Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 12, December, 1953

Sucker by Hunt Collins

Harley was the fall guy for the cops, and they had him all sewed up. Somehow, I had to get him out...

It was Harley’s wife who called me. I remember hearing the phone ringing, and then Anne nudged me and said, “You’d better get that, hon.”

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and turned on the lamp on the end table. The clock read two-thirty.

“Now, who the hell is that?” I said to Anne.

“Answer it,” she said. “That’s the best way to find out.”

I made some crack about early morning humor and then walked out into the hallway and past my daughter Beth’s room. I went down the steps, and the phone kept clamoring. When I reached it, I snatched the receiver from the cradle.

“Hello,” I said, perhaps a bit too gruffly.

“Dave?” the voice asked. It was hurried and almost frantic.

“Yes,” I said. “Who’s this?”

“Marcia. Dave, Harley’s in trouble.”

I was still half-asleep. “Who?” I asked.

“Harley, my husband,” she said. “The police... our sitter...”

“Pull yourself together, Marcia. What kind of trouble?”

“They... they say he killed our baby sitter. Dave...”

“What?”

“Yes, yes. Dave, they’ve taken him away. He asked me to call you. He...”

“Where’d they take him?”

“To the sheriff’s office, Dave. It’s all so crazy. He... he couldn’t have done a thing like that, Dave. You know that. He...”

“Of course I know.” I was wide awake now. “I’ll get right down there, Marcia. Now don’t you worry. I’ll go right down.”

“Thank you, Dave. Thank you so much.”

“I’ll want to hurry now. I’ll call you later.”

“All right, Dave. Thank you.”

I hung up and went upstairs and started to dress. Anne sat up in bed and said, “Where are you going?”

“Down to the sheriff’s office. They’re holding Harley there. They say he killed his baby sitter.”

“Oh, that’s absurd,” Anne said.

“I know. But they seem to be serious about it.”

“Well, my God,” Anne said.

I finished dressing, and then I dusted a little talc over the two-thirty a.m. shadow on my chin. I went back into the bedroom, kissed Anne, and said, “I won’t be long, honey.”

“All right,” she said. “Be careful.”

I went out into the hallway and opened the door to Beth’s room. She was sixteen, but she still kicked the covers off every night. I tiptoed in, covered her, and then kissed her lightly on the cheek, the way I’d been doing ever since she was born. Then I went down and got the car out of the garage.

When I arrived at the sheriff’s office, the sheriff himself greeted me. He told me Harley wasn’t allowed any visitors, but I told him I was Harley’s lawyer, and he said I could have a few minutes. He led me to the back of the building, unlocked a barred door leading to the cellblock, and brought me to Harley’s cell.

Harley said nothing until the sheriff was gone. Then he came to me and squeezed my hand tightly. “Dave, thank God you’re here,” he said. He was a thin man, with hair greying at the temples. His eyes were grey, and he was thin-lipped and high-cheeked, and I guess I’d known him for more than three years now.

“What’s it all about?” I asked. I offered him a cigarette, which he took gratefully and lighted hurriedly. He let out a great puff of smoke and said, “Dave, they’re trying to play me for a sucker.”

“How so?”

He drew in on the cigarette again. “This kid tonight. The pressure is probably on from upstairs someplace, and they’re trying to hang it on the most convenient sucker. That happens to be me.”

“All right, suppose you tell it from the beginning.”

Harley nodded. “Sure. Sure.” He let out a deep sigh, as if he’d already told the story too many times already. “Marcia and I went out tonight. Nothing special. A movie and a few drinks afterwards. To be exact, we had three martinis each.”

“All right, go on.”

“We got home at about midnight. This kid who was sitting for us — Sheila Kane — a nice kid we always use, she was sleeping on the couch when we came in. Marcia woke her, and I paid her and then took her out to the car. She lives on the other end of town, Dave. I always drive her home.”

“Go on.”

“I took her straight home. I dropped her off at her house, and then took off. I stopped in a bar to buy a package of cigarettes. Then I went home.” He paused and sucked in a deep breath. “An hour later, the cops were pounding on my door. They said the kid had been raped and strangled. Her parents told them she’d been sitting for us.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “How do they tie that to you?”

