by Ed McBain
“Yes. Then, of course, I met Mary. She’s a wonderful girl.”
“Yes.”
“And now my son is a murderer.” He shook his head. “If you understand it, Mr. Bell, please tell me. Because I don’t. I’ve wracked my brain trying to understand it, and I can’t. Jesus, I can’t! I can’t understand the damn thing!”
His face was in anguish now, and Hank felt he would begin crying at any moment. “Mr. Di Pace,” he said, “there are lots of things we …”
“Do you know what I’ve been doing ever since this happened?” Di Pace said. “I’ve been going over everything, everything we ever did, every word I ever spoke to my son, every slap I ever gave him, every present, every place I took him. I’ve been reliving his life. I’ve been going over it step by step, inch by inch, and trying to find out why he did this. Because if he did this thing, he’s not to blame. What did I do wrong, I keep asking myself. What? What? Where did I fail my son?”
“You can’t blame yourself for a slum environment, Mr. Di Pace. Danny might have been all right if …”
“Then who do I blame? Who do I blame for getting fired when I worked out on Long Island? Who do I blame for the decision to come back to Harlem? Mr. Bell, who do I blame for the fact that I’m a failure and my son is a murderer?”
“You’ve got a shoe store. You’ve got—”
“I’ve got a life that’s a failure, Mr. Bell. John Di Pace, failure. Even Danny knew it. Mary? Mary loves me. Whatever I want to do is all right with her. But you can’t expect the same love from a child. You’ve got to prove yourself to a child. And what did I ever prove to Danny? I can remember when he first found out I hadn’t been in the service. He came in one day and said his friend’s father had been a sailor, and he wanted to know what I had been. I told him I hadn’t been drafted. I told him I had a punctured ear drum. He asked me what that was, a punctured eardrum. I told him it was a hole in my ear through which poison gas could enter, that gas masks hadn’t been designed to stop this possibility. He said, ‘But weren’t you in the Army?’ I told him I wasn’t. ‘The Navy?’ he said. No, not the Navy either. ‘Then what? The Marines?’ No, not the Marines. ‘Nothing?’ he said. ‘You were nothing?’
“I was nothing, Mr. Bell. You were flying bombers over Germany, and I was nothing.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody wanted to go fight a war.”
“I wanted to. How do you explain a punctured eardrum to an eight-year-old kid who only wants to know that his father was a hero? I heard him outside one day a little while later. This other kid was telling him that his father had been on a destroyer and that it had been sunk by Japanese suicide planes. When he was finished, Danny said, ‘You should see my Daddy’s stamp collection. I’ll bet it’s the biggest stamp collection in the world.’ A stamp collector against a sailor on a destroyer that went down.”
“I don’t think that had anything to do with—”
“Do you have any kids, Mr. Bell?”
“Yes. A daughter. She’s thirteen.”
“Girls are easier. I guess you’re lucky.”
“They’re not so easy.”
“Do you ever get the feeling that you don’t know your own kid?”
“Sometimes.”
“I used to get that feeling a lot, even before this happened, before the—the killing, I mean. I used to look at Danny, and I saw him growing up before my eyes, and I knew that one day soon he’d be a man, and I didn’t even know him. And I used to wonder when I stopped knowing him, when he became something less than my son, and something more than my son, when he became this person called Danny Di Pace who was a person in his own right, a person very different from the two people who’d produced him. I used to wonder where he’d come from all of a sudden, this stranger who sat at the dinner table with us and told stories about friends I didn’t even know. Where did he come from? Who was he? My son? Why, my son was just a little thing I used to hold in my arms while giving him his bottle. Who was this—this man almost that I didn’t even know? Do you ever feel that way, Mr. Bell? With your daughter?”
“Yes,” he said uneasily. “Sometimes.”
“But girls are different. You don’t have to worry with girls. I read someplace that five times as many boys as girls are arrested each year. And with girls, it’s mostly sexual offenses. They don’t get into the more serious trouble. The beatings and the … the killings.”
