A Matter of Conviction

by Ed McBain

  The alarm clock rang at seven-thirty, as it did every morning. This gave Hank forty-five minutes in which to wash, shave, dress and eat before leaving the house at eight-fifteen. This morning, however, this morning which was starting wrong after a night that had ended wrong, there was a difference. There had apparently been an interruption of electrical service sometime during the night. The power had been off for close to a half hour. When the electric alarm clock began buzzing at seven-thirty, it was really seven-fifty-eight. Hank did not make the discovery until twenty minutes later when he tuned in the kitchen radio to see what the weather would be like that day. When he heard the correct time, he left his breakfast and rushed into the bathroom to shave, opening a welt on his cheek and cursing the Bentons and their lousy party, his wife and her frigid love-making, the goddamn inefficient electric company, and even the radio station which had finally apprised him of the truth. He stormed out of the house wanting to know why Jennie wasn’t awake yet, sprinted all the way to the subway station, and did not arrive at the office until almost ten o’clock. Once there, he discovered that everything that had gone before (and by this time he was beginning to relent the poxes he’d levied on those nice Bentons, his passionate wife, the excellent service of the electric company and the public-mindedness of the radio station) had only been preludes to the true catastrophe waiting at the office.

  On Friday afternoon, after the Rafael Morrez case had been assigned to him, he had accepted transcripts of the boys’ interrogation as recorded by the stenographer on the night of the slaying, taken them to his office and put them into his top desk drawer. This morning, this glorious fouled-up morning, the transcripts were gone. It was ten-fifteen, and the weather seemed determined to break all previous records set for heat, and the goddamn transcripts of the police interrogation were gone. He began searching the office. By ten-thirty, he was soaked with perspiration and ready to force open one of the suicideproof windows and leap to the pavement below. He called the building’s custodian and tried to find out whether or not a cleaning woman had inadvertently dumped the typed sheets into a wastepaper basket. He called the stenographic pool and asked whether or not some harebrained typist had picked them up of her own initiative. He buzzed Dave Lipschitz and asked if anyone had been snooping around his office that morning. He searched the office a second time, and then a third time. It was eleven o’clock.

  He sat behind his desk and stared glumly at the wall, drumming his fingers on the desk top, ready by this time to commit first-degree murder himself.

  It was then that Albert Soames, that bright young bastard, strolled into the office with the transcripts under his arm. Hope you don’t mind, Hank, he’d said, just wanted to check them over myself since I was the one who went up to the precinct on the night of the murder, here they are, safe and sound, this looks like a fine case, I’ll bet you enjoy it, I can read the sentence for you now even before you begin, death in the electric chair, my friend, death in the electric chair.

  Looking over the record of the questioning now, wondering what he could do to prevent the next hammer blow of fate from falling on this completely nutty morning, Hank was inclined to agree with Soames’s prediction.

  The People were prosecuting for Murder One in the Morrez case, and first-degree murder carried with it a mandatory death penalty. The indictment requested by the bureau seemed fair to Hank. Murder One was either premeditated murder or murder committed during the enactment of a felony. In the case of the People versus Aposto, Reardon and Di Pace—and especially in the light of what they’d said on the night of their arrest—there was little doubt in Hank’s mind that the murder was premeditated. Nor did this appear to be a case wherein the thin line of technicality separated Murder One from Murder Two, a case wherein the premeditation consisted of having drawn a revolver twenty seconds before firing it.

  These boys seemed to have gone into Spanish Harlem deliberately and coldly. They had not slain in the heat of passion with intent to inflict only grievous injury. They had come there, it appeared, prepared to kill, and maliciously, blindly, they had struck down the first likely victim. If ever the People had an open-and-shut case of murder in the first degree, this was it. Why, even the lieutenant in charge of the detective squad had ripped holes in Aposto’s and Reardon’s obvious lies.

  Nodding to himself, Hank turned to the first page of the interrogation of Danny Di Pace and began reading it.

  DI PACE: Is someone calling my mother?

  LARSEN: That’s being taken care of.

  DI PACE: What are they going to say to her?

  LARSEN: What do you expect them to say?

  DI PACE: I don’t know.

  LARSEN: You killed a kid. You want them to tell her you’re a hero?

  DI PACE: It was self-defense.

  The telephone on his desk rang. Reluctantly, Hank put aside the transcript and reached for the phone, feeling an immediate sense of premonition. On this morning of all magnificent mornings, he would not be surprised to learn that the bank had foreclosed his mortgage, that the Hudson had flooded and swelled into his living room, and that …

  “Henry Bell,” he said.

  “Hank, this is Dave on the desk. There’s a woman out here. Says she wants to see you.”

  “A woman?” The sense of premonition was stronger now. He found himself frowning.

  “Yeah,” Dave said. “Okay to send her in?”

  “What does she want to see me about?”

  “The Morrez kill.”

  “Who is she, Dave?”

