Since the last week of August, Rollie Knight had lived in terror.
The terror began in the janitor's closet at the assembly plant where Leroy Colfax knifed and killed one of the two vending machine collectors, and where the other collector and the foreman, Parkland, were left wounded and unconscious. It continued during a hasty retreat from the plant by the four conspirators - Big Rufe, Colfax, Daddy-o Lester, and Rollie. They had scaled a high, chain-link fence, helping each other in the darkness, knowing that to leave through any of the plant gates would invite questioning and identification later.
Rollie gashed his hand badly on the fence wire, and Big Rufe fell heavily, limping afterward, but they all made it outside. Then, moving separately and avoiding lighted areas, they met in one of the employee parking lots where Big Rufe had a car. Daddy-o had driven because Big Rufe's ankle was swelling fast, and paining him. They left the parking lot without using lights, only turning them on when reaching the roadway outside.
Looking back at the plant, everything seemed normal and there were no outward signs of an alarm being raised.
"Man, oh man," Daddy-o fretted nervously as he drove. "If I ain't glad to be clear o' that!"
From the back seat, Big Rufe grunted. "We ain't clear o'nuthin'yet."
Rollie, in front with Daddy-o and trying to stem the bleeding of his hand with an oily rag, knew that it was true.
Despite his fall, Big Rufe had managed to get one set of chained cash bags over the fence with him. Leroy Colfax had the other. In the back seat they hacked at the bags with knives, then poured the contents - all silver coins - into several paper sacks. On the freeway, before reaching the city, Colfax and Big Rufe threw the original cash bags out.
In the inner city they parked the car on a dead-end street, then separated. Before they did, Big Rufe warned, "Remember, all we gotta do is act like there ain't nuthun' different. We play this cool, ain't nobody gonna prove we was there tonight. So tomorrow, everybody shows their faces just like always, same as any other day." He glared at the other three.
"Somebody don't, that's when the pigs start lookin' our way."
Leroy Colfax said softly, "Might be smarter to run."
"You run," Big Rufe snarled, "I swear I'll find 'n kill you, the way you did that honky, the way you got us all in this . . ."
Colfax said hastily, "Aint gonna run. Just thinkin' is all."
"Don't think! You showed already you aint got brains."
Colfax was silent.
Though he had not spoken, Rollie wished he could run. But to where? There was nowhere; no escape, whichever way you turned. He had a sense of his own life seeping out, the way blood was still seeping from his injured hand. Then he remembered: The chain of happenings leading to tonight had begun a year ago, when the white cop baited him, and the black cop gave a card with a hiring hall address. Rollie's mistake, he recognized, had been to go there. Or had it? If what had overtaken him had not happened in this way, there would have been some other.
"Now listen good.." Big Rufe had said, "we all in this together, we stick together. If nobody of us four blabs, we gonna be okay."
Perhaps the others believed. Rollie hadn't.
They parted then, each taking one of the paper sacks of coins which Big Rufe and Colfax had divided in the back seat of the car. Big Rufe's was bulkier than the others.
Choosing his route cagily, conscious of the implications of the paper sack of coins if he should be stopped by a police patrol, Rollie reached the apartment house on Blaine near 12th.
May Lou wasn't in; she had probably gone to a movie. Rollie bathed the gash in his hand, then bound it roughly with a towel.
After that he counted the money in the paper sack, dividing the coins into piles. It totaled $30.75 - less than a day's pay at the assembly plant.
If Rollie Knight had had the erudition or philosophy, he might have debated, within himself, the nature of risks which human beings take for trifling amounts such as $30.75, and their degrees of losing. There had been earlier risks which frightened him - the risk of refusing to be swept along into deeper involvement with plant crime, and the risk of backing out tonight, which he could have taken, but didn't, when Big Rufe thrust the gun into his hand.
These risks had been real, not just imagined. A savage beating, accompanied by broken limbs, could have been ordered for Rollie by Big Rufe as easily as groceries are ordered from a store. Both men knew it; and that way Rollie would have been a loser too.
But in the end the losing could have been less than the total disaster - life imprisonment for murder - which threatened now.
In essence the risks which Rollie chose to take, and not to take, were those which - in degree - face all men in a free society. But some, within the same society, are born with cruelly limited choices, belying the hoary bromide that "all men are created equal."
