A Handy Death

Chapter 4

Sharon McCloud had managed to spread a tablecloth over a portion of the conference table without disturbing Steve Sadler’s many papers, and was busy putting down paper plates and spoons.

“Sandwiches will be right along,” she said.

Ross grinned. “No beer or martinis today?”

“You have your choice of coffee or soda today. And like it,” Sharon said with mock severity. She turned at the diffident tap on the door and opened it to admit a young fellow from the delicatessen down the block. He was carrying a cardboard box filled with hot, capped cups, cold bottles, wrapped sandwiches and pastry. Sharon tipped the boy, piled the sandwiches on one plate, the Danish on another, and placed the drinks on the center of the cloth. Ross picked up a sandwich, discovered it was roast beef, and opened it. He took a big bite, chewed, and swallowed.

“Certainly not the Sign of the Dove.”

“Vacation’s over,” Sharon said. “We’ve got an urgent case now. Remember?”

Ross smiled. “You mean, shut up and eat?” He became serious, turning to Steve. “And what was Dupaul’s explanation?”

Steve was searching the pile for a corned-beef sandwich. He finally managed to unearth one by scattering the other sandwiches over half the table. Sharon, sitting quietly to one side, put down her sandwich, straightened the pile, and went back to eating.

“About the gun? He didn’t have any,” Steve said, and unwrapped the sandwich. “No mustard? Oh, well...” He shrugged philosophically, took a bite and chewed. “Not the Sign of the Dove? It isn’t even Lindy’s. Lindy’s isn’t even Lindy’s!”

“But he must have said something.”

“He just swore it was impossible.”

“He denied the gun was his?”

“No, he couldn’t very well deny that, nor did he try to. He said when his grandfather died, he just took over the old man’s guns. I guess there’s nothing so rare about that. People are supposed to transfer registrations, but few do. The gun was one of a pair of twenty-two caliber target pistols, S&W brand. Billy Dupaul claimed he only brought the one to New York with him.”

“And the second gun of the pair?”

“It’s still up in Queensbury, I imagine.”

“I don’t suppose Ballistics were able to do much with the shattered bullet?”

“Nothing,” Steve said. “They weighed the fragments and came up with the idea it was a twenty-two but that was about all.”

“Even with a fragment missing? Hogan should have been able to tear them apart on that.”

“Except that Dupaul admitted shooting the man. And the gun was his.”

“But he claimed he didn’t have it with him that night?”

“He swore up and down he had left it at the hotel. He said — repeatedly — that he had gone out on the binge without the gun.”

“And no explanation on his part to explain how the gun could have gotten there?”

“None.”

“Any fingerprints on the gun?”

“The barrel had some unidentifiable smears; the grip was corregated and didn’t take prints. But, as I said, there was never a question as to Dupaul firing it.”

“He fired a gun, then dropped it. The police found a gun. In the meantime Dupaul had left the room...” Ross thought a moment and then shook his head. “No, maybe in court I would have pushed that a bit, but I doubt I’d have gotten very far. I’d have to admit here in the privacy of our office that in all probability Dupaul’s twenty-two was the gun used and that he used it. Still, did they do a nitrate test on him?”

“No. I imagine they didn’t feel it was necessary.”

“Probably not. Still, they should have. Hogan might have gotten him to change his story. However — What was his explanation for failing to recognize his own gun when it was given to him? After all, he must have used it many times. You’d think he would have recognized the feel.”

“He was in no shape to identify guns. I doubt he could feel much of anything at that stage.”

Ross finished his sandwich, wiped his fingers on a paper napkin and tossed it aside. He frowned.

“Did the boy ever admit to carrying the gun since coming to New York? Or was it always left in his room?”

“He finally admitted carrying it on a few occasions. At first he denied it — after all, he had no New York City permit for it, and the Sullivan law is still a tough one — but a witness from the ball club, one of the other players, said he had seen the gun on Dupaul once, and Dupaul told him he wore it when he went into neighborhoods he had been told were dangerous.”

“Which covers about all of New York today,” Ross said dryly.

“Yes, sir. Anyway, Dupaul swore up and down he had left the hotel without the gun that night, but he couldn’t offer any more than his word.”

“Could he have gone back for it? After those drinks in that second bar he was in — the one on Lexington? And been too drunk to remember?”

“I doubt it. The timetable wouldn’t have permitted it.”

“It must have been pretty easy for the prosecution,” Ross said. “Here’s a witness, who admits being so drunk he can’t remember most of the things that happened, being positive on that one particular score.”

“Well,” Steve said, “he wasn’t drunk when he left his hotel room.”

