A Matter of Conviction

by Ed McBain

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 w
ith. 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 …”

  DIABLO: Listen, I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t care how much you talk about Spanish girls when none of the debs are around. But I ever hear anybody mention a spic when I’m with Carol, and I swear to God, there’s a busted head. I swear to God.

  CONCHO (He is a thin boy with deep-brown eyes and black wavy hair. He is very proud of his widow’s peak, which his mother has told him is a mark of distinction in a man. He has also been told about a famous male movie star who tweezes his widow’s peak to keep it well defined. He has been tempted to use tweezers on his forehead, but he is afraid the boys would find out and consider it unmasculine. He is concerned about masculinity because his father is a drunkard whose most masculine act is beating Concho’s mother regularly and brutally. Concho is disturbed by the fact that he’s skinny. If he were huskier, he would beat up his father whenever he came near his mother. As it is, he can only stand by in impotent anger while his father, a hulk of a man, commits the unmanly act of beating a woman. Concho’s real name is Mario. He began calling himself Concho after he’d seen a Western movie in which the marshal of the town, a man named Concho, cleaned out a saloonful of toughs with his bare hands. In a street fight, Concho behaves like a wild man. He never goes into a fight unarmed, whatever the terms laid down by the war counselors. He knows he has personally stabbed fourteen spies in various rumbles. He does not know that he is responsible for having torn to shreds the ligaments in an opponent’s right hand, rendering that hand forever useless. If he knew, he would boast about it. His speech is peppered with the pseudomusical jargon of the gutter. He dresses neatly and precisely and prides himself on the fact that he always carries a clean handkerchief.): What I mean is this. Can you feature anybody actually marrying a spic chick? I mean, this is insane.

  DIABLO: What’s the difference? A chick is a chick. The Spanish guys marry them, don’t they?

  CONCHO: Sure, but it must drive them nuts. They’re all nymphos.

  DIABLO: How the hell do you know?

  CONCHO: I know. Somebody told me. You can’t never satisfy a Spanish girl. They want more and more.

  DIABLO: You can’t even satisfy your hand, you shmuck. What the hell do you know about Spanish girls?

  CONCHO: Listen, I know. Don’t I know, Botch?

  BOTCH: Sure. He knows. (Botch is seventeen years old and enjoys a reputation as a ladies’ man. He is a good-looking boy with a magnificent profile and a thick-lipped mouth from which the name Botch—short for “Bacia mi,” Kiss me—was derived. His father works in a restaurant in the Wall Street area. His mother is dead. His older sister takes care of the house. He also has a younger brother, and he is determined to “break both his arms” if the kid ever gets involved in gang-busting. His reputation as a lover is based on the fact that he went to bed with a young married girl on the block. The gang beat up the girl’s husband when he came around looking for Botch afterward. Botch has visited the girl regularly ever since. He thinks she is afraid to refuse him, but he has never told this to the gang. The gang considers him a man of the world, and he would not shatter this illusion for anything.)

  DIABLO: You ever had a Spanish girl, Botch?

  CONCHO: Look who he’s asking. The master!

  BOTCH (with dignity): I don’t like to talk about what I had or didn’t have.

  CONCHO: Anything that walks with a skirt on, this guy has had. He’s modest. He’s a gentleman.

  BOTCH (with the same dignity): If you was a girl, would you like some guy telling what he done or didn’t do with you?

  CONCHO: I wouldn’t, but thank God I ain’t a girl. Besides, everybody knows about you and Alice. Even that banana she’s got for a husband.

  BOTCH: Little man, there are some things we don’t talk about. Inform him, Diablo.

  BUD: Hey, talkin’ about bananas.

