Law and Order

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  “Yeah, okay, Brian. I won’t make no noise.”

  Kevin pretended he was in a deep sleep and Brian leaned close and whispered in his ear, “Hey, Kevin. Come on, kid, wake up.” One hand went firmly around his brother’s arm, the other over his mouth as Kevin feigned surprised, waking sounds. “Huh? Wha?”

  “Quiet, will you? Don’t wake Mom.”

  The only light in the room came from the hallway and Brian’s expression was dimly seen: noncommittal, calm. He turned, found Kevin’s pants on a chair and handed them to his brother. “Here, slip into these, will you? Look, I need you to help me with something outside.”

  Warily, Kevin put the pants on over his shorts, but when he reached for a shirt, Brian told him, “You don’t need that, Kev. This’ll only take a minute. You don’t need your shoes either. I just didn’t want anyone to look out the window and see you in your drawers. Go on, go through the window; there’s just something I need help with out there.”

  Kevin stood hesitantly inside the window. He couldn’t see anything in the courtyard. “Gee, Brian, I’m still asleep. What’s this all about?”

  “Stop making noise and go on out, Kevin. I’m right behind you.”

  Brian’s hand rested lightly on the back of Kevin’s neck as they walked across the courtyard toward the inner, darkened alleyway. A shiver ran down Kevin’s spine. He could feel the hairs along the base of his skull stiffen and he stopped abruptly when they were only a few steps into the passageway.

  “Hey, Brian, that you?” John asked, his voice happy and relieved.

  Kevin was aware that the pressure on the back of his neck had increased; he couldn’t turn or run forward. He was between his brother and his cousin.

  “What’s this all about anyway, Brian?” Kevin asked.

  There was no more pretense at being sleepy. He was starkly awake and the hours of waiting and chewing on his fingers and worrying about what he should do brought him to a pitch of stark terror which he had to dispel. He swung his fist into the unseen bulk of his cousin.

  “You stupid son of a bitch,” he said to John O’Malley. He felt a satisfying pain in his fist as it made contact with the totally vulnerable, unprepared midsection of his cousin.

  Brian locked his arm across Kevin’s chest and yanked him back.

  “Go on into the house now, John,” Brian ordered. “Do what I tell you.”

  John O’Malley moved reluctantly, his hands hugging his stomach. He didn’t want to retaliate for the unprovoked blow. He only wanted to reassure Kevin. “Gee, Kevin,” he gasped, “gee, Kev, don’t be mad. I never told nobody nothin’, I swear to God, Kevin. Hey, Brian, I didn’t tell on him, did I?”

  “Go on in the house, John, and get to bed now. Move!”

  Brian shoved his brother from him. Kevin recoiled from the grating rough surface of the stuccoed wall. He realized now, slowly, with terrifying clarity, why Brian had told him not to put on his shirt.

  He rubbed at a scraped elbow. “Ah, Brian, ah, gee, it wasn’t my fault. I’m the one’s gotta be with that half-wit all the time and I swear it wasn’t me that...”

  Brian took a step toward him. His right shoe ground down on Kevin’s bare toes and his arm went up swiftly, implacably, and caught Kevin’s throat so that the cry was stifled. He had decided not to use his fists. He wanted something that would last longer than a few punches. His own hand scraped briefly against the rough wall and gave some measure of what Kevin must feel down the right side of his shoulder and arm as he shoved him against the wall with more deliberate force this time.

  “Don’t, Brian, please, don’t. Oh, Jesus, that hurts!”

  He felt a cold and dispassionate anger. “You are really a sneaky, rotten little son of a bitch, Kevin. Not only are you a lousy thief, but you let poor John hold the bag for you all these hours. What have you been worrying about these last three hours, poor John in the precinct house or your own ass?”

  It was senseless to deny anything. It was always senseless, and yet, even now, he tried.

  “It...it...it was all John’s idea, Brian. Honest. You all think he’s so dumb, that he never gets an idea. But we were on our way home from basketball and we saw the truck pull up, see? And John says, ‘Let’s go see what they left there.’”

  Brian backed away and seemed very interested. “John said ‘Let’s go see what they left there’?”

