Conviction

by Julia Dahl

  “I noticed you have a fund in memory of the Davises,” I continue. “Maybe you could tell me a little about that?”

  “The anniversary has just past,” says Dorothy. “Is there some specific reason you’re interested in this now?”

  So much for my plan to ease in.

  “Well,” I say, “DeShawn Perkins wrote me a letter.” Dorothy raises her eyebrows. Pastor Green Jr. makes a sniffing sound. “I’m sure you know that he says he didn’t kill them.”

  “I believe the boy confessed,” says Pastor Green Sr.

  “Right,” I say. “But he says he was coerced. He says the detective threatened him and that he was kept in the interrogation room for hours without an adult. He says he signed the paper because he just wanted to go home.”

  No response.

  “What did you all think when you heard he’d been arrested?”

  The people at the table exchange glances. After a few moments, Pastor Green Sr. speaks. “I think we were all surprised. But you have to understand, there was a lot of violence in our community then. It was a terrible time. People like Malcolm and Sabrina, they were working hard to provide stability and positivity for young people, but especially when the weather got hot and school let out, there was a lot of temptation to run wild.”

  “And how could you blame them, really,” says Dorothy. “Most of the adults in the community were no better. Smoking crack in the middle of the street, shooting each other over nothing. Our little girl, Shirley. That same summer some woman mugged her on the way to summer camp. Stole an eleven-year-old’s backpack! How can you even explain that to a child?”

  “Had DeShawn been in trouble with the law before?”

  “I believe he was arrested once or maybe twice,” says Pastor Green Sr. “Marijuana, I think. Or it might have been stealing.”

  “I spoke with him over the phone a few days ago and he mentioned that his parents were getting threats.”

  “Threats?” says Pastor Green Jr.

  “He said people—or someone—had been calling the house and hanging up. And he said he found a letter that said something like, ‘I’m watching you.’ He said that when he asked Malcolm about it he told him it was nothing, but that Sabrina was worried.”

  “Come to think of it,” says Abel, “I think Malcolm did mention something about hang-ups. He was considering changing their number.”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” says Dorothy.

  “Didn’t I?”

  “No!”

  Abel turns his head toward his wife but doesn’t make eye contact. He is picking at his fingernails, leaning forward, legs spread wide. He wears a silver Medic Alert bracelet around one wrist.

  “Did he say anything about who he thought might be doing it?” I ask.

  “No,” says Abel.

  “What did the police say? About the phone calls.”

  Abel scratches his throat. “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t tell the police?” asks Dorothy.

  Abel looks down at his hands, plays with his wedding ring. “You were the only one they interviewed, Dorothy. I’m sure you remember I was taking care of the girls. And then Ontario came to stay.…”

  He trails off, avoiding his wife’s glare.

  “So you weren’t interviewed?” I ask, looking at Abel and the elder pastor. They shake their heads. “Did that seem odd? That the police didn’t talk to people who were close with the victims?”

  “Yes and no,” says Pastor Green Sr. “They arrested DeShawn very quickly. And once they had a confession, and that witness, I suppose they thought—we all thought—they had their man.”

  “Did any of you know the witness?”

  Head shakes all around.

  “Were you at the trial?”

  “We all went,” says Pastor Green Sr. “We felt it was important to represent the victims in the courtroom.”

  “Do you think DeShawn got an adequate defense?”

  There is a pause, then Dorothy speaks up. “I’m not sure we’re qualified to say. We were mostly concerned with Ontario, to be honest. I’m just speaking for myself here, but when word got around that he confessed, and that there was a witness … well, that’s pretty convincing, isn’t it? I never thought of DeShawn as violent, but what happened to Malcolm and Sabrina and little Kenya was just so shocking. I remember thinking that if he was really innocent he would have asked for our help. He would have shouted it to the rooftops.”

  “He told me he wanted to testify but that his lawyer said it was a bad idea.”

  I wait for a response but there is none. Every person in the room is grimacing.

  “Was there anything else Malcolm and Sabrina were involved in that might have made people angry?”

  “They were involved in a lot,” says Pastor Green Sr. “We all were. Trying to keep the community safe. Turn it back into a place people might actually be proud to call home. It’s hard to say it now, but I voted for Giuliani the first time he ran. I thought his idea about cracking down on the so-called ‘quality of life’ crimes was a good one. Public urination and turnstile jumping and what have you. If we don’t show our children that we respect our neighborhood, how can we expect them to behave? Malcolm and Sabrina helped with sweep-up Sundays. After worship we’d take brooms and garbage bags and try to clean things up a little. If a business had a broken window or some graffiti they wanted help with, we’d make that the day’s mission.

  “Of course there were bigger things, too. We worked against the gangs. We had midnight marches through some of the nearby housing projects that used to make some people angry. And the Crown Heights Alliance.”

  “What was that?”

  “I’m sure you’ve read about the riots?”

  I nod. I’ve heard the term “Crown Heights Riots,” of course, but I really only have a vague sense that it involved a clash between black and Jewish neighbors and took place around the same time as the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles.

