She looked around the dark room, and then down at Mr. McGrory, who was asleep on his stomach.
“Herb!”
After a moment, without moving, Herb replied, “What?”
“Get up, for God’s sake!”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Get up, Herb, damn you!”
Mrs. McGrory turned on the lamp on her bedside table as Mr. McGrory sat up.
The first thing Mr. McGrory noticed was the shattered mirror.
“Jesus, what happened to the mirror?”
“How would I know?”
“It’s busted.”
“I can see that. What happened?”
Mr. McGrory ran over the possibilities.
“It could have been a sonic boom,” he theorized.
“Sonic boom?”
“You know, when an airplane goes faster than sound.”
“Oh, God, Herb! Sometimes . . .”
“Well, you tell me,” he said.
“Get up and see if anything else is wrong,” she said. “Don’t cut your feet on the broken glass.”
“Jesus!”
“Do it now, Herb!”
Two minutes later, after taking a cautious tour of their apartment, Mr. McGrory returned to announce that the only thing that seemed to be wrong was the mirror.
“You didn’t hear anything?” Joanne asked, significantly, nodding toward the wall with the broken mirror.
Several times, the McGrorys had heard the sounds of Cheryl Williamson entertaining gentleman callers in her bedroom. Once they had had to bang on the wall to request less enthusiasm.
Mr. McGrory smiled and said, “Could be . . .” and then made a circle with the thumb and index finger of his left hand, into which he then inserted, with a pumping motion, the index finger of his right hand.
“You’re disgusting,” Joanne said, and then added: “This time, it’s too much. The mirror is busted. I’m going to go over there and read the riot act to her.”
“No, you’re not,” he said.
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Then I’m going to call the cops. I won’t have this!”
“Call the cops? What are you going to say, ‘The lady next door’s boyfriend screwed her so hard the mirror fell off our wall’?”
“Unless we do something about it, we’re going to have to pay for that mirror,” Joanne argued.
“Okay,” Herb said after a moment’s thought. “Go tell her what happened.”
“If I go over there, what she’s going to say is that she doesn’t have any idea what I’m talking about. Would you?”
“Would I what?”
“Say, ‘Gee, I’m sorry my scre . . . lovemaking broke your mirror, and I’ll write you a check’?”
“And what good do you think calling the cops is going to do?”
“It can’t do any harm, can it?” Joanne asked reasonably. “Maybe something is wrong next door—with her. And I don’t want us to have to pay for the mirror.”
Joanne went to the telephone on the bedside table and punched 911.
At 1:57 A.M., a call went out from Police Radio:
“Disturbance, house, 600 Independence Street, second-floor left apartment.”
Officer James Hyde, a tall, thin, dark-haired young man of twenty-four, reached for his microphone in his patrol car, pushed the button, and replied:
“Thirty-five twelve, got it.”
A moment later, there was another response, this one from Officer Haywood L. Cubellis, a 210-pound, six-foot-seven, twenty-five-year-old African-American from his patrol car:
“Thirty-five seventeen, I’ll back him up.”
Whenever possible—in other words, usually—two cars will respond to a “Disturbance, House” call. Such calls usually involve a difference of opinion between two people of opposite—or the same—sex sharing living accommodations. By the time the cops are called, tempers are at—or over—the boiling point.
If two officers are present, each can listen sympathetically to the complaints of one abused party vis-à-vis the other, which also serves to keep the parties separated. One lonely police officer can be overwhelmed.
Both cars arrived at 600 Independence Street a few minutes after 2 A.M., although neither—there was little traffic— had used either siren or flashing lights.
While it might be argued that neither Officer Hyde nor Officer Cubellis was a highly experienced police officer—Hyde had been on the job three years and Cubellis four—they had enough experience to know that it was better for officers responding to a “Disturbance, House” call to bring with them calm, reason, and order, rather than the heightened excitement that howling sirens, flashing lights, and screaming tires produce.
“Hey, Wood,” Jim Hyde called as both got out of their cars and started into the apartment complex.
Officer Haywood Cubellis waved but did not respond.
He followed Hyde to the second-floor door of apartment 12B, and stood to one side as Hyde both knocked with his nightstick and pushed the doorbell.
Mrs. McGrory answered the door, in her bathrobe, with Herb standing behind her in trousers and a sleeveless undershirt, looking a little uncomfortable.
Both Hyde and Cubellis made a quick analysis.
Nice people. Looked sober. No bruises or signs of anything having been thrown or overturned in the apartment.
“You called the police, ma’am?” Hyde asked.
“Yes, I did.”
“What seems to be the trouble?”
“I like to think of myself as a reasonable person,” Joanne said. “Live and let live, as they say. But this is just too much.”
“What is it, ma’am?”
“Come in and I’ll show you,” Joanne said, and motioned the two policemen into the apartment. Both nodded at Herb, and Herb nodded back.
Officer Hyde looked at the broken mirror.
“What happened?”
“That’s what we would like to know,” Joanne said. “That’s why we called you.”
“You don’t know what happened to the mirror?” Hyde asked.
“Herb, my husband, and I were sound asleep when it happened. ”
“I told her I thought it was probably a sonic boom,” Herb said.
