The Criminal

by Jim Thompson

  “Aaaah,” I said. “Nothing new, Clint. Same old sixes and sevens.”

  “What’s this I hear about your name being put up for a circuit court appointment? I was just going to call and ask if I could be of help in any way. Write a few letters or say a word or two in the right places. I believe I have some small influence and—”

  “Well, that’s very kind of you, Clint,” I said. “But, no, I guess there’s nothing to it. My God, what would I do on the Federal bench! I’d be lost, y’know. I wouldn’t know how to act.”

  “Oh, now,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t say that, Kossy.”

  “What they really need is someone like you,” I said.

  “Someone with a lot of dignity and a broad background in public service. By the way, I suppose you know you’re considered also?”

  He was completely astonished. But completely. He said so himself.

  “Why—why, Kossy,” he said. “I hardly know what to say. Not that I’d stand the slightest chance, of course, but…”

  “I don’t see why not,” I said. “It seems to me you might stand a very excellent chance. If I withdraw, swing such small support as I may have over to you, why—”

  “Well,” he said, “I couldn’t ask you to do that. I’d appreciate it, of course, but—”

  “You don’t have to ask,” I said. “I’d simply be doing it as a matter of civic duty. After all, if you can make the financial sacrifices entailed in accepting the appointment, I certainly should be willing to say a word here and there.”

  “Well, he said. “That’s certainly very nice of you. It’s nice of you to feel that way.”

  He sat looking down at his desk for a moment, rocking back and forth in his swivel chair. He sighed, shook his head, and looked up.

  “Kossy,” he said. “You dirty son-of-a-bitch.”

  “I meant it,” I said. “Just that and nothing more. And no strings attached.” And I did mean it.

  “I know,” he said. “That’s what makes you such a son-of-a-bitch. It’s indecent, God damn it. If you had a spark of humanity in you, you’d offer me an outright bribe.”

  I laughed, and he joined in. Rather tiredly, I thought. He pushed a cigar box across the desk, held a match for me. His hand trembled, and he drew it away quickly.

  “Now, about young Talbert,” he said. “I assume you’re here in his interests? Well, I’m willing to do everything I can, Kossy. The boy is more to be pitied than condemned, in my opinion. He’s made a tragic mistake, a very serious one, but I can’t regard him as a criminal in the ordinary sense of the word. I—”

  “And of course, he’s been very cooperative,” I said. “We can’t overlook that, can we, Clint?”

  He creaked back and forth in his chair, his hands folded on his stomach, his eyes studying me gravely. I folded my hands on my stomach, rocked back and forth in my chair and frowned at him. He scowled, and leaned forward.

  “That has all the earmarks of a very nasty insinuation, Kossy. Are you implying that the boy’s constitutional rights were violated?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “I can’t even think all those big words without getting tangled up. All I’m saying is that you sweated that kid until he didn’t know his ass from an adding machine. He’d have sworn that he killed Christ if you told him to.”

  “Well,” he said, “that’s one murder we didn’t have to inquire about.”

  I laughed and said he was certainly right. Someone laughed and said he was certainly right. I took the cigar out of my mouth, and studied it. And studied it. Damn him, the dirty stinking—. No, he hadn’t meant what he had said. But he had said it. Damn him, damn him, da—

  “Kossy,” he said, “that was a rotten thing to say. I’m thoroughly ashamed. Please forgive me.”

  “What the hell?” I said. “I needled you pretty hard. Anyway, you didn’t say anything. I wasn’t even listening to you. Now—”

  “Kossy, my friend. I—”

  “I said you didn’t say anything!” I said. “Get me? I wasn’t listening to you. I—I—God damn, you call this a cigar? You ought to serve corned beef with it.”

  “All right, Kossy,” he smiled. “Okay, boy.”

  “Now, getting back to this alleged confession, Clint. I’ll tell you how I feel about it. The boy didn’t have an alibi; he was known to have had relations with the girl. All in all, and with the newspapers turning on the heat—that’s one thing I can’t figure out, incidentally—”

  “Oh, the newspapers,” he shrugged. “I never pay any attention to ’em, Kossy.”

