The azaleas were dying.

Naturally, they would be dying, and he should have known better. A man born and bred in New York City could dig each hole to its properly specified depth, spread peat moss in it, lay the plant onto this rich brown cushion with loving care, keep it watered and spoonfed with vitamins — and the thing would die anyway for no other reason than that a city boy had planted it.

Or perhaps he was being overly sensitive. Perhaps the intense heat of the past few days had been responsible for the plants’ illness. If that were the case, the azaleas might just as well give up the ghost, because today was going to be another scorcher. He rose from his squatting position near the fading shrubs that lined the terrace, squinting into the distant harsh glare of the Hudson. Another bright, sticky day, he thought, and his tiny office came instantly to mind, and he glanced rapidly at his watch. He still had a few minutes, at least time for a cigarette before he began his trek to the subway.

He pulled the pack from his jacket pocket, tore off the cellophane top and shook a cigarette free. He was a tall man with a large-boned frame, his body padded with sinew that would never turn to fat. His hair was black, cropped close to his skull in a crew cut which subtracted five years from his age. At thirty-eight, he still managed to convey to juries the look of a young innocent about to prosecute a case only because it was in the best interest of the people. And, like a young boy, he could suddenly vent seemingly spontaneous fury on a witness, turning his testimony into a shambles under the gleaming truth-sword of the very young. This morning, as every morning, his blue eyes were pale after a night’s sleep. Later in the day they would regain their full color, quickly readable meters of the ebb and flow of energy within the man.

He pulled up one of the rattan chairs, maneuvered it so that it faced the river and the pure cloudless blue of the sky, and leisurely puffed on his cigarette. He turned when he heard the screen door clatter shut behind him.

“Shouldn’t you be on your way?” Karin asked.

“I have a few minutes,” he said.

She crossed the terrace lazily, stooping beside the potted geraniums, plucking a few dead leaves from each plant, and then walking to the huge stone bowl that served as an ash tray, dropping the leaves, and coming to where he sat. He watched her, wondering if all men were still delighted by their wives’ beauty after fourteen years of marriage. She had been only nineteen when he’d met her, and the hunger of a Germany in defeat had robbed her body of its rightful claim to flesh. She was still a slender woman, but slender with the glow of health now, thirty-five years old with the firm unsagging breasts of a young girl, an abdomen only faintly striated by childbirth years before. She pulled up a stool and caught his free hand with her own, bringing it to her cheek. Her long blond hair touched the back of his hand. She was wearing a short-sleeved white blouse and dungarees and he thought, How American she looks, and then realized how ridiculous he was being. Why, even her English, heavily accented when he had first met her in Berlin, had lost its guttural Teutonic bite, had become rounded and polished, a pebble worn smooth by contact.

“Jennie up yet?” he asked.

“It’s summertime,” Karin said logically. “Let her sleep.”

“I never see that girl,” he said. “My own daughter.”

“The prosecution exaggerates.”

“Possibly,” he answered. “But I get the feeling I’ll come home one night and find Jennie sitting at the dinner table with a young man she’ll introduce as her husband.”

“Hank, she’s only thirteen,” Karin said. She rose and walked to the edge of the terrace. “Look at the river. It’s going to be very hot today.”

He nodded. “You’re the only woman I know who doesn’t look like a truck driver when she puts on a pair of pants.”

“And how many other women do you know?”

“Thousands.” He smiled. “Intimately.”

“Tell me about them.”

“Wait until my memoirs are published.”

“There’s the excursion boat,” she said. “I wish we could go one day. Could we, Hank?”

“What?”

“The boat...” She paused and studied him. “I thought it might be fun.”

“Oh. Oh, yes.”

For a moment, a cloud had passed, fleeting, ephemeral, disturbing him with the puritanical fact that he had not been the first with Karin Brucker. Well, it was wartime, he told himself, what the hell. She’s my wife now, Mrs. Henry Bell, and I should be grateful that an incredible beauty like Karin chose me over the competition, but why the hell did there have to be competition, well, it was wartime, it was... and yet, Mary would not have.

Mary.

The name sprang into his mind full-blown, as if it had been waiting to leap from a dark corner of his memory. Mary O’Brien. Not any longer, of course. Married now. To whom? What was his name? If he had ever known, he had now forgotten. Besides, she would always be Mary O’Brien to him, untouched, pure... You can’t compare them, damnit! Karin lived in Germany, Karin was...

Suddenly he asked, “Do you love me?”

She turned to him, startled. She had not yet made up her face. There were laughter wrinkles at the corners of her hazel eyes, and her unpainted mouth parted in slight surprise and then, very softly, she said, “I love you, Hank,” with a note of wonder and chastisement in her voice and, in what seemed like embarrassment, she went into the house quickly. He could hear her moving noisily about in the kitchen.

Mary, he thought. God, what a long time ago.

He sighed and looked out at the Hudson, dizzily reflecting the early-morning sun. He rose then and went into the kitchen for his briefcase. Karin was picking up the breakfast dishes.

Without looking at him, she said, “About the boat ride, Hank.”

“Yes?”

“For it to be fun, it shouldn’t be on a Saturday or a Sunday.” She raised her eyes to meet his. “For it to be fun, Hank, you would have to take a day away from the office, sometime in the middle of the week.”

“Sure,” he said. He smiled and kissed her briefly. “Sure.”

It looked as if it might rain.

The July heat had been building in the city all day long, mounting in blast-furnace intensity. Now, at seven-thirty, ominously dark clouds hung on the horizon, bringing with them a false cloak of blackness, an imitation night without stars. The magnificent New York skyline spread across the sham night in bold knife-edged silhouette. Lights had been turned on in defense against the approaching storm and window slits pierced the silhouette like open yellow wounds. There was the distant rumble of thunder across the river in New Jersey. Feeble streaks of lightning crossed the sky like erratic tracer shells searching for a nonexistent target.

When the rain came, it would sweep across the Hudson to lash the Riverside Drive apartment buildings with their doormen and elevator operators, with their obscenities scrawled on the foyer walls of what had once been the aristocracy of dwellings. The rain would continue eastward, driving unchecked through colored Harlem and then Spanish Harlem, racing for the opposite shore of the island and the East River, washing in passing the streets of Italian Harlem.

In Italian Harlem, they sat on the front stoops and talked about the Yankees and the turncoat Giants and Dodgers. The women wore flowered housedresses and the men wore short-sleeved sport shirts. The D.S.C. trucks had been through earlier that afternoon, sprinkling the street with water. But the sun had attacked the asphalt again like a searing blow torch, bringing back the suffocating heat of the street. The sun was gone now, but the heat remained, and the people sipped at cans of beer beaded with cool moisture, and they glanced skyward and wished the rain would hurry. Before the rain, there would be a cool wind that rushed through the street, catching at newspapers, lifting skirts. Before the rain, there would be the sweet pure smell of what was coming, the scent of refreshing cleanliness.

Before the rain, a murder would be committed.

The street was long.

It ran clear across the island of Manhattan, starting at the East River, running westward with the precision of a shishkebob skewer. Hanging on that skewer, one modulating into the other so that all geographical boundaries were lost in the polytypic overlap, were Italians, Puerto Ricans and Negroes. It was a long, long street, piercing the island at its heart, rushing with geometric inevitability toward the rain clouds banked over the Hudson River.

The three came down the street.

The word had gone around that afternoon, passed from lip to lip, mouth to mouth, “The stuff is on, the stuff is on,” and now they came down the street, three tall boys walking rapidly and without fear as they passed el-liberated Third Avenue, and then Lexington Avenue, walking more cautiously as they approached Park, cutting through one of the arches supporting the overhead New York Central tracks and then bursting into the mouth of the street like alien hand-grenade explosions. Their combat boots hit the pavement in regulated chaos, their fists were bunched, there was in each a high-riding excitement which threatened to blow off the tops of their skulls and dissipate their generated anger. The tallest of the three pulled a knife, and the blade glittered in the paling light, and then there were three knives, the silent performers in a vaudeville pantomime, and a young girl shouted in Spanish, “Mira! Cuidado!” and one of the boys yelled, “Shut up, you spic whore!” and a boy sitting on one of the stoops turned his head toward the sound of unaccented English and then suddenly rose.

“There’s one of them!” a voice said, and another voice yelled, “Get him!”

The boy lifted a blank face. A blade flashed, penetrated, flesh ripped in silent protest as the knife gashed upward from the gut. And now the other knives descended, tearing and slashing until the boy fell like an assassin-surrounded Caesar, crumpling to the pavement. The knives withdrew. Blood spattered like early rain to the sidewalk. From the opposite end of the street four boys began running toward the intruders.

“Go, go!” a voice shouted, and the three ran, crossing under the railroad tracks on Park Avenue, running, running, and suddenly it was raining.

The rain drummed relentlessly on the figure balled against the stone of the stoop, diluting the rich red blood that ran from his open belly, washing the blood into the gutter that traversed the long street.

The boy was dead even before the squad car picked up his attackers not four city blocks away.

Monday was starting wrong.

Or, he supposed, perhaps Sunday night had ended wrong. In any case, and in whatever sequence, this was going to be one of those days which — unless something positive were done about it immediately — would rapidly succumb to the battering combination of error and circumstance. Sitting behind the desk in his small office, the sheaf of transcripts finally, finally, finally before him, Hank tried to reconstruct the events which, like elements of a sorcerer’s evil brew, had united to overboil in chaos.

The first of these elements had been the party last night at the Bentons’. Sunday night was no damn good for parties anyway, since all of the men drank too much in an effort to obliterate what was coming on the morrow, and all the women tried too desperately to maintain a weekend glamour which would instantly evaporate at the first ring of the Monday morning alarm. Add to this particular Sunday night party the fact that Charlie Cooke had got really drunk, absolutely stoned beyond the reaches of civilized inebriation, stinko, blotto, blind drunk, and that Alice Benton had begun wailing about a legendary beating her husband had administered to her some eight years ago, which memory had apparently been evoked by Charlie’s supine position in the middle of the living room, and the pall of the usual Sunday night get-togethers assumed titanic proportions which drove every guest (except the unconscious Charlie Cooke) home long before midnight.

Back in their own house, Hank and Karin had discussed the party over a nightcap. The more they talked about it, the more horrible it seemed until finally, in an attempt to blot out the events of the evening, they’d gone to bed and sought the cleansing solace of love-making. This, as it turned out, was another mistake. Neither of them was in a particularly loving frame of mind, and the harder they drove themselves toward a passion they did not feel, the sharper became the memory of the very real images they were trying to eradicate. Whatever pleasure they derived from their forced mating that night was instantly counteracted by the knowledge that it had been a truly loveless act designed to soften the impact of an evening spent with people who seemed totally devoid of love. They had fought lovelessness with more lovelessness, however mechanically precise, enjoyable only in its precision, but totally unsatisfactory otherwise. Exhausted, beginning to feel the flat aftermath of their hard drinking and their coldly manic intercourse, they had drifted off into restless, dissatisfied sleep.

The alarm clock rang at seven-thirty, as it did every morning. This gave Hank forty-five minutes in which to wash, shave, dress and eat before leaving the house at eight-fifteen. This morning, however, this morning which was starting wrong after a night that had ended wrong, there was a difference. There had apparently been an interruption of electrical service sometime during the night. The power had been off for close to a half hour. When the electric alarm clock began buzzing at seven-thirty, it was really seven-fifty-eight. Hank did not make the discovery until twenty minutes later when he tuned in the kitchen radio to see what the weather would be like that day. When he heard the correct time, he left his breakfast and rushed into the bathroom to shave, opening a welt on his cheek and cursing the Bentons and their lousy party, his wife and her frigid love-making, the goddamn inefficient electric company, and even the radio station which had finally apprised him of the truth. He stormed out of the house wanting to know why Jennie wasn’t awake yet, sprinted all the way to the subway station, and did not arrive at the office until almost ten o’clock. Once there, he discovered that everything that had gone before (and by this time he was beginning to relent the poxes he’d levied on those nice Bentons, his passionate wife, the excellent service of the electric company and the public-mindedness of the radio station) had only been preludes to the true catastrophe waiting at the office.

On Friday afternoon, after the Rafael Morrez case had been assigned to him, he had accepted transcripts of the boys’ interrogation as recorded by the stenographer on the night of the slaying, taken them to his office and put them into his top desk drawer. This morning, this glorious fouled-up morning, the transcripts were gone. It was ten-fifteen, and the weather seemed determined to break all previous records set for heat, and the goddamn transcripts of the police interrogation were gone. He began searching the office. By ten-thirty, he was soaked with perspiration and ready to force open one of the suicideproof windows and leap to the pavement below. He called the building’s custodian and tried to find out whether or not a cleaning woman had inadvertently dumped the typed sheets into a wastepaper basket. He called the stenographic pool and asked whether or not some harebrained typist had picked them up of her own initiative. He buzzed Dave Lipschitz and asked if anyone had been snooping around his office that morning. He searched the office a second time, and then a third time. It was eleven o’clock.

He sat behind his desk and stared glumly at the wall, drumming his fingers on the desk top, ready by this time to commit first-degree murder himself.

It was then that Albert Soames, that bright young bastard, strolled into the office with the transcripts under his arm. Hope you don’t mind, Hank, he’d said, just wanted to check them over myself since I was the one who went up to the precinct on the night of the murder, here they are, safe and sound, this looks like a fine case, I’ll bet you enjoy it, I can read the sentence for you now even before you begin, death in the electric chair, my friend, death in the electric chair.

Looking over the record of the questioning now, wondering what he could do to prevent the next hammer blow of fate from falling on this completely nutty morning, Hank was inclined to agree with Soames’s prediction.

The People were prosecuting for Murder One in the Morrez case, and first-degree murder carried with it a mandatory death penalty. The indictment requested by the bureau seemed fair to Hank. Murder One was either premeditated murder or murder committed during the enactment of a felony. In the case of the People versus Aposto, Reardon and Di Pace — and especially in the light of what they’d said on the night of their arrest — there was little doubt in Hank’s mind that the murder was premeditated. Nor did this appear to be a case wherein the thin line of technicality separated Murder One from Murder Two, a case wherein the premeditation consisted of having drawn a revolver twenty seconds before firing it.

These boys seemed to have gone into Spanish Harlem deliberately and coldly. They had not slain in the heat of passion with intent to inflict only grievous injury. They had come there, it appeared, prepared to kill, and maliciously, blindly, they had struck down the first likely victim. If ever the People had an open-and-shut case of murder in the first degree, this was it. Why, even the lieutenant in charge of the detective squad had ripped holes in Aposto’s and Reardon’s obvious lies.

Nodding to himself, Hank turned to the first page of the interrogation of Danny Di Pace and began reading it.

The telephone on his desk rang. Reluctantly, Hank put aside the transcript and reached for the phone, feeling an immediate sense of premonition. On this morning of all magnificent mornings, he would not be surprised to learn that the bank had foreclosed his mortgage, that the Hudson had flooded and swelled into his living room, and that...

“Henry Bell,” he said.

“Hank, this is Dave on the desk. There’s a woman out here. Says she wants to see you.”

“A woman?” The sense of premonition was stronger now. He found himself frowning.

“Yeah,” Dave said. “Okay to send her in?”

“What does she want to see me about?”

“The Morrez kill.”

“Who is she, Dave?”

“Says she’s Mrs. Di Pace.”

“Danny Di Pace’s mother?”

