A Matter of Conviction

by Ed McBain

  DANNY: I am! I just can’t see any sense—

  TOWER: Okay, forget it. You want me to go over and sound them all by myself, that’s what I’ll do. Me and Batman’ll take care of it.

  DANNY: Look, there’s six of them. You go over there …

  TOWER: Never mind. I shoulda known better than to ask somebody ain’t even on the club.

  DANNY: What’s that got to do with it? I just can’t see—

  TOWER: Forget it. Come on, Batman.

  DANNY: Wait a minute.

  TOWER: What?

  DANNY: You go sound them, there’ll be a rumble. Right here. I can guarantee it. That’s it. I’m telling you.

  TOWER: I ain’t afraid of a rumble.

  DANNY: Neither am I.

  TOWER: So? You coming or staying?

  DANNY: I ain’t afraid. You know that, damnit!

  TOWER (sarcastically): Sure, I can see you’re not afraid.

  DANNY: All right, all right. Damnit, I was talking to a girl. All right, come on, let’s get it over with.

  (They start around the edge of the pool toward the other side, where the Horsemen are emerging from the water. As they walk, we notice other boys watching them, and then getting to their feet to join them, so that the long march around the edge of the gleaming blue pool becomes a sort of recruiting march, as if the bugle has been sounded for formation of ranks and the Thunderbirds are massing. It is a terrible thing to watch them, because there is the silence of a vigilante committee about them, the menacing deadly purposefulness of a lynch mob. Tower, Batman, and Danny are in the front rank. As they walk, the other boys fall in behind them, not in strict formation, but nonetheless presenting the formidable appearance of an army on the move. The lifeguard on his high chair looks over to the boys. He is not a cop, and he doesn’t feel like getting involved with a bunch of hoods. He stays where he is, studying the water for drowning people, of whom there are none at the moment. The hum over the pool begins to subside, and then it is gone altogether. Barefoot, bare-chested, the Thunderbirds—at least a dozen of them now—cross the pool area. Trouble is in the air. The silence of trouble is a louder noise than the gay hum of voices which preceded it. Five of the Puerto Rican boys have gone over to the fountain on that side of the pool. Only one—Alfredo—remains by the edge of the pool, his feet dangling in the water. He does not see the Thunderbirds until they are almost upon him. He scrambles to his feet and looks frantically for the other members of his party, but he is surrounded before he establishes contact. The boys ring him in, and he faces them with his back to the pool.)

  TOWER: What are you? A little girl?

  ALFREDO: A gorl? What you minn?

  TOWER: You’re wearing a necklace. I thought only girls wore necklaces.

  ALFREDO: A neck—(His hand goes up to the chain and cross. He is trying to see past the boys to where his friends are, but the circle is tight and unbending.) Tha’s no necklace. Tha’s Jesús Cristo. Don’ you got no religion?

  TOWER: Oh, you got religion, huh? He’s got religion, boys.

  ALFREDO: Come on, wha’ you wann here, anyway?

  TOWER: We want to see how religious you are, spic.

  ALFREDO: Hey, don’ call me—

  TOWER: We want to see if you can walk on the water, spic.

  ALFREDO: Walk on dee—

  (Batman shoves out at him, and Alfredo hurtles backward into the water. The Thunderbirds are in the pool almost instantly, splashing wildly as Alfredo surfaces. Alfredo is frightened now. He is surrounded by a dozen boys, and his feet are not on the ground. He has never been a good swimmer; he came here today only to be one of the boys. Now the boys have deserted him and …)

  TOWER: Get him! Get him!

  (The Thunderbirds reach for Alfredo. He strikes out at them, but his punches are ineffectual in the water. Batman seizes him from behind.)

  TOWER: Shove him under!

  (Batman pushes down on Alfredo’s shoulders, shoving him beneath the surface of the water. Alfredo pushes up again, his mouth open for air, and another boy strikes him, and then Batman seizes his hair and pushes down with all his might. Another boy closes in, adding the force of his arms to Batman’s. A bubble breaks the surface of the water. The pool is terribly still. The lifeguard weighs his responsibility—someone is likely to drown out there—and then decides his responsibility does not extend this far. He comes down off the chair, though, and sidles away from the crowd in search of a cop.)

