A Matter of Conviction

by Ed McBain

  “The son of a bitch,” Holmes said.

  He went to see Mary that afternoon.

  He called her from the office to say he was coming, and she said she would be out until three but that she would expect him then.

  The street was sufferingly hot. No place in the world gets hotter than Harlem, he thought. Name a place and Harlem’s hotter because Harlem is a giant concrete coffin and nothing stirs in that coffin, there is no breath of air. In July and August …

  In July …

  He could remember a Fourth of July in Harlem. He had been eight years old at the time, and there had been no law forbidding the use of fireworks in those days. He had sat with his mother at the window of their sixth-floor apartment, overlooking the street, hearing the explosions of the firecrackers and the cherry bombs, watching the Roman candles erupt over the rooftops. The street was a bedlam of noise and excitement, boys igniting fuses and then running, tin cans leaping into the air with the force of contained explosion, girls shrieking. It had been a hot day, and even on the sixth floor there was no breeze. He had leaned out over the sill, watching the excitement in the street below. His father, in the parlor, was listening to the Yankee game.

  At six o’clock, his mother discovered they were out of bread. His father, absorbed in the impending doom of a White Sox rally, would not budge from the radio.

  “You go down, Henry,” his mother said. “I’ll watch you from the window.”

  He took the money for the bread and ran down the steps. The grocery store—the only open one on the street—was three doors away. In the street, the noise and the excitement claimed him completely. His eyes wide, he walked to the grocery store, made his purchase and was starting back when the older boys surrounded him.

  At first he thought it was a game. Then he saw that they were all holding burning pieces of clothesline in their hands, and then he realized they were touching the ropes to the fuses of firecrackers, and suddenly the explosions came, bursting at his feet, bursting in the air over his head, a medley of cacophony unleashed by the boys. He tried to escape the sound, fear rolling over him in engulfing shock waves, but the boys would not break the circle, would not let him out of the exploding circle of red and yellow, would not allow him to run away from the fear, the fire, the threat, the bombs, and he tried to yell but his voice was drowned out in the terrible roar of the explosions, the stink of the gunpowder, and far above him his mother’s voice yelling, “Henry! Get away from him! Henry!” while the firecrackers burst around him and he shrieked in silent terror.

  His father sprang from the mouth of the tenement like a wild man, striking the nearest boy a blow that sent him sprawling to the pavement. He picked up his son and ran upstairs with him, and Hank clung to the loaf of bread in his arms, squeezing it to a pulp. Upstairs, his mother said, “I shouldn’t have sent him. You had to listen to your damn ball game! I knew he shouldn’t be on the streets today! I knew it! I shouldn’t have sent him.”

  Hank’s father said, “He’s all right, he’s all right. They didn’t hurt him.”

  And maybe they didn’t.

  But he began stuttering on the day of the incident, and he did not stop stuttering until he was eleven years old, and even then not completely. All through adolescence, whenever anything upset him, the old stutter would come back, and he would remember again that Fourth of July in Harlem with the firecrackers exploding around him, the devils of hell at his feet, at his head, surrounding him.

  He climbed the steps of the tenement in which Mary Di Pace lived. He found her apartment on the fourth floor. The catch for a milk-bottle lock hung limply from the outside of the door, and his first thought was, They still steal milk in Harlem. He smiled grimly. Men could develop satellites to spin in outer space, men could shoot rockets to the moon, devise intercontinental ballistic missiles which could destroy cities, and in Harlem—unless you put a wire loop on your door, a loop controlled from inside the apartment—they still stole your milk. Sighing, he knocked on the door.

  “Hank?” her voice called.

  “Yes.”

  “Just a minute, please.”

  He waited in the hallway. From somewhere in the building, he heard the voices of a man and woman raised in heated argument.

  “So what do you do with the money?” the man wanted to know.

  “What do you think I do with it? I buy rubies and furs, what the hell do you think? I buy gasoline for my Cadillac!”

  “Don’t get smart, you stupid bitch! I give you forty dollars a week for the house. So where is it? Every Wednesday, you’re broke. What do you do with it? Eat it?”

  “I keep a stable of Arabian ponies,” the woman said. “That costs money. I give cocktail parties for the ladies in the Social Register. What the hell do you think I do with all that money, all that big forty dollars?”

  “I know what you do with it,” the man said. “You play the goddamn numbers. You think I don’t know?”

  “Shut up, the windows are all open,” the woman said.

  “The hell with the windows! Stop spending my money on the numbers!”

  The door opened.

  Mary smiled. “Hello, Hank,” she said. “Come in.”