“That’s nonsense,” Joanne said. “It came from in there.”
She pointed at the wall.
“What’s in there?”
“The next apartment,” Joanne said.
“What do you think came from in there that broke your mirror?”
“You tell the officers, Herb.”
“This was your idea. You tell them,” Herb said.
“Sometimes you make me sick,” Joanne said. “You really do.”
“Why don’t you tell us what you think happened, ma’am?” Officer Cubellis suggested.
“Well, all right, I will. So far as I know, she’s a very nice girl. Her name is Cheryl Williamson. But she . . . every once in a while she entertains in there, if you know what I mean. Most of the time, there’s absolutely no problem, but once or twice—more than once or twice—she, they have gotten sort of carried away with what they’re doing, and it gets a little noisy, if you take my meaning.”
“What’s that got to do with your mirror?” Officer Hyde asked.
“It broke,” Joanne said, as if surprised by the question.
“And you think the people next door are responsible?”
“Well, Herb and I certainly aren’t,” Joanne said.
“Jim, why don’t I talk to the lady next door?” Officer Cubellis suggested.
“Why not?” Hyde said.
“Maybe something happened to her,” Joanne said.
Officer Cubellis left the McGrory bedroom.
“I don’t know how much it will cost to replace that mirror, but it won’t be cheap, and I don’t see why we should pay for it,” Joanne said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Officer Hyde said.
Five minutes later, Officer Cu
bellis returned and reported that it didn’t appear anyone was home in the next apartment. He had both rung the bell and knocked at Cheryl Williamson’s front door, and then gone outside the house, up the side stairs, and knocked at her back door. There was no doorbell button there that he could find. There was no response from either place, and he could hear no sounds from inside the apartment, or see any lights.
“I know she came in,” Joanne said. “I woke up when she came in. Her screen door squeaks. It was a little after midnight. ”
“Possibly she went out again,” Officer Cubellis said.
“Or maybe she knows the cops are here and doesn’t want to answer her door.”
“Why would she want to do that?”
“The mirror, of course,” Joanne said. “Somebody’s going to have to pay for it.”
“Ma’am, you’ll just have to take that up with her yourself in the morning,” Officer Hyde said.
“Can’t you just go in and see if she’s there or not?” Joanne asked.
“No, ma’am, we can’t do that.”
“For all we know, she’s in there lying in a pool of blood,” Joanne said.
“Ma’am, why would you say that? Did you hear any noises, anything like that?”
Joanne thought it over before replying.
“No,” she said finally, with some reluctance. “But that doesn’t mean anything. The mirror did get busted.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Officer Cubellis said, patiently. “But that doesn’t give us the right to break into that apartment. Think about this: You and Mr. McGrory are in here, watching a Stan Colt movie on TV. Lots of shooting, women screaming, explosions. Particularly at the end. The lady in the next apartment hears this and gets worried and calls 911. When the movie is over, you and Mr. McGrory go out for a hamburger. So when the police get here, there’s no answer. And they break in. And then you come home, and find the police in your apartment, and the door broken in.”
“Who would have to pay for the broken door if something like that happened?” Joanne inquired.
“The police . . .” Officer Cubellis began, and then changed his mind about the ending, “. . . would have to make the lady next door pay for the broken door,” he said. “Because she was the one who wanted the police to break in.”
“Jesus Christ, Joanne!” Herb McGrory said. “Officers, I’m sorry we put you to all this trouble.”
“No trouble at all, sir. That’s what we’re here for,” Officer Hyde said.
“I’m sure you’ll be able to work things out about the mirror, ” Officer Cubellis said.
Officers Cubellis and Hyde left the McGrory apartment, got into their patrol cars, and put themselves back into service. Officer Hyde filled out a Form 75-48, an initial report form for almost all police incidents. On it he stated that the McGrory mirror had been broken, and that Mrs. McGrory believed the occupant of the adjacent apartment was somehow responsible. An initial investigation of the adjacent apartment revealed that there was no response at that location and the premises were locked and secured.
[TWO]
When it was 2:23 A.M. in Philadelphia—the time that Officers Hyde and Cubellis reported to Police Radio that they were back in service after the “Disturbance, House” call—it was 8:23 A.M. in the village of Cognac-Boeuf, a small village in the southwest of France, not far from Bordeaux.
Despite the name, no cognac was distilled in the area, and the local farmers raised only enough milk cows for local consumption. Although sheep were still grown in the area, even that business had suffered from the ability of Australian and Argentine sheep growers to produce a higher grade of wool and a better quality of lamb at a lower price.
What once had been a bustling small village was now just a small, out-of-the-way village catering to what small farmers were left and to retirees, both French and from as far away as England, Sweden, and even the United States of America.
The retirees sold their houses or apartments in Hamburg or Copenhagen, and spent the money to buy—at very low prices; nobody but retirees had use for them—ancient farm-houses with a hectare or two of land, spent enough money to make them livable, and then settled down to watching the grass grow.
