A Matter of Conviction

by Ed McBain

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “He’s a punk, they’re all punks. But he’s also the leader of the Thunderbirds. They call him Big Dom.”

  “Oh yes. I’ve heard of him.”

  “Yeah, well, he told me something interesting, not that I didn’t suspect as much all along. They’re all punks, believe me.”

  “What’d he tell you?”

  “I’d like you to hear it from his own mouth. I know where we can find him if you’ve got a few minutes.”

  “I’ve got plenty of time.”

  “Fine, let me get my hat.”

  There was, Hank noticed as they walked through Harlem, a perpetual look of sourness on the face of Richard Gunnison. It was as if he carried garbage in his back pocket but, rather than put it into the nearest garbage can, he preferred to bear the smell stoically and with great malice. His eyes flicked over the streets as they walked, and the look of sourness claimed his face completely.

  “Harlem,” he said at last. “Beautiful, ain’t it? I been stuck in this lousy squad for twenty-four years. I’d rather be in a Russian concentration camp in Siberia. Look at them!”

  “They don’t look too bad,” Hank said.

  “That’s ’cause you don’t know them. They’re all thieves, every single one of them. Or pimps. Or whores. Or gamblers. Or junkies. You see that old lady there with the shopping bag?”

  “Yes,” Hank said.

  “Go over to her and ask her what number’s leading. She’ll tell you in a minute. The numbers racket is against the law, and everybody in Harlem knows it. But anytime in the afternoon, you can stop anybody on the street and say, ‘What’s leading?’ and they’ll tell you. They can’t feed their kids, but they can scrape up that two, three bucks to lay on a number.”

  “I’m not for lawbreaking,” Hank said, “but those people probably feel that the numbers are a pretty harmless diversion. A lot of countries have legal lotteries, you know.”

  “This ain’t a lot of countries, this is Harlem, and it’s against the law here, and half the goddamn police force is kept busy shagging ass after the offenders. Look at them! And half these people you see on the street are junkies, you know that? We got enough junk in Harlem to keep everybody in the world supplied for the next ten years.”

  “Then why don’t you do something about it?”

  “We try, all right. And the Narcotics Squad ain’t exactly asleep, either. But we ain’t got enough cops to go around. I’ll tell you something, Bell. I’ve never known a cop to take a bribe on a narcotics pinch. That’s the truth. I’m not saying you can’t fix anything else you’d care to in this city—including maybe murder. But junk, absolutely not. There ain’t a cop in this city who’ll take a nickel to square a junk rap. So you can’t say we ain’t trying. We just ain’t got the men. You know how many people there are in this precinct? Thousands! And we’ve only got a hundred and eighty-five patrolmen and eighteen detectives attached to the Twenty-seventh. And they’re supposed to keep all these people from slitting each others’ throats or taking dope or burglarizing apartments or selling stolen goods or mugging or pimping or whoring, and I tell you, my friend, it just can’t be done. You think we’d have these street gangs if we had enough cops? We’d rap these kids with a nightstick whenever they even looked at anybody cockeyed. That’s all half of them need, anyway.”

  “Maybe,” Hank said.

  “No maybes about it. A punk is a punk, and these kids are all punks. And I never yet seen a punk who didn’t begin blubbering the minute you cracked him one.” He paused. “We’re going to a poolroom on Second Avenue. We can find Big Dom there.”

  “In your opinion, then,” Hank said, “all we have to do is get tough and we’ll wipe out the juvenile delinquency problem, is that right?”

  “That’s right. A swift kick in the ass instead of all this mollycoddling. Since when have the psychiatrists become the ones who decide what’s right and wrong? A criminal is a criminal! We got enough nuts in the booby hatch now without trying to excuse every thief of his crime by saying he’s a disturbed personality. So who ain’t a disturbed personality? You? Me? We’re all a little nuts, but we’re also law-abiding citizens. Crack their goddamn skulls, that’s the answer. If a punk steps out of line, send him up and throw away the key. That’s the answer.” He paused. “Here’s the poolroom. You’re about to meet another punk who should have been locked up when he was six years old.”

  They climbed the stairs leading to the second floor. There was the strong smell of urine in the hallway. Hank wondered, as they climbed, whether there was a single flight of stairs anywhere in Harlem which did not smell of human waste.