  “Says she’s Mrs. Di Pace.”

  “Danny Di Pace’s mother?”

  “Just a second.” Dave’s voice retreated from the phone. “You Danny Di Pace’s mother?” Hank heard him ask. The voice came back to the mouthpiece. “Yeah, that’s who she is, Hank.”

  Hank sighed. “Well, I’d planned on seeing her anyway, so it might as well be now. Send her in.”

  “Roger,” Dave said, and then he hung up.

  Hank replaced the phone on its cradle. He was not looking forward to the woman’s entrance. In the preparation of his case, he’d have summoned her to the office once, and then only to ascertain facts of the boy’s background. Her unexpected arrival now rattled him. He hoped she would not cry. He hoped she would understand that he was the People’s attorney, hired by the citizens of New York County to defend their rights, and that he would defend those rights as vigorously as her son’s attorneys defended his. And yet he knew she would cry. He had never met her, but she was the boy’s mother. She would cry.

  He took the typed sheets from his desk top and put them into a drawer. Then he sat back to wait for the mother of Danny Di Pace, hoping against hope that there would not be another scene to add to this day which had begun so badly.

  She was younger than he’d expected. He realized that the moment she stepped into the small waiting room outside. She came toward the inner office then, and he saw her face completely for the first time, and he felt as if he’d been struck with something hard and solid, and he suddenly knew that all the events of last night and this morning had been building toward this one shattering practical joke. Shock followed instantly on the heels of recognition to render him completely speechless as he sat behind his desk.

  Hesitantly, Mrs. Di Pace said, “Mr. Bell?” and her eyes met his, and then the recognition crossed her face, too, followed instantly by the same shock, a visible thing which knifed her brown eyes and then sent her jaw slack. She shook her head in disbelief and then asked, “Hank?” hesitantly, and then “Hank?” more firmly.

  “Yes,” he said, and he wondered why this had to be and he knew with sudden intuition that he was being sucked into a whirlpool where drowning was a distinct possibility, where he must swim or drown, swim for his life.…

  “Are you … Mr. Bell?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I … Have you … have you changed your name? Is that it?”

  “Yes. When I began practicing law,” he said. He had
changed his name for many reasons, most of which were deeply rooted and unconscious and which he could not have explained rationally if he’d tried. He did not try to explain now. The change of name was a fait accompli, a legal decree reading “ORDERED, that upon compliance with all the provisions herein contained, the said petitioners shall, on and after the 8th day of February, 1948, be respectively known as and by the names of Henry Bell, Karin Bell, and Jennifer Bell, which they are authorized to assume and by no other names.”

  “And you’re a district attorney?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “And my son’s case is in your …”

  “Sit down, Mary,” he said.

  She sat, and he studied the face he had once known so very well, the face he had held in his youthful hands—Wait for me, wait for me—it was the same face, more tired perhaps, but the same face that had belonged to Mary O’Brien at nineteen, the brown eyes and the near-red hair, red with a burnished glow, the aristocratic nose, the sensual mouth, the utterly exotic mouth, he had kissed that mouth.…

  He had thought of this meeting many times. In the great American fantasy of star-crossed lovers meeting on wind-swept streets, he had imagined meeting Mary O’Brien again one day, and he had thought some of the old love they had known for each other would still be there, and perhaps their hands would touch briefly and they would sigh wistfully over a life together that had never been and never would be—and then once more part. And now, here was the meeting, and Mary O’Brien was the mother of Danny Di Pace, and he didn’t know what the hell to say to her.

  “This is … very strange,” he said. “I had no idea …”

  “Nor I.”

  “I mean, I knew you were married. You wrote to me and told me you were getting married and … and maybe you even mentioned the name, but that was such a long time ago, Mary, and I never.…”

  “I mentioned the name,” she said. “John Di Pace. My husband.”

  “Yes. Maybe you did mention the name. I don’t remember.”

  He could remember every other detail of the day he’d received her letter, could remember the wet drizzle clinging to the airfield in the north of England, the sounds of the Liberators warming up outside, the white plumes of their exhausts sifting through the early-morning rain, the neat red and blue diagonal lines on her airmail envelope, the hurried scrawl of her hand, and the address, Captain Henry Alfred Belani, 714 5632, 31st Bomber Squadron Command, U. S. Army Air Corps, A.P.O. New York, New York, and the words:

  Dear Hank—

  “When you asked me to wait for you, I said I didn’t know. I said I was still very young. I’ve met someone, Hank dear, and I’m going to marry him, and I hope you will understand. I don’t want to hurt you. I have never wanted to hurt you.…

  And the sudden angry roar of the bombers taxiing across the blackened field to take off into the wind.

  “I didn’t remember the name,” he said.

  They were both silent.

  “You’re—you’re looking very well, Mary,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t know you still lived in the old neighborhood.”

