A Matter of Conviction

Three

Monday was starting wrong.

Or, he supposed, perhaps Sunday night had ended wrong. In any case, and in whatever sequence, this was going to be one of those days which — unless something positive were done about it immediately — would rapidly succumb to the battering combination of error and circumstance. Sitting behind the desk in his small office, the sheaf of transcripts finally, finally, finally before him, Hank tried to reconstruct the events which, like elements of a sorcerer’s evil brew, had united to overboil in chaos.

The first of these elements had been the party last night at the Bentons’. Sunday night was no damn good for parties anyway, since all of the men drank too much in an effort to obliterate what was coming on the morrow, and all the women tried too desperately to maintain a weekend glamour which would instantly evaporate at the first ring of the Monday morning alarm. Add to this particular Sunday night party the fact that Charlie Cooke had got really drunk, absolutely stoned beyond the reaches of civilized inebriation, stinko, blotto, blind drunk, and that Alice Benton had begun wailing about a legendary beating her husband had administered to her some eight years ago, which memory had apparently been evoked by Charlie’s supine position in the middle of the living room, and the pall of the usual Sunday night get-togethers assumed titanic proportions which drove every guest (except the unconscious Charlie Cooke) home long before midnight.

Back in their own house, Hank and Karin had discussed the party over a nightcap. The more they talked about it, the more horrible it seemed until finally, in an attempt to blot out the events of the evening, they’d gone to bed and sought the cleansing solace of love-making. This, as it turned out, was another mistake. Neither of them was in a particularly loving frame of mind, and the harder they drove themselves toward a passion they did not feel, the sharper became the memory of the very real images they were trying to eradicate. Whatever pleasure they derived from their forced mating that night was instantly counteracted by the knowledge that it had been a truly loveless act designed to soften the impact of an evening spent with people who seemed totally devoid of love. They had fought lovelessness with more lovelessness, however mechanically precise, enjoyable only in its precision, but totally unsatisfactory otherwise. Exhausted, beginning to feel the flat aftermath of their hard drinking and their coldly manic intercourse, they had drifted off into restless, dissatisfied sleep.

The alarm clock rang at seven-thirty, as it did every morning. This gave Hank forty-five minutes in which to wash, shave, dress and eat before leaving the house at eight-fifteen. This morning, however, this morning which was starting wrong after a night that had ended wrong, there was a difference. There had apparently been an interruption of electrical service sometime during the night. The power had been off for close to a half hour. When the electric alarm clock began buzzing at seven-thirty, it was really seven-fifty-eight. Hank did not make the discovery until twenty minutes later when he tuned in the kitchen radio to see what the weather would be like that day. When he heard the correct time, he left his breakfast and rushed into the bathroom to shave, opening a welt on his cheek and cursing the Bentons and their lousy party, his wife and her frigid love-making, the goddamn inefficient electric company, and even the radio station which had finally apprised him of the truth. He stormed out of the house wanting to know why Jennie wasn’t awake yet, sprinted all the way to the subway station, and did not arrive at the office until almost ten o’clock. Once there, he discovered that everything that had gone before (and by this time he was beginning to relent the poxes he’d levied on those nice Bentons, his passionate wife, the excellent service of the electric company and the public-mindedness of the radio station) had only been preludes to the true catastrophe waiting at the office.

On Friday afternoon, after the Rafael Morrez case had been assigned to him, he had accepted transcripts of the boys’ interrogation as recorded by the stenographer on the night of the slaying, taken them to his office and put them into his top desk drawer. This morning, this glorious fouled-up morning, the transcripts were gone. It was ten-fifteen, and the weather seemed determined to break all previous records set for heat, and the goddamn transcripts of the police interrogation were gone. He began searching the office. By ten-thirty, he was soaked with perspiration and ready to force open one of the suicideproof windows and leap to the pavement below. He called the building’s custodian and tried to find out whether or not a cleaning woman had inadvertently dumped the typed sheets into a wastepaper basket. He called the stenographic pool and asked whether or not some harebrained typist had picked them up of her own initiative. He buzzed Dave Lipschitz and asked if anyone had been snooping around his office that morning. He searched the office a second time, and then a third time. It was eleven o’clock.

He sat behind his desk and stared glumly at the wall, drumming his fingers on the desk top, ready by this time to commit first-degree murder himself.

It was then that Albert Soames, that bright young bastard, strolled into the office with the transcripts under his arm. Hope you don’t mind, Hank, he’d said, just wanted to check them over myself since I was the one who went up to the precinct on the night of the murder, here they are, safe and sound, this looks like a fine case, I’ll bet you enjoy it, I can read the sentence for you now even before you begin, death in the electric chair, my friend, death in the electric chair.