“Just a second.” Dave’s voice retreated from the phone. “You Danny Di Pace’s mother?” Hank heard him ask. The voice came back to the mouthpiece. “Yeah, that’s who she is, Hank.”

Hank sighed. “Well, I’d planned on seeing her anyway, so it might as well be now. Send her in.”

“Roger,” Dave said, and then he hung up.

Hank replaced the phone on its cradle. He was not looking forward to the woman’s entrance. In the preparation of his case, he’d have summoned her to the office once, and then only to ascertain facts of the boy’s background. Her unexpected arrival now rattled him. He hoped she would not cry. He hoped she would understand that he was the People’s attorney, hired by the citizens of New York County to defend their rights, and that he would defend those rights as vigorously as her son’s attorneys defended his. And yet he knew she would cry. He had never met her, but she was the boy’s mother. She would cry.

He took the typed sheets from his desk top and put them into a drawer. Then he sat back to wait for the mother of Danny Di Pace, hoping against hope that there would not be another scene to add to this day which had begun so badly.

She was younger than he’d expected. He realized that the moment she stepped into the small waiting room outside. She came toward the inner office then, and he saw her face completely for the first time, and he felt as if he’d been struck with something hard and solid, and he suddenly knew that all the events of last night and this morning had been building toward this one shattering practical joke. Shock followed instantly on the heels of recognition to render him completely speechless as he sat behind his desk.

Hesitantly, Mrs. Di Pace said, “Mr. Bell?” and her eyes met his, and then the recognition crossed her face, too, followed instantly by the same shock, a visible thing which knifed her brown eyes and then sent her jaw slack. She shook her head in disbelief and then asked, “Hank?” hesitantly, and then “Hank?” more firmly.

“Yes,” he said, and he wondered why this had to be and he knew with sudden intuition that he was being sucked into a whirlpool where drowning was a distinct possibility, where he must swim or drown, swim for his life...

“Are you... Mr. Bell?”

“Yes.”

“But I... Have you... have you changed your name? Is that it?”

“Yes. When I began practicing law,” he said. He had changed his name for many reasons, most of which were deeply rooted and unconscious and which he could not have explained rationally if he’d tried. He did not try to explain now. The change of name was a fait accompli, a legal decree reading “ORDERED, that upon compliance with all the provisions herein contained, the said petitioners shall, on and after the 8th day of February, 1948, be respectively known as and by the names of Henry Bell, Karin Bell, and Jennifer Bell, which they are authorized to assume and by no other names.”

“And you’re a district attorney?” she said.

“Yes.”

“And my son’s case is in your...”

“Sit down, Mary,” he said.

She sat, and he studied the face he had once known so very well, the face he had held in his youthful hands — Wait for me, wait for me — it was the same face, more tired perhaps, but the same face that had belonged to Mary O’Brien at nineteen, the brown eyes and the near-red hair, red with a burnished glow, the aristocratic nose, the sensual mouth, the utterly exotic mouth, he had kissed that mouth...

He had thought of this meeting many times. In the great American fantasy of star-crossed lovers meeting on wind-swept streets, he had imagined meeting Mary O’Brien again one day, and he had thought some of the old love they had known for each other would still be there, and perhaps their hands would touch briefly and they would sigh wistfully over a life together that had never been and never would be — and then once more part. And now, here was the meeting, and Mary O’Brien was the mother of Danny Di Pace, and he didn’t know what the hell to say to her.

“This is... very strange,” he said. “I had no idea...”

“Nor I.”

“I mean, I knew you were married. You wrote to me and told me you were getting married and... and maybe you even mentioned the name, but that was such a long time ago, Mary, and I never...”

“I mentioned the name,” she said. “John Di Pace. My husband.”

“Yes. Maybe you did mention the name. I don’t remember.”

He could remember every other detail of the day he’d received her letter, could remember the wet drizzle clinging to the airfield in the north of England, the sounds of the Liberators warming up outside, the white plumes of their exhausts sifting through the early-morning rain, the neat red and blue diagonal lines on her airmail envelope, the hurried scrawl of her hand, and the address, Captain Henry Alfred Belani, 714 5632, 31st Bomber Squadron Command, U. S. Army Air Corps, A.P.O. New York, New York, and the words:

And the sudden angry roar of the bombers taxiing across the blackened field to take off into the wind.

“I didn’t remember the name,” he said.

They were both silent.

“You’re... you’re looking very well, Mary,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t know you still lived in the old neighborhood.”

“Harlem? Yes. Johnny’s store is there.” She paused. “My husband. Johnny.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Hank...”

“Mary, I don’t know why you came here, but—”

“Oh, Hank, for the love of God, are you going to kill my son?”

She did not cry. In that moment, he wished she would have cried. She hurled the words across the desk instead, her face dead white behind the startling brown eyes and the full sensual mouth.

“Mary, let’s understand each other,” he said.

“Please. Let’s.”

“What happened between us was a long time ago. You’re married now, and I’m married, and we both have children.”

“And you’re prosecuting my child for murder.”

“Mary—”

“Aren’t you, Hank?”

“Yes, I am,” he said. “I work for this county, and it’s my job to protect the people of this county. Your son committed murder, and as attorney for the—”

“My son had nothing to do with it! It was the others!”

“If that’s true, I’ll find out before the trial.”

“He didn’t even belong to the gang!”

“Mary, believe me, this is not a vengeful office. The case will be investigated thoroughly before it comes to trial. If there are mitigating circumstances—”

“Oh, stop it, stop it, Hank, please. This isn’t what I expect from you. From a stranger, yes, but not you, not Hank Belani.”

“Bell,” he corrected gently.

“I’m Mary,” she said softly, “the girl you once knew. Mary. Who loved you once... very dearly.” She paused. “Don’t tell me about mitigating circumstances.”

“What do you want me to tell you, Mary?”

“That my boy won’t be sent to the electric chair...”

“I can’t promise you anything like—”

“...for something he didn’t do!” she concluded.

The room went silent again.

“No one pays with his life for something he didn’t do,” Hank said.

“You really believe that, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yes. I really believe it.”

She stared at him long and hard. Then she said, “I don’t know you any more, do I?”

“A lot’s happened to both of us,” he said. “We can’t expect...”

“It’s funny,” she said tiredly. “I came into this office expecting a stranger — and I found one. I don’t know you at all. I don’t even know whether or not you’d allow what happened between us to influence what might happen to my son. For all I know—”

“Don’t say it, Mary!” His voice was harsh. “I’m a lawyer, and I believe in justice, and your son’ll get justice. When I got your letter, I was hurt, yes. But that was a long time ago, and everyone grows up.”

“Will my son grow up?” she asked.

And to this there was no answer.

He went back to the street the next morning and realized in an instant that the image of Harlem as he knew it was no longer valid.

Standing on the corner of 120th Street and First Avenue, he looked westward and tried to visualize himself as a boy and found that geography had passed the dagger of befuddlement to time, and that both had conspired to stab memory.

On the north side of the street, spreading from Second Avenue where the grocery store used to be, where he’d flipped picture cards on hot summer days, spreading from there almost halfway down the block was an open lot, leveled by the bulldozers for a new housing project. The house in which he’d been born and raised — his Aunt Serrie had served as midwife during the delivery — still stood in the center of the block on the south side of the street, but the candy store that had been alongside it was boarded up and demolition had already begun on the houses across the way from it.

“This isn’t where the kids come from,” Detective First Grade Michael Larsen said. “It’s a few blocks over, sir.”

“I know,” Hank answered.

He looked up the street again, feeling change as a sentient thing, wondering if change were truly synonymous with progress. For if the geography of Harlem had changed, if the architecture of the city had imposed upon the gridwork of streets a new pattern of sterile red brick, the model caves of the Miltown Men, the people of Harlem had changed, too. His earlier concept of the three Harlems was one of clear territorial division: Italian, Spanish and Negro. In his mind, he had almost erected the border inspection posts. He recognized now that there was no true border separating the three. Harlem was Harlem. The streets of Italian Harlem were dotted with the tan and white faces of Puerto Ricans, the deeper brown of Negroes. In Harlem could be read the entire immigration pattern of New York City: the Irish and the Italians being the first to succumb to the slow steadiness of integration; the Negroes — later arrivals — melting imperceptibly into the pot of white Protestant respectability; the Puerto Ricans entering last, reaching desperately across a cultural and lingual barrier for the extended hand of acceptance. The hand, they discovered, held an open switch blade.

He wondered what the city had learned, if anything. He knew there were studies, countless studies of housing conditions and traffic problems and schools and recreation centers and occupational opportunities, scores of studies compiled by learned men who knew all about immigration. And yet, projecting the city into the not too distant future, twenty years, twenty-five years, he could visualize it as a giant wheel. The hub of that wheel would be the midtown area where the Idea Men worked, grinding out communications for the entire nation, Eat Crunchies, Wash With Wadley’s, Smoke Saharas, shaping the taste and the thought of the country with their words. And surrounding the camp of the Idea Men would be the nomadic tribes, fighting among themselves for the unproductive earth of the city streets, roaming, shifting, still searching for that welcoming hand of acceptance. A huge loudspeaker would be set atop the Empire State Building in the heart of the hub owned by the Idea Men. And every hour on the hour, the loud-speaker would bleat out a single word which would ring loud and clear on the air of the city, crossing into the territories ruled by the barbarian tribes roaming the fringes of the hub.

And that word would be “Tolerance!”

And Rafael Morrez, swimming in a sea of words, drowned because words don’t float.

“Are you familiar at all with Harlem, sir?” Larsen said.

“I was born here,” Hank answered. “On this street.”

“Oh? Yeah?” Larsen looked at him curiously. “Well, it’s changed a lot since then, I guess.”

“Yes. It has.”

“You know,” Larsen said, “we could’ve brought this girl to your office. You didn’t have to come to Harlem.”

“I wanted to come.”

Walking with the detective who’d caught the initial squeal, he wondered now why he’d wanted to come. Perhaps it was the note, he thought. Perhaps the note challenged my bravery and my manhood. Or perhaps I wanted to see what it was about Harlem that could alternately produce a district attorney and three young killers.

“This is the block,” Larsen said. “The three of them lived right here. And the Puerto Rican kid lived on this same street, only farther west. Great, huh?”

Hank looked up the street. The asphalt had grown gummy in the heat of morning. In the middle of the block, a group of boys had turned on the fire hydrant, and they ran through the stream of water in their clothes, tee shirts sticking wetly to their bodies. The water plunged upward, deflected by a tin can wired to the nozzle of the pump, cascading downward in a waterfall that was costing the city money. Farther up the block, a stickball game was in progress. The garbage cans were stacked alongside the curb, awaiting the D.S.C. pickup trucks. Women in housedresses sat on the front stoops, fanning themselves. Outside the candy store, a group of teen-age boys stood talking.

“If you’re wondering what Thunderbirds look like in their leisure time, you’re looking at them now,” Larsen said.

The boys looked entirely harmless. Sitting on the wooden newsstand outside the store, they chatted and laughed quietly among themselves.

“The girl lives in that building alongside the candy store,” Larsen said. “I phoned before I left the squad, so she knows we’re coming. Don’t mind the dirty looks on the faces of the yardbirds. They know I’m a bull. I’ve kicked their asses around the corner more times than I can count.”

The boys’ conversation tapered off and then stopped as Hank and Larsen approached. Tight-lipped, inscrutable, they studied the pair as they entered the tenement. The entrance hallway was dark and narrow. A stench hit the nostrils immediately, the stench of bodies and of body waste, the stench of cooking, the stench of sleeping and waking, the stench of life contained, confined.

“I don’t know how the hell people manage to live here,” Larsen said. “Some of them make good salaries, too, would you believe it? You’d think they’d get out. This ain’t good for people. You live like a pig, you begin to feel like a pig. She’s on the third floor.”

They climbed the narrow steps. He could remember climbing similar steps when he was a boy. The façade of Harlem might have changed, but the guts were the same. Even the stench was familiar. As a boy, he had urinated behind the first-floor staircase, adding to the stench. You live like a pig, you begin to feel like a pig.

“This is it,” Larsen said, stopping before an apartment marked 3B. “Both parents work, so the kid’ll be alone. She’s sixteen, but she looks a lot older and a lot harder. She seems to be a nice kid, though.” He knocked on the door.

The door opened almost instantly, as if the girl had been standing behind it waiting for the knock. She was a dark-haired girl with wide brown eyes and clean features. Lipstick was the only make-up she wore. She wore a red peasant skirt and a white blouse, and her hair was caught at the back of her neck with a red ribbon.

“Hello,” she said, “come in.”

They entered the apartment. The linoleum was worn, and the plaster was chipped and peeling, and an electrical outlet hung loose from the wall, its naked copper wires exposed. But the apartment was scrupulously clean.

“Miss Rugiello, this is Mr. Bell, the district attorney.”

“How do you do?” the girl said. She spoke in a low whisper, as if she were afraid of being overheard.

“How do you do?” Hank said.

“Would you like some coffee or something? I can put some on. It’d only take a minute.”

“No, thank you,” Hank said.

The girl nodded, as if, convinced beforehand that he would not accept her hospitality, she were now affirming her conviction.

“Well... sit down... won’t you?”

They sat at a kitchen table with an enamel top, the girl sitting at the far end, Hank and Larsen taking chairs on opposite sides of her.

“What’s your first name, miss?” Hank said.

“Angela,” she said.

“I have a daughter almost your age,” Hank said.

“Yeah?” the girl said in seeming interest, but she watched Hank suspiciously.

“Yes.”

“That’s nice,” Angela said.

“Mr. Bell would like to ask you some questions,” Larsen said.

“Yes?” She put the word almost as a question, but she nodded simultaneously, indicating that she knew why the district attorney was here.

“About what happened on the night Morrez was stabbed,” Larsen said. “About the knives.”

“Yes?” she said again, and again it was almost a query.

“Yes,” Hank said. “Can you tell me what happened in your own words?”

“Well, I didn’t see the stabbing or anything. You understand that, don’t you? I didn’t have anything at all to do with the stabbing.”

“Yes, we understand that.”

“Is it wrong that I took the knives? Can I get in trouble for taking the knives?”

“No,” Hank said. “Tell us what happened.”

“Well, Carol and I were sitting on the front stoop downstairs. Carol is my cousin. Carol Rugiello. It was, you know, early yet. Just after supper. You know. Quiet. And none of the fellows was around, but we figured that was because they were getting ready to go bopping. It was decided that afternoon, you see. About the stuff being on between them and the Horsemen, I mean.”

“The Spanish gang?” Hank asked.

“Yeah, the spies,” she said gently, nodding. “They had a truce on before, them and the Birds, but that afternoon the warlords met and decided the stuff was on again. So we knew they were going bopping that night. And there’s a lot of things they have to do before they go, so we figured that’s why none of them was around. Carol’s boy friend is the warlord of the Thunderbirds, so she knew all about it.”

“Do you have a boy friend on the club?”

“Well, no, not a steady or anything like that. I go to their jumps and like that. But I ain’t really interested in none of them. I mean, not for a boy friend. But they’re nice boys. I mean, they seem like nice boys, you know?”

“Yes, go on.”

“Well, we were sitting there on the front stoop, and it was very quiet. It looked like rain. I remember saying to Carol it looked like it was going to rain...”