  “Harlem? Yes. Johnny’s store is there.” She paused. “My husband. Johnny.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “Hank …”

  “Mary, I don’t know why you came here, but—”

  “Oh, Hank, for the love of God, are you going to kill my son?”

  She did not cry. In that moment, he wished she would have cried. She hurled the words across the desk instead, her face dead white behind the startling brown eyes and the full sensual mouth.

  “Mary, let’s understand each other,” he said.

  “Please. Let’s.”

  “What happened between us was a long time ago. You’re married now, and I’m married, and we both have children.”

  “And you’re prosecuting my child for murder.”

  “Mary—”

  “Aren’t you, Hank?”

  “Yes, I am,” he said. “I work for this county, and it’s my job to protect the people of this county. Your son committed murder, and as attorney for the—”

  “My son had nothing to do with it! It was the others!”

  “If that’s true, I’ll find out before the trial.”

  “He didn’t even belong to the gang!”

  “Mary, believe me, this is not a vengeful office. The case will be investigated thoroughly before it comes to trial. If there are mitigating circumstances—”

  “Oh, stop it, stop it, Hank, please. This isn’t what I expect from you. From a stranger, yes, but not you, not Hank Belani.”

  “Bell,” he corrected gently.

  “I’m Mary,” she said softly, “the girl you once knew. Mary. Who loved you once … very dearly.” She paused. “Don’t tell me about mitigating circumstances.”

  “What do you want me to tell you, Mary?”

  “That my boy won’t be sent to the electric chair …”

  “I can’t promise you anything like—”

  “… for something he didn’t do!” she concluded.

  The room went silent again.

  “No one pays with his life for something he didn’t do,” Hank said.

  “You really believe that, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes. I really believe it.”

  She stared at him long and hard. Then she said, “I don’t know you any more, do I?”

  “A lot’s happened to both of us,” he said. “We can’t expect …”

  “It’s funny,” she said tiredly. “I came into this office expecting a stranger—and I found one. I don’t know you at all. I don’t even know whether or not you’d allow what happened between us to influence what might happen to my son. For all I know—”

  “Don’t say it, Mary!” His voice was harsh. “I’m a lawyer, and I believe in justice, and your son’ll get justice. When I got your letter, I was hurt, yes. But that was a long time ago, and everyone grows up.”

  “Will my son grow up?” she asked.

  And to this there was no answer.

  He went into Holmes’s office that afternoon. As chief of the Homicide Bureau, Holmes was familiarly referred to by most newsmen as “Sherlock,” but everyone on the staff called him Ephraim, which was his true given name. He was a short man with white hair and spectacles, his round face giving him the appearance of a television comic, an impression which could not have been further from the truth; Ephraim Holmes was a man almost totally devoid of any humor.

  “What is it, Hank?” he asked immediately. “I’m busy.”

  “The Morrez case,” Hank said without preamble.

  “What about it?”

  “I’d like to drop the assignment. I’d like you to assign someone else to the prosecution.”

  Holmes looked up suddenly. “What in hell for?” he asked.

  “Personal reasons.”

  “Like what?”

  “Personal reasons,” Hank repeated.

  “You getting scared?”

  “No. Why should I be?”

  “I don’t know. All the newspaper fuss. The bastards are pretrying the case already. Screaming for the death penalty. I thought it might be giving you the jumps.”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “Then what is it? Don’t you think we’ve got a case?”

  “I think we’ve got a very strong case.”

  “For Murder One?”

  “Yes, for Murder One.”

  “Then what the hell’s the matter?”

  “I told you. It’s something personal. I’d like to disqualify myself, Ephraim. I’d appreciate it.”

  “None of these kids are related to you or anything, are they?”

  “No.”

  “Are you leary about asking for the death penalty for young kids?”

  “No.”

  “Are you prejudiced against Puerto Ricans?”

  “What?”

  “I said—”

  “I heard you.
What kind of a question is that?”

  “Don’t be so high and mighty. Hatred doesn’t choose its jurisdictions. You may be one of those who feel the city’s better off without the likes of Rafael Morrez. You may feel the murder was justified.”

  “That’s absurd,” Hank said. “And I don’t think anybody really feels that way.”

  “No, huh? You’d be surprised.” Holmes paused. “You still haven’t convinced me that I should reassign this case.”

  “Let’s simply say that the defense may concoct some yarn about the unconscious prejudice of the People’s attorney.”

  “Then you don’t like Puerto Ricans?”

  “I wasn’t speaking of that kind of prejudice.”

  “Then what kind?”

  “Ephraim, I can’t explain this to you. I want out. I want to drop the case. I’ve barely begun working on it, so there’ll be no real loss of time or energy. And I think the office will benefit by my withdrawal.”

  “You think so, do you? And whom would you suggest I assign this to?”

  “That’s your job, not mine.”

  “Have you ever known me to snow you, Hank?”

  “No.”

  “All right then. When I tell you you’re the best damn prosecutor on this staff, you’ll know I’m not just making noises. This is an important case, more important than you—”