Two weeks after Weldon Whitman had been found guilty, Robert Cloud returned to the Hall of Justice for the sentencing. He walked down the wide fifth-floor corridor to the thick double doors of Department Four of the Criminal Divison. Opening one of the doors an inch, he peered inside. The courtroom was practically empty; there were three spectators in the public section, and that was all: no judge, no clerk, not even a bailiff. Cloud closed the door and fingered a cigarette from the pack in his coat pocket.
He had no reason, really, for being there that morning. Weldon Whitman’s conviction had rated only ten column inches of space the next day. The sentencing, a procedural formality, would rate no space at all. As far as the reading public was concerned, the story was dead. To Robert Cloud, however, it was still alive. Weldon Whitman and G. Foster Klein and Doris Calder had all intruded upon his thoughts with disturbing regularity since the day of the verdict.
Cloud had not told anyone at the paper that he was going to Whitman’s sentencing; he had merely called the city desk and said he would be late that morning. He was really not even sure why he had such an irresistible urge to be there. He had questioned Lew Lach about the ritual of sentencing, and learned that one of two things would happen: either the punk, as Lach referred to Whitman, would be sentenced to death, or the judge would recommend mercy and sentence him to life in prison. Cloud wondered if the outside chance of seeing Whitman beat the death sentence was what he hoped for that morning.
Crushing out the cigarette under his foot, he opened one of the doors and looked into the courtroom again. A uniformed deputy was sitting near the railing, and Weldon Whitman was waiting, alone, at the defendant’s counsel table. Cloud pulled the door open and went inside.
“I’m Robert Cloud of the Ledger,” he said, showing his press card to the deputy. “All right if I talk to your prisoner?”
“Long as you stay outside the rails,” the deputy told him.
Cloud nodded and moved along the empty row of press seats until he was as close as he could get to the counsel table. As Cloud approached, Whitman turned in his chair to face him.
“Remember me?” Cloud said by way of greeting.
“Sure,” Weldon Whitman answered, his mismatched lips curving into that irregular grin, and a sneer that, this time, was obviously innocent. “You’re the guy who offered to buy me some cigarettes. I should have taken you up on it; I ran out a few days ago.”
“The offer’s still good,” Cloud told him.
“Well, thanks, but I guess I’ll just quit.” Whitman’s grin widened grotesquely. “Maybe if old Judge Lukey finds out about it, he’ll think I’m putting down my bad habits and go easy on me.”
“I thought you were the guy who didn’t have any bad habits,” Cloud remarked. “I thought you were the guy everybody was out to frame.”
“Come on, buddy,” Whitman answered easily, “I never claimed to be an angel. I’m a burglar and a stickup man and a lot of other things. But I haven’t done anything that rates the gas chamber.”
“Do you think there’s a chance the judge will set aside the death penalty?”
“Are you kidding?” Whitman’s grin was replaced by an expression of utter astonishment. “Man, you sure don’t know much about Lukey, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, let me clue you in on something, then. Do you know what the cons up at San Quentin call Condemned Row? They call it Carl’s Place, because Lukey keeps it populated most of the time. This guy hands out death sentences like a traffic judge hands out ten-dollar fines. Hell, he wouldn’t let me off with life if I was his own kid.”
“He’s that bad, huh?”
“Bad? Listen, you hang around the Hall of Justice long enough and you’ll find out for yourself.” Bitterness crept into Whitman’s voice and he said flatly, “Lukey is the worst killer in California. That’s why they tried me in his courtroom; that’s why they threw every lousy unsolved case in their files at me and assigned the chief prosecutor himself to handle the case. They knew I’d never get off if Lukey was the judge; they knew he’d give me the gas pill.”
“You make it sound like they’re going to an awful lot of trouble to get you,” Cloud said. “What makes you so important to them?”
“Look at my record,” Whitman told him. “I’ve been a thorn in the law’s side since I was a juvenile first-offender. I’ve probably given the law in this county more grief than any six other guys put together. And the thing about it, the thing that really gets to them, is that I’ve never backed down from them, see? I’ve never copped out and I’ve never crawled for the bastards, not once. I tell them to go fuck themselves every time they try to make me crawl.” Whitman’s eyes turned to piercing black dots. “Sure, they’re going to a lot of trouble to get me. What happens to me is important. Important to them. I’m the punk they can’t beat, see? As long as I’m alive, every cop in this county is a loser, because every time I make a fool of one of them it reflects on all of them—and believe me I’ve made fools of them more than once. The only way they can beat me is to kill me—and that’s what this trial is all about.”
Cloud studied Whitman soberly, wondering how much was truth, and how much simply egotism. Whitman had served time in Chino, San Quentin, and Folsom, so he’d undoubtedly given the police considerable trouble along the way. But the rest of it—? Cloud found it difficult to believe that the city police, the county sheriff, the district attorney, and the Superior Court would all be involved in such an elaborate conspiracy simply to teach Weldon Whitman a lesson in respect for the law. Especially by sending him to the gas chamber. Still—one never knew.
