One Monday We Killed Them All

by John D. MacDonald

  I remembered his words as I looked at Mildred in her yellow towel. She lit a cigarette. Dwight reached lazily and she gave it to him and lit another. They were both looking at me and I suddenly realized how very much alike they were. There was an inevitability about this association. It wouldn’t last long. They didn’t lead lives in which anything lasted very long. But they had to be together for a little while.

  “He came to tell me to stop working for Jeff. He gets these weird ideas.”

  “Jeffie is a dear man,” Mildred said. “He’s a fun sort. Sergeant, dear, we sort of run with the pack, but we’re not employees, really. I did try to be one last year. I teased him to put me on a little telephone list, just to see what it would be like, but he was horribly chicken about it, scared of Daddy, truly.”

  “We don’t want to keep you from your work, Fenn,” Dwight said.

  As I walked toward the elevator I could hear them laughing.

  I learned Larry had made no headway with Jeff Kermer. Jeff had admitted just the casual association described by Dwight. We suffer the existence of Division Street. We need and use Jeff Kermer, and he needs and uses us. It is a realistic relationship which would horrify the reform elements if they knew how it works. In nearly all categories of major and minor crime, we run well below the FBI statistics for the national average. Nearby cities with a fatter per capita police budget run higher.

  It is a power relationship, not a conspiracy. In the un-written arrangement, Kermer keeps his operations pretty well centralized in the Division Street area, and can operate the clip joints, the gambling, the call girl circuits, the unaffiliated local union rackets and small scale protection setups, as well as jukes, pinball machines and punchboards, without any serious interference. In return he puts the whole city off limits for the organized narcotics trade, pornography, professional armed robbery, safe-cracking and car theft rings. We try to keep two classes of informers inside his organization, those he knows about and those he doesn’t. We can’t expect him to stop amateur impulsive crimes of violence, but we expect him to keep professional talent out of town. If any tries to move in, and he can’t readily break it up, he sees that we get tipped off. If one of the independent operators within his sphere of influence gets too greedy, we are tipped off that Jeff wouldn’t mind a raid and some arrests. This always pleases the reform elements. Because it is a controlled town, it is a cooling off place for out of town hoodlums. In return for the arrangement that they not ply their trade in Brook City, we agree to forego the dragnet technique of picking up strangers on suspicion.

  As far as the police department is concerned, there is no grease involved. Kermer has a political budget, necessary to protect the status quo, but no bag man ever visits Larry Brint. And Jeff is too smart to try to buy the police. In a controlled town, when the police are purchased, it upsets the power balance, the town gradually becomes so wide open that the ever-present reform element gains enough power to take over and break up the party. Whenever any cop is so stupid as to try to extract grease, Kermer tips Chief Brint off and that cop is suspended. So corruption helps keep the force clean and professional, and giving a good return on the tax dollar.

  For Larry Brint it is a working arrangement, a rational compromise. But he knows that such a balance cannot be maintained because it is a highly personal solution. Men sicken and die, and the ones who replace them have other ideas. Also, Larry was in a static position, and Jeff Kermer was getting stronger. Jeff had been expanding into legitimate enterprise for a long time, slowly allying himself with the commercial pressure group, acquiring new power of a different sort. And it was this duality of interest which kept him from making any attempt to obscure the details of the killing of Mildred Hanaman. Just as his extra-legal activities were at the mercy of Chief Larry Brint, his legitimate businesses were vulnerable to the pressure the Paul Hanaman group could bring to bear.

  The killing occurred six weeks after I talked to Dwight and the Hanaman girl in Dwight’s apartment.