  Encouraged, Kevin nodded eagerly. “Yeah, honest, Brian, and I said, ‘No, let’s go home.’”

  “Oh, you wanted to go home, but John insisted you go and look in the box. So one of you...opened the door...”

  “John did,” Kevin said quickly. “John opened the door and saw the flags, and he carried the box to the street, Brian.”

  “John did that?”

  Kevin nodded anxiously. “Yeah, and then that Danny Dunne came by and...okay, yeah, I ran home. Honest, I got scared, Brian, so I ran home.”

  “And got into bed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And went to sleep.”

  “Well...yeah.”

  “Jesus, it was John did everything, and not you, Kevin, right? It was John?”

  The tears, hot and shameful, spilled from Kevin’s eyes. The shadow in front of him, all he could see of his brother, was a dark tormenting force against which he had no defense. His words were no defense; they made everything worse, yet they spilled from his mouth almost with a will of their own.

  Though he recognized the uselessness of his attempt, and that the penalty which would be exacted because of his very attempt to avoid penalty would increase with each word, Kevin tried to shift the blame. He was overwhelmed by the need to justify himself and he knew of no other way than by blaming someone else for his misdeeds. He stopped speaking, waited for Brian’s cold, hard, mocking voice to egg him on to greater lies, but Brian was silent now and the murderous hand was too swift for him. He tried to twist free of Brian’s grasp.

  “Stand still, damn you, stand still,” Brian whispered savagely into his brother’s ear. His fingers tightened along the sharp jawline and his arm pressed against the narrow chest, and the rapid heartbeat inside the frightened body was steady against his arm. “You’re a thief and a liar and a rotten, sly little son of a bitch,” Brian said and he forced the side of Kevin’s face against the cement, then jerked it back again. Kevin’s neck stiffened against the expected scrape of the other side of his face, but now Brian’s shoe ground down on his bare feet. Kevin’s whole body jumped beneath his skin, twitching and twisting to avoid sudden assault.

  He tasted the salt of his tears; words spilled from him in a torrent of self-pity; and, strangely, he began to believe his own lies and this filled him with a sense of righteousness which led to some small outrage which translated finally into action. His hands went up, tried to pry Brian off him.

  “You gonna fight back, Kevin?” Brian asked in an incredulous and insulting tone. “That’s very good, Kev. That’s really swell. Come on, kid, let’s see what you got.” Brian slapped him about the face and head but Kevin’s hands refused to do more than attempt to ward off the blows. Brian smacked him freely, then finally held him against the wall.

  “You had enough, huh? Now listen to me, Kevin, if you step out of line again by so much as one inch I’ll kill you. You got that, Kevin?”

  Kevin expected the last terrible pain; it was the logical punctuation for the final threat. He closed his eyes instinctively as his face smashed into the cement. The impact sent him to the ground. Brian kicked him hard in the backside then pulled him to his feet and shoved him toward the house.

  Kevin lurched from the alleyway, walked painfully on his aching feet. He climbed over the window sill slowly and crept into his bed carefully. He touched at himself with trembling fingertips. His face was sticky and wet with a combination of tears and blood. His shoulders and arms were raw wounds and he couldn’t touch them even lightly.

  “Kevin? Hey, Kevin?”

  Kevin locked his back teeth together, tried to lock out
the sound of his cousin’s concern. John leaned over him with that worried, sorry, stupid voice. “You okay, Kevin? Hey, Kevin, you all right?”

  Kevin watched through the window as Brian moved slowly from the shadows and toward the street. He waited just long enough to be sure Brian wasn’t coming into the house yet.

  “Come over here, John,” he whispered. “I want to tell you something.” He motioned John to the foot of his bed and John perched on his heels, expectant.

  “Gee, Kev, I swear I never told nobody nothin’. And you know, Kev, that Detective Dunne, gee, he hit me on the backside with a club when Mr. Gallegher went outside and he said he’d kill me if I said anything about it, but still I didn’t say who was with me, Kev, and gee, it hurt something awful but I never let on.”