Rollie, and tens of thousands like him, hedged in from birth by poverty, inequality, scant opportunity, and with the sketchiest of education providing poor preparation for such choices as occur, are losers from the beginning. Their degree of losing remains the only thing to be determined.
Thus, the tragedy of Rollie Knight was twofold: The darker side of the earth that he was born to, and society's failure to equip him mentally to break away.
But thinking none of this, knowing only bleak despair and fear of what would come tomorrow, Rollie thrust the $30.75 in silver beneath his bed, and slept. He did not awaken later when May Lou came in.
In the morning, May Lou dressed Rollie's hand with a makeshift bandage, her eyes asking questions which he did not answer. Then Rollie went to work.
At the plant, plenty of talk was circulating about the murder - robbery of the night before, and there had been reports on radio, TV, and in the morning newspaper. Local interest in Rollie's area of Assembly centered on the bludgeoning of Frank Parkland, who was in the hospital, though reportedly with mild concussion only. "Just proves all foremen are thickheaded," a humorist pronounced at break time. There was immediate laughter. No one seemed distressed by the robbery, or greatly concerned about the murdered man, who was otherwise unknown.
Another report said one of the plant managers had had a stroke, brought on by the whole affair plus overwork. However, the last was clearly an exaggeration since everyone knew a manager's job was a soft touch.
Apart from the talk, no other activity concerning the robbery-murder was visible from the assembly line. Nor, as far as Rollie could see, or hear through scuttlebutt, was anyone on the day shift questioned.
No rumors, either, tied any names to the crime.
Despite Big Rufe's warning to the other three, he alone failed to show up at the plant that day. Daddy-o conveyed the news to Rollie at midmorning that Big Rufe's leg was so swollen he could not walk, and had reported sick, putting out a story of having been drunk the night before and falling down stairs at home.
Daddy-o was shaky and nervous, but had recovered some of his confidence by early afternoon, when he paid a second call to Rollie's work station, obviously wanting to gab.
Rollie had snarled at him, low-voiced, "For Cri-sakes quit hangin' round me. And keep that stinkin' mouth shut!" If anyone blabbed, causing word to spread, Rollie feared most of all it would be Daddy-o.
Nothing more that was notable occurred that day. Or on the one after.
Or through an entire week following that.
As each day passed, while Rollie's anxiety remained, his relief increased a little. He knew, however, there was still plenty of time for the worst to happen. Also he realized: while the sheer numbers of lesser unsolved crimes caused police investigations to ease or end, murder was in a different league. The police, Rollie reasoned, would not give up quickly.
As it happened, he was partly right and partly wrong.
The timing of the original robbery had been shrewd. It was the timing also which caused police investigation to center on the plant night shift, even though detectives were unsure that the men they sought were company employees at all. Plenty of auto plant crimes were committed by outsiders, using fake or stolen employee identification badges to get in.
All the police had to work with was a statement by the surviving vending machine collector that four men were involved. All had been masked and armed; he believed all four were black; he had only the vaguest impressions of their physical size. The surviving collector had not seen the face of the briefly unmasked robber, as had his companion who was knifed.
Frank Parkland, who was struck down instantly on entering the janitor's closet, had observed nothing.
No weapons had been discovered, no fingerprints found. The slashed cash bags were eventually recovered near a freeway, but provided no clue, apart from suggesting that whoever discarded them was headed for the inner city.
A team of four detectives assigned to the case began methodical sifting through names and employment dockets of some three thousand night shift employees. Among these was a sizable segment with criminal records. All such individuals were questioned, without result. This took time. Also, part way through the investigation the number of detectives was reduced from four to two and even the remaining pair had other duties to contend with.
The possibility that the wanted men might be part of the day shift, and had remained in the plant to stage the robbery, was not overlooked. It was simply one of several possibilities which the police had neither time nor manpower to cope with all at once.
What investigators really hoped for was a break in the case through an informer, which was the way many serious crimes, in greater Detroit as elsewhere, were solved. But no information came. Either the perpetrators were the only ones who knew the names involved, or others were remaining strangely silent.