“My cigarette lighter. They found it near her body.”

I looked at Harley steadily. “How come?” I asked.

“The kid smokes,” he said, shrugging wearily. “Hell, Dave, she’s all of eighteen. She lighted up in the car when I was taking her home. I gave her my lighter. I guess she forgot to return it.”

“This bar you went into later, for cigarettes. Did anyone see you?”

“I don’t think so. It was one of these places that have a small floor show. The show was on when I went in, and no one was paying attention to who came and went. I got the cigarettes from a machine just inside the door. Then I left.”

“When you took the girl home, did you wait for her to go inside before you left?” I asked.

Harley puffed on his cigarette, trying to remember. “No,” he said at last.

“Do you usually?”

“Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. I was tired, Dave. I wanted to get home. Hell, who knew anything like this was going to happen?”

“Where’d they find the girl?”

“In a dark street a few blocks from her home. They figure she was thrown out of a car.”

“And your lighter?”

“Alongside her in the road. They say I dropped it when I threw her out. Good God, Dave, can’t you see they’re trying to sucker me?”

“It looks that way,” I said. “I wish someone had seen you in that bar, though.”

“The hell with the bar. I wasn’t gone more than fifteen minutes. It takes about five minutes to get the girl home, and another five coming back. Jesus, Dave, I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to.”

“Does anyone beside Marcia know you were gone only fifteen minutes?”

Harley shook his head. “She doesn’t even know, Dave. She was asleep when I got home. Oh goddamnit, this is a mess.”

“And they’ve booked you on suspicion?”

“Yes,” Harley said miserably. “I’m their big sucker.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Maybe we can work something out.”

It was one of the hardest trials I’ve ever fought. The district attorney swung it so that the jury was almost all women. If there’s anything a woman hates and despises, it’s a rapist — so I had nine strikes against me to begin with. The other three jury members were men.

The trial went for five days, with the DA pulling every trick in the book. He paraded all the circumstantial evidence, and he did it so well that every member of that jury could have sworn they’d all been eye witnesses to the rape and murder.

When he got Harley on the stand, Harley told the same story he’d told me. He told it simply and plainly, and the jury and the assembled spectators listened in silence. Then I began to question him.

“How old are you, Mr. Pearce?” I asked.

“Forty-two,” Harley said.

“Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any children?”

“Yes.”

“How many, Mr. Pearce?”

“Two. A boy and a girl.”

“How old are they?”

“The boy is seven. The girl is five.”

“Did you engage the dead Sheila Kane to stay with these children while you and Mrs. Pearce went out for the evening?”

“Yes.”

“Was this a customary practice of yours?”

“Yes.”

“How many times had you engaged Miss Kane previous to the night of her death?”

“We’d been using her on and off for about a year.”

“And nothing ever happened to her before this night,” I said. “Nothing...”

“Objection!” the DA snapped. “Counsel for the defense is attempting to establish...”

“Sustained,” the judge said wearily.

“Would you tell the court what Miss Kane looked like, please?”

Harley hesitated. “I... well, she was blonde.”

“Yes?”

“Blue eyes, I think. I don’t really remember.”

“Short or tall?”

“Medium, I suppose.”

“Glasses?”

“No. No glasses.”

“What was her address?”

“I don’t know. I drove by memory, I suppose. She showed me the first time, and then I just went there from memory every other time.”

“Did you call her ‘Sheila,’ Mr. Pearce?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And what did she call you?”

“Mr. Pearce.”

“Thank you, that will be all.”

The DA stared at me, and then he shrugged. I suppose he wondered what I was trying to do. It was so simple that it probably evaded him. I was simply trying to show that no lust had ever crossed Harley Pearce’s mind or heart. He couldn’t even describe the dead girl well. He did not know her address. They maintained a strictly adult to adolescent relationship. Sheila and Mr. Pearce.

The DA called his next witness, the bartender at the Flamingo, the bar Harley had stopped at to buy his cigarettes. The bartender said he always watched the door during the floorshow. He’d known of a lot of bars that had been held up during floorshows, when no one was paying attention to the bar or the cash register. So he always kept a close watch, and he’d have noticed anyone who came in that night. He had not seen Harley Pearce enter. The DA smiled and turned the man over to me.

