I said that I didn’t always know now, and he said I should ask him whenever I was in doubt. “Incidentally, I spoke to a lawyer about the way you’d been gypped out of your property for that city dump, and he thinks you’ve got a hell of a good case. In fact, he’s willing to take it on a contingency for a third of what he can recover.”
“But I’ve told you,” I said, “I just can’t do it, Jeff. I’m simply not up to a courtroom battle.”
“My lawyer friend thinks they’d go for an out-of-court settlement.”
“Well, maybe,” I said. “But Connie would be sure to find out about it, and I’d still be up the creek. She’d grab any money I got, and give me a good smearing besides.”
“I don’t see that,” Claggett frowned. “You’ve been sending her quite a bit of money, haven’t you?”
“Better than four thousand since I got out of the hospital.”
“Then why should she want to give you a bad time? Why should she throw a wTench in a money machine? She hurts you, she hurts herself.”
I nodded, said he was probably right. But still…
“I’m just afraid to do it, Jeff. I don’t know why I am, but I am.”
He looked at me exasperatedly, and seemed on the point of saying something pointed. Instead, however, he sighed heavily and said he guessed I just couldn’t help it.
“But think it over, anyway, won’t you? You don’t need to commit yourself, but you can at least think about it, can’t you?”
“Oh, well, sure,” I said. “Sure, I’ll think about it.”
“That’s a promise?”
“Of course,” I said.
He left. I returned to Kay, who was well prepared to receive me.
“I could simply kill you!” she exploded. “You made me lose my job, you stupid old boob you!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’m sure you were much too good for it.”
“I was not! I mean — why didn’t you speak up for me? It was all your fault, anyway, but you didn’t say a word to defend me!”
“I thought I did, but possibly I didn’t say enough,” I said. “I really don’t think it would have changed anything, however, regardless of what I’d said.”
“Oh, you! What do you know, you silly old fool?”
“Very little,” I said. “And at the rate I’m aging, I’m afraid I won’t be able to add much to my store of knowledge.”
She glared at me, her face blotched and ugly like a soiled picture. She said angrily that I hadn’t needed to act like a fool, had I? Well, had I?
“You didn’t even give him time to open his mouth before you were cracking your silly jokes! Saying that I couldn’t wear my gun because it didn’t match my birthday suit, and a lot of other stupid, silly stuff. Well, you weren’t funny, not a doggone bit! Just a plain darned fool, that’s all you were!”
“I know,” I said.
“You know?”
“It’s a protective device.” I nodded. “The I-ain’t-nothin’-but-a-hound-dawg syndrome. When a dog can’t cope, he flops over on his back, thumps his tail, wiggles his paws, and exposes his balls. Briefly, he demonstrates that he is a harmless and amusing fellow, so why the hell should anyone hurt him? And it works pretty well with other dogs, literal and figurative. The meanest mastiff has never masticated me, but I’ve taken some plumb awful stompings from pussycats.”
“Huh! You think you’re so smart, don’t you?”
“Meow, sppftt,” I said.
John Ball
Appointment with the Governor
John Ball — the creator of Virgil Tibbs — is a man of parts. He is a lieutenant colonel in the US. Air Force — CAP; he has been on the staffs of the Brooklyn Eagle, the New York World-Telegram, and Fortune. Mr. Ball has written more than thirty books, and he received both the MW A Edgar Allan Poe Award and the CWA Gold Dagger for In the Heat of the Night.
“Appointment with the Governor” originally appeared in Who Done It? a collection edited by Alice Lawrence and Isaac Asimov in which the contributors’ identities were coded. This is the first publication of the story under John Balls name.
It never would have happened at all if Maggie MacDonald had been at her desk as usual. Through four administrations Maggie had presided over the governor’s appointments, and no one could recall that she had ever made a mistake. Because of her unerring ability to keep everything sorted out in proper order, and the acute sixth sense that she sometimes displayed in knowing who should get in and who should be kept away, no one had brought up the matter of her age. There was no one her equal to replace her and if perchance she were technically over the age limit for her job, no one was going to be rude enough to even think about it.
But Maggie had an appointment for her annual physical examination and the person who had been designated to fill in for her was unaccountably late. Which is why Mrs. Willis M. Roberts and Mrs. Chester R. Burke were shown into the same waiting room when every effort should have been made to be sure that they never met. By the time the replacement for Maggie was at her desk the damage had been done. She realized it at once, but there was nothing she could do about it except pray that the two women did not fall into conversation. If that happened…
Meanwhile, the governor’s clemency secretary was standing beside the desk of the state’s chief executive. He was a thoroughly conscientious man, perhaps the single best appointment that the governor had made. He gave his recommendations very carefully and never without a full consideration of the evidence available. If a further investigation was indicated, he was tireless in seeing that it was done properly. He was also a very tough man to lobby. He had the full respect of his associates, the press, and the members of the bar.
As he spoke the governor listened carefully and silently. It was the most important case to come up since the election, and it involved the newly reinstated death penalty. If the execution did go forward as scheduled, it would be the first one under the new law. There was a great deal of public emotion on both sides of the question, but the voters had been decisive in the referendum that restored capital punishment. That was a mandate, and the governor knew it, but it was not going to be allowed to decide the issue.
“I want to know something,” the governor said. “Is there the least possibility that Roberts might be innocent? Could he have been framed? I know such things are done. Could he simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
The clemency secretary shook his head. “Governor, I can give you my assurance there is no possibility of innocence. After the trial and sentencing, Roberts admitted that he was guilty. That fact was not publicized, but I checked it out and it’s true. Also, he supplied some additional details that the sheriff himself didn’t know.”
“That’s bad,” the governor said.
The clemency secretary nodded, regretfully. “It is,” he agreed. “And now you want my recommendation.”
The governor took a breath and held it for a moment, knowing that a man’s life was at stake.
The clemency secretary spoke calmly and quietly. “I am recommending that clemency be denied. In my own conscience I don’t believe in capital punishment, but it is part of the law and if anyone has ever deserved it, Roberts is the man. I can’t find a single mitigating condition: He wasn’t drunk, under the influence of any drug, or otherwise incapacitated. He killed the little girl in cold blood, knowing what he was doing and the penalty for his crime. He has a long history of violent offenses, many of them sexual in nature. Like Chessman, one of his victims is in a mental hospital, probably permanently. Another, a girl of sixteen, can never have children.”