The Kiss of the Prison Dancer

by Jerome Richard

  Then the department store was taken away from his uncle and he was out of a job. For a while they both worked in the tailor shop. He remembered how he would look up at her and how the tears came to his eyes to see her bent over a suit or a dress, sewing away as if it were important to her. “Sarah, mein Schatz,” he said once, but she told him to speak Yiddish.

  The memories were painful. Max could feel the headache gathering force just behind his eye and he sat on the edge of the bed holding his head in his hands as he remembered, but he couldn’t stop. It was like being forced to watch a movie. And the memory he could never forget, the sound of the boots on the steps and the heavy knock on the door. “Come along,” one of the SS men said. And the thing he would like most to forget: going down-stairs he asked, “Where are we going?” and Sarah laughed at him.

  The next morning, waiting for the bus, he was looking at the display of rings in a jewelry store, but he saw Sarah’s reflection in the window. Remember, she said, and then the bus came.

  Clara called him at work to say she got the job at the library. “That’s wonderful,” Max said, whispering into the telephone, his back turned to Shmuel. “I’ll come over after work and we can celebrate.”

  “Bring some candy,” Shmuel said.

  “Big ears!” Max said, returning to his desk.

  Shopping for candy after work, Max noticed something about Holtz in the evening paper and he began to sweat and tremble. A jury had been chosen, the trial would begin tomorrow. He called Clara to say he was not feeling well.

  16

  He was halfway to work when he knew he must attend the trial and, thinking he could transfer at the next street, he pulled the cord and stumbled down out of the bus only to stare for a moment in the direction of downtown and then at the houses around him. It was the wrong stop. The newspaper that recounted the crime with pictures of Holtz and the girl’s body covered by the sheet in the little grove was unpeeling in his hands and he threw it away page by page and set off for the downtown bus two blocks away.

  In the marble corridors of the Hall of Justice he called the agency to say he was not feeling well and then he asked the blind man at the newsstand where the Holtz trial was being held.

  “Third floor and turn to your left,” the blind man said, adding, “It must be quite a show.”

  Max jabbed at the elevator button. The doors slid open immediately and Max rushed gratefully in and out again a moment later on the third floor. In a corridor to his left were a row of courtrooms and Max went down the row, peering into the little windows in the doors until he came to one where people were standing, their backs blocking the window. Max stopped there, but he had never been in a courtroom before and he wondered if it was all right to go in during the trial. Finally he made up his mind and he opened the door slowly and squeezed in among the spectators at the back of the court. He could not see anything, but he held his breath and listened as somewhere in front a man was saying, “There is not one shred of real evidence to link my client to this case. Mortimer Holtz is being made a scapegoat, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, but after you have heard the evidence or lack of it I am sure you will have no part of it. Thank you.”

  “Who was that?” Max asked the man next to him.

  “Andrew Tyler, the defense lawyer,” the man said. “Those were was his opening remarks.”

  Some people were talking in the front of the courtroom, but Max could not make out what was being said. He pushed his way forward until he could see an American flag and a California flag flanking the judge’s bench and then he could see the judge himself leaning back in his highback leather chair. The judge seemed to be thinking about something on the ceiling. Max followed his eyes to the banks of lights, but there was only the flickering of a bulb behind its thick glass panel. Max regarded the judge again. He kept the tips of his fingers together as if making a little play steeple and his face, framed by waves of white hair, concentrated on the flickering bulb, or, Max thought, perhaps on heaven itself so peaceful did the judge appear. Then, suddenly, he leaned down and spoke to someone Max could not see. “Call Doctor Anthony Capehart to the stand,” a voice said, echoed by a louder voice that sang out: “Doctor Anthony Capehart.”