  DANNY: Okay, let him up. That’s enough.

  TOWER: Hold him!

  DANNY: You’re going to drown him! Let him up!

  TOWER: I said hold him!

  (Another air bubble breaks the surface. The boys stand in a silent circle. Beneath the water, held tightly by Batman and the other boy, Alfredo struggles, but he cannot break the grip. Then he stops struggling.)

  DANNY: Let him go! He’s drowning, can’t you see?

  TOWER: He’s faking! He’s holding his breath.

  DANNY: Damnit, you’re gonna kill him! Tower, let him go!

  TOWER: Shut up!

  (Beneath the surface, Alfredo is beginning to go limp, his eyes opening wide in terror. From the water fountain, Frankie senses the sudden silence of the pool. He turns, takes one look and then says “Mira!” and the other Puerto Rican boys turn, and then they break into a trot toward the pool’s edge. They do not stop at the lip. Led by Frankie, they dive into the water, striking first at Batman and the boy holding Alfredo under. Alfredo, released, surfaces, grabs for the lip of the pool, and feebly sucks in air. In the pool, the boys are fighting now, cursing loudly. The girls around the edges of the pool are screaming. The lifeguard rushes back with a policeman. The sound of his whistle splits the air.)

  “Then Tower started it all, is that right?” Hank said.

  “Damn right, he started it,” Frankie said. “And we weren’t doing nothing, either. Just swimming. So he got us all hauled down the station house, that dumb jerk. And for what? Just so he could be a big man.”

  “Did Danny actually resist Tower’s command?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did he try to save this boy Alfredo?”

  “I didn’t even know he was there,” Frankie said. “I just found out today, same as you did.”

  “He was there,” Gargantua said. “Some guys told me he was yelling they should let Alfie go. That’s what I heard around, anyway. He ain’t really a Thunderbird, you know. He just kind of hangs out with them.”

  “He oughta choose his friends better,” Frankie said. “They all stink, every one of them. You ever meet the president of that club?”

  “No. Who’s he?” Hank said.

  “A guy named Big Dom. He’s really a little shrimp. You could fit him in your side pocket.” Frankie shook his head. “I don’t know where they dug him up, I swear to God. Ain’t a president supposed to have leadership qualities? Not that I’m a big leader, but this Dominick character is strictly for the sparrows. Argggh, they’re a nowhere club altogether.”

  “You’d do good to send them three to the chair, Mr. Bell,” Gargantua said.

  “Yeah,” Frankie agreed, “you’d do real good.” He turned to face Hank. His eyes were still invisible behind the dark glasses, but suddenly he was no longer the Picasso-lover with the proud Spanish blood. His face seemed to go suddenly hard, and his voice, though issuing from his mouth in a monotone, was menacing. “You’d do real good, Mr. Bell.”

  “It wouldn’t be nice for them to get away with this,” Gargantua said.

  “No,” Frankie said. “A lot of people might not like it.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. The two boys stared at him, as if trying to make their meaning clear without the necessity of further words.

  Finally Hank rose. “Well,” he said, “thanks for all the information,” and he reached into his back pocket for his wallet.

  “The beers are on me,” Frankie said.

  “No, let me—”

  “I said the beers are on
me,” he said, more firmly this time.

  “Well, thank you, then,” Hank said, and he left the bar.

  The mother of Rafael Morrez did not arrive home from work until 6 P.M. She was a seamstress in the garment district. She had come to Harlem from a town in Puerto Rico called Vega Baja, where she had worked in a one-room factory that made children’s shirts. From the outside of the building, the place where she had worked had not resembled a factory at all. There was a grilled iron railing, and then a pastel-colored building set back from a small courtyard where wild orchids grew. Violeta Morrez would begin work at eight in the morning, and she worked through until six o’clock in the evening. She had better working conditions and higher wages in New York, that was true. But in Puerto Rico, at the end of the working day, she would go home to her son Rafael. In New York she could no longer do that. Her son Rafael was dead.

