A Matter of Conviction

Nine

Judge Abraham Samalson sat in the outdoor slate patio of the Bell house in Inwood, a brandy snifter of cognac in his delicate hands. The sky to the west was peppered with stars, and the judge tilted his bald head and examined the heavens, and all the while he rolled the glass of cognac in his thin hands, and occasionally he sniffed at the bouquet, and occasionally he drank. Music came from the hi-fi setup inside the house, oozing onto the patio, where Karin had planted a wild array of summer-blooming flowers that formed the flanking walls of the terrace. The open side of the terrace faced the river and the New Jersey cliffs on the opposite shore.

“That was a nice job Barton did on you in the newspapers, Hank,” Samalson said.

“Oh, very nice,” Hank agreed.

“I think it’ll work in reverse for you. It makes you sound very dashing and romantic. Who is there in the entire city of New York who hasn’t longed to lift the skirts of an Irish lass? Not that I believe a word of the story’s implications. But it serves to illustrate the dangers of incompetent composition. Barton starts out to kill you, and what does he achieve? He creates a romantic figure.”

“I didn’t think the story was so romantic,” Hank said.

“You’re too sensitive. The Mike Bartons of America are people to laugh at, not to hate. Give Barton a trench coat and a juicy piece of gossip and he’s happy. He can play at being a reporter.”

“I think he’s a dangerous man,” Hank said.

“Only if we take him seriously. If we laugh at him, the danger is immediately dissipated.”

“I wish I could agree with you, Abe,” Hank said.

“You never did agree with me, so I see no reason for you to begin now. You were the most argumentative student I ever had in any of my classes, and I taught law for fourteen years. I might add, in the fairness becoming my role as a magistrate, that you were also the most promising student I ever had.”

“Thank you.”

“I think I can safely say, in fact, that in the fourteen years I taught law I had only six students who I thought should be lawyers. The rest should have been shoe clerks.” Samalson paused. “Or is that a prejudiced statement?”

“A bit snobbish perhaps, but...”

“I’m referring to Danny Di Pace’s father. He runs a shoe store, doesn’t he?”

“Oh. Yes.”

“What sort of a person is he?”

“I’ve never met him.”

“He must be — Well, forget it.”

“What were you going to say?”

“Only that delinquency doesn’t simply spring from the soil. If a kid turns bad, chances are nine out of ten you’ll find some sort of trouble with the parents.”

“So what do we do? Prosecute the parents instead of the kids?”

“I don’t know what we do, Hank. The law makes no provision for the allocation of blame. If three men conspire together to commit a murder and only one of them actually pulls the trigger of the gun, the three are nonetheless tried for acting in concert. On the other hand, if parents, through neglect or overindulgence, or just plain indifference, produce a boy who stabs another boy, the parents are not considered the lawbreakers. But have they not, in all fairness, contributed to the crime? Weren’t they, too, acting in concert?”

“You’re saying we should arrest the parents, too?”

“I’m saying nothing of the sort, and I won’t have you pulling any of your trick shyster-lawyer questions on me.” Samalson chuckled. “I’m simply asking a question. Where does the blame begin? And where does it end?”

“That’s the big question, Abe. Answer that one, and you can start your own TV quiz show.”

“I get that question every day in my courtroom. And every day I make my decision, and I pass my sentence as specified by law, the punishment to fit the crime. But sometimes I wonder about justice.”

“You? Abe, you don’t!”

“Ah, but I do, and this is strictly out of school and if you ever repeat it to a goddamn soul, I’ll tell the newspapers that you once prepared a theoretical defense of the Sacco-Vanzetti case.”

“He never forgets a thing, Karin,” Hank said. “He’s got a mind like a blotter.”

“Spongy and blue,” Samalson said.

“I’m interested to know why you doubt justice,” Karin said.

“I didn’t say I doubted it, I said I wondered about it.” He turned to Hank. “Are you training her to be a shyster, too?”

“She’s the best damn lawyer in New York,” Hank said. “You should hear some of our arguments.”

