Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 46, No. 9, September 1982

The Tenth File by Jerry Jacobson

The man convicted of rape claimed he was innocent. So what else was new? Still, Siderman thought he might look into it. There might even be a Pulitzer Prize newspaper story there!

That afternoon, Siderman had been darting back and forth between the several courtrooms of Franklin County Superior Court, his attention fractured like a cat’s before ten balls of rolling yarn. Twenty-six years, man and boy, as the Herald-Graphic’s police reporter, he couldn’t recall a day filled with as much criminal variety.

Nine very serious matters had been before the courts that day. There had been five arraignments on charges of murder, two arson trials and a case of fraud and embezzlement. The latter rated as Siderman’s favorite. A former used car dealer, who was now calling himself a rock-music entrepreneur, had been chased into court by no less than a dozen amateur “basement” rock bands.

Friends and relatives of the bands had shelled out over $120,000 for satin jumpsuits, strobe lights, speakers, amplifiers and flashpots, in addition to cash for promised recording studio time, demonstration tapes, with the modern day Music Man promising big-time recording contracts and concert dates just around the corner. Of course the only thing just around the corner was the shark-skin’s car, gassed and idling and readied for a fast exit from town. The trial sessions had a definite lynch-mob feel to them and for the first time in a long time for Siderman, court reporting was fun.

Only a single important case among these was resolved that day, a cut-and-dried first-degree rape case involving a 25-year-old male and his 22-year-old female victim in an incident which had taken place in the vicinity of the airport some two months earlier. The jury’s verdict had been a quick issuance and completely expected. The prosecution’s case against the young man, in fact, had been so solid, Siderman could summon no genuine interest in the rapist’s upcoming appeals.

One other case had been placed in the hands of the jury that, evening, which meant Siderman had to keep himself available in the event of a verdict until the jury was bedded down at ten p.m. So he wandered across the avenue from the Courts Building to a favorite watering hole of bailbondsmen, lawyers and process servers to serve out his time.

He removed from his glass scarely an ounce of his first Murphy’s Irish when the bartender handed him the telephone receiver from behind the bar. The caller was Constantine Baker, the Herald-Graphic’s night city editor, who had traced Siderman to the bar via a tedious process of elimination.

“We just received a call from county jail,” the editor informed Siderman. “John Gideon just tried to hang himself in his cell. He was in a pretty bad way, raving and screaming and just a short step from being carted off to the lollipop farm. However, the jail guards did get out of him that he wanted to talk with the Herald-Graphic reporter who covered his trial. He seemed pretty adamant about not wanting to talk to anyone else. He further stated that if his request for an interview was denied, he’d find some way to end his life again and soon.”

Siderman had to spend a minute or two drumming up a referent for the name John Gideon. Gideon, Gideon. Wasn’t that the name of the rapist who had been convicted that afternoon? Siderman thought so. But John Gideon didn’t know Siderman from a sackful of ball-bearings. Throughout the trial, they hadn’t met and hadn’t spoken and Siderman’s attendance at the trial, besides, wouldn’t have gained him a gold star. Though it embarrassed him to say so, John Gideon had been to him only a back stiffened in its seat at the defense table and a nervous hand constantly running itself through a head of dark, brown hair.

“Why does Gideon want to talk with me specifically?” Siderman asked his night editor. “We’ve never met and my stories on his trial were mostly composites from police reports and reports from the Airport Authority, hand-out stuff. If Gideon is looking for someone to champion his cause, he’s searching in all the wrong nooks and crannies.”

“It’s my hunch he wants to issue you a confession,” said Constantine Baker. “Eleventh-hour confessions aren’t novel. We’ve both heard of hundreds of them. Just consider this an assignment, hear him out as far as his story will take him and then phone in what you get. The computers are down now, but I’ll have a rewrite man handy to collect what Gideon gives you. If what he gives you is just razzle-dazzle to garner him a little publicity, then just give him a cookie and bid him adieu.”

Siderman had listened to his fair share of convicted felons use and abuse the public presses on last-ditch efforts to escape punishment and he was a little too old and too wily now to fall for it. And he was tired and no longer really felt he was a member of an exalted profession, but just the pitiable device through which the successes and achievements of others passed, a flesh-and-bone conduit. And now, stuck here for the remainder of his working days in the backwashes of society where petty criminals drove him to Irish whisky and sleepless nights, another cry for justice and mercy was playing him for a patsy.

When he arrived at the seventh floor of the County-City Building, John Gideon was still in the jail’s dispensary. Siderman took a seat at one of the telephones in the visitor’s area and glanced around for a bartender.

Twenty minutes passed in excruciating sobriety and then a solitary young man was ushered from the lock-up, saw Siderman was the only visitor and headed for the seat opposite him beyond the glass. Siderman noted a bluish welt beneath his right eye where he’d likely been struck while struggling to end his life. Now, because of his unstable frame of mind, he was restrained in ankle chains and handcuffs. The brown eyes looked tired and fearful, but Siderman wasn’t being taken in altogether. He still regarded John Gideon a convicted rapist and behind bars where he properly belonged.

“Mr. Siderman?”

Siderman nodded, took out his press credentials and pressed them against the glass, then picked up the telephone.

“I guess you’re wondering why I asked to see you and not any of the other reporters who covered my trial.”

“The thought crossed my mind,” Siderman told him.

“It was because you were the only one who didn’t badger me to confess and pump me about my background and ask me about all my old girlfriends, like I was the three-headed man or the formaldehyde pig in a jar in some freak show.”

“And to show your gratitude, you want to confess to me and give the Herald-Graphic a break,” Siderman said.