  “It was an ugly time,” continues Pastor Green Sr. “There was a lot of hatred. A lot of misunderstanding. Glorious Gospel and a few other congregations began a monthly dialogue session with some of the Lubavitchers. It was informal. We were trying to find common cause.”

  “How did that work out?”

  “It wasn’t particularly well-attended, on either side,” he says, looking at Abel. “But it was very important to me. It’s so easy for people to forget their history. All Christians were once Jews. And the Jews were on our side during the civil rights struggles.”

  “Different kinds of Jews,” says Abel quietly.

  Pastor Green Sr. runs his hands over his pants and inhales through his nose.

  “No one came out of those riots looking good,” he says. “It was a black eye for everyone. And I was not going to sit by and watch my community burn to the ground because grown people were too stupid and angry to see common humanity in someone who looks different from them.”

  “It’s not just that they look different…” begins Abel.

  “Abel, I’m not getting into this with you.”

  Dorothy puts her hand on her husband’s leg.

  “Many of us thought it was important to channel the anger everyone was feeling into something positive,” says the senior pastor.

  “But not everyone agreed,” I say.

  “That’s not unusual,” says Pastor Green Jr., scooting up toward the table. “And frankly, this isn’t the time for airing these past squabbles. Even today, there are disagreements about the priorities of the Davis Fund, as there are with many church priorities. Dad, I don’t think Malcolm was even particularly involved in the dialogue sessions, was he?”

  “Well, he wasn’t opposed.”

  “Red,” says Dorothy, “Abel wasn’t opposed, either.”

  “He could have fooled me.”

  “Okay,” says the current pastor. “Let’s move on, shall we? Ms. Roberts, is there anything else we can help you with?”

  I want to keep on friend
ly terms with these people, so I decide it’s probably time to go.

  “I think I’m good for now,” I say. “I’m not certain where this story is going to lead, but I really appreciate your time.”

  I write my name and phone number on two pieces of paper and give one to Dorothy and one to the senior pastor. His son stands and walks me out.

  “My father and the Norrises were very close to Malcolm and Sabrina,” he says. “The murders really devastated them. Off the record, I think they feel some guilt for not seeing what DeShawn was capable of.”

  “Did you know him at all?”

  “A little,” he says. “He’s a couple years older than me, and he stopped coming to church about a year before they died. Malcolm and Sabrina used to drag him along, but he made a scene during one of the Sunday sweep-ups and I think they decided it wasn’t worth it anymore.”

  “What kind of scene?”

  “We were picking up trash and he threw an empty beer bottle at Sabrina. I think he just meant to have her put it in her trash bag, but he threw it hard. She ducked and it shattered on somebody’s car.”

  “Do you think he was actually aiming at her?”

  “I have no idea,” he says. “I just remember everybody was really upset and DeShawn got all defensive and ran off. We went to different schools, so I didn’t see him much after that. My mom thought he was a bad influence.”

  “What did you think when you heard they’d arrested him?”

  “It scared me. There were a lot of rumors about him being in a gang, and I got the idea that the gang might go after my dad. I don’t know why. I don’t think I slept for a month.”

  “What gang was this?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think he actually was in a gang. I think people were just trying to make sense of how a kid—I mean, he was sixteen—a kid could do something that horrible. Later on, I heard he was angry because they’d taken in another child. And then I heard he’d gotten kicked out of school and Malcolm was going to send him to a group home. I have no idea what was really true. But none of it explained why he’d murder them all.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that maybe he didn’t do it?”

  Redmond Jr. takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “It’s not something I’ve thought much about. But yes, of course it’s possible.” He puts his glasses back on. “Lord knows we’ve see a lot of young black men falsely accused, even now. We had a parishioner whose son was arrested for allegedly stealing an iPhone last year. Fortunately, the congregation was able to raise the money for his bail, but so many others just get stuck in Rikers. The DA dropped the charges. It makes me sick to think that DeShawn’s been in prison all this time if he didn’t do it. And if it wasn’t him, there’s someone out there who shot an entire family in their bed. What else has he done?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Afternoon

  July 6, 1992

  Crown Heights, Brooklyn

  Saul found out about the lineup from one of the officers at the precinct.

  “Your witness ID’d the son,” said Officer Kevin Whitlock. “Kid confessed.”

  It was 3:00 P.M. Saul was scheduled for a 4–12. He could have come in early for the lineup, but no one called.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Just a couple hours ago.” Whitlock was on desk duty because he had failed to secure his weapon properly and it went clattering to the ground as he ran after a robbery suspect last week. He lost the suspect, his dignity—a group of kids on lunch break from the nearby junior high saw the whole thing—and got demoted to desk work.

  “Who took it?” asked Saul.

  “Olivetti. I think that’s his second confession this week. I should start a pool to see if he can top April. What was that? Six?”