“True. What about his roommate? This Marshall boy. Had he already gone back to Queensbury by this time?”

“He left that day, actually. But the room clerk who testified said that Marshall had checked out at least an hour before Billy Dupaul came down and went into the bar.”

Ross picked up a hot cup of coffee, removed the lid, added sugar and stirred it absently, his mind considering the facts Steve Sadler had given him. At last he sighed.

“Well, possibly I owe poor Al Hogan an apology, but I’m damned if I’ll dig him up to give it to him. I think he could have gone into a lot of questions in far greater depth, but in the end I’m afraid I’m forced to agree with you, Steve. On the basis of the evidence, including the pistol and including the flimsiness of Dupaul’s story, I can understand the jury finding the boy guilty. And Judge Demerest handing down that sentence. Still—”

“Unless,” Steve suggested, “it was Mr. Hogan who invented that flimsy story and saddled the boy with it.”

“I doubt it,” Ross said positively. “Al Hogan was a drunk, but he always had imagination. He not only would have come up with a better story, but he had a perfect one right to hand.”

Both Sharon and Steve stared at him. Ross smiled. Steve frowned.

“But what story could possibly have explained away that gun?”

“There was no need to explain away the gun. When you can’t explain something away, you merely incorporate it.”

Ross reached for a Danish, aware of the curiosity his statement had engendered, thought of his waistline, and reluctantly changed his mind. He wiped his lips and leaned back in his chair, dismissing for the time being the first case of the People of the State of New York versus William Dupaul. He motioned toward the casette recorder; Sharon, understanding, reversed the tape and prepared to continue.

“All right,” Ross said. “What happened to put him back in jail as a second-offender?”

Steve sipped his coffee, made a face, and put the cardboard container aside. “Awful,” he muttered under his breath, straightened his glasses, and dug into his pile of papers.

“He got into a fight.”

“When?”

“Well, he served—” Steve found the proper reference and checked it “—forty-three months on the first sentence, getting out in 1968, in June, for good behavior. The second offense occurred in December of the same year, about six months after his release.”

“All right. Go ahead.”

“He got into this fight in a bar. He was working—”

“Dupaul sounds like the sort of fellow who ought to stay out of bars,” Ross commented dryly. “Anyhow, bars aren’t supposed to hire ex-convicts. Not in this state.”

“True,” Steve said, “only he wasn’t working in the bar. He was wrestling beer kegs for a living, working for a brewing company. Either he didn’t want to go back to baseball, or more likely baseball didn’t want him back with a record. In any event, he was handling these beer kegs into this bar this day and one of the customers recognized him and started to needle him.”

Sharon had cleared the table, putting the refuse aside to be disposed of later. Now she was back with her stenographic book, noting the interruptions on the recorder meter. Steve referred to his papers and went on.

“In this case there were plenty of witnesses, all willing to testify. The bar was fairly crowded, but it was early afternoon and nobody was drunk. Unfortunately, most of the witnesses — like witnesses anywhere — had thirteen different stories. Still,” Steve added, “this time I find it a lot harder to excuse Mr. Hogan.”

“Al Hogan was his lawyer again?”

“Yes, sir. Appointed by the court again. Dupaul was broke, of course. And that was about all the work Mr. Hogan was getting in those last days. I imagine the courts must have felt sorry for him.”

“I felt sorry for him, too, but a little consideration for the rights of the accused to decent counsel wouldn’t have been too amiss, either,” Ross said evenly. “So what happened in this bar?”

“This one customer — a man named Clarence Riess — apparently recognized Dupaul and started to give him the needle. He got pretty obnoxious, it seems. He wanted to know if Dupaul had turned queer in prison, and asked Dupaul what he had really been doing in Neeley’s apartment the night he shot him five years before. The bartender claimed he was too busy to see or hear what led up to the fight; when he got around to noticing it the two men were already hard at it. There are witnesses who claim Dupaul kept his cool until this man actually called him names; others claimed Dupaul practically started it. Naturally, the DA’s office stressed the witnesses who suited them. Louis Gorman hadn’t risen to Chief Assistant in those days, but he was already on the staff. He was one of the men at the prosecution table.”

Ross shook his head and sighed.

“What I don’t understand is how, if even a barfly could see the proper defense in that first case, Al Hogan couldn’t, drunk or sober. In fact, I don’t believe it. Al was sharper than that.”

Sharon said, “I don’t understand.”

“Which only means,” Ross said, more to himself than to the others, “that in all probability Billy Dupaul wouldn’t let him use that argument for his defense. God save all lawyers from noble clients!”

