A Matter of Conviction

by Ed McBain

  The question startled him.

  What else can you do? he asked himself. You don’t allow lepers to roam the streets, do you?

  No. But you don’t kill them either, he reasoned. And even though no cure is known, you nonetheless keep searching for a cure.

  Come on, he told himself. You’re not a psychologist, and you’re not a sociologist. You’re a lawyer. You’re concerned with the legal aspects of crime. You’re concerned with punishing the guilty.

  The guilty, he thought.

  He sighed and looked at his watch. Five minutes had gone by. He lighted another cigarette. He was flicking away the match when a young sailor came out of the building, squaring his white hat.

  “Nice day, huh?” the sailor said.

  “Lovely,” Hank answered, and he thought he could now safely assume that Louisa Ortega was free to talk to him.

  “Man, I’m hungry,” the sailor said. “I ain’t had breakfast yet. Any good places to eat around here?”

  Hank shrugged. “You can try a Hundred Twenty-fifth Street,” he said.

  “Thanks. Which way is that?”

  “Uptown. That way.” Hank pointed.

  “Thanks a lot, Mac,” the sailor said. He paused on the stoop. “You, uh, going up there?”

  “Yes,” Hank said.

  The sailor winked. “You better have breakfast first. You’re gonna need all the strength you got.”

  “I’ve already had breakfast,” Hank said, smiling.

  “Okay,” the sailor said. “Well, I be seeing you. Stay out of jail.” And he walked off toward Park Avenue.

  Hank put out his cigarette and went upstairs again. This time Louisa opened the door for him. She was wearing a flowered pink wrapper belted at the waist. Her long black hair hung over her shoulders. She wore no make-up and no shoes. Her face was thin, but her body was well curved, and she smiled somewhat embarrassedly and said, “Come een,” and Hank entered the apartment.

  “I’m sorry I keep you waitin’,” the girl said. She closed the door behind him.

  “That’s quite all right,” Hank said.

  “Si’ down,” Louisa said.

  He looked around the room. A rumpled, unmade bed was against one wall. A rickety wooden table and two wooden chairs rested against the opposite wall alongside an old gas refrigerator and a sink.

  “The bed is mos’ comfortable,” she said. “Si’ there.”

  He went to the bed and sat on the edge of it. The girl sat at the other end, pulling her legs up under her.

  “I’m tired,” she said. “I di’n get to sleep all night. He was bodder me every fi’ minutes.” She paused. With complete frankness, she said, “I’m a hooker, you know.”

  “I assumed.”

  “Sí.” She shrugged. “Iss nothin’ wrong with hookin’. I radder sell my body than sell dope or somethin’. Verdad?”

  “How old are you, Louisa?” Hank asked.

  “Nineteen,” she said.

  “Do you live with your parents?”

  “I got no parents. I come here from dee islan’ to stay with my aunt. Then I move out. I like it better to be free, entiende?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Iss nothin’ wrong with hookin’,” Louisa said again.

  “That’s your personal affair,” Hank said, “and it doesn’t concern me. I want to know only what happened on the night of July tenth. The night Rafael Morrez was killed.”

  “Sí, sí. Pobrecito. He wass a nice kid. I remember once he wass up here when I wass with a frien’. He wass play his music. It wass very dark in the apar’ment, an’ my frien’ an’ me we wass on the bed, an’ Ralphie he wass play his music.” She chuckled. “I think maybe he got a little excited, Ralphie.”

  Hank listened and wondered what weight the testimony of an admitted prostitute would carry with a jury.

  “I give him one free one time,” Louisa said. “Ralphie, I mean. He wass a good kid. Iss not his fault he wass born blind, verdad?”

  “What happened on the night he was killed?”

  “Well, we were si’n downstairs on the stoop. Me, an’ Ralphie, an’ this other girl—she’s a hooker, too, her name is Terry. She’s a Spanish girl, too. She’s older than me, abou’ twenty-two, I guess. She wass suppose to meet one of her friens a little later. An’ it looked like it wass rain soon, you know? So we were si’n there, her an’ me, talking. An’ Ralphie was on the bottom step, jus’ listening. He wass a good kid.”