Looking over the record of the questioning now, wondering what he could do to prevent the next hammer blow of fate from falling on this completely nutty morning, Hank was inclined to agree with Soames’s prediction.

The People were prosecuting for Murder One in the Morrez case, and first-degree murder carried with it a mandatory death penalty. The indictment requested by the bureau seemed fair to Hank. Murder One was either premeditated murder or murder committed during the enactment of a felony. In the case of the People versus Aposto, Reardon and Di Pace — and especially in the light of what they’d said on the night of their arrest — there was little doubt in Hank’s mind that the murder was premeditated. Nor did this appear to be a case wherein the thin line of technicality separated Murder One from Murder Two, a case wherein the premeditation consisted of having drawn a revolver twenty seconds before firing it.

These boys seemed to have gone into Spanish Harlem deliberately and coldly. They had not slain in the heat of passion with intent to inflict only grievous injury. They had come there, it appeared, prepared to kill, and maliciously, blindly, they had struck down the first likely victim. If ever the People had an open-and-shut case of murder in the first degree, this was it. Why, even the lieutenant in charge of the detective squad had ripped holes in Aposto’s and Reardon’s obvious lies.

Nodding to himself, Hank turned to the first page of the interrogation of Danny Di Pace and began reading it.

The telephone on his desk rang. Reluctantly, Hank put aside the transcript and reached for the phone, feeling an immediate sense of premonition. On this morning of all magnificent mornings, he would not be surprised to learn that the bank had foreclosed his mortgage, that the Hudson had flooded and swelled into his living room, and that...

“Henry Bell,” he said.

“Hank, this is Dave on the desk. There’s a woman out here. Says she wants to see you.”

“A woman?” The sense of premonition was stronger now. He found himself frowning.

“Yeah,” Dave said. “Okay to send her in?”

“What does she want to see me about?”

“The Morrez kill.”

“Who is she, Dave?”

“Says she’s Mrs. Di Pace.”

“Danny Di Pace’s mother?”

“Just a second.” Dave’s voice retreated from the phone. “You Danny Di Pace’s mother?” Hank heard him ask. The voice came back to the mouthpiece. “Yeah, that’s who she is, Hank.”

Hank sighed. “Well, I’d planned on seeing her anyway, so it might as well be now. Send her in.”

“Roger,” Dave said, and then he hung up.

Hank replaced the phone on its cradle. He was not looking forward to the woman’s entrance. In the preparation of his case, he’d have summoned her to the office once, and then only to ascertain facts of the boy’s background. Her unexpected arrival now rattled him. He hoped she would not cry. He hoped she would understand that he was the People’s attorney, hired by the citizens of New York County to defend their rights, and that he would defend those rights as vigorously as her son’s attorneys defended his. And yet he knew she would cry. He had never met her, but she was the boy’s mother. She would cry.

He took the typed sheets from his desk top and put them into a drawer. Then he sat back to wait for the mother of Danny Di Pace, hoping against hope that there would not be another scene to add to this day which had begun so badly.

She was younger than he’d expected. He realized that the moment she stepped into the small waiting room outside. She came toward the inner office then, and he saw her face completely for the first time, and he felt as if he’d been struck with something hard and solid, and he suddenly knew that all the events of last night and this morning had been building toward this one shattering practical joke. Shock followed instantly on the heels of recognition to render him completely speechless as he sat behind his desk.

Hesitantly, Mrs. Di Pace said, “Mr. Bell?” and her eyes met his, and then the recognition crossed her face, too, followed instantly by the same shock, a visible thing which knifed her brown eyes and then sent her jaw slack. She shook her head in disbelief and then asked, “Hank?” hesitantly, and then “Hank?” more firmly.

“Yes,” he said, and he wondered why this had to be and he knew with sudden intuition that he was being sucked into a whirlpool where drowning was a distinct possibility, where he must swim or drown, swim for his life...

“Are you... Mr. Bell?”

“Yes.”

“But I... Have you... have you changed your name? Is that it?”

“Yes. When I began practicing law,” he said. He had changed his name for many reasons, most of which were deeply rooted and unconscious and which he could not have explained rationally if he’d tried. He did not try to explain now. The change of name was a fait accompli, a legal decree reading “ORDERED, that upon compliance with all the provisions herein contained, the said petitioners shall, on and after the 8th day of February, 1948, be respectively known as and by the names of Henry Bell, Karin Bell, and Jennifer Bell, which they are authorized to assume and by no other names.”

“And you’re a district attorney?” she said.

“Yes.”

“And my son’s case is in your...”

“Sit down, Mary,” he said.

She sat, and he studied the face he had once known so very well, the face he had held in his youthful hands — Wait for me, wait for me — it was the same face, more tired perhaps, but the same face that had belonged to Mary O’Brien at nineteen, the brown eyes and the near-red hair, red with a burnished glow, the aristocratic nose, the sensual mouth, the utterly exotic mouth, he had kissed that mouth...