  She was wearing a tan linen suit, the jacket unbuttoned over a white blouse. A stray wisp of red hair curled alongside her cheek. He had the impression that she had just come into the apartment and removed her hat. Her eyes were tired, and the strain of the past few days showed in the weary set of her mouth. But he knew in an instant that she, like every woman he’d ever known, had come beyond the terror and hysteria of initial shock and then rebounded with amazing resiliency to face whatever lay ahead. There was in her eyes—and he knew the look because he had seen it often on Karin’s face—a combination of strength and dignity and determination. The look frightened him somewhat; it was the look worn by the tigress guarding the entrance to her den of cubs.

  “Come in, Hank,” she said. “I just got back this minute. I was talking to Danny’s lawyers.” He stepped into the apartment. “No scenes this time,” she said. “I promise.”

  He followed her through a short corridor past an open bathroom door and then into a living room furnished with a suite from one of the stores on Third Avenue. A television set rested on a table in one corner of the room. Drapes hung over the single window, which opened on the airshaft between the buildings. A fire escape was outside the window. From somewhere upstairs Hank could still hear the arguing couple, their voices echoing in the shaftway.

  “Sit down, Hank,” Mary said. “It’s not too bad in here. We get a breeze through that window, and it crosses into the bedroom facing the street.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and he sat on the sofa. They were awkwardly silent for a moment. Then he said, “You’ve got a nice apartment, Mary.”

  “Don’t kid me, Hank,” she answered. “I moved here from Long Island. I know what nice is.”

  “Why’d you come back to Harlem, Mary?”

  “They cut production, and Johnny lost his job. We’d saved some money, and I suppose we could have held on to the house. But a friend of ours was opening a shoe store here in Harlem. He asked Johnny if he wanted to go in as a partner. Johnny thought we should. I thought so, too.” She shook her head. “It seemed like the right decision at the time.” She paused. “If we could have seen ahead, if we could have known—” She cut the sentence and lapsed into silence. He sat watching her, wondering if the initial shock had truly passed. She raised her eyes suddenly, meeting his, and they looked at each other across a wide gulf of years, and neither said anything for several moments. Then, as if struggling with an inner secret resolve, Mary said, “Would you like a drink?”

  “Not if it’s any trouble. I only came to …”

  “I’m a little ashamed of myself, Hank,” she said, lowering her eyes, “for the way I behaved in your office the other day. I hope—”

  “Under the circumstances …”

  “Yes, yes, I know, but …” She raised her eyes
, meeting his directly again. “I want to apologize.”

  “Mary, there’s no need to …”

  “This is—you know, you never think anything like this is going to happen to you. You read about it in the newspapers all the time, but it means nothing. And suddenly, it’s happening to you. Your family. You. It … it takes a while to … to realize it. So—so please forgive me for the way I behaved. I wasn’t myself. I just …” She rose suddenly. “We only have rye and gin. Which would you like?”

  “Gin would be fine,” he said softly.

  “Tonic?”

  “If you have some.”

  “Yes, I think so.” She walked into the kitchen. He heard her open the door to the refrigerator, heard her uncapping the bottle of quinine water, heard the rattle of ice-cube trays. She came back into the living room, handed him his drink, and then sat opposite him. They did not toast. Quietly they sipped at the drinks. Down in the areaway someone clanked a garbage-can cover into place.

  “It’s funny about people, isn’t it?” she said suddenly. “How two people who once knew each other so well can meet and—and be strangers.” A curious laugh of puzzlement, joyless, escaped her mouth. “It’s funny,” she said again.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m—I’m glad you came today, Hank.”

  “I came to tell you—”

  “I like to believe that people who once meant something to each other … that … that if you knew someone very well …” She struggled with the thought silently and then said simply, “You meant a lot to me, Hank.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “When we were kids, you—you did a lot for me.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes: You see, I’d always thought of myself as very ugly until—”

  “Ugly? You?”

  “Yes, yes. And then you came along, and you thought I was so very beautiful, and you kept telling me so until—until I began to believe it. I’ll always be grateful to you for that, Hank.”

  “Mary, of all the people in the world, you’re hardly the one to have doubted your own good looks.”

  “Oh, but I did. I did.”

  There was an ease now, somehow, miraculously, there was a complete relaxation of tension. At last, the barrier of years had been spanned, leaving only the ease they once had known, the familiarity with which they had discussed the very serious problems of the very young, big and small, all earth-shattering. Looking back, he felt a peculiar tenderness for the two infants who had held hands and talked together in low earnest whispers. The people here today in this tenement living room bore very little resemblance to those two of long ago—and yet he recognized them, and he felt a pleasant warmth spread through him. For the moment, he forgot why he had come to see her. For the moment, for now, it was enough that they could talk to each other again.

  “You did a lot for me, too,” he said.

  “I hope so, Hank.” She paused. “Hank, let me tell you what happened because—I was always a little sorry I’d sent that letter, always a little ashamed that I’d taken the coward’s way out. Do you know, do you understand—I hope you understand—that I loved you?”

