“Come with me, Marja,” she said.
Dumbly, Marja followed her. Mike was standing behind the rail. He tried to speak, but she looked right through him. A hurt expression came over his face. It wasn’t until she was through the door that she realised he was crying.
The Rose Geyer Home was in the far end of the Bronx. She looked at it curiously as she got out of the car with the policeman and the Welfare matron. It was almost like the country up here. The Home was surrounded by open fields.
An hour later she was escorted to the doctor’s office by one of the girls, who looked at her questioningly, but spoke not a word as they walked down the long, grey corridor.
She held the door open for Marja. “In here, honey,” she said in a not unpleasant voice. She followed Marja into the office. A thin, grey-haired man looked up. “I got a new fish for you, Doc,” the girl said.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders wearily. “In there.” He pointed to a small room. “Take off all your clothes.”
His examination was brief and efficient. Twenty minutes after she had come into his office she was dressed and back in the entrance room.
The doctor handed her a prescription. “Get this filled at the dispensary and take it all during your pregnancy,” he said.
Marja was startled. She cast a quick glance behind her. The girl who had brought her was sitting against the wall. She turned back to the doctor. “Who, me?” she asked incredulously.
The girl’s voice came from behind her. It was flat but not without humour. “He don’t mean me, honey. I been here without a guy for two years now, damn it!”
Marja looked at the doctor, then at the paper in her hand. Suddenly she realised what it meant. She sank into a chair beside the desk and began to laugh.
The doctor stared at her. “What’s so funny?” he asked.
She looked up at him, the tears running down her cheeks. That was the hell of it. He would never know. Nobody would.
The State vs. Maryann Flood
I WAITED WHILE the clerk administered the oath to the State’s first witness. She was a tall, dark girl with a dramatic part in the middle of her long jet-black hair. She seemed quite calm and uninterested in the people in the court. Her eyes were dark and unreadable.
“Your name, please?” the clerk asked.
“Raye Marnay,” she answered. The voice was surprisingly light and thin in such a tall girl.
The clerk nodded to me and I walked forward slowly. I stopped in front of her and looked up. “How old are you, Miss Marnay?” I asked.
The answer came promptly. “Twenty-three.”
“Where were you born?”
“Chillicothe, Ohio.”
“When did you come to New York?” I asked.
“About two years ago.”
I was beginning to get used to the strange, thin sound of her voice. “What did you do in Chillicothe?”
“I lived there,” she said.
I could hear the faint sound of laughter in the courtroom. I waited for it to subside before I spoke again. “I meant, what did you work at for a living in Chillicothe, Miss Marney?”
“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know that was what you meant. I was a schoolteacher.”
I looked at her. The hell of it was that she really had been a schoolteacher. “What grade did you teach?”
“Kindergarten,” she answered promptly. “I love children.”
I couldn’t help smiling at the way she said it. “I don’t doubt that Miss Marney,” I said. I let the smile leave my face. “What made you decide to come to New York?”
“I wanted to be an actress,” she said. “Professor Berg, he was the dramatic teacher at the senior school, wrote a play which we put on in the little theatre. It was called Lark in the Valley, and I played the leading part in it He said I had so much talent that it was a shame that I had to waste it in a small town like Chillicothe. He said I was another Mary Astor. So I decided to come to New York.”
“And what happened after you arrived in New York?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “I walked around for weeks and nobody would even see me. Even with the letters that Professor Berg gave me.”
“Then why didn’t you go back to Chillicothe?”
“I couldn’t,” she answered in her small voice. There was a note of hurt in it. “Everybody would know then that I was a failure.”
“I see,” I said. “Then, what did you do for a living?”
“I got a job in a restaurant on Broadway as a waitress. It was a place where a lot of show people came in. I had heard that many girls who worked there found jobs on the stage.”
“How long did you work there?” I asked.
“About three weeks,” she said.
“What happened then?”
“I was fired,” she answered in an even tinier voice, if that was possible. “The manager said he ran a restaurant, not a dramatic school.”
Another ripple of laughter ran through the courtroom. I waited for it to pass. “Then what did you do?”
“I looked for another job, but I didn’t find any. One day I was talking to another girl in the rooming-house where I lived. She said with my face and figure I ought to become a model. I thought that was a good idea. Many models become actresses, you know. I asked her how I could become a model. She sent me up to Park Avenue Models.”
I nodded. “Was this the first time you had ever thought of modelling?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“What did you do then?” I asked.
“I went up to Park Avenue Models and applied for work.”
“Who did you speak to when you went up there?”
“Mrs. Morris.”
“What did she tell you?”
“She said I would have to get some pictures taken and then she would put them in her file. She gave me a card with the names of about four photographers on it. Until I had them, she said, she couldn’t do anything for me. I explained to her that I didn’t have the money for it. She said she was sorry but she couldn’t do anything for me until then. I was just about to leave when Miss Flood came out of her office and saw me.”