The Piaf Mill, for example, which sat on a small stream a kilometer from Cognac-Boeuf, had been purchased, with 1.7 hectares of land, six years before by a Swedish woman, Inge Pfarr Stillman, and her husband, Walter, an American, using the money—about $80,000—Inge had gotten from the sale of her apartment in Uppsala, near Stockholm.
It had gradually become believed that Walter Stillman, a burly man who wore a sloppy goatee as white as what was left of his hair, was a retired academic. He was obviously well-educated, and it was thought he was writing a book.
The mill, now converted into a comfortable home, was full of books, and every day the postman on his bicycle delivered yesterday’s International Herald-Tribune from Paris, and once a week, the international editions of Time and News-week.
Most afternoons, Stillman could be found in Le Relais, the better of Cognac-Boeuf’s two eating establishments— neither of which had won even one of Michelin’s stars— often playing chess with Père Marcel, the parish priest, and drinking the local vin ordinaire.
The people of Cognac-Boeuf—in particular the shopkeepers—had come to call Stillman, respectfully, “M’sieu Le Professeur.”
His name was actually Isaac David Festung, and he was a fugitive from justice, having been convicted of violation of Paragraph 2501(a) of the Criminal Code of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, for having intentionally and knowingly caused the death of Mary Elizabeth Shattuck, a human being, by beating and/or strangling her by the neck until she was dead.
M’sieu Le Professeur’s true identity had come to light two years before when, at sunrise, a dozen members of France’s Gendarmerie Nationale had appeared, pistols drawn at the Piaf Mill’s door. When Madame Stillman opened it to them, the gendarmes had burst in and rushed across the Mill’s ground floor to the stairs, then up the stairs to the loft. There they found—naked under a goose-down comforter in bed—a man who, although he insisted indignantly that he had never even heard of anyone named Isaac Festung, they arrested and placed in handcuffs.
After a brief stop at the constabulary office in Cognac-Boeuf to report the suspect was in custody—there was no telephone in Piaf Mill, and the radios in the gendarmes’ Peugeots were out of range of their headquarters—the man, still denying he had ever even heard of Isaac Festung, was taken in a gendarmerie car to Gradnignan Prison in Bordeaux, fingerprinted, and placed in a cell.
Forty-five minutes after that, a technician of the French Surêté, sent from Paris, after comparing “Stillman’s” just-taken prints with a set of prints of one Isaac David Festung, furnished via Interpol by the office of the Philadelphia District Attorney, declared that it was his professional opinion that they matched beyond any reasonable doubt.
When confronted with this announcement, Isaac Festung shrugged his shoulders and said that it was sad but he wasn’t surprised, that it had been inevitable that the American CIA would finally gain control of Interpol and finally be able to silence him.
Madame “Stillman,” meanwhile, back at the Piaf Mill, had gotten dressed and then driven to the telephone office in Cognac-Boeuf. There she had made several telephone calls, and had then come out to repeat more or less what her husband had said in Bordeaux: He was being persecuted by the American FBI and CIA both for being a peace activist and “for what he knew.” What he knew was not specified.
He had fled the United States, they both said, after he was arrested on a preposterous charge of murder. Furious that he had escaped their clutches, the CIA and FBI had arranged for a kangaroo trial in absentia, which had predictably found him guilty and sentenced him to death.
One of the telephone calls Madame Stillman/Mrs. Festung made was to a lawyer in Paris, who promptly called a press conference to make public what outrageous violations of law—and common decency—the barbaric American g
overnment was attempting to perpetrate.
The next day, the newspapers of France—and elsewhere in Europe—carried the story, often accompanied by outraged editorials.
For one thing, the European Convention on Human Rights had declared that an accused criminal was entitled to his day in court, which meant that he had the absolute right to be physically present in the courtroom to refute witnesses making, for example, preposterous charges that he had beaten and/or strangled his girlfriend and then stuffed her body into a trunk, which he then stored in a closet in his apartment, until the odor from there had caused his neighbors to call the police, asking them to investigate.
As astonishing an outrage as that was, the Americans had the incredibly barbaric arrogance to sentence the man illegally tried to an illegal sentence, that of being put to death by electrocution.
The death penalty was not permitted under French law. Extradition of someone sentenced to death, even in a trial at which he was present when a jury of his peers had found him guilty, was absolutely forbidden.
Many of the editorials demanded both that Mr. Festung be immediately set free and that the French government make, in the strongest possible language, their outrage known to the United States government.
The government of France wasn’t willing to go that far, possibly because the United States government suggested that if it did, the United States government would no longer honor requests of France passed to them via Interpol.
The matter would be decided, the French government announced, as soon as humanly possible, in a French court. France being France, that took six months, during which Mr. Festung remained confined in Gradnignan Prison in Bordeaux.
Mrs. Festung visited him frequently, sometimes daily, while they waited for the wheels of French judicial bureaucracy to grind inexorably.
The United States government then contracted for the services of a French law firm to represent it at the appeal hearing. There was a legal counsel, with a large support staff— more than forty people, it was said—attached to the United States Embassy in Paris, but it turned out that before he had become the legal counsel of the United States, he—and most of the members of his staff—had been special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and were not allowed to practice law, even in the United States.
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