“What time does the floorshow start at the Flamingo?” I asked.

“Ten minutes to twelve, sir,” he said.

“Do you serve many drinks while the floorshow is on?”

“No, sir. Most everyone is at their tables, watching the show.”

“And are we to understand that you keep a constant watch on the door during that time? I mean, since you are not serving drinks.”

“Objection,” the DA said, rising.

“Overruled,” the judge answered. “Proceed.”

“Is that what you do during the show?” I repeated.

“Well... I guess I look at the show, too. On and off, I mean. But I watch the door mostly. A lot of robberies...”

“Watch the cigarette machine?”

“Well, no, sir.”

“Then it is likely that someone did enter, stop at the machine, and leave, all while you were taking one of your periodic looks at the show?”

“Well...”

“Did you see me standing at the bar that night?”

The bartender blinked his eyes. “You, sir?”

“Yes, me. Standing near the blonde in the mink stole. I was drinking a Tom Collins when the show started. Did you see me?”

“I... I don’t recall, sir. I mean...”

“I was there! Did you see me?”

“Objection!” the DA said. “Counsel for the defense is perjuring...”

“Did you see me?”

“Near... near the blonde, sir?”

“Yes, near the blonde. Did you or didn’t you?”

“Well, there was a blonde, and if you say you was standing near her... I mean, I don’t remember, but...”

“Then you did see me?”

“I... I don’t remember, sir.”

“I wasn’t there! But if you couldn’t remember whether I was or not, how can you remember whether or not Mr. Pearce came in for a package of cigarettes especially when — by your own admission — you could have been watching the floorshow at that time?”

“I...”

“That’s all,” I said.

I heard the murmurs in the courtroom, and I knew I’d done well. I’d punctured one part of the DA’s case, and the jury was now thinking if he was wrong there, why can’t he be wrong elsewhere, too? Why couldn’t Harley have loaned the girl his cigarette lighter? Why couldn’t his story be absolutely true? After all, the DA’s case was purely circumstantial.

I clinched it in the summing up. I painted Harley as an upstanding citizen, a man who — just as you and I — was a good husband and a good father. A man who hired a baby sitter, the same sitter he’d been hiring for the past year, went out to a quiet movie, had a few drinks with his wife, and then came home. He drove the sitter to her house, dropped her off, and then went back to his wife. Someone had attacked her after he’d gone. But not Harley. Not the man sitting there, I told them, not the man who could be your own brother or your own husband, not him.

The jury was out for half an hour. When they returned, they brought me a verdict of Not Guilty.

We celebrated that night. Harley and Marcia came over while his mother-in-law sat with their kids. We laughed and drank and Harley kept saying, “They were looking for a sucker, Dave. But you showed them. By Christ, you showed them you can’t fool with an innocent man.”

He told me I was the best goddamn lawyer in the whole goddamn world, and then he started a round of songs, and we all joined in, drinking all the while. The party was doing quite well when Beth walked in.

She’d had a date with one of the neighborhood boys. He dropped her off at the front door, and she came into the living room. She said hello to Marcia and Harley when we stopped singing, and then excused herself and started up the steps to her room.

“How old is she now, Dave?” Harley asked.

“Sixteen,” I said.

“A lovely girl,” he said, very softly.

I’d been watching Beth climb the steps, watching her proudly. She was still my little girl, but she was ripening into womanhood quickly. I watched her mount the steps with the sure, swift suppleness of a healthy young girl, and then I turned to look at Harley.

His eyes were on Beth, too. He watched her legs as she walked higher and higher up the staircase, and then his eyes traveled the length of her young body, slowly, methodically.

He did not take his eyes from her until she’d opened the door to her own room and stepped out of view. Then he said: “What’ll we sing next, folks?”

I looked at Harley, and then I looked at the empty staircase, and I suddenly felt very foolish inside, very foolish and very naive. Naive and tremendously stupid.

I felt exactly like what Harley would, undoubtedly, have called a “sucker.”

And there was, of course, nothing I could do.

I did not join in the next song.