  She had come to New York at the request of her husband, who had been a dishwasher in a restaurant on Forty-second Street. He had preceded her to the mainland by a year, living with some cousins of his and saving enough money finally to rent his own apartment and to send for his wife and his son. She had joined him reluctantly. For whereas she knew that New York was a city of opportunities, she was very fond of Puerto Rico and dreaded leaving familiar safe surroundings. Six months after she arrived in the city, her husband took up with another woman, leaving her and the boy to find their own way in the city.

  Now, at thirty-seven—two years older than Hank’s wife Karin—Violeta Morrez looked like a woman of sixty. Her body was thin and her face was gaunt, only a slight hint of beauty lingering about the eyes and the mouth. She wore no make-up. Her black hair was pulled back severely into a tight bun.

  They sat in the “parlor” of her fourth-floor walk-up, and there was a stillness to the room as they faced each other. Her eyes, wide and brown in the hollow face, stared at Hank with a frankness that made him uneasy. It was like looking into the eyes of immense sorrow, he realized, a sorrow too great for empathy, a sorrow that demanded solitude and resented solicitude.

  “What can you do?” she asked. “What can you possibly do?”

  She spoke English well, with only a trace of an accent. She had told Hank earlier that she’d studied the language for a year before joining her husband in New York. She had gone to school at night in Puerto Rico.

  “I can see that justice is done, Mrs. Morrez,” Hank said.

  “Justice? In this city? Do not make me laugh. There is justice here only if you are born here. For the others, there is nothing but hatred.” He listened to her voice, and he thought, There is no bitterness in her words, even though the words themselves are bitter. There is only an unutterable sadness, a despair, a surrender to sorrow.

  “This is a city of hatred, señor. There is hatred in this city’s heart, and it is a bad thing to feel.”

  “I’m here to help your son’s case, Mrs. Morrez. Anything you can tell me about—”

  “To help his case, yes. But to help him, no. You can never help Rafael again. It is too late to help him. My son is dead, and the ones who killed him are still alive. And if they continue to stay alive, there will be more killings because these are not human beings, these are animals. These are animals full of hatred.” She paused. Her eyes held his. Like a child asking her father why the sky was blue, she said, “Why does this city hate, señor?”

  “Mrs. Morrez, I …”

  “I was taught love,” she said, and suddenly her voice was wistful, a tenderness creeping into it, a gentleness which for a moment overwhelmed the sorrow. “I was taught that to love is the best thing. I was taught this in Puerto Rico where I was born. It is easy to love there. It is warm there, and slow, and the people say hello to you on the street, the people know who you are, they know you are Violeta Morrez, they say, ‘Hello, Violeta, how are you today, have you heard from Juan? How is your son?’ It is important to be somebody, don’t you think? It is important to know that you are Violeta Morrez and that the people in the street know you.” She paused. “Here, it is different. Here it is cold, and here everyone rushes, and here there is no one to say, ‘Hello, Violeta,’ or to wonder how you are feeling today. There is no time for love in this city. There is only hatred. And hatred has robbed me of my son.”

  “Your son will have justice, Mrs. Morrez. I’m here to see to that.”

  “Justice? There is only one justice, señor. And that is to kill the murderers the way they killed him. It would be justice to put out their eyes and then come at them with knives, the way they came at my Rafael in his darkness. This is the only justice for animals. And they are animals, señor, make no mistake. If you do not send these murderers to the electric chair, there will be no safety any more. I tell you this from my heart. There will be only fear. Fear and hatred, and they will together rule this city, and decent people will hide in hallways and pray to God.

  “My Rafael was a good boy. He never did a wrong thing in his life. There was the spirit of gentleness about him. His eyes were dead, señor, but there was great life in his heart. It is easy to feel, you know, that a blind person needs to be watched always. It is a mistake we make. I made this same mistake. I watched him, I cared for him, always, always. Until we came here. And then his father left, and I had to take a job. One must eat. And so Rafael went on the street while I worked. And it was on the street that he was killed. A good boy. Dead.”

  “Mrs. Morrez—”

  “There is only one thing you can do for me and for my Rafael. Only one thing, señor.”

  “What’s that, Mrs. Morrez?”