“Well, how do you wonder about it?” Karin persisted.

“Look at her,” Samalson said. “Like a terrier with a bone, anxious to start gnawing at it. I wonder about justice, my dear, because I’m not sure I’ve ever dispensed real justice in my courtroom.”

“And just what is real justice?”

“Real justice is nonexistent,” Samalson said. “Is retribution justice? Is there justice in the Bible’s eye for an eye? I doubt it.”

“Then where is there justice?” Hank asked.

“To be just is to be actuated by truth and lack of bias, to be equitable and evenhanded. There is no such thing as justice.”

“Why not?”

“Because men administer justice. And there is no such thing as a truthful, equitable, evenhanded, unprejudiced man.”

“Then we might just as well forget law and order,” Hank said. “We might just as well become barbarians.”

“No. The law was designed by men to fill the needs of men. If our justice is not pure, it is at least an attempt to maintain the inherent dignity of man. If someone has been wronged, it is the duty of society to give him redress. Your Rafael Morrez was allegedly wronged. An act of larceny was committed against him. The grandest sort of larceny. His life was stolen from him. And now Morrez, or society speaking for Morrez, is seeking redress. You are protecting the dignity of Rafael Morrez by prosecuting those who allegedly wronged him.”

“And this is justice,” Hank said.

“No, this is not justice. Because if we were truly seeking justice, the Rafael Morrez case would consume a lifetime. Don’t you see, Hank? In our courtrooms, we are concerned only with blacks and whites. Did these three boys commit this crime against this other boy? If so, they are guilty of first-degree murder and must be punished as specified by law. If not, they are free. But where are the grays? How can a man be fair, and truthful, and equitable, when he has only the most obvious black and white facts before him?”

“The county will present all the facts, Abe. You know that.”

“The facts of the crime, yes. And, of course, there will be psychologists presented by both sides, and the defense will try to show that these poor boys were misguided and a product of our times, and you will try to show that we cannot blame our times for the product, that a modern murderer is no different from a Colonial murderer. Three weeks from now, the jury will listen to all this, weighing the facts of the crime, and I will guide them as to points of law in the case. And then they will turn in their verdict. And if they decide the boys are not guilty, I shall free them. And if they decide the boys are guilty of first-degree murder, and if they do not ask for leniency, I shall do what I am duty-bound and sworn to do. I shall administer sentence as prescribed by the law. I shall send those three boys to the electric chair.”

“Yes,” Hank said, and he nodded.

“But will that be justice?” Samalson shook his head doubtfully. “Crime and punishment. A noble concept. But how much of our system of punishment is based on the guilt-ridden complexity of modern man? Are we satisfying our own hunger for self-punishment every time we level sentence on a so-called criminal?”

“You can’t apply modern psychology to laws conceived thousands of years ago, Abe.”

“Can’t I? What makes you think man has changed so very much in the past thousand years? We’re the guiltiest animals on the face of the earth. And we share a race memory of guilt. And we cover our shame with the high-flown notion that justice will triumph. But I’ll tell you something, Hank, and this I firmly believe, and it has nothing to do with my ability to judge a case as I’m supposed to. I do that very well within the specified confines of my job. But I do not believe that justice very often triumphs. There are more murderers loose than I’d care to count. And I’m not talking about the people who pull the trigger or plunge the blade. Until mankind can decide where the act of murder begins, there will be no real justice. There will only be men armed with rhetoric and — like our friend Mike Barton in his reporter role — they will only be playing at the game of administering justice. They will only be fakes.”

Samalson looked up at the stars.

Somberly he said, “Maybe it takes a God. We’re only men.”

He began preparing his case on Monday and, with the trial three weeks away, he found he could not get the judge’s words out of his mind.

