IX
GUILTY AS CHARGED
The Jew, I take it, is essentially temperamental, whereas the Irishmanis by nature sentimental; so that in the long run both of them may reachthe same results by varying mental routes. This, however, has nothing todo with the story I am telling here, except inferentially.
It was trial day at headquarters. To be exact, it was the tail end oftrial day at headquarters. The mills of the police gods, which grind notso slowly but ofttimes exceeding fine, were about done with theirgrinding; and as the last of the grist came through the hopper, the lastof the afternoon sunlight came sifting in through the windows at thewest, thin and pale as skim milk. One after another the culprits,patrolmen mainly, had been arraigned on charges preferred by a superiorofficer, who was usually a lieutenant or a captain, but once in a whilean inspector, full-breasted and gold-banded, like a fat blue bumblebee.In due turn each offender had made his defense; those who were lyingabout it did their lying, as a rule, glibly and easily and with acertain bogus frankness very pleasing to see. Contrary to a generalopinion, the Father of Lies is often quite good to his children. Butthose who were telling the truth were frequently shamefaced and mumblingof speech, making poor impressions.
In due turn, also, each man had been convicted or had been acquitted,yet all--the proven innocent and the adjudged guilty alike--hadundergone punishment, since they all had to sit and listen to lectureson police discipline and police manners from the trial deputy. It wasperhaps as well for the peace and good order of the community that thepublic did not attend these seances. Those classes now that are the mostthoroughly and most personally governed--the pushcart pedlers, with thepermanent cringing droops in their alien backs; the sinful small boys,who play baseball in the streets against the statutes made and provided;the broken old wrecks, who ambush the prosperous passer-by in theshadows of dark corners, begging for money with which to keep body andsoul together--it was just as well perhaps that none of them wasadmitted there to see these large, firm, stern men in uniform wrigglingon the punishment chair, fumbling at their buttons, explaining, whining,even begging for mercy under the lashing flail of Third DeputyCommissioner Donohue's sleety judgments.
"The only time old Donny warms up is when he's got a grudge againstyou," a wit of headquarters--Larry Magee by name--had said once as hecame forth from the ordeal, brushing imaginary hailstones off hisshoulders. "It's always snowing hard in his soul!"
Unlike most icy-tempered men, though, Third Deputy Commissioner Donohuewas addicted to speech. Dearly he loved to hear the sound of his ownvoice. Give to Donohue a congenial topic, such as some one's official orpersonal shortcomings, and a congenial audience, and he excelledmightily in saw-edged oratory, rolling his r's until the torturedconsonants fairly lay on their backs and begged for mercy.
This, however, would have to be said for Deputy Commissioner Donohue--hewas a hard one to fool. Himself a grayed ex-private of the force, whohad climbed from the ranks step by step through slow and devious stages,he was coldly aware of every trick and device of the delinquentpoliceman. A new and particularly ingenious subterfuge, one that tastedof the fresh paint, might win his begrudged admiration--his gray flintsof eyes would strike off sparks of grim appreciation; but then, nearlyalways, as though to discourage originality even in lying, he wouldplaster on the penalty--and the lecture--twice as thick. Wherefore,because of all these things, the newspaper men at headquarters viewedthis elderly disciplinarian with mixed professional emotions. Presidingover a trial day, he made abundant copy for them, which was very good;but if the case were an important one he often prolonged it until theymissed getting the result into their final editions, which, if you knowanything about final editions, was very, very bad.
It was so on this particular afternoon. Here it was nearly dusk. Thewindows toward the east showed merely as opaque patches set against awall of thickening gloom, and the third deputy commissioner had startedin at two-thirty and was not done yet. Sparse and bony, he crouchedforward on the edge of his chair, with his lean head drawn down betweenhis leaner shoulders and his stiff stubble of hair erect on his scalp,and he looked, perching there, like a broody but vigilant old crestedcormorant upon a barren rock.
Except for one lone figure of misery, the anxious bench below him was bynow empty. Most of the witnesses were gone and most of the spectators,and all the newspaper men but two. He whetted a lean and crookedforefinger like a talon on the edge of the docket book, turned the pageand called the last case, being the case of Patrolman James J. Rogan.Patrolman Rogan was a short horse and soon curried. For being on suchand such a day, at such and such an hour, off his post, where hebelonged, and in a saloon where he did not belong, sitting down, withhis blouse unfastened and his belt unbuckled; and for having no betterexcuse, or no worse one, than the ancient tale of a sudden attack offaintness causing him to make his way into the nearest place where hemight recover himself--that it happened to be a family liquor store was,he protested, a sheer accident--Patrolman Rogan was required to pay fivedays' pay and, moreover, to listen to divers remarks in which he heardhimself likened to several things, none of them of a complimentarycharacter.