“I guess you’re right,” Hank said.
Di Pace nodded. The room was silent. Then he said, “You know, I remembered something the other night. It just came to me out of the blue when I was sitting and thinking over the things we’d done and said. It was something that happened right after I lost my job. I remember I was out covering some bushes. We were going to sell the house anyway, we’d already decided to come back to Harlem, you see, but I don’t like to see living things die, and that was a bad corner in the winter, the way the wind used to rip around it, the bushes could have been damaged, so I covered them every year. This was in the fall, I can remember it was a very bright clear day, but with a nip in the air, you know those kind of days. I was outside working. I had on an old brown sweater, I remember.…”
(The housing development in which the Di Paces live is typical of the low-cost developments on Long Island. The house is priced at $11,990 and the Di Paces were required to produce a thousand dollars in cash when they first bought it. Monthly mortgage payments used to be $83, but they are now $101 because the house was finally assessed and also because the bank holding Di Pace’s mortgage says there is an escrow shortage, a term he does not fully understand. He does understand that the house is now costing him eighteen dollars more per month than he had figured on.
Di Pace’s house is a six-room ranch on a corner plot. The plot is seventy feet by one hundred feet as opposed to the sixty-by-one-hundred plots most of his neighbors own. But because the house is on a corner the back yard is really a side yard, and this disturbs Di Pace. He has always wanted a true back yard. The fact that he must barbecue on the side of his house where all the neighbors can see him embarrasses him. He is working in his side yard now, covering his bushes with tarpaulin. The houses of the development stretch in endless symmetry toward the horizon. There is a flawless blue sky overhead. The leaves on the spindly maples which sprout on the front lawns of all the houses are turning brown. There is a sharp wind, and it lifts Di Pace’s hair as he works. The sunshine is very bright. It is a good crisp fall day. It holds the death of summer and the promise of winter.
Di Pace works tirelessly and fastidiously. The brown sweater he is wearing is torn at the elbows and unraveling at the throat. But he likes this sweater. It was given to him by Mary years ago, when they were just kids going together. When he received it, it reminded him of an Army sweater. It smells of perspiration now, and there are streaks of paint on it from previous household chores, but it is a warm sweater and it fits him well. He has not gained a pound since the time Mary gave him the sweater. He knows he will never gain any weight or lose any. He is what he is, and he’ll be that until he dies.
When Danny approaches him, Di Pace does not look up. He continues working on the bush, securing the tarpaulin with cord, tying the cord tightly about the thicker lower stems. Danny is almost thirteen years old, a tall boy who is beginning to fill out, his awkward long-leggedness giving way to the well-proportioned body of a young man. He watches his father silently for a moment.)
DANNY: Pop?
(He has never called his father Dad. There is something effete in the word, he believes. He feels, too, an inadequacy in the word Pop. It does not express to him the father-son relationship he desires. He would like a word that expressed warmth and companionship and man-to-manness. “Dad” does not do that, and “Pop” is somehow lacking. He has thought often of calling his father Johnny. This, he thinks, would establish something between them. But he knows that his father would not like it, even though he has never discussed it with him. He knows intuitively that his fathe
r would not like it. And so, rejecting the word expressing a false relationship, eliminating the word for the relationship he desires, he has settled upon “Pop,” which fills but does not satisfy the need.)
DI PACE: What is it, Danny?
DANNY: Is it true?
DI PACE: What?
DANNY: That we’re moving?
DI PACE: Oh yeah. It’s true. Would you hand me that ball of twine?
(Danny hands his father the twine, watching him as he works on the bush. He would like to help his father. He can remember wanting to help his father ever since he was a little kid. When his father was painting, he would come out and ask if he could paint, too, and his father would invariably say no. He could understand this somewhat. His father is a careful and fastidious worker, and he does not like a child slowing down the work or making a mess. But still he wished he could have helped his father sometime.)
DANNY: Where … where are we going?
DI PACE: To Harlem.