  They found Big Dom at a table near the back of the pool hall. He nodded at the lieutenant, racked up the balls and then broke them. He’d been trying to knock one ball loose from the neat triangle. Instead, the balls scattered all over the table when the cue smashed into them. He looked up, shrugged and said, “Lousy break.”

  “This is the D.A., Dom,” Gunnison said. “He wants to talk to you. He wants to hear the story you told me.”

  “Yeah?” Big Dom studied Hank’s face. “Somebody beat you up, Mr. Bell?” he asked.

  “Don’t get wise, punk,” Gunnison said. “You read the newspapers same as anybody else. Just tell Mr. Bell the story you gave me.”

  “Sure,” Big Dom said.

  He was truly a short boy, with wide shoulders and a thick neck and waist. He seemed to be having trouble now as he reached over the table for a long shot. He wore his hair very long, combed into a high black crown, with sideburns that dropped past his ears. In his left ear lobe he wore a circular gold earring. The ornament did not look feminine on him, however. If anything, there seemed to be a bull-like strength emanating from the boy. And immediately upon seeing him, Hank knew that Frankie Anarilles had been wrong in his judgment of this boy. For whatever his faults—and playing bad pool seemed to be one of them—this boy was definitely not lacking in leadership qualities. In the presence of a police lieutenant and a district attorney, he continued to shoot his solitaire pool as if he were an oil baron being visited at his estate in the California hills. He missed two shots in a row, studied his cue and said, “No wonder. The stick’s warped.” He went to the rack, held up a new cue, looked down the length of it with one eye closed and then went back to the table.

  “So you want to hear my story, huh?” he said.

  “Yes,” Hank answered.

  “Mmm,” Big Dom said, and he triggered off another shot, missing. The new cue had not seemed to improve his game noticeably.

  “You know who I am?” he said. “I’m Big Dom.” He paused. “Five ball in the side pocket.” He shot and missed. “This damn table is crooked,” he said. “The floor’s on a bias.”

  “I’ve heard of you,” Hank said.

  “Sure, everybody has. I had my name in the papers a total of sixteen times. They got my address wrong one time.” He wiped his nose on his forefinger and squatted so that he was just peering over the edge of the table as he sized up his next shot. Then he said, “Eight ball in the corner,” shot and missed.

  “You know why they call me Big Dom?” he asked, straightening up.

  “Come on, cut the jazz,” Gunnison said. “Mr. Bell’s a busy man.”

  “They call me Big Dom ’cause I’m a shrimp,” he said. He laughed. “But everybody knows if they ever really call me a shrimp, they’re dead.” He laughed again. “Dead. So they call me Big Dom.”

  “You’re a very tough punk,” Gunnison said sarcastically. “Tell Mr. Bell the story before I bust that pool cue over your head.”

  “These kids you’re trying to send to the chair, Mr. Bell. They’re all nice guys.”

  “They committed murder,” Hank said.

  Big Dom shrugged. “Lots of nice guys all through history have killed people. In a war, the more people you kill, the more medals you get. That don’t make them any less nice, does it?”

  “What makes you say these
boys are nice?”

  “They all got heart,” Big Dom said. “Courage. You can count on them. They’re not going to turkey out when you’re supposed to go down on another club. They’re okay, every one of them.”

  “Is Di Pace a Thunderbird?”

  “No, man. He don’t swing with our club.” He studied the table. “Twelve ball banked up to this corner.” He shot and missed. “Not enough chalk on the stick,” he said. He began chalking the stick, the blue dust particles covering the front of his dark shirt. He didn’t seem to care very much. “We got a tight club here, mister,” Big Dom said. “Danny wasn’t one of us, but he never punked out of nothing, either. Whenever we jitterbugged, he was there with us. He never let us down.”

  “Is he a good fighter?” Hank asked.

  Big Dom shrugged. “Who gets time to notice when everything’s jumping? But he knocked the crap out of a kid named Bud when he first moved around here. I wasn’t around that day, but Diablo told me all about it. That night, we sent a little squad around to take care of Danny. But he’s all right. Take it from me. A good kid.”

  “Who—with two other good kids—killed Rafael Morrez.”