  (He gestures toward the door with his head. Danny Di Pace has just entered the candy store. Bud surveys him with unconcealed and immediate malice. There is a marked difference in the appearance of the two boys, and perhaps this is responsible for the instantaneous antagonism Bud feels. For he is truly ugly, a boy who—at the age of sixteen—is already beginning to lose his hair. His face festers with acne. His nose is gross, the bones having healed crookedly after being shattered in a street fight when he was fourteen. He is short and squat, and at one time he was called Ape by the boys. He discouraged this by beating up three members of the gang. He is now called Bud, which he considers more dashing than Charles, his given name, or Charlie, his childhood nickname. He does not like to talk about sex. He has never kissed a girl in his life. He knows this is because girls consider him ugly. Looking at Danny Di Pace, who, at the age of fourteen, stands erect and tall in the doorway of the candy store, his red hair neatly combed, surveying the place with the secure knowledge of his good looks, Bud is glad the sex talk is ending, glad this smug intruder has come into their hangout looking for trouble.)

  DIABLO (whispering): Who’s that?

  BUD: Beats me. He looks like a banana.

  BOTCH: That’s the new kid moved in at 327. Up the block.

  DIABLO: Yeah?

  BOTCH: He used to live over on the next street when he was little. He just moved back from someplace out on Long Island.

  DIABLO: Where on Long Island?

  BOTCH: I don’t know. Someplace where they got the plane factories. His mother knows mine from when they were kids. She was up the house the other day.

  DIABLO: We got branches in some Long Island towns, you know.

  BOTCH: Yeah, but this guy’s a coolie, I think. Look at him.

  (Danny has purchased a pack of cigarettes. He tears off the cellophane top, rips the package open a
nd puts a cigarette between his lips. He is lighting it when Bud walks over to him.)

  BUD: Hey, got a butt?

  DANNY (shaking one loose, extending the pack): Sure. Help yourself. (He smiles. He is obviously making a thrust at friendship.)

  BUD (taking the pack): Thanks. (He strikes the pack against his hand, shaking loose one cigarette. He tucks this behind his ear. Then he shakes loose another.) For later. (He smiles, then shakes a half-dozen cigarettes into the palm of his hand.) In case any of the boys want one. (He is about to hand the pack back to Danny. He changes his mind, shakes another half dozen into his palm.) I got a very big family, and they all smoke. (He hands Danny the near-empty pack.)

  DANNY (studies it for a moment; then, handing the pack to Bud): Here. Keep the rest.

  BUD (smirking): Why, thanks, kid. Hey, thanks.

  DANNY: And buy me another pack. Pall Mall’s the brand.

  BUD: What?

  DANNY: You heard me. I ain’t running a Salvation Army soup kitchen. Those butts cost me twenty-seven cents. You can just shell out the same for a fresh pack.

  BUD: You can just go to hell, little man.

  (He turns to go. Danny claps his hand on Bud’s shoulder and whirls him around, then drops his hand immediately, spreading his legs wide, bunching his fists at his sides.)

  DANNY: I still ain’t got the cigarettes.

  BUD: You touch me again, little man, and you’re gonna get a hell of a lot more than the cigarettes. Believe me.

  JOEY (coming around the counter, wiping his hands on a rag): Cut that out. I don’t want no trouble in here, you understand? (To Danny) You get out of here, you little snotnose.

  DANNY: Not until he buys me a new pack of cigarettes.

  BUD (turning away from him): Don’t hold your breath, kid. I ain’t—

  (But Danny clamps his hand onto Bud’s shoulder a second time. This time he does not spin him around. He pulls him backward, off balance, and through the open door of the candy store, hurling him onto the street against the snow banked near the curb. Bud strikes the snow and then leaps erect, bracing himself with the natural instincts of a street fighter. It is very cold on the street and, as a result, the street is almost empty. The two boys face each other, their breaths pluming from their open mouths. Bud is the first to move. He comes at Danny with his fists clenched, and Danny sidesteps agilely and—as Bud passes—clobbers him at the back of his head, swinging both hands, which are clenched together like a mallet. Bud feels the blow. It knocks him off his feet and to the pavement. He is still on the ground when the other boys swarm out of the candy store. Concho makes a move toward Danny, but Diablo stops him.