The Devil's Stocking

by Nelson Algren

  Rabbit didn’t answer his mother. Didn’t even look at her. He looked, instead, at Melissa, his sixteen-year-old sister sitting across the table from him.

  “How’s school?” he asked her. Although he knew she had dropped out months ago.

  “Fine, Dex, fine,” Melissa assured him, “school is fine. I walked past it a couple of weeks ago and it’s still standing there looking fine.”

  “I’m disappointed in you, sis,”

  “You’re disappointed in me?” She was smiling.

  “You had a chance to go to school and make something of yourself, Melissa, I never had that chance.”

  “Now Dexter dear,” Mother Baxter corrected him, “you know how I begged you to finish high school. Purely begged you.”

  Again he did not, apparently, hear her. The fact was that Dexter was as deeply disappointed in his mother as he was in his sister. Dexter Baxter kept high moral standards for both mother and sister. Both continually let him down.

  Nor were his mother and sister the only people who had ever disappointed Dexter. He had also been disappointed in the court that had sentenced him to three-to-five instead of handing him the reward money and letting him make the street.

  Not only had the court forced him to serve two years and eight months, but he still had not seen a penny of the reward. People never tired of taking advantage of Dexter Baxter. Here they were still at it.

  “It would be good if you could find something, dear,” his mother persisted.

  “They need a weekend bartender at the Easy Street,” Melissa informed him, “ten until closing time. No experience necessary. All they ask is that he put some of the money into the register.” She smiled.

  “The landlord phoned too, son,” Mother Baxter put in. “He was polite too. He reminded me we’re two months behind.”

  “Mother dear,” Dexter finally turned toward her, “you’ve worked for me all your life. Now why don’t you go out and find a job of your own?” Reaching his open palm against her face, he shoved her over backward, chair and all.

  “Are you hurt, mother?” Melissa asked as the old woman rose, blushing in humiliation. She turned, breathing hard because she was a heavy woman, and walked to her bedroom dabbing at her eyes. Only her feelings had been injured.

  Melissa cocked her head to one side and, pertly as a bird, studied her brother. He’d never try anything like that on her, she knew. He’d tried it once but he wouldn’t try it again. He never tried force on anyone who might strike back; she knew that much about Dexter Baxter.

  “What are you hanging around Easy Street for?” Baxter asked, though he could not have cared less. Where Melissa spent her nights, whose bed she slept in, was the least of his concerns. If the wench didn’t come home at all, so much the better. All he wanted was to talk about something else than going to work. Talking about work was as boring as work itself. Even for a weekend in a bar where he could steal as much as he earned.

  “I got a steady boyfriend there,” she lied, “he thinks the world of me.”

  “I’m glad you’ve settled down to a single man,” he congratulated her.

  “The last time I got locked, you were going steady with the whole town.”

  “He’s not single,” she chose to misunderstand, “he’s married.”

  “How come we’re two months behind then in the rent?” he jumped right in there.

  “Dexter dear.” Mother Baxter was back, standing now in a tweedy pink bathrobe, in her bedroom door, “Dexter dear, you ought to be ashamed to talk like that to your sister.”

  “Going steady,’” Melissa ignored her mother as completely as had her brother, “doesn’t mean what you think it means. Our relationship is purely flatonic.”

  “It’s what?”

  “Flatonic. That means …”

  “I know what it means, sis,” Dexter grinned, “it means you don’t neck. You just converse about books. What was the name of that last book you read, sis?”

  “You know, Dexter,” she smiled at him, “every time you come out of the can you look fruitier than when you went in?”

  “‘Fruitier?’” Mother Baxter needed to know, “what is ‘fruitier’”

  Nobody explained to Mother Baxter. Nobody ever explained anything to Mother Baxter. How this young girl with the morals of a mink, and this skinny thief, who was in and out of jail like a fiddler’s elbow, came to be flesh of her flesh, was more than the old woman could grasp.

  “Different strokes for different folks, sis,” Dexter answered his sister, and turned away from both her and his mother as if, between the pair of them, he felt he were being asphyxiated.

