The Kiss of the Prison Dancer

by Jerome Richard

  The prosecutor stood up, smiled at the jurors and announced that the prosecution rested. As the judge rapped his gavel, the back doors flew open and people started to leave. “Adjourn until nine o’clock tomorrow morning,” the judge said, and the lawyers and their assistants and everyone else in the court began to pack their things and hurry out as if deserting a picnic threatened by rain.

  Trapped in the front row, Max watched the bailiff lead Holtz out through a little door behind the judge’s bench. When everyone was gone except Max and the old man, the old man pushing against him, trying to leave too, Max said, “The girl was a whore!” But the old man opened his jacket and turned off his hearing aid and then Max let him go.

  That night Max went downstairs to watch the news on television. Mrs. Thompson sat in the easy chair, one hand resting on the china cat; the old man sat closer to the set and talked to the announcer.

  “May I come in?” Max asked.

  “Of course,” Mrs. Thompson said. “Look who’s here!” she told her husband. She had to repeat it, but then the old man turned around and welcomed Max. “Been keeping yourself busy lately?” the old man asked.

  Max wondered what he meant, but the news was starting and he answered “Yes,” and took a seat.

  When the commentator described the first day of the trial a picture of Holtz was shown on the screen. “He’s guilty,” Mrs. Thompson announced. “You can see it in his eyes.”

  Max wanted to tell her it was an old picture, he could tell by the crewcut, but Mr. Thompson said, “I hope he gets what’s coming to him,” and then the commentator was talking about something else so Max didn’t say anything at all. He hoped the jurors would not look too closely at Holtz’s eyes.

  In the morning, Max went down to the Hall of Justice early, but there were still several people ahead of him waiting for the courtroom to be opened. It was not until he was seated, again behind where Holtz would sit, and the courtroom was filling up that he remembered this too was a working day and he had not called to say he was still sick. He looked at the people filing in the door and decided not to risk losing his seat.

  The jurors took their places. The lawyers assembled and then Holtz himself was led in. When the bailiff stood to address the court, everyone leaned forward, poised, ready. He asked the court to rise and with one sound they stood while the judge entered and waved them to their seats.

  This was Tyler’s day. The tall defense attorney wore a dark blue suit with a white handkerchief like a miniature sail showing from his breast pocket and a diamond stickpin in his tie that sometimes caught the light and sparkled like a star. He stood and waited for absolute silence. “Call Albert Foster,” he said, but after the ringing way he called the witness, and after the way Foster strutted to the witness stand, the testimony seemed an anticlimax. Foster was a merchant seaman who kept a room in the same boardinghouse where Holtz lived. He considered himself and Holtz to be good friends. “Tell the jurors,” Tyler pleaded, “what kind of person Mortimer Holtz really is. What was his reputation with his neighbors in the boarding house?”

  It was Foster’s opinion that Holtz would not hurt a fly. When Gianelli cross-examined him and asked about Holtz’s Nazi philosophy, Foster said, “He doesn’t really believe that stuff,” but everyone saw Tyler push Holtz back into his seat and tell him to shut up.

  Gianelli sat down and Tyler rose to ask the witness one more question. “Did you ever,” he asked slowly, his back turned to the jury, “See Linda Jordan go to Mortimer Holtz’s room?”

  “Yes,” Foster said. “Several times.”

  The witness was allowed to step down after that and Tyler stood before the court, scratching his chin as if contemplating his next move. Earlier, waiting for the trial to resume, the main topic of conversation among the spectators had been whether or not Holtz would be called to testify in his own behalf. Now, sensing that the time had come, the crowd leaned forward and began to whisper.

  The judge leaned forward too and cleared his throat. “Mr. Tyler,” he said. “Call your next witness.”

  Tyler looked out at the audience. “Mortimer Holtz to the stand,” he said in his best Roman orator tone. Someone in the audience applauded foolishly and alone, the brief flurry of claps dying quickly like the salvo of a firing squad. The judge lifted the gavel and the bailiff stood ready to charge the audience, but neither was needed. A loud whisper penetrated the court: “I wasn’t trying to be funny!”