  These are the facts brought out by the police investigation. McAran had broken off the relationship. The girl was furious with him. Her pride was hurt. She was drinking heavily. He was staying out of her way. She found him on a Saturday at midnight in one of the private rooms at the Holiday Lounge in a four-handed game of stud poker. He told her to leave him alone. They called each other obscene names. She wandered out to the bar and came back with a drink and kibitzed the game for a little while. Without warning she poured the drink over his head. He swung backhanded at her. She dodged the blow, but was so unsteady on her feet she fell down. She laughed at him. He went and got a towel, dried his face and head and went back to the table, ignoring her completely. She worked herself into a screaming rage and catapulted herself at him, clawing at him from behind. He stood up, tipping his chair over, and walked her back against the wall beside the door, held her there with his left hand and worked her over with his right, striking her heavily with his open hand, backhand and forehand, until there was no resistance in her. He kept striking her until the men he was gambling with came and pulled him away. She collapsed, semiconscious. They went back to the interrupted game. After five minutes she was able to get to her feet. She left without another word. As she went out through the bar several people noticed her face was badly swollen and beginning to discolor. She left the Holiday Lounge at approximately ten minutes to one. A maid heard her car enter the driveway at her home at about one-thirty. The trip should have taken no longer than fifteen minutes. She remained in bed most of the next day, complaining of a headache, nausea and a vision defect. She was up for an hour, but complained of dizziness and went back to bed. When a maid discovered her dead in her bed at noon on Monday, the coroner, using a thermistor bridge thermometer and the temperature extrapolation method, gave the estimated time of death as three o’clock on Monday morning. In view of the facial contusions, autopsy permission was requested and granted, and the cause of death was shown to be a traumatic rupture of a minor blood vessel in the left hemisphere of the brain with an attendant slow build-up of pressure which in turn starved the supply of blood to those deeper areas of the brain controlling respiration and heart action. No abnormality or malformation was noted in the area of the hemorrhage. Two consulting specialists concurred with the coroner’s opinion that the facial bruises indicated blows of a sufficient severity so that it was possible they had also ruptured the blood vessel. The three witnesses to the assault were questioned separately. They willingly gave statements which were not contradictory in any significant respect.

  The principle of reasonable doubt is one of the basic ingredients of the law. Any zealous defense would make much of the fact that the girl had been visibly drunk. The autopsy could not pin down the approximate time of the brain injury. She could have fallen before McAran beat her. She could have gotten out of the car on the way home and fallen. She could have gotten up in the night and fallen in her own bathroom.

  McAran was charged with murder in the second degree. With all the Hanaman weight behind him, the young prosecutor, John Finch, made massive preparation. Midway through the trial it was easy to guess how it was going to go. The defense wisely requested a recess, conferred with Finch, and, with his agreement, entered a plea of guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter. McAran was sentenced to five years at Harpersburg State Prison.

  Had Paul Hanaman, Junior, stepped sufficiently out of character to have roughed up a drunken B-girl in one of the Division Street saloons, and had she walked out under her own power and died over twenty-four hours later, it is almost beyond the realm of possibility to believe he would have spent even five days in a cell. In his case, the doubt would have been exceedingly reasonable.

  I visited Dwight in his cell after he had been sentenced and was waiting to be transported to Harpersburg.

  He gave me a rocky smile more like the lip-lift snarl of an animal.

  “Dirty cop bastard!”

  I leaned against the bars. He sat on the bunk, cracking h
is knuckles. “Sure. I framed you.”

  “It could have been fixed. Five lousy years! Jesus!”

  “Fixed?”

  “One of your prowl cops up there testifying he saw her pull over halfway home and get out and trip and fall on her stinking head.”

  “Oh, sure. We always do that for our friends.”

  “Why did Kermer cross me? Two of those guys taking my money in that game work for him. I told Jeff how to do it. They go on the stand. On the stand they change the testimony, and they say Mildred fell on her head hard after dumping that drink on me, and she acted dazed and funny, and her face was banged up before she ever got into that room, and all I did was slap her a little trying to bring her out of it. Was that so hard?”

  “Did he agree?”

  “He winked and told me not to worry about a thing. After they gave it straight, I knew I was cooked.”

  “Maybe Kermer needs Hanaman more than he needs you, Dwight.”

