A Matter of Conviction

by Ed McBain

  “So you’re working for Ralphie, huh?” Frankie said.

  “That’s one way of putting it, I suppose,” Hank answered.

  “It looks open and shut to me,” Frankie said. “The Birds ain’t got a chance.” He paused. Casually, he said, “Have they?”

  “I think we’ve got a good case against them,” Hank said.

  “Yeah, well, I hope you give it to them good. Between them and the niggers, there ain’t much choice who you should hate most. But that’s a contest I think the Birds win.”

  “Do you have trouble with the colored gangs, too?” Hank asked.

  “Man, that’s our middle name, trouble. And that’s where we are, right in the middle. The wops look down on us, and the niggers look down on us, and where does that leave us? It leaves us holding the sloppy end of the stick. It’s like we don’t belong to the human race, you dig? We’re something crawled out of the sewer. The niggers think they’re hot stuff because all of a sudden they’re wearing white shirts and ties instead of carrying spears in the jungle. Man, my people are a proud race. Puerto Rico ain’t no damn African jungle. And what makes the wops think they’re so high and mighty? What’d they ever have? Mussolini? Big deal! This guy Michelangelo? Okay. But what the hell have they done recently?” Frankie paused. “You ever hear of a guy named Picasso?”

  “Yes,” Hank said.

  “Pablo Picasso,” Frankie said. “He’s the greatest artist ever lived. I went all the way down the museum to see that show of his they gave. Man, he sings! And you know something? He got the same blood in his veins that I got in mine.”

  “You went to the museum to see the Picasso exhibit?” Hank asked, surprised.

  “Sure. Gargantua went with me. Remember?”

  “Sure, I remember. That was the night we bopped with the Crusaders.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. When we got back from the museum.”

  “Who are the Crusaders?”

  “This gang from the West Side,” Frankie said. “Colored guys. A bunch of bananas. We sent them home crying that night.”

  “I tell you the truth,” Gargantua said, “a lot of them Picasso pictures I didn’t understand.”

  “You’re a meatball,” Frankie said. “Who says you got to understand it? All you got to do is feel it. This guy paints with his heart. He’s got his heart spread all over the pictures. You can feel it. Hell, he’s Spanish!”

  The bartender brought the beers to the table, eying Hank curiously. He wiped his hands on his apron and then went back to the bar.

  “Did you know any of these fellows personally?” Hank asked. “The ones who killed Morrez?”

  “I know Reardon and Aposto,” Frankie said. “That bastard Reardon is the one I really hope you get.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, Aposto’s—you know—not all there. I mean, this is a kid you tell him to push his mother in the river, like he’ll do it. He’s a little … feeble-minded? Retarded? You know.” He tapped his temple with a circling forefinger. “This is legit because my kid brother’s in his class at school, so he knows.”

  “What school is that?”

  “S.A.T. Manhattan. The School of Aviation Trades, you know? My brother goes there.”

  “And your brother’s in Aposto’s class, and he says Aposto’s retarded, is that right?”

  “Yeah. But Reardon ain’t. Reardon is a shrewd son of a bitch. Tower, he calls himself. Tower. I’ll give him a tower, that bastard.”

  “Why don’t you like him?”

  “Because I don’t like punks who try to behave like wheels, that’s why. I mean, this guy is nothing,” Frankie said. “A real nowhere. But he’s always trying to make a name for himself. He’s got this idea, you know, that the big-time racketeers are watching him. He makes a name in a street club, and he thinks he’s going to control the waterfront next week. He’s got holes in his head. I mean, man, this bopping is sheeeeeet, you know. I mean, real sheeeeet, man. But he keeps trying to get a rep. So now he’s got one. Now he’s got a rep going to take him straight to the electric chair. You want to know something?”

  “What’s that?”

  “We had a bop scheduled for the night Ralphie was killed. The Birds knew all about it. Gargantua met with their warlord, this cat called Diablo, a Spanish name, how do you like that? So it was all set up. The project on a Hun’ Twenty-fifth. At ten o’clock. The Birds knew this. And if the Birds knew it, then Reardon knew it, too. He makes it his business to know everything that happens on that club. So what happens? Early in the night, he rounds up this idiot Aposto, and this kid Di Pace who I never heard of, and he stages his own private raid into our turf. Man, don’t you read it?”