  Max squeezed between a fat woman carrying a shopping bag and a tall thin man in a suit who was cleaning his nails with a matchstick. “Stop shoving,” someone behind him said and the fat woman gave him a terrible look as she hugged the shopping bag to her breasts, but Max paid no attention. He could see Doctor Capehart taking the oath and seating himself at the witness stand. Max could see the entire court now. In front of the witness stand, the court reporter sat, his fingers poised over his machine. Along the side sat the jurors. Max studied them carefully: eight women and four men sat in the jury box as they might sit in the bus at three o’clock. Max looked around for a familiar face, but recognized no one. Someone approached Dr. Capehart and began asking him questions.

  “Who is that?” Max asked the tall man next to him.

  He did not answer. Instead, the woman with the shopping bag said, “Gianetto. Gianetti.”

  “Gianelli,” the tall man said, pronouncing each syllable as a separate word.

  “The district attorney,” the fat woman whispered.

  “Assistant district attorney,” the tall man said, looking straight ahead.

  Max thanked them both.

  It was established that Dr. Capehart was the county coroner. He testified that Linda Jordan had sex before she died and that death had occurred as a result of a severe cut on the neck resulting in the severing of the carotid artery. Mr. Gianelli paced lion like before the court, asking his questions as he made the turn in front of the witness. He was a short man who stooped over as he paced so that the judge occasionally leaned over to see what he was doing. Now he stalked the prosecutor’s table and pounced on an object in a sack. He held it before the witness and revealed the bottom two-thirds of a broken beer bottle. “Could this be the object that killed Linda Jordan?” he asked.

  Dr. Capehart looked at the jagged edges of the bottle. “It could be,” he said.

  Gianelli thanked the doctor.

  Tyler stood up and began his cross-examination. He did not pace like Gianelli but stood in front of the witness, blocking the audience from seeing.

  “Was Linda Jordan raped, Dr. Capehart?”

  “The appearance of her body was consistent with rape. There was a struggle and there was semen in her—”

  “Come, come, Dr. Capehart. Was she raped or not?”

  “I would say probably.”

  “Probably? But you can’t say for sure?”

  “No.”

  “She might have had sex some time before she died?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “That’s all, Dr. Capehart.” Tyler dismissed him as if he just failed an audition.

  The next witness was a lab technician who testified that blood found on the bottle was the same type as Linda Jordan’s and that a hair attached to it matched Linda Jordan’s hair. The bottle was marked Exhibit A and Gianelli then asked permission to pass it among the jurors, bringing Tyler to his feet again.

  “This is outrageous,” he shouted.

  “I take it, Mr. Tyler, that you object,” the judge asked.

  Tyler said that passing the bottle around would constitute a vulgar piece of exhibitionism and the judge agreed and sustained the objection, but Gianelli, holding the bottle piece up like a trophy, walked slowly past the jury box. In the courtroom the spectators leaned forward, and Max saw clearly the fragment of brown bottle that ended in what looked like rotting teeth. Gianelli handed it to a clerk to be marked for identification and the court relaxed, but Max saw the prosecutor smile to his assistant at the long table.

  Max realized that Holtz must be at the other table. While a new witness was being called, he examined the row of heads. One he recognized as Tyler, leaning over the table and writing. There were two more men at the table; they were both young and wore suits,
one in dark blue, the other in gray, and from the back either one could be Holtz. While a policeman was being sworn in, Max asked his tall neighbor which man was Holtz.

  “In the blue suit,” the man said, spitting the words out like pits from the corner of his mouth. “The table on the right.”

  “He won’t wear a suit when they hang him,” the fat woman to Max’s left whispered.

  Max thanked the thin man and started to explain to the fat woman that in California convicts were executed by gas, but he thought better of it. On the stand Gianelli produced the bottle again and the officer testified that he found it in the same grove where Linda Jordan died. But Max was hardly conscious of this testimony; he was staring at Holtz. He let his hair grow, Max observed, explaining why he had not picked Holtz out immediately. Turn around, Max thought, trying to send a telepathic message to Holtz. Turn around, he urged, anxious to see the face of the man who had brought him to the Hall of Justice when he should be working. “Turn around, troublemaker,” he whispered. But Holtz did not move.