The entrance to the candy store was on the right-hand side of the shop, its door opening on the three tightly cramped booths which sat alongside the wall there. A fountain with four stools was opposite the booths closest to the rear wall. A telephone booth stood against the rear wall next to a curtained doorway which led to the back of the store. A glass display case upon which was an assortment of chewing gum and a cash register was just inside the door, forward of the fountain and stools.

There was a combined feeling of shoddiness and hominess to the candy store. For whereas the place was badly in need of a paint job, whereas the leatherette of the booths was stained with hair oil and thumb smears, whereas the penny candy in the display case looked stale and unpalatable, the store exuded an atmosphere of relaxed comfort. Standing in the doorway, he could understand why the Thunderbirds had chosen the spot as their hangout. He walked into the shop just as the telephone rang. The proprietor went to answer it, and he remembered for a moment the days in Harlem when telephones were not to be found in every apartment. The owner of the candy store would answer the phone and then send a kid to get whomever the call was for. The rules stated that the messenger rated a tip — usually a nickel, sometimes a dime. The rules further stated that the tip had to be spent in the store. There was always a mad rush from the street whenever the telephone in the candy store rang. Today, on a similar side street in Italian Harlem, the kids barely looked up when the phone rang. Telephones were no longer a luxury. They were as essential to day-by-day living in Harlem as were television sets. The rooftops bristled with electronic antennas, irrefutable testimony to the effectiveness of installment buying.

The proprietor of the store held a brief conversation with whoever was on the other end of the line and then hung up. The four boys sitting in the booth closest to the phone did not look up as he walked back to the display case. He was a short man with a spotlessly clean white apron and a spotlessly clean bald pate. He walked with a slight limp, but the limp — rather than weakening him — seemed to give him a strength of character which was totally lacking before the limp was noticed.

“Help you, Mac?” he said to Hank.

“I’m looking for the members of a club called the Thunderbirds,” Hank said. “I’ve been told this is their hangout.”

“Somebody told you wrong, mister.”

“The somebody who told me was Detective Lieutenant Richard Gunnison of the Twenty-seventh Squad. He’s not a man who makes mistakes.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Where are they?”

“And who are you?”

“Assistant District Attorney Henry Bell.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The boys in the rear booth looked up. One made a motion to rise, but a second boy laid a hand on his arm, and he sat instantly.

“Well, well,” the proprietor said, “we never had a D.A. in this store before. I’m honored.”

“Where do I find the Thunderbirds?” Hank gestured to the rear booth. “Are those boys members of the gang?”

“I sure as hell wouldn’t know, mister,” the proprietor said. “All I do is run a candy store.” He extended his hand across the case. “Name’s Joey Manetti. Pleased to know you.”

Hank took the hand. “Mr. Manetti,” he said, in a voice which carried to the rear booth, “the lieutenant gave me a list of names and addresses of known members of the Thunderbirds. Now, I can have these kids picked up and brought to my office for questioning. I thought I’d save time if I could talk to them here — in Harlem. Which will it be?”

Manetti shrugged. “You’re asking me? Mister, I run a candy store.”

Hank turned to the rear booth. “How about it?” he said.

A boy with heavy shoulders and muscular forearms studied Hank with pale hooded eyes. He nodded imperceptibly. “Come on over,” he said.

Hank walked to the booth. The boys sitting there ranged in age from fifteen, he guessed, to nineteen. The one who’d called him over was the oldest of the group, and the biggest. He wore his black hair combed flat against his skull, the sideburns long. A silver identification bracelet dangled from his left wrist. There was a scar on the forearm, several inches above the bracelet. His brows were heavy and black, shading thickly lidded blue, almost gray eyes. When he spoke, his lips barely moved.

“Sit down,” he said. “Concho, get the district attorney a chair.”

One of the boys slid out of the booth and went through the curtained doorway at the rear of the shop. When he returned, he put the chair down at the head of the table and then took his position in the booth again. Hank sat.

“My name’s Diablo,” the oldest boy said. “You know what that means?”

“It means devil,” Hank answered.

“That’s right.” He smiled thinly and then looked to the other boys. One of them nodded.

“Are you Spanish?”

“Me?” Diablo said. “Me? Cut it out, willya?”

“Diablo is a Spanish word.”

“Yeah?” the boy said, surprised. “I thought it was Italian. I’m Italian.”

“Diablo Degenero,” Hank said. “Your real name is Carmine. You’re the so-called warlord of the Thunderbirds.”

“That’s right,” Diablo said. “Boys, this is the district attorney. These are some of the boys. Concho, Nickie and Bud. What can we do for you?”

“You can answer a few questions,” Hank said. “Either here or downtown. It’s up to you.”

“We’ll answer them here,” Diablo said. “If we like the questions.”

“If you don’t like the questions, you can answer them downtown. With a stenographer present.”

“You got a lot of courage, Mr. District Attorney,” Diablo said. “Coming in here without an escort of bulls.”

“I don’t need any detectives,” Hank said.

“No?”

“No. Do you think I do?”

Diablo shrugged. “Mr. District Attorney, I would say—”

“The name is Bell,” Hank corrected. “Mr. Bell.”

Diablo was silent for a moment. “Mr. District Att—”

“Mr. Bell,” Hank said.

Diablo stared at him. Then he smiled again, the same thin mocking smile. He shrugged. “Sure. Mr. Bell. Whatever you say, Mr. Bell. What are your questions, Mr. Bell?”

“Is Danny Di Pace a member of your gang?”

“What gang, Mr. Bell?”

“The Thunderbirds.”

“The Thunderbirds ain’t a gang, Mr. Bell. It’s a social and athletic club. Ain’t that right, boys?”

The boys in the booth nodded. They did not take their eyes from Hank.

“Is Danny a member of the club?” he asked.

“Danny Di Pace, did you say, Mr. Bell?”

“Yes.”

“Danny Di Pace. Now, let me see. Oh yes, that’s right. He lives on this block, don’t he?”

“You know he does.”

“Yes, that’s right, so he does. A very nice kid, Danny Di Pace. But I hear he got himself into a little trouble. He went over there to Spanish Harlem and got himself jumped by some little spic bastard. Is that the Danny Di Pace you mean, Mr. Bell?”

“Yes,” Hank said.

“Now what was your question, Mr. Bell?”

Hank paused for just a moment. Then he said, “You’re wasting my time, hotshot, and my time is valuable. Either I get straight answers, or you get dragged into my office. Now take it whichever way you want it.”

“Why, Mr. Bell,” Diablo said innocently. “I am answering you as straight as I know how. I just forgot your question, that was all.”

“Okay,” Hank said, “suit yourself.” He shoved back his chair. “I’ll see you all at Leonard Street. We may keep you there a while, so don’t make any extended plans.” He turned and started for the door. There was an excited buzzing at the table behind him.

Then Diablo called, “Hey!”

Hank did not turn.

“Mr. Bell! Mr. Bell!”

Hank stopped. Slowly, he faced the table. Diablo was smiling, somewhat sheepishly.

“What’s the matter? Can’t you take a little joke?”

“Not on the county’s time. Are you ready to talk to me?”

“Sure. Come on, sit down. Don’t get excited. We clown around all the time. Makes life interesting, you know? Come on, sit down.”

Hank went back to the table and sat.

“You want some coffee, Mr. Bell? Hey, Joey, coffee all around, huh?”

“Now what about Danny?” Hank said.

“I can tell you this. If you give that kid the electric chair, you’ll be making a big mistake.”

“I don’t set the sentence for anybody,” Hank said. “I only prosecute the case.”

“That’s what I mean. Can I talk frank, Mr. Bell?”

“As frankly as you like.”

“Okay. Them three guys are innocent.”

Hank said nothing.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Diablo said. “They killed a guy. And he was blind. But there’s more here than meets the eye, Mr. Bell. I mean it.”

“Like what?”

“Like, for example, there was a bop scheduled for that night. Now, I’m talking to you like a goddamn brother, giving you inside dope I don’t have to give you, right?”

“Go ahead.”

“I know we were supposed to bop because I set the thing up with this spic they call Gargantua. He’s their warlord. The Horsemen’s, you know? He takes dope. I happen to know that for a fact. Half the guys on the Horsemen take heroin. I think that’s even where they got the name for their club. Horse, you know? H. Heroin. One thing for the Birds, we don’t touch any of that stuff. We break a guy’s arm, we find out he’s on junk. Ain’t that right, boys?”

The boys nodded in self-righteous agreement.

“Anyway, it was me set up the thing. So I know where it was supposed to be, and all that. And we decided there wasn’t going to be no sneak raid or anything like that. We was supposed to meet like there’s a project on a Hun’ Twenty-fifth. Right there. And that was where we was supposed to have it out, you know? At ten o’clock.”

“What’s your point?” Hank asked.

“My point is this. You think it makes sense that three of the Birds would go into enemy turf looking for trouble when we got enough trouble scheduled for later that night? It don’t make sense, does it? They were out for a walk, that was all. Just out for a walk.”

“Why’d they walk over to Spanish Harlem?”

“How do I know? Maybe they just wandered over there by accident. Maybe they were looking for a little shtupie, you know? Lots of guys, they fool around with the Spanish girls. They’re very hot people, the Spanish.”

“So they walked into Spanish Harlem, just wandered over there,” Hank said, “and jumped a blind boy and stabbed him to death. And you say they’re innocent.”

“Not of stabbing him to death. Oh, they killed that little spic, all right.”

“Then of just what are they innocent?”

“Of murder,” Diablo said.

“I see.”

“This kid pulled a knife on them, didn’t you know?”

“So I’ve been told,” Hank said wearily.

“It’s the truth. I been asking around. I mean, there are some spies I know who are coolies, and really, you know, okay.”

“Coolies?”

“They don’t belong to no club.”

“Like Danny?”

Diablo did not answer. “I talked to some of these guys,” he said, ignoring Hank’s question, “and they seen the knife themselves. How about that?”

“That’s very interesting,” Hank said. “Did Danny belong to the Thunderbirds?”

“I’ll tell you something,” Diablo said, ignoring the question again. “It was self-defense for Tower and Danny. For Batman—” he shrugged — “well, Batman is a little pazzo, you know?”

“Crazy, do you mean?”

“Well, not crazy. But... slow? Stupid? You know, like he needs somebody to wipe his nose for him. He ain’t really responsible for nothing he does.”

And that was it. The nonlegal mind of Carmine (Diablo) Degenero had just, all unwittingly, provided Hank with the line of defense the opposition would use. For Batman Aposto, they would try to show mental incompetency. The boy simply did not know what he was doing and could not be held responsible for his actions. For Tower Reardon and Danny Di Pace, they would try to establish a case of justifiable homicide. The boys had killed in self-defense. They would try, in short, to get all of the boys off scot free.

Thank you, Diablo Degenero, Hank thought. I’m a little slow this morning.

“Do you want to help your friends?” he asked.

“Naturally. They’re innocent.”

“Then tell me a few things I’d like to know.”

“Go ahead.”

“Tower belongs to the club, doesn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“And Batman?”

“Yes.”

“And Danny?”

“What difference does it make?”

“It may make a lot of difference.”

“To your case, you mean? You mean you can send him to the chair quicker if he’s one of us?”

“If he’s guilty, he’ll be convicted,” Hank said. “And it has nothing whatever to do with whether he’s one of you or not. This may come as a surprise to you, but I’m only interested in the truth.”

“It comes as a surprise, all right,” Diablo said. He grinned. “In fact, it comes as a surprise whenever anybody connected with the law is interested in the truth. Around here, they’re only interested in beating hell out of you every chance they get.”

“Was Danny a member?”

“Yes and no,” Diablo said.

“What kind of an answer is that?”

“It’s the truth. You said you wanted the truth. Okay, you got it.”

“Did he belong or didn’t he?”

“I told you. Yes and no. He wasn’t exactly a coolie, but he wasn’t exactly a Bird, either. He was like— I don’t know what the hell you would call him. Like if there was a fight, he went down with us. But sometimes he didn’t. And we never pushed him.”

“How’d he achieve this status?” Hank asked.

“Huh?” Diablo said.

“He sounds like somebody special. He enjoys the gang privileges, but he doesn’t necessarily abide by the gang rules. How’d he work that?”

“Well...” Diablo paused. “There are some guys you automatically don’t mess around with. I mean, especially if he’s one of you. Don’t get me wrong. We got heart, plenty of it. And like, if we wanted to bust Danny, we coulda. But we didn’t want to. I mean, like from the very first, he made himself clear, you know? So we respected it. Also, like I said, he was sort of one of us.”

“But not actually.”

“No. Like he never bought a jacket or nothing. We got these jackets we sometimes wear, but not so much any more because the Horsemen see you wearing them they get excited and the stuff’s on. And even the cops don’t like the jackets. Jackets make everybody nervous. We hardly ever wear them. But Danny wouldn’t even buy one.”

“Did you ask him to join the club?”

“Sure. Lots of times. I mean, he’s practically one of us already. But he ain’t. He just wanted to be...” Diablo shrugged. “I can’t explain it. He’s okay, though. A down cat. We knew that right from go. Right from when he first moved around here.”

“When was that? I thought he’d lived in Harlem all his life.”

“No, no, his mother was from here. And his father, too. But they moved out to Long Island when he was a little kid. His father worked in one of the airplane factories out there. Then he lost his job, and they came back to the city. This musta been about a year and a half ago, I guess. So they came back to Harlem.”

“Did you know Danny when he was younger?”

“No. He usta live on a different block. I only met him when they moved here from Long Island.”

“Can you remember what happened?”

“Sure. You know, he was a new kid on the block. Besides, that’s when he made himself clear. I mean, where he stood. So, sure, I remember. We all remember. Right, boys?”

The boys nodded.

“What happened?” Hank asked.

“Well, it was wintertime, I remember,” Diablo said. “We had a big snow, and the plows had come through and pushed all the snow up against the curb, you know? It was a big drag, man, like who needs snow? You couldn’t drive a car or nothing for a couple of days. We were real inactive. So we were sitting right here in this candy store that afternoon. I think it was these very same guys. No. Nickie wasn’t here. It was me, and Concho, and Bud, and a kid who ain’t here, we call him Botch. We were sitting right here, in this booth, having hot chocolates. I think we were talking about gash...”

Holmes came into the office the moment Hank returned.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“Fine,” Hank said.

“Got a few items of interest for you. Want to hear them?”

“Sure. Have you had lunch yet?”

“No. Are you going out, or shall we send for something?”

“I’d just as soon have a sandwich in the office. There’s a menu in one of the drawers there.”

Holmes found the menu while Hank took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie.

“I’ll just take a ham sandwich and a chocolate malted,” Hank said.

Holmes nodded and began dialing. “I understand you’ve had some cops assigned to your house. How come?”

“I got a threatening letter the other day. I’m not looking for reprisals against my family.”

“Mmm,” Holmes said, and he gave the lunch order into the phone. When he hung up, he asked, “Still think we’ve got a good case?”

“Yes.”

“Heard anything further from the boy’s mother?”

“No. But I found out one of the things she’d told me was true. Di Pace wasn’t actually a member of the gang.”

“That won’t help him much.”

“No, I don’t see how it will. Besides, he was closely enough allied with the gang so that he can really be considered a member. His nonmember status is more a mental trick than a fact.”

“How do you mean?”

“For reasons of his own, Danny Di Pace preferred to think of himself as a loner even though he engaged in gang activities and was, for all practical intents and purposes, a member of the gang.”

“I see. What do you suppose the line of defense will be?”