“I don’t understand,” Steve said. “What defense?”

Ross studied the other two. He sighed.

“Do you remember before, I said that Al Hogan had the perfect defense if he wanted to invent a story? Just suppose Al Hogan had rehearsed the boy, Dupaul. Now, remember, Neeley had testified first, since he was a prosecution witness; his story was on the record. Now, suppose after hearing that testimony, Hogan took Billy aside that night and told him what to say. Suppose the boy got up on the witness stand and agreed with almost everything Neeley claimed; that he’d been drinking alone, met Neeley in the street the way the other man claimed, that he’d been pretty drunk, that Neeley had, indeed, invited him up to his apartment under the guise of sobering him up with coffee—

“But!” Ross raised a hand. “Suppose when they got to the apartment, Neeley had made a pass at him; had made him an improper proposition. Here’s a young boy, a stranger in town, a known athlete — hell! The jury would have freed him in five minutes. The boy carried the gun — his own gun — because he’d heard there were places and people you couldn’t trust in this town, and here was a case in point!

“Look at it from the defense attorney’s viewpoint. A man is stopped in the street by a drunk who tries to bend his ear with a sad story of how tough it is to get a drink in New York. What does that man do? He shakes off the drunk and gets away from there; the last thing he does is invite the drunk up to his apartment to sober him up. In this town? Al Hogan could have made mincemeat of Neeley on the stand. Not only have gotten Billy off, but probably have given Neeley some grief with the law.”

Steve nodded slowly. “Then why didn’t he think of it?” He suddenly remembered something and looked a bit sheepish. “Although, to tell the truth, I didn’t see it myself.”

“Al Hogan would have seen it as quickly as I did,” Ross said. “Which simply means he didn’t use the defense because Billy Dupaul wouldn’t let him. Billy had fired one attorney, and was probably ready to fire another if he felt he had to. And poor Al Hogan needed the work. Which could also mean...” He paused, thinking.

Sharon said, “Which could mean what?”

“It could mean that Dupaul, quite possibly, was telling the truth — or at least the truth as he saw it. Which, unfortunately, isn’t always the same thing.” Ross nodded his head. “Well, it’s something to think about. Let’s get on. What finally happened in that bar?”

“The man Dupaul was fighting — this Riess — went down from a blow from Dupaul and struck his head on the edge of one of the kegs Dupaul had been lugging in when the argument started. The man fractured his skull. The prosecution dug up a witness who claimed he saw Dupaul pull out his bung-starter, which can be claimed to be a weapon. The prosecution pushed that point, of course, and also brought in Dupaul’s first conviction—”

Steve saw the expression on Ross’s face, and nodded.

“Yes, sir, I know it’s inadmissible, but Mr. Hogan was half asleep during the trial, as far as I could determine; he died the following month, if you recall. The judge warned the DA’s table several times, but in the long run the impression remained with the jury. Dupaul, after a very brief trial, was found guilty of second-degree assault. It made him a second-offender.”

Ross remembered the words of Jerry Coughlin regarding juries and the impressions they retained. The newspaperman’s words were, unfortunately, all too true. Still, Ross couldn’t think of a better system to protect the innocent than the jury system.

“What happened to this man Riess?”

“He recovered completely. He’s probably starting fights in other bars right this minute.”

“And Dupaul was sentenced to what?”

“Seven and a half to twenty years as a second-offender.”

Ross whistled. “That’s quite a penalty for a random fight in a bar, especially considering that nobody got killed or permanently injured.”

“Well,” Steve said, “I suppose the man could have died. And the DA’s office, pushed by Gorman, as I hear it, really poured on the law-and-order bit; bloodthirsty killers roving the streets — those were his exact words. It must have had the proper effect on the judge to get Dupaul that stiff a sentence.”

“And he’s served so much of it, so far?”

“Well, he went in in late December, 1968, and this is late October... A few months less than four years. Incidentally, when Louis Gorman became Chief Assistant District Attorney, he served notice on the parole board that when, as, and if Dupaul ever became eligible for parole, he, personally, would oppose it vigorously. That was before Raymond Neeley died, of course. Now he’s pushing for the murder charge for all he’s worth.”

Ross looked surprised.

“Where did you get that information about Gorman’s statement to the parole board?”

Steve Sadler grinned. “That’s off-the-record information, Hank. From friends in the trade, so to speak.”

Ross knew enough to drop the matter. All professionals had their inner sources of information, much as the police department did, and it was enough that they had them without the need to discuss them. Instead, Ross pursued another angle.