  Kevin sat up, locked his hands together and clenched his fingers hard so that they became a solid weapon at the ends of his arms. He straightened his arms and swung in a quick, dangerous motion. He caught John O’Malley on the right temple with such an unexpected force that the large boy toppled from the bed. He went down with a heavy thud, his head against the radiator.

  Kevin leaped up, bent over him, but John was silent. In a sudden panic, Kevin ran across the room, closed the door and put the night lamp on. He fell to his knees beside his cousin and shook him.

  “John? Come on, John, quit kidding around. Oh, please, Sweet Jesus, Mother of God, let him be all right. Johnnie, don’t be dead. Oh, my God, I didn’t mean to do it, John. John?”

  There was a soft, bewildered moan and then a tentative movement. Puzzled, dizzy, John O’Malley slowly sat up, blinked, mouth opened at the bloody sight of Kevin. His hand went to his head and he felt the blood where his head had hit the pipe.

  “Wow, gee, Kevin, what happened?”

  Kevin was weightless with a combination of terror and relief. He pressed his cousin’s shoulder with a trembling hand. “You’re okay, Johnnie, you’re okay.”

  John looked up at the bed. “Gee, how’d I get down here? Was we horsing around?”

  Kevin nodded quickly. “Yeah, that’s right. We was clowning around and we fell, both of us. Jesus, John, don’t say nothing about this to anybody, okay?”

  “Well, yeah, okay, Kevin. Jeez, Kevin, what happened to you? You’re all scraped and bloody. You fall or something outside?”

  “Yeah. I fell.” He put the light out and got back into bed. He heard John settle in his own bed across the room. “Go to sleep now, John, okay?”

  “Yeah, Kev. Hey, Kevin, you’re not mad at me, right?”

  “No, I’m not mad at you.”

  Brian walked rapidly, with long, determined strides, then finally broke into a run. It took a long time before the sharp, hard pain in his throat and chest forced him to slow down. He was keyed up, both physically and emotionally. He was sickeningly aware of what might have happened to him.

  Francis Kelly told him, only that morning, about some guy who was about to be appointed and got dumped off the list for some dumb thing or other. His family had moved out of the city and the guy went to stay with them for a month, not even a permanent move, just a visit. But he hadn’t reported it and they found out and it was good-by Charlie.

  They could do that to you; after all the years of study and hard work, after that damn written test and the killing physical, each of them competing against a field of contenders with more to gain than a trophy. He’d made the top 10 per cent; he’d be called before long; he’d be appointed and admitted to the Police Academy and put on probation. But anything could kill it for him, once and for all.

  A dumb little brother stealing a box of flags and the whole thing could go up in smoke.

  Jesus, he’d really messed the kid up. He hadn’t meant to hurt him that badly. It had gotten a little out of control; something had snapped; he’d just not known when, or how, to stop. He leaned against a collection of empty garbage cans along the sidewalk edge and lit a cigarette.

  It had been a dumb kid’s prank, really. Hell, Kevin wasn’t going to end up an armed robber or something; the boys just happened on the situation. He’d just meant to slap him around a little, make sure he got the message. He hoped Kevin wouldn’t look too battered. Jesus, his mother would be upset. Well, that would be Kevin’s problem, and knowing Kevin, he’d come up with some story or other that made him look good. Funny, nobody would believe him but everyone would pretend they did because everyone would have a fair idea of the truth and it would be better not to dig too much into it.

  Brian tossed the cigarette into the gutter and started for home. He began to feel better: it would be okay. As he walked up the long, twisting hill from the bottom of 181st Street, he remembered all the times he’d zipped down it on roller skates and in scrap-wood wagons and on bikes and sleds. It was a good hill, fast. He walked up, then turned to survey the steepness, remembering, then continued toward home.

  In the general darkness, the brightly lit window on the top floor of the three-story old gray clapboard house just behind the police station shone like a beacon. Brian must have passed that old house a million times; he could remember wondering about the crazy old lady the kids used to say lived there. There had been a hundred stories, passed on from older brothers and sisters, circulated among the young, to keep them all in a pleasant state of terror when they passed the house. Jeez, the woman must be long dead, or a hundred years old by now, if there ever was an old woman. Brian rubbed the back of his neck and started to move again but some unexpected slash of light caught his attention.