  “Well, that just about makes you unique,” I said. “At any rate, you jumped to the entirely erroneous conclusion that the boy was guilty and you felt justified in, uh, urging him to admit it. Insisting that he admit it until he couldn’t hold out any longer. You were just doing your job, as you saw it, but—”

  “You’re dead wrong, Kossy. Naturally, I talked to the boy at some length, but there was certainly no duress involved. He was as entirely free to maintain his innocence as he was to admit his guilt. It’s his own confession, told of his own free will in his own words.”

  “That’s what you believe,” I said. “You couldn’t prosecute him if you didn’t believe it. But take a tip from me, Clint. Don’t go into court with that confession. You go into court with that, and I’ll rip you to pieces.”

  “Oh, well,” he said. “Of course, if you want to make a jury case out of it, have the boy treated like some hardened criminal…”

  “What did you have in mind?” I said.

  “Well, I certainly didn’t contemplate anything like that, Kossy. Now, he’s your client, of course, and I wouldn’t want to urge any course of action upon you. But I thought you and I might just talk it over quietly with one of the juvenile justices, someone like old mother Meehan, and I’m sure her honor would give very serious consideration to any recommendations.”

  “Such as?” I said.

  “Well”—he pursed his lips—“state industrial? Until he attains his majority?”

  “Huh-uh,” I said.

  “We-el. You may well be right, Kossy. I’m inclined to feel that you are. If the boy wasn’t responsible for what he did, and, frankly, how can you hold a mere child responsible, why he certainly shouldn’t be punished. He isn’t bad; he’s only sick. He’s sorely in need of treatment. Perhaps a brief stay in one of our state hospitals—I see no reason at all why he shouldn’t be fully restored and ready to return to society within, oh, possibly eighteen months; well, a year, then. Or even nine months. I believe I can guarantee an outside maximum of nine months. I believe I can explain to the court that it’s largely a matter of rest and quiet, having time for reflection and—”

  “Huh-uh,” I said. “Absolutely no.”

  “You name it, then. What’s your best offer, Kossy?”

  “Complete dismissal. Unqualified exoneration. The boy was excited, overly tired. He didn’t realize what he was saying.”

  “Nonsense. No, siree. No, by God!”

  “That’s it,” I said. “And, Clint, that still leaves it plenty bad for the boy. It leaves it lousy for him and his parents. If he walked out of the place this minute, he’d still be getting the rawest deal a kid could get. He’ll suffer for it the rest of his life. Think of it, Clint! Think of what it’s going to mean to him at school, and after he leaves school, starts looking for a job, or when he meets some nice gal and wants to get married.…Would you want a child of yours to run around with a kid who was the prime suspect in a rape-murder case? Would you want him on your payroll? Would you want your daughter to marry him? Would you want to associate with him yourself? Don’t say it, Clint. Don’t tell me people will forget. They’ll forget, all right—that he wasn’t convicted. It’s like the old song: the words are ended but the melody lingers on. And it’ll get louder and uglier wherever he goes, whatever he does, as long as he lives.”

  “That’s what you say. I feel otherwise. Mind you, now”—he held up a hand—“mind you, my
mind isn’t closed on the matter. You show me something, just anything at all that might cast a reasonable doubt on his guilt, and I’ll be most happy to consider it. You’ll find me unusually receptive, Kossy. I’ll be just as pleased as you are. But, hell, I can’t—”

  “Let him go, Clint,” I said. “It’ll still be bad enough.”

  “So? Aren’t you being remiss then in asking me to discharge him? Shouldn’t you prove him innocent beyond any shadow of a doubt? Is anything less fair to him?”

  “Clint,” I said. “How many of these sex murderers are ever run down? You can’t type them on modus operandi; they’re not peculiar to any particular group or class. They look like you and me and everyone else, and they are you and me and everyone else. The corner grocer and the chain-store executive, the bum and the big business man, the choir singer and the dice hustler, the minister, the prize fighter, the guy who mows your lawn and the guy who—”

  “Kossy. I think you must have misunderstood me. I said nothing about your producing the guil—another suspect. That isn’t what I said at all.”