  “What were you talking about?”

  “Well, Terry wass tellin’ me what happened to her with a cop of the Vice Squad, how that happened that afternoon.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Well, let me see. I remember the sky wass gettin’ dark all at once.…”

  (The clouds are banking high over the Hudson, spreading in a black canopy over the tenements of Spanish Harlem. A wind is starting in the canyon, sweeping through the street. It lifts the skirts of the two girls standing on the front stoop, talking in Spanish. Louisa is fully made up now, but she does not look cheap or garish. Neither does Terry. Both are well-dressed, perhaps two of the best-dressed girls in Harlem. Both look fresh, both look passionate, with a dark-eyed, dark-haired exotic beauty that promises much to the seeker of erotica. It is common knowledge along this street that they are prostitutes. The boys have very little to do with Terry or Louisa, except to bandy sex talk about. The boys consider it beneath them to sleep with a prostitute, and even the virgin boys on the Horsemen would rather pretend to experience than to find that experience with a prostitute. The girls’ friends are usually men who drift uptown because they have heard you can find girls like Louisa and Terry in Spanish Harlem. They very often go home with something more than a gratified sex appetite. Muggings are common in the streets of Harlem, and a man who has come there for sex is not likely to complain later to the police about a criminal assault. The girls do not encourage the muggings, nor are they affiliated with the muggers. Theirs is a strict business operation, a body for a bill. They euphemistically, and in an unbusinesslike way, refer to their bed partners as “friends.” This applies to anyone with whom they commit the act of intercourse, except the man they happen to be living with at the moment, if they are indeed living with anyone. This person serves as part-time pimp and part-time lover. He is referred to as “my old man.” Some of the girls’ friends are respectable businessmen from New Rochelle or the suburbs of Long Island, but they are never entertained in Spanish Harlem. These men are visited at various places of assignation throughout the city. One of Louisa’s friends is a book publisher who maintains an apartment in Greenwich Village away from his large home in Roslyn. He likes the fresh young look about Louisa. Terry can remember going on a party in the stockroom of a machine-parts factory in the Bronx. There was no bed. She entertained twelve men, one after the other, on a blanket spread on the stockroom floor.

  The transient customers, the ones who approach the girls in bars, generally satisfy their needs in Harlem. The girls will use an empty apartment which they will rent for the evening or for the hour from an old crone who derives her income alternately through supplying the apartments and through baby-sitting for mothers who work. Louisa maintains her own apartment, and she does not live with an “old man.” But she is afraid the Vice Squad will crack down on her one day. This is her constant fear. She has never had trouble with the police, but she knows that trouble will come one day. She talks freely about her profession to various cops she knows, and even to some she doesn’t know. But the Vice Squad cop is a shadowy figure to her, and she dreads picking up a man, taking him to her apartment, and then being arrested by him at the crucial, specified-by-law point when one “exposes her privates.”)

  TERRY: He look jus’-like anyone you would meet. He wass wear a summer suit, an’ a straw hat. La mera verdad, era guapo.

  LOUISA: Wha’ did he say to you?

  TERRY: He said he wass lookin’ for a good time. He said I look like the kind of girl who could show
him a good time.

  LOUISA: So what did you tell him?

  TERRY: I said it depends on what he consider a good time.

  (Rafael Morrez sits on the bottom step of the stoop, half listening to Terry’s discourse. His eyes are black in his thin, sixteen-year-old face. He wears a sport shirt with a bright Hawaiian print. Despite the heat, he wears corduroy trousers, the color of which does not match the basic color of the shirt. He is not dressed sloppily, but he has about him the slightly askew look of a blind person which, on a person who can see, might indicate a hasty dresser. The sounds of the street are magnified to him. He knows, too, that it is going to rain soon. He can smell rain and feel it. He has been blind since birth, but every other part of his body is highly sensitive to everything happening around him. There are some who hold that Morrez can even smell danger. But there is danger coming within the next few minutes, and he does not seem to be aware of it. The skies are black and swollen now. It will rain soon. It will rain heavily.)

  LOUISA: So what happened?