Usually, Hank was a careful and meticulous worker, preparing his cases with the preciseness of a mathematician. It was his contention that a lawyer should never make the mistake of thinking a jury would appreciate subtleties. Beginning with the assumption that a jury knew nothing whatever about the law or the case being tried, it was his task to present the facts so that, once understood, they led to an inescapable conclusion. In offering the facts, he tried to leave nothing to the imagination. Piece by piece, he built his jigsaw puzzle. By the time he was ready to make his closing statement, the scattered evidence would have locked together into a clear and indisputable picture from which one conclusion, and one conclusion alone, could be drawn. The skill of such a trial performance depended largely upon the groundwork he did in his office before the trial. It was no simple task to batter a jury with facts and at the same time leave them convinced that they had done all their own reasoning. He was, in a sense, demanding total identification from them. Moving from the jury box into the figure of the prosecutor, they were in the position of being able to assay the facts as he himself had done earlier. But, and he knew this with the instincts of an actor, the jury needed more than identification. They demanded, too, a performance. They wanted to see a show, especially in a murder trial. And so it became important to decide which witnesses preceded others, how the testimony given could be presented so that it built to a logical and seemingly effortless climax of overwhelming truth. And, in addition to this, he had the defense’s case to worry about. He had to be prepared for whatever they might hurl at him. In effect, he had to prepare two cases — his own, and the defense’s as well.

His desk on that Monday morning three weeks before the trial was a clutter of disorder. Slips of paper covered its top, each held in place with a metal paperweight. Large lined pads were filled with scribbled notes. Folders of testimony taken by civil-service stenographers were stacked at one corner of the desk. A folder containing the psychological report rested near his telephone. And his memo pad held jottings of things yet to do:

Call Police lab! Where the hell is report on knives?

See Johnny Di Pace?

Leader of Thunderbirds — Big Dom?

Jennie’s birthday, August 26

In the midst of the disorder, there was an order known only to Hank. It disturbed him that the police laboratory had not yet presented its report on the murder weapons. On his tentative mind graph of the trial’s chronological progression, he could visualize the presentation of the weapons as one of the highest peaks on the steadily rising dramatic line. He intended to start with witnesses who would testify to the events leading up to the killing, intended to reconstruct that July night in the courtroom as if it were happening before the jury’s eyes. He could almost hear his words now — “The boys put these knives into their pockets, these knives. They are not penknives. They are not knives used for mumblety-peg. They are weapons.” And then he would press the stud on one of the knives and allow the blade to snap open. He knew the device would be effective. Props were always effective and knives automatically generated excitement. There was something inherently menacing about a knife, any knife. A switch blade held the added element of surprise, the long blade snapping from the handle with sudden viciousness. And he knew, too, that most people would rather face the snout of an automatic pistol than stare at the tempered steel length of a blade. In the mind of the ordinary citizen, a shooting was something which happened in the movies. But every ordinary citizen had cut himself accidentally at one time or another, had seen the flow of blood, had known what a knife or a razor blade or a seemingly harmless kitchen utensil can do to flesh.

Hank would use the knives well, playing on the natural fear of blades and coupling this with the direct testimony of the killers themselves, whom he intended to call to the witness chair last. He knew, of course, that the boys could not be forced to testify against themselves, and that if they refused to take the stand, Judge Samalson would immediately inform the jury that this was in no way to be construed as an admission of guilt. But he felt certain that Aposto would be allowed to testify, if only to establish his low mentality. And the jury’s unconscious adverse reaction to anyone who refused to take the stand would be doubled against Reardon and Di Pace if one boy were allowed to speak and the others restrained. Besides, with a plea of self-defense the one chance the boys had, it did not seem likely that their attorneys would advise them against testifying. So he felt fairly certain he could get them into the witness chair, and once there he would pry from their own mouths the story of what had happened that night. But first he would present the knives.

So where the hell was the report?

Annoyed, he dialed the police laboratory at headquarters on Centre Street and was connected with a man named Alex Hardy.

“This is Mr. Bell of the Homicide Bureau,” he said. “I’m prosecuting the Rafael Morrez case, which comes to trial three weeks from today. I’ve been expecting a report on the murder weapons, but I haven’t received one as yet. I’m preparing my case now, and I’d like to use whatever you can give me on those knives.”