  “In this city of hatred, you can add my hatred,” she said, and there was still no bitterness in her voice, only an emptiness, a haunting preoccupation with cold facts too complex to grasp. “You can add this hatred I shall feel as long as I live. And you can kill the boys who killed my Rafael. You can kill them and rid the streets of animals. This is what you can do for me, señor.

  “God forgive me, you can kill them.”

  Karin was in the living room, talking on the phone, when he arrived home that evening. He went directly to the bar, poured a Martini from the waiting pitcher, kissed her briefly on the cheek, and then listened to her end of the conversation.

  “Yes, Phyllis, of course I understand,” she said. “Well, babysitters are always difficult to come by, and I know I did give you rather short notice. We did so hope you could come, though. We wanted you to meet—Yes, I see. Well, there’ll be other times. Certainly. Thanks for calling. And give my regards to Mike, will you? ’Bye.”

  She hung up and then went to Hank, putting her arms around his neck and giving him a real kiss. “There,” she said. “How’d the day go? May I have one of those?”

  He poured a drink for her, sighed and said, “The plot sickens. I go into Harlem, and I feel as if I’m dipping my hands into a quagmire. I can’t see the bottom of it, Karin. All I can do is feel around with my hands and hope I don’t hit any sharp rocks or broken bottles. I talked with one of the girls who was with Morrez on the night he was stabbed. Do you know what it was he pulled out of his pocket? The thing the defense claims was a knife?”

  “What?”

  “A harmonica. How about that?”

  “They’ll still claim their clients mistook it for a knife.”

  “And well they might have.” He paused. “This Tower Reardon is shaping up as a real prize package, if I can believe his enemies.” He paused again. “Karin, I don’t think you’d believe the situation in Harlem unless you actually saw it. It’s almost too goddamn illogical. These kids are like armies massed to attack, with war counselors and armories—and the same blind enemy hatred. Their uniforms are their jackets and their cause is as meaningless as the causes that motivate most wars. They don’t even have an over-all theme to hold over their heads as a banner, no ‘Make the world safe for democracy,’ or ‘Asia for the Asiatics’ or any of the tried-and-true slogans used to inflame good patriots into anger. Their wars are just a way of life. It’s
the only way they know. I mean, Harlem was a rotten place when I was a kid, but it’s more rotten now because something’s been added to the rottenness that comes with slums and poverty. It’s as if these kids, forced to live in a prison, have further subdivided their big prison into a lot of little prisons, creating arbitrary boundary lines, this is my turf, this is yours, you walk here and I’ll kill you, I walk there and I’m dead. It’s as if it wasn’t quite hard enough for them to begin with, they’ve had to make it harder by imposing a gridwork of minute ghettos upon the larger ghetto they were forced into. Do you know something, Karin? I think I could question them until I’m blue in the face, trying to find out why they fight. And I think they would tell me it’s because they have to protect their turf, or their girls, or their pride, or their national honor, or whatever the hell. And I think they really won’t know the answer themselves.”

  He paused and studied his glass.

  “Maybe there’s something to this ‘compulsive behavior’ idea, after all. Maybe all these kids are just sick.”

  “Sick, sick, sick,” Karin said.

  “It’d be funny,” he said solemnly, “if it weren’t so goddamn serious.”

  “I didn’t mean to …”

  “Karin, if those three boys hadn’t gone into Spanish Harlem to kill Morrez that night, I’m sure that three Puerto Rican boys, sooner or later, would have strolled into Italian Harlem and killed one of the Thunderbirds. I’ve heard them talking about their enemies. This isn’t kid cops-and-robbers stuff, Karin. When they say they’d like to kill someone, they mean they’d like to kill him. You can see it in their eyes.”

  “You can’t excuse murderers on the grounds that they one day might be victims.”

  “No, of course not. I was only thinking of what Mrs. Morrez said to me this evening. The mother of the dead boy.”

  “Yes?”

  “She said they were animals, the ones who killed her son. Are they animals, Karin?”

  “I don’t know, Hank.”

  “And if they are, who the hell put them into the forest they roam?”

  “The same could be said of any murderer, Hank. All human beings are a product of their society. But we nonetheless have laws to protect …”