  “I don’t keep track,” said Saul. They’d done it all without him. He felt himself going sour with anger, as if curdled milk were running through his veins. There had been so many days of feeling so utterly unmoored since he left the community. And yet he had almost always managed to maintain a kind of distance from what he knew his family and former friends were thinking of him, saying about him. He saw the other former Hasids he met at Coney Island come and go, sorrow and bitterness their only guide as they wandered lost and alone through a world they did not understand. Saul once told a group that had gathered for a Shabbos meal that holding on to anger and sadness was like building their new life upon sand. It could only crumble and be washed away. He took pride in re-creating his own life on the solid bedrock of police work; he was a peace officer, a guardian, a problem solver. His new identity gave him self-worth and that—not the hole in his heart that Binyamin’s absence created; not the holidays and weekends and nights spent alone; not the weeping phone calls from his mother or the difficulty finding camaraderie with his colleagues—was what would forge the foundation of his future. But if his fellow officers didn’t even respect him enough to loop him in on a lineup with his own witness, what kind of foundation was it, really? He walked past Whitlock and the detectives’ desks, seeing the family photos of smiling wives and children looking at their uniformed fathers as if they were superheroes. He’d missed a significant morning in a significant case, and it was difficult not to dive headfirst into resentment and animus. So difficult it made him shiver.

  “The rabbi returns!” said Olivetti when Saul found him in the precinct’s break room with another detective, Paul Amodino. Saul knew some of his colleagues called him “rabbi” behind his back. He tried not to hate them for it.

  “DeShawn confessed?”

  “Sure did,” said Olivetti. “Didn’t have much of a choice after your witness fingered him.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “The kid? Rikers.”

  “Have you talked to the ADA?”

  “She’s on her way.”

  “She?” Saul had only ever encountered male prosecutors.

  “The new star,” said Olivetti, not even trying to hide his disdain. “Sandra Michaels. She’s one of those feminists they brought in for sex crimes. Affirmative action hire. One hundred percent.”

  “You want me to set up the chair?” asked Amodino.

  “Perfect.”

  The “chair” was how some in the precinct referred to a seat beside a particular desk along the far wall and just below the one air-conditioning vent in the squad room. The vent blew cold air straight down, and some of the men thought it was amusing to sit an attractive woman there on hot days and hope her nipples made an appearance. Almost to a man, his colleagues spoke openly, and crassly, about sex, something Saul was unaccustomed to. Frum couples had sex, of course, but he never spoke about his body, or his wife’s body, with anyone. As a child, in yeshiva, there was some talk, and yes, he had more than once encountered the gauzy, baffling photographs in a friend’s stolen skin magazine. But it was all surreptitious; undoubtedly forbidden. At the precinct, officers taped naked and half-naked photographs of women inside their lockers. Even when female officers were around, the men bragged and teased constantly. He never joined in, and people noticed. It was yet another way he stood out.

  While he waited for the ADA, Saul went outside to smoke, something he had begun doing occasionally. Half the time he didn’t inhale, but he liked the way he felt holding a cigarette: serious, perhaps even a little dangerous. If the yarmulke set him apart from his fellow cops, the cigarette, he imagined, helped him blend in.

  He was about to go back inside when he saw Naftali Rothstein get out of a cab across the street. Rothstein and Saul had not known each other growing up. Rothstein was a Lubavitcher, while Saul’s family was Belz and lived in Borough Park. Like many haredi, Saul found the Lubavitchers odd. They wore short jackets, spoke English instead of Yiddish, and stood around the city on street corners asking clearly unobservant people if they are Jewish. He had to give them credit, however, for their tenacity. And since working in Crown Heights alongside members of the Chabad movement, he’d come to admire their general willingness to
extend themselves for those outside their community—a trait Saul believed was in too short supply among haredi.

  Saul also admired their practicality. Since the 1960s, the ballooning Lubavitch population—made up of survivors of the Holocaust and Soviet oppression, and their offspring—understood the importance of cultivating trust with the police. Most officers and even the top brass had little love for their ways, but because the sect wanted to keep their people safe from the street violence that had become as commonplace as gum on the sidewalk—and keep official eyes averted from issues they wished to handle inside the fold—a hand was extended, and relationships formed. Rothstein worked in the Crown Heights Jewish Council’s nascent media office crafting press releases about events major and minor—the beating of two yeshiva students from Israel by “neighborhood thugs”; the dedication of a child-care center. He completed the Citizens Police Academy and signed up for a monthly ride-along, usually to the chagrin of those tasked with having him in their backseat. He was also one of those pressuring the NYPD’s recruitment officers to invite Jews to the academy, so when Saul graduated, Rothstein introduced himself. Although most Lubavitchers lived in the vicinity of the 71st precinct, after the riots Rothstein began coming around to the 77th, the precinct where Saul was stationed and that policed the predominately black area north of Eastern Parkway. He told Saul that he believed a presence there would be helpful in the ongoing quest to have the community’s voice and situation understood by the outside world—especially since that outside world was just blocks away. The more police saw Jews as people worth protecting, the better, Rothstein reasoned. And in the past year, his face had become a familiar one around the precinct.

  “Saul!” said Rothstein as the cab drove away.

  Saul raised his hand in greeting and crushed the unsmoked half of his cigarette beneath his shoe. The men shook hands. Sweat dripped down Rothstein’s brow, dampening his thin black beard. Saul ran his hand along his own face, thankful it was no longer covered in fur.

  “You must be trying to lose weight standing here in the sun!” said Rothstein. “Don’t tell me the air conditioning is out inside?”