The police were aware that the vending concessions at the plant were Mafia-financed and run; they knew, too, that the dead man had Mafia connections. They suspected, but had no means of proving, that both factors were related to the silence.
After three and a half weeks, because of a need to assign detectives to newer cases, while the plant murder-robbery case was not closed, police activity slackened off.
The same was not true elsewhere.
The Mafia, generally, does not look kindly on any interference with its people. And when interference is from other criminals, repercussions are stern, and of a nature to be a warning against repetition.
From the instant that the man with the Indian features died from the knife wound inflicted by Leroy Colfax, Colfax and his three accomplices were marked for execution.
Doubly assuring this was that they were pawns in the Mafia-Black Mafia war.
When details of the murder-robbery were known, the Detroit Mafia family worked quietly and effectively. It had channels of communication which the police did not.
First, feelers were put out for information. When none resulted, a reward was quietly offered: a thousand dollars.
For that much, in the inner city, a man might sell his mother.
Rollie Knight heard of the Mafia involvement and reward one week and two days after the debacle at the plant. It was at night and he was in a dingy Third Avenue bar, drinking beer. The beer, and the fact that whatever official investigation was going on had not, come close to him so far, had relaxed a little of the terror he had lived with for the past nine days.
But the news, conveyed by his companion at the bar - a downtown numbers runner known simply as Mule - increased Rollie's terror tenfold and turned the beer he had drunk into bile, so that he was hard pressed not to vomit there and then. He managed not to.
"Hey!" Mule said, after he conveyed the news of the Mafia-proffered reward. "Ain't you in that plant, man?"
With an effort, Rollie nodded.
Mule urged, "You find out who them guys was, I pass the word, we split the dough, okay?"
"I'll listen around," Rollie promised.
Soon after, he left the bar, his latest beer untouched.
Rollie knew where to find Big Rufe. Entering the rooms where the big man lived, he found himself looking into the muzzle of a gun - the same one, presumably, used nine days before. When he saw who it was, Big Rufe lowered the gun and thrust it in his trousers waistband.
He told Rollie, "Them crummy wops come, they ain't gonna find no pushover."
Beyond his readiness, Big Rufe seemed strangely indifferent - probably, Rollie realized later, because he had known of the Mafia danger in the first place, and accepted it.
There was nothing to be gained by staying, or discussion. Rollie left.
From that moment, Rollie's days and nights were filled with a new, more omnipresent dread. He knew that nothing he could do would counter it; he could only wait. For the time being he continued working, since regular work - too late, it seemed - had become a habit.
Though Rollie never knew the details, it was Big Rufe who betrayed them all.
He foolishly paid several small gambling debts entirely with silver coins. The fact was noticed, and later reported to a Mafia underling who passed the information on. Other pieces of intelligence, already known about Big Rufe, were found to fit a pattern.
He was seized at night, taken by surprise while sleeping, and given no chance to use his gun. His captors brought him, bound and gagged, to a house in Highland Park where, before being put to death, he was tortured and he talked.
Next morning Big Rufe's body was found on a Hamtramck roadway, a road much traveled at night by heavy trucks. It appeared to have been run over several times, and the death was listed as a traffic casualty.
Others, including Rollie Knight - who heard the news from a terrified, shaking Daddy-o - knew better.
Leroy Colfax went into hiding, protected by politically militant friends. He remained hidden for almost two weeks, at the end of which time it was demonstrated that a militant, like many another politician, has his price. One of Colfax's trusted companions, whom each addressed as brother, quietly sold him out.
Leroy Colfax, too, was seized, then driven to a lonely suburb and shot.
When his body was found, an autopsy disclosed six bullets but no other clues. No arrest was ever made.
Daddy-o ran. He bought a bus ticket to New York and tried to lose himself in Harlem. For a while he succeeded, but several months later was tracked down and, soon after, killed by knifing.
Long before that - on hearing of Leroy Colfax's slaying - Rollie Knight began his own time of waiting, and meanwhile went to pieces.
Leonard Wingate had trouble identifying the thin female voice on the telephone. He was also irritated at being called in the evening, at home.
"May Lou who?"
"Rollie's woman. Rollie Knight."
Knight. Wingate remembered now, then asked, "How did you get my phone number? It isn't listed."
"You wrote it on a card, mister. Said if we was in trouble, to call."