“You think I want to confess?” John Gideon rubbed his forehead in disbelief. “You think that’s why I tried to kill myself? I tried to kill myself because I’m innocent. I’ve lost my job and I’ve lost my girlfriend and the press treats me like I’m Jack the Ripper in his formative years and I’ve just been convicted of first-degree rape! Can you see any possible reason why I would want to live?”

“You still have the appeals process ahead of you. You should be holding out some hope for that.”

“With some judge lurking in the wings and just dying to wield his rubber stamp on me? That’s what I have to look forward to?”

“Look, Mr. Gideon, you still haven’t explained to me why you wanted to see me,” Siderman said. “You ought to be trying to secure yourself a good lawyer, something a little more effective than a public defender.”

“The first thing a good lawyer does, Mr. Siderman, is turn you upside-down and shake you to see what kind of money falls out of your pockets. I was a management trainee with a fast-foods chain at $600-a-month. My savings account looks like a bad joke and I can’t even sell my car for cash because it’s still in police impound. A good lawyer wants me for a client like he wants an old building to fall on him.”

“Well, I don’t practice law on the side, Mr. Gideon, so I’m not Legal Plan B. Suppose you just come to the point with me and tell me why I’m here.”

At perhaps being brushed aside again, the brown eyes winced. But then the young man’s jaw set. “Mr. Siderman, all during the time I was out on bail, before my trial began, I was looking for the guy who actually did this rape. Because I knew it wasn’t me. Okay, so I failed the polygraph test. But any expert in the field will tell you a polygraph isn’t 100 per cent accurate. Just normal nervousness will make that needle jump everywhere but up on the roof.”

Siderman thought to interrupt but he didn’t. It was best to let Gideon run out his string and get it all out of his system. Catharsis would not get him out of jail, but it was good for the soul.

“Those Airport Authority police, the county police, the city cops, the county prosecutor — they pegged me as a possible, suspect and just ignored all the inconsistencies in the case to get a conviction and chalk another win up on the wall.”

Siderman nodded, still thinking essentially about Irish whisky.

“Mr. Siderman, go to my apartment in King’s Heights. Ask my roommate, Dick Rambowe, to give you my files and notes. I compiled them after my arrest and while the trial was in progress. The public defender they dished off on me wouldn’t even look at them. You read it over, Mr. Siderman, all of it and you’ll reach the same conclusion I did. The guy who did this crime is still walking around out there, laughing himself silly and rubbing his hands together and getting all heated up to do it again.”

Well, here was a fresh wrinkle on an old dodge. Not a ranting and raving confession, but just a request to look at a little paperwork. Siderman was getting off easy.

“You just want me to go over your files and notes. Nothing else.”

“Nothing else,” said Gideon. “When you’ve finished reading them, and you’re not convinced there’s reasonable doubt about my guilt, then you can just walk away from it and there’ll be no hard feelings.”

The tortured face beyond the glass was telling Siderman about a young man’s final straw. It looked like the face of the last homely girl at the dance with the music winding down and the lights coming up and no dancing partners in view. But there was something else now that was slowly persuading Siderman that this was just a little bit more than a desperate man’s final weak trick pulled from a rabbitless hat and it was precisely this: a guilty man would not be putting a reporter on a trail of evidence if he knew that trail would lead only to himself. And therefore this was not the time nor the place to simply give a man a cookie and bid him goodbye.

Siderman took out a small notebook and a ballpoint pen. “What’s the address of your apartment complex and your unit number?” he asked.

The king’s heights section was located south of the city, eight miles from the scene of the rape for which John Gideon had been convicted. His former apartment complex was a maze of ultramodern modules of dark cedar, each unit with its individual carport. Siderman guessed the rents began at $400 per month and then ran up and sharply out of sight. Gideon and his roommate likely had tossed in together much in the manner of secretaries and airline stewardesses in an effort to live cheaply and yet in reasonable opulent surroundings.

Like Gideon, Dick Rambowe was also a management trainee with the firm Siderman had learned was Polar Bear Seafoods Corporation, the franchisee for one hundred West Coast Blye’s Bounty Seafood Bars. To show his displeasure at Gideon’s firing even before his trial had begun. Rambowe had taken a thirty-day leave of absence from Polar Bear. Siderman recalled reading an interview of Rambowe by another reporter in which Rambowe had expressed unbridled rage at his company for having judged his roommate and friend guilty even before his jury had been selected and seated. Under those circumstances, Siderman now doubted Rambowe would ever return to Polar Bear Corporation.

John Gideon’s roommate answered the door to Unit 1026 dressed in an Eagles tee-shirt and tennis shorts. It was ten a.m. and he seemed not to have shaved since the conclusion of the trial the afternoon before. Beyond his shoulder Siderman could see a livingroom littered with packing boxes and the debris told a sad story about which Siderman knew he need not even ask.

“I suppose this is the post-mortem interview,” Rambowe said, his malice softened in an attempt to be a gracious host. “You know, how does it feel to lose a roomie to the state penitentiary? Did I know John was a rapist all along? Was I asked to leave by the Sandpiper’s management group before the lease was up? All of that?”

“No, none of that,” Siderman said. “In fact, just the opposite. In fact, I’m halfway convinced John Gideon is innocent.”

“Well, then, mister, you are standing in the shortest line since the opening of Gates of Heaven. The public wasn’t interested in John’s trial, his public defender damn sure wasn’t and you press guys weren’t exactly falling all over each other to get inside that courtroom.”

“I admit to not being as strong an advocate of the accused as I should have been,” Siderman said, and let his apology go at that.