  “I wish I had that sloppy, drunken, big-mouth broad right here, right now. I’d kill her in a way that would give me some kicks. Five years!”

  “More like three and a half if you handle it right.”

  “I have the strangest feeling I’m not going to handle it right, brother-in-law.” He looked at me with a curious steadiness which made me uneasy. “I owe you, cop. I owe you and Kermer and Hanaman and this bastard town and this bastard system that’s put me in every newspaper in the country. I’ll be in the news again, officer. Wait for the day. Have yourself a nice five years with my sister.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense. Don’t talk like a punk kid.”

  He looked down at his big meaty right hand and slowly flexed the fingers. “A little too hard,” he said softly. “And a little too long. Should have stopped when she went loose, but I was in the rhythm of it, popping her face back and forth, catching it just right.” He stared up at me with a corrugation of boyish forehead, a puzzled look. “By then I wasn’t sore, you know? It was like—a game with a ball, where you catch the rhythm, and do it just right. It’s like playing some kind of a game.” His voice rose to a pitch thin and plaintive. “And what was she worth? A bag like Mildred? She didn’t care about herself, did she? It didn’t matter to her what happened, what she said, the things she did. All she wanted was her kicks. What she liked best was somebody watching. Jesus Christ, what makes her worth five years!”

  “Meg wants to know what she can do,” I said.

  He came back from a far place and focused on me. “What does she want to do? Pack a picnic lunch?”

  “Do you want to see her?”

  “No.”

  “Do you need cigarettes or anything?”

  He didn’t answer me. He was staring down at the floor. I waited a little while and then I left. He didn’t look up. I wondered how he’d adjust to Harpersburg. So did a lot of other people. All of us guessed wrong. We thought that toughness was a muscle reflex, that they’d peel him right down to a whimper. In this good guy-bad guy world it is too easy for all of us to believe in the myth of the gutless villain. So we all guessed wrong.

  v

  Meg called me from the kitchen door and I went in for the late lunch with the prodigal brother. He was in a yellow sweater, gray slacks, his cropped hair still spikey with shower dampness. Meg served the foods he had always loved best, in great quantity. She tried to talk in a spritely way of small funny things, but there was an edge of anxiety in her voice.

  I knew what was bothering her and I had no good way to help her. I knew he was somewhat sullen and indifferent, but not as much as she believed him to be. It is the prison mark on them. We learn to recognize it in our work. I can walk down a busy city street and pick out the ex-cons who have done long time with a good chance of being right, but oddly enough some of the ones I pick out will be career enlisted personnel in civilian dress. They have lost the normal mobility and elasticity of the muscles of the face, the expressive muscles. There is a restriction of normal eye movement, a greater dependence on peripheral vision. The range of the conversational voice is reduced. There is a restriction of gesture and a reluctance to move quickly. Somewhat the same effect can be achieved as a parlor game with the normal person by asking someone to balance a book on their head and then continue to walk, sit, talk, drink.

  “Is everything all right?” she would ask, too often.

  “Everything is fine, Sis,” he would say in the deadened voice of the cell blocks and exercise yards.

  Once he looked down and plucked at the front of the sweater and said, “So damn bright. I keep seeing it. I’m used to that gray.”

  And I could see him consciously slowing himself down as he ate. Most prison disorders begin in the dining halls, so that is where they try to achieve total control. At Harpersburg they file in and line up at the long tables. No talking. The food is already served. At the whistle signal they all sit and begin to eat. No talking. The stick screws rove the floor and the gun screws watch from the gallery. At the second whistle, five minutes later, they stand up, facing the aisle, and start the file out, farthest tables first, carrying plates and utensils. Just outside the main door they split the file out into four check lines to get the cutlery count. From entrance to exit is a nine-minute span, so they gobble the slop, choke it down, gasping with haste, or endure a constant hunger.