The door to the judge’s chambers opened, and the court clerk and G. Foster Klein strode briskly into the courtroom. Cloud glanced around. Several more spectators had entered, and the bailiff had appeared and was having them remove their hats and extinguish their cigarettes. Presently Cloud noticed a tall woman pass through the rails and begin setting up a stenographic machine at the court reporter’s table.
“I got one lucky break,” Whitman said. “The court reporter at my trial died before he could complete the transcript. I might be able to get a new trial because of it.”
“You mean the old man with the hearing aid?”
“Yeah. Keeled over three days after the trail ended. One of the deputies said it was a heart attack.”
“You call that a lucky break?” Cloud said. “An old man dying like that?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Whitman replied, his voice growing cool. “I meant it was a lucky break that he didn’t get around to finishing the transcript before he died.”
Cloud felt himself flush slightly. “Sorry,” he muttered, and shifted his gaze away from the condemned man’s flat, hard stare. What in hell am I trying to do? Cloud wondered. That was the second time in just a few minutes that he had tried to discredit Whitman. He saw that Whitman was still staring at him. “I misunderstood you, that’s all,” he said.
“Forget it,” Whitman said.
A buzzer sounded; a moment later the chamber door opened and Judge Lukey emerged. “Everybody rise!” the bailiff ordered. “Department Four of the Superior Court is now in session, the Honorable Carl V. Lukey, judge presiding. Be seated and remain quiet in the courtroom!”
The aged jurist ascended the bench and opened a single manila folder. “State of California versus Weldon Whitman,” he announced. “Is the defendant present?”
Whitman rose behind the counsel table. “Present,” he said simply.
“State present?” Lukey asked.
“Present, your honor,” Klein said from the opposite table.
“This being the time and place set for judgment and sentence in this matter,” Lukey intoned, “is there any legal cause why such judgment and sentence should not now be pronounced?”
“The defendant is absolutely innocent of the charges,” Whitman said for the record.
“That,” countered the elderly jurist, “is a personal opinion of defendant and does not constitute legal cause. Anything else?”
Whitman remained silent.
“Very well then,” said Lukey, “there appearing to be no legal cause contrary to sentencing, it is the judgment and sentence of this court that you, Weldon Whitman, be delivered by the sheriff of this county into the custody of the warden of the state penitentiary at San Quentin, and there, at a date and time later to be fixed by this court, be by him put to death in the manner prescribed by law: to wit, the administration of lethal gas.”
Robert Cloud, listening; absorbing each precisely spoken word of the judgment, felt his mouth go suddenly dry and found that, although he wanted to and tried, he could not swallow. It was a strange and distasteful experience for him, to sit and listen to one man tell another that he must die, and not only tell him he must, but also where and by whose hand and how. In an instant it all seemed barbaric, venomous, almost blasphemous, as if an invasion had been made into the domain of God.
And, Cloud realized, it was not yet over, for Judge Lukey was still speaking. Frowning, the reporter leaned forward a fraction. His lips parted in incredulity as he became aware of a reiteration of the exact words intoned so emotionlessly a moment before; and he grasped then that the judge was sentencing Whitman to death a second time. He recalled Lew Lach’s crude observation: Now they can gas him twice.
Is this right? Cloud wondered. Is this good law? The man hasn’t killed anyone; he hasn’t taken the life of another human being. Is this punishment just?
He tried to moisten his lips, but his tongue was dry and thick and useless to him. The judge’s voice continued to flow into his head and register words like banner headlines in his mind. Down the list of charges the jurist’s monotone went, sounding heavily with doom. For the third and fourth kidnapping charges the convicted man received two life sentences without possibility of parole. For the two sexperversion charges, fifteen years each; for the attempted rape, five years; for the auto theft, three years; for the assault and battery, two years; for assault with a deadly weapon, five years; for attempted robbery, two years; and for the eight charges of armed robbery, a total of eighty years. All to run consecutively, which meant that in the event the death sentences were not carried out, the prisoner would have to serve one hundred twenty-seven years before beginning his life sentences.
This is incredible, Cloud thought. This isn’t justice; it’s some grotesque parody of justice. Even if Whitman were guilty of every charge in the indictment, did this punishment fit his crimes? Two death sentences, two life terms, more than a hundred years in other sentences—and for what? Robberies? Hardly. Assaults? One woman slapped across the face, one man hit in the jaw with a gun barrel. Brutal, yes, but certainly not gas-chamber offenses. Kidnappings, then? Not the two technical incidents; those were ridiculous. And the other two? They were real enough; but did the victims actually suffer bodily harm? Was being forced to commit an act of fellatio that irreparable, that permanently damaging?
One thing was certain, Cloud decided: any harm done to the victims was by no stretch of the imagination as final as a trip to the gas chamber. That was final final.
Was it just? he asked himself again, more demandingly. Was it right? Did society require so stringent a revenge? He recalled a quotation of Francis Bacon: Severity breedeth fear….