“Morrez, Morrez, oh, yes,” Hardy said. “That Puerto Rican kid. Yes, we have the knives, all right.”

“I know you have them. How about the report?”

“Well, that’s another thing again.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Dennis is on vacation, you see.”

“Who’s Dennis?”

“Dennis Bennel. He’s head of the lab.”

“So?”

“So he didn’t leave any instructions concerning those knives.”

“Well, who’s second in command there? Does your whole shop fall to pieces when one man goes on vacation?”

“Not at all, not at all. And there’s really no need to get snotty, Mr. Bell. We’re only doing our job here.”

“Your job was to run some tests on those knives. When will I have that report?”

“I’m just a working stiff, Mr. Bell. You’re wasting your time getting sore with me.”

“Whom do you suggest I get sore with?”

“I’ll connect you with Lieutenant Canotti. Maybe he can help you.”

Hardy covered the mouthpiece. Hank impatiently tapped a letter opener on the desk. A brusque voice came onto the line.

“Canotti here.”

“This is Assistant District Attorney Bell of the Homicide Bureau. I asked for a report on the murder weapons in the Rafael Morrez case. I still haven’t received it. Your man just told me Mr. Bennel...”

“Lieutenant Bennel. Yes?”

“...is out of the office on vacation. Now how do I go about getting that report?”

“Just ask,” Canotti said.

“I’m asking.”

“Okay. What’s all the heat about?”

“I’m trying the case in three weeks, that’s what all the heat is about. Listen, what is this? Some sort of a comic routine?”

“I’ll put somebody to work on the knives as soon as possible, Mr. Bell.”

“Thanks a lot. When will I have the report?”

“As soon as it’s ready.”

“And when will that be?”

“We’re a little understaffed at the moment. Half our men are on vacation, and there are murders being committed every day in this fair city, Mr. Bell. Now I’m sure you feel that the prosecution of a case is more important than the solving of another case, but our police department feels differently. We can’t satisfy everybody, Mr. Bell. We plod along and try to do our level best. But then, I’m sure you’re not interested in our internal problems.”

“Nor in your irony, Lieutenant. Can I have that report by the beginning of next week?”

“Certainly. If it’s ready.”

“Lieutenant Canotti, I’d hate like hell to have to go into the D.A.’s office on this.”

“I’d hate that to happen, too, Mr. Bell. Especially since we are now engaged on a project dumped into our laps by one of the Mayor’s committees. Do you understand, Mr. Bell?”

“I do. If I haven’t got that report by next Monday morning, you’ll be hearing from me.”

“Nice talking to you,” Canotti said, and he hung up.

Hank slammed down the receiver. How the hell was he supposed to get to the bottom of this without co-operation? How could he show the beginning, the middle, and the end of a murder without...

Until mankind can decide where the act of murder begins, there will be no justice.

The judge’s words. Strange words for a man sitting on the bench.

Well, he could not concern himself with the intricate problems of mankind. No. No matter what the judge said, Hank’s duty was clear. To prosecute a case according to the grand jury indictment. First degree murder. That was it, and that was all. Was he supposed to indict the entire city of New York? Of did it end there? Where did it go? The state? The nation? The world? You could extend responsibility to the outer reaches of time and come up with the conflicting opinion that everyone and no one was responsible. In which case, the murderers would roam the streets and havoc would replace civilization.

No.

He knew what he had to do. Present his case. Show the facts. Convict the three killers.

Purposefully, he picked up the folder containing the psychological report on Anthony Aposto. The letter from Bellevue Hospital was addressed to Judge Abraham Louis Samalson, from whom the court order remanding Aposto to Bellevue had been obtained. It read:

Hank put the report back into its folder.

If there had been any doubt before about the defense for Batman Aposto, there was none now. And, in the face of the report — a copy of which had undoubtedly been furnished to the defense attorneys, too — Hank knew he didn’t stand a chance of convicting Aposto. Nor, truly, did he feel there would be any real justice in such a conviction.

Real justice is nonexistent.