He had thought of this meeting many times. In the great American fantasy of star-crossed lovers meeting on wind-swept streets, he had imagined meeting Mary O’Brien again one day, and he had thought some of the old love they had known for each other would still be there, and perhaps their hands would touch briefly and they would sigh wistfully over a life together that had never been and never would be — and then once more part. And now, here was the meeting, and Mary O’Brien was the mother of Danny Di Pace, and he didn’t know what the hell to say to her.

“This is... very strange,” he said. “I had no idea...”

“Nor I.”

“I mean, I knew you were married. You wrote to me and told me you were getting married and... and maybe you even mentioned the name, but that was such a long time ago, Mary, and I never...”

“I mentioned the name,” she said. “John Di Pace. My husband.”

“Yes. Maybe you did mention the name. I don’t remember.”

He could remember every other detail of the day he’d received her letter, could remember the wet drizzle clinging to the airfield in the north of England, the sounds of the Liberators warming up outside, the white plumes of their exhausts sifting through the early-morning rain, the neat red and blue diagonal lines on her airmail envelope, the hurried scrawl of her hand, and the address, Captain Henry Alfred Belani, 714 5632, 31st Bomber Squadron Command, U. S. Army Air Corps, A.P.O. New York, New York, and the words:

And the sudden angry roar of the bombers taxiing across the blackened field to take off into the wind.

“I didn’t remember the name,” he said.

They were both silent.

“You’re... you’re looking very well, Mary,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t know you still lived in the old neighborhood.”

“Harlem? Yes. Johnny’s store is there.” She paused. “My husband. Johnny.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Hank...”

“Mary, I don’t know why you came here, but—”

“Oh, Hank, for the love of God, are you going to kill my son?”

She did not cry. In that moment, he wished she would have cried. She hurled the words across the desk instead, her face dead white behind the startling brown eyes and the full sensual mouth.

“Mary, let’s understand each other,” he said.

“Please. Let’s.”

“What happened between us was a long time ago. You’re married now, and I’m married, and we both have children.”

“And you’re prosecuting my child for murder.”

“Mary—”

“Aren’t you, Hank?”

“Yes, I am,” he said. “I work for this county, and it’s my job to protect the people of this county. Your son committed murder, and as attorney for the—”

“My son had nothing to do with it! It was the others!”

“If that’s true, I’ll find out before the trial.”

“He didn’t even belong to the gang!”

“Mary, believe me, this is not a vengeful office. The case will be investigated thoroughly before it comes to trial. If there are mitigating circumstances—”

“Oh, stop it, stop it, Hank, please. This isn’t what I expect from you. From a stranger, yes, but not you, not Hank Belani.”

“Bell,” he corrected gently.

“I’m Mary,” she said softly, “the girl you once knew. Mary. Who loved you once... very dearly.” She paused. “Don’t tell me about mitigating circumstances.”

“What do you want me to tell you, Mary?”

“That my boy won’t be sent to the electric chair...”

“I can’t promise you anything like—”

“...for something he didn’t do!” she concluded.

The room went silent again.

“No one pays with his life for something he didn’t do,” Hank said.

“You really believe that, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yes. I really believe it.”

She stared at him long and hard. Then she said, “I don’t know you any more, do I?”

“A lot’s happened to both of us,” he said. “We can’t expect...”

“It’s funny,” she said tiredly. “I came into this office expecting a stranger — and I found one. I don’t know you at all. I don’t even know whether or not you’d allow what happened between us to influence what might happen to my son. For all I know—”

“Don’t say it, Mary!” His voice was harsh. “I’m a lawyer, and I believe in justice, and your son’ll get justice. When I got your letter, I was hurt, yes. But that was a long time ago, and everyone grows up.”

“Will my son grow up?” she asked.

And to this there was no answer.

He went into Holmes’s office that afternoon. As chief of the Homicide Bureau, Holmes was familiarly referred to by most newsmen as “Sherlock,” but everyone on the staff called him Ephraim, which was his true given name. He was a short man with white hair and spectacles, his round face giving him the appearance of a television comic, an impression which could not have been further from the truth; Ephraim Holmes was a man almost totally devoid of any humor.

“What is it, Hank?” he asked immediately. “I’m busy.”

“The Morrez case,” Hank said without preamble.

“What about it?”

“I’d like to drop the assignment. I’d like you to assign someone else to the prosecution.”

Holmes looked up suddenly. “What in hell for?” he asked.

“Personal reasons.”

“Like what?”

“Personal reasons,” Hank repeated.

“You getting scared?”

“No. Why should I be?”