  I could see him trying to slow himself to the leisurely pace of freedom. But there was too much food, and it was too rich. Near the end of the meal he suddenly turned sweaty gray and excused himself hastily. We heard the wrenching distant sounds of his illness.

  Meg sat with the tears running down her face. “He doesn’t like anything,” she said in a hopeless voice. “He doesn’t like anything at all.”

  “It will take a little time.”

  “It isn’t the way I wanted it to be, Fenn.”

  “Be patient.”

  “I’ve been trying so hard.”

  “You’re doing fine. You’re doing all you can do.”

  “But what does he want?” she cried. The phone rang. I guess it was a partial answer to the question she had asked. I took the call.

  It was a girl’s voice, young, husky, hesitant. “Is Dwight McAran there?”

  “Who is calling?”

  “Just a friend.”

  “I’d better have him call you back. If you’ll give me your num—”

  McAran appeared beside me, saying, “For me? Let me have it.”

  He was tense when he spoke into the phone. “Who?” he said. “Oh, it’s you.” He seemed let down. “Well, it’s nice to be out. Sure. What else can I say about it? What? No. Not so soon. Later on, kid. Give me a few days. Let me get used to being loose. Sure.” He hung up and looked at me. “You want a transcript of the call, cop? You want me to ask permission to use the phone?”

  “Who is she?”

  “A girl I’ve never seen, Lieutenant. But she’s written me letters. A lot of letters. And she sent me pictures of herself.” I was aware of Meg standing nearby. “She’s just a little girl whose been cheering me in my darkest hours, Lieutenant. She was only seventeen when they tucked me away in Harpersburg, but she’s a full grown girl now.”

  “Who is she, dear?” Meg asked. “Do we know her?”

  He shrugged. “You might. You might not. Cathie Perkins, a blonde kid. Stacked.”

  “There’s a history teacher at the high school named Ted Perkins,” Meg said. “They have five daughters.”

  “This is the middle one of the five,” Dwight said. He smiled like a cat in a fish market. “I’m her hero.”

  “She’s not showing much judgment,” I said.

  Meg turned on me. “What kind of a remark is that? They’re a nice family. I think one of the Perkins girls would be good for Dwight, better for him than that Hanaman girl was, certainly. Because he’s been in jail, are decent people too good for him? What kind of an attitude is that, Fenn? Really!”

  Later on, I drove down to the station. We’re in a sandstone wing added to
the original pseudo-Grecian City Hall in the early twenties. It backs up against the block containing the Brook County Courthouse, a gray, cheerless, Federalist structure. I parked in back of our wing. As I pushed the door open I heard warning shouts and saw a girl running toward me, as fast as she could run. Even though I had a moment to brace myself, she knocked me back against the doors. She yelled and squirmed. I trapped her wrists. She kicked me twice before I could immobilize her against the wall, and then she tried to bite. Detective Raglin and the jail matron we call Iron Kate hurried up and took her off my hands. I was glad to get a little farther away from the fetid, grainy smell of the girl. She wore black jeans, an ornate motorcycle belt, a soiled pale green sweater with nothing under it. Re-caught, she stood quietly enough, breathing hard, staring down at the floor. Her parched blonde hair had long black roots.

  “Sorry, Fenn. She just took off like a rabbit,” Raglin said. His bald head was pink with anger.

  “What is she?” I asked.

  “New girl in town, trying to work a drunk in the bus station. Chuck West made the collar. He followed them over to Alderman Street, back to one of those empty garages. When he went in to break it up, her boy friend who was waiting right there had already coldcocked the drunk and they were checking his pockets.”

  “Tryna fine idennafacation,” the girl said in a raspy voice. “Some drunk follows me and falls on his head, see, and so Tommy and I, we’re tryna be decent, see, but we get arrested on a crummy rap.”

  “Off we go to the fish tank, dearie, where you’ll make a lot of new friends,” Iron Kate said and put a come-along hold on the girl’s wrist. Before they got to the stairs the girl started to resist. She gave a thin squeak of pain and went along with a new docility.