by Larry Crane
“Pay me? How much? How much are you willing to pay me?" Smith asked.
“I’m willing to give you ten thousand dollars, no questions asked. And all I—”
“Ten large. Is that all she’s worth to you?”
“You bigmouth, smartass punk!”
“Are you going to swing at me? Watch it. You’ll do a real number on your knuckles. Guard!”
“If you touch her—!”
“Swing Armand! Do something crazy for your wife!” Smith shouted.
What is that? A note of envy coming from him—that there was something Marce and I have that he and every woman he’s ever known never did? Does a man like him ever think like that? Is he giving me a way to salvage this disaster of a meeting—by slugging him, and going home with some pride—even better if I did wreck my knuckles in the process?
“If you touch her—!” Gavin screamed.
“Guard!” Smith turned and walked to the door.
You fucking, sniveling cream puff, Gavin thought of himself.
Chapter 43
Marcella had just come out of the shower and was drying off when she first heard the knocking at the door. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She dropped the towel and wrapped herself in her bathrobe. She saw Gavin when she peered through the peephole.
She unbolted the door. He rushed in. She suppressed an urge to just tell him flat out to go home and smiled instead.
“Hi. How was Antigua?” she asked.
Gavin went immediately to the fridge and grabbed the unfinished bottle of Cabernet. He quickly found two long-stem glasses in the dishwasher and carried the lot to the couch in the living room. Marcella followed him, reclosing the robe around herself and retying the sash. She took one of the glasses, and he splashed each three quarters full. They clinked and took a sip together.
“You know it wasn’t Antigua. You’re just mocking me. Nevertheless, for a day or two Marie-Galante was paradise. Then I bellied up to a jellyfish. Cut the trip short a week."
“Oh, bad luck.”
“I’ve been thinking about your convict,” he said.
“It’s a hell of a way to spend a vacation.”
“I went to see him in the hoosegow. I think you should get the hell away from him. The guy’s a nut case,” he said.
“As part of your vacation, you went to the prison? That just had to have been a joy. What did you two chat about?”
“He recommended Martinique.”
“Sure he did. Is that the whole reason you came here, to tell me you saw him? It’s got to be. You’re not going to be able to tell me anything I don’t already know about the case,” Marcella said.
“Oh hell, I didn't go anywhere except to see him. There was no vacation. I told him he was pond scum and offered him money to cut off the little dance you two are engaged in.”
“Oh, that must have really gone over well with him. I’d like to hear how he characterized you when you said that.”
”Besides calling me a fuckface? He challenged me to test my flabby muscles against his.”
“Think you could take him?” Marcella asked.
“It’s damned near certain he’s getting out. Soon. Some judge says the confession was forced out of him.”
“What actually happened is that he wrote to the feds asking them to assign him a lawyer to help him navigate the federal court system.” Marcella turned her back to him and sauntered into the living room. “He thought he didn’t have a chance, but they surprised him and assigned a young guy named Lichtenstein to him.” She went to the side table at the end of the couch, reached for the pack of Salems there, popped a cigarette out of the pack and flared a match. “It turns out he’s a gem, and he works for next to nothing.” She slid the drawer open, withdrew a small cassette voice recorder. She pressed the record button and slid the machine into the pocket of her robe, then turned to face Gavin again.
“Is that what you talk to him about now, appeals? That wasn’t the plan as I remember it,” he said.
“It’s impossible not to talk about legal stuff. They’ve appealed through the entire state court system, which opened the door to moving up to federal courts. Lichtenstein has boundless energy. He’s carrying the water. Suddenly it seems as if all the stalling and denials have turned into reversals. The Supreme Court ordered an evidentiary hearing, whatever that is. That’s where Gibbons came in.”
“So, the fog sets in. He’s got everybody blaming the police,” Gavin said.