  When Holtz was sworn in and seated he stared straight ahead. In the first row, Max squirmed. Holtz’s pushed in eyes seemed to Max to have picked him out, but Holtz’s clay face remained blank. Max forced himself to look away. He followed Tyler who had stepped back to the defense table to consult some papers and who now approached the witness.

  The first questions had to do with identifying himself and Holtz described his childhood, a lonely boy whose father deserted the family before Holtz was old enough to learn his name.

  “And do you know his name now?” Tyler asked.

  “No, sir,” Holtz answered in his thin high voice that seemed to have gotten stuck in adolescence. “I never asked. I didn’t want to know.”

  When Tyler nodded Holtz went on to tell about his mother, a woman who was good to him and taught him right from wrong, killed in an auto accident three years ago in Bixby, Arizona.

  “And that’s when you came to San Francisco?”

  “Yes, sir. There were no jobs in Bixby.”

  He never looked at his lawyer; he didn’t even address his answers to the jurors as some witnesses had done or to the judge as the girl’s father sometimes did. Max turned around and tried to make out the line of Holtz’s vision. There were only the leather paneled doors and the clock high on the back wall.

  Now Tyler was asking Holtz if his political beliefs could ever lead him to the crime of which he was accused. “Oh no, sir. My beliefs have to do with society. They have nothing to do with this.”

  “If you please,” his lawyer said, “would you describe for the ladies and gentlemen of the jury the events of the evening on which the crime took place.”

  “If you wish,” Holtz said. Now he did acknowledge the jury, nodding to them as if they had just been introduced and then facing front again. “I met Linda around eight o’clock and we went to my place. She told me that her father had forbidden her to see me again. I said ‘But you’re seeing me now,’ and she said it was for the last time. Then she left alone.”

  “And did you and Linda have sex before she left?”

  Holtz’s face cracked. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “What happened after she left?”

  “Well, I just walked around for a while, wondering if I done the right thing by letting her go.”

  “What time was this?”

  “I would say it was about nine o’clock.”

  Max looked back at the clock, thinking for a moment that Holtz was reading the time on the courtroom clock, but the time there was ten thirty.

  “Is it possible you walked through Golden Gate Park?” Tyler asked.

  “Yes, I did walk through the park. Definitely. But I did not murder Linda Jordan.”

  Tyler looked from his witness to the judge to the reporters to the jury and then back to Holtz. “One more question, Mr. Holtz.” Tyler clasped his hands behind his back and started moving, retreating towards the defense table. “You testified that you did not murder Linda Jordan, but you did have sex with her. Did you rape her?”

  “No,” Holtz said, turning to face the jury. “She always gave me what I wanted.”

  Max slapped himself on the cheek, but the sound was lost in the larger sound of the general intaking of air, a mass inhalation that should have left a vacuum, that seemed for a moment as if it did leave a vacuum because all around people were coughing and the judge’s gavel did not carry. Holtz stood up and began to move out of the witness box, staggering into the sound, the vacuum, but Gianelli was there, shoving him back into the witness chair and then the court seeme
d to fill with air again. The gavel was heard, and everyone could breathe.

  Gianelli and Holtz stared at each other. “Isn’t it true,” Gianelli demanded, stabbing Holtz with his finger, “that you did not want to break off seeing Linda Jordan?”

  Holtz’s eyes rolled up, abandoning the contest with the prosecutor, to fix on their old target. He answered Gianelli very slowly, not choosing his words so much as explaining to a child. “It was strictly her father’s idea.”

  “You had an argument about it?”

  “We had a discussion about it.”

  “Why would a girl who was not going to see you any more have sex with you?”

  “Ask her.”

  The gasp came from the spectators again and Gianelli leaned into it as he returned to his table, spitting out the words, “No more questions.”

  The judge looked over at Tyler who seemed to be studying the grain of the wood in the defense table. “Mr. Tyler?”

  Tyler half stood. “The defense rests,” he said.