Properly crushed and shrunken, the culprit departed thence with hisuniform bagged and wrinkling upon his diminished form, and the thirddeputy commissioner, well pleased, on the whole, with his day's hunting,prepared to adjourn. The two lone reporters got up and made for thedoor, intending to telephone in to their two shops the grand total andfinal summary of old Donohue's bag of game.
They were at the door, in a little press of departing witnesses and latedefendants, when behind them a word in Donohue's hard-rolled officialaccents made them halt and turn round. The veteran had picked up fromhis desk a sheet of paper and was squinting up his hedgy, thick eyebrowsin an effort to read what was written there.
"Wan more case to be heard," he announced. "Keep order there, you men atthe door! The case of Lieutenant Isidore Weil"--he grated the name outlingeringly--"charged with--with----" He broke off, peering about himfor some one to scold. "Couldn't you be makin' a light here, some ofyou! I can't see to make out these here charges and specifications."
Some one bestirred himself and many lights popped on, chasing theshadows back into the far corners. Outside in the hall a policeman doingduty as a bailiff called the name of Lieutenant Isidore Weil, thricerepeated.
"Gee! Have they landed that slick kike at last?" said La Farge, theolder of the reporters, half to himself. "Say, you know, that ticklesme! I've been looking this long time for something like this to becoming off." Like most old headquarters reporters, La Farge had hisdeep-seated prejudices. To judge by his present expression, this was avery deep-seated one, amounting, you might say, to a constitutionalinfirmity with La Farge.
"Who's Weil and what's he done?" inquired Rogers. Rogers was a youngreporter.
"I don't know yet--the charge must be newly filed, I guess," said LaFarge, answering the last question first. "But I hope they nail him! Idon't like him--never did. He's too fresh. He's too smart--one of thoseself-educated East Side Yiddishers, you know. Used to be a courtinterpreter down at Essex Market--knows about steen languages. Andhe--here he comes now."
Weil passed them, going into the trial room--a short, squarely built manwith oily black hair above a dark, round face. Instantly you knew himfor one of the effusive Semitic type; every angle and turn of hisoutward aspect testified frankly of his breed and his sort. And at sightof him entering you could almost see the gorge of Deputy CommissionerDonohue's race antagonism rising inside of him. His gray hacklesstiffened and his thick-set eyebrows bristled outward like bits offrosted privet. Again he began whetting his forefinger on the leatherback of the closed docket book. It was generally a bad sign for somebodywhen Donohue whetted his forefinger like that, and La Farge would havedelighted to note it. But La Farge's appraising eyes were upon theaccused.
"Listen!" he said under his breath to Rogers. "I think they must havethe goods on Mister Wisenheimer at last. Usually he's t
he cockiest personround this building. Now take a look at him."
Indeed, there was a visible air of self-abasement about Lieutenant Weilas he crossed the wide chamber. It was a thing hard to define in words;yet undeniably there was a diffidence and a reluctance manifest in him,as though a sense of guilt wrestled with the man's natural conceit andassurance.
"Rogers," said La Farge, "let's hustle out and 'phone in what we've gotand then come back right away. If this fellow's going to get the harpoonstuck into him I want to be on hand when he starts bleeding."
Only a few of the dwindled crowd turned back to hear the beginning ofthe case, whatever it might be, against the Jew. The rest scatteredthrough the corridors, heading mainly for the exits, so that the twonewspaper men had company as they hurried toward the main door, makingfor their offices across the street. When they came back the long crosshalls were almost deserted; it had taken them a little longer to finishthe job of telephoning than they had figured. At the door of the trialroom stood one bulky blue figure. It was the acting bailiff.
"How far along have they got?" asked La Farge as the policeman made wayfor them to pass in.
"Captain Meagher is the first witness," said the policeman. "He's theone that's makin' the charge."
"What is the charge?" put in Rogers.
"At this distance I couldn't make out--Cap Meagher, he mumbles so,"confessed the doorkeeper. "Somethin' about misuse of police property, Itake it to be."