Without having been asked about it, Rambowe now swept his hand around the room to explain the mess. “I’m picking up John’s things and taking them over to his folks’ place. Mine are next. With John’s appeal bond set at $100,000, it isn’t likely he’ll be out pounding the pavement and looking for work. And my quitting at Polar Bear, well, I can afford to stay at the Sandpiper now like I can afford to buy the state of Texas and give half of it away.”

Siderman was only now beginning to understand the collective destruction a criminal conviction could bring.

“I saw John at the county jail last night,” Siderman told Rambowe. “He’d taken some notes on what he thought were discrepancies in the case, the investigation and the trial, and asked me to take a look at them.”

Rambowe nodded. He walked across the livingroom to a board-and-brick bookcase and took down a blue binder notebook.

“John called me this morning to let me know you might stop by for it. I mean, can you beat that Daffy Duck public defender the court dumped out on John? He didn’t call John’s parents to testify, even though John said he made a long-distance phone call from their home on the night of the rape. At seven p.m. exactly. I mean, the phone company has a record of that call. And the victim testified she was picked up by the rapist at 6:30, only on her police statement she said it was 6:45. She moved the time a full fifteen minutes. Either way, John can’t be in two places at the same time.”

Siderman nodded absently as he scanned the notes. They appeared to be detailed and meticulously drawn.

“John left his parents’ home at 7:30 and got back here to the apartment around ten-to-eight,” Rambowe was continuing, his indignation rising with each word spoken. “Now that’s a twenty-minute drive and it always will be! But the police didn’t even bother to interview either me or John’s folks on it, even though John named all of us as defense witnesses. Hell, you’d almost think the public defender’s nephew is a rapist and everybody’s running around covering up for him.”

“The court often views relatives and friends of a defendant to be prejudiced witnesses,” Siderman told Rambowe. “The public defender may have thought it would be a waste of time to call them.”

“But John’s folks wouldn’t lie! They’re decent people!”

“Well, the public defender may have thought they wouldn’t lie generally, but just might lie to keep their son out of prison. It’s the P.D.’s job to determine when to take risks and when to decline to show his cards.”

Rambowe heaved a sigh and returned to his packing. “Well, it was probably all over for John the minute he agreed to take the polygraph.”

“Was he told that if he passed the test, the charge against him would be dropped?”

Rambowe nodded. “Only he didn’t pass it. Hell, nobody is going to pass a lie detector test when his nerves are shot from being charges with rape out of the clear blue sky and then hustled all around a police department with handcuffs on your wrists and ink on your fingertips.”

“Wish I’d have been there to advise him,” Siderman told Rambowe. “Since a polygraph can’t be admitted as evidence in a trial it has no validity. And if it has no validity, then the test can’t be used as a basis for arrest. No prosecutor can refute logic like that no polygraph tester, either, all of which makes the test a waste of time and taxpayers’ money.”

“I’ll tell you, Mr. Siderman, I know John better than I know anyone and I’d bet my precious hide he’s in jail for another man’s crime. You can bet the cops found a car similar to the one the victim described and when something begins to look too good to be true, the cops will run with it every time rather than break a sweat looking for somebody else.”

“Well, now I’m looking for somebody else, Mr. Rambowe,” Siderman told the young man. “And my attention isn’t all that easily distracted.”

On the way back to his own apartment, Siderman was convinced of two things: first, he was certain John Gideon would not be sending him on the trail of additional evidence if Gideon knew that evidence would only tighten the noose around his own neck; and second, Siderman was certain he would make more headway if he proceeded on the premise that the actual rapist was still at-large.

Siderman spent the remainder of the morning and early afternoon familiarizing himself with John Gideon’s notes. His key piece of unintroduced evidence was the time-factor surrounding the rape. Siderman was in immediate and total agreement with it. Gideon could not possibly have left his parents’ home, picked up the victim in his car, driven her to the dead-end road on abandoned airport property, raped her, and then returned to his own apartment at the time Dick Rambowe said he did, given that Rambowe was telling the truth and Siderman thought he was. Prejudicial testimony, all of it, but Ed Wintermute, Gideon’s public defender, hadn’t even risked introducing it as evidence so that the testimony might find its way into the record. And that wasn’t at all like Wintermute’s usually aggressive style in a court of law. Siderman knew him to be generally a hard-charger. It was a change of character Siderman found difficult to explain.

It was later that same afternoon when Siderman tracked down Ed Wintermute in the heavy traffic of the Public Defender’s Office. The young P.D. snatched a look at his watch and told Siderman he could spare him enough time for a fast cup of coffee in the basement cafeteria of the Courts Building, but no more.

“But this better not be a trip around the bush, Siderman. I’ve got eight clients going to trial tomorrow and four of them are still in county lock-up without a leg to stand on.”

In the drab cafeteria, Wintermute began to wolf down an apple turnover with his coffee.

“I wanted to talk to you about the John Gideon rape case,” Siderman said the instant they were seated.

“That’s no longer a case,” Wintermute told him. “It’s down on the books as a first-degree conviction.”

“I admit I didn’t follow the trial as closely as I should have,” Siderman went on hastily, “but after talking with Gideon, I’m convinced he’s sitting in lock-up for a crime he didn’t commit.”

The public defender smiled commiserately. “Siderman, the wrong-man syndrome in jails is more prevalent than accidental falls in a BB-shot factory and you know it.”

“And so are citizens convicted on circumstantial evidence. The victim, for instance, stated she was raped in an ‘81 compact. Gideon drove an ‘81 Chevette, a company car. But hell, Wintermute, sixty percent of the cars on the road are compacts. And the police didn’t even line up several compacts for the victim to look at, only the one driven by John Gideon.”

“The police had a suspect and they had the suspect’s car in the Impound Garage, Siderman. It’s a normal thing to take the victim to the suspect’s vehicle to see if he or she can identify it. They can’t run all over town collecting compact cars so the victim can make a choice.”

“Also,” Siderman went on quickly, “the victim described the seat covers in the rapist’s car as being of a material similar to velvet. Only John Gideon’s car had vinyl seats.”

“Which is similar to velvet, Siderman. The operative word here is similar. I don’t see anything of conflict in that evidence.”

“Okay, what about the victim testifying that the rapist wore a tan suit with matching vest? John Gideon swore under oath he didn’t even own a tan suit. And his parents testified he left their house that night wearing dark blue slacks and a white pullover sweater.”

Wintermute was shaking his head. “No cigar, Siderman. Any testimony given by the parents is considered prejudiced, you know that. And what John Gideon says he owns and doesn’t own is purely his word against anyone else’s.”

“A police search of his apartment didn’t turn a tan suit or a matching vest.”

“And a rapist, if he’s a smart rapist, will usually get rid of any evidence which might point to this guilt. And that includes the clothing he wore on the night of the rape. I defended John Gideon the best I could, Siderman, and that defense was more than he deserved. Now, if you have any more salient points to make, trot them out, because I am due back upstairs ten minutes ago.”

“Okay, okay. Just one more point. About the photo montage the victim was given to identify the rapist.”

“I don’t recall seeing a police photo montage in the Gideon case,” Wintermute said.

“Although the victim hadn’t yet seen Gideon, of the six sets of photos showing males in full-face and profile, only Gideon’s set wasn’t split by a vertical black line and were, in fact, smaller than the five other sets.” Siderman brought out a copy of the montage and slid it across the table. “It is suggestive and misleading, Wintermute, and you know it.”

“All right,” said the public defender, after analyzing the photos briefly, “I’ll admit this montage is a pretty sloppy piece of work. But it’s none of my affair how Vince DiBiasi puts together a montage. But all the men have short beards, like John Gideon. And they all are roughly the same age. Siderman, we’re not dealing with high art here, just a hurry-up photo montage. I suggest you talk to Lt. DiBiasi about it if you think the montage was unfairly rendered.” Wintermute glanced at his watch and finished off the last of his coffee. “Anything else, Siderman?”

Siderman had other doubts, but a man in a rush wasn’t going to be an attentive audience. “No, that’s all for now.”

“For now? Siderman, this case is a closed matter with me. Ended, shut, finis. John Gideon is a convicted rapist, and there’s nothing more I can do for him. Now upstairs, there is a county lock-up crammed with more prisoners than girls at the U.S.O. dance when the fleet’s in town. And it is my job to get them all to trial before the floors collapse from their collective weight and the ones that aren’t crushed in the fall are wandering the city at-large because of over-crowding and the inherent structural weakness of concrete. Don’t call us, Siderman, we’ll call you.”

Siderman finished his coffee alone and then left the basement of the Courts Building by a side exit and crossed the busy boulevard to the Public Safety Building. He took an elevator up to the police divisions on the seventh floor. One of the two detectives at work in the Assault/Rape Division was Vincent DiBiasi, a swarthy Greek of fifty with an olive complexion and unruly black eyebrows. They knew each other only slightly and so Siderman introduced himself and showed the detective his press credentials.

“Yes, Siderman,” said the detective, pushing back from his paperwork, “what can I do for you?”

“I’m looking into the John Gideon rape case,” Siderman told DiBiasi.

A faint smile appeared on the detective’s face. “Well, I don’t think you’ll find much news in that, Siderman. Gideon’s already been convicted.”

“You were the investigating officer, is that right?”

“That I was. The rape happened on Airport Authority property, but neither they nor the county people are equipped to do effective investigations in cases of rape, so we usually step in. Also, the victim in this case was a resident of the city.”

“I was just across the street talking with Ed Wintermute, who was Gideon’s attorney,” Siderman told the detective. “He brought up the mattter of this photo montage you put together to show the victim. He said you showed him that montage at one point during the investigation.”

“The montage? Yes, I seem to recall showing it to Wintermute. What about it?”

“Well, lieutenant, you’ll excuse me for saying so, but that montage wasn’t precisely cricket where John Gideon was concerned.”

“How do you mean?”

“How I mean is, Gideon’s photos were noticeably smaller than those of the other five suspects. And Gideon’s show no vertical black line separating the two pictures.”

Siderman saw the detective’s dark eyes narrow, as though he was measuring Siderman now not as merely a pesterous journalist, but as an adversary come out of the woodwork.

Evenly, he said to Siderman, “I don’t recall anything out of line with that particular montage. With a rape victim, everything has to be a little hurry-up. The memory of the events surrounding the assault tend to vanish pretty rapidly. The victim’s subconscious mind goes to work almost immediately to lock the events away as being too horrid for the conscious mind to recall.”

“I see. Do you remember off-hand who picked the other five subjects in the montage?”

“I did”

“And who exactly did you pick?”

DiBiasi’s eyes again narrowed. “I don’t think I understand what you’re driving at, Siderman.”

“I mean, were they suspects in other rapes, or males with records of arrest for rape? Or were they just randomly picked? You know, a cat burglar here, a shoplifter there. Or were they cops?”

“Just random. No cops. Just five guys with previous arrest records, all with short, dark brown beards and about the same age and height as the suspect. As I say, we were dealing with a time element here.”

“But John Gideon wasn’t arrested as a suspect until five weeks after the crime was committed,” Siderman said.

“Five hours, five days, five weeks, what does it matter? We arrested the suspect, slapped together a photo montage and then showed it to the victim. We followed all the recognized procedures. The chief gave us high marks for that investigation.”

Siderman nodded, thinking DiBiasi may have got high marks for his investigation, but not very high marks for telling the truth. Ed Wintermute had told Siderman he’d never seen the photo montage. So why was DiBiasi all too eager to agree Wintermute had seen it when Siderman indicated that was the case? Something had the aroma of a barrel of fish here. What was being exhibited here was far too much contact between an investigating detective and a member of the public defender’s staff, more than was normal.

DiBiasi seemed fidgety to get back to work. “Look, if that’s all, Siderman, I got a mountain of reports to get out here and my private secretary had the gall to go off shopping with Princess Grace in Monaco.”

“Don’t get up,” Siderman told him, “I’ll let myself out.”

Siderman might have left the building then were it not for the fact that his hunches were coming in bunches like bananas. He walked briskly to a public phone near the bank of elevators and punched off the digits for the Assault/Rape Division. The answering voice was that of the other detective Siderman had seen in the office.

“Assault/Rape, Lt. Colquitt.”

“Is Lt. DiBiasi there?”

“Yes, but he’s on the phone, sir. Is there something I can help you with?”

“No,” Siderman told the detective, “I’ll call him back later.”

That was curious. Here was a detective, presumably up to his badge in paperwork and yet he had time to make a phone call. But then again it could have been a call he’d taken and not made.

Quickly Siderman broke the connection, slipped in another dime and nickel and dialed the Office of the Public Defender.

“Office of the Public Defender,” answered a female’s voice.

“Ed Wintermute, please.”

“Mr. Wintermute is on the telephone, sir. Would you like to hold?”

“No, I’ll catch him another time.”

Elements in a puzzle were now beginning to show themselves in a teasing, elusive way, but Siderman’s aging brain wasn’t up to putting them together. This was piecework better left to men with younger, more facile minds, not to a battle-weary police reporter whose best days could be read in the alcoholic rings in a bartop.

But one thing was clear to him. Both Vincent DiBiasi and Ed Wintermute might have been conferring on a matter that was largely moot. Then, one or the other stood to gain or lose something by John Gideon’s conviction or vindication. No. Not one or the other. Both. If only one of them was directly or indirectly involved, the other would simply turn him a cold shoulder and a deaf ear. In any event, a lot of people were suddenly showing more than casual interest in Siderman’s inquiries.

It was after ten p.m. when Siderman returned home to his sidehill duplex on Dulanney Street, where it seemed he had always lived, just two buildings down from Fraley’s Fine Foods, a dilapidated mom-and-pop’s where it seemed he had always shopped, and across the street from the King Klean Coin-Op Laundramat where it seemed he had eternally done his dirty clothes. As well, he expected to die on this street, found propped up in bed one morning with a two-day-old copy of the New York Times collapsed on his chest like a faulty tent, filled with Pulitzer-caliber stories by which he had not gotten around to be inspired.

He had a lone Spencer steak in his refrigerator, a survivor piece of meat that was on the verge of turning from light brown to blue. It didn’t look as though it would kill him and so he plopped it into a frying pan on his speed-heat burner turned up to full blast. He covered it with a lid to cut down the spatter and set a pan of water to boil for some vermicelli noodles. Protein and starch. Likely, they would do him in long before the actuary tables.

He tossed the noodles into the boiling water and then poured out some scotch, ran a bit of tap water onto it and dropped in an ice cube. All these things he did randomly, as though his fatigued brain were set on automatic pilot. What his brain had been thinking all these last few hours was a single thought: that John Gideon had been carefully set up for a crime of rape — and that someone had planned for him to be the fall-guy all along.

Upon reflection, Siderman felt it was all the culinary wizardry that saved his life. He had just stepped back into the livingroom when the shots rang out, so many shots that he was able to put a number to them only after he’d dug the bullets from the wall and collected the one imbedded in the painting and the last from the floor. His drink flew up into the air as he made a graceless dive to the carpet. He watched the Venetian blinds at the front of the room dance like puppets as the bullets ricocheted off them. One bullet slammed into a painting of a collie dog protecting a lamb in the snowstorm, showering Siderman’s backside with broken glass. He listened for the laboring whine of an automobile engine as it revved to continue on up Dulanney. When there was no such roar, he knew the car had travelled down the hill, which meant its driver likely had fired through an open window on the passenger side from behind the wheel.

Siderman let five minutes pass before he got to his feet. Smoke was wafting from the kitchen and water was hissing as it boiled from a pot and fell onto a hot burner. Siderman removed both pans and turned off the burners. He was drenched in scotch whisky and the lobe of his left ear was bleeding from a glass cut and his right palm was seered. But he was still alive.

No cars were on the street and the laundramat was empty. Elvira Loudermilk, Siderman’s neighbor in the other half of the duplex, was away visiting a daughter in Palm Springs. It was so quiet out, a fleeting moment passed when Siderman thought the attack hadn’t happened at all.

But, of course, it had. He found and extracted nine bullets from the wall. He picked up a tenth from the floor and pried an eleventh from the painting. An automatic pistol, with the casings ejected. And something of the attack told Siderman his assailant didn’t want him dead, only scared. He had just been issued a stern warning to cease and desist.

For the time being, Siderman placed it all at the back of his mind, ate his charred steak and the vermicelli noodles, bandaged his hand and went to bed. He did not sleep soundly, but he slept, the series of naps merely a device to mark time until dawn.

In the morning he called a glass company and while he waited for them to arrive, placed a call to the parents of John Gideon. The boy’s father had already left for work, but his mother was home and told Siderman she was eager to cooperate with him if it meant her son stood a chance of exoneration.

Siderman had only a single question to ask.

“Mrs. Gideon, the evening John paid you a visit was a Thursday, the night of the incident for which he was later arrested.”

“Yes, Mr. Siderman, a Thursday.”

“Did John ever visit you on any other Thursdays?”

“Oh, every Thursday, Mr. Siderman. Ever since he moved in with Dick Rambowe and they started their management training together. Sometimes he brought laundry home — his shirts, you know. Sometimes he brought a girl and they would stay for dinner. Mr. Siderman, do you have something in mind by asking the question?”

“Only that someone may have known or learned about your son’s habit of visiting you, though for what reason and to what purpose still isn’t clear tome.”

An anxious pause fell across the line. Then, Mrs. Gideon said, “If John has to go to prison, it might spell the end for him. All those awful people, the murderers and robbers and all the others. And confinement, that would even be worse. John has always been a mild claustrophobic. He’s never been able to sleep without the bedroom door open and he refuses to ride in elevators. He’ll be an absolute bundle of neuroses when he gets out.”

“Well, let’s hope we’ll have him out of county jail before he’s even transferred.”

“But you can’t promise anything, can you, Mr. Siderman?”

“No,” he told her. “I can’t.”

The glass fitters arrived at ten a.m. and were gone by ten-thirty. While they were working, Siderman placed a toll call to the Driver’s License Division of the Department of Licensing. He was owed a favor and now seemed like a good time to collect on it. He needed some driver’s license information, he said, on men with two distinctly unusual last names whose birthdates were after 1950. Siderman waited on the line ten minutes while a computer was fed. It delivered data on only one name. The name did not come as a surprise to Siderman. And neither did the information.

By eleven o’clock he was downtown and on a hunch entered the basement garage of the Public Safety Building unseen. From its license plate he found the car he wanted and did what he knew he had to do. Vincent DiBiasi had been careless.

Upstairs in the Assault/Rape Division, DiBiasi couldn’t entirely hide his irritation at Siderman’s continuing bird-dogging.

“Siderman, for a guy who’s been getting most of his stories from the booking sheets the last twenty years, your sudden interest in the inner workings of the division is perplexing.”

“I need a minor favor,” Siderman said. “In lieu of getting an order from the court.”

“Is that a threat, Siderman?”

“Let’s just say you’re dealing with a man with options.”

The detective spent a moment staring the reporter down, perhaps thinking he stood to gain or lose a great deal by his decision.

“Ask your favor, Siderman.”

“I’d like to take a look at some rape investigations. Just the preliminary reports. The who, what, when, where and why.”

“Just the Offense Reports,” the detective said, with a faint lift of his bushy eyebrows. “Well, since it will take a man eight hours to separate the preliminaries from the rest of the collected data, we’ll just pull the files and sit you down at a desk. How far back into the archives do you wish us to go?”

“Eight months should be far enough,” Siderman answered. “About how many reported rapes or attempted rapes would that include?”

“Roughly two hundred, Siderman. We’re a very amorous city. Take that desk back in the corner there and I’ll have the files pulled.”

That DiBiasi was not showing more anxiety disappointed Siderman, but police detectives were good at hiding their emotions. Then, too, most cases of rape usually dead-ended themselves very quickly for lack of suspects, witnesses and hard evidence. But it was a weak trump card Vince DiBiasi was holding.

A detective brought in the files and placed them on the desk in front of Siderman in two one-foot stacks.

“They go back to August of last year,” the detective told him. “The assaults are mixed in with the rapes, so check the Crime Classification Section of the Offense Report if you’re shooting for one or the other.”

Siderman nodded. Then he removed his suitcoat, loosened his necktie, pulled down the topmost file from the left stack of manila folders and set to work.

To save time and eye-sight, he concentrated only upon rape cases, the physical description of the suspects in each case and the description of the vehicle where one was involved. He also paid attention to the location of each rape scene, keeping alert for locations which would seem to bear some relationship to the scene of the rape for which John Gideon had been convicted. As he read, he was struck surprised by the large number of rapes and assaults involving wives and their husbands and female employees and their male employers. He had always felt rape was an act done by one stranger to another, yet fully two-thirds of the offense forms named as principals those who were work associates, relatives or close friends. The day you didn’t learn something new was the day you didn’t get up.

Siderman missed lunch. His emersion in the Offense Reports was so total, he did not push back from his work until the last folder of the left-hand stack was closed and pushed aside. The symmetry of having one pile completed and one remaining caused him to stop, stretch and look around the room. A detective sat at one desk interviewing a young female who looked on the verge of crying. At another desk, another detective was issuing what appeared to be a stern lecture to a man and woman, who intermittently threw each other looks of menace. Vince DiBiasi was not at his desk, but his sports jacket was still draped across the back of his chair.

Siderman walked out into a hallway and found a row of vending machines. He bought two packages of peanut butter cups, an apple and a half-pint of milk. He wolfed it all down at his desk and then broke the ice of the single remaining stack of files. It was a little after three p.m. He had been at it over four hours.

He found his rhythm again, but still the case files refused to associate themselves with John Gideon.

Until the tenth file of the right-hand stack.

The case of rape was easily five months old. It had taken place south of the city, on Southwest 189th Street, on a street of abandoned houses on Airport Authority property. The rape for which John Gideon had been arrested, tried and convicted had occurred on Southwest 186th Street, a scant three blocks north of the incident Siderman now stared at on a sheet of paper, case number A/R 877-80, the 877th reported incident of assault or rape of the previous calendar year.

Siderman’s heart-rate began to increase as he ran his eye down the left-hand margin for the report’s section listings. His eyes halted at the section titled SUSPECTS, its sub-sections titled S-1, S-2, and S-3, each box reserved for the description of a numbered suspect up to a total of three.

Only one sub-section, the one titled S-1, was filled in, for a lone suspect in a single incident of rape. He was described by the victim as a white male, aged 25–30, whose height was 5-10 and approximate weight was 170 pounds. He had dark brown or black hair and a short, dark beard. His eyes were brown and his complexion was described as fair.

The sub-section also included a box titled CLOTHING. In it was written. “Tan suit with matching vest.”

That he would find listed in the VEHICLE Section an ‘81 compact car was merely an academic exercise. There it was, a 1981 Chevette. With velvet bucket seats. And then something that was not mentioned in the Offense Report which eventually implicated John Gideon: a small air-freshener in the shape of a fir tree dangling from the car’s rearview mirror above the dashboard. Siderman had already seen Gideon’s car in the Impound Garage. No such air-freshener was hanging from its rear-view mirror.

Siderman closed the file as riddles began to surface in his mind. If John Gideon was purposely being railroaded into prison, then this case folder marked A/R 877-80 most certainly would have come up in the light of day to exonerate Gideon. But the file’s surfacing wasn’t allowed to happen. Why, then, hadn’t the file been removed altogether? Why leave it available for someone like Siderman to stumble upon? Was there a connection between Ed Wintermute, Vince DiBiasi and a young man now convicted of the crime of rape? And if so, what could that connection possibly be?

Vince DiBiasi Was back at his desk. Their eyes caught and hooked. Siderman smiled at him and the detective smiled back and then dropped his head back to his paperwork.

Still, the presence of the file haunted Siderman. If there was a conspiracy, then the file shouldn’t be there! But it was there! So how had someone come to make such an incredible blunder?

And then Siderman had it. Of course the file had not been discovered. Because no one had been looking for it! Because no one even knew it was there!

When their eyes met again, Siderman motioned the detective to come over. DiBiasi Nodded, pushed back from his desk and rose. He came slowly down the room and sat in the chair set along side the desk, the interrogation chair. The detective didn’t seem all that comfortable in it, either.

“Find something, Siderman?”

“Yes,” said Siderman in an empty tone. “But first, let me tell you a story.”

The detective lit a small, thin cigar. “A story? I love stories, Siderman. And reporters are such good storytellers, so this should be good. Let’s hear it.”

“Once upon a time,” Siderman began, without malice or theatrics, “let us say roughly six weeks ago, a city detective was assigned to a case of rape. He investigates the crime scene and subsequently fills out an Offense Report according to the statements of the victim.

“For several weeks there appears to be no movement on the case and no suspects. Indeed, the case does not appear to be worked at all. Then quite suddenly, a suspect turns up, a young male who appears to fit all the criteria for arrest. He is arrested forthwith. Procedure is followed to the letter. The evidence gathered against him, while extremely circumstantial, nevertheless carries enough weight to prosecute. The suspect’s prosecution is successful, with the sentencing phase remaining and the investigation goes down in the books as a solved case. The investigating detective is commended for his work by his chief and the prosecutor is likewise commended by his superior. All in all, it is a seemingly well-handled matter at every level, from beginning to end.”

DiBiasi was shifting in his seat uneasily. His eyes were averting the reporter’s.

Siderman saw that no genuine purpose would be served now by prolonging the fall of the blade.

“Lieutenant DiBiasi,” Siderman said evenly and with compassion, “You have a son, don’t you? Be warned that I’ve done some checking on driver’s license data. You have a son and Ed Wintermute has a single daughter, Patricia Maria, and no other children.”

“Yes. I have a son.”

“His name is Victor, isn’t it.”

“Yes.” The detective’s eyes were wandering now, in a desperate attempt not to make contact with Siderman’s. “His name is Victor.”

“You’ll forgive me, lieutenant, but I’ve done some checking. The car he owns is a 1981 Chevette, isn’t it?”

“Well, I don’t keep track of Vic all that much. He doesn’t live at home. And kids are always buying cars, or trading them in.”

“The physical description on his driver’s license matches the description given by the rapist’s victim,” Siderman said.

“It does? Well, that’s a very general description. It probably fits hundreds of young men in Vic’s age-group.”

“Lieutenant, your son owns a 1981 Chevette, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” came the begrudging voice.

“With a temporary license sticker? New cars bought in the same month usually bear similar serial numbers — 661-6777, 661–767, 661–676. The victim was shown John Gideon’s license plate number in court, a rear-window sticker number and she testified it was very similar to the rapist’s temporary sticker number. Similar, Lt. DiBiasi.”

The detective seemed immobilized. The ash of his cigar was over an inch long.

“Lieutenant, does your son own a tan suit with a matching vest?”

“A tan suit? Kids’ clothes these days. Who knows? I mean, the fads are always changing. One week it’s cowboy gear and the next it’s preppie, or leather, or beach-bum sloppy.”

Siderman waited patiently for the detective’s rambling discourse to fade.

Then...

“Yes. He has a tan suit. And a matching vest.”

“And his height is around 5-10? Weight about 170 pounds? And he has dark brown hair and a closely cropped beard?”

The detective nodded, his head bowed in shame.

“You found John Gideon, didn’t you?” Siderman said. “Somehow, some way — through luck or sheer happenstance — your paths crossed after the rape. You may even have discovered he went to visit his parents every Thursday night. But in any event, there he was, the almost perfect stand-in for your son, whose guilt you had been suppressing for weeks when the movement in the case was at a dead-stop. It was likely an incredibility you could scarcely believe. A young man who was roughly the same age, height and weight as your son. With the same dark brown beard. And wonder of wonders, he owned an automobile that was the same make, style and year as the one owned by your son, Victor.”

Vince DiBiasi had the look of a drained man. His face was the color of pastry dough and his eyes mirrored a mind that was fatigued and beaten.

“From that point on,” Siderman continued, “it was nothing more than a matter of leading the victim towards the end you wanted served: the arrest of John Gideon and thereby the absolution you wished for your son. Time was on your side of the fence. The rape was far into history and the victim’s memory no longer crystal clear. And you had a suspect who could virtually pass for your son. And you doctored the photo montage, just to make doubly certain John Gideon’s photo was the one the victim picked out.”

“I love my son,” the detective said weakly now. “I don’t love what he did. But I love my son.”

Siderman didn’t much like the notion of dropping bombshells upon already beleaguered cities; but a mission was a mission and there were objectives to be reached.

“Lieutenant, were you aware your son came close to being a suspect in a previous rape?”

The detective twitched with a sudden shock. For a moment the eyes came alive, but they were confused, as though they were searching in a confused way for something they had lost but could not find.

“Of course, you weren’t aware of that. The rape happened in October of last year. And you weren’t with this division then, were you?”

DiBiasi was still in a state of confusion. To bring him up out of it, Siderman opened the file folder and centered it on the desk beneath his eyes.

“How do I know you weren’t with this division last October? Because the Offense Report on that rape was still in your files, the one you’re reading now. It puzzled me why the report should still be there, until it dawned on me that possibly you didn’t know it was there. Because it involved an investigation which took place before you arrived. You might have turned it up if you’d checked the prior arrest files, or these active Offense Reports. But you didn’t. Because you already had your suspect. John Gideon. And since his arrest and conviction were being orchestrated, the last thing you wanted was another qualified suspect.”

It had been a major blunder and DiBiasi’s face showed it as he read the Offense Report he never found. Shame and relief began to fill his face.

“Lieutenant DiBiasi,” said Siderman now, moving to fill in the final puzzle piece, “what is your wife’s maiden name?”

“You put two-and-two together there, too, didn’t you, Siderman?”

“Yes, I’m afraid I did. It’s Wintermute, isn’t it?”

DiBiasi nodded slowly once again.

“Your wife is Ed Wintermute’s sister. Which makes your son his nephew. It’s no wonder Ed Wintermute gave John Gideon less than a stalwart defense. The continued freedom of his nephew and your son depended upon it.”

DiBiasi stubbed out his cigar in an ash tray. He wiped the build of perspiration from his face and then coughed once to regain his composure.

“All right, Siderman. So what’s next?”

“You’ll make me a copy of the Offense Report,” Siderman told him. “Just in case it actually does become misplaced or lost. Then, you’ll take it to the chief criminal prosecutor, or one of his deputies. It will be their decision whether to appeal Judge McCombe’s ruling of a fair trial, dismiss the charge against John Gideon, or to take Gideon to trial a second time.”

“My son will have to be arrested, of course,” said the detective, his quiet tone indicating he was resigned to that course now.

“You’ll do what you have to do. And I’ll do what I have to do. We both know John Gideon is innocent. And sooner or later, the public deserves to know it, too.”

DiBiasi nodded and rose. “I’ll get you a copy of this,” he told Siderman. “Shouldn’t take but a few minutes.”

In the detective’s absence, Siderman reflected upon all these developments for a purely selfish, professional standpoint. Had he leapt into the John Gideon arrest from the very outset, he might now have placed himself into the running for a Pulitzer. But he hadn’t and so he wouldn’t be losing much sleep over being visited by the Pulitzer nominating committee. But then again, John Gideon would not be headed for prison, either. And that was a trade-off he could live with very easily.

It was not long before Vince DiBiasi returned with Siderman’s copy of the Offense Report. Siderman folded it and slipped it into a pocket and as he did, his fingertips brushed the final puzzle piece.

He brought out the shell casing and handed it to the detective. “I think this belongs to you. I got the license number of your private car from the Department of Motor Vehicles. You drove down Dulanney Street last night, which meant you had to fire across the passenger seat through an open window.”

“I didn’t get all the casings,” said DiBiasi, needlessly.

“It was wedged between the seats.”

DiBiasi jiggled the shell casing in his palm. “You plan to make anything out of this?”

“I don’t think so,” Siderman told him. “You’ll have to arrest your own son, explain why this Offense Report wasn’t located and perhaps even face charges of an improper investigation. That strikes me as enough trouble for any single human being to face. But I am going to bill you for a pane of glass, plus labor.”

“Where will you be when the deputy prosecutor reaches a decision?” DiBiasi asked the reporter.

“Where am I always?” Siderman told him. “In the reporters’ room downstairs. I’ll wait until ten p.m., then I’ll have to go with what I know and what I suspect. Is that fair?”

“Fair,” the detective told him. “I suppose you’ll want to be the one to tell John Gideon. And his parents.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Siderman said. “I’ve blown a Pulitzer through neglect and deadened instincts and just plain laziness. So this appears to be the next best satisfaction.”

Neither man could argue that.