  The judge declared a recess for lunch and in the afternoon the attorneys addressed the jury. Max hurried back from lunch to take his seat in the first row and, long before the trial was to resume, the seats were filled and spectators lined the rear of the courtroom. Gianelli reviewed the case for the jurors, pointing out that Holtz had a motive for the crime because Linda Jordan was not going to see him any more and he could not account for his whereabouts when the crime was committed. Then he spoke about Holtz’s philosophy. “He says that his Nazi philosophy has nothing to do with this case, that it only concerns society, but we remember that the people who shared his philosophy murdered six million people in cold blood.” Then the prosecutor turned his back on the jury and started to walk away. People began to stir, believing he was finished, but he suddenly turned around and marched back to the jury box. “Is it so hard to believe,” he asked, “that a Nazi would murder an innocent person? Remember, you need only be satisfied of this man’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I am satisfied. I’m sure you are too. I ask you as mothers and fathers to bring back the only verdict possible in this case: guilty!”

  The judge gaveled down the cries that swept the courtroom and Max, who found himself nodding at what the prosecutor said, wiped his brow and whispered to himself: Guilty! The hell with him. He wanted to get up and leave the courtroom now that his mind was made up, but Tyler was standing before the jurors, his head bowed a little. “Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury,” he said, “I won’t keep you long. I just want to remind you that in America a man is entitled to any philosophy he wants, even if no one else agrees with it. It doesn’t matter that you don’t like the defendant’s views. I don’t like them either. It only matters that his life is in your hands.” He dug at the floor with his shoe and then he argued that the evidence in the case was not conclusive. “The prosecution has failed miserably to prove its case. Where are the witnesses? Where are the fingerprints? Remember, if there is reasonable doubt in your minds, you cannot convict, and there must be reasonable doubt because the prosecution’s case is built entirely on hearsay and innuendo.” He backed away from the jury box, but everyone seemed to know he was not finished. He paced back and forth and then stood again before the jurors, his hands outstretched. “If you send this innocent boy to the gas chamber,” he said, “you will have it on your conscience the rest of your lives.” For a moment the room was dead, and then Tyler thanked the jurors and sat down.

  Now everyone turned to look at the clock. After some discussion in front of the bench, the judge declared a recess and he and the lawyers retreated to his study. The spectators began to file out, but Max sat where he was, wishing he had left earlier when, for a moment, he forgot what he knew. He should have told him, Max thought, addressing the empty rows, that we are not Nazis.

  When court reconvened an hour later, the judge read his instructions to the jury and then they filed out. For a while the spectators stayed where they were, but after an hour they began to leave. “What’s taking them so long?” a man asked Max.

  Riding home on the bus that evening—word had gone around the spectators waiting in the corridor that the jurors had been locked up for the night and Max left the Hall of Justice picturing the twelve jurors locked in a cell, debating the case far into the night—Max found a seat facing sideways and tried to imagine himself one of the jurors. He went over the whole case again, saw Gianelli pacing back and forth like a lion, Tyler leaping up to object. That’s all the evidence? Max asked his fellow jurors. Well, we can’t convict him on that. The juror sitting next to him rattled his newspaper. The boy’s life is at stake, Max said. After all, ladies and gentlemen, we are not murderers.

  He was convinced Holtz would be acquitted and that night he called Clara and made a date for Friday night. He was so sure Holtz would go free that he decided to go back to work the next day, but later, watching television (“I hope they hang him,” Mrs. Thompson cried when the announcer said the case had gone to the jury), he changed his mind and the next morning he was back at the Hall of Justice.

  It was a gray morning. Fog drew a shroud over the city and Max shuddered as he went back into the marblelined lobby. Outside the courtroom a crowd was already waiting, smoking cigarettes and talking. At one end of the corridor he recognized some people from the rally at Wagner Hall. They stood apart and looked very serious. Max stayed away from them. Near him a woman was saying that if the jury was out a long time that meant they would acquit him. Max moved on to the next group. Here a man said the longer they were out the more likely they were to find him guilty. Max wondered who these people were, what their interest in the case was. Some people were laughing and Max moved near to them, trying to find out what there was to laugh about when suddenly motion swept through the crowd. They were piling into the courtroom. Max heard nothing, but he followed the crowd in and saw that the jury was in its place. The seats were all filled and Max had to stand. The judge waited until the room was quiet, then he asked, “Has the jury reached a verdict?”