“For Reardon and Di Pace, they’ll attempt to justify the homicide. For the Aposto boy, mental incompetency.”

“You ready to fight them?”

“As for the self-defense, we still haven’t turned up the knife Morrez was supposed to have pulled. And his blindness would seem to eliminate any foolish theories about his being the attacker. As for the Aposto boy, I’d like him examined by Bellevue. Would you arrange for his remand, Ephraim?”

“Be happy to. What’s your next move?”

“I’m going up to Spanish Harlem tomorrow. I want to track down this knife thing. If they’re going to use it, I want to be prepared. What’d you have to tell me, Ephraim?”

“First of all, Judge Samalson is going to try the case.”

“What?”

“I thought you’d be surprised. Defense counsel raised a hell of a stink. Claimed he was a friend of yours, claimed you studied under him at N.Y.U., claimed he was prejudiced in your favor.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“Of course. But it didn’t stop them from asking for a change of venue.”

“That must have sat very well with Abe.”

“Abe Samalson is the fairest judge we’ve got on the bench. In words of one syllable, he denied the motion by telling the defense to go straight to hell.”

“Good for Abe!”

“This didn’t stop them. They insisted on a change of venue. Claimed the local press had made prejudicial and inflammatory statements about the case. Abe still told them to go to hell. He recognized their motion for just what it was. Another dilatory tactic. This makes the third. First they made a motion to examine the grand-jury minutes on the grounds that the indictment was handed down without proper legal evidence. The motion was denied. Next they asked for a bill of particulars identifying the witnesses, the place, the weapons — but this only gained them a week. The trial is still set for next month, and Samalson will still be hearing it. Are you pleased?”

“Yes. I like Abe. He’s a good man.”

“Seen him recently?”

Hank suddenly laughed. “I think he’s coming to dinner this weekend!”

“Oh, great,” Holmes said. “I’d advise you not to discuss the case.”

“Thanks. I didn’t plan to.”

The phone on Hank’s desk buzzed. He picked up the receiver.

“Yes?”

“Hank, this is Dave on the desk. Two people here for you. One’s got a carton full of lunch.”

“Who’s the other?”

“Guy named Barton. Claims he’s a reporter. Ever hear of him?”

“Mike Barton?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve heard of him. What does he want?”

“Wants to talk to you.”

“Tell him we’re just about to have lunch. If he doesn’t mind my mumbling around a sandwich, he’s welcome to join us. And send it in, Dave. I’m starved.”

The lunch and Mike Barton came into the office together. Barton was a tall man with the shoulders and chest of a truck driver. His lips were thick, and attention was drawn to his mouth by a heavy black mustache which sat under his nose like a smear of printer’s ink. He extended his hand immediately.

“Mr. Bell?” he asked.

“How do you do?” Hank said, and he took the hand. “Ephraim Holmes, chief of the bureau. Ephraim, Mr. Barton.”

“We’ve met,” Holmes said dryly.

“Having a tête-à-tête with your star prosecutor, Sherlock?”

“Just having lunch with him, Mike,” Holmes said, taking the sandwiches and drinks out of the cardboard box. He paid the delivery boy and then made himself comfortable in one of the chairs, spreading the food out on the desk top.

“What’s on your mind, Mr. Barton?” Hank asked.

“Good question,” Barton said, smiling. When he smiled, his teeth were startlingly white against the black mustache. His eyes, too, seemed to gleam with reflected pinpoint light, a deep brown against the wide expanse of his face. He has a very big head, Hank found himself thinking. It’s too bad he’s not in the theater. “What’s on everybody’s mind these days?” Barton continued.

Hank unwrapped his sandwich and began munching on it. “Well, I’m not qualified to speak for everybody. Only myself.”

“And what’s on your mind?”

“The Morrez case.”

“The very same thing that’s on my mind, Mr. Bell.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

“That’s exactly why I’m here. Have you been reading our paper lately?”

“I’m sorry,” Hank said. “I don’t read the tabloids.”

“Snobbery in a public official?”

“Not at all. I just never got into the habit.”

“Our tabloid happens to be a good one,” Barton said.

“What are you running this week?” Holmes asked dryly. “An exposé on Park Avenue call houses?”

Barton chuckled, but there was no humor in the laugh. “We fill a public need,” he said. “And we also perform a public service.”

“Sure. You tell the average citizen where he can go to get laid. You give the Vice Squad extra headaches.”

“We also ran a series on the Vice Squad,” Barton said.

“Your paper stinks,” Holmes said flatly. “It’s a cheap, sensational, yellow tabloid which poses under the banner of liberalism to sell extra copies and advertising. What do you want here?”

“I came to talk to Mr. Bell,” Barton said, his brows pulling down darkly.

“I’m chief of the bureau,” Holmes answered, picking up the implied challenge. “I can hear anything you’ve got to say to Mr. Bell.”

“Okay,” Barton said. “How does it look so far?”

“How does what look?” Hank asked.

“The case. Do you think they’ll burn?”

“I’m prosecuting for murder in the first degree,” Hank said. “That’s what the indictment read.”

“What about this story they’ve concocted about the Morrez kid carrying a knife and attacking them?”

“I haven’t investigated it thoroughly as yet.”

“Well, when do you plan on starting?”

“I’m afraid that’s my business, Mr. Barton.”

“Is it? I thought you were a public servant.”

“I am.”

“Then it’s the public’s business, too.”

“If the public were capable of trying this case, I might agree with you, Mr. Barton. Unfortunately, the public hasn’t been trained in the law, and I have. And I’ll investigate and prepare the case as I see fit.”

“No matter what the public wants?”

“How do you mean?”

“The public wants those three kids to die in the electric chair. I know it, and you know it, too.”

“So?”

“So what are you doing about it?”

“What would you like me to do, Mr. Barton? Personally transport them to Sing Sing and throw the switch on them tomorrow? They’re entitled to a fair trial.”

“No one’s denying them their right to justice. But there’s only one justice in this case, and it’s apparent to everyone. They killed a defenseless kid in cold blood. The public demands retribution!”

“Are you speaking for the public, or for yourself?”

“I’m speaking for both.”

“You’d make a good foreman of a lynching party, Mr. Barton,” Hank said. “I still don’t know why you came here.”

“To find out how you felt about this case.”

“This isn’t the first murder case I’ve ever tried. I feel about it the way I’ve felt about every other one. I’m going to do my job the best way I know how.”

“And does that job involve sending those kids to the chair?”

“That job involves prosecuting for first-degree murder. I don’t deliver the sentences in this county. If the boys are convicted by a jury, Judge Samalson will determine the sentence.”

“The death sentence is mandatory, and you know it.”

“That’s true.”

“Then if you succeed in prosecuting for first-degree murder, you will also succeed in sending those kids to the chair.”

“The jury may ask for and receive leniency, in which case a life sentence may be decided upon. It’s been done before.”

“Is that what you’ll be trying for? A life sentence?”

“That’s out of order!” Holmes snapped. “Don’t you answer that, Hank!”

“Let me set you straight, Mr. Barton,” Hank said. “I’m going for a conviction in this case. I will present the facts as I understand them to the jury and the court. The jury will decide whether or not those facts, without any reasonable doubt, add up to first-degree murder. If they convict, Judge Samalson will determine the sentence. My job is not to seek vengeance or retribution. My job is to show that a crime was committed against the people of this county, and that the defendants I’m prosecuting are guilty of that crime.”

“In other words, you don’t care whether they die or not?”

“I’ll be prosecuting for—”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I wouldn’t dignify it.”

“What’s the matter, Bell? Are you afraid of capital punishment?”

“I’ve sent seven men to the electric chair since I became a public prosecutor,” Hank answered.

“Have you ever sent any kids to the chair?”

“I’ve never tried a murder case involving boys of this age, no.”

“I see.” Barton paused. “Ever hear of a girl named Mary O’Brien, Mr. Bell?”

Hank hesitated a moment. Holmes caught his eye.

“Yes,” Hank said.

“I spoke to her yesterday. I understand you played footsie with her when you were both kids.”

“I think you’d better leave, Mr. Barton.”

“Is Mary O’Brien — now Mary Di Pace — the reason for your reluctance to...”

“Get out, Barton!”

“...prosecute this case the way the public wants it prosecuted?”

“You want me to throw you out, Barton?”

“It’d take a bigger man than you, Mr. District Attorney,” Barton said. He grinned. “I was leaving anyway. Don’t miss tomorrow’s paper. It’ll curl your hair.” He turned to Holmes. “So long, Sherlock,” he said, and he left the office.

“The son of a bitch,” Holmes said.

When he got home that afternoon, there was company waiting in the living room.

Karin met him at the door and said, “John and Fred are here. I don’t think it’s a social visit.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see. They have the look of men who’ve discovered goldenrod in their neighbor’s lawn.”

“No kiss for the returning warrior?” he said.

“Why, certainly.”

She kissed him briefly, and he said, “I’ll see you later. Where’s Jennie?”

“She’s having dinner at one of her friends’. She’ll be gone until eleven or so.”

“It bodes well,” Hank said.

“Does it? I haven’t been asked yet.”

“I don’t believe in asking my women. I just drag them into my cave by the hair.”

“If I were you, I’d go talk to the Committee for the Preservation of Green Lawns in Inwood first.”

“I intend to do that right now. Did you mix some Martinis?”

“I did.”

“Good. I’d like one.”

“They’re on the bar. I’d join you, but someone around here has to get dinner going.”

“Chill some wine,” he said.

“My, my,” Karin answered. “What brings on the sudden romanticism?”

“The very sight of you, my dove,” he said, and he winked and went into the living room.

“Well, well,” he said, “this is a surprise. John, Fred, how are you?”

Both men rose as he entered the room. John McNalley was in his early thirties, a tall sinewy man with prematurely gray hair. He worked for a chemical research plant in Yonkers. Fred Pierce was an advertising man, art director for a firm which specialized in photographic layouts. In contrast to McNalley, he was short and rotund, with the sloppy look of an artist living on the Left Bank. They shook hands with Hank, and then McNalley said, “Home from the wars, eh?”

“Busy day,” Hank said. “Busy day. Either of you care for a Martini? I’m going to have one.”

Pierce looked as if he were about to accept, but McNalley promptly said, “No,” for both of them. Hank went to the bar, picked up the pitcher there, held the swizzle stick to its lip and poured a hefty Martini into his glass. He plucked two olives from the open jar on the bar top and dropped them into the glass.

“Here’s luck,” he said.

“Drink hearty,” Pierce said, and then he glanced at McNalley as if wondering whether he had his approval to speak.

Hank loosened his tie and sat down. “What can I do for you, fellas?” he said. “Donation for the P.T.A.? Little League? What is it this time?”

“Well, nothing very serious,” McNalley said.

“Just a little friendly visit, that’s all,” Pierce said, glancing again at McNalley.

“Well, it’s always good to see you,” Hank said, and he watched them over the rim of his glass, wondering why they were here, suspecting at once that this was not “just a little friendly visit.”

“Good for neighbors to get together every now and then,” McNalley said.

“Especially in a neighborhood like this one,” Pierce said. “Where everybody knows everybody else. Where the people have been living on the same street for years. It’s a good neighborhood, Hank.”

“It certainly is,” Hank replied. He was, in truth, not overly fond of Inwood. But as a prosecutor for New York County, he was required to maintain residence within the county. They had thought of moving to Greenwich Village when he’d first got the job, but Karin had rightfully insisted that Inwood would provide a more countrified environment for Jennie, who was, at the time, only five and a half years old. Still, he had never really felt any deep-rooted ties with the community.

“We’d like to keep it good,” McNalley said.

“That’s a reasonable hope,” Hank answered, sipping at the Martini. He felt rather good. He’d felt this way ever since his talk with Mary. He was hoping these two rather forlorn-looking neighbors of his would go home for dinner so that he could go kiss his wife.

Out of a clear blue sky, Pierce said, “How would you like your daughter marrying one of those Puerto Ricans?”

Hank blinked. “What? What did you say?”

“Now, just a minute, Fred,” McNalley said. “I thought we agreed that I would do the—”

“I’m sorry, John. Only, we were talking about the neighbor—”

“I know what we were talking about. Boy, you’re about as subtle as a locomotive!”

“Well, I’m sorry if I—”

“Oh, just keep quiet and let me explain this to Hank. You’re going to give him the wrong idea, for God’s sake.”

“The wrong idea about what, John?” Hank asked.

“About the neighborhood. And the city.”

“Why, I think this is a nice neighborhood,” Hank said. “And a nice city.”

“Sure you do,” McNalley said.

“See, I told you he’d agree with us,” Pierce said.

“About what?” Hank asked.

“About keeping the neighborhood good. And the city.”

“I don’t think I know what you mean,” Hank said.

“Well, then let’s discuss it a little, Hank,” McNalley said. “Now you know that Fred and I and all the rest of our neighbors are not prejudiced people. We’re—”

“Of course not,” Hank said.

“Of course not. We’re normal American citizens who happen to believe that all men are created equal and that everyone’s entitled to his place in the sun. Am I right, Fred?”

“Absolutely,” Pierce said.

“Sure,” McNalley agreed. “And we don’t happen to believe there’s any such thing as a second-class citizen. But we do feel that certain elements in this city would be better suited to a rural rather than an urban culture. You can’t expect to take people who are used to cutting sugar cane and fishing, you can’t just take these people and throw them into the middle of the biggest city in the world and hope they’ll make an amicable adjustment to civilization. These elements—”

“Which elements?” Hank said.

“Well, Hank, I don’t have to bandy words with you, because I’m sure we see eye to eye and I know you won’t mistake me for a man with prejudices. I’m talking about the Puerto Ricans.”

“I see,” Hank said.

“Who are a fine people, that’s for sure. I understand there’s a very low crime rate on the island of Puerto Rico itself, and that it’s as safe to walk around down there as it would be in a hospital nursery. But down there isn’t up here. And it isn’t safe to walk around in Spanish Harlem, and there is a very high crime rate in Spanish sections, and those sections are spreading all over the city. And pretty soon it won’t be safe to walk anywhere without being afraid of getting knifed. And that goes for Inwood, too.”

“I see,” Hank said.

“Now obviously, we can’t tell these damn people where they should live. They’re American citizens — just like you and me, Hank, just like you and me — and they’re free men who are entitled to their place in the sun, and I wouldn’t deny it to them. But it seems, to me they should be taught that they can’t simply come into a civilized city and turn it into a jungle suitable only for jungle animals. I’m thinking of my wife and kids, Hank, and I guess you ought to be thinking of that lovely little daughter of yours because I sure as hell wouldn’t want her getting raped by some farmer from Puerto Rico some night.”

“I see,” Hank said.

“Which brings us to why we’re here. Now, none of us on this street condones murder, that’s for damn sure, and I hope you realize we’re all law-abiding citizens who are anxious to see justice done. But nobody goes into the jungle — and I know that particular word is overused these days — but nonetheless nobody goes into the jungle and hangs a hunter for having killed a dangerous tiger. Nobody would ever think of doing a thing like that, Hank.”

“I see,” Hank said.

“Okay, so we have these three young white boys who happen to be strolling in Spanish Harlem — which you’ll agree is a part of the jungle — and this jungle animal comes at them with a knife and...”

“Just hold it a minute, John,” Hank said.

“...it only seems reasonable to— Huh?”