He supposed he had - probably the night of the filming in that inner city apartment house.
"Well, what is it?" Wingate had been about to leave for a Bloomfield Hills dinner party. Now he wished he had gone before the phone rang, or hadn't answered.
May Lou's voice said, "I guess you know Rollie ain't been workin'."
"Now, how in the world would I know that?"
She said uncertainly, "If he don't show up . . ."
"Ten thousand people work in that plant. As a Personnel executive I'm responsible for most of them, but I don't get reports about individuals
, . ."
Leonard Wingate caught sight of himself in a wall mirror and stopped.
He addressed himself silently: Okay, you pompous, successful, important bastard with an unlisted phone, so you've let her know what a wheel you are, that she's not to assume you've anything in common just because you happen to be the same color. Now what?
In his own defense, he thought: It didn't happen often, and he had caught it now; but it showed how an attitude could grow, just as he had heard black people in authority treat other black people like dirt beneath their feet.
"May Lou," Leonard Wingate said, "you caught me in a bad moment and I'm sorry. Do you mind if we start again?"
The trouble, she told him, was with Rollie. "He ain't eatin', sleepin', don't do nuthun'. He won't go out, just sits and waits."
"Waits for what?"
"He won't tell me, won't even talk. He looks awful, mister. It's like" May Lou stopped, groping for words, then said, "Like he's waitin' to die."
"How long since he went to work?"
"Two weeks."
"Did he ask you to call me?"
"He don't ask nuthun'. But he needs help bad. I know he does."
Wingate hesitated. It really wasn't his concern. It was true he had taken a close interest in hard core hiring, and still did; had involved himself, too, in a handful of individual cases. Knight's was one. But there was just so much help that people could be given, and Knight had quit working - voluntarily it seemed - two weeks ago. Yet Leonard Wingate still felt self-critical about his attitude of a few minutes earlier.
"All right," he said, "I'm not sure I can do anything, but I'll try to drop by in the next few days."
Her voice said pleadingly, "Could you, tonight?"
"I'm afraid that's impossible. I've a dinner engagement which I'm late for already."
He sensed hesitation, then she asked, "Mister, you remember me?"
"I already said I do."
"I ever ask you for anythin' befo'?"
"No, you haven't." He had the feeling May Lou had never asked much of anyone, or of life, nor received much either.
"I'm asking now. Please! Tonight. For my Rollie."
Conflicting motivations pulled him: ties to the past, his ancestry; the present, what he had become and might be still. Ancestry won. Leonard Wingate thought ruefully: It was a good dinner party he would miss. He suspected that his hostess liked to demonstrate her liberalitas by having a black face or two at table, but she served good food and wine, and flirted pleasantly.
"All right," he said into the telephone, "I'll come, and I think I remember where it is, but you'd better give me the address."
If May Lou had not warned him beforehand, Leonard Wingate thought, he would scarcely have recognized Rollie Knight, who was emaciated, his eyes sunken in a haggard face. Rollie had been sitting at a wooden table facing the outer door and started nervously as Wingate came in, then subsided.
The company Personnel man had had the forethought to bring a bottle of Scotch. Without asking, he went to the closet - Eke kitchen, found glasses and carried them back. May Lou had slipped out as he arrived, glancing at him gratefully and whispering, "I'll just be outside."
Wingate poured two stiff, neat Scotches and pushed one in front of Rollie. "You'll drink this," he said, "and you can take your time about it. But after that, you'll talk."
Rollie's hand went out to take the drink. He did not look up.
Wingate took a swallow of his own Scotch and felt the liquor burn, then warm him. He put the glass down. "We might save time if I tell you I know exactly what you think of me. Also, I know all the words, most of them stupid - white nigger, Uncle Tom - as well as you. But whether you like or hate me, my guess is, I'm the only friend you'll see tonight." Wingate finished his drink, poured another and pushed the bottle toward Rollie.
"So start talking before I finish this, or I'll figure I'm wasting time and go."
Rollie looked up. "You act pretty mad. When I ain't said a word."
"Try some words then. Let's see how it goes." Wingate leaned forward. "To start: Why'd you quit work?"
