, you know.”
Thompson reached over and grabbed my wrist, so that he could look at my watch. “Chow’s in thirty minutes,” he said, “such as it is. We’d better get on with it.”
“Yes, sir.” I pulled out my recorder so I could make a record.
“None of that, Mr. Anwalt, not even any notes. Otherwise I will not utter another word. I only agreed to talk to you for your sake. Do you understand that?”
I had no choice, so I nodded.
“I’m no spring chicken,” he began. “When I was born Herbert Hoover was president. The first phase of the war to end all wars had been over for fourteen years, and the man who was to provoke the second phase had not yet taken power in Germany.
“Edison had just died, but many of the other scientific and industrial giants were still around. Orville Wright and Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, to name a few. Einstein had not yet come to this country. Enrico Fermi was a young whippersnapper like you. There were giants all around me.
“There wasn’t any such thing as molecular biology in those days. I started out where the oldtimers like Luther Burbank and George Washington Carver, who incidentally was also still around, had left off. For most of my career my methods hadn’t changed all that much from theirs. These guys were solid researchers and they developed good techniques.”
He paused, apparently to savor this reflection on happier times.
I couldn’t yet tell what he was getting at, but he was in control, and if I wanted to hear anything I had to listen to all of it.
“Times changed so much during my lifetime,” he continued. “We went from national optimism to national gloom, from a land of inexhaustible resources to a land of scarcities, from a nation of exporters to a nation of importers, from an oil glut to an oil crisis. During my lifetime man first realized that while he could not yet destroy the planet he was fully capable of destroying himself.
“This is why I decided I had to do something to change that. I did it, and it was working, but Gonzalez didn’t care about the world. He was a cowardly little man with a puny little intellect and all he cared about was how much money he could get for what he knew. This is why I killed him, Mr. Anwalt.”
“Gonzalez was blackmailing you?”
“He was trying to. I didn’t give in, as you can see. I shut him up for good.” Thompson’s voice sounded absolutely icy, totally out of character with the civilized man he had been before.
“I—I don’t know much about him, Dr. Thompson, except they said on TV he was from Venezuela.”
“He worked for me at one time, Mr. Anwalt, but it wasn’t in a scientific capacity. He was the helicopter pilot I used on my expeditions into the rain forest. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in almost five years. Then, suddenly, last week he turned up right here in town. He wanted money.” Thompson paused again. “Tell me, Mr. Anwalt, how much do you really know about me?”
“I’ve seen the movie they made about you,” I answered truthfully. “Then, of course, there’s what I heard on TV and what I read about you when you were arrested. They say that when you discovered the oilbush you changed the course of history, and I guess you probably did.”
The old man’s face now had a distinct smirk on it, as though regardless of what he had done he was daring the world to hate him for killing Gonzalez. It didn’t take long for the significance of that look to sink in, and in that instant I thought I had him figured out.
It wasn’t supposed to work that way, I knew. Nobody was supposed to get a break from the law because of who he was; everybody was supposed to get equal treatment. But I was a realist. I knew that in practice famous people did get treated better and poor people were treated worse.
I felt a little sick when it occurred to me that Thompson thought his fame dispensed with the need for a lawyer, that he confidently expected the law would go light on him because of who he was.
But in one reckless, nonchalant utterance, he destroyed my theory. “I didn’t discover the oilbush,” he said.
That remark sent my mind reeling. My carefully evolving explanation collapsed.
The discovery of that bush down in the Amazon ranked among the miracles of the ages. In one fell swoop the discovery of this prosaic-looking plant had not only eliminated the world’s energy crisis, it had stopped the devastators of Earth’s rain forests in their tracks.
A new theory sprang up to fill the void. “A-are y-you trying to tell me that somebody else discovered it? Was it Gonzalez? Was that why he was blackmailing you?”
Thompson’s face had lost the smirk. Now he was deadpan and serious. “I wish it was that simple. The truth is that what has happened already is bound to cause exactly the same kind of speculation you just made, and that could be disastrous. If I stood trial, even if I didn’t testify, things would be enormously worse. I wish you’d try to understand that it’s not only better for me but better for the world that I plead guilty and go quietly away to prison. I won’t be around that much longer anyhow.”
I was determined not to let it go at that. “As your lawyer, Dr. Thompson, I’m obligated to respect your wishes as long as I consider them to be in your best interest legally.” I tried to sound firm.
“But,” I added, “I can’t determine what your best interests are unless I know the unvarnished truth, and I don’t. You say, for instance, that you didn’t discover the oilbush, and I gather from that statement and from the fact that you were being blackmailed that Gonzalez was claiming he did…”
“Nobody did.” Thompson’s face was solemn and grim.
“B-but I remember—from the movie, the helicopter landed and you jumped out with this bundle, and you said—”
“Some actor said it. And yes, I know this is really the way it was, but it was all staged. Gonzalez was just a mope, an airplane driver, somebody to get me around the forest, somebody to interpret for me. I paid him well for that, well enough so that he should have kept his mouth shut.”