by Ed McBain
“I don’t understand,” I said. “How do they tie that to you?”
“My cigarette lighter. They found it near her body.”
I looked at Harley steadily. “How come?” I asked.
“The kid smokes,” he said, shrugging wearily. “Hell, Dave, she’s all of eighteen. She lighted up in the car when I was taking her home. I gave her my lighter. I guess she forgot to return it.”
“This bar you went into later, for cigarettes. Did anyone see you?”
“I don’t think so. It was one of these places that have a small floor show. The show was on when I went in, and no one was paying attention to who came and went. I got the cigarettes from a machine just inside the door. Then I left.”
“When you took the girl home, did you wait for her to go inside before you left?” I asked.
Harley puffed on his cigarette, trying to remember. “No,” he said at last.
“Do you usually?”
“Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. I was tired, Dave. I wanted to get home. Hell, who knew anything like this was going to happen?”
“Where’d they find the girl?”
“In a dark street a few blocks from her home. They figure she was thrown out of a car.”
“And your lighter?”
“Alongside her in the road. They say I dropped it when I threw her out. Good God, Dave, can’t you see they’re trying to sucker me?”
“It looks that way,” I said. “I wish someone had seen you in that bar, though.”
“The hell with the bar. I wasn’t gone more than fifteen minutes. It takes about five minutes to get the girl home, and another five coming back. Jesus, Dave, I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to.”
“Does anyone beside Marcia know you were gone only fifteen minutes?”
Harley shook his head. “She doesn’t even know, Dave. She was asleep when I got home. Oh goddamnit, this is a mess.”
“And they’ve booked you on suspicion?”
“Yes,” Harley said miserably. “I’m their big sucker.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Maybe we can work something out.”
It was one of the hardest trials I’ve ever fought. The district attorney swung it so that the jury was almost all women. If there’s anything a woman hates and despises it’s a rapist—so I had nine strikes against me to begin with. There were only three men on the jury.
The trial went for five days, with the D.A. pulling every trick in the book. He paraded all the circumstantial evidence, and he did it so well that every member of that jury could have sworn they’d all been eyewitnesses to the rape and murder.
When he got Harley on the stand, Harley told the same story he’d told me. He told it simply and plainly, and the jury and the assembled spectators listened in silence. Then I began to question him.
“How old are you, Mr. Pearce?” I asked.
“Forty-two,” Harley said.
“Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any children?”
“Yes.”
“How many, Mr. Pearce?”
“Two. A boy and a girl.”
“How old are they?”
“The boy is seven. The girl is five.”
“Did you engage the dead Sheila Kane to stay with these children while you and Mrs. Pearce went out for the evening?”
“Yes.”
“Was this a customary practice of yours?”
“Yes.”
“How many times had you engaged Miss Kane previous to the night of her death?”
“We’d been using her on and off for about a year.”
“And nothing ever happened to her before this night,” I said. “Nothing—”
“Objection!” the D.A. snapped. “Counsel for defense is attempting to establish—”
“Sustained,” the judge said wearily.
“Would you tell the court what Miss Kane looked like, please?”
Harley hesitated. “I … well, she was blond.”
“Yes?”
“Blue eyes, I think. I don’t really remember.”
“Short or tall?”
“Medium, I suppose.”
“Glasses?”
“No. No glasses.”
“What was her address?”
“I don’t know. I drove by memory, I suppose. She showed me the first time, and then I just went there from memory every other time.”
“Did you call her ‘Sheila,’ Mr. Pearce?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And what did she call you?”
“Mr. Pearce.”
“Thank you, that will be all.”
The D.A. stared at me, and then he shrugged. I suppose he wondered what I was trying to do. It was so simple that it probably evaded him. I was simply trying to show that no lust had ever crossed Harley Pearce’s mind or heart. He couldn’t even describe the dead girl well. He did not know her address. They maintained a strictly adult-to-adolescent relationship. Sheila and Mr. Pearce.
The D.A. called his next witness, the bartender at the Flamingo, the bar Harley had stopped at to buy his cigarettes. The bartender said he always watched the door during the floor show. He’d known of a lot of bars that had been held up during floor shows, when no one was paying attention to the bar or the cash register. So he always kept a close watch, and he’d have noticed anyone who came in that night. He had not seen Harley Pearce enter. The D.A. smiled and turned the man over to me.
“What time does the floor show start at the Flamingo?” I asked.
“Ten minutes to twelve, sir,” he said.
“Do you serve many drinks while the floor show is on?”
“No, sir. Most everyone is at their tables, watching the show.”
“And are we to understand that you keep a constant watch on the door during that time? I mean, since you are not serving drinks.”
“Objection,” the D.A. said, rising.
“Overruled,” the judge answered. “Proceed.”
“Is that what you do during the show?” I repeated.
“Well … I guess I look at the show, too. On and off, I mean. But I watch the door mostly. A lot of robberies—”
“Do you watch the cigarette machine?”
“Well, no, sir.”
“Then it is likely that someone did enter, stop at the machine, and leave, all while you were taking one of your periodic looks at the show?”