“I don’t know. All the newspaper fuss. The bastards are pretrying the case already. Screaming for the death penalty. I thought it might be giving you the jumps.”

“No, that’s not it.”

“Then what is it? Don’t you think we’ve got a case?”

“I think we’ve got a very strong case.”

“For Murder One?”

“Yes, for Murder One.”

“Then what the hell’s the matter?”

“I told you. It’s something personal. I’d like to disqualify myself, Ephraim. I’d appreciate it.”

“None of these kids are related to you or anything, are they?”

“No.”

“Are you leary about asking for the death penalty for young kids?”

“No.”

“Are you prejudiced against Puerto Ricans?”

“What?”

“I said—”

“I heard you. What kind of a question is that?”

“Don’t be so high and mighty. Hatred doesn’t choose its jurisdictions. You may be one of those who feel the city’s better off without the likes of Rafael Morrez. You may feel the murder was justified.”

“That’s absurd,” Hank said. “And I don’t think anybody really feels that way.”

“No, huh? You’d be surprised.” Holmes paused. “You still haven’t convinced me that I should reassign this case.”

“Let’s simply say that the defense may concoct some yarn about the unconscious prejudice of the People’s attorney.”

“Then you don’t like Puerto Ricans?”

“I wasn’t speaking of that kind of prejudice.”

“Then what kind?”

“Ephraim, I can’t explain this to you. I want out. I want to drop the case. I’ve barely begun working on it, so there’ll be no real loss of time or energy. And I think the office will benefit by my withdrawal.”

“You think so, do you? And whom would you suggest I assign this to?”

“That’s your job, not mine.”

“Have you ever known me to snow you, Hank?”

“No.”

“All right then. When I tell you you’re the best damn prosecutor on this staff, you’ll know I’m not just making noises. This is an important case, more important than you—”

“It’s just another murder, Ephraim. We prosecute hundreds of murder cases each—”

“It’s not just another murder, and don’t you think that for a minute. It’s damn important. I want you to prosecute it, and the Boss wants you to prosecute it, and I’m not going to reassign it unless you can give me a better reason than you’ve given me so far.”

“All right,” Hank said, sighing. “I know the mother of one of the boys. Di Pace.”

“She’s a friend of yours?”

“No, not exactly. I knew her when I was a kid — before I went into the Army.”

“How well did you know her?”

“We were going steady, Ephraim.”

“Mmm. I see,” Holmes said.

“I asked her to wait for me when I went away. I got a Dear John while I was overseas. I never saw her again until this morning.”

“This all happened how long ago?”

“About fifteen years, I guess.”

“That’s a long time ago, Hank.”

“Yes, but the defense might use it, and it might weaken our case.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Suppose they put Mary on the stand? Suppose she claims she jilted me in 1943 and that petty revenge is the People’s motive in pushing for the death penalty?”

“How well did you know her, Hank?”

“I told you. We were—”

“Did you go to bed with her?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Might she perjure herself along those lines?”

“To save her son? She might do or say anything.”

“I still don’t think it’ll hurt us. Either way.”

“I wish I could agree with you.”

“Let me explain this case a little, Hank. You said it was just another murder, and I told you it wasn’t. Would you like to know why?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Okay. To begin with, this whole damn juvenile-delinquency thing is giving the city a fat pain in the foot. Everybody’s screaming about it, the cops, the schools, the judges, the press, the grand juries, the whole town’s suddenly full of experts who’ve just discovered that two per cent or more of the nation’s kids wind up before the courts each year. And do you know what they’re all screaming? ‘Let’s get tough! Expel the troublemakers from the schools! Fine the parents! Impose curfews! Give them stiff jail sentences! Stop the murderers! Show them we mean business!’

“God knows, they all mean business and they’re all in the same business, but they’re like a bunch of corporation vice-presidents who can’t seem to decide on the best way to sell their line. Maybe they’ll never decide, but that’s not our problem. I’m only telling you this to illustrate the first pressure being put on this office. We’re being urged in a thousand and one indirect ways to use these killers as examples. We’re being pressured to send them to the electric chair so that others will take heed of the terrible sword of justice.”

“Ephraim, this office has never buckled under to—”

“That’s number one, Hank, and only the beginning, and I think you’ll see in a minute why this is an important case requiring the best legal mind on our staff. Number two is the tolerance groups. Now, the kid who was killed was Puerto Rican. The Puerto Rican people in this city are probably the most oppressed people in the world, the new scapegoats, the new whipping posts for a neurotic society. Whenever a Puerto Rican commits a crime, the newspapers have a field day, playing on an undeniably existing prejudice to form a ready-made villain. I don’t want to go into the psychological relation of crime to minority groups. I just want to say this. This time, the victim is a Puerto Rican. And the tolerance groups have all piled on the band wagon demanding equal justice — and reasonably, I feel — for the dead Rafael Morrez. In short, we’re not only being asked to get tough, we’re being asked to get tough indiscriminately, to show that we’ll take no nonsense from any killer, white, black, brown or tan. We’re being asked to show that justice is not only terrible, it is also fair.”