“Everyone’s taking his book as gospel. It’s unbelievable. It doesn’t seem to matter what happened in the sandpit. It’s ancient history. Gibbons zeroed in on the confession. The state courts and twenty judges all had said it was voluntary, but Gibbons said it wasn’t. He ordered a new trial. New Jersey appealed but the Supreme Court refused to hear it. That’s where it is. It’s getting close. Smith is doing handsprings.”
“Of course he is. Who wouldn’t? He’s going to win. It hasn’t helped that you’re out there in the newspapers every week.”
“Are you reading the articles? I’m not supporting him,” she said. “I’m telling the truth.”
“The articles are borderline truth. So, it seems there’s no reclaiming Vickie from the ash heap of dead flirts.”
“Gavin, I resent that. I resent that so much I can’t—. The insinuation that I’m in any way contributing to that image of her. That’s a lie.”
“It is. It’s his lie. Yours is that all references to Vickie have literally disappeared from the case completely. You’re right in there with him, fogging it all over with legalities.”
It’s true what’s he’s saying, she thought. The entire Edgar Smith discussion these days has devolved into the intricacies of his appeal process—whether or not his statement to the police was voluntary—the element of premeditation in the definition of first-degree murder—police interrogation practices—how long he’s been in jail—if he’s actually guilty of anything. Where is Vickie in all this? Vickie is dead. If I ever thought I was going to replace every reference to Edgar with Vickie’s name I was mistaken.
“You’re right. It’s his name in the headlines, not Vickie’s,” she said.
“You’ve swallowed his story, hook, line, and sinker. Gone over to his side.”
“I have not. All of the circumstantial evidence, Gavin, he’s heard before and so has the whole world. He’s had fourteen years to come up with an answer to every one of those points, and the public has bought the whole package. But not me.”
“He’s going to get out, a free man,” Gavin said.
“There’s no way I could have prevented that, not against all the lawyers. They have their truth. But Vickie’s is the truth of her death—of Edgar as a murderer. That’s what will come out of all the fog of sympathy he’s managed to whip up for himself. And when it does, Vickie will have won out.
Marcella reached in her bathrobe pocket and withdrew the voice recorder. She punched a button and they heard the whirring, warbling sound of a rewinding cassette, then her own voice: “The public has bought the whole package. But not me—”
Marcella punched the player and it stopped.
“I need to get him on tape.”
“You’re going to wind up dead,” Gavin said.
Chapter 44
The Last Minutes of Victoria Zielinski
Excerpts from the True Crime Novel
Part 3: 8:46-9:07 p.m., March 4, 1957
Victoria stumbled forward in the darkness. The sandy soil in the pit was soft and uneven. She pressed on toward the light she saw coming from a house in the distance. She was soon past the fence post that marked the spot where the sandpit property started—beyond Chapel Road. She would bang on the door of the house. Whoever they were, they seemed to still be up watching TV or something. Edgar Smith was back there by the car and probably coming after her. How had all this happened so fast? It was all so nightmarish and unbelievable—he suddenly groping her and she punching at him and falling out of the car, kicking and fighting w
ith him. She stopped to listen, wiping her nose and mouth with her glove. She was bleeding. She talked to herself or to anybody who could help. “Please, make him just get in the car and drive off.” She turned to look back and saw him, just a fleeting black shape, before she felt a crushing blow across her eye and saw stars everywhere.
***
It was the same drive he had made countless times picking up or delivering packages from the pharmacy. Donald Hommell pulled the pharmacy station wagon into the parking lot. It was a couple of minutes before 9:00 p.m. when he walked in the front door and went to the back with the package he had been sent to pick up. He reached across the counter to give Mr. Passaro the change from what he’d paid at Davis Pharmacy. He slid the package onto the counter. Passaro saw that he’d won the bet that Donald would complete his trip back and forth before the 9:00 p.m. closing time.
Hommell announced that he was leaving and went out back to the parking lot and his Ford. He drove out onto Wyckoff Avenue, heading toward Ramsey, and then on to Pelzer’s Bar. He pressed the gas pedal to the floor and soon was speeding along at sixty miles an hour. Ahead, just where the curb and sidewalk at West Crescent started, he saw a girl hurrying along under the lone streetlight. He recognized Myrna Zielinski. He pressed the horn, waved, and drove on.