  “Isn’t that about what it amounts to?”

  “Not at all. We have evidence of his guilt. I merely pointed out that without something to dispel that evidence, some reasonably concrete proof of innocence, my hands were tied. You can see that, Kossy. You can’t conscientiously expect me to drop the case. It wouldn’t be fair to the boy.”

  He reached for the cigar box again, raised his eyebrows at me. I shook my head.

  “I’ll get him off, Clint,” I said. “I’ll get a verdict or a dismissal. You ain’t got a God damn thing but the confession, and I’ll rip it to pieces. It’ll have more holes in it than a whores’ convention.”

  He laughed. “Ah, Kossy. I’ll bet you do take my hide off, at that. However, I don’t think I’d count too much on getting him off.”

  “Let him go, Clint. I know you want to.”

  “I can’t, Kossy. It’s simply unthinkable.”

  “Let him go. Give him a clean bill of health. It’ll still be bad, but it’s better than anything else.”

  “I can’t. Understand me, Kossy? I can’t!”

  I hadn’t actually expected him to. Just hoped. His case might not be too strong, but it was stronger than mine, and with all the newspapers raising hell, keeping the deal spotlighted…

  No, he couldn’t do it.

  I picked up my briefcase from the floor, and stood up. “All right, Clint,” I said. “I guess that takes care of everything for the present. Now, if I can have a little chat with the boy…”

  “Certainly, certainly.” He punched a button on his desk. “I’ll tell the matron to clear out and see that you’re not disturbed. Incidentally, I think you’ll see that we’ve done everything possible to make things pleasant for Bob.”

  “I’m sure of it,” I said. “Now, about that civil court appointment, Clint. I’m really going to pour the coal on that. I’m only sorry I didn’t get busy on it sooner.”

  “Kossy,” he said. “I…well, I just don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Nuts,” I said. “Thank me? You don’t even know anything about it.”

  “Why don’t we have lunch some time soon? I’ll give you a ring.”

  “You’d better let me call you,” I said. “You know how it is. I never know what’s going to crop up until the very last minute.”

  “What about Sunday? You’re not busy on Sunday. Come out for dinner and spend the afternoon with us. We haven’t had a good talk in a long time.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’d love to. Give me a raincheck, will you? Some other time? I’m kind of tied up for the next few weeks.”

  His smile faded. He turned and stared out the window, spoke with his back turned to me. He was thinking of that “Christ murder” remark.

  “You’ll never forget that, will you?” he said. “You can’t forget it.”

  “Forget what?” I said.

  “I don’t know why I said it, Kossy. You know I’m no antiSemite. I’d give anything in the world if I hadn’t said it. I know there’s no use in saying I’m sorry, but—”

  “Sorry?” I said. “What about? What are you supposed to have said? I didn’t hear you say a thing, Clint.”

  11

  I. Kossmeyer

  The kid seemed quite contented and at peace with the world. They usually are that way after a hard sweating. They’ve been down through hell and come up the other side, and they’re still right there on the brink, but it seems nice. No more questions. No more loud voices and bright lights. No more scowls and frowns. Nothing but smiles and friendliness, quiet and rest. You’ve done the “right thing,” see? And possibly it is the right thing, but it’s still wrong. Guilty or innocent, it’s wrong. It’s difficult to place a rope around a man’s neck: the law, slowly evolving through the centuries, winding its way up through dungeons and torture chambers, emerging at last into the sunlight, intended it to be difficult. Now, in suffering the law to be put aside, in placing the rope where others could not place it, in retreating to the evil chaos of no-law, you have done the “right thing,” and you are rewarded for it. And so, too, are the men like Clinton rewarded, men who achieve the surface right through the depthless wrong. Convictions: those are the sole criteria in judging the Clintons. For the law has changed, but people have not. They are still lingering back in the shadows; thumbs turned down on the fallen, hustling wood for the witch-burner, donning their bedsheets and boots at the first smell of blood.