“I see what you’re driving at,” Hank said. “I still think any other person on the staff—”

“And lastly, there is what the sob sisters would call the human-interest angle. We’re prosecuting this case in the interests of the people of this county. And do you know what the people see? The people see three strapping killers striding into a quiet street and stabbing to death a blind boy. A blind boy, Hank! Don’t you see the outrage here? Don’t you see the affront to decency? How can the streets be safe for anyone if a blind person, protected and sheltered by the unwritten laws of humanity ever since the beginning of time, can be brutally attacked and killed?”

“I see,” Hank said.

“Do you? Then you must also see that it’s essential for this office to prosecute this case with all the talent and energy it can muster. You’re our boy, Hank, and we’re going for the death penalty.”

“I still think—”

“No. Your request is officially refused. For God’s sake, Hank, a lot more than three boys is going on trial here. This office is going on trial.” Holmes paused. “And,” he said, “if you want to look at it in another light, maybe the whole damn city is going on trial.”

He stood on the deck of the ferry, and on his right he could see the high span, beautiful in its ugliness, of the Queensboro Bridge. Dead ahead, squatting on the water like a giant half-submerged whale, was Welfare Island. In the Youth House Annex there, a fifteen-year-old boy named Danny Di Pace was being held, awaiting trial for murder. They had not taken him to the Twelfth Street building because too many escapes, legend held, were successfully executed there.

A cool breeze blew off the East River, caressing the back of his neck, dissipating the dull heat of midsummer. Far off in the distance, pristine and cool, a delicate tracery against the shrieking raw blue of the sky, was the Triboro Bridge. He could remember when the bridge was being built. He could remember walking in the excavation site on 125th Street, a fourteen-year-old boy picking his way among the cinder block and concrete, the steel supporting rods, the freshly turned earth. The summer of 1934, and a young boy who visualized the bridge as a gateway to the treasures of the world. If you could cross that bridge, he had thought, you could get out of Harlem. There was purpose to the bridge, and meaning, and he had decided on that day, with the bulldozers and the steam shovels noisily pushing the land around him, that one day he would leave Harlem — and he would never return.

He did not know whether or not he hated the neighborhood.

But he had recognized with the clear vision of the very young that there were better things to be had from life. And he meant to have them.

One of those better things, he thought later, was Mary O’Brien.

He did not meet her until he was seventeen. Born into an Italian family, possessing a grandfather who — even on the brink of war with the Axis powers — proclaimed Italy as the cultural leader of the world and touted Mussolini as the savior of the Italian people, Hank had found it difficult at first to believe that he could fall in love with an Irish girl. Hadn’t he been told repeatedly by members of his family that the Irish were all drunkards? Hadn’t he been told by brothers of his street fraternity that all Irish girls were fast girls? Hadn’t most of the street fights taken place between the Italians and the Irish? How then could he possibly fall in love with a girl who was as Irish as her red hair?

She was fifteen when he met her. She didn’t wear lipstick then. He dated her on and off for a year before she allowed him to kiss her. Her mouth was a wondrous thing. He had kissed girls before, but he had never known the sweetness of a woman’s mouth until the day he kissed Mary O’Brien. And from that day on, he loved her.

His grandfather took a dim view of the situation.

“Why,” he asked in Italian, “must you go out with an Irish girl?”

And Hank had answered, “Because I love her, Grandpa,” and there was the ring of youthful authority in his voice. Loving her, he discovered her. And discovering her, he loved her more, until she became a part of his plans. When he left Harlem, Mary O’Brien would accompany him. He would carry her away, her red hair streaming over his shoulder, her rich laugh floating on the wind.

In 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Hank, who was twenty-one at the time and in his senior year at N.Y.U., was called up almost instantly. They gave him a party at his grandfather’s house. And while the others ate lasagna — his mother’s specialty — and drank good red wine, his grandfather took him aside and put his tailor’s hands on Hank’s shoulders and said, in hesitant English, “You go to fly aeroplani?”

“Yes, Grandpa,” he said.

The old man nodded. At sixty-eight, he possessed a head of snow-white hair. His eyes were brown behind thick spectacles, the natural accouterments of a tailor who studied his stitches with meticulous care.

“You will bomb Italy?” he asked, and there was sadness in his eyes.

“If I have to,” Hank answered honestly.

The old man nodded again, and his eyes held Hank’s, and he said, “Will they shoot at you, Enrico?”