  Melissa’s latest affair of the heart actually was platonic. It was platonic because her friend was not even aware of Melissa. Barney Kerrigan had been sitting around Main Street bars, in Hackensack, chatting with this barfly then that, in hope of running down Dexter Baxter.

  He’d bought this good-looking young redhead a few drinks, had wondered whose I.D. card she was drinking on, but hadn’t paid much heed to her chatter until she’d volunteered her name. Kerrigan had invited her into a booth.

  He was sitting with his back to the door when Baxter came in and, spotting his sister, strode up to her with the intention of giving her a talk on morality loud enough for the barflies to overhear. But Melissa spoke first.

  “Mr. Kerrigan, this is my brother.”

  Dexter Baxter took one look, swung about and was out the door.

  Kerrigan stared after him. “What got into him?” he asked.

  “He don’t take to cops, that’s all,” Melissa explained.

  “I’m not a cop.”

  She touched him lightly on his hand, as much as to say, Stop kidding.

  “Of course you’re a cop. Some kind of cop.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “A cop is a cop, that’s all.” Melissa gave him her whitest, sweetest smile, “you just know, that’s all.”

  “That’s funny,” Kerrigan told her, “because I’m really not. I’m an investigator with the public defender’s office.”

  “It’s what I said. Some kind of cop.” Her smile had become teasing. “Look, don’t feel bad. It don’t mean you’re a bad guy. It just means people got to be a little careful talkin’ to you, that’s all. Why else do you think Dex took off like that?”

  “Well,” he told her, “all I can tell you is what I told you already. I’m not a cop. Quite the opposite in fact. And it’s Dexter I’ve been hoping to talk to.”

  “We were talking about you earlier this evening, Mr. Kerrigan.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I told Dex I had a new boy friend. That we were going steady.”

  Kerrigan still didn’t get it.

  “Well,” she laid her hand onto his, “we have had a couple drinks together, haven’t we?”

  Then, having gotten it at last, he didn’t know how to handle it. He’d found a person who could bring him to Baxter—but there seemed to be a price tag attached. She handled it for him by picking up her coat. “Let’s get out of here,” she decided.

  They sat in a pizza parlor for an hour before Melissa said at last, “Dex will be home by now, if you want to see him.”

  Kerrigan nodded. It would suit him fine.

  “It’s a long walk,” she told him, hoping he might hail a cab.

  “Let’s walk anyhow,” he told her. It was too easy to get involved in the back of a taxi.

  When they came into her small front parlor, Mother Baxter greeted them, smiling her short-sighted smile.

  “Are you the man who called from the parole office?” she asked Kerrigan.

  “No,” he told her. Then, looking up, he saw a shadowy figure leaning, as though listening, in the shadowy hall. Kerrigan felt alarmed until Melissa called out cheerfully, “Come out, Dex, we have company.”

  Dexter came out unsmiling but did not sit down.

  “Can we have coffee, mother?” Melissa asked. The girl was enjoying the situat
ion she had created.

  “Sit down, Dex, so we can talk,” Kerrigan suggested.

  Baxter stayed standing.

  “Sit down, dear,” Mother Baxter urged her son, “the man isn’t going to hurt you.”

  “Sit down, Dex,” Melissa commanded him, and he sat down.

  “You think I’m going to talk to you about Calhoun, mister, you’re wrong,” Baxter assured Kerrigan. “That’s done. Over. Through.”

  “It isn’t done, through or over for Calhoun,” Kerrigan reminded him. “It’s every day for him.”

  Baxter shrugged his indifference. Kerrigan felt himself getting angry, but cooled it.

  “You put the man in there, Dex. You know what it’s like in there. I don’t blame you, in a way, considering the time you were facing.”

  Baxter looked Kerrigan up and down. He didn’t care much, it appeared, for what he saw.

  “I’m not talking about Calhoun, mister.”

  “Mister,” Kerrigan assured him, “you have to talk about Calhoun.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning it isn’t the state you have to be afraid of anymore. It’s the people behind Calhoun you’re standing in danger of now.”

  This was straight bluff. Baxter was not in imminent peril of physical assault. Calhoun regarded him as a man whom the judicial system had used and had now tossed aside. The man was, in a sense, a victim too. He didn’t feel vindictive toward Baxter, but toward the forces behind Baxter.

  This kind of thinking, Kerrigan perceived, was totally alien to Baxter’s own vindictive mind. There blacks and whites were forever at swords’ points; that blacks were out to kill him there could be no doubt. Kerrigan read Baxter well.

  “Sleep on it,” he suggested to Baxter. “I’ll drop by tomorrow night.”

  When Melissa opened the door to Kerrigan, the following evening, she saw, beside Kerrigan, a big blond fellow. Don Kessler was well over six feet and had put on weight since his marriage. He weighed close to three hundred pounds.

  When they stepped inside, Mother Baxter came out and told them to make themselves at home while she made coffee. Dexter was sleeping but she’d wake him up. She didn’t ask Kessler who he was.

  If Melissa knew, she didn’t say. She retired to a corner to listen and watch.

  Dexter came out, in pajamas and a bathrobe. He gave Kessler a cursory nod of recognition.

  “I’ve been talking to Iello,” Kerrigan began.

  Baxter, sitting on the edge of his chair, looked ready to take flight. Except he had nowhere to fly.

  “I don’t have anything to do with Nick Iello. I haven’t seen him for years. We don’t have anything in common anymore.”

  “You’ve got plenty in common with Iello, Baxter. If he goes into court and testifies that he lied about Calhoun, that makes you out a liar too.”

  “I’ve been called a liar before. So what?”

  “A man is doing triple life because of it, that’s so what.”

  “Don’t make me responsible for that, mister. That whole deal was made up between Iello and De Vivani. They didn’t even tell me what to say. I had to figure it out for myself. What do you expect me to do? Go up for eighty years for God’s sake?”

  “Let’s forget about then and talk about now, Baxter,” Kerrigan suggested. “You’re out of the reach of the courts now, as you know, for perjury. But you’re not out of reach of others.” He turned toward big Don Kessler. “You tell him, Don.”

  “Get yourself off the hook, Dex,” Kessler advised him. “You’ll be going up again, you know that as well as I do, and you won’t have the protection you had till now. How long do you think you’d last at Leesburg?”

  “I don’t have any plans to make Leesburg,” Baxter assured Kessler, “none whatsoever. I’m out and I’m going to stay out.”

  “Be that as it may, and I wish you good luck, too,” Kessler filled him in, “but if you’re not inside then you’re out. You’ve used up your protective custody, Dex. If you don’t get off the hook by yourself, there are people who are going to put you on it.”

  Mother Baxter appeared in the doorway bearing a tray on which she’d arranged a dish of chocolate cookies. A moment later she was back with three cups and a coffee percolator still perking.

  “Help yourself, boys,” she invited them, and sat down to watch them eat and drink. Mother Baxter always felt contented when she had the privilege of serving people.

  “And what line of work are you in, Mr. Kessler?” she asked big Don.

  “Oh,” big Don rambled a moment for a reply, “I’m in television,” he told Mother Baxter.

  “On the morning of June 16, 1966,” Dexter Baxter’s statement read, “I was in the alley behind the Apex Supply Company’s plant in Jersey City. My purpose was to break in and rob the place. My partner, Nick Iello, was lookout. He told me he was going down to a bar on the corner for cigarettes before they closed, so it must have been around 2 A.M. I heard a couple of shots shortly after, but thought it must be a car backfiring. A few minutes later Iello came running, hands me a handful of bills and tells me to get out of the area, there’s been a shooting, there’s going to be cops all over the place and he has to get back because he’s been seen. Somebody had seen him running out of the bar. The money was from the register. I never saw anybody come out of the bar. Iello mentioned a man named Ruby Calhoun, a prize-fighter of whom I’d heard. When I got picked up, because of Iello, the police tied me up to nine charges of armed robbery, in four different counties. They could charge me with the murders, they told me. I could do eighty years for armed robbery, they told me. Then they began handing me mug shots. What else could I do? I identified the one they wanted me to identify.”

  Kerrigan got the recantations of Baxter and Iello notarized and handed them to a New York Times reporter. The reporter promptly attached his own byline to them and made the front pages, accompanied by a photograph of Calhoun. He had never met Calhoun.

  The reporter accepted full credit, nevertheless, for an admirable job of reporting and his long association with the man who’d been perjured into the penitentiary. There was talk of film rights.

  The reporter was so busy accepting honors that he neglected to mention it was another man who had built up Calhoun’s case by two years of determined pursuit of the witnesses.

  New Jersey vs. Calhoun became a national issue.

  “Both men are sticking their necks out,” Max Epstein told the press.

  “They’re making themselves liable to prosecution for perjury.”

  Neither Iello nor Baxter were making themselves liable to anything. Neither was a man who left himself open to anything, for a moment. Both knew that the statute on prosecution for perjury had run out for them.

  “If they recant their original testimony in court,” state’s attorney Scott warned both witnesses, “we will establish that they are now lying, and we will prosecute.”

  More hot air. Prosecutor Scott, too, knew that the statute had run out.

  3

  Evidentiary

  Hearing

  Did the recantations of Iello and Baxter make the first trial of Ruby Calhoun null and void? Calhoun’s defense thought so. The state did not.

  Calhoun’s attorney was now Max Epstein. The evidentiary hearing, convened to decide the legality of the original trial, was presided over by the same judge who had conducted that first trial.

  “We are not here to retry the criminal case,” Judge Turner forewarned Epstein at the evidentiary hearing of October 1974. “We are here on a limited procedure. Kindly attune your evidence to such procedure.”

  Epstein immediately asked Iello whether the testimony he had given, identifying Calhoun as the man emerging from the Melody Bar and Grill immediately after the killings, had been true.

  “No,” Iello replied.

  “You lied under oath?”

  “I did.”

  “Now you have come forward and have spoken to Barney Kerrigan of the office of the public defender
. Barney, will you stand up? Have you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were there any threats to you by Mr. Kerrigan, or by anyone, which would cause you to volunteer this information? Promises? Inducements?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Why did you not come forward before?”

  “I was afraid of retaliation from the prosecutor’s office.”

  “Have you been visited, recently, by any member of that office?”

  “I seen Lieutenant De Vivani three times the past year, more or less. He’d promised me I wouldn’t have to worry about going to jail because I had testified for the state. So I told him, ‘I’m having quite a lot of trouble here, lieutenant. Can you do something for me because I’m under a doctor’s care?’ He told me, ‘You got yourself into this, now get yourself out.’ Then he tells me, ‘Don’t try to rearrange your story or I’ll get you a hundred years.’

  “A hundred years?’I, ask him. ‘For what? If Calhoun gets an appeal I’ll take the Fifth. I won’t testify no more for the state. The state is a stinker.’ That is why I’m getting pressured now from the prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor’s office is also a stinker.”

  “In what form is this pressure applied to you, Mr. Iello?”

  “I never realized until after the trial how I had been fashioned by Hudson County. They molded me into that and made a stool pigeon out of me and then they made me a scapegoat. You know who the real victim in this whole business is? Me. I’m the real victim.”

  “How did Hudson County fashion you, Mr. Iello?”

  “By continuously and constantly questioning me. I was told of a reward I was supposed to have. I was told that a certain man ought to be in jail, if not for this crime then for some other, and that it was up to me to send him there. Why so? Am I the prosecuting attorney for God’s sake? ‘They really gave me the business’ is what I said to myself when I seen the papers. And when I ask them, ‘What do I do now?’ after I had perjured myself for them, you know what they told me? ‘Move to another town,’ they told me, ‘it won’t look nice for you to be hanging around Jersey City.’ How do you like that? I’m born and raised in Jersey City, now they tell me, ‘Get out!’ Then the police broke my ribs and I was back in jail.”