Draining the first Scotch poured for him, Rollie replenished his glass, then began talking and went on. It was as if, through some combination of Leonard Wingate's timing, acts, and speech, a sluice gate had been opened, so that words tumbled out, channeled by questions which Wingate interposed, until the whole story was laid bare. It began with Rollie's first hiring by the company a year ago, continued through his experiences at the plant, involvement with crime - small at first, then larger - to the robbery-murder and its aftermath, then the knowledge of the Mafia and word of his ordained execution which, with fear and resignation, Rollie now awaited.
Leonard Wingate sat listening with a mixture of impatience, pity, frustration, helplessness, and anger - until he could sit no more. Then, while Rollie went on talking, Wingate paced the tiny room.
When the recital was done, the Personnel man's anger exploded first. He stormed, "You goddam fool! You were given a chance! You had it made! And then you blew it!" Wingate's hands clenched and unclenched with a complex of emotions. "I could kill you!"
Rollie's head came up. Briefly, the old impudence and humor flashed.
"Man, you gonna do that, you take a card 'n stand in line."
The remark brought Wingate back to reality. He knew he was faced with an impossible choice. If he helped Rollie Knight to escape his situation, he would compound a crime. Even failing to act on his own knowledge at this moment probably made him an accessory to murder, under the law. But if he failed to help, and merely walked away, Wingate knew enough of the inner city and its jungle law to be aware that he would be leaving Rollie to his death.
Leonard Wingate wished he had ignored the telephone bell tonight, or had not yielded to May Lou's plea to come here. If he had done one or the other, he would now be seated comfortably at a table with congenial people, white napery, and gleaming silver. But he was here. He forced himself to think.
He believed what Rollie Knight had told him. Everything. He remembered, too, reading in the press of the discovery of Leroy Colfax's bullet-punctured body, and it had been drawn to his notice in another way because, until recently, Colfax had been an assembly plant employee.
That was barely a week ago. Now, with two of the four conspirators dead and a third having dropped from sight, Mafia attention was likely to move to Rollie soon. But how soon? Next week? Tomorrow? Tonight? Wingate found his own eyes going nervously toward the door.
He reasoned: What he must have, without delay, was another opinion, a second judgment to reinforce his own. Any decision was too crucial to make unaided. But whose opinion? Wingate was sure that if he went to his own senior in the company, the vice-president of Personnel, the advice given would be coldly legalistic: Murder had been committed, the name of one of the murderers was known; therefore inform the police, who would handle it from there.
Wingate knew - whatever the consequences to himself - he wouldn't do it. Or at least, not without seeking other counsel first. An idea occurred to him: Brett DeLosanto.
Since their first encounter last November, Leonard Wingate, Brett, and Barbara Zaleski had become good friends. In course of an increasing amount of time in one another's company, Wingate had come to admire the young designer's mind, realizing that beneath a surface flippancy he possessed instinctive wisdom, common sense, and a broad compassion. His opinion now might be important. Also, Brett knew Rollie Knight, having met him through Barbara and the Auto City filming.
Wingate decided: He would telephone and, if possible, meet Brett tonight.
May Lou had slipped into the apartment unnoticed. Wingate didn't know how much she had heard or knew. He supposed it didn't matter.
He motioned to the door. "Can you lock that?"
May Lou nodded. "Yes."
"I'm going now," Leonard Wingate told Rollie and May Lou, "but I'll be back. Lock the door after me and keep it locked. Don't let anyone else in. When I come, I'll identify myself by name and voice. You understand?"
"Yes, mister." May Lou's eyes met his. Small as she was, scrawny and unimpressive, he was aware of strength.
Not far from the Blaine apartment house, Leonard Wingate found a pay phone in an allnight Laundromat.
He had the phone number of Brett's apartment in a notebook and dialed it. The Laundromat's washers and dryers were noisy and he covered one ear so he could hear the ringing tone at the other end. The ringing continued unanswered, and he hung up.
Wingate remembered a conversation with Brett a day or two ago in which Brett mentioned that he and Barbara would be meeting Adam and Erica Trenton - whom Leonard Wingate knew slightly - later in the week. Wingate decided to try there.
He called Directory Assistance for the Trentons' suburban number. But when he dialed it, there was no answer either.
More than ever now, he wanted to reach Brett DeLosanto.