  TERRY: Mama Teresa got me an apartment. I ask for the money first. He give it to me. La mera verdad, era un buen tipo. Until I took off my dress.

  LOUISA: What did he do?

  TERRY: He said he wass from the Vice Squad, and he is going take me to jail. Then he took back his money and put it in his wallet.

  LOUISA: But di’n you ask for identification?

  TERRY: He showed it, he showed it. No cabe duda, he wass a detective. I wass very scared. La mera verdad, I never been so scared in my life. Then he says to me maybe we can work it out.

  LOUISA: What did he mean, “work it out”?

  TERRY: What you think?

  LOUISA (shocked): An’ did you?

  TERRY: Seguro. You think I want to go to jail?

  LOUISA: I would never have done thees. Never, never. Nunca, nunca, nunca.

  TERRY: He had me caught! What you want me to do?

  LOUISA: Quién sabe, but I would never have done thees. Nunca, nunca! I would rot in jail first!

  (The girls fall silent. The street, too, has become silent, anticipating the storm. On the steps, Rafael Morrez tilts his head skyward, as if listening for something. Louisa turns to him.)

  LOUISA: Ralphie, why you don’ play us some music?

  TERRY: Ándale, Ralphie, some music.

  (At the girls’ request, Morrez reaches into his pocket, and at that instant the three boys enter the street. There is trouble in their stride, and Louisa recognizes it instantly. She starts down the steps, and then sees that the boys have spotted Morrez.)

  LOUISA: Mira! Cuidado!

  TOWER: Shut up, you spic whore!

  (Rafael turns toward the boys. He stands suddenly. Something glints in the hand he has taken from his pocket. He faces the boys blankly.)

  TOWER: There’s one of them!

  BATMAN: Get him!

  (A blade flashes, penetrates, flesh rips in silent protest as the knife gashes upward from the gut. And now the other knives descend, tearing and slashing until Morrez falls like an assassin-surrounded Caesar, crumpling to the pavement. The knives withdraw. Blood spatters like early rain to the sidewalk. From the opposite end of the street four boys begin running toward the intruders.)

  TOWER: Go, go!

  (The three boys begin running down the street toward Park Avenue. Louisa comes off the steps, running to the felled Morrez.)

  LOUISA: Ralphie! Ralphie! Madre de Dios! Virgencita mía!

  (And suddenly it is raining.)

  “What happened then?” Hank asked.

  “I hold his head in my lap. He iss … iss bleeding everywhere, everywhere—they rip him all up. Then the police come. Police all over the street. Sirens going, police chasing the others, and police asking questions—always the police. When it is too late.”

  “Did Morrez have a knife?” Hank asked flatly.

  “A knife? A knife?”

  “Sí. Un cuchillo.”

  “Un cuchillo? Ralphie? Qué hace con un cuchillo? A knife? No, this iss not so. Who said this to you?”

  “The boys said he pulled a knife and attacked them.”

  “This is a lie. He stood up when I yell, and he turn to face them. But it is they who attack. No, he did not have a knife.”

  “Then tell me something, Louisa. What was it he took out of his pocket? What was it that glittered?”

  “Glit—Oh! Oh! The harmonica, you mean? You mean the harmonica on what he plays his music? This is what you mean?”

  Gargantua was waiting downstairs when Hank came out of the building. Another boy was with him. The second boy wore dark glasses and a high-crowned, narrow-brimmed hat. His eyes were invisible behind the glasses. A straggly mustache clung to his upper lip. The suggestion of a Dizzy-kick formed a sparse triangle of hair between his lower lip and his chin. He was very fair, with the almost alabaster coloration of a high-born Spaniard. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and a narrow blue tie and dark-blue trousers. A tattoo mark was on his right forearm. His hands were big, and he wore a wrist watch on his left wrist. He stood with his hands behind his back, surveying the sidewalk and the street. He did not turn to look at Hank as he approached.

  “Here’s the D.A. now, Frankie,” Gargantua said, but the boy did not turn. “Did you find her?”

  “I found her,” Hank said. “She was very helpful.” He stopped before the two boys. The one called Frankie was still looking off up the street disinterestedly, the dark glasses effectively hiding his eyes.