DANNY: Where Grandma lives?
DI PACE: Near there. Yes. Give me that scissors.
(Danny hands him the scissors. He recalls that on the few occasions he did help his father it was always in the capacity of the person who handed him things or held things. In his mind, he has created a fantasy wherein he and his father are painting the side of the house, sitting on the same scaffold. He calls his father Johnny, and they crack jokes together and laugh together, and at lunchtime they sit on the scaffold and eat sandwiches Mary has made, and then Johnny says, “Well, back to the salt mines,” and they begin painting again. Occasionally, as they work, they begin singing. The song is spontaneous, and it stops just as quickly as it has started, usually ending on a laugh. At the end of the day, they lower the scaffold and then they back away from the job and, paint-smeared hands on dungareed hips, they survey their work. And Johnny says, “That’s a damn good job, son. Let’s go up to the center and get ourselves a couple of sodas.” It is a nice fantasy. It has never happened. It will never happen.)
DANNY: I don’t like Harlem much.
DI PACE: Well, you’ll get used to it, Danny. Your mother and I think it’s best for us to—
DANNY: I saw a beating there once.
DI PACE: When was this?
DANNY: When Grandpa died. When we went to the funeral. I was walking with Christina. We were going to get some ice cream pops.
DI PACE: You never told me this.
DANNY: They were chasing this colored kid. A whole bunch of them were after him. He tried to climb onto a car that stopped for a light. He tried to get away from them that way. But the car had no running board, and he hung to the door handle when the car started, and lifted his feet off the street, trying to hang on. But the car sped up, and he dropped off, and they surrounded him. They hit him with an ash can. I can remember him laying in the street, and the kids kept lifting up this ash can and throwing it down on his back, and the colored guy just kept laying there with his hands covering the back of his neck while that ash can went up and down, up and down, passing from hand to hand. Then the cops came.
DI PACE: You never told me this.
DANNY: And later, when I was walking with Christina, we were behind one of the kids, and he said, “Man, did you see me hit that jig? I musta split his head wide open with that ash can.” That was what he said. And he laughed. And the kid with him laughed, too. That was when Grandpa died. We went back to the funeral parlor then, and Grandpa was laying in the coffin. I began crying, don’t you remember? I didn’t cry for Grandpa up until that time. But I cried then.
DI PACE: I didn’t see you crying, Danny. I didn’t know my father meant that much to you.
DANNY: Pop, I don’t like Harlem.
DI PACE: Well, I haven’t got a job here any more, Danny. And this shoe store …
DANNY: Pop, do we have to move to Harlem? Pop, I really don’t like it. I’ve got friends here and—
DI PACE: You’ll make new friends there.
DANNY: I don’t want to be friends with kids who hit a colored guy with an ash can.
DI PACE: All the kids in Harlem aren’t like that.
DANNY: Pop, listen to me. Can you stop working on that bush for a minute? Can you listen to me?
DI PACE: What is it, Danny?
DANNY: I don’t want to live in Harlem, Pop. Please. I don’t want to live there.
DI PACE: It’s not as easy as that, Danny. I’ve lost my job.
DANNY: Well, for Christ’s sake, why’d you lose it?
DI PACE: I don’t like that kind of language.
DANNY: I’m sorry, but why’d you have to lose your job? Why couldn’t you hang on to it? What’s the matter with you, Pop?
DI PACE: They cut production, Danny. It’s not my fault.
DANNY: I don’t want to live in Harlem!
DI PACE: (with some anger): You’ll live where we have to live!
DANNY: I don’t want to live there! I don’t want to live where guys—
DI PACE: Danny, we’re moving and that’s it. I don’t want to hear anything more about it.
DANNY: Pop, please, don’t you see? I couldn’t live there. I’d be … I’d be …
DI PACE: You’d be what?
DANNY: I’d … I’d …
(He turns and runs out of the yard. His father stares after him for a moment and then goes back to tying his bush.)
“He never finished the sentence?” Hank asked.