  “He was looking for personal glory?”

  “Sure, what else? He’s trying to make a rep for himself. Naturally, he didn’t expect the cops to get him. Nobody expects to get busted. He figured he’d come in here and raise a little hell, and then go back to the Birds and get elected president or something. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that was just how it happened. Reardon conned those two shmoes into coming in here. Hey, you ain’t touched your beer.”

  Hank picked up his glass and drank from it.

  “Good, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, very good,” Hank said. “You talk as if you know Reardon very well.”

  “I once give him a hole on the side of his head, I bet he’s still got the scar,” Frankie said.

  “When was this?”

  “In a bop. I hit him and he went down, so I kicked him in the head. I was wearing combat boots, I mean anybody goes bopping without combat boots is out of his mind. So I musta split his head wide open.”

  “Why’d you kick him?”

  “Because he was down, and I didn’t want him to get up again.”

  “Do you kick anyone who’s down?”

  “Anybody.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know that if they get me down, they’re gonna kick me. You ever been stomped, mister?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it ain’t so much fun. Unless maybe you like getting stepped on all over. Me, I don’t like it. So I do it to the other guy first. This way, when he’s down, he stays down, and he can’t hurt me. Reardon hit me with a ball bat once, you know that? He almost broke my leg, that bastard. Man, I got a thing for him, believe me. If you don’t kill that son of a bitch, I’m gonna do the job for you some day.”

  “And get busted?” Hank asked.

  “Not me. Besides, if I got busted it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Then I could stop all this gang bopping. Maybe getting busted is the only way out. Or else getting drafted in the Army. ’Cause, man, this bopping is strictly sheeeeeeet.”

  “Then why do you do it?”

  “You got to live, don’t you? You got to protect your rights.”

  “Which rights?”

  “Your turf, man, your territory. Otherwise they be coming in here all the time—like they done with Ralphie. You got to stop them, don’t you? You can’t let them step all over you.”

  “They seem to feel that you’re the intruders,” Hank said.

  “Yeah, big intruders,” Frankie said. “All we try to do is get along, so all we get is trouble. With guys like Reardon around, you can’t even blow your nose. He’s a real troublemaker, that bastard. All the time. Right from when he first joined the Birds. You remember that time at the pool, Gargantua?”

  “Yeah, I remember that time, all right. They almost drowned Alfie.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last summer,” Gargantua said. “There’s a pool on First Avenue. The Jefferson Pool. It’s open in the summertime, you know? It’s near the school—only the school’s on Pleasant Avenue. This is on First, around a Hun’ Thirteenth. So we used to go over there sometimes. It gets pretty hot around here in the summer, you know.”

  “Yeah, but we don’t go there no more,” Frankie said. “They made sure of that. We go over there, it’s like taking our lives in our h
ands. Even if we didn’t have to pass through their turf to get there. That pool is like a battleground. We step in there, man, there’s fireworks. Like that day last summer.”

  “Di Pace was there, you know that?” Gargantua said to Frankie. “I remember that was the first time I seen him. He just moved in the neighborhood that winter, I think. Yeah, he was with Reardon that day.”

  “I don’t remember him,” Frankie said. “Aposto was there, I know, because I remember he threw the first punch. But I don’t think I ever seen this Di Pace kid. It don’t matter, anyway, because it was Reardon started it all. He was the one.”

  “What happened?” Hank asked.

  “Well, it was a real hot day,” Frankie said. “Hotter even than today. We were hanging around doing nothing and somebody said let’s go over to the pool. So we got our trunks and towels, and we grabbed a cab to take us—”

  “You took a taxi?”