“You mean the Miss Flood who is here in this courtroom?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“What happened then?”
“When Miss Flood saw me, she snapped her fingers and said I was the girl. She sent me to the 14th Street Fur Shop. That was the first time I ever modelled. I wore one of their fur coats and walked up and down in their windows so people could see it.” There was a note of pride in her voice. “I was their favourite model. You see, I’m very tall, and people can see me a long way off. I worked there at least three days a week ever since.”
“What other modelling did you do?” I asked.
She hesitated a moment. “That was the only place I ever worked.”
I nodded. “How much did they pay you?”
“Ten dollars a day,” she answered.
“That came to about thirty dollars a week,” I said. “Was that enough for you to live on?”
She shook her head. “No. My dramatic lessons cost more than that each week.”
“How did you make extra money?”
“I used to date a lot,” she said.
“Date?” I asked.
She nodded. “That’s what we called it.”
“Who do you mean by ‘we’?” I asked.
“The girls I knew,” she said.
“How did you go about this—er—dating, as you call it?”
“It began after I had been working a few weeks as a model. I asked Miss Flood for some extra work and she called me into her office. She said that a model’s life was often very difficult and sometimes clients called her up and asked her to recommend some girls to go out with them. She said these men were very generous and always tipped the girls well for just spending time with them. She asked if I was interested.”
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I was interested,
” she replied.
Another ripple of laughter ran through the courtroom. I didn’t blame them. “What did you do then?”
“Miss Flood arranged a date for me that night. He was a nice gentleman. He took me to dinner, then we went up to his apartment for a few drinks. He was very amusing. He gave me ten dollars when I left. He said that was for being so nice and for me to tell Miss Flood that he was very pleased.” “Is that all you did?” I asked. “Have a few drinks?”
Her face changed colour slightly. She seemed to be blushing. “We had two parties,” she almost whispered.
“Parties?” I questioned, looking at the jury. “What do you mean by parties?”
“Intercourse.” She was still speaking in that low, hard-to-hear voice.
“You mean you had intercourse twice with this man?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes. That’s what I mean.”
“Weren’t you surprised that the man wanted that? That he took it for granted?”
She shook her head. “No. The men were no different back in Chillicothe. They all look for the same thing.”
Laughter scaled the courtroom walls. The judge rapped his gavel. The noise subsided.
“What did you do next?” I asked.
“I went home to sleep. I was tired,” she said.
The roar almost blew the courtroom apart. Even I had to work to keep a straight face. Finally I could speak. “I mean when you went back to Park Avenue the next time.”
“That was the next day. I went back to thank Miss Flood for being so nice to me. She asked me if I had a good time and if I was willing to go on any more dates. I said I would if all the gentlemen were as nice as this one. She assured me that she knew nothing but nice gentlemen, then she asked me how many parties we had. I told her and she took some money out of her desk and gave it to me. I didn’t want to take it, I told her that the gentleman had given me ten dollars. She laughed and said that was my tip, and made me take the money.”
“How much was it?” I asked.
“Fifty dollars,” she said.
“Did you realise what this meant?” I asked. “That you were committing an act of prostitution?”
“I didn’t look at it like that,” she protested. “If I didn’t like the gentleman, I didn’t have to do anything. I wouldn’t.”
“Did you ever meet any gentleman you didn’t like?” I asked sarcastically.
She shook her head. “No. Miss Flood was right. She only knew the finest-type gentlemen.”
Laughter again echoed through the court. I waited until it had subsided. “Before you knew Miss Flood, did you ever have intercourse for money?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Did you ever have intercourse for money after you met Miss Flood that she did not arrange?”
“No, sir,” she said. “I’m not a whore.”
“That’s all, thank you,” I said, walking away from her. I paused in front of Vito’s table. Marja looked up at me. Her eyes, wide and dark and proud, stared right into me. I had the strangest feeling that the pride in them was for me. I kept my eyes carefully guarded and turned to Vito.
“Your witness,” I said and continued on to my table. I sat down and watched Vito get slowly to his feet.
There was no doubt about it, he was a real pro. Even the way he walked toward the witness indicated his sureness and his ability. His voice was warm and rich.
“Miss Marney,” he called.
She looked up at him. “Yes, sir.”
I nodded to myself in reluctant grudging admiration. In just the way he spoke her name he had asserted his dominance over her.
“You mentioned that you appeared in a play in Chillicothe. Lark in the Valley. I believe you called it.”
She nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“It was written by a Professor Berg, you stated, a professor of dramatics in the senior school?”
“Yes sir.”
“You said that you came to New York after that at the suggestion of the professor, who said you had too much talent to waste it in a small town like Chillicothe?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I assume he meant dramatic talent. That was what he meant, wasn’t it?”
The girl hesitated.
Vito’s voice was impatient. “Come, Miss Marnay. That was what he meant, wasn’t it?”
Her voice was even smaller than before. “I think so.”