“I hope I’m misunderstanding you so far. I hope I’m not getting the impression that you came in here in an attempt to tell me how to try the Rafael Morrez case.”

“We wouldn’t do a thing like that, Hank, and you know it.”

“Then why did you come in here?”

“To ask you whether you’re seriously going to try to inflict the death penalty on these three white boys who — in self-defense — would not allow this Puerto Rican—”

“This Puerto Rican was as white as you are, John.”

“All right, have your little joke,” McNalley said, “but we happen to think this is serious. And we’re your neighbors.”

“Admittedly. So?”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to prosecute for first-degree murder as charged in the indictment handed down by the grand jury.”

“You’re going to try to hang these boys?”

“I’m going to try to convict them.”

“Why?”

“Because I believe they’re guilty.”

“And do you realize what this will mean?”

“What will it mean, John?”

“It’ll mean that every damn Puerto Rican in this city will think he can get away with murder! That’s what it’ll mean!”

“Haven’t you got your facts a little mixed up? It’s the Puerto Rican who was killed.”

“He came at them with a knife! Are you trying to tell me that decent citizens should be penalized for protecting their own lives? Or their property? For God’s sake, Hank, you’re opening the door for anarchy! You’re paving the way for jungle animals to take over the civilized world!”

“There’s an inscription outside the Criminal Courts Building downtown, John, at the south entrance hall. It says—”

“Oh, don’t quote inscrip—”

“It says, ‘Where law ends, there tyranny begins.’”

“What’s that got to do with what we’re discussing?”

“You’re talking about the civilized world. Law is the civilized world. Without law, we’ve got tyranny, and anarchy, and jungle animals. And you’re asking me to suspend law in favor of—”

“I’m not asking you to suspend anything! I’m asking you for justice.”

“What kind of justice?”

“There’s only one kind of justice,” McNalley said.

“Exactly. And she’s blind, and she doesn’t know the difference between a dead Puerto Rican and a dead native of this city. She knows only that the law has been broken.”

“How would you like your daughter marrying one of those Puerto Ricans?” Pierce said.

“Oh, nuts,” Hank answered.

“Well, how would you?”

“Stop worrying so damn much about the superiority of your sexual prowess. I imagine Puerto Rican men copulate much the same way that you do, no better, no worse. I doubt if we’re in any particular danger of losing our women to the alien hordes!”

“There’s no sense talking to him, John,” Pierce said. “There’s just no sense.”

“You can do what you want to,” McNalley said ominously. “I just want to tell you, Hank, that the opinion of this neighborhood—”

“The hell with the opinion of this neighborhood,” Hank said, rising, slamming down his glass. “And the hell with the opinion of the newspapers, which happens to be contrary to the opinion held by this neighborhood. I’m riding this particular jackass, and I don’t want to wind up in the river.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’ll prosecute this case exactly as I want to, without any hints or advice from anybody! Is that clear enough?”

“It couldn’t be clearer. Come on, Fred.”

Without another word, both men stalked out of the house. Karin came in from the kitchen.

“Wow!” she said.

“Yeah. I’m going to have another Martini. You want one?”

“Yes.” She shook her head. “I had no idea... Have the newspapers been giving you trouble, too?”

“I saw a reporter this afternoon. Karin, there’s something you should know.”

“What’s that?”

He handed her the drink. “The mother of one of the boys — Mary Di Pace — is the girl... the girl I...”

“The girl you loved?”

“Yes.” He paused. “The newspapers will try to make something of it. I thought you should know.”

She watched him as he raised his glass. His hand was shaking. He downed the drink quickly and then poured another.

“I won’t even read the stories,” she said.

He shrugged and then wiped a hand over his face. Outside, the sky was beginning to darken with sudden summer rain clouds. He walked to the big picture window. Aimlessly, he said, “Rain coming.”

“Yes.”

She could see his face, could see the beginning of a tic at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t let them bother you,” she said. “McNalley or Pierce or any of the others. Just do your job.”

“Yes,” he said, and he nodded.

In the distance, lightning flashed across the sky, followed instantly by the low rumble of thunder. He turned to her.

“Karin?”

“Yes?”

“Could — could we go upstairs?”

“Yes, darling,” she said. She took his hand and led him to the steps. She could feel tension surging like electricity through his fingers. A lightning bolt crashed closer, and she felt him start unconsciously, wince when the thunder bellowed its near answer. He pulled her to him suddenly, fiercely. Standing on the step below her, he pressed his face to her bosom. His body was stiff, his jaws clamped together, the trembling visible.

“I need you,” he said. “Karin, I need you so much.”

She did not answer. She took his hand and led him to their bedroom and she could remember the first time he’d said those words to her, so long ago, the first time she began to know a little about the man she loved so much. They had driven out of Berlin on a Friday afternoon, a weekend pass tucked into the pocket of his blouse, the jeep bouncing along bomb-pitted roads under a sky as bright as blue enamel. He looked very handsome in his captain’s tunic, the twin silver bars gleaming on his shoulders, his eyes reflecting the blue of the flawless sky. They had found an inn a hundred kilometers from the city, the familiar Zimmer sign hanging out front. He had joked about the word on the drive to the inn, thinking it amazing that this family named Zimmer had managed to corner the market on all the hotels in Germany. They’d eaten dinner alone in the small dining room while the proprietor hovered over them, pouring from a bottle of French wine he’d managed to save from “the good days.” They’d gone up to the room then, and he’d begun unpacking his small bag while she undressed. He was taking out his pajamas when she whispered, “Hank.”

He turned to her. She stood naked, one arm crossed over her breasts, the other arm extended.

“Give me the top,” she said. “I want to wear your pajama top.” There was a curious look in her eyes. He went to her, sensing that it was very important that he give her the pajama top. Her eyes made it an important thing. He handed it to her, and she put it on and then hugged her arms across her body.

“It’s nice,” she said. “It’s very nice. I knew it would be nice.” She reached up to put her arms around his neck, shorter now without her high-heeled pumps, looking very small and very vulnerable in the overlarge pajama top. “May I kiss you, please?” she asked.

“What for?”

“To thank you.”

“What for?”

“For finding me. For taking me away from Berlin this weekend. For lending me your pajama top.”

“Karin...”

“Are you very tired?” she asked, a slight smile on her mouth.

“Tired?”

“After all that driving,” she said.

“No, I’m not.”

“I thought you might be tired,” she said.

“No,” he answered, returning the smile, “I’m not tired at all,” and she kissed him.

She could not remember afterward how many times she awakened him during the night. She could not sleep at all. Lying in the circle of his arms, she was sure this was not real, this untouched inn hung with medieval gables, leaded windows that had not been shattered by bombs, clean white sheets, and Hank beside her with a three-day pass, no rush to the base in the morning, this could not be real. In the darkness of the ancient room, the fat mattress cradling them, embracing them, the windows open, the town silent and still except for the occasional rumble of an airplane droning toward Berlin, she lay wide awake, her eyes saucer-wide, a small smile of childish disbelief on her mouth.

She woke him the first time to ask, “Are you real?”

He blinked at her in the darkness. “Yes,” he said sleepily. “I’m real.”

“Why don’t you make love to me?” she said.

“Now?”

“Can you think of a better time?”

“Yes. Tomorrow morning.”

“That’s a good time,” she agreed. “But now is a good time, too.”

She lay awake afterwards, thinking, He’s had a very tiring drive in a jeep, he must be exhausted, I mustn’t demand too much of him, but I want to touch him, I want him to be awake, I want to know that he is real, I want hours and hours and hours of him, I never want to leave this bed, I want to stay in this bed for the whole three days, I love his pajama top.

“Hank?”

“Mmmm?”

“I love your pajama top.”

“Mmmm.”

“You’ll never be able to wear it again without thinking of me.”

“Mmm.”

“Will you?”

“No. Won’t.”

“Do you want to sleep?”

“Don’t you?”

“I want to talk. Hank, we can sleep all day tomorrow. We have three whole days together. Can we talk?”

“All right.”

“Isn’t Mr. Vettiger nice?”

“The proprietor? Yes. Adorable.”

“Are you very sleepy?”

“No, no, notatall.”

“Do you think he knows we’re not married?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re not very talkative.”

“I’m listening.”

“I think he knows,” she said.

“I don’t think he cares,” Hank answered.

“He likes us. We’re a wonderful couple.”

“Mmm.”

“You looked so handsome today.”

“Go to sleep,” he said.

“I’ll wake you later.”

“All right.”

“You’ll know you’re being awakened.”

“Will I?”

“Yes. You’ll know,”

“Why don’t you go to sleep?”

“I’m too excited. I love you too much. We’ve got three days together, Hank. Oh, I’m so happy, I’m so damn happy!” She chuckled and then caught herself. “I mustn’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Laugh on Friday, cry on Sunday,” she said. “Don’t you know that expression?”

“This is Saturday,” Hank said. “It’s past midnight.”

“Yes, but it’s really Friday,” Karin said adamantly.

“That’s not logical. It’s not even sensible.”

“Laugh on Friday, cry on Sunday. I don’t want to cry on Sunday.”

“This is Saturday. You can laugh all you want.”

“When I was a little girl, all I did was wet my pants and cry. That’s what my father said, anyway. He used to call me ‘Benässen und Weinen.’”

“What’s that?”

“It means ‘Wet and cry.’”

“It’s a good name. I’ll call you that from now on.”

“Don’t you dare! Go to sleep. I’ll wake you later.”

“You twisted my arm,” he said.

He was asleep again almost instantly. She listened to his heavy breathing and she thought again, He’s so tired, I should let him sleep. She got out of bed and walked to the dresser where he’d put his cigarettes and his billfold and his dog tags. She shook a cigarette free from the pack, lighted it, and then went to stand at the window, looking out over the fields, silvery white in the moonlight. The floor was cold. She stood by the window for just a little while, one arm folded across his pajama top, the other moving to her face each time she sucked in on the cigarette.

She put out the cigarette then and went back to the bed. “You’re so warm,” she said. He grunted in his sleep and she grinned delightedly and thought, He really is. He’s the warmest human being I know. He’s always so warm. His feet are never cold. How does he keep his feet so warm?

“Warm my feet,” she said, and he grunted again, and she stifled a laugh.

I mustn’t laugh. It’s really Friday, no matter what he says, it won’t be Saturday until I wake up in the morning, why are men so ridiculous about time? She lay in bed with a smile on her face, holding his hand between her own, clutching his hand to her bosom. In a little while she fell asleep, the smile still on her mouth.

This was McNalley’s jungle.

It didn’t look like a jungle at all.

Hank had come down the long street, starting in Italian Harlem and walking west, retracing the steps of the three young killers on that night in July. Now, on Park Avenue, he walked into the market beneath the New York Central tracks, listening to the babble of voices around him. He felt as if he had truly entered a foreign land, but he felt no fear. He felt again, and very strongly, that the idea of three Harlems existing as separate territories was truly a myth. For, despite the change of language, despite the change of color — the Puerto Rican people ranged from white to tan to brown — despite the strange vegetables on the stalls and the religious and mystic pamphlets printed in Spanish, he felt that these people were no different from their neighbors to the east, or the west. In fact, they shared a common bond: poverty.

And yet he could, in part, understand McNalley’s fear. For here was, on the surface at least, the alien. What ominous words were being spoken in this foreign tongue? What malicious thoughts lurked behind these brown eyes? Here among the botanical herbs on the stalls, the hedionda, and maguey, and higuito, and corazón, here where the housewives haggled over the price of fruit and vegetables — “How much the guenepas? The chayote? The ají dulce, the mango, the pepino?” — here was another world, not a jungle certainly, but a world as far removed from Inwood as was Puerto Rico itself. Here, in a sense, was the unknown. And McNalley, the caveman squatting close to his protective fire, looked out into the darkness and wondered what terrible shapes lurked behind each bush, and he fed his own fear until he was trembling.

He walked to the exit at the end of the long tunnel and came out into sunlight again. On the corner of the street a butcher shop nestled beneath the tenement, its Carnicería sign advertising the meats resting on trays in the window. Alongside it was a bodega, cans of groceries stacked in the window, strings of peppers hanging overhead. He walked past the grocery and into the street where Rafael Morrez had been killed.

The people knew instantly that he was the law.

They sensed it with the instinct of people who have somehow discovered the law to be not their protector but their enemy. They allowed him a wide berth on the sidewalk. They watched him silently from the front stoops of the tenements. In the open lots strewn with rubbish, children looked up as he walked by. An old lady said something in Spanish, and the crone with her began laughing hysterically.

He found the stoop where Morrez had been sitting on the night he’d been killed. He checked the address again and then walked past a thin man in his undershirt who was sitting outside on a milk-bottle case. The man was smoking a long black cigar. The undershirt was stained with sweat. Hank paused in the hallway and struck a match, examining the mailboxes. Four of the boxes had been sprung from their locks. None of the boxes carried a name plate. He walked out onto the front stoop again.

“I’m looking for a girl named Louisa Ortega. Do you know where I—”

“No hablo Inglés,” the old man said.

“Por favor,” Hank said hesitantly. “Dónde está la muchacha Louisa Ortega?”

“No entiendo,” the man said, shaking his head.

Hank stared at him. His Spanish had been slow and halting, but certainly intelligible. And then he realized the man did not want to tell him.

“She’s not in any trouble,” Hank said. “It’s about Rafael Morrez.”

“Rafael?” the man said. He looked up at Hank. His brown eyes said nothing. “Rafael está muerto,” he said.

“Si, yo comprendo. I’m investigating. Soy investigator,” he said lamely, wondering if that were the Spanish word. The man looked at him blankly. “Habla Italiano?” Hank said, in a desperate thrust at establishing communication.

“No,” the man said. He shook his head. Then, in English, he added, “Go ’way. Don’ bodder me.”

“Who you looking for, mister?” a voice said, and Hank turned. The boy stood at the foot of the stoop, his hands on his hips. He wore dungarees and a gleaming white tee shirt. His complexion was tan, his eyes brown, his black hair cut close to the scalp except for a high crown at the front of his head. His hands were square, with big knuckles, a signet ring on the third finger of his right hand.

“I’m looking for Louisa Ortega,” Hank said.

“Yeah, and who are you?”

“District attorney,” Hank said.

“What do you want with her?”

“I want to ask her some questions about Rafael Morrez.”

“You got any questions, you can ask me,” the boy said.

“And who are you?”

“My name’s Gargantua,” the boy said.

“I’ve heard of you.”

“Yeah?” A slight smile formed on his mouth. “Yeah, maybe you have. I been in the papers a few times.”

“I didn’t get your name from the papers,” Hank said. “I got it from a member of the Thunderbirds. A boy named Diablo.”

“Don’t talk to me about that stinking creep. I ever see him again, he’s dead. Wham! Dead.”

He clenched his fists when he spoke, and his face became transposed in that instant to a grimace of hatred, as if he were acting out the real murder of Diablo. His expression, the way his big hands tightened when he spoke, left no doubt that he truly wanted Diablo dead.

“Where do I find Louisa Ortega?”

“I told you. You talk to me.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Hank said, “but I really have nothing to say to you. Unless you happened to be sitting on this stoop the night Morrez was murdered.”

“Oh, you admit he was murdered, huh?”

“Cut it out,” Hank said impatiently. “I’m on your side. I’m prosecuting this case, not defending it.”

“A cop on my people’s side?” Gargantua said. “Ha!”