“No,” Di Pace said. “But the other night, thinking about it, I knew what he was trying to tell me.”
“And what was that?”
“He was trying to say he’d be afraid. Afraid.” Di Pace paused. “And I wouldn’t hear him.”
ELEVEN
With the trial only three days away, with his face still covered with adhesive plaster even though he’d been released from the hospital, Hank received a call at the office that Friday.
“Mr. Bell, this is Lieutenant Canotti.”
“Hello,” Hank said.
“I’ve got that report you wanted.”
“The report? What report?”
“On those knives.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, of course. I’d almost forgotten.”
“What’s the matter, Bell? Losing your pep? You were ready to go in to your boss on this, remember?”
“I remember.”
“So where’s the fighting assistant district attorney now?” Canotti paused. “That street beating take the starch out of you?”
“I’m busy, Canotti,” Hank said. “Make it short, and make it sweet, and cut the bull. I don’t know you well enough to start a feud.”
Canotti chuckled and then said, “We ran a lot of tests on these knives. No good latent prints because they got smeared when this Rugiello girl handled them. But there was something else that was interesting. At least, I think it was interesting.”
“What was that?”
“Well, you’ll see when you get the report. I’m sending a copy over together with the knives. Don’t forget to sign for receipt, will you?”
“When will this be?” Hank asked.
“I’m sending them over right now. The trial ain’t till Monday, am I right?”
“That’s right.”
“Sure. So you got all weekend to think about it.” Canotti chuckled again. “I hope it don’t upset your case, Mr. Bell.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you read the report. Like I said, it’s pretty interesting.”
“Okay, I’ll read the report.”
“Sure. So long, Mr. Bell. It was nice dealing with you.” And Canotti hung up. Hank replaced the receiver on the cradle. The instrument erupted into sound again instantly. He picked up the receiver again.
“Hello?”
“Bell? This is Lieutenant Gunnison of the twenty-seventh. I got something that might interest you. Can you run up here?”
“What is it?”
“It’s connected with the Morrez case. It might give you a new slant.”
; “I can’t get away right this minute,” Hank said. “After lunch sometime?”
“I’ll be here all afternoon. Come whenever you can. There’s somebody I’d like you to talk to.”
“Okay, I’ll see you later,” Hank said, and he hung up.
The report from the police laboratory did not arrive until two-thirty that afternoon. Hank, packing his briefcase to leave the office, stuffed the report in with his other papers, locked the enveloped knives in his desk drawer, and then signed the receipt while the messenger waited. His plan was to stop in on Gunnison and then go directly home, where he would put the finishing touches to his case before beginning the selection of jurors on Monday.
He did not reach the precinct house until a little after three. He looked up at the green lanterns flanking the wide stone stoop and then climbed the steps into the muster room. A sign at the desk read: “All visitors must state their business to the desk officer.” He walked to the high desk, caught the sergeant’s eye and said, “I want to see Lieutenant Gunnison. I’m from the district attorney’s office.”
“Upstairs,” the sergeant said, and he went back to his work.
Hank followed the pointing DETECTIVE DIVISION sign into the upstairs corridor. A man in shirt sleeves, a .38 hanging from a shoulder holster, stopped him just outside the squad room.
“Help you, sir?” he said.
“I want Lieutenant Gunnison,” Hank said.
“The loot’s busy just now. Somebody else help you?”
“Gunnison called me this morning, asked me to stop by. I’m from the D.A.’s office.”
“You Bell?”
“Yes.”
“Hello. I’m Detective Levine. Come on in and have a chair. I’ll tell the loot you’re here.”
Hank passed through the slatted rail divider and sat at one of the desks. Levine went into the lieutenant’s office and emerged a moment later with Gunnison.
“Mr. Bell?” Gunnison said.
“Yes, how do you do?”
“I’m Lieutenant Gunnison. You got a few minutes?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“I had a visitor this morning. An eighteen-year-old kid named Dominick Savarese. Ring a bell?”