  When Gianelli finished questioning the policeman, Tyler dismissed the officer without any questions and the judge declared a ten minute recess. About half the audience filed out and as they did so, Max pushed to the front and took a seat directly behind Holtz. His lawyer was conferring with the third man at the desk. Holtz sat perfectly still as if waiting to be wound up. “Holtz,” Max whispered, leaning over the railing and then sitting back quickly as Holtz turned around.

  “Did you call me?” Holtz asked.

  Max shook his head and after looking over the rest of the audience, Holtz turned back, but Max had seen the face of the newspaper stories, the round face with the dark hair and the moustache and the pushed in eyes of a child’s mistreated doll, familiar and repellant, like the face of an unnatural brother seen for the first time. Max stared at the neatly trimmed, flat head and Holtz’s long, graceful neck. He felt like crying.

  When he looked up, people were crowding into the row. “That’s my seat,” a man said. Max slid over against an old man wearing a hearing aid. Several people complained, but the judge was rapping his gavel and they sat squeezed into the row. The old man gave him a dirty look and the man on the other side shoved his elbow into Max’s rib as the assistant district attorney called for Mister Arthur Jordan to take the stand and the quiet courtroom grew more quiet still. The clerk called the witness’s name and the murdered girl’s father took long strides down the aisle and through the swinging gate that separated the spectators from the participants, stopped and looked embarrassed at the audience, and then followed the clerk to the witness stand where he was sworn in. He was a large man and he stretched the suit he was wearing as if it weren’t his. Gianelli leaped to his feet and began his pacing. “Are you acquainted with the defendant, Mortimer Holtz?” he asked, passing in front of the witness box. Even sitting in the witness box Jordan looked as if he would swallow the microphone.

  “Yes,” he said, looking not at Holtz but straight ahead, at no one or, perhaps, at anyone who was not Holtz.

  The court reporter pecked silently away at his machine.

  “When was the last time you saw the defendant?” Gianelli emphasized the last syllable, spitting the word out.

  “About a week before.…” He finished the sentence, but no one heard it.

  “Speak a little louder,” the judge said.

  The big man seemed to gather himself together, filling the box even more. “A week before Linda was murdered,” he said, too loudly this time.

  “Tell us in your own words what happened on that occasion.”

  Jordan fidgeted and then adjusted the microphone. “Holtz came to take Linda out. I think they were going to a dance or something. Well, I had argued with Holtz before about Hitler and when he came to the door I called Linda and I said, ‘Your little stormtrooper is here.’ And Holtz, he said ‘When the New Order comes you will be taken care of along with the Jews.’”

  “Objection,” Tyler shouted.

  Gianelli explained that he was going to show that Holtz had a motive for murdering Linda Jordan and the judge allowed the girl’s father to proceed. The spectators all leaned forward and Max escaped the elbows of the man next to him.

  “So I threw him out of the house,” Jordan said, running his hand through his hair.

  There was a long pause. Gianelli nodded. “Go on,” he said softly. Jordan hunched his shoulders and raised his hands as if to speak by gesturing, but then he relaxed suddenly and said, “Linda ran out of the house after him. I waited up for her and when she came home I told her she was not to see Holtz again. We argued for a while, then she agreed that the following week she would tell him she wasn’t allowed to go out with him anymore. She was always a good girl I-” Tyler got to his feet, but he sat down again without saying anything and Jordan continued: “-wanted her to call him or write to him, but I finally agreed to let her tell him. She thought it was the fair thing to do.”

  “Did you see Holtz that night?” Gianelli asked.

  “No. She went out again and met him someplace, I don’t know where. They arranged it over the telephone. She just went out and we never saw her again.”

  Gianelli faced the jurors; he looked as if he would take a bow. Behind Max a woman wept and several people turned around, but Max kept staring straight ahead.