The judge’s words again. And certainly, would it not be just for Aposto to pay for a crime he’d committed, no matter what his mental state? An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Where did the person Aposto end, and the personality Aposto begin? What divided the killer from the mental deficient? Were they not one and the same person? Admittedly they were. And yet you could not send a boy with the mental age of a ten-year-old to the electric chair. This would not be justice. This would simply be blind animal reaction.

Blind.

Rafael Morrez was blind. And was not his deficiency as great as the low mentality of Anthony Aposto? Yes, but his blindness did not save him from Aposto’s quick sentence. And yet Aposto’s mentality would save him from the sentence of the state. And that, Hank thought, is the difference between animals and men.

Justice, he thought.

Justice.

On Wednesday evening of that week, he was not thinking of justice. He was instead filled with an all-consuming rage at the injustice of what was happening to him.

He had worked late at the office, preparing an outline for the questioning of Louisa Ortega. He had decided to use the fact that the girl was a prostitute, rather than try to hide it from the jury. The defense would only shatter her testimony later if he concealed her occupation, and so he tried to fashion the questions he would ask her so that she would emerge as a victim of circumstance, a girl forced into the oldest profession because of poverty and hunger. He did not think it wise to reveal the fact that the girl had had relations with Morrez on at least one known occasion. His jury-image of Morrez was that of the defenseless blind boy, the victim of three cold-blooded murderers. He did not wish to destroy this ideal image by offering the jury a glimpse at something they might consider sordid.

He would, of course, be very careful in the selection of jury members. He was allowed an unlimited number of challenges for cause, and he was allowed to peremptorily challenge a total of thirty-six prospective jurors. He could, for example, excuse a man simply because he did not like the color of his eyes. Ideally, he’d have wanted at least three Puerto Ricans on the jury. He knew this would be impossible, and he’d consider himself lucky if the defense permitted him to empanel even one. He debated in his own mind whether or not he preferred men or women on the jury and decided that it didn’t make much difference either way. Whereas men would more readily accept the testimony of Louisa Ortega, they might unconsciously identify with the virility of the three killers. And whereas a woman’s maternal instinct might cause her to embrace the image of Morrez protectively, she would certainly rebel against anything a prostitute said under oath.

As it almost always did, it would break down to a sense of feel. He would know instantly when questioning a prospective juror whether this man or woman would be impartial. He knew lawyers who maintained that the best way to select a jury was to accept immediately the first twelve men or women and let it go at that. He did not agree with them. He felt that there was more to winning a case than pure chance, and he tried to establish during the questioning period whether or not the jury member would like him personally. He was, after all, an actor in a show — one of the stars — and unless the jury empathized with him his case would indeed be a difficult one.

His own personal gauge was a prospective juror’s eyes. He always stood very close to the man or woman he was questioning, and he liked to believe that he could read intelligence or lack of intelligence, fairness or prejudice, empathy or antagonism in that person’s eyes. Perhaps his gauge was fallacious. He had certainly empaneled jurors in open-and-shut cases only to have the verdict go finally against him. But if the eyes were not the windows of the soul (and he had forgotten who made that original observation) he did not know which part of the body was a more accurate measure of what went on inside a man.

He called Karin at six to say that he would not be home for dinner.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said. “That means I’ll be eating alone.”

“Isn’t Jennie home?”

“No, she’s gone out.”

“Where in the name of God does that girl go all the time?”

“There’s a new Brando picture at Radio City. She went with some of the girls.”

“Neighborhood girls?” he asked pointedly.

“No. The neighborhood girls seem to be avoiding our daughter. She called some friends from school.”

“What the devil,” Hank muttered. “Can’t they even leave her alone? What time will she be back, Karin?”

“Not too late. Don’t worry about it. There are two detectives prowling the house like sentries. One of them is very good-looking. I may invite him in for dinner.”

“Ja, ja, you do that.”

“Would it make you jealous?”

“Not in the slightest,” he said. “But it may lead to a homicide in Inwood. Honey, I may be home very late. Don’t wait up for me if you don’t feel like it.”

