by Howard Fast
She felt sick, bad and forlorn, but unable to feel much sorrow for either of the two men. They had brought it on themselves, she assured herself.
2. The Police
When Shirley got to the police precinct, she was tired, and she told herself that for two cents she would give up the whole thing and go home. It reflected her feelings about the police, this attitude that at best they were neutrals—and at the worst, they were her natural enemies. When, the following day, Shirley related the facts to her friend Cynthia, who worked with her at Bushwick Brothers, Cynthia said, “Sure, sure, so you don’t go to the cops. Where do you go? The SPCA?” “I should have gone to bed,” said Shirley, and Cynthia said, “Sure, sure, a couple of goons try to kill you, but you should have gone to bed.” “But I went to bed anyway,” said Shirley, “with five large hours of sleep.”
Yet it was still before nine o’clock that evening when Shirley walked into the precinct and over to the duty sergeant behind his mahogany rail. It was a slow, middle-of-the-week night. An old woman sat on a bench, crying quietly. A small boy sat on a table at the other side of the room, very seriously eating a large five-cent pretzel, and while Shirley was there, two drunks were brought into the main room and through it and then taken out. The old woman kept on crying.
“What can I do for you lady?” the sergeant asked Shirley.
“I don’t know.”
“Then what are you here for, lady?” the sergeant asked patiently.
“I’m here because a couple of goons tried to kill me,” Shirley said with some impatience. “Is it the wrong place? Where should I go—City Hall?”
“Take it easy,” the sergeant said. “What do you mean—a couple of goons tried to kill you?”
“They tried to take me for a ride.”
“That don’t mean they wanted to kill you, lady.”
“No, they were just dating me. Then they tried to get fresh. Do I look like a nut?”
“You look upset,” the sergeant said.
“Oh, no. I’m not upset. I’m as calm as a daisy.”
At that moment, two officers brought in a squirming seventeen-year-old boy. Shirley lit a cigarette while they booked him. The old lady stopped crying, came over and asked Shirley what the seventeen-year-old had done.
“He knocked over the First National Bank,” Shirley replied, and the old woman shook her head and said that it just didn’t seem possible, he looked like such a nice boy.
“Then he blew up Brooklyn Bridge. How do I know?”
The old lady then began to cry again, and Shirley, who bore her no malice, felt guilty and miserable, and tried to console her. Apparently the old woman had been waiting for someone to console her, and she told Shirley that she was there because her cat was lost, and that it had been lost since three o’clock in the afternoon, and she had been sitting there since six o’clock, and that she was alone in the world except for the cat. “Maybe you think that a person shouldn’t feel that way about a cat, but that’s the way I feel. That’s just the way I feel. There’s nothing I can do about it. Maybe you’re not supposed to care so much about a cat. But it seems to me that if you do, you do. It’s not sinful. Do you think it’s sinful?”
Shirley did not think it was sinful. She was so moved by the old woman’s loss of the cat that for the moment she forgot why she was there, and the sergeant had to shout to get her attention.
“Miss, what’s your name?”
“My name?”
“Your name. That’s right, your name. Unless you want to forget about the whole thing and go home?”
“Great,” Shirley nodded. “Forget about it and go home. Just tell me, if you were in my place, would you forget about it and go home?”
“All I’m asking is your name.”
“Shirley Campbel.”
“How do you spell that?”
“Shirley—S-h-i-r-1-e-y. Campbel—C-a-m-p-b-e-l.”
“You mean—C-a-m-p-b-e-l-l?” The sergeant asked her.
“I mean C-a-m-p-b-e-l.”
“That ain’t the way Campbell’s spelled, Miss.”
“So why ask me how to spell it?”
“I’m just asking you one L or two Ls? That’s all, lady.”
“I told you—one L.”
“All right, if that’s the way you want it.”
“That’s the way I want it.”
“And you’re sure you want to make a complaint?”
“I don’t want to complain. Look at me—am I the complaining type? I don’t even want to marry you—”
“Thank God.”
“—and that goes both ways. I just came in here to inform you that a couple of hoodlums tried to kill me. I should have known better.”