***
Myrna couldn’t believe she’d missed Vickie. It was impossible that they would have passed each other walking. She knew right away that Vickie must have gotten a ride from somebody and went by the house in the car before she started out from home to meet her. She hadn’t seen any cars on the walk down to the Nixon’s. She felt terrible about starting out late. Vickie was probably furious—or maybe not if she’d gotten a ride into town or someplace—she might even be back home when she got there. She walked on as fast as she could. As the car whizzed past, she saw in the light of the streetlamp that it was Donald Hommell. She hurried on home. She went through the door calling out: “Ma, I went all the way to the Nixon’s and back and didn’t see her anywhere!”
***
Edgar Smith stepped after her as she staggered from the first impact of the bat on the side of her face. He swung again as hard as he could. She absorbed a second impact, stumbled and fell headlong at the side of the road. He was breathless. He staggered, standing over her. He turned in a circle, assessing the scene. He turned and ran back up across Chapel Road, letting the bat fall from his hand. He cranked the car and swerved as he backed the car all the way down to where she lay. He pulled her varsity jacket over her head, and pushed her limp form into the open trunk. He drove back to the pit, running over the bat that lay in the road in the process. He drove in as far as he could into the sandpit. He wrestled her out of the trunk and let her fall to the ground.
Victoria groaned and lay still. Smith lifted her to a sitting position and from the back, grabbed her under both arms and dragged her to the top of a mound of dirt. He looked down at her. She was still moaning. He reached for a rock, lifted it shoulder high, and smashed it down. He dragged her body by the feet across the top of the mound and pushed her over the top. He stood still and listened and heard nothing. It was absolutely black all around—black and cold. He stumbled down off the mound to the car.
For the first time, he realized that his foot was freezing cold. His shoe was gone, but he couldn’t hang around looking for it. He backed the car all the way down to Chapel Road again. He stopped and picked up the bat in the road. He trotted forward on Chapel far enough and lobbed the bat high into the trees at the side of the road. He trotted in the darkness back toward the car. He yanked the door open and slid behind the wheel. He reached to gather Victoria’s books and her handbag from the floorboards onto the seat on the passenger side. He pressed the accelerator pedal and sped forward well beyond where he’d thrown the bat. He scooped up the books and handbag, limped into the woods at the side of the road and dropped them there.
He drove on to Pulis Avenue and into the Bogert Trailer Park. He went into the trailer by the back door, minus one shoe and breathless with anxiety. He heard his wife Patricia in the kitchen. He went into the bathroom and washed his hands. He looked down at the blood covering his trouser leg from knee to cuff, and all over the socks. He lowered his pants and stuck the socks in a pocket, and called out to Patricia: “Pat, I’ve been sick all over my pants. Can you throw me another pair?”
Chapter 45
Edgar Smith Case File
by Marcella Armand - Staff Reporter
Smith Goes Free. He Says He Did It, But Did He?
The sensational Edgar Smith murder trial that rocked Bergen County in 1957 and sent Smith to death row at Trenton State Prison is back in the news as subsequent Supreme Court interpretations have set Smith free.
In the Superior Court of New Jersey this afternoon at 4:50 p.m., December 6, 1971 Judge Morris Pashman released Edgar Smith from imprisonment as part of a deal in which Smith was re-convicted of murder, albeit murder in the second degree instead of the original trial’s jury verdict of first degree. Smith’s nearly fifteen years of incarceration were considered good time, and he was released on parole immediately. The deal involved Smith answering questions put to him under oath by Pashman.
Q: Mr. Smith, did you and did you alone kill Victoria Zielinski?
A: I did.
Q: Was there anyone else there, Mr. Smith, when you killed her?
A: No.
Q: Did you see anyone else in the area during the time you were in the sandpit with Victoria?