  …There was a portable radio going in the window. The table was loaded down with fruit and candy bars and potato chips, and he had a stack of comic books two feet high. He was reading one of the comic books when I went in, turning the pages with his finger tips since he had a coke in one hand and a banana in the other.

  He went on reading it, answering me absently, apparently unconcerned with what had happened and what might happen. He was all right now. Miraculously, he had been snatched up from the abyss. He did not want to leave the present, to look back from it or beyond it.

  He inquired about his folks: why hadn’t they come to see him.

  I said that they’d wanted to, but I’d felt they’d better not. They were badly upset. It would be hard on everyone concerned.

  “Well,” he said, idly. “I guess maybe that’s right. I guess maybe they better wait.”

  He turned a page of the comic book. He read it, the coke and banana moving alternately to his mouth, and turned another one.

  “Wait for what, Bob?” I said. “Until you serve your sentence or until you get out of the nut house?”

  “What?” he said.

  “Listen to me, Bob,” I said. “I—Bob!”

  “Yeah?” He frowned, fretfully, without looking up. “I’m listening, ain’t I?”

  I snatched the comic book out of his hand and threw it across the room. I brushed the banana into the wastebasket, and tossed the coke after it.

  He said, “Hey! What’d you do—”

  “Shut up!” I said. “I’m asking all the questions, get me? I ask the questions and you give the answers, and you have your mind on ’em when you do it. Do you understand that, Bob? I asked you if you understood that!”

  Some of the vagueness went out of his eyes. He nodded sullenly, a little fearfully.

  “All right,” I said. “Question number one: why did you lie to me that first night I talked to you?”

  “Lie? I didn’t tell you any lie.”

  “Who did you lie to? Come on, spit it out! You told me you didn’t kill Josie Eddleman and you told the district attorney that you did. Now which was the lie?”

  “Well, I—Mr. Clinton said—”

  “To hell with what Mr. Clinton said. I don’t give a fast-day fart for what he said. Did you lie to me? Did you kill that girl?”

  He shook his head. “Huh-uh. O’ course, I didn’t.”

  “You lied to Mr. Clinton, then. If you didn’t lie to me you lied to him. Isn’t that
right, Bob? Both stories couldn’t have been the truth. If you told me the truth, you didn’t tell him the truth. Isn’t that right?”

  He hesitated.

  I said, “Well, how about it?”

  “Well, uh, you see”—his eyes wavered—“I was kind of mixed up. I wanted to tell him the truth, but I was mixed up. So he said, well, maybe it was this way an’ that way, how did I know it wasn’t, and maybe it could have been. And I said, maybe it was, I guess it was. I was all mixed up, and he wasn’t. So I told him the truth like he said.”

  “I see,” I said. “You told him you killed Josie, and that was the truth, and you told me you didn’t kill her and that was the truth.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s—”

  I slapped him across the mouth.

  I swung my hand back and forth, slapping him palm and backhand.

  The matron pounded on the door and rushed in. I told her to beat it.

  “I’m slapping hell out of a client,” I said, “and I don’t want to be disturbed.”

  “I’m going to report this to Mr. Clinton!”

  “You do that,” I said. “Take your time going and don’t hurry back.”

  She slammed out, and of course she didn’t return. Clint knew what I was doing; he couldn’t object to it. With slight variations and with, naturally, a contrary purpose, I was doing exactly what he’d done.

  I led the boy over to the sink, telling him, hell, not to cry: I was just trying to be his friend and he’d thank me for it some day. I helped him to wash his face, kidding and joshing until he began to smile a little.

  “That’s swell,” I said. “That’s my boy. Now we’ll start getting somewhere. We’re not mixed up any more, now, are we?”

  “N-No, sir.”

  “You didn’t kill Josie, did you?”

  “No, sir. I guess I— No, sir.”

  “You told me the truth. What you told Mr. Clinton was not the truth.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You were out at the golf course at noon. Before noon and for some time afterwards.”