“Why the extreme vindictiveness on Louie Gorman’s part? Directed, it seems, solely against Billy Dupaul?” Ross shook his head. “I know there are people that Gorman doesn’t like — myself being number one on the list, probably — but in general I wouldn’t call him a vindictive man.”

Sharon cleared her throat.

“Maybe I can help you there, H. R. I was—”

Ross grinned at her. He said, “You were just a little girl back in those days. What would you know of the affair? Or remember?”

“I wasn’t all that young, but thank you kindly all the same,” Sharon said, and smiled back. “After all, this Billy Dupaul was just nineteen when he went to prison, but you can be sure he remembers everything that happened, even if he was a bit fuzzy about what happened the night he got drunk. And I was older than Billy Dupaul at the time.”

Ross raised both hands in mock surrender.

“I won’t ask how much older. All right; what do you know of Louie Gorman and his grudge?”

“I was working for Mechles and Hutton in those days,” Sharon said. “The story went through every law office in town, I guess; if you’d have been in the country you would have heard it, too. Louie Gorman didn’t have too many friends, certainly not among his help, and they passed it on. Probably with a good deal of pleasure.

“One day, it seems, after Judge Demerest appointed him as Defense Counsel for Dupaul, Mr. Gorman mentioned to his wife that he, personally, thought the boy was guilty as the devil. They were at dinner, or in the sanctity of their bedroom — anyway, in the privacy of their home — when he said it, but his wife belonged to a bridge club, and I imagine she was so used to being held down at home that she took the opportunity to be a fountainhead of knowledge with her bridge-playing cronies, so she passed it on. And one of the women there passed it on again, and it went from lip to lip as these things do, and it finally reached a gossip columnist who used it as a fill-in. Without names, of course, but too easily recognizable. Well, Billy Dupaul saw it and recognized it. And showed up at Gorman’s office, steaming at the ears, and demanding an explanation.”

Ross was listening intently. Sharon smiled impishly and went on.

“Of course, if Mr. Gorman had simply denied the entire story, that probably would have been the end of the matter, but that wouldn’t have been like Mr. Gorman. Instead, he refused to make any comment to the boy at all. He simply said that his private opinions were his own, and that in any event they never entered into a case, nor had the slightest effect on the thoroughness of his defense—”

“You know?” Ross said musingly. “I believe he meant it.”

“Maybe so, but Billy Dupaul, even though only nineteen, wasn’t buying that argument. To him, a defense counsel had to believe his client was innocent, whether he was or not—”

“Which simply proved that Dupaul was innocent regarding the law,” Steve said with a broad smile. “Whether or not he was of the shooting.”

“Anyway,” Sharon continued, “Billy Dupaul not only fired Gorman on the spot as his attorney, in front of the entire office staff, and using the then-current teen-age vocabulary in doing it, but he also used physical force on him.”

“Physical force?”

“He slapped him,” Sharon said. “In front of everyone. And Mr. Gorman has never forgiven him.”

“Slapped him?”

“The story was that he said, ‘You’re too little to hit, and too big to forgive, so take this.’ And he slapped him a few times.”

“In front of his entire office?”

“Everyone. He dragged him from his office to do it.”

“Well, I can understand Gorman being irked, to say the least. Though I can see Billy Dupaul’s point, too. Luckily, I’ve been able to take my slaps at Louie in court, rather than physically.”

Ross grinned.

“The one I really pity, though, is Mrs. Gorman. I can imagine what went on when Louie got home that day.” He became serious. “All right. We have a defense to handle. Steve, I want you to take over most of the other cases we have pending; dole them out to the boys in the office you think can handle them best. I worked over the weekend to bring them up to date, so as to be free for the Dupaul case. And I’ll be available for consultation, of course.”

Sharon was noting the footage on the recorder meter, making notes.

“And, Sharon, I’ll want Steve’s summary typed up from the tape by one of the girls, with the memoranda on the points I raised to be inserted as they came, noting the meter footage. You know what I want.”

“Right, H. R.”

Steve said, “Where do you plan to start, Hank?”

“Well,” Ross said, “they’re transferring Dupaul from Attica down to the Tombs either this afternoon or tonight, and by the time they finish booking him in and getting him settled, it’ll be too late to do much with him today, so I’ll see him tomorrow. I think I’ll work with Mike Gunnerson in the meantime.”

Sharon frowned. “In what direction, H. R.?”

“In a direction nobody bothered to turn before,” Ross said, and came to his feet. “I’m going to start with the assumption that that flimsy, ridiculous, and unprovable story that Dupaul gave the jury in his first trial was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Steve looked at him a moment and sighed.

“Good luck, Hank,” he said. “You’ll need it!”