“I’ll wait up. Hank, if you get lonely, call me again, will you?”

“I will.”

“All right, darling. Goodbye.”

He hung up, smiling, and went back to work.

At 7:10 P.M. his telephone rang. Absent-mindedly he lifted it from the receiver and said, “Hello?”

“Mr. Bell?” a voice asked.

“Yes,” he said.

There was no answer.

“Yes, this is Mr. Bell.”

He waited. There was still no answer.

“Hello?” he said.

The silence on the phone was unpunctuated, unbroken. He waited with the receiver in his fist, saying nothing, listening, waiting for the sound of the phone being hung up on the other end. The sound did not come. In the stillness of his office, the silence on the phone seemed magnified. He was aware all at once that his hand was sweating on the black plastic of the receiver.

“Who is this?” he said.

He thought he could hear breathing on the other end of the line. He tried to remember what the voice which had said “Mr. Bell?” sounded like, but he could not.

“If you have something to say, say it,” he said to the empty phone.

He wet his lips. His heart was pounding, and he resented the foolish staccato beat in his chest.

“I’m hanging up,” he said, not expecting the words to find voice, surprised when they did. His statement had no effect on the party at the other end. The silence persisted, broken intermittently by staticlike sounds, the minute impulses of electricity on any telephone wire.

He slammed the receiver back onto its cradle.

When he picked up the outline on Louisa Ortega, his hands were trembling.

He left the office at nine that night.

Fanny, her white-thatched head drooping slightly, opened the doors of the one elevator which was still running.

“Hello, Hank,” she said. “Burning the midnight?”

“Got to wrap up this Morrez case,” he told her.

“Yeah,” she said. She closed the doors. “Well, what’re you going to do? That’s life.”

Solemnly, remembering the shaggy-dog story, Hank said, “Life is a fountain.”

“Huh?” Fanny said. “What do you mean, life is a fountain?”

He looked at her with a mock stunned expression. “You mean life isn’t a fountain?”

“Hank,” she said, wagging her head, “you’re working too hard. Close the windows in your office. Don’t let the sun in.”

He grinned, and then he remembered the silent phone call, and the grin dropped from his mouth. In the street outside, the buildings of justice had closed their faces for the night. An occasional light burned like an unblinking eye in the otherwise gray façades of the buildings. The streets, thronged with counselors and clerks and offenders and witnesses during the daytime, were almost empty at this hour. He glanced at his watch. Nine-ten. With luck, he’d be home before ten o’clock. A nightcap with Karin, outdoors perhaps, and then to bed. It was a beautiful balmy night, and the night stirred something deep inside him, a memory impulse leaping into vague restless prominence. He could not pinpoint the memory, but he felt very young all at once, and he knew the memory was connected with his youth, the smell of a summer night, the giant black arc overhead dotted with swarming stars, the sound of the city all around him, the myriad sounds gathering and rising to become the sound that only a city possessed, the heartbeat of a metropolis. It was a night to drive along the West Side Highway with the top of a convertible down and the jewel lights of the city gleaming in the sky, reflecting on the waters of the Hudson. It was a night for listening to “Laura,” a night designed to show man that romance was a very real thing which had nothing whatever to do with the daily grind of the rat race.

He was unconsciously smiling when he entered City Hall Park. His step, too, was lighter, and his shoulders were back and his head was erect and he felt as if he owned the city of New York. Lock, stock, and barrel, the city was his, a giant wonderland of peaks and minarets and soaring towers designed for his pleasure alone. He hated this city, but, by God, it sang in his blood, it roared there like the intricate tonality of a Bach fugue, it was his city, and he was a part of it, and as he walked beneath the spreading leaf canopy of the park trees he felt as if he were merging with the concrete and the asphalt and the steel and the blazing tungsten, as if he were truly the city personified, and he knew for a fleeting instant how Frankie Anarilles felt when he walked the streets of Spanish Harlem.

And then he saw the boys.