  “Sure, there was six guys, so what did it cost us, a dime each or something? Including the tip? We hopped in the cab and went right to the pool. Then we changed in the locker room and went outside. All we had on our minds was getting in that water.…”

  (The temperature on this August day is going to break all records previously set for the city of New York. It is now noon, with the sun at its apex directly overhead, and the thermometer on the brick wall of the bathhouse reads 100.6. As the Puerto Rican boys emerge from the locker room to the pool area, they are assailed by the hum of voices which seems to hover over all bathing places, indistinct, a rumble like the ocean itself, interspersed with the clearer sounds of water splashing, laughter, the reverberating deep click of the diving board.

  The pool, a glistening blue rectangle, ripples with reflected sunlight. It is crowded on this Saturday, but then it is usually crowded on weekends. Most of the people in the pool and surrounding it are young. There is the usual amount of horseplay, the duckings, the shrieking girls being tossed into the water, the water fights with young girls sitting astride the shoulders of their mock stallions.

  The entrance of the Puerto Rican boys does not evoke an immediate show of antagonism. They walk carefully and cautiously, because they are, after all, in enemy turf no matter how allegedly neutral the ground. But their entrance has gone largely unobserved. There are six boys in all. One is brown, another white, and the remainder range the tan spectrum. The dark boy, Mike, speaks only Spanish. He has no desire to learn English. He is afraid that if he learns to speak English well, he will be mistaken for a Negro. The fact that he speaks Spanish, then, is a badge of pride to him. He has resisted every effort of his schoolteachers to get him to learn English. Another of the boys, Alfredo, cannot speak English too well, either, but it is not through lack of trying. He is an intelligent boy who, being taught by born-and-bred New Yorkers who do not speak Spanish, finds it difficult to learn. He is also a devout Catholic, and he wears a slender gold chain about his throat, from which dangles a miniature gold cross. The boys enter the water. They stay close to each other, swimming in the tight formation of a convoy. The lifeguard glances at them disinterestedly and then goes back to chatting with a blonde who seems determined to lose the top half of her two-piece swimsuit.

  Tower Reardon straightens up from the water fountain where he has just taken a drink. He is a tall, excellently proportioned boy who lifts weights. He ordered the weights from the back cover of a comic book. He worked in a grocery store for a full summer to earn the price of the weights. His father makes fun of his efforts. “I never needed to lift weights,” he says. “I worked on the goddamn railroad laying ties, and my muscles are real. Yours are fake. All weight lifters are muscle-bound.” He has warned Tower that he will throw out the “whole shooting match” the first time any of the neighbors complain. And so Tower is very careful when he’s working out. He works out with the weights every evening for two hours. He lifts them toward the ceiling, and then he deposits them very gently on the floor because he does not want the people in the apartment below to yell about his making noise. Sometimes he walks into the kitchen, spans his mother’s tiny waist with his powerful hands and lifts her off the floor. He enjoys exhibiting his strength to her. His mother makes a big fuss of being annoyed. “Put me down, you idiot,” she will say, but he knows she enjoys it, too. Secretly, Tower believes he is stronger than his father. He would like to test it someday. He would like to Indian-wrestle with him or something. But his father is always too busy watching the ball games on television. And besides, Tower is afraid his father might, just might, beat him in a test of strength and then he’d never hear the end of the goddamn railroad stories. And, too, he does not wish to lose face before his mother.

  His mother does not know he belongs to a street gang. She constantly warns him about the dangers of Harlem. She cautions him against accepting cigarettes from strangers. “That’s how they get you started on dope,” she tells him. “You be careful, Artie. There are a lot of dope peddlers in Harlem.” Tower has not told her that he once tried marijuana. He has not told her, either, that the only reason he hasn’t tried the bigger stuff is because he is afraid it will milk his strength. He likes to be strong. He enjoys his nickname. Tower. He chose it himself and later pretended the gang members gave him the name.

  He walks to the edge of the pool and looks out at the water, spotting the Puerto Rican boys at once. The only boy he knows is Frankie Anarilles, with whom he has had some close calls but never any real trouble. He knows, however, that Frankie is president of the Horsemen. He knows, too, that—by unspoken word—the pool is supposed to be neutral territory. In any case, there has never been any trouble here before. He is not now consciously looking to promote trouble. But seeing the Puerto Rican boys in the pool somehow makes him angry.