  “Your witness,” Gianelli said. Tyler approached the witness, got close enough to touch him and then backed up and leaned against the juror’s box. “To your knowledge, Mr. Jordan, did the defendant ever make a threat of any kind against your daughter?”

  Jordan shook his head and the judge asked him to speak up. “No,” Jordan said.

  “Very good,” Tyler said, looking significantly at the jurors. “Now tell us if you will, where did your daughter first meet my client?”

  “I think it was at a dance.”

  “And how often did Linda and my client go out together?”

  The girl’s father adjusted his chair, leaving himself a little farther back in the witness box. “Four or five times,” he said. “I would say five times.”

  “And did your daughter ever have sexual relations with my client?”

  There was a gasp from the audience, which the judge punctuated with his gavel even before Gianelli could shout “Objection!”

  Tyler went before the judge. “Your honor, I just want to show the court that my client did not have any motive for raping the girl.”

  Gianelli almost pushed the defense attorney aside. “It would prove no such thing, your honor. The testimony is immaterial.”

  The judge contemplated the blinking light and rapped the gavel soundlessly against his palm. “I’ll overrule the objection,” he said. “You may answer the question, Mr. Jordan.”

  Jordan looked at Gianelli, but the prosecuting attorney waved his hand in the air and Jordan swallowed and said, “She may have. I don’t know.”

  “You mean, don’t you,” Tyler stood before the witness box now, obscuring the witness from the spectators, “that she had relations with so many boys there’s no doubt she had them with my client also?”

  “Pig!” the old man next to Max said while comment crackled like electricity in the audience and the judge hammered the noise down.

  Max touched the old man’s arm. “It’s important,” Max told him. “He has to bring these things out.” But the old man pulled his arm free and did not look at Max.

  “Isn’t it true,” Tyler shouted while the audience buzzed and the judge hammered, “that your seventeen-year-old daughter owned a diaphragm?”

  And now Gianelli could be heard above the audience shouting his objection. When the judge got the audience quiet he turned to Tyler and said, “Now that’s enough, Mr. Tyler. You asked the question I allowed you to ask and the witness said he didn’t know. Unless you can demonstrate the relevance of this line of questioning I will not let you proceed with it any further.” But Tyler was already walking back to the defense table.

  On redirect ex
amination Gianelli asked the girl’s father if he feared for the girl’s life when she was out with Holtz, but Tyler objected. Gianelli tried again. “Did Holtz seem to you a person capable of violence?” But Tyler objected that this called for the witness’s opinion and the objection was sustained. Once more Gianelli paced and stopped before the girl’s father. “He did say, didn’t he, ‘When the New Order comes you will be taken care of along with the Jews?’ He said that to you?”

  Mr. Jordan nodded. “Yes, he said that.” And then he was allowed to step down.

  Gianelli conferred with the judge and the spectators took the opportunity to talk to each other about the trial. Max tried to talk to the old man next to him. “Holtz didn’t need to rape her, that’s what the lawyer was trying to bring out. Don’t you see what that means?” But the old man stared straight ahead and did not answer.

  Tyler joined Gianelli before the judge and then all three looked at the clock and when they broke up, Gianelli called a Mr. Wishniak to the stand. The judge had to gavel for silence. Mr. Wishniak was a high school teacher who lived near Golden Gate Park. He testified that he had seen Holtz in the park on the night of the murder. “Where in the park?” Gianelli asked. “Near the grove where the girl was murdered,” the teacher replied and people in the audience nodded as if this clinched the case. Gianelli rubbed his hands together as he turned the witness over to Tyler.

  “Did you know the defendant?” Tyler asked.

  “No, sir, I did not,” Wishniak said.

  “How did you know who it was?”

  “I recognized his picture in the newspaper when he was arrested and I went to the police.”

  Tyler made him admit that it was dark in the park and that he did not carry a flashlight or speak to Holtz or even get a very prolonged look at him, but he could not shake Wishniak’s identification and he finally threw his hands in the air and released the witness.

  “Mr. Gianelli?” the judge said.