There were eight of them, and they sat on two benches flanking either side of the path which wound through the small park. The lampposts along the path, he noticed, had either gone out accidentally or been put out. In any case, the benches upon which the boys sat were in total darkness and he could not see the boys’ faces. The area of blackness, intensified by the high covering arch of the heavily laden trees, spread for at least fifty feet along the path. The darkness began not ten feet ahead of him.

He hesitated.

His stride broke, and he remembered the telephone call — “Mr. Bell?” — and then the silence, and he wondered if that call had been made to ascertain the fact that he was still in the office. There were two detectives assigned to his home in Inwood, but... Suddenly he was frightened.

The boys sat motionless on the benches. Silently, like wax figures shrouded in impenetrable darkness, they sat and waited.

He decided to turn and walk out of the park.

And then he decided he was being foolish. There was nothing ominous about a group of young kids sitting in a park in the middle of a city. For God’s sake, there were probably a thousand policemen cruising the area! His right foot touched the patch of darkness on the path, moved into it, followed by his left, and then his right again, and then the darkness was everywhere around him as he approached the benches and their silent cargo, the fear returning in him with alarming suddenness.

The boys sat quietly. There was no talking — hardly any breathing, it seemed to him — as he passed between the two benches looking neither to the left nor the right, neither acknowledging their presence nor denying it.

The attack came swiftly, surprisingly because, if anything, he expected a punch to be hurled, but instead something lashed across his chest, something hard and sinuous, something alive with fury. He balled his fists and turned to the first attacker, but the same live terror leaped out of the darkness at his back, and he heard the rattle of metal, the sound of chains, chains? can it be they’re using? and then he felt the sharp snap of metal across his face, and now there was no doubt that the weapons in the hands of these eight boys were tire chains, skid chains, spiked with metal prongs to catch at the snow, wielded with surprising deftness and agility.

He threw a punch at a shadowy figure and someone grunted in pain, and then from behind him another of the skid chains whipped at his legs and he felt raw pain rocket up his spine to explode inside his skull. Another of the flailing chains whipped across his chest, and he seized at it with his hands, pulling at it, feeling the ripping of his flesh as his hands tore across the metal prongs.

There was a curious silence to the scene. None of the boys spoke. Occasionally they grunted when he struck one of them, but they said nothing intelligible. There was only the sound of heavy labor, and the sound of the metal chains lunging into the darkness, colliding with his body until he felt pain everywhere and still the chains would not stop their metallic methodical beating. A chain struck the calf of his right leg, and he felt himself losing his balance, and he thought I must not fall, they’ll stomp me, they’ll kick me with combat boots, and then his shoulder slammed against the concrete path and a kick exploded against his rib cage, and another set of tire chains descended on his face with the wild power of a medieval mace. And then the chains and the boots joined in a medley of organized pain, and still there was no sound but the chains and the labored breathing of the boys and far off the muted hum of an automobile engine somewhere on the street.

He was filled with rage, an impotent blind rage that threatened to consume him, overwhelming the shrieking pain he knew. There was injustice to this beating, but at the hands of his assailants he was helpless, helpless to stop the prongs which tore at his clothes and his flesh, helpless to stop the thick leather of the boots as they descended on him. Stop it, you goddamn fools! he screamed mentally. Do you want to kill me? What are you solving? What the hell are you solving?

A kick tore open his face. He could feel the skin ripping apart like the skin of a frankfurter on the outdoor barbecue grill of his home in Inwood, his face tearing, it was funny, the warm flow of blood, I must protect my teeth, the city swarming about him, all the sounds of the city rushing into the vortex of fifty-foot blackness on the path of the park, and the chains whipping, and the boots, the boots, and within him the outrage at the injustice, the impotent outrage suffocating him, rising inside him until a shocking star-shell explosion of pain rocked the back of his head and sent him soaring wildly into unconsciousness.

And in that last instant before the darkness became complete, he realized that he didn’t know whether his attackers were the Thunderbirds or the Horsemen.

And it didn’t make a damned bit of difference either way.