"Aha!" gloated La Farge in his gratification. "Come on, Rogers--I don'twant to miss any of this."
It was plain, however, that they had missed something; for, to judge byhis attitude, Captain Meagher was quite through with his testimony. Hestill sat in the witness chair alongside the deputy commissioner's desk;but he was silent and he stared vacantly at vacancy. Captain Meagher wasknown in the department as a man incredibly honest and unbelievablydull. He had no more imagination than one of his own reports. He had along, sad face, like a tired workhorse's, and heavy black eyebrows thatcurved high in the middle and arched downward at each end--circumflexesaccenting the incurable stupidity of his expression. His black mustachedrooped the same way, too, in the design of an inverted magnet. LarryMagee had coined one of his best whimsies on the subject of the shape ofthe captain's mustache.
"No wonder," he said, "old Meagher never has any luck--he wears hishorseshoe upside down on his face!"
Just as the two reporters, re-entering, took their seats the trialdeputy spoke.
"Is that all, Captain Meagher?" he asked sonorously.
"That's all," said Meagher.
"I note," went on Donohue, glancing about him, "that the accused doesnot appear to be represented by counsel."
A man on trial at headquarters has the right to hire a lawyer to defendhim.
"No, sir," spoke up Weil briskly. "I've got no lawyer, commissioner."His speech was the elaborated and painfully emphasized English of theself-taught East Sider. It carried in it just the bare suggestion of theracial lisp, and it made an acute contrast to the menacing Hibernianpurr of Donohue's heavier voice. "I kind of thought I'd conduct my owncase myself."
Donohue merely grunted.
"Do you desire, Lieutenant Weil, for to ask Captain Meagher anyquestions?" he demanded.
Weil shook his oily head of hair.
"No, sir. I wouldn't wish to ask the captain anything."
"Are there any other witnesses?" inquired Donohue next.
There was no answer. Plainly there were no other witnesses.
"Lieutenant Weil, do you desire for to say something in your ownbehalf?" queried the deputy commissioner.
"I think I'd like to," answered Weil.
He stood to be sworn, took the chair Meagher vacated and sat facing theroom, appearing--so La Farge thought--more shamefaced and abashed thanever.
"Now, then," commanded Donohue impressively, "what statement, if any,have you to make, Lieutenant Weil, touchin' on this here chargepreferred by your superior officer?"
Weil cleared his throat. Rogers figured that this bespoke embarrassment;but, to the biased understanding of the hostile La Farge, there wassomething falsely theatrical even in the way Weil cleared his throat.
"Once a grandstander always a grandstander!" he muttered derisively.
"What did you say?" whispered Rogers.
"Nothing," replied La Farge--"just thinking out loud. Listen to whatFoxy Issy has to say for himself."
"Well, sir, commissioner," began the accused, "this here thing happenslast Thursday, just as Captain Meagher is telling you." He had slippedalready into the policeman's trick of detailing a past event in thepresent tense.
"It's late in the afternoon--round five o'clock I guess--and I'mdownstairs in the Detective Bureau alone."
"Alone, you say?" broke in Donohue, emphasizing the word as though theadmission scored a point against the man on trial.
"Yes, sir, I'm alone. It happens that everybody else is out and I'm intemporary charge, as you might say. It's getting along toward dark whenPatrolman Morgan, who's on duty out in the hall, comes in and says to methere's a woman outside who can't talk English and he can't make outwhat she wants. So I tells him to bring her in. She comes in. Rightaway I see she's a Ginney--an Italian," he corrected himself hurriedly."She's got a child with her--a little boy about two years old."
"Describe this here woman!" ordered Donohue, who loved to drag indetails at a trial, not so much for the sake of the details themselvesas to show his skill as a cross-examiner.
"Well, sir," complied Weil, "I should say she's about twenty-five yearsold. It's hard to tell about those Italian women, but I should say she'sabout twenty-five--or maybe twenty-six. She's got no figure at all andshe's dressed poor. But she's got a pretty face--big brown eyes and----"
"That will do," interrupted the deputy commissioner--"that will do forthat. I take it you're not qualifyin' here for a beauty expert,Lieutenant Weil!" he added with elaborate sarcasm.
"You asked me about her looks, sir," parried Weil defensively, "and I'mjust trying to tell you."