  “This is Frankie Anarilles,” Gargantua said. “He’s president of the Horsemen. It was him who named the club. I don’t think I got your name, mister.”

  “Bell,” Hank said.

  “Frankie, this is Mr. Bell.”

  Frankie nodded. “Nice to know you, man,” he said. “What brings you to the turf?”

  “Rafael Morrez. I’m prosecuting the case,” Hank said.

  “Oh, yeah. Gone. Good luck with it. Kill them, man.”

  “We can tell you things about them goddamn Thunderbirds,” Gargantua said, “would make you lay down and die, believe me.”

  “Listen, I don’t know about you two,” Frankie said, “but I’d like a brew. Come on. I’ll buy.”

  They began walking toward Fifth Avenue. Both boys walked with a peculiar headlong shuffle, their hands in their pockets, their heads and shoulders erect, their eyes looking straight ahead. He felt emanating from the two the same casual security that Hollywood celebrities wear. They knew who they were, and they wore their notoriety with aloof indifference but with a measure of pride.

  In an attempt at making conversation, Hank said, “Do you like Harlem?”

  Frankie shrugged. “Yeah. I like Harlem.”

  “You do?” Hank said, faintly surprised.

  “Sure. Sure I like it.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean why? I live here. Everybody knows me here.”

  “Don’t they know you anyplace else?”

  “Oh, they know me when I crack somebody’s head, all right.” He chuckled. “The wops know me, all right. That ain’t what I mean, man. I mean, like when I’m here, when I’m walking the streets here, they know me, and I feel like myself, you dig? I’m Frankie. Everybody knows I’m Frankie. Everybody knows I’m president of the Horsemen.”

  “That can get dangerous, can’t it?” Hank asked.

  “Oh, man, like sure it can get dangerous,” Frankie said, and there was pride in his voice now. “I mean, it’s like with anything else. You get a rep, a name, then you got to watch out.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, man, it’s the same with everything, ain’t it? Like any big shot, not that I’m a real big shot. But anybody who makes it, there’s always people who are ready to knock them down. You know what I mean? So I’m president of the Horsemen, and there’s lots of people would like to knock me down. That’s all. It’s the same all over this country, ain’t it?”

  “In a sense, I suppose,” Hank said.
>
  “But they ain’t never gonna knock you down,” Gargantua said.

  “You can say that again, man. They got to get up real early in the morning to jap this boy. Hey, how about here?” Frankie said.

  They had walked up past 111th Street to a small bar on Fifth. The bar boasted its name in gilt letters on two front plate glass windows: “Las Tres Guitaras.”

  “The Three Guitars,” Frankie said. “We call it Las Tres Putas. That means The Three Whores. That’s because you can usually find hookers hanging around in here. But it’s a nice place. They give you a good glass of beer. You like beer?”

  “Yes,” Hank said.

  “Good. Come on.”

  They walked into the place. The bar ran the length of the room on the left side. There were booths opposite it, and a shuffleboard setup alongside the hot table at the far end of the room. Three men were standing at the bar drinking when Hank walked in with the boys. They downed their drinks instantly, sidled past Hank and left.

  “They think you’re a T man,” Frankie explained. “Everybody in Harlem got the jitters about junk. They see a stranger, they automatically figure he’s a Fed looking to make a narcotics pinch. All the bulls in the barrio they know. But a stranger who’s dressed nice—bang, he must be a Fed. And they don’t want to be anywhere around if there’s going to be a narcotics pinch. Because sometimes the guy who’s pinched, he’ll like throw the stuff away, you know? The deck, I mean. The heroin. You know what I mean, or am I just talking?”

  “I know what you mean,” Hank said.

  “Okay, so they’ll ditch the junk, and it might land near you, near your feet or something. And the next thing you know, you’re arrested for holding, or maybe even for intent to sell if there’s enough of the junk in the deck. So if you spot a T man, the best thing is to get the hell out, man, go, go. Let’s sit in this booth here. Hey, Miguel, let’s have three brews, huh? Good beer here. You’ll like it.”

  They sat. Frankie’s hands were immense on the table.