“Well—”
“Did you see me standing at the bar that night?”
The bartender blinked his eyes. “You, sir?”
“Yes, me. Standing near the blonde in the mink stole. I was drinking a Tom Collins when the show started. Did you see me?”
“I—I don’t recall, sir. I mean—”
“I was there! Did you see me?”
“Objection!” the D.A. said. “Counsel for defense is perjuring—”
“Did you see me?”
“Near—near the blonde, sir?”
“Yes, near the blonde. Did you or didn’t you?”
“Well, there was a blonde, and if you say you was standing near her.… I mean, I don’t remember but—”
“Then you did see me?”
“I—I don’t remember, sir.”
“I wasn’t there! But if you couldn’t remember whether I was or not, how can you remember whether or not Mr. Pearce came in for a package of cigarettes especially when—by your own admission—you could have been watching the floor show at that time?”
“That’s all,” I said.
I heard the murmurs in the courtroom, and I knew I’d done well. I’d punctured one part of the D.A.’s case, and the jury was now thinking, If he was wrong there, why couldn’t he be wrong elsewhere, too? Why couldn’t Harley have loaned the girl his cigarette lighter? Why couldn’t his story be absolutely true? After all, the D.A.’s case was purely circumstantial.
I clinched it in the summing up. I painted Harley as an upstanding citizen, a man who—just like you and me—wa
s a good husband and a good father. A man who hired a baby sitter, the same sitter he’d been hiring for the past year, went out to a quiet movie, had a few drinks with his wife, and then came home. He drove the sitter to her house, dropped her off, and then went back to his wife. Someone had attacked her after he’d gone. But not Harley. Not the man sitting there, I told them, not the man who could be your own brother or your own husband, not him.
The jury was out for a half hour. When they returned, they brought me a verdict of “not guilty.”
We celebrated that night. Harley and Marcia came over while his mother-in-law sat with their kids. We laughed and drank and Harley kept saying, “They were looking for a sucker, Dave. But you showed them. By Christ, you showed them you can’t fool with an innocent man.”
He told me I was the best goddamn lawyer in the whole goddamn world, and then he started a round of songs, and we all joined in, drinking all the while. The party was doing quite well when Beth walked in.
She’d had a date with one of the neighborhood boys. He dropped her off at the front door, and she came into the living room. She said hello to Marcia and Harley when we stopped singing, and then excused herself and started up the steps to her room.
“How old is she now, Dave?” Harley asked.
“Sixteen,” I said.
“A lovely girl,” he said, very softly.
I’d been watching Beth climb the steps, watching her proudly. She was still my little girl, but she was rounding into womanhood quickly. I watched her mount the steps with the sure, swift suppleness of a healthy young girl, and then I turned to look at Harley.
His eyes were on Beth, too. He watched her legs as she walked higher and higher up the staircase, and then his eyes traveled the length of her young body, slowly, methodically.
He did not take his eyes from her until she’d opened the door to her own room and stepped out of view. Then he said, “What’ll we sing next, folks?”
I looked at Harley, and then I looked at the empty staircase, and I suddenly felt very foolish inside, very foolish and very naïve. Naïve and tremendously stupid. I felt like what Harley would have called a “sucker.”
I did not join in the next song.
SEE HIM DIE
When you’re the head man, you supposed to get the rumble first. Then you feed it to the other guys, and you read off the music, and if they don’t like it that’s their hard luck. They can take off with or without busted heads.
So that’s why I was sore when Aiello comes to me and starts making like a man with an inside wire. He’s standing in a doorway, with his jacket collar up around his nose, and first off I think he’s got some weed on him. Then I see he ain’t fixing to gather a stone, but he’s got this weird light in his eyes anyway.
“What’re you doing, A?” I said.
Aiello looked over his shoulder as if the bulls were after him. He takes my arm and pulls me into the doorway and says, “Danny, I got something hot.”
“What?” I said. “Your pants?”
“Come down, man,” he told me.
“Watch the talk,” I warned him.
“Danny, what I mean this is something.”
“So tell it.”
“Django Manzetti,” he said. He said it in a kind of a hoarse whisper, and I looked at him funny, and I figured maybe he had just hit the pipe after all.
“What about him?”
“He’s here.”
“Whatya mean, here? Where here?”
“In the neighborhood.”
“You’re full of it,” I told him.
“I swear to God, Danny. I seen him.”
“Where?”
“I was going up Louise’s. You know Louise?”
“I know Louise.”
“She lives on the seventh floor. I spot this guy up ahead of me, and he’s walking with a limp and right off I start thinking of the guys in the neighborhood who limp, and all I come up with is Carl. And then I remember Django.”
“There must be a million guys who limp.”
“Sure, but name me another one, dad. Anyway, I got a look at his face. It was Django.”
“How’d you see his face?”
“He went up the seventh floor, too. I was knockin’ on Louise’s door, and this guy with the limp goes down the end of the hall and sticks a key in the latch. Then he remembers I’m behind him, and he turns to cop a look, and that’s when I seen his face. It was Django, all right.”
“What’d you do?”
“Nothing. I turned away fast so he wouldn’t see I spotted him. Man, that cat’s wanted in more states.…”
“You tell Louise this?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Dad, I’m sure.” Aiello looked at me peculiar, and then he turned his eyes away.
“Who’d you tell, A?”
“Nobody. Danny, I swear it on my mother’s eyes. You the first one I’m talking to.”
“How’d he look?” I said.
“Django? Oh, fine. He looked fine, Danny.”
“Whyn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I just now seen you!” Aiello complained.
“Whyn’t you come looking for me?”
“I don’t know. I was busy.”
“Doin’ what? Standin’ in a doorway with your thumb up?”
“I was …” Aiello paused. “I was lookin’ for you. I figured you’d come by.”
“How’d you figure that?”
“Well, I figured once the word leaked, you’d be around.”
“How’s the word gonna leak if you’re the only one knows it?”
“Well, I figured …”
Aiello stopped talking, and I stopped listening. We both heard it at the same time, the high scream of a squad car siren.
“Cops,” I said.
And then we heard another siren, and then the whole damn block was being busted up all at once, sirens screaming down on it from all the side streets.
In fifteen minutes, every damn cop in the city was on our block. They put up their barricades, and they hung around behind their cars while they figured what they were gonna do. I spotted Donlevy in the bunch, too, strutting around like a big wheel. He had me in once because some jerk from the Blooded Royals took a slug from a zip gun, and he figured it was one of my boys, and he tried to hang it on me. I told Donlevy where he could hang his phony rap, and I also told him he better not walk alone on our block after dark or he’d be using his shield for a funeral emblem. He kicked me in the butt, and told me I was the one better watch out, so I spit at his feet and called him a name my old man always uses, and Donlevy wasn’t hip to it, so he didn’t get too sore, even though he knew I was cursing, but he didn’t know just what I was cursing. So he was there, too, making like a big wheel, with his tin pinned to his coat so that everybody could know he was a cop. All the bulls were wearing their tin outside, so you could tell them from the people who was just watching. There were a lot of people in the streets now, and the cops kept shoving them back behind the barricades which they’d set up in front of the building where Django was. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure that somebody’d blown the whistle on Django and that the bulls were ready to try for a pinch. Only thing, I figured, they didn’t know whether he was heeled or not, and so they were making their strategy behind their cars, afraid to show their stupid faces in case he was heeled. I’d already sent Aiello for the boys, and I hung around on the outside of the crowd now because I didn’t want Donlevy to spot me and start getting wise. Also, there were a lot of bulls all over the place, and outside of the tin you couldn’t tell the bulls from the people without a scorecard, and nobody was selling scorecards. So when a bull’s back was turned and the tin couldn’t be seen, he looked just like anybody else—and Christ knows what bull spotted me somewhere doing something, and I didn’t want to take no chances until all the boys were with me.
There was a lot of uniformed brass around the cars, too, and they all talked it up, figuring who was gon
na be the first to die, in case Django was carrying. Django was born and raised right in this neighborhood, and all the kids knew him from when he used to be king of the hill. And Django was always heeled, even in those days, either with brass knucks or a switch knife or a razor or a zip gun, and later on he had a .38 he showed the guys. That was just before he lammed out—the time he knocked off that crumb from uptown. I remember once when Django cut up a guy so bad, the guy couldn’t walk. I swear. I mean it. He didn’t only use the knife on the guy’s face. He used it all over so the guy couldn’t walk later, that guy was sorry he tangled with a customer like Django, all right. They only come like Django once in a while, and when you got a Django in your neighborhood, you know it, man. You know it, and you try to live up to the rep, you dig me? You got a guy like Django around, well hell man, you can’t run the neighborhood like a tea party. You got certain standards, and ideals I guess you would call them. So we was all kind of sorry when Django had to take off like that, but of course he was getting all kinds of heat by that time, not only from the locals who was after him for that crumb uptown, but also he was getting G-heat because the word was he transported some broads into Connecticut for the purpose of prostitution, leastways that’s the way they read it off on him at the line-up, and I know a guy who was at the lineup personally that time, so this is straight from the horse’s mouth.
But if those cops were wondering whether or not Django was heeled, I could have saved them a lot of trouble if they wanted to ask me. I could tell them Django was not only heeled but that he was probably heeled to his eyeballs, and that if they expected to just walk in and put the arm on him, they had another guess coming, or maybe two or three. It didn’t make one hell of a big difference anyhow, because the cops looked as if they brung along their whole damn arsenal just to pry Django out of that seventh floor apartment. The streets were really packed now with people and cops and reporters and the emergency cop truck, and I expected pretty soon we were gonna have President Eisenhower there to dedicate a stone or something. I began to wonder where the hell the boys were, because the rooftops were getting lined pretty fast, and if the cops and Django were going to shoot this thing out, I wanted to watch him pick them off. And unless we got a good spot on the roof, things would be rugged. I was ready to go looking for Aiello when he comes back with Ferdy and Beef.