Leonard Wingate recalled something else Brett had told him: Barbara's father was still on the critical list at Ford Hospital. Wingate reasoned: The chances were, Barbara and Brett were together, and Barbara would leave word at the hospital about where she could be reached.
He dialed the hospital's number. After waiting several minutes, he spoke with a floor nurse who admitted, yes they did have means of getting in touch with Miss Zaleski.
Wingate knew he would have to lie to get the information. "I'm her cousin from Denver and I'm calling from the airport." He hoped the Laundromat's noises sounded sufficiently like airplanes. "I've flown here to see my uncle, but my cousin wanted me to meet her first. She said if I called the hospital you'd always know where I could find her."
The nurse observed tartly, "We're not running a message agency here."
But she gave him the information: Miss Zaleski was at the Detroit Symphony tonight with Mr. and Mrs. Trenton and Mr. DeLosanto. Barbara had even left the seat numbers. Wingate blessed her thoroughness.
He had left his car outside the Laundromat. Now he headed for Jefferson Avenue and the Civic Center, driving fast. A fine rain had begun while he was telephoning; road surfaces were slick.
At Woodward and Jefferson, crowding his chances, he beat an amber light and swung into the forecourt of the Ford Auditorium - blue-pearl-granite-and-marble-faced showplace of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Around the Auditorium, other Civic Center buildings towered - Cobo Hall, Veterans' Memorial, the City-County Building - modern, spacious, brightly floodlit. The Civic Center area was often spoken of as a fountainhead - the beginning of a vast urban renewal program for downtown Detroit.
Unfortunately, while the head was finished, almost nothing of the body was in sight.
A uniformed attendant by the Auditorium's main doors stepped forward.
Before the man could speak, Leonard Wingate told him, "I have to locate some people who are here. It's an emergency." In his hand he held the seat numbers he had copied down while speaking with the hospital nurse.
The doorman conceded: Since the performance was in progress and there was no other traffic, the car could remain "just for a few minutes," with the key in the ignition.
Wingate passed inside through two sets of doors. As the second doors closed, music surrounded him.
An usherette turned from watching the stage and the orchestra. She said, low-voiced, "I won't be able to seat you until intermission, sir. May I see your ticket?"
"I don't have one." He explained his purpose and showed the girl the seat numbers. A male usher joined them.
The seats, it seemed, were near the front and center.
"If you'd take me to the row," Wingate urged, "I could signal Mr. DeLosanto to come out."
The usher said firmly, "We couldn't allow that, sir. It would disturb everybody."
"How long to intermission?"
The ushers were unsure.
For the first time, Wingate was aware of what was being played. He had been a music lover since childhood and recognized Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet Orchestral Suite. Knowing that conductors used varying arrangements of the suite, he asked, "May I see a program?" The usherette gave him one.
The passage he had identified was the opening of the "Death of Tybalt."
With relief, he saw it was the final portion of the work before an intermission.
Even waiting impatiently, the music's magnificence swept over him. The swift-surging opening theme moved on to a quickening timpani solo with strokes of death-like hammer blows . . . Tybalt had killed Romeo's friend Mercutio. Now, on the dying Tybalt, Romeo wreaked vengeance he had sworn . . . Horn passages wailed the tragic paradox of human destructiveness and folly; the full orchestra swelled to a crescendo of doom . . .
Wingate's skin prickled, his mind drawing parallels between the music and the reason for his presence here.
The music ended. As a thunder of applause swept through the Auditorium, Leonard Wingate hurried down an aisle, escorted by the usher. Word was passed quickly to Brett DeLosanto whom Wingate saw at once. Brett appeared surprised, but began moving out, followed by Barbara and the Trentons.
In the foyer, they held a hurried conference.
Without wasting time on details, Wingate revealed that his search for Brett had been because of Rollie Knight. And since they were still downtown, Wingate's intention was that the two of them go directly to Rollie and May Lou's apartment.
Brett agreed at once, but Barbara raised difficulties, wanting to go with them. They argued briefly, Leonard Wingate opposing the idea, and Brett supported him. In the end it was agreed that Adam would take Erica and Barbara to Brett's Country Club Manor apartment and await the others there. Neither Adam, Erica, nor Barbara felt like returning to the concert.