  He became alert and curious and pressed back into the shadows and finally alongside the huge old tree that stood in front of the old house. The light appeared again, a streak of brightness along the sidewalk as the basement door of the station opened, then disappeared as the door closed.

  A figure, dark, compact, quick, moved from the door to the car parked by the curb. It was Detective Danny Dunne. He glanced around carelessly, then put down the carton he had under his arm, opened the trunk of his car and put the carton of flags in and slammed it shut. Then he put his foot on the bumper, tied his shoelace, lit a cigarette, surveyed the late sky, got into the car and took off. He drove in the opposite direction from Kruger’s candy store.

  Brian stepped from behind the tree and watched the car, bearing the flags, disappear. From nowhere, memory filled him—of boxes of candy balls, glass jars of unwrapped candy, sudden windfalls of games and toys, whole cartons of good rubber balls, commercial boxes of baseball-player cards and gum. None of them ever asked where these treats came from; no one would ever dare ask questions.

  Just as Detective Dunne’s family would not question the box of American flags he brought home with him that night.

  PART THREE: The Son: Patrolman Brian Thomas O’Malley 1940

  NINETEEN

  THIRTY-THREE THOUSAND YOUNG MEN took the examination for Patrolman, New York City Police Department. Fewer than twelve hundred survived the written, physical, medical and background checkout. The class at the Police Academy was comprised of the top 10 per cent of the resulting list of eligibles. Eighty-five per cent of them held college degrees. By the time they received their appointments, they all knew they were something special.

  The Fordham College and City College men regarded each other with cool suspicion. The former were would-be F.B.I, agents, the latter would-be professionals; all of them had accepted appointment to the Police Department as a necessary economic adjustment: purely a temporary stopover.

  The instructors were somewhat uneasy at the composition of the class. Educationally, there had never been a class with so many degrees and professionals; there were lawyers, dentists, even a doctor or two. Ethnically, aside from the Fordham men, there was a noticeable shortage of Irishmen and a statistically large number of Jews. Some farseeing, long-range predictors muttered darkly about bad days ahead; these bright little Jews would take over the Department within fifteen or twenty years; they’d take the exams, get the promotions, put their own in positions of po
wer. Wiser, calmer heads predicted they’d never go the course.

  The recruits picked up the Department’s method of identification when speaking of someone: you meant the short Jewish guy or the pale Irishman or the dark Italian or the big Dutchman. If you were safely in the midst of your own, you could be a little more specific and to the point: you meant the sheeny or the mick or the wop or the heinie; you spoke about hunkies and niggers or jigs; sometimes you used a variety of inventive names once you knew who you were talking to and he knew you.

  Brian noticed that the only guys who seemed uneasy about the constant ethnic references were the Jews, but everyone knew they were ultrasensitive about themselves for some reason or other. And even about other groups. One guy raised an objection during a lecture on description for purposes of identification. The instructor said the suspect was obviously Italian and this guy argued that an Italian from the north of Italy might have light hair, blue eyes, fair skin and that the “obviously Italian” tag could be confusing. The description might apply to a person from Greece, Crete, Spain and on and on.

  The guy was very sincere and the instructor, an old-timer with thirty-two years in the Department, ten of them at the Academy, calmly waited him out. When the recruit finished what he thought was a pretty good argument, the instructor pushed himself back from the lectern, rubbed the back of his neck in a puzzled way and said softly, “Well, sonny, all I can say is that in my experience a guinea is a guinea and that’s about the only way to put it.”

  The recruit, who had a year of law school, pursed his lips thoughtfully against further comment, particularly since the Italian sitting next to him laughed as hard as anyone else in the room.

  The lectures were about as boring as those they’d had at Delehanty’s and covered material they’d had to know in order to pass the exams in the first place. Brian started to copy notes from the guy next to him, a nice, quiet, easygoing C.C.N.Y. graduate named Arthur Pollack. He had a precise method of listening, mentally sorting, selecting and writing down three or four important facts and key phrases to just about cover whatever you needed to retain of any particular lesson.