  “I thought so. But then your letter …”

  “I used to lie awake at night and wonder what you were doing. Were they firing at you? Were you hit? Was your plane going down? Would you be captured and tortured? I used to cry at night. One night my mother came in and said, ‘Mary, Mary, what’s the matter?’ and I said, ‘He may be dead,’ and she said, ‘You damn fool, you should have married him, you should have taken whatever love you could get because love isn’t something you find on street corners.’ And I began crying again, and praying—I’ve never really been religious even though I was raised as a Catholic—but I prayed so hard for you, Hank, I prayed that you would be safe and whole and that … that you’d come back to me. And then I met Johnny.”

  “Yes?” he said.

  “This may sound stupid. But I wouldn’t have started seeing him if it weren’t for you. And I wouldn’t have loved him if I hadn’t loved you first. It was because of your gentleness, and your … your love for me that I was capable of loving another man. That’s why my letter was so cruel. I should never have written that letter. I should have swum to England, crawled to you to thank you, kissed your hands, Hank. I shouldn’t have sent a letter.”

  “Mary, you—”

  “And the other day, in your office, I was terribly unfair to a person who’s been fair all his life. I know you have a job to do. I know you’ll do it the way it has to be done. And now I respect that. I respect it the way I’ve always respected you. I could not have loved you so completely if you hadn’t been the person you were. And I don’t think that person has changed very much. You’re still Hank.”

  “I’ve changed a great deal, Mary.”

  “The surface? The polish? Oh, yes, you’re not the awkward young man who once picked flowers for me in the park. But I’m not the redheaded skinny young …”

  “You were never skinny!” he protested.

  “… girl who accepted the flowers so self-consciously. But I think we’re essentially the same, Hank. I think, when we lower the masks, we’re essentially those two silly kids who thought the world was full of dragons and shining white knights.” She paused. “Aren’t we?”

  “Perhaps.”

  She nodded, lost in thought. Then she said, “You’re not here to talk about Danny, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Because I’d rather not. You see, I feel we’re both after the same thing. Justice. And I don’t want to mess it up with emotion. I was very wrong the other day. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  “I forgave you a long time ago,” Hank said, and their eyes met for just an instant, and then Mary nodded, and sighed, and sipped at her drink, and the tenement was very still, the summer heat mushrooming silently outside the window.

  “Why did you come, Hank?”

  “At lunchtime today, I spoke to a reporter named Mike Barton.”

  “Yes.”

  “He said he’d talked to you yesterday.”

  “That’s true.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him that Danny was innocent.”

  “I mean … about us.”

  “Oh.”

  “You did mention something about us?”

  “Yes, I did. I said we’d known each other when we were younger.”

  “How’d you happen to mention that?”

  “He asked if I’d ever met the man who’s prosecuting the case? I said yes, I had, and in fact we’d known each other when we were younger.”

  “Is that all?”

  “I think so. Yes. That’s all. Why?”

  “He implied—more.”

  “More? You mean …?”

  “Well, he implied we really knew each other. He implied we’d …”

  “I understand.” She paused. “But of course, we never did.”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry we didn’t. I—I should have given you that. When you’ve given everything else, it seems so petty to cling to … I should have allowed you that.”

  “Mary, the important thing is—”

  “Does it embarrass you? My talking like this?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Because I think you should know, in fairness you should know, that I wanted you as much as you seemed to want me.”

  “I’m glad to know that.”

  “I was a silly little girl.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “Yes, I was. A person shouldn’t draw boundary lines for love. Love is giving. I should have given you everything I had to give.”

  For a moment he thought of Karin and the bombardier, and his brow creased in puzzlement.

  “About Barton,” he said. “He’s writing a story. God knows what it’ll say. But you can bet it won’t be flattering. It’ll be nothing we can sue him or the paper for, but it’ll be loaded with the implication that
you and I were far more than casual friends, and that our past relationship might influence the outcome of the case.”

  “I see.”

  “I thought I ought to warn you.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

  “I mean, I didn’t think your husband should …”

  “Should what?”

  “Should … should get the idea that … that his wife …”

  She looked at him in complete surprise. “Why, I’ve told Johnny how close we were, Hank. I’ve even told him I was a little sorry you and I hadn’t made love together.”

  “You told him that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And … and what did he say?”

  “He said—I remember this very well—” she smiled—“he said it wouldn’t have mattered to him, and it might have mattered very much to us. That’s what he said.”

  “He sounds like … like a remarkable man.”

  “I think you’d like him.”

  “Well, then the story won’t cause you any trouble.”

  “No. None at all. Not with Johnny, anyway.”

  “I’m relieved to hear that.”

  “And this is why you came?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could have told me this on the phone.”

  “I know I could have,” he said.

  “Then why did you come?”

  He paused for a moment, and then he smiled, and then he said, “I guess I wanted to make sure I hadn’t been a fool when I fell in love with a girl named Mary O’Brien.”

  SEVEN

  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?”