  “Maybe Morrez needed killing,” Big Dom said. “What do you think he was? An angel or something?”

  “He was blind,” Hank said.

  “So? Being blind makes him an angel?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Tell him your story,” Gunnison said. “We haven’t got all day.”

  “Okay, okay.” Big Dom put down the pool cue. “It happened like only this spring. There was this Spanish girl like a lot of the guys on the club used to make it with, you know. She was no prize package, but she was always available. So some of the guys from the Horsemen, they found out about it. Like this girl didn’t mean crap to them, you know what I mean? But all of a sudden, just because the Birds are making it with her, they get excited. So we had a meet. Me and Frankie, and Diablo and Gargantua. There was a cool on at the time, until this thing with the girl happened.”

  “A cool?”

  “Yeah, like no fighting. What do you think, we fight all the time? Man, don’t you think we got anything better to do?”

  “All right, so what happened?”

  “So we tried to decide where it was gonna be and all that. First, it was gonna be a fair one, like you know where two guys put on the gloves, but we decided the hell with that, so it was gonna be a real bop, only we couldn’t settle where, so we decided to have another meet the next night. Only you can’t trust those Spanish guys, I mean they’re all hopheads, how the hell can you trust them, they’d knock off their own mothers for some pot. So that very night, right after we had the meet, I mean with everything still up in the air about where the bop was gonna be, that very night …”

  (It is a mild spring night in Harlem, and we can hear music on the air, drifting from the open windows of the tenements to find its way into the street. There is a peaceful feel to the block. We hear occasional laughter, an occasional baby crying from one of the apartments. But it is an idle night, heavy with the magic of spring, because spring comes to Harlem too, and the people of Harlem know her headiness, know her rare smile, know the beauty in her eyes and on her mouth. The Thunderbirds are sitting on one of the tenement stoops, seven of them: Big Dom, Diablo, Botch, Bud, Reardon, Aposto and Concho. Danny Di Pace is with the Thunderbirds, too. The boys are passing around a cheap bottle of wine. The girls with them do not accept the bottle, not because they don’t drink but only because they don’t want to drink on the front stoop, in public. Besides, the girls are playing it rather cool this evening. They have heard about the impending rumble between their boys and the Horsemen, and they know that the cause of the dispute is a fourteen-year-old slut named Rosie who is Spanish and probably diseased. Carol is particularly offended because she and Diablo are supposed to be going steady, and she understands that Diablo hasn’t been exactly reticent with that Spanish pig, either. In fact, Carol has not spoken to Diablo since she learned about the incident, and she is the one who sets the pace now for the other girls. The boys play the game in their own way. If the girls want to be cool, so be it. They can be equally cool. And the wine they drink, thirty-nine cents a quart, helps them to ignore the girls. It also helps them to drop their usual attitude of caution. For if there is one noticeable trait about all gang members, it is their constant vigilance. Walking down the block, sitting on a stoop, idling on a corner, their eyes constantly flick the streets, looking, watching, waiting for any sudden attack. Tonight their usual wariness is not present. Aided by the wine, drinking in retaliation against the coolness of the girls, they have dropped their guard—and this can be a fatal error in Harlem.

  The attack comes swiftly and unexpectedly.

  The automobile turns the corner and shrieks into the street. It careens onto the sidewalk, narrowly missing Bud, who leaps off the stoop. Another car follows it, chasing Concho, who has leaped off the front stoop after Bud and who is trying to cross the street to get to a cellar where he knows a gun is hidden. The doors of the cars open. Twelve boys spring to the pavement and then break into a trot. The drivers of the cars gun the engines and race off up the street. Many of the Horsemen are armed. Big Dom is the first to see this.)

  BIG DOM: They got pieces! Scatter!

  (The guns begin to erupt. The Thunderbirds, close to the edge of drunkenness, reel off the stoop and into the street, trying to escape the guns. The guns, fortunately, are zip guns—one shot to a customer, and that’s all. These particular zip guns were made with rubber bands, the filed hammers of cap pistols, wooden frames and the cylinders of automobile radio aerials. The rubber band activates the cap pistol firing pin, discharging a .22-caliber cartridge through the car aerial barrel. It is easy to come by real guns in Harlem and the Horsemen boast of three .38-caliber pistols in their armory. Tonight, however, for reasons of their own—largely centered upon the fact that they realize the basis for this quarrel is very thinly founded—they are using weapons which, in Harlem, are considered passé. It is unlikely that they even intend to do any real damage tonight. In fact, they have probably staged this sneak raid to avoid the impending rumble which—for a girl whom they know to be a pig—would be both senseless and costly.