“You can be more positive than that, Miss Marnay,” he said sarcastically.
“That was what he meant,” she said. “Yes, sir.”
“What?” he asked.
“Dramatic talent,” she said.
“You said that the play was presented at a little theatre in Chillicothe. What theatre was it?”
Her brows knotted together. She cast a worried glance at me. I tried to look confident, but I didn’t know what the hell he was getting at. “It—it wasn’t exactly a theatre,” she stammered.
“If it wasn’t a theatre, what was it?” Vito asked.
“It was at the Antelope Club,” she said. “It was a special show the professor wrote for their annual affair.”
“The Antelope Club,” Vito said. He looked at the jury. “I see.” He turned back to her. “That wouldn’t be a stag affair, would it?”
She looked down at her feet. “I believe it was.”
“Were you the only female in the cast?” he asked.
She nodded. “I was.”
“What part did you play?”
Her voice hardly carried to my table. “I was the farm girl.”
“What was the theme of the play? Did you have many lines to speak?” His voice was harsh.
“It was about this girl and the three men that worked on the farm. The farmer, his son, and the hired hand, and what they did on that one particular night. I didn’t have any lines to speak. It was all in pantomime. The professor was a great believer in the Stanislavsky method of drama.”
“Stanislavsky, hmm …” Vito scratched his head. “Wasn’t that the Russian who believed in action instead of speech?”
“That’s right,” she said.
“And the professor’s play was all action?” he added.
She nodded. “Yes.”
His voice turned very heavy and sarcastic. “So much so that the play was raided by the police and all of you were charged with giving an indecent performance. As a result of that, you and the professor were dismissed from your posts in school. Isn’t that true?”
She didn’t answer. She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling.
Vito was shouting now. “Come now, Miss Marney, answer my question.”
Her face had lost all its colour; the rouge stood out in dark blotches on her cheeks. She looked down at the floor. Her voice had vanished into a tiny whisper. “Yes.”
“That’s all, Miss Marnay.” Vito looked at the jury as if to say: How can you believe anything a girl like that might say? He half shrugged, and turned back to his table.
Joel and Alec leaned toward me as I called the next witness. Their whispers were hoarse in my ear.
“He sure kicked hell out of her,” Joel said.
“Yeah,” Alec answered, his glance following the girl as she took her seat. “He really ripped her.”
I drew in my breath. “One thing you guys are forgetting. He ripped her, not the story she told about Flood. Notice he stayed away from that?”
Joel nodded. “He’s no dope. He’s trying to destroy her credibility.”
“It won’t do him any good,” I answered. “The payoff will still come on facts pertinent to the case. And he knows it.”
“All the same. I’d be careful, Mike,” Alec whispered. “He’s got a bagful of tricks.”
The clerk was administering the oath to another girl, the second witness for the State. I began to get to my feet. “He’ll still have to find something better than the truth if he expects to get anywhere with this one,” I said as the court clerk nodded to me. I moved around the table and wal
ked toward the witness stand.
The hospital room was dark and quiet as I came in. I could hear the sounds of the Old Man’s breathing. It was slow and easy.
A nurse held her finger to her lips. “He’s sleeping.”
I nodded and started to back out of the room.
“Who’s sleeping?” The Old Man’s voice was loud and strong in the quiet. “That you, Mike?”
I stepped forward again. “Yes, sir.”
“Come over here and speak up,” he said irascibly. “I can’t hear you.”
I walked over to the head of the bed. His bright, dark eyes looked up at me. A half-smile was on his lips. “How did it go today, Counsellor?”
“All right,” I said. “We got through the first four witnesses. Vito couldn’t do very much with their stories. All he did was bang at the people themselves. I think we did pretty good, on the whole.”
“I know,” the Old Man said. “I heard.”
I glanced at the telephone next to the hospital bed. He must have been burning up the wire all day.
“There’s one thing that bothers me, though,” he said. “I can’t figure Vito’s strategy at all. Right now it looks like he’s feeding the girl to the wolves.”
I didn’t speak. There was a curious sinking feeling in my heart. I could have put up a much better argument than Vito had that day. “It’s almost as if he didn’t care what happens with our case,” I said. “He’s letting me get away with everything in the book.”
“Did you see Flood?” the Old Man asked. “How’d she look?” His eyes were watching me very carefully.
“I saw her,” I said. “She seems okay.”
“Mike,” he said, “it’s me you’re talkin’ to.”
“She looks fine,” I said. “Real fine.”
“Still got the same feeling toward her? Even now?”
“I—I don’t know, John,” I said. “I only know that when I look at her I choke up inside.”
He nodded slowly. “I know what you mean, Mike. I spoke to her a couple of times. She’s got great strength and real courage, son, She might have been a great lady if she had gone in another direction.”
“Maybe she never had a chance, sir,” I said.
The shrewd look came back into his eyes. “She had her chance, Mike. No matter what you say or what anyone did, she had the final say. She herself threw it away.”
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