"Proceed! Proceed!" bade Donohue, rumbling his consonants.
"Yes, sir. Well, in regard to this woman: She's talking so fast I can'tfigure out at first what she's trying to tell me. It's Italian she'stalking--or I should say the kind of Italian they talk in parts ofSicily. After a little I begin to see what she's driving at. It seemsshe's the wife of one Antonio Terranova and her name is MariaTerranova. And after I get her straightened out and going slow she tellsme her story."
"Is this here story got a bearin' on the charges pendin'?"
"I think it has. Yes, sir; it helps to explain what happens. As near asI can make out she comes from some small town down round Messinasomewhere, and the way she tells it to me, her husband leaves there notlong after they're married and comes over here to New York to get work,and when he gets enough money saved up ahead he's going to send back forher. That's near about three years ago. So she stays behind waiting forhim, and in about four months after he leaves the baby is born--the samebaby that she brings in here to headquarters with her last Thursday. Shesays neither one of them thinks it'll be long before he can save upmoney for her passage, but it seems like he has the bad luck. He's sickfor a while after he lands, and then when he gets a job in aconstruction gang the padrone takes the most of what he makes. And justabout the time he gets a little saved up some other Ginney--Italian--inthe construction camp steals it off of him.
"So he's up against it, and after a while he gets desperate. So he joinsin with a Black Hander gang--amateurs operating up in the Bronx--and thevery first trick he helps turn he does well by it. His share is nearabout a hundred dollars, and he sends her the best part of it to bringher and the baby over. She don't know at the time, though, how he raisesall this money--so she tells me. And I think, at that, she's telling thetruth--she ain't got sense enough to lie, I think. Anyway it soundstruthful to me--the way she tells it to me here last Thursday night."
"Proceed!" prompted Donohue testily
.
"So she takes this here money and buys herself a steerage ticket andcomes over here with the baby. That, as near as I can figure out, isabout three months ago. She's not seen this husband of hers for going onthree years--of course the baby's never seen him. And she figures he'llbe at the dock to meet her. But he's not there. But his cousin isthere--another Italian from the same town. He gets her through EllisIsland somehow and he takes her up to where he's living--up in theBronx--and tells her the reason her husband ain't there to meet her. Thereason is, he's at Sing Sing, doing four years.
"It seems that after he's sent her this passage money the husband getsto thinking Black Handing is a pretty soft way to make a living,especially compared to day laboring, and he tries to raise a stakesingle-handed. He writes a Black Hand letter to an Italian grocer heknows has got money laid by, only the grocer is foxy and goes to theTremont Avenue Station and shows the letter. They rig up a plant andthis here Antonio Terranova walks into it. He's caught with the markedbills on him. So just the week before she lands he takes a plea inGeneral Sessions and the judge gives him four years. When she gets towhere she's telling me that part of it she starts crying.
"Well, anyway, that's the situation--him up there at Sing Sing doing hisfour years and her down here in New York with the kid on her hands. Andshe don't ever see him again, either, because in about three or fourweeks--something like that--he's working with a gang in the rock quarryacross the river, where they're building the new cell house, and a chunkof slate falls down and kills him and two others."
"Right here and now," interrupted the third deputy commissioner, "I wantto know what's all this here stuff got to do with these here charges andspecifications?"
"Just a minute, please. I'm coming to that right away, commissioner,"protested the accused lieutenant with a sort of glib nervous agility;yet for all of his promising, he paused for a little bit before hecontinued. And this pause, brief enough as it was, gave the listening LaFarge time to discover, with a small inward jar of surprise, thatsomehow, some way, he was beginning to lose some of his acrid antagonismfor Weil; that, by mental processes which as yet he could not exactlyresolve into their proper constituents, it was beginning to dribbleaway from him. And realization came to him, almost with a shock, thatthe man on the stand was telling the truth. Truth or not, though, thenarrative thus far had been commonplace enough--people at headquartershear the like of it often; and as a seasoned police reporter La Farge'semotions by now should be coated over with a calloused shell inches deepand hard as horn. Trying with half his mind to figure out what it wasthat had quickened these emotions, he listened all the harder as Weilwent on.