“The court stands adjourned!” Judge Lukey announced with a crack of his gavel. It was all over. The judge retired from the bench without so much as a May God have mercy on your soul. G. Foster Klein, there only to announce his presence at the proceedings, picked up his briefcase and walked briskly up the aisle, followed by his assistant. The court clerk and stenographer began gathering up their papers. Spectators moved toward the big double doors. The deputy came over to handcuff Weldon Whitman.
“Well, that’s that,” Whitman said to Cloud. He held his wrists out to the deputy.
“Where do you go from here?” Cloud asked.
“Up north,” Whitman said resignedly. “Up to Q, to Carl’s Place, where they keep the animals pending slaughter. But my case goes to the capital. Death sentences get an automatic appeal hearing by the California Supreme Court. That’s the state’s way of protecting its citizens from people like Lukey and Klein.”
“What do you think your chances are?”
“Poor right now,” Whitman replied clinically. “But they’ll improve. When the Supreme Court turns me down on the automatic appeal, then I’ll try to raise some money to file a writ of error on the basis of an incomplete trial transcript. They grant new trials in civil cases when the transcript isn’t complete: maybe they’ll do it in a criminal case, too. It’s never been tried before, but it’s a chance.”
“You seem to know the law pretty well,” Cloud observed.
Whitman grinned engagingly. “Have to,” he said. “Nobody else is going to look out for my interests.”
Cloud stared thoughtfully at Weldon Whitman. Was that the reason, he wondered, why he himself was interested in the case?—the fact that nobody else was interested in it? Did he decide to be friendly toward Whitman just because he was all alone? Or was there some deeper reason, some intuitive reason that had not surfaced yet? Something had drawn him to Weldon Whitman—something as demanding as it was inexplicable.
“Let’s go, Whit,” he heard the deputy say. Cloud looked up, and his eyes met Weldon Whitman’s.
“Good luck,” Cloud said.
Whitman nodded. “Thanks,” he said simply.
Cloud watched as the deputy led the chained, twice-condemned man through a rear door. He was now alone in the big courtroom. Sighing, he walked out into the corridor.
On his way to the elevators, Cloud noticed a blonde woman entering one of the other courtrooms. He was almost certain it was Doris Calder, one of the main witnesses against Weldon Whitman. Curious, he walked over to the open courtroom door. He watched the woman go halfway down the aisle and take a seat. When she was settled, she turned her head slightly; it was Doris Calder.
Cloud stepped to the side of the doorway and looked at the posted docket for that particular court, Department Two. The neatly typed agenda of the proceedings for that day was displayed behind the glass door of a small bulletin board. Cloud scanned the list of names. Near the middle of the page, he read:
Frowning thoughtfully, Cloud went back to the door and looked at Doris Calder again. Her eyes were turned toward the jury box, where two rows of defendants, under the watchful eyes of a trio of deputies, had been brought in from the holding cell. Cloud wondered which one was Billy Calder, and how they were related. As he stood there, a bailiff came over to close the doors. Cloud stepped into the courtroom and sat in the last row.
Department Two was handling the final dispositions of felony cases which had been referred for probation reports. It was routine work, and the judge, much younger, more energetic than Lukey, began calling cases as soon as he sat down, and dispatched them with speed and efficiency. In the middle of the fifth case, Cloud noticed G. Foster Klein quietly enter the courtroom and walk down the aisle. He paused next to Doris Calder for a moment, and they exchanged brief, whispered words. Then Klein continued on past the railing and sat down at the prosecution’s counsel table.
Ten minutes later, the judge called, “People versus Billy Calder.” A boy of about eighteen came out of the jury box and stood before the bench. Her son, Cloud thought. The boy was joined on his left by a deputy public defender, and on his right by G. Foster Klein representing the state.
“Billy Calder,” the judge said, “you have been found guilty of grand theft of an auto, and upon a motion of the public defender’s office, your case was remanded to the county probation department for a recommendation. That department, after a study of your case, has recommended in favor of probation. The court will now hear further motions by the defense.”
“Defense moves that the court accept the recommendation of the probation department,” said the public defender.
“Prosecution?” the judge inquired.
“The state has no objection,” G. Foster Klein said.
“No objection at all, Mr. Klein?” the judge said, his brow pinching slightly.
“No, your honor,” Klein said smoothly. “The state has read the probation officer’s report and feels that the defendant is an acceptable candidate for probation. The state makes no objection to the public defender’s motion.”
“Very well, gentlemen,” the judge said, with what Cloud thought was a hint of judicial resignation. “Billy Calder, having been found guilty of grand theft of an auto, you are hereby sentenced to serve two years in the state penitentiary. Said sentence is suspended on condition you serve the said two years under the jurisdiction and guidance of the Los Angeles County Department of Probation. So ordered by this court.”
The judge closed the file and passed it down to the court clerk. Klein spoke briefly to the public defender, then escorted Billy Calder past the rails and up the aisle. Doris Calder rose and joined them, and the three left the courtroom together.
Isn’t that cozy, thought Cloud. Weldon Whitman’s prosecutor, one of the chief witnesses against him, and the witness’s son, a car thief. Just one big happy family.
He left the courtroom to hurry to the newspaper.