“Don’t waste my time,” Hank said. “Do you know where she is, or do I have to send a detective to pick her up? I can guarantee he’ll find her.”

“Don’t get excited,” Gargantua said. “What’d Diablo say about me?”

“Nothing more than that you were warlord of the Horsemen.”

“Was he straight?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you know? Most of them Thunderbirds are on junk. You know what I mean? They’re addicts. They all take dope. One thing you never find on our club is a guy who’s hooked. We kick him off so fast, his head spins.”

“That’s interesting to know,” Hank said. “Where’s the girl?”

“Apartment fourteen on the first floor. She probably ain’t even home.”

“I’ll take a chance,” Hank said.

“Listen, I’ll wait for you. I want to talk to you.”

“I may be a little while.”

“That’s okay. I got nothing to do, anyway.”

“Fine,” Hank said, and he went into the building.

Tenements are tenements. There is no such thing as an Italian tenement or a Puerto Rican tenement or a Negro tenement. They’re all the same, he realized, and they all stink. The stink begins building in the outer lobby with the broken mailboxes and the shattered naked light bulb in the ceiling. It assails you as you climb the narrow stairs in the dark hallway, punctuated by feeble air-shaft light at each landing. The camouflaging Lysol stench is almost as overwhelming as the urine smell it attempts to cover. The smells of cooking reach out from every doorway, half a hundred apartments oozing the smell of fish, the smell of meat, spaghetti, arroz con pollo, cabbage, bacon, until all the smells unite into an unsavory stench which has no origin, and no association with food. It’s like a poison gas seeping through the hallways, invading the nostrils and the throat, a total assault wave designed to make you retch.

As he climbed to the first floor of this tenement in Spanish Harlem, he was aware of the mounting attack of smell, aware of the putrescent aroma of garbage coming from behind the steps on the ground floor where the garbage cans were stacked. He found Apartment 14 and twisted the bell set at shoulder height in the door. The door was painted to simulate natural-grain wood, the painter’s idea of this being to paint the door a deep brown and then smear erratic tan lines over the brown. The wood of the door itself was covered with a tin coating, and it was over this that the painter had exercised his artistic flair. The bell was loose. It did not sound with a clear sharp ring. It rattled noisily in its metal cup and then died. He tried it again. Again the bell issued its deathlike trembling.

“Sí, sí, vengo!” a voice shouted from inside the apartment.

Hank waited. He could hear the steel bar of the police lock inside the door being lowered to the floor. The door opened a crack, stopping sharply when the additional precaution of a chain caught it. Part of a face appeared in the crack.

“Quién es?” the girl asked.

“I’m from the district attorney’s office,” Hank said. “Are you Louisa Ortega?”

“Sí?”

“I’d like to ask you a few questions. May I come in?”

“Oh.” The girl seemed flustered. “Oh, not now,” she said, “I am busy now. There ees someone with me.”

“Well, when—”

“It will be soon,” she said. “You come back fi’, ten minutes, okay? I talk to you then, okay?”

“All right,” Hank said. The door closed, the girl’s face vanished. He could hear the bar of the police lock being wedged back into place. Wearily, he went down to the street again. Gargantua was nowhere in sight. Neither was the old man in the undershirt. Hank looked at his watch, lighted a cigarette and leaned against the wall of the building. A stickball game was in progress in the middle of the street. The game went on excitingly, with the usual number of temper flareups and arguments. But the players might just as well have been in Yankee Stadium performing before thousands of people. In fact, there was possibly more violence in a major-league game than was evident in this street game played by teen-agers who conceivably were capable of slitting another teen-ager’s throat.

Standing on the front stoop of the building, he realized that Harlem, on its surface at least, was as well-ordered and nonviolent as any other community in the city. True, you could not equate a Harlem tenement with an apartment building on Sutton Place. You could not simply discount the fire escapes cluttered with the paraphernalia of living, could not easily ignore the lots covered with rubble, the flies crawling over the meat in the window of the butcher shop, the poverty which sprang from every darkened doorway. But the tempo here, the feel, was not much different from what you would find anywhere else in the city. These were people going about their daily tasks. There was no trace of a violent undercurrent running through the life of the community — not now there wasn’t, not at ten o’clock on a sunny morning in midsummer. Then why did violence erupt here? Why did three kids from Italian Harlem, three blocks and three thousand miles away, stride into this street and take the life of an innocent blind boy? He could not lay it all at the doorstep of racial misunderstanding. He had the feeling that this was only a symptom and not the disease itself. Then what was the disease, and what caused it? And if the three boys who killed were diseased, were sick, was the state justified in eliminating them from society?

The question startled him.

What else can you do? he asked himself. You don’t allow lepers to roam the streets, do you?

No. But you don’t kill them either, he reasoned. And even though no cure is known, you nonetheless keep searching for a cure.

Come on, he told himself. You’re not a psychologist, and you’re not a sociologist. You’re a lawyer. You’re concerned with the legal aspects of crime. You’re concerned with punishing the guilty.

The guilty, he thought.

He sighed and looked at his watch. Five minutes had gone by. He lighted another cigarette. He was flicking away the match when a young sailor came out of the building, squaring his white hat.

“Nice day, huh?” the sailor said.

“Lovely,” Hank answered, and he thought he could now safely assume that Louisa Ortega was free to talk to him.

“Man, I’m hungry,” the sailor said. “I ain’t had breakfast yet. Any good places to eat around here?”

Hank shrugged. “You can try a Hundred Twenty-fifth Street,” he said.

“Thanks. Which way is that?”

“Uptown. That way.” Hank pointed.

“Thanks a lot, Mac,” the sailor said. He paused on the stoop. “You, uh, going up there?”

“Yes,” Hank said.

The sailor winked. “You better have breakfast first. You’re gonna need all the strength you got.”

“I’ve already had breakfast,” Hank said, smiling.

“Okay,” the sailor said. “Well, I be seeing you. Stay out of jail.” And he walked off toward Park Avenue.

Hank put out his cigarette and went upstairs again. This time Louisa opened the door for him. She was wearing a flowered pink wrapper belted at the waist. Her long black hair hung over her shoulders. She wore no make-up and no shoes. Her face was thin, but her body was well curved, and she smiled somewhat embarrassedly and said, “Come een,” and Hank entered the apartment.

“I’m sorry I keep you waitin’,” the girl said. She closed the door behind him.

“That’s quite all right,” Hank said.

“Si’ down,” Louisa said.

He looked around the room. A rumpled, unmade bed was against one wall. A rickety wooden table and two wooden chairs rested against the opposite wall alongside an old gas refrigerator and a sink.

“The bed is mos’ comfortable,” she said. “Si’ there.”

He went to the bed and sat on the edge of it. The girl sat at the other end, pulling her legs up under her.

“I’m tired,” she said. “I di’n get to sleep all night. He was bodder me every fi’ minutes.” She paused. With complete frankness, she said, “I’m a hooker, you know.”

“I assumed.”

“Sí.” She shrugged. “Iss nothin’ wrong with hookin’. I radder sell my body than sell dope or somethin’. Verdad?”

“How old are you, Louisa?” Hank asked.

“Nineteen,” she said.

“Do you live with your parents?”

“I got no parents. I come here from dee islan’ to stay with my aunt. Then I move out. I like it better to be free, entiende?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Iss nothin’ wrong with hookin’,” Louisa said again.

“That’s your personal affair,” Hank said, “and it doesn’t concern me. I want to know only what happened on the night of July tenth. The night Rafael Morrez was killed.”

“Sí, sí. Pobrecito. He wass a nice kid. I remember once he wass up here when I wass with a frien’. He wass play his music. It wass very dark in the apar’ment, an’ my frien’ an’ me we wass on the bed, an’ Ralphie he wass play his music.” She chuckled. “I think maybe he got a little excited, Ralphie.”

Hank listened and wondered what weight the testimony of an admitted prostitute would carry with a jury.

“I give him one free one time,” Louisa said. “Ralphie, I mean. He wass a good kid. Iss not his fault he wass born blind, verdad?”

“What happened on the night he was killed?”

“Well, we were si’n downstairs on the stoop. Me, an’ Ralphie, an’ this other girl — she’s a hooker, too, her name is Terry. She’s a Spanish girl, too. She’s older than me, abou’ twenty-two, I guess. She wass suppose to meet one of her friens a little later. An’ it looked like it wass rain soon, you know? So we were si’n there, her an’ me, talking. An’ Ralphie was on the bottom step, jus’ listening. He wass a good kid.”

“What were you talking about?”

“Well, Terry wass tellin’ me what happened to her with a cop of the Vice Squad, how that happened that afternoon.”

“What did she say?”

“Well, let me see. I remember the sky wass gettin’ dark all at once...”

Judge Abraham Samalson sat in the outdoor slate patio of the Bell house in Inwood, a brandy snifter of cognac in his delicate hands. The sky to the west was peppered with stars, and the judge tilted his bald head and examined the heavens, and all the while he rolled the glass of cognac in his thin hands, and occasionally he sniffed at the bouquet, and occasionally he drank. Music came from the hi-fi setup inside the house, oozing onto the patio, where Karin had planted a wild array of summer-blooming flowers that formed the flanking walls of the terrace. The open side of the terrace faced the river and the New Jersey cliffs on the opposite shore.

“That was a nice job Barton did on you in the newspapers, Hank,” Samalson said.

“Oh, very nice,” Hank agreed.

“I think it’ll work in reverse for you. It makes you sound very dashing and romantic. Who is there in the entire city of New York who hasn’t longed to lift the skirts of an Irish lass? Not that I believe a word of the story’s implications. But it serves to illustrate the dangers of incompetent composition. Barton starts out to kill you, and what does he achieve? He creates a romantic figure.”

“I didn’t think the story was so romantic,” Hank said.

“You’re too sensitive. The Mike Bartons of America are people to laugh at, not to hate. Give Barton a trench coat and a juicy piece of gossip and he’s happy. He can play at being a reporter.”

“I think he’s a dangerous man,” Hank said.

“Only if we take him seriously. If we laugh at him, the danger is immediately dissipated.”

“I wish I could agree with you, Abe,” Hank said.

“You never did agree with me, so I see no reason for you to begin now. You were the most argumentative student I ever had in any of my classes, and I taught law for fourteen years. I might add, in the fairness becoming my role as a magistrate, that you were also the most promising student I ever had.”

“Thank you.”

“I think I can safely say, in fact, that in the fourteen years I taught law I had only six students who I thought should be lawyers. The rest should have been shoe clerks.” Samalson paused. “Or is that a prejudiced statement?”

“A bit snobbish perhaps, but...”

“I’m referring to Danny Di Pace’s father. He runs a shoe store, doesn’t he?”

“Oh. Yes.”

“What sort of a person is he?”

“I’ve never met him.”

“He must be — Well, forget it.”

“What were you going to say?”

“Only that delinquency doesn’t simply spring from the soil. If a kid turns bad, chances are nine out of ten you’ll find some sort of trouble with the parents.”

“So what do we do? Prosecute the parents instead of the kids?”

“I don’t know what we do, Hank. The law makes no provision for the allocation of blame. If three men conspire together to commit a murder and only one of them actually pulls the trigger of the gun, the three are nonetheless tried for acting in concert. On the other hand, if parents, through neglect or overindulgence, or just plain indifference, produce a boy who stabs another boy, the parents are not considered the lawbreakers. But have they not, in all fairness, contributed to the crime? Weren’t they, too, acting in concert?”

“You’re saying we should arrest the parents, too?”

“I’m saying nothing of the sort, and I won’t have you pulling any of your trick shyster-lawyer questions on me.” Samalson chuckled. “I’m simply asking a question. Where does the blame begin? And where does it end?”

“That’s the big question, Abe. Answer that one, and you can start your own TV quiz show.”

“I get that question every day in my courtroom. And every day I make my decision, and I pass my sentence as specified by law, the punishment to fit the crime. But sometimes I wonder about justice.”

“You? Abe, you don’t!”

“Ah, but I do, and this is strictly out of school and if you ever repeat it to a goddamn soul, I’ll tell the newspapers that you once prepared a theoretical defense of the Sacco-Vanzetti case.”

“He never forgets a thing, Karin,” Hank said. “He’s got a mind like a blotter.”

“Spongy and blue,” Samalson said.

“I’m interested to know why you doubt justice,” Karin said.

“I didn’t say I doubted it, I said I wondered about it.” He turned to Hank. “Are you training her to be a shyster, too?”

“She’s the best damn lawyer in New York,” Hank said. “You should hear some of our arguments.”

“Well, how do you wonder about it?” Karin persisted.

“Look at her,” Samalson said. “Like a terrier with a bone, anxious to start gnawing at it. I wonder about justice, my dear, because I’m not sure I’ve ever dispensed real justice in my courtroom.”

“And just what is real justice?”

“Real justice is nonexistent,” Samalson said. “Is retribution justice? Is there justice in the Bible’s eye for an eye? I doubt it.”

“Then where is there justice?” Hank asked.

“To be just is to be actuated by truth and lack of bias, to be equitable and evenhanded. There is no such thing as justice.”

“Why not?”

“Because men administer justice. And there is no such thing as a truthful, equitable, evenhanded, unprejudiced man.”

“Then we might just as well forget law and order,” Hank said. “We might just as well become barbarians.”

“No. The law was designed by men to fill the needs of men. If our justice is not pure, it is at least an attempt to maintain the inherent dignity of man. If someone has been wronged, it is the duty of society to give him redress. Your Rafael Morrez was allegedly wronged. An act of larceny was committed against him. The grandest sort of larceny. His life was stolen from him. And now Morrez, or society speaking for Morrez, is seeking redress. You are protecting the dignity of Rafael Morrez by prosecuting those who allegedly wronged him.”

“And this is justice,” Hank said.

“No, this is not justice. Because if we were truly seeking justice, the Rafael Morrez case would consume a lifetime. Don’t you see, Hank? In our courtrooms, we are concerned only with blacks and whites. Did these three boys commit this crime against this other boy? If so, they are guilty of first-degree murder and must be punished as specified by law. If not, they are free. But where are the grays? How can a man be fair, and truthful, and equitable, when he has only the most obvious black and white facts before him?”

“The county will present all the facts, Abe. You know that.”

“The facts of the crime, yes. And, of course, there will be psychologists presented by both sides, and the defense will try to show that these poor boys were misguided and a product of our times, and you will try to show that we cannot blame our times for the product, that a modern murderer is no different from a Colonial murderer. Three weeks from now, the jury will listen to all this, weighing the facts of the crime, and I will guide them as to points of law in the case. And then they will turn in their verdict. And if they decide the boys are not guilty, I shall free them. And if they decide the boys are guilty of first-degree murder, and if they do not ask for leniency, I shall do what I am duty-bound and sworn to do. I shall administer sentence as prescribed by the law. I shall send those three boys to the electric chair.”

“Yes,” Hank said, and he nodded.

“But will that be justice?” Samalson shook his head doubtfully. “Crime and punishment. A noble concept. But how much of our system of punishment is based on the guilt-ridden complexity of modern man? Are we satisfying our own hunger for self-punishment every time we level sentence on a so-called criminal?”

“You can’t apply modern psychology to laws conceived thousands of years ago, Abe.”