  He gestures toward Aposto, who comes dripping out of the pool to where Tower stands.)

  BATMAN: What’s the matter, Tower?

  TOWER: Look in the water.

  (Batman looks. He sees nothing. He does not very often catch things the first time around. He reacts slowly to thought and to suggestion. The only time he is really alert is when he is in a fight. He fights completely by instinct, and his instinct is that of an animal. He derives great pleasure from fighting because he knows he does it well. He knows, too, that it is possibly the one thing he does well. He has never been interested in school, but not because he realizes that his very low I.Q. sets him apart from other more intelligent boys. It simply doesn’t seem very interesting to him, and he would quit if he could find a good job, but nobody seems to want to hire him. He is a student at Manhattan Aviation Trades where he is totally inept in both his academic and manual-training classes. His teachers, however, do not consider him a “difficult” student. He never causes any trouble in the classroom. They have not the slightest inkling that he belongs to a street gang and that in the heat of battle he is capable of killing. They figure him for a slow child. When they are questioned a year later, after the killing of Rafael Morrez, they will all express honest shock and astonishment that a quiet kid like Anthony Aposto could “go berserk.” This quiet kid, Anthony (Batman) Aposto, does not want to go berserk. This quiet kid wants to fight because everybody tells him he is a good fighter. That’s all he wants to do. He would make an excellent soldier and would probably be decorated for valor in the field. Unfortunately, he is too young to be drafted. Unfortunately, he will kill another very real—to him—“enemy” long before he is old enough to be drafted.)

  BATMAN: I don’t see nothing in the water, Tower. What is it? Something in the water?

  TOWER: Over there. Spics.

  (Batman looks. He sees the Puerto Rican boys, but he is not angered by the sight of them. He looks for some hidden meaning in Tower’s words but can find none. Are the spics peeing in the water or something? Is that it?)

  BATMAN: Yeah, I see them. What’re they doing, Tower?

  TOWER: You like swimming with them?

  BATMAN (shrugging): Gee, I don’t know. I didn’t even notice them until you
told me. Gee, what’re they doing, Tower?

  TOWER: Get Danny.

  BATMAN: Danny? Yeah, he was over there with a girl. I’ll get him, Tower. I’ll get him.

  (He leaves Reardon. Reardon stands at the edge of the pool, his hands on his hips. He counts the Puerto Ricans. Six of them. He wishes there were more Thunderbirds around. But he knows that if there is trouble, they will materialize from nowhere. This is one of the advantages of gang membership. He knows now that there will be trouble. But in his mind he is not the person who is going to cause the trouble. The trouble, he feels, began the moment the Puerto Ricans came into the pool. They are the troublemakers; he is innocent; he is vindicated.

  Danny approaches. He has been swimming at the pool all summer long. He is burned to a deep brown, and his red hair is lighter than it is in the wintertime.)

  DANNY: What’s up, dad?

  TOWER: Take a look. San Juan’s polluting the water.

  DANNY: Huh? (He glances at the pool.) Aw, what the hell, let them swim. It’s hot enough to melt concrete.

  TOWER: We let them in, they’ll be bringing over the whole West Side.

  DANNY: They been here before. Relax, Artie.

  TOWER (correcting him): Tower.

  DANNY: Yeah. So relax, Tower.

  TOWER: I don’t like the idea.

  DANNY: So who are you? Head of the Immigration Department or something?

  TOWER: I’m me, and I don’t like it, and I say we kick them out.

  DANNY: So go ahead and kick them out. What the hell do you want from me? I was talking with a girl there.

  TOWER: I didn’t know you were turkey.

  DANNY: What?

  TOWER: You heard me.

  DANNY: What’s this got to do with being turkey? They want to swim here, who gives a damn?

  TOWER: This pool is in our turf.

  DANNY: But they always swim here! They’re always coming over. Look, I got a girl over there and—

  TOWER: Sure, go ahead, turkey.

  DANNY: Now wait a minute—

  TOWER: I never knew you to punk put of something before. I thought you was a down cat.