Daddy's Gone a Hunting

82

Sammy was one of the many street people who was questioned by the police as to whether he knew the homeless man who called himself Clyde. At first he had said that he had never heard of him. He didn’t want to get in trouble. But when one of his friends tipped him off that it had been on television that maybe Clyde had killed a couple of girls, Sammy was seized with a sense of civic duty.

Tony Bovaro was a young cop in the Chelsea district who would wake him up in the morning if he was squatting outside a building or near a townhouse and say, “Okay, Sammy, you know you’re not supposed to be here. Get moving before I have to take you in.”

This time, it was Sammy who went looking for the officer. On Thursday afternoon, he caught up with Officer Bovaro, who was seated, with his partner, in a squad car. “I got something to tell you, Officer,” he said, trying to conceal the fact that he had a pretty good buzz on.

“Hi, Sammy. Haven’t seen you in a couple of days,” Bovaro said. “What’s up?”

“What’s up is that you should take a look at the black-and-blue mark on my chin.”

The twenty-four-year-old police officer got out of the squad car and examined Sammy’s grime-covered, splotched, and unshaven face. But then he did notice the ugly black and purple swelling on Sammy’s jaw. His interest deepened. “That’s pretty nasty, Sammy. How did it happen?”

Sammy could see that the cop was listening to him with respect. “That guy, Clyde, the one they think murdered that college student, he damn near killed me last week. I tried to set up near him and he didn’t want me there. And then when I said I wouldn’t leave…”

Sammy did not mention that he had deliberately knocked over the bottle of wine Clyde had been enjoying. “Anyhow, Clyde punched me so hard I almost had to go to the hospital but I didn’t. That guy was mean. He was crazy. Just so you know, I hear that he admitted punching that girl. But I bet he killed her. I don’t know about the one thirty or so years ago. But if he was around here and she got in his way, I bet he killed her, too.”

“Okay, Sammy, take it easy,” Officer Bovaro said, even as his partner grabbed the radio to call in that they had new information about Clyde Hotchkiss.

An hour later, Sammy was in the local police station recounting his story with gusto. As he was speaking he embellished it, claiming that the street guys were all afraid of Clyde Hotchkiss. “We called him Lonesome Clyde,” Sammy said, his sly grin revealing several missing teeth. Then, for the benefit of the investigators who had not yet seen a close-up of his jaw, he thrust it forward. “Clyde had a terrible temper. He was a killer. I could be dead right now the way he hit me.”

When Sammy left the police station, he was followed by a reporter who had noticed him going in and who was curious as to why he was there. “It was my duty to come forward,” Sammy said earnestly. Then, with further embellishment about how he had barely escaped with his life, he retold his story.