  A man stood up in the jury box. “Yes, your honor.” Everything will be all right, Max told himself. Everything will be all right. The man in the jury box, a tall thin man who hunched dangerously over the railing, took a paper out of his pocket and read from it. Max tried to read his face. Everything is all right, his face seemed to say.

  “We, the undersigned members of the jury, having heard all the evidence in the case and being convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, find the defendant guilty.…” His last words were lost in the swelling noise of the courtroom. “Guilty,” people were saying. “He’s guilty!” Max pushed forward. “NO!” he shouted, but no one in the cheering courtroom heard him.

  17

  After dinner there was a knock on the door. Max finished putting the dishes in the sink. “Just a minute Mrs. Thompson,” he called, drying his hands. But it wasn’t Mrs. Thompson at all. Max opened the door on Shmuel holding a bunch of roses wrapped in green paper.

  “Shmuel, it’s you?” Max asked.

  Shmuel was either blushing or reflecting the color of the flowers. “How do you feel?” he asked softly, as if he were in a hospital. He tried a smile, changed it for a look of great seriousness, then smiled again.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You were sick, I came to see how you were.” But now Shmuel began to look from Max, dressed in his suit, to the bed. He sniffed the air. Max followed his gaze and suddenly remembering he was supposed to be sick, sagged a little and tried to look pale.

  “I feel a lot better,” Max said, and he invited Shmuel in.

  Shmuel took the straight-back chair this time, leaving Max the easy chair. “How are things at the office?” Max asked.

  “All right. A little busy maybe.”

  “I’m sorry you have to do my work.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I enjoy it,” Shmuel said. He waved the flowers as he spoke and some petals fell off. “Here,” he said. “You got some water?”

  Max took the
bouquet and sniffed their perfume. “Why did you bring flowers?”

  “What should I have brought, chicken soup?”

  Max went to find something to put the flowers in. The only thing that would hold them was a glass and he had to place it so the flowers would lean against the wall. “They’re very nice, Shmuel. Thank you.”

  Shmuel tapped his fingers on his thigh and sang a wordless song.

  “Dr. Resnick sent you?” Max asked.

  Shmuel stopped singing. “Why should Resnick send me? I just came to see how you were.” He sounded hurt and he got up to leave.

  “Stay, Shmuel, stay,” Max said, getting up and pushing Shmuel back into the seat. He was glad for someone to talk to, even if it was Shmuel. “It was just a bad cold,” he said, trying to remember if that was what he told the secretary when he called. “I’ll be back to work tomorrow.”

  Shmuel sang a little more. Then: “I see your Nazi was found guilty,” he said.

  “What do you mean—my Nazi?” Max asked, starting up from his chair. He balanced awkwardly for a moment, and then completed the motion, rising and going to the kitchen so he could talk about the trial with his back to Shmuel, because just at the mention of it he felt the sweat squeeze out of his forehead. “Who’s my Nazi?”

  “That fellow in the park. That murdered that little girl. I remember you were interested in it because it happened near here. I guess you didn’t see the paper today.”

  “She wasn’t a little girl,” Max said. “You want tea?”

  “Thank you,” Shmuel said. “A cup of tea would be nice. I thought she was a little girl. Anyway the jury found him guilty today. He’ll get what he deserves.”

  “I hope so,” Max said. He put the water on to boil and hunted in the cupboard for tea bags. “Why did you call him my Nazi?”

  “A joke. Because you were always asking about him.”

  “Some joke!” Max hung a tea bag in one of the cups, spooned instant coffee into the other, and then spilled the coffee back into the jar and put a teabag in the cup instead. “You think he deserves to die?”