"So this here big chunk of rock or slate or whatever it was falls on himand the two others and kills them. Not knowing where to send the body,they bury it up there at Sing Sing, and she never sees him again, livingor dead. But here just a few days ago it seems she picks up, fromoverhearing some of the other Italians talking, that we've got such athing as a Rogues' Gallery down here at headquarters and that herhusband's picture is liable to be in it. So that's why she's here. She'sfound her way here somehow and she asks me won't I"--he caughthimself--"won't the police please give her her husband's picture out ofthe gallery."
"And for why did she want that?" rumbled Donohue.
"That's what I asks her myself. It seems she's got no shame about it atall. She tells me she wants to hang on to it until she can get themoney to have it enlarged into a big picture, and then she's going tokeep it--till the bambino--that's Italian for baby, commissioner, youknow--till the baby grows up, so he can see what his dead father lookedlike."
Now of a sudden La Farge knew--or thought he knew--why his interest hadstirred in him a minute before. Instinctively his reporter's sixth sensehad scented a good news story before the real point of the story hadcome out, even. A curious little silence had fallen on the half-lighted,almost empty big room. Only the voice of Weil broke this silence:
"Of course, commissioner, I tries to explain to her what thecircumstances are. I tells her that, in the first place, on account ofthe mayor's orders about cutting down the gallery having gone intoeffect, it's an even bet her husband's picture ain't there anyhow--thatit's most likely been destroyed; and in the second place, even if it isthere, I tells her I've got no right to be giving it to her without anorder from somebody higher up. But either she can't understand or shewon't. I guess my being in uniform makes her think I'm running the wholedepartment, and she won't seem to listen to what I says.
"She cries and she carries on worse than ever, and begs and begs me togive it to her. I guess you know how excitable those Italian women canbe, especially when they are Sicilians. Anyhow, commissioner, after alot of that sort of thing I tells her to wait where she is for a minute.I leaves her and I goes across into the Bertillon room, where thepictures are, and I looks up this here Antonio Terranova. I forget hisnumber now and I don't know how it is he comes to be overlooked whenwe're cleaning out the gallery; but he's there all right, full face andside view, with his gallery number in big white figures on his chest.And, commissioner, he's a pretty tolerable tough-looking Ginney." Thewitness checked an inclination to grin. "I takes a slant at his picture,and I can't make up my own mind which way he'll look the worst enlargedinto a crayon portrait--full face or side view. I can still hear hercrying outside the door. She's crying harder than ever.
"I puts the picture back, and I goes out to where she is and tries toargue with her. It's no use. She goes down on her knees and holds thebaby up, and tells me it ain't for her sake she's asking this--it's forthe bambino. And she calls on a lot of Italian saints that I never evenheard the names of some of them before--and so on, like that. It'spretty tough.
"She's such a stupid, ignorant thing you can't help from feeling sorryfor her--nobody could." He hesitated a moment as though seeking forwords of explanation and extenuation that were not in his regularvocabulary. "I got kids of my own, commissioner," he said suddenly, andstopped dead short for a moment. "I'm no Italian, but I got kids of myown!" he repeated, as though the fact constituted a defense.
"Well, well--what happened then?" The deputy commissioner's frosty voiceseemed to have frozen so hard it had a crack in it. And now then theSemitic face of Weil twisted into a grin that was more thanshamefaced--it was downright sheepish.
"Why, then," he said, "when I comes back out of the Bertillon room thesecond time she goes back down on her knees again and she says to me--ofcourse she ain't expected to know what my religion is--maybe thatexplains it, commissioner--she says to me that all her life--everymorning and every night--she's going to pray to the Blessed Virgin forme. That's what she says anyway. So I just lets it go at that."
He halted as though he were through.
"Then do I understand that, without an order from any superiorauthority, you gave this here woman certain property belonging to thePolice Department?" Old Donohue's voice was gruffer than common, even.He whetted his talon forefinger on the desk top.
"Yes, sir," owned up the Jew. "There's nobody there but just us two. AndI don't know how Captain Meagher comes to find the picture is gone andthat it was me took it--but it's true, commissioner. She goes awaykissing it and holding it to the breast of her clothes--that Rogues'Gallery picture! Yes, sir; I gives it to her."
The third deputy commissioner's gold-banded right arm was shoved out,with all the lean fingers upon the hand at the far end of it widelyextended. He spoke, and something in his throat--a hard lumpperhaps--husked his brogue and made his r's roll out like dice.
"Lieutenant Weil," he said, "I congratulate you! You're guilty!"
The Escape of Mr. Trimm Page 9