“Yes.”

His hands tightened on Hank’s shoulders. With great difficulty he said, “Then you will shoot back.” He nodded. “You will shoot back,” he continued, nodding. He lifted his glasses and brushed at his eyes. “Caro mio,” he said gruffly, “take care of yourself. Come back safe.”

He went to see Mary that night. She was nineteen years old now, a woman with the slender curves of a girl. They walked along the East River Drive with the lights of the three-year-old bridge spanning the dark waters uptown, and he kissed her and said, “Will you wait for me, Mary?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m young, Hank. You’ll be gone a long time. I don’t know.”

“Wait for me, Mary. Wait for me.”

None of them had waited for him. He received Mary’s letter the next year. His grandfather died six months later. They would not allow him to go home for the funeral. He’d always been sorry that the white-haired man with the weak eyes and the gentle hands had never met Karin. He knew intuitively that the pair would have formed their own axis, with none of the sinister qualities of Hitler’s and Mussolini’s.

The ferry hit the dock pilings. The captain pulled her in smoothly and easily. The dock lowered to meet the deck of the boat, and then the guardrails were raised, and Hank disembarked and walked rapidly to the building where Danny Di Pace was being held.

The man Hank spoke to was busy answering telephones all the while Hank was there. Three phones rested on his desk, and they rang in frightening succession, so that he barely managed to wedge his conversation between the jangling of the telephones.

“You see how it is,” he said. “A rat race, an absolute rat race. We try to keep up with the boys and girls remanded to us by the Children’s Court, and it’s just like shoveling sand against the tide. It’s too much for us, Mr. Bell. It’s just too much. Do you know what we’d like to do here? Do you know what we could do if we had a staff?” He shook his head dolefully and then glanced abruptly at the phone, as if dreading a further interruption.

“What do you do, exactly, Mr. Walsh?” Hank asked.

“We try to find out what makes these kids tick. We dig. But how much digging can you do when you’re short of shovels?”

“Have you ever had any members of either of these two gangs before, Mr. Walsh?”

“Yes.”

“And what happened?”

“We ran our tests. We always try to find out what it is about a boy’s mentality or his emotional make-up that—”

“Try?” Hank asked.

“Yes, try. We don’t always succeed. For God’s sake, Mr. Bell, we’re swamped with—”

The telephone rang. Walsh lifted the receiver.

“Hello,” he said. “Yes, this is Mr. Walsh. Who? Oh, hello, how are you?” He paused. “Yes, I have a report on him. Just a minute.” He covered the mouthpiece. “Will you excuse me, Mr. Bell? This won’t take long.” He opened a folder on his desk and began speaking into the phone again. “Hello? Yes, we’ve confirmed that. The father is an alcoholic. No, there’s no question, the report is right here on my— Yes. All right, thank you for calling.” He hung up and then sighed deeply. “Deviant homes. We get more damn kids from deviant homes than I can count on—”

“What do you mean?” Hank asked.

“Well, surely you’re aware of all the research that’s been done,” Walsh said, glancing at Hank in surprise.

“No, I’m afraid I’m not.”

“There’s so much, I hardly know where to begin,” Walsh said, the surprise still on his face. “The Gluecks, for example. Their prediction table was based on four principal factors — discipline by the father, supervision by the mother, affection by both parents for the child, and cohesiveness of the family group. It was computed that, if these factors were unfavorable, the possibilities for delinquency were ninety-eight point one out of a hundred. Now, that’s pretty damned high, don’t you think?”

“If the research were accurate, yes.”

“There’s no reason to believe it wasn’t,” Walsh said. “It certainly comes as no surprise to anyone working in the field that deviant homes produce the vast majority of our delinquents.”

“I still don’t know what you mean by deviant homes.”

“Broken homes, immoral homes, criminal homes, homes where there’s a cultural conflict — such as is evident in the homes of some Puerto Rican gang members. We’ve had many such cases here.”

“Have you had Danny Di Pace here before?”

“No. But Reardon was with us for a while.”

“And what happened?”

“What did we discover about him, do you mean? He seemed to us to be an extremely aggressive boy, with a mother who’s overly permissive and a father who’s overly strict. He’s what we term an ‘acting-out neurotic.’”

“I’m afraid you’re going a little beyond me, Mr. Walsh.”

“I’m simply saying that his delinquent behavior seems to be compounded out of strong resentment to his repressive father and the desire to evoke some emotional response from his mother, whose permissiveness he distrusts.”

“I see,” Hank said, not seeing at all. “Why was Reardon here?”

“Oh, some street trouble. I don’t remember now what it was. This was several years back, you understand.”

“What was the final outcome?”

“What was the court disposition, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“He was released on probation.”

“Even though your study showed him to be — well, potentially dangerous?”