Outside, Wingate led Brett to his waiting car. The rain had stopped.
Brett, who was carrying a topcoat, threw it on the back seat, on top of one of Wingate's already there. As they pulled away, Leonard Wingate began a swift-paced explanation, knowing the journey would be short.
Brett listened, asking an occasional question. At the description of the murder-robbery, he whistled softly. Like countless others he had read published reports of the killing at the plant; also, there was a personal link since it seemed likely that events that night had hastened Matt Zaleski's stroke.
Yet Brett felt no enmity toward Rollie Knight. It was true that the young black worker was no innocent, but there were degrees of guilt, whether recognized in law or not. Wingate obviously believed - and Brett accepted - that Rollie had become enmeshed a little at a time, in part unwillingly, his freedom of choice diminishing like a weakening swimmer drawn toward a vortex. Nonetheless, for what Rollie Knight had done, there were debts he would have to pay. No one could, or should, help him escape them.
"The one thing we can't do," Brett said, "is help him get away from Detroit."
"I figured that, too." If the crime had been lesser, Wingate thought, they might have chanced it. But not with murder.
"What he needs is something he didn't have those other times - the best lawyer you can get with money."
"He doesn't have money."
"Then I'll raise it. I'll put some up myself, and there'll be others."
Brett was already thinking of people to approach - some, outside the usual ranks of charity bestowers, who felt strongly about social injustice and racial prejudice.
Wingate said, "He'll have to surrender to the police; I can't see any other way. But if we've a strong lawyer he can insist a protection in jail." He wondered - though not aloud - how effective the protection would be, lawyer or not.
"And with a good trial lawyer," Brett said, "he might, just might, get a break."
"Maybe."
"Will Knight do as we say?"
Wingate nodded. "He'll do it."
"Then we'll find a lawyer in the morning. He'll handle the surrender.
Tonight, the two of them - the girl as well - had better stay with Barbara and me."
The Personnel man shot a glance across the car's front seat. "You sure?"
"I'm sure. Unless you've a better idea."
Leonard Wingate shook his head. He was glad he had found Brett DeLosanto.
Though nothing the young designer had said or done so far was beyond Wingate's own powers of reasoning and decision, Brett's presence and clearheadedness was reassuring. He possessed an instinctive leadership, too, which Wingate, with his training, recognized. He wondered if Brett would be content to remain designing all his years.
They were at the 12th and Blaine intersection. Outside the rundown, paint-peeling apartment house, they got out of the car and Wingate locked it.
As usual, the odor of garbage was strong.
Ascending the worn wooden stairway to the apartment house third floor, Wingate remembered he had told Rollie and May Lou he would identify himself from outside by name and voice. He need not have bothered.
The door he warned them to keep locked was open. Part of the lock was hanging loose where some force - undoubtedly a violent blow - had splintered it.
Leonard Wingate and Brett went in. Only May Lou was inside. She was putting clothes into a cardboard suitcase.
Wingate asked, "Where's Rollie?"
Without looking up, she answered, "Gone."
"Gone where?"
"Some guys come. They took him."
"How long ago?"
"Right after you went, mister." She turned her head. They saw she had been crying.
"Listen," Brett said, "if we get descriptions we can warn the police."
Leonard Wingate shook his head. He knew it was too late. He had a feeling it had been too late from the beginning. He knew, too, what he and Brett DeLosanto were going to do now. They would walk away. As so many in Detroit walked away or, like the priest and Levite, crossed over on the other side.
Brett was silent.
Wingate asked May Lou, "What will you do?"
She closed the cardboard suitcase. "I'll make out."
Brett reached into a pocket. With a gesture, Wingate stopped him. "Let me."
Without counting them, he took what bills he had and pressed them into May Lou's hand. "I'm sorry," he, said. "I guess it doesn't mean much, but I'm sorry."
They went downstairs.
Outside, when they came to the car, its nearside door hung open. The window glass was broken. The two topcoats which had been on the car's back seat were gone.
Leonard Wingate cradled his head in his arms on the car roof. When he looked up, Brett saw his eyes were wet.
"Oh, God!" Wingate said. He raised his arms beseechingly to the black night sky. "Oh, God! This heartless city!"
Rollie Knight's body was never found. He simply disappeared.