“Can’t I? What makes you think man has changed so very much in the past thousand years? We’re the guiltiest animals on the face of the earth. And we share a race memory of guilt. And we cover our shame with the high-flown notion that justice will triumph. But I’ll tell you something, Hank, and this I firmly believe, and it has nothing to do with my ability to judge a case as I’m supposed to. I do that very well within the specified confines of my job. But I do not believe that justice very often triumphs. There are more murderers loose than I’d care to count. And I’m not talking about the people who pull the trigger or plunge the blade. Until mankind can decide where the act of murder begins, there will be no real justice. There will only be men armed with rhetoric and — like our friend Mike Barton in his reporter role — they will only be playing at the game of administering justice. They will only be fakes.”

Samalson looked up at the stars.

Somberly he said, “Maybe it takes a God. We’re only men.”

He began preparing his case on Monday and, with the trial three weeks away, he found he could not get the judge’s words out of his mind.

Usually, Hank was a careful and meticulous worker, preparing his cases with the preciseness of a mathematician. It was his contention that a lawyer should never make the mistake of thinking a jury would appreciate subtleties. Beginning with the assumption that a jury knew nothing whatever about the law or the case being tried, it was his task to present the facts so that, once understood, they led to an inescapable conclusion. In offering the facts, he tried to leave nothing to the imagination. Piece by piece, he built his jigsaw puzzle. By the time he was ready to make his closing statement, the scattered evidence would have locked together into a clear and indisputable picture from which one conclusion, and one conclusion alone, could be drawn. The skill of such a trial performance depended largely upon the groundwork he did in his office before the trial. It was no simple task to batter a jury with facts and at the same time leave them convinced that they had done all their own reasoning. He was, in a sense, demanding total identification from them. Moving from the jury box into the figure of the prosecutor, they were in the position of being able to assay the facts as he himself had done earlier. But, and he knew this with the instincts of an actor, the jury needed more than identification. They demanded, too, a performance. They wanted to see a show, especially in a murder trial. And so it became important to decide which witnesses preceded others, how the testimony given could be presented so that it built to a logical and seemingly effortless climax of overwhelming truth. And, in addition to this, he had the defense’s case to worry about. He had to be prepared for whatever they might hurl at him. In effect, he had to prepare two cases — his own, and the defense’s as well.

His desk on that Monday morning three weeks before the trial was a clutter of disorder. Slips of paper covered its top, each held in place with a metal paperweight. Large lined pads were filled with scribbled notes. Folders of testimony taken by civil-service stenographers were stacked at one corner of the desk. A folder containing the psychological report rested near his telephone. And his memo pad held jottings of things yet to do:

Call Police lab! Where the hell is report on knives?

See Johnny Di Pace?

Leader of Thunderbirds — Big Dom?

Jennie’s birthday, August 26

In the midst of the disorder, there was an order known only to Hank. It disturbed him that the police laboratory had not yet presented its report on the murder weapons. On his tentative mind graph of the trial’s chronological progression, he could visualize the presentation of the weapons as one of the highest peaks on the steadily rising dramatic line. He intended to start with witnesses who would testify to the events leading up to the killing, intended to reconstruct that July night in the courtroom as if it were happening before the jury’s eyes. He could almost hear his words now — “The boys put these knives into their pockets, these knives. They are not penknives. They are not knives used for mumblety-peg. They are weapons.” And then he would press the stud on one of the knives and allow the blade to snap open. He knew the device would be effective. Props were always effective and knives automatically generated excitement. There was something inherently menacing about a knife, any knife. A switch blade held the added element of surprise, the long blade snapping from the handle with sudden viciousness. And he knew, too, that most people would rather face the snout of an automatic pistol than stare at the tempered steel length of a blade. In the mind of the ordinary citizen, a shooting was something which happened in the movies. But every ordinary citizen had cut himself accidentally at one time or another, had seen the flow of blood, had known what a knife or a razor blade or a seemingly harmless kitchen utensil can do to flesh.

Hank would use the knives well, playing on the natural fear of blades and coupling this with the direct testimony of the killers themselves, whom he intended to call to the witness chair last. He knew, of course, that the boys could not be forced to testify against themselves, and that if they refused to take the stand, Judge Samalson would immediately inform the jury that this was in no way to be construed as an admission of guilt. But he felt certain that Aposto would be allowed to testify, if only to establish his low mentality. And the jury’s unconscious adverse reaction to anyone who refused to take the stand would be doubled against Reardon and Di Pace if one boy were allowed to speak and the others restrained. Besides, with a plea of self-defense the one chance the boys had, it did not seem likely that their attorneys would advise them against testifying. So he felt fairly certain he could get them into the witness chair, and once there he would pry from their own mouths the story of what had happened that night. But first he would present the knives.

So where the hell was the report?

Annoyed, he dialed the police laboratory at headquarters on Centre Street and was connected with a man named Alex Hardy.

“This is Mr. Bell of the Homicide Bureau,” he said. “I’m prosecuting the Rafael Morrez case, which comes to trial three weeks from today. I’ve been expecting a report on the murder weapons, but I haven’t received one as yet. I’m preparing my case now, and I’d like to use whatever you can give me on those knives.”

“Morrez, Morrez, oh, yes,” Hardy said. “That Puerto Rican kid. Yes, we have the knives, all right.”

“I know you have them. How about the report?”

“Well, that’s another thing again.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Dennis is on vacation, you see.”

“Who’s Dennis?”

“Dennis Bennel. He’s head of the lab.”

“So?”

“So he didn’t leave any instructions concerning those knives.”

“Well, who’s second in command there? Does your whole shop fall to pieces when one man goes on vacation?”

“Not at all, not at all. And there’s really no need to get snotty, Mr. Bell. We’re only doing our job here.”

“Your job was to run some tests on those knives. When will I have that report?”

“I’m just a working stiff, Mr. Bell. You’re wasting your time getting sore with me.”

“Whom do you suggest I get sore with?”

“I’ll connect you with Lieutenant Canotti. Maybe he can help you.”

Hardy covered the mouthpiece. Hank impatiently tapped a letter opener on the desk. A brusque voice came onto the line.

“Canotti here.”

“This is Assistant District Attorney Bell of the Homicide Bureau. I asked for a report on the murder weapons in the Rafael Morrez case. I still haven’t received it. Your man just told me Mr. Bennel...”

“Lieutenant Bennel. Yes?”

“...is out of the office on vacation. Now how do I go about getting that report?”

“Just ask,” Canotti said.

“I’m asking.”

“Okay. What’s all the heat about?”

“I’m trying the case in three weeks, that’s what all the heat is about. Listen, what is this? Some sort of a comic routine?”

“I’ll put somebody to work on the knives as soon as possible, Mr. Bell.”

“Thanks a lot. When will I have the report?”

“As soon as it’s ready.”

“And when will that be?”

“We’re a little understaffed at the moment. Half our men are on vacation, and there are murders being committed every day in this fair city, Mr. Bell. Now I’m sure you feel that the prosecution of a case is more important than the solving of another case, but our police department feels differently. We can’t satisfy everybody, Mr. Bell. We plod along and try to do our level best. But then, I’m sure you’re not interested in our internal problems.”

“Nor in your irony, Lieutenant. Can I have that report by the beginning of next week?”

“Certainly. If it’s ready.”

“Lieutenant Canotti, I’d hate like hell to have to go into the D.A.’s office on this.”

“I’d hate that to happen, too, Mr. Bell. Especially since we are now engaged on a project dumped into our laps by one of the Mayor’s committees. Do you understand, Mr. Bell?”

“I do. If I haven’t got that report by next Monday morning, you’ll be hearing from me.”

“Nice talking to you,” Canotti said, and he hung up.

Hank slammed down the receiver. How the hell was he supposed to get to the bottom of this without co-operation? How could he show the beginning, the middle, and the end of a murder without...

Until mankind can decide where the act of murder begins, there will be no justice.

The judge’s words. Strange words for a man sitting on the bench.

Well, he could not concern himself with the intricate problems of mankind. No. No matter what the judge said, Hank’s duty was clear. To prosecute a case according to the grand jury indictment. First degree murder. That was it, and that was all. Was he supposed to indict the entire city of New York? Of did it end there? Where did it go? The state? The nation? The world? You could extend responsibility to the outer reaches of time and come up with the conflicting opinion that everyone and no one was responsible. In which case, the murderers would roam the streets and havoc would replace civilization.

No.

He knew what he had to do. Present his case. Show the facts. Convict the three killers.

Purposefully, he picked up the folder containing the psychological report on Anthony Aposto. The letter from Bellevue Hospital was addressed to Judge Abraham Louis Samalson, from whom the court order remanding Aposto to Bellevue had been obtained. It read:

Hank put the report back into its folder.

If there had been any doubt before about the defense for Batman Aposto, there was none now. And, in the face of the report — a copy of which had undoubtedly been furnished to the defense attorneys, too — Hank knew he didn’t stand a chance of convicting Aposto. Nor, truly, did he feel there would be any real justice in such a conviction.

Real justice is nonexistent.

The judge’s words again. And certainly, would it not be just for Aposto to pay for a crime he’d committed, no matter what his mental state? An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Where did the person Aposto end, and the personality Aposto begin? What divided the killer from the mental deficient? Were they not one and the same person? Admittedly they were. And yet you could not send a boy with the mental age of a ten-year-old to the electric chair. This would not be justice. This would simply be blind animal reaction.

Blind.

Rafael Morrez was blind. And was not his deficiency as great as the low mentality of Anthony Aposto? Yes, but his blindness did not save him from Aposto’s quick sentence. And yet Aposto’s mentality would save him from the sentence of the state. And that, Hank thought, is the difference between animals and men.

Justice, he thought.

Justice.

On Wednesday evening of that week, he was not thinking of justice. He was instead filled with an all-consuming rage at the injustice of what was happening to him.

He had worked late at the office, preparing an outline for the questioning of Louisa Ortega. He had decided to use the fact that the girl was a prostitute, rather than try to hide it from the jury. The defense would only shatter her testimony later if he concealed her occupation, and so he tried to fashion the questions he would ask her so that she would emerge as a victim of circumstance, a girl forced into the oldest profession because of poverty and hunger. He did not think it wise to reveal the fact that the girl had had relations with Morrez on at least one known occasion. His jury-image of Morrez was that of the defenseless blind boy, the victim of three cold-blooded murderers. He did not wish to destroy this ideal image by offering the jury a glimpse at something they might consider sordid.

He would, of course, be very careful in the selection of jury members. He was allowed an unlimited number of challenges for cause, and he was allowed to peremptorily challenge a total of thirty-six prospective jurors. He could, for example, excuse a man simply because he did not like the color of his eyes. Ideally, he’d have wanted at least three Puerto Ricans on the jury. He knew this would be impossible, and he’d consider himself lucky if the defense permitted him to empanel even one. He debated in his own mind whether or not he preferred men or women on the jury and decided that it didn’t make much difference either way. Whereas men would more readily accept the testimony of Louisa Ortega, they might unconsciously identify with the virility of the three killers. And whereas a woman’s maternal instinct might cause her to embrace the image of Morrez protectively, she would certainly rebel against anything a prostitute said under oath.

As it almost always did, it would break down to a sense of feel. He would know instantly when questioning a prospective juror whether this man or woman would be impartial. He knew lawyers who maintained that the best way to select a jury was to accept immediately the first twelve men or women and let it go at that. He did not agree with them. He felt that there was more to winning a case than pure chance, and he tried to establish during the questioning period whether or not the jury member would like him personally. He was, after all, an actor in a show — one of the stars — and unless the jury empathized with him his case would indeed be a difficult one.

His own personal gauge was a prospective juror’s eyes. He always stood very close to the man or woman he was questioning, and he liked to believe that he could read intelligence or lack of intelligence, fairness or prejudice, empathy or antagonism in that person’s eyes. Perhaps his gauge was fallacious. He had certainly empaneled jurors in open-and-shut cases only to have the verdict go finally against him. But if the eyes were not the windows of the soul (and he had forgotten who made that original observation) he did not know which part of the body was a more accurate measure of what went on inside a man.

He called Karin at six to say that he would not be home for dinner.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said. “That means I’ll be eating alone.”

“Isn’t Jennie home?”

“No, she’s gone out.”

“Where in the name of God does that girl go all the time?”

“There’s a new Brando picture at Radio City. She went with some of the girls.”

“Neighborhood girls?” he asked pointedly.

“No. The neighborhood girls seem to be avoiding our daughter. She called some friends from school.”

“What the devil,” Hank muttered. “Can’t they even leave her alone? What time will she be back, Karin?”

“Not too late. Don’t worry about it. There are two detectives prowling the house like sentries. One of them is very good-looking. I may invite him in for dinner.”

“Ja, ja, you do that.”

“Would it make you jealous?”

“Not in the slightest,” he said. “But it may lead to a homicide in Inwood. Honey, I may be home very late. Don’t wait up for me if you don’t feel like it.”

“I’ll wait up. Hank, if you get lonely, call me again, will you?”

“I will.”

“All right, darling. Goodbye.”

He hung up, smiling, and went back to work.

At 7:10 P.M. his telephone rang. Absent-mindedly he lifted it from the receiver and said, “Hello?”

“Mr. Bell?” a voice asked.

“Yes,” he said.

There was no answer.

“Yes, this is Mr. Bell.”

He waited. There was still no answer.

“Hello?” he said.

The silence on the phone was unpunctuated, unbroken. He waited with the receiver in his fist, saying nothing, listening, waiting for the sound of the phone being hung up on the other end. The sound did not come. In the stillness of his office, the silence on the phone seemed magnified. He was aware all at once that his hand was sweating on the black plastic of the receiver.

“Who is this?” he said.

He thought he could hear breathing on the other end of the line. He tried to remember what the voice which had said “Mr. Bell?” sounded like, but he could not.

“If you have something to say, say it,” he said to the empty phone.

He wet his lips. His heart was pounding, and he resented the foolish staccato beat in his chest.

“I’m hanging up,” he said, not expecting the words to find voice, surprised when they did. His statement had no effect on the party at the other end. The silence persisted, broken intermittently by staticlike sounds, the minute impulses of electricity on any telephone wire.

He slammed the receiver back onto its cradle.

When he picked up the outline on Louisa Ortega, his hands were trembling.

He left the office at nine that night.

Fanny, her white-thatched head drooping slightly, opened the doors of the one elevator which was still running.

“Hello, Hank,” she said. “Burning the midnight?”

“Got to wrap up this Morrez case,” he told her.

“Yeah,” she said. She closed the doors. “Well, what’re you going to do? That’s life.”

Solemnly, remembering the shaggy-dog story, Hank said, “Life is a fountain.”

“Huh?” Fanny said. “What do you mean, life is a fountain?”

He looked at her with a mock stunned expression. “You mean life isn’t a fountain?”

“Hank,” she said, wagging her head, “you’re working too hard. Close the windows in your office. Don’t let the sun in.”

He grinned, and then he remembered the silent phone call, and the grin dropped from his mouth. In the street outside, the buildings of justice had closed their faces for the night. An occasional light burned like an unblinking eye in the otherwise gray façades of the buildings. The streets, thronged with counselors and clerks and offenders and witnesses during the daytime, were almost empty at this hour. He glanced at his watch. Nine-ten. With luck, he’d be home before ten o’clock. A nightcap with Karin, outdoors perhaps, and then to bed. It was a beautiful balmy night, and the night stirred something deep inside him, a memory impulse leaping into vague restless prominence. He could not pinpoint the memory, but he felt very young all at once, and he knew the memory was connected with his youth, the smell of a summer night, the giant black arc overhead dotted with swarming stars, the sound of the city all around him, the myriad sounds gathering and rising to become the sound that only a city possessed, the heartbeat of a metropolis. It was a night to drive along the West Side Highway with the top of a convertible down and the jewel lights of the city gleaming in the sky, reflecting on the waters of the Hudson. It was a night for listening to “Laura,” a night designed to show man that romance was a very real thing which had nothing whatever to do with the daily grind of the rat race.