“We’re lucky we were even able to make a study, Mr. Bell. We’re operating with one case worker for every seventy-five boys. That’s spreading it pretty damn thin, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I would say so. What happened while Reardon was on probation?”

“Well, the probation officers are pretty much in the same boat we’re in. Each of them is handling a case load similar to our own. This doesn’t leave time for very much individual attention to a boy’s problems. What happens is that a good percentage of boys on probation get into trouble all over again.”

“Like Reardon?”

“Yes, if you wish to use him as an example. He’s only one of hundreds, though.” Walsh paused. “We could do such a job, Mr. Bell, if we had the money and the staff. Such a job.”

Hank nodded. “Don’t you feel, though, that you’re simplifying things somewhat? I mean, by hiding behind all this psychological—”

“Hiding?”

“Perhaps that’s not the word I wanted. But do you feel that delinquency can be reduced to such simple psychological equations?”

“Of course not. There is practically no such animal as a pure delinquent type. The acting-out neurotic, the wayward egocentric boy, even the passive or socialized delinquent — the one who’ll succumb to the pressures of his environment or his group while not truly being a disturbed personality — are hardly ever encountered in a pure state. And we certainly can’t discount the influence of environment, or a poor school situation, or even the unenlightenment of many police officials, as contributing factors to delinquency. But this is not psychological gobbledygook, Mr. Bell. I hope you didn’t mean to imply that.”

“These boys, Mr. Walsh, killed another boy.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Would you excuse their act by telling me their parents have personality disorders?”

“Would I excuse the act of murder?” Walsh asked.

“Yes.”

“It is your job to decide the law, Mr. Bell, not mine. I am dealing with people, not torts.”

Hank nodded. “May I see the Di Pace boy now, please?”

“Certainly,” Walsh said. As he rose, the phone rang again. “Damnit,” he said. “Betty, would you answer that, please? This way, Mr. Bell.”

The boy had his mother’s red hair and brown eyes, the same oval face, the same mouth, which looked curiously feminine on a boy turning into a man. He was a tall boy, muscularly loose, with the huge hands that identified the street brawler.

“If you’re a cop,” he said, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I’m the district attorney,” Hank said, “and you’d better talk to me. I’m prosecuting this case.”

“All the more reason I got nothing to say. You think I’m gonna help you send me to the electric chair?”

“I want to know what happened on the night Morrez was killed.”

“Yeah? So go ask Morrez. Maybe he’ll tell you. I don’t have to tell you nothing. Go talk to the big-shot lawyers the court appointed. I got four of them all to myself. Go talk to them.”

“I’ve already talked to them, and they had no objections to my questioning you and the other boys. I guess you know you’re in serious trouble. Your lawyers have told you that.”

“I’ll go to Children’s Court.”

“No you won’t, Danny. You’ll be tried with the other boys in General Sessions, Part Three.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. The case will be tried in this county next month. You’ll get a fair trial, but nobody’s going to try to coddle you. You killed a boy, Danny.”

“Yeah? That’s what you got to prove, mister. I’m innocent until I’m proved guilty.”

“That’s true. Now suppose you tell me what happened on the night of July tenth?”

“I told the story a hundred times already. We were out for a stroll. The spic jumped us, so we stabbed him. It was self-defense.”

“The boy you stabbed was blind. You surely must realize that no jury is going to believe he jumped you.”

“I don’t care what they believe. That’s what happened. You can ask Batman and Tower. They’ll tell you the same thing.”

“Who’s Batman?”

“Aposto. That’s what they call him.”

“Who calls him that?”

“The guys on the club he belongs to.”

“What gang is that?”

“You know all this already. Who the hell are you trying to con?”

“I’m asking you anyway,” Hank said. “What’s the name of the gang?”

“The Thunderbirds.” Danny paused. “And it ain’t a gang. It’s a club.”

“I see. And what differentiates a gang from a club?”

“The Thunderbirds never go around looking for no trouble.”

“Then what were you doing in Spanish Harlem on the night of July tenth if not looking for trouble?”

“We were out for a stroll.”

“You and Tower — who I suppose is Reardon — and Batman. Is that correct?”

“That’s correct,” Danny said.

“Why do you call him Tower?”

“I don’t know. I guess because he’s a tall guy. Also, he’s very strong. Tower kind of rhymes with power.”

“What do they call you?”

“Danny.”

“No nickname?”

“What do I need a nickname for? Anyway, Danny is a nickname. My real name is Daniel.”

“Why’d you join the gang, Danny?”

“I don’t belong to no gang.”

“The club then.”

“I don’t belong to no club.”

“Then what were you doing with two members of the Thunderbirds on the night of July tenth?”