A: No.
Pashman also ordered a psychiatric report on Smith from Dr. Ralph Brancale, Director of the Diagnostic Center at Menlo Park which reads in part:
It is quite evident that the defendant examined today is a different man than the one who entered the death house fifteen years ago. There is no evidence of serious pathology, and he does not appear to have any malignant psychosexual process. The examiner feels that this defendant may be returned to the community without posing a danger to the public.1
On the same page, Pashman’s ruling described Edgar Smith in glowing terms.
This is a man who developed from a high school dropout to a self-educated writer. Edgar Smith is an outstanding example of the meaningful changes that a prisoner can undergo as to render him a useful, productive citizen upon his return to society.
Pashman also stated that Smith’s transformation was reason to be optimistic about the rehabilitation possibilities of the state correction system. He inferred that Smith’s reintegration into society was the true reason of accepting his plea. He concluded by making reference to how the law in criminal cases had developed through the decade of the sixties to what it is today, an institution emphasizing rehabilitation, not simply punishments.2
* * *
1 Calissi, Counterpoint, 958.
2 Calissi, Counterpoint, 959.
Chapter 46
A rented black-and-white Sylvania television set was propped up on a flimsy wheeled stand in front of Marcella and Gavin. The reception was blurry, white lines jiggling. Gavin got up and fiddled with the rabbit ears antenna to see if he could clear up the picture.
Edgar Smith was dressed in a dark suit and white shirt with a wide multi-colored tie. He and Buckley sat maybe six feet apart, Buckley on the left Smith on the right, in comfortable if not plush chairs with a small table between them. The table had a glass of water for each on it. Buckley, as host of his TV show Firing Line, read his customary guest introduction aloud from his notes fastened to a clipboard on his lap.
“A couple of hours ago he was cooling his heels in solitary confinement. Now he’s a free man and on national television. It’s incredible,” Marcella said.
Buckley was also dressed in a dark suit, rumpled white shirt, and narrow tie. He leaned back to the left, his head canted even further left with the knuckles of his right hand resting on his cheek, his legs crossed knee over knee, gesturing with his left hand. Smith struck a mirror-image pose, leaning and canting even further right, and putting as
much distance as possible between them.
“Christ, they’re like Mutt and Jeff,” Gavin said.
“It’s classic Edgar Smith. Buckley doesn’t have a clue. In his Esquire piece he extols Edgar to the high heavens as a brilliant intellectual jailbird in his own image. Now we see the Bobbsey Twins in person on the screen.”
“When was it, 1965, when the investigator working for Smith’s mother and the defense counsel Selser appeared at Buckley’s offices and showed him that it was flatly impossible that Edgar had killed Vickie?” Gavin said.
“Yeah, Andrew Nicol. Well, of course you see, there simply isn’t enough time for Edgar to have picked her up, driven to the sandpit, arriving there at 8:45 p.m. or so, and then walked in the back door of the trailer a little after 9:00 p.m., having killed Vickie and disposed of her books in the woods along the way,” Marcella said.
“At the trial, Selser did all he could to draw out how long it took them to get to the sandpit. Smith at some point even described having to stop along the way and wait several minutes for a bulldozer working on the road to give him room to drive on. No bulldozer operator was called to the witness stand. I’m guessing they couldn’t find him or there was no such man.
“Nicol interviewed numerous friends and acquaintances of Edgar and only two or three out of the bunch could imagine him committing such a horrendous assault. Besides, he also believed that it strained credibility that such a phlegmatic and mild-mannered young man could have turned into a monster in a matter of a few minutes.”
Buckley finished the summary sentimentalizing on how it had come to be that Smith would be sleeping somewhere other than his eight-by-eight-foot jail cell that night for the first time in nearly fifteen years.
“Oh, the humanity,” Gavin said.
Buckley misstated where the police initially picked Smith up for questioning.
“If he can’t get that straight, how can anyone trust anything he says about the case?” Marcella said.