He was unconsciously smiling when he entered City Hall Park. His step, too, was lighter, and his shoulders were back and his head was erect and he felt as if he owned the city of New York. Lock, stock, and barrel, the city was his, a giant wonderland of peaks and minarets and soaring towers designed for his pleasure alone. He hated this city, but, by God, it sang in his blood, it roared there like the intricate tonality of a Bach fugue, it was his city, and he was a part of it, and as he walked beneath the spreading leaf canopy of the park trees he felt as if he were merging with the concrete and the asphalt and the steel and the blazing tungsten, as if he were truly the city personified, and he knew for a fleeting instant how Frankie Anarilles felt when he walked the streets of Spanish Harlem.

And then he saw the boys.

There were eight of them, and they sat on two benches flanking either side of the path which wound through the small park. The lampposts along the path, he noticed, had either gone out accidentally or been put out. In any case, the benches upon which the boys sat were in total darkness and he could not see the boys’ faces. The area of blackness, intensified by the high covering arch of the heavily laden trees, spread for at least fifty feet along the path. The darkness began not ten feet ahead of him.

He hesitated.

His stride broke, and he remembered the telephone call — “Mr. Bell?” — and then the silence, and he wondered if that call had been made to ascertain the fact that he was still in the office. There were two detectives assigned to his home in Inwood, but... Suddenly he was frightened.

The boys sat motionless on the benches. Silently, like wax figures shrouded in impenetrable darkness, they sat and waited.

He decided to turn and walk out of the park.

And then he decided he was being foolish. There was nothing ominous about a group of young kids sitting in a park in the middle of a city. For God’s sake, there were probably a thousand policemen cruising the area! His right foot touched the patch of darkness on the path, moved into it, followed by his left, and then his right again, and then the darkness was everywhere around him as he approached the benches and their silent cargo, the fear returning in him with alarming suddenness.

The boys sat quietly. There was no talking — hardly any breathing, it seemed to him — as he passed between the two benches looking neither to the left nor the right, neither acknowledging their presence nor denying it.

The attack came swiftly, surprisingly because, if anything, he expected a punch to be hurled, but instead something lashed across his chest, something hard and sinuous, something alive with fury. He balled his fists and turned to the first attacker, but the same live terror leaped out of the darkness at his back, and he heard the rattle of metal, the sound of chains, chains? can it be they’re using? and then he felt the sharp snap of metal across his face, and now there was no doubt that the weapons in the hands of these eight boys were tire chains, skid chains, spiked with metal prongs to catch at the snow, wielded with surprising deftness and agility.

He threw a punch at a shadowy figure and someone grunted in pain, and then from behind him another of the skid chains whipped at his legs and he felt raw pain rocket up his spine to explode inside his skull. Another of the flailing chains whipped across his chest, and he seized at it with his hands, pulling at it, feeling the ripping of his flesh as his hands tore across the metal prongs.

There was a curious silence to the scene. None of the boys spoke. Occasionally they grunted when he struck one of them, but they said nothing intelligible. There was only the sound of heavy labor, and the sound of the metal chains lunging into the darkness, colliding with his body until he felt pain everywhere and still the chains would not stop their metallic methodical beating. A chain struck the calf of his right leg, and he felt himself losing his balance, and he thought I must not fall, they’ll stomp me, they’ll kick me with combat boots, and then his shoulder slammed against the concrete path and a kick exploded against his rib cage, and another set of tire chains descended on his face with the wild power of a medieval mace. And then the chains and the boots joined in a medley of organized pain, and still there was no sound but the chains and the labored breathing of the boys and far off the muted hum of an automobile engine somewhere on the street.

He was filled with rage, an impotent blind rage that threatened to consume him, overwhelming the shrieking pain he knew. There was injustice to this beating, but at the hands of his assailants he was helpless, helpless to stop the prongs which tore at his clothes and his flesh, helpless to stop the thick leather of the boots as they descended on him. Stop it, you goddamn fools! he screamed mentally. Do you want to kill me? What are you solving? What the hell are you solving?

A kick tore open his face. He could feel the skin ripping apart like the skin of a frankfurter on the outdoor barbecue grill of his home in Inwood, his face tearing, it was funny, the warm flow of blood, I must protect my teeth, the city swarming about him, all the sounds of the city rushing into the vortex of fifty-foot blackness on the path of the park, and the chains whipping, and the boots, the boots, and within him the outrage at the injustice, the impotent outrage suffocating him, rising inside him until a shocking star-shell explosion of pain rocked the back of his head and sent him soaring wildly into unconsciousness.

And in that last instant before the darkness became complete, he realized that he didn’t know whether his attackers were the Thunderbirds or the Horsemen.

And it didn’t make a damned bit of difference either way.

She stood by the bed.

She wore a white skirt and a black sweater, and her blond hair was pulled back into a pony tail captured by a small black ribbon.

“Hello, Dad,” she said.

“Hello, Jennie.”

“How do you feel?”

“A little better.”

He had been in the hospital for three days now, but this was the first time Jennie had come to visit. Sitting up in bed with his face and his body bandaged, he looked at the sunlight playing on his daughter’s hair, and he thanked God that the pain was gone now. The only pain now was in the memory of what had happened to him. The police had found him on the park path a little after midnight. The path around him had been stained with blood, and the hospital doctors later told him he’d been in deep shock. They’d dressed his wounds and filled him with sedatives and now, three days later, the pain in his body was gone. But the other pain still lingered, a pain of puzzlement, the pain of not being able to understand an attack that was senseless and cruel.

“Why did they beat you, Dad?” Jennie asked.

“I’m not sure,” he answered.

“Did it have something to do with the Morrez case?”

“Yes. In a twisted way, I suppose it did.”

“Are you doing something wrong?”

“Wrong? Why, no. What makes you think that?”

Jennie shrugged.

“What is it, Jennie?”

“Nothing. Just... the way the kids in the neighborhood have begun treating me, like a leper or something. I thought — I thought maybe you were doing something wrong.”

“I don’t think I am, Jennie.”

“All right,” she said. She paused. “Mommy went to see that boy the police picked up.”

“What boy?”

“The one who wrote you the threatening letter. About the Thunderbirds. You know the one.”

“Yes?”

“Well, they picked up the boy who wrote it. I guess your beating finally goosed the police into action.”

“Jennie, that’s hardly the proper language for a young lady to—”

“Anyway, they got him, Daddy. He’s a cripple.”

“A cripple?”

“A polio victim. He walks with a limp. They had his picture in the newspaper. He looked very sad, Daddy.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. When I saw his picture, I wondered what it would be like to be crippled and — and growing up in Harlem. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Mommy went to see him this morning. The police let her. She asked him if he’d meant the threat, if he’d really meant that he would kill you.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said, ‘Yes, goddamnit! Why would I send the note otherwise?’”

“Jennie, your language...”

“I’m only quoting him, Dad.” She paused. “But he wasn’t in on the beating. He isn’t even one of the Thunderbirds, and he has an alibi for the night you were beat up. I talked to Mommy on the phone before I came over here. She said they’ll release him as soon as someone puts up the bail for him.”

“How much?”

“Two thousand dollars. Daddy, will this sound strange?”

“What, Jennie?”

“If I had two thousand dollars, I’d put it up for bail. Because, Daddy, he looked so sad. He looked so damn sad.” She paused. “Does that make any sense to you?”

“A little,” he said.

Jennie nodded. “Will they be letting you out of here soon?”

“A week,” he said. “Maybe a little longer.”

“They hurt you pretty badly, didn’t they?”

“Yes.”

“How does it feel? To get beat up, I mean.”

“Well, it doesn’t feel good,” he said, and he attempted a smile.

“Daddy, whichever way this case works out, isn’t... isn’t there the possibility that you may be beaten up again?”

“I suppose there’s that possibility.”

“Are you afraid?”

He met her eyes with his own, and he saw that she was seeking honesty, but he lied nonetheless. “No,” he said, “I’m not afraid,” and he knew instantly he’d made a mistake by lying.

Jennie turned her head away from him. “Well,” she said, “I guess I ought to be scramming. Mommy said to tell you she’ll be here tonight.”

“Will you come again, Jennie?” he asked.

“Do you want me to?” she said, and again her eyes met his.

“Yes, I’d like you to.”

“I’ll try,” she said.

“Maybe... maybe we’ll be able to talk.”

“Maybe.”

“I meant without nurses or anything interrupting.”

“Yes. I know what you meant. The way we used to talk when I was a little girl.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe,” she said again. “But it’ll have to be after next week sometime. Mommy’s sending me to Rockaway to stay with the Andersons.”

“Oh? When was this decided?”

“Last night.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“A week.” Jennie hesitated. “I think Mommy’s afraid something might happen to me if I stay in the city.”

“I see,” Hank said.

“Do you think something might happen to me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well...” Jennie shrugged. “I’ll be going now, Dad.” She bent over the bed and kissed him hastily. “Take good care of yourself.”

She walked to the door, and he watched it close gently behind her. And then she was gone.

With the trial only three days away, with his face still covered with adhesive plaster even though he’d been released from the hospital, Hank received a call at the office that Friday.

“Mr. Bell, this is Lieutenant Canotti.”

“Hello,” Hank said.

“I’ve got that report you wanted.”

“The report? What report?”

“On those knives.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, of course. I’d almost forgotten.”

“What’s the matter, Bell? Losing your pep? You were ready to go in to your boss on this, remember?”

“I remember.”

“So where’s the fighting assistant district attorney now?” Canotti paused. “That street beating take the starch out of you?”

“I’m busy, Canotti,” Hank said. “Make it short, and make it sweet, and cut the bull. I don’t know you well enough to start a feud.”

Canotti chuckled and then said, “We ran a lot of tests on these knives. No good latent prints because they got smeared when this Rugiello girl handled them. But there was something else that was interesting. At least, I think it was interesting.”

“What was that?”

“Well, you’ll see when you get the report. I’m sending a copy over together with the knives. Don’t forget to sign for receipt, will you?”

“When will this be?” Hank asked.

“I’m sending them over right now. The trial ain’t till Monday, am I right?”

“That’s right.”

“Sure. So you got all weekend to think about it.” Canotti chuckled again. “I hope it don’t upset your case, Mr. Bell.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you read the report. Like I said, it’s pretty interesting.”

“Okay, I’ll read the report.”

“Sure. So long, Mr. Bell. It was nice dealing with you.” And Canotti hung up. Hank replaced the receiver on the cradle. The instrument erupted into sound again instantly. He picked up the receiver again.

“Hello?”

“Bell? This is Lieutenant Gunnison of the twenty-seventh. I got something that might interest you. Can you run up here?”

“What is it?”

“It’s connected with the Morrez case. It might give you a new slant.”

“I can’t get away right this minute,” Hank said. “After lunch sometime?”

“I’ll be here all afternoon. Come whenever you can. There’s somebody I’d like you to talk to.”

“Okay, I’ll see you later,” Hank said, and he hung up.

The report from the police laboratory did not arrive until two-thirty that afternoon. Hank, packing his briefcase to leave the office, stuffed the report in with his other papers, locked the enveloped knives in his desk drawer, and then signed the receipt while the messenger waited. His plan was to stop in on Gunnison and then go directly home, where he would put the finishing touches to his case before beginning the selection of jurors on Monday.

He did not reach the precinct house until a little after three. He looked up at the green lanterns flanking the wide stone stoop and then climbed the steps into the muster room. A sign at the desk read: “All visitors must state their business to the desk officer.” He walked to the high desk, caught the sergeant’s eye and said, “I want to see Lieutenant Gunnison. I’m from the district attorney’s office.”

“Upstairs,” the sergeant said, and he went back to his work.

Hank followed the pointing DETECTIVE DIVISION sign into the upstairs corridor. A man in shirt sleeves, a .38 hanging from a shoulder holster, stopped him just outside the squad room.

“Help you, sir?” he said.

“I want Lieutenant Gunnison,” Hank said.

“The loot’s busy just now. Somebody else help you?”

“Gunnison called me this morning, asked me to stop by. I’m from the D.A.’s office.”

“You Bell?”

“Yes.”

“Hello. I’m Detective Levine. Come on in and have a chair. I’ll tell the loot you’re here.”

Hank passed through the slatted rail divider and sat at one of the desks. Levine went into the lieutenant’s office and emerged a moment later with Gunnison.

“Mr. Bell?” Gunnison said.

“Yes, how do you do?”

“I’m Lieutenant Gunnison. You got a few minutes?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“I had a visitor this morning. An eighteen-year-old kid named Dominick Savarese. Ring a bell?”

“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.”

It was common knowledge among New York City’s lawyers that Judge Abraham Samalson permitted no nonsense in his courtroom. In General Sessions, Part III, on the Monday that marked the beginning of the Morrez trial, an air of solemnity pervaded the sunswept, wood-paneled room despite the throngs of prospective jurors, spectators, and reporters who packed the court. Seated at the rear of the room, Karin and Jennifer Bell listened to the Honorable Abraham Samalson, impressive in his robes of justice, as he reminded the spectators that this court was concerned with serious business and that any attempts to turn it into a circus would result in his barring all spectators from the trial. With the patience of a kindergarten instructor he explained what his function as a judge would be, and then he asked that the first of the prospective jurors be called.

From all outward appearances, the selection of jurors proceeded in an orderly and totally unsurprising manner. Hank, for the prosecution, asked the questions he was expected to ask. The lawyers for the three defendants — there were twelve appointed by the court — similarly asked the questions expected of them. The process was long and, for the most part, unexciting. Mike Barton, listening to the proceedings with the rest of the reporters, stifled many a yawn as the jurors were either empaneled or excused.

“Mr. Nelson, if the prosecuting attorney proved to you, beyond any reasonable doubt, that these three young boys were guilty of premeditated murder, would you have any qualms about voting for a verdict of guilty?”

“Why should I have any qualms?”

“Because there is a mandatory death penalty attached to the crime of first-degree murder.”

“No, I would not have any qualms.”

“You would send them to the electric chair?”

“Yes. If they were guilty, I would.”

“If, on the other hand, the facts as presented seemed to warrant a plea for leniency, could you find it in keeping with your morals and your ethics to ask the court for leniency in sentencing these boys?”

“I could.”

“Yes, and if we can show that a lesser crime than first-degree murder was committed, would you accept the facts as shown and consider bringing in a verdict on, for example, second-degree murder or manslaughter?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“He means,” Samalson interrupted, “that whereas the district attorney will try to prove that these boys committed murder in the first degree, the facts as presented before this court may indicate that a lesser crime, such as second degree murder or manslaughter, was actually committed. In which case, would you allow the grand-jury indictment or the high office of the district attorney to prejudice you against bringing in a verdict for a lesser crime?”

“No, I would not.”

“Does that answer your question, Mr. Randolph?”

“It does. Thank you, Your Honor. And if it were shown before this court that these boys did not commit any crime, would you vote for an acquittal, would you set them free?”

“I would.”

“Thank you,” Randolph said. “Excuse this juror.”