“They asked me would I like to go for a stroll, so I said yes. So I went. There ain’t no law against that.”

“There’s a law against murder.”

“Yeah, but this was self-defense.”

“Danny, that’s sheer nonsense and you know it. The boy was blind!”

“So what?”

“So I’m telling you this. If you stick to this story, I can guarantee one thing. I can absolutely guarantee that you’ll end up in the electric chair.”

Danny was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “That’s what you want, ain’t it?”

“I want the truth.”

“You got the truth. Tower and Batman and me were out for a stroll. The lousy spic jumped us and we knifed him. That’s the truth.”

“Did you stab Morrez?”

“Sure, I stabbed him. The lousy spic jumped us. I stabbed him four times.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to stab him. What’s the matter, you think I’m afraid of stabbing somebody? I’d stab anybody got wise with me.”

“A blind boy?”

“Oh, lay off the blind-boy jazz, willya? He jumped us.”

“How could he jump you when he couldn’t even see you?”

“Ask him. Maybe he heard us. Maybe he wasn’t really blind. Maybe he was only faking like he was blind so—”

“Danny, Danny.”

“How the hell do I know why he jumped us? But he did, all right. So we give it to him. One thing about the Thunderbirds, they got heart. They don’t go looking for no trouble, but if it comes, they don’t turkey out, either.”

“All right, Danny. The three of you made up a story, and maybe it was a good story. But it doesn’t work in the light of the facts, and I should think you’d be smart enough to change the story now that you know the facts. This way, you haven’t got a prayer.”

“I’m telling you exactly what happened. You want me to lie?”

“What are you afraid of, Danny? Who are you afraid of?”

“I ain’t afraid of nothing or nobody on the face of the earth. And don’t you forget that neither. And I’ll tell you something else. You may think I’m going to the chair, but you got it all wrong. ’Cause I ain’t. And if I was you, I’d watch my step, mister. I just wouldn’t go walking around no dark streets at night.”

“Are you threatening me, Danny?”

“I’m just advising you.”

“Do you think I’m afraid of a bunch of teen-age hoodlums?”

“I don’t know what you’re afraid of or what you ain’t. All I know is I personally wouldn’t want to tackle fifty guys who are out to burn.”

“The Thunderbirds, do you mean?”

“I ain’t mentioning no names. Just watch your step, mister.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Hank said dryly.

“Because just between the two of us,” Danny said, “you don’t look to me like you could handle a skinny dame, no less fifty guys.”

“You’ve got quite a talent, Danny,” Hank said.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“I came here because your mother told me—”

“My mother? What’re you dragging her in this for? Why’d you send for her?”

“I didn’t. She came to see me. She told me you didn’t belong to the Thunderbirds, and that you’d had nothing to do with the stabbing. When I explained this to your lawyers, they agreed I might see you. So I came. And now I’m convinced more than ever that you did belong to the gang and that you killed that boy cold-bloodedly and with premeditation. That’s your talent, Danny. It should work well with a jury.”

“I didn’t kill him cold-bloodedly or nothing. I stabbed him in self-defense, and I wasn’t trying to kill him. I was only trying to stop him from hurting me.”

“He was blind!” Hank said angrily.

“I don’t know what he was, and I don’t care. All I know is he got off that stoop like a madman, and he had a knife in his hands, and when he come at us—”

“You’re lying!”

“I ain’t lying. He had a knife. I saw it. For God’s sake, I saw it! You think I wanted to get cut? So when Tower and Batman went at him, I went at him, too. I ain’t turkey, mister. When there’s trouble, I got heart.”

“It certainly takes a lot of heart to attack a boy who can’t see.”

“You don’t have to see to be able to stab somebody. There’s guys been stabbed on the blackest night. All you got to do is feel, and stick the blade. What the hell do you know? You lousy pansy, you was probably born on a big estate in—”

“Shut up, Danny!”

“Don’t tell me to shut up. You’re lucky my lawyers are even letting you talk to me. Nobody sent for you, you come of your own free will. Okay, you’re here and this is what I got to say. I say we were walking down that street, and that spic got up off the stoop like a crazy man and come at us with a blade in his fist. We stabbed him because it was either us or him. If he died, that’s tough. He shouldn’t of got wise.”

Hank rose. “Okay, Danny. That’s your story. I wish you luck.”

“And keep away from my mother, mister,” Danny said. “Just keep away from her. You hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Then you better do it.”

“There’s only one thing I’m going to do, Danny. I’m going to send you and your friends to the electric chair for the murder of an innocent boy.”

The note was waiting for him back at the office. It was addressed to MISTER DISTRICT ATTORNEY HENRY BELL. The letters were scrawled across the face of the envelope in ink. He tore open the flap and pulled out the single sheet of notepaper. In the same hand were written the words: