True Crime

5

The Pussy Man was standing on the corner of Pine. A dark figure shambling through the downtown corridors of red brick and white concrete and imageless glass. A middle-aged black in a filthy gray overcoat-even in this weather, the overcoat, stained and worn. He reeked of wine and urine. His stubbly face was hangdog and his eyes were yellow and streaked with red. But he was alert in a feral way: his head, his glance, darted here and there. And he kept up a steady stream of patter to the last of the lunch-hour pedestrians.

When men walked by, he demanded their money. “Gimme some of your money,” he said. “You got money. You got money on toast. I don’t got no money, gimme some of your money, you got money on toast, man, I see you with your money …” on and on like that. And when women passed-when they hurried by him with their lips pressed together in anger and disgust-he demanded sex the same way. “Gimme some of that pussy, baby, I want some of that pussy you got, you got pussy on toast, baby, what’re you saving that pussy for, I need some pussy on toast, baby, gimme some of your pussy on toast.”

I had parked my car in a garage nearby and was hurrying toward the Bread Factory. The Pussy Man spotted me as I approached the corner. His mouth widened in a predatory grin, showing his gray teeth.

“Steve!” he said. “Steve! Is that you, newspaper man? Is that the newspaper man? Now, I know you got my money, Steve. I know you got money on toast. Gimme some of that money.”

I came within range of his stench as he moved closer, his head bent down, his hand extended. My son’s miserable cries were still in my head, and an all-too-familiar sickness with myself swirled inside me like green gas. I was in no mood for the Pussy Man. For the smell of piss on him and the cloud of vomit and alcohol on his breath. For the looks on the women’s faces as they went by, not only the winces of disgust and anger, but the fear I saw as their footsteps quickened. I hated the bum. He made my gorge rise.

“Gimme some of that money, Ste …” he said, but then a working girl in a polka-dot dress tried to sneak past his blind side. She clutched her purse close, hewing to the restaurant window. But the Pussy Man spotted her. “Hey, sister,” he said-he called her sister because she was black too. “Hey, sister, I know you got some sweet pussy, you got some sweet pussy on toast, gimme some of that pussy.”

“Here,” I said. “Shut the fuck up.”

He swiveled back to me and his sister angled by with her mouth puckered almost to nothing. I had my wallet out and was flicking through the bills. I always gave the bastard a five when I saw him. Because it got him off the street. The minute he had five he went for a bottle and was gone for hours, guzzling and puking behind some alley Dumpster somewhere.

“There’s that money,” he said, hanging over my wallet like a jumpy vulture. “Gimme five, gimme ten, gimme twenty, twenty dollars, Steve, twenty dollars on toast.”

I plucked out a fiver and stuck it out at him, turning my face to avoid his breath. “Don’t spend it on food, asshole,” I said.

His pocked hand made a fist, and the bill was gone. “Five dollars?” he said. “That’s all you gonna give me? Five lousy dollars? You could give me twenty. You could give me a hundred dollars you got so much money. You got money on toast, Steve.”

But he was already edging away, talking back at me over his shoulder. Folding the bill into halves and then quarters and slipping it into his overcoat pocket clutched in his fist. In another moment, he was walking down the sidewalk with his head hung down in silent concentration, ignoring the passersby, ignoring everything but the golden dream of the liquor store at journey’s end. I hoped he got drunk enough to stagger out in front of a truck.

Grimacing, I took the last few steps to the Bread Factory.

It was a colorful fast food spot on the corner, wrapped in glass. I shouldered the door in and the smell of sourdough came to me, washing away the reek of the Pussy Man. The lunch crowd had thinned, but the people behind the counter were still doling out round loaves of bread and broad plates of salad. Customers still sat munching here and there among the wood-rimmed linoleum tables. I scanned the room and spotted Porterhouse in a corner. Sitting alone at a table for two with an empty cup in front of him. He saw me and lifted a diffident salute.

He looked like his voice. A lot of people don’t-you learn that as a reporter, on the phone all the time. But he was a dead ringer for his own hesitant tremolo. In his early forties. Small and bald, with a head as round as a nickel, with a thin moustache hiding a weak, pale mouth and eyes like prey, flitting and frightened, behind the large square frames of his glasses. I didn’t like him on the spot. But at that moment, in that mood, I might not have liked anyone.

I raised a finger to him across the room, asking him to wait. I was hungry on top of everything else and, as the last customer carried his tray from the counter, I stepped up and ordered a loaf of sourdough and some coffee.

I brought them to the corner table. Set them down and offered the little man my hand. He shook it. His palm was clammy. I sat down across from him.

“Sorry to eat while we talk,” I said, waving vaguely at the bread loaf. “I missed lunch.”

It was a lie though. I wasn’t sorry. I didn’t care. What was it to him if I ate while we talked? Little mousy dickhead dragging me away from my kid at the zoo. Sure, it was my fault, but blaming him made me feel better and he didn’t look big enough to stop me. I picked up the sourdough and ripped into it, chomping loudly, swigging some coffee to wash it down.

Porterhouse tried not to watch me. His fingers fidgeted round his cup. His glance went here and there.

“I guess being a reporter is a very busy life,” he said after a moment.

I swallowed hard. Gave him an accusing glare. “Yeah, and this is my day off,” I said.

He looked as if he might apologize. He licked his lips. The bottom rim of his paper cup rattled against the linoleum. Then maybe it occurred to him he ought to assert himself. He looked like the sort of fellow to whom that might occur from time to time.

“So I … I have a pretty busy schedule myself, Mr. Everett,” he said almost firmly. “How can I help you?”

I gave him another dark stare across my coffee. But I could hear my kid going on in my head again. We were going to the zoo! I could hear his mournful wail. Self-disgust wrestled with anger in my breast and it was self-disgust in three straight falls. I dropped back against the canework of my flimsy tube chair. I sighed. The poor bastard, I thought as I watched Porterhouse, as I watched his Adam’s apple working in his throat.

“Right,” I said finally, setting the paper cup down in front of me. I pushed my wire-rims back on my nose. Interlaced my fingers on the linoleum tabletop. I took a deep breath. “I appreciate your coming to talk to me. I guess I just wanted to get an idea of how you’re feeling today, you know. Now that Beachum’s going to be executed. With his conviction based on your testimony and all. Does it bother you?”

I suppose that was the sort of question he was expecting. He seemed ready for it anyway. He tilted his chin and looked thoughtful and sort of noble for a moment. Then he recited a speech he must’ve been composing in his head ever since he’d gotten my message. I took another bite of bread while he talked, another sip of coffee. I suppose I should have taken out my notebook or something, pretended to write some of it down. But it was pretty ridiculous stuff, and I figured I could always reconstruct it at the office if I had to.

“A man has a responsibility to his neighbors,” said Porterhouse. “You can’t just consider your own feelings. It’s very important that justice be done according to the laws of the land, you know …” And so on. The usual shit.

When he was done, he licked his lips again. Gestured nervously with one of his small pink hands. “Aren’t you going to take notes or record me or something?” he asked. “Usually when I’ve talked to reporters … I mean …”

“Oh … I … I have a photographic memory,” I said. It sounded stupid even to me, so I put the bread down and pulled a thin notebook out of my back pocket. I slapped it onto the table beside the loaf, opened it to an empty page. Pulled a Bic from my pocket and uncapped it. And I said: “So you never have any doubts? About your testimony? You ever think you might have made a mistake?”

Porterhouse swaggered-sitting there in his chair. He rolled his narrow shoulders around under his gray pinstripes and showed me a swaggering smile at one corner of his mouth. “I guess you might say I’m not the sort of person who gives way to doubts too easily,” he said. “ ‘Make sure you’re right, then go ahead,’ that’s my motto.”

I wrote his motto in my pad. “Sort of like Davy Crockett,” I said.

He gave a breathy laugh, rubbed his two hands together slowly. “Yeah. I guess you could say that.” He was already imagining tomorrow’s banner. Downtown Accountant a Modern Crockett. Me-I was imagining my Davy, my son. Jumping around when I came in, too excited to get the words out. Going to the-to the zoo! I didn’t want to be here anymore, talking to this guy about nothing. It was for nothing, it was futile-and I’d known it would be before I came.

I raised my eyes. I felt tired now and depressed. “So there’s no question in your mind that Frank Beachum was the man you saw running out of the store that day?”

The same swaggering half smile. A virile nod of his circular head. “That’s right. No question whatsoever.”

“You saw his face. You saw the gun in his hand.”

“Yes, I did,” he said proudly. “I guess you could say I’m as sure of that as I am of anything in this world.”

“From the entryway in the back of the store. Where the bathroom is.”

“That’s correct.”

I nodded slowly, looking at him. His round, pink and certain features, that smug simper on them. It was a dumb question, I thought. Was he sure? Hell, yes. Of course he was sure. He would’ve had to be. To convince the cops, to go into court. To fend off the business end of a cross-examination. To send someone to the Death House. He was a cock-proud little man maybe, but he wasn’t a bad-guy, after all. He wasn’t a villain. Of course he was sure. I could not for the life of me remember why it had seemed so urgent that I talk to him like this.

We are going to the zoo!

Porterhouse cleared his throat and glanced down at my notebook. Roused, I quickly made a show of writing. As sure as anything … this world. Across from me, the accountant inflated himself with a breath, well satisfied. He brought his hand to his mouth and lightly groomed his small moustache.

“How could you see anything over the potato chips?” I asked him.

The question came out of me suddenly. I had almost given up on asking it. There seemed no point. Then I had asked it anyway without thinking.

I want to describe what happened after that as precisely as I can. Because precisely nothing happened. Nothing happened at all. Porterhouse did not rear back, one hand flung above his pate in a horror of discovery. He didn’t spill his coffee or stutter lies or fidget with his collar in a revealing way. He didn’t blink.

He simply said, after a moment’s pause, “I don’t understand. What potato chips? I had a very clear view.”

And I knew that he was not telling the truth.

How did I know? How can I explain? If it was nothing I saw, if it was nothing he said. What minute signal, what electrical force, what inaudible intonation, what chemical, what smell convinced me-I couldn’t begin to say. All I know is: I sat across from him, sat across the linoleum table at the Bread Factory, and in the moment’s pause before he answered me, I sensed-something-what should I call it? — his spirit-I sensed his spirit guttering like a candle. And I knew he hadn’t seen Frank Beachum running out of that store.

He wasn’t lying. I was almost sure of that. But he was a little man who wanted very much for people to think he was a big man. This, also, I understood-or thought I understood-without a word. He wanted to be a big man, and for a moment, some six years ago, he was. He had been in a store when a young woman was murdered. He had seen a man come into the store and chat with the woman behind the counter. And maybe she had apologized because she owed him money. Or maybe he had said: Don’t forget, Amy, you owe me some dough. And then Dale Porterhouse had gone into the bathroom to take a leak. And he had heard her cry out, Please not that! And the gunshot.

And then the policemen had come. The big, tough policemen with their heavy utility belts and guns. They had asked him what he knew, what he saw. And he wanted them to be pleased with him. He wanted them to clap him on the shoulder and say: Well done, friend, in their big deep voices. And there were the girls back in his office whom he wanted to tell, and the men who would envy him, and the trial … By the time the trial started, I think he believed it himself. I don’t think he would’ve committed perjury. I don’t think he would’ve survived cross-examination if it was not all clear to him by then in his mind. I think he believed it then, and I think he believed it now. I think he believed it all until the moment I asked him about the potato chips. Then, for a moment-for that moment’s pause before he spoke-then, I think, he remembered the truth. His memory stood ajar for that moment and the light of his spirit guttered in the breeze. That’s what I saw. And he remembered that he could not see, that he had not seen anything over the bags of potato chips.

Then, I think, in the next moment, he believed his own story again. It was all as fast as that.

“I saw everything, just as I said,” he told me now. “Obviously, I would inform the authorities right away if there were any doubt.”

I nodded. From the cheap chandeliers above, harsh lamplight glared in the corners of my glasses. Through that reflected glare I looked at him. I thought:

He didn’t, he didn’t see it. They don’t have a thing, not a thing, on this Beachum guy. No one saw him. No one heard the shots. No one could trace the gun. They don’t have a goddamned thing on him. And they’re gonna put him to death tonight.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Porterhouse,” I said, reaching for my coffee cup.

And what if he’s innocent? I thought.