  But a zip gun, while lacking the accuracy or fire power of a professionally manufactured weapon, is not a toy. The .22 slugs which carom about the gutter are the same cartridges used in a real pistol. And they are equally capable of killing.

  One of these slugs catches Big Dom in the leg, and he hurtles to the sidewalk and then begins crawling up the street, anxious to find the safety of a cellar. Tower Reardon and Danny Di Pace run to where Dom has fallen, each catching an arm and half dragging, half pulling him to the chain-barricaded steps leading to the basement of a tenement near the corner. The shots are becoming sporadic now. Only eight of the boys were armed, and seven have already fired the single-cartridge guns. The last boy shoots wildly into the street, and then the twelve rush for the corner, passing the hiding place of Big Dom, Tower and Danny.)

  BIG DOM: The sons of bitches! The dirty jap bastards!

  DANNY: Shhhh, shhhh, they’ll hear us!

  BIG DOM: Do you think I’ll lose my leg? Oh God, will I lose my leg?

  TOWER: Quiet! For the love of Mike, shut up!

  DANNY: What are they doing?

  TOWER: They’ve stopped on the corner.

  DANNY: What’s that? Listen! (They listen.)

  TOWER: A siren! The cops!

  DANNY: Good! They’re all carrying pieces. Man, this’ll—

  TOWER: Wait a minute. Look at that.

  (The three boys lean forward. The Horsemen have stopped on the corner. Rafael Morrez is standing on that corner, his jacket open. One by one, the Horsemen quickly hand him the zip guns, slapping the weapons into his open hand. One by one, he tucks the guns into his shirt and into his waistband, moving with the tactile speed of a blind person. Frankie Anarilles is the last man to free himself of an
incriminating weapon. The other Horsemen have already run off in pairs, in threes. Frankie gives his gun to Morrez.)

  FRANKIE (clapping him on the shoulder): Good boy, Ralphie.

  (He runs off. Rafael Morrez zips up the front of his jacket. Using a home-fashioned cane, he begins tapping his way up the street as a squad car pulls to the curb.)

  FIRST PATROLMAN: You! Hey you! Hold up there.

  (Morrez turns blankly toward the car. The first patrolman is ready to get out when his partner, closer to the curb, stops him.)

  SECOND PATROLMAN: It’s all right, Charlie. He ain’t one of them. He’s a blind kid. I seen him around.

  (The squad car pulls away. Morrez begins walking faster, his cane tapping rapidly as he continues up the long street to Spanish Harlem.)

  “Don’t you see?” Big Dom said. “The kid was a gun-bearer for the Horsemen. They gave him the pieces, and he walked away safe. That way, if the bulls picked up any of the guys who staged the raid, they’d be clean.”

  “It beats car aerials six ways from the middle, don’t it?” Gunnison said.

  “What do you mean?” Hank asked.

  “They use car aerials as weapons sometimes,” Gunnison explained. “They break them off automobiles. It makes a wicked whip, can cut a kid’s face to ribbons. And it has the advantage of being available at the scene and easily disposed of afterward. Car aerials are dispensable. Guns aren’t.”

  “You’re hip to the car aerials, huh?” Big Dom asked.

  “Sonnyboy, there ain’t nothing you can use that we ain’t seen already.”

  Big Dom shrugged. “The point is,” he said tiredly, “this Rafael Morrez wasn’t no angel.”

  “You’re telling me he was a gun-bearer on one occasion?” Hank asked.

  “On one occasion? Mister, I’m telling you he was a member of the goddamn gang!”

  She knew all the signs of his restlessness.

  Sitting opposite him in the silence of their home, she pretended to be working on last Sunday’s crossword puzzle, but she watched Hank over the edge of the newspaper as he reread his carefully typed notes, and she knew that something was wrong.