“All right. Levy!” he called to an officer who had just entered. “Take this lady up to Lieutenant Burton.”
Up a flight of stairs, Lieutenant Burton’s office was a small room with spotted buff walls that fought to maintain the curling paint of a generation ago. Burton, a heavy-set man in his late forties, sat down at an old wooden desk, after seating Shirley on one of the two straight wooden chairs which, with a filing cabinet, completed the furnishings of the room. After studying Shirley for a long moment, Burton dropped his gaze to the sheet of paper Officer Levy had deposited on his desk.
“You spell your name like this, Miss Campbel—one L?”
“Sue me,” said Shirley.
“We can live without the wisecracks.”
“I can live with my name the way it is, too. What is it—a crime for me to spell my name that way?”
“It’s no crime. Only I’ve never seen Campbell spelled with one L.”
“All right. I’ll go to court and change it.”
“Just take it easy, Miss Campbel. According to this, you allege that someone tried to kill you?”
“Someone. That’s right.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
“Oh, no. I’m only here to argue about my name.”
“Look, miss,” Lieutenant Burton said, “I’m trying to be polite and straightforward about this. We get a lot of complaints from all kinds of people. It’s easier if you cooperate. According to the desk sergeant, a couple of boys took you for a ride and got fresh. Well, you’re an attractive girl. It happens. Is that it?”
“No,” said Shirley. “That’s not it.”
“Then tell me.”
“All right. Tonight two goons I have never laid eyes on before knock on the door of my apartment, and when I open the door, they push their way in—”
“Where do you live, Miss Campbel?”
“Two-twelve Minetta Street.”
He wrote as she spoke, his wide face impassive.
“They push their way in, a large fat one and a skinny little runt. The skinny one has a gun with a silencer attached—”
“How do you know it was a silencer, Miss Campbel?”
“I watch television. Friday and Saturday I date, if a date is there. Sunday, sometimes, the girls get together. The rest of the week, well the nightclubs and how much theater can a girl take? So I watch television occasionally—”
“Let’s get back to your story, Miss Campbel.”
“The fat one takes out some snapshots and compares the prices with me—”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean he looks at the pictures and then he looks at me, and then he decides I’m right.”
“For what?”
“For killing, Officer? Or do you like to be called Detective?”
“Lieutenant Burton.”
“OK, Lieutenant. So he compares, and then I’m it.”
“You live alone, Miss Campbel?”
“On my wages, you couldn’t keep a cat. I live alone. I’m an orphan. Do you want to feel sorry for me? You don’t believe a word I’m saying, do you?”
“Suppose you tell me the rest of it. Did you see these snapshots?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
“Th
ey took me downstairs and we got into this big black car—”
“Oh?”
“It could have been yellow or pink. It was black, so sue me. We drive over to Sixth Avenue and start uptown, and all the time I’m turning over in my mind how it feels to be dead. My life hasn’t exactly been a bed of roses, Lieutenant, but when I looked back over it, I preferred it to being dead. That’s only natural, isn’t it, Lieutenant? So when we got to Nineteenth Street, and this fat goon who’s driving starts to make a left turn, I put my foot down hard on his gas-pedal foot. He lost his head, like I was hoping, and the car ran wild into a storefront. I was jammed behind the fat one and the seat was behind me, so all I got was the wind knocked out of me. I guess they’re both dead. That’s it.”
Shirley finished, and Detective Burton stared at her, and for a long moment nothing at all was said. Then he took a deep breath and asked her whether all this had happened tonight.
“I told you. Then I walked over here and got into a discussion about how to spell my name with that bright one you keep downstairs. He also brought up the rule about you can’t use just one L. But he insisted harder than you did.”
“You say the car crashed on Nineteenth Street and Sixth?”
“Nineteenth and Sixth,” Shirley nodded.
Detective Burton breathed deeply and picked up the phone. “Give me the desk,” he said, and then he said, “Did a car crash at Nineteenth and Sixth?” A pause. “When?” A pause. “I see, the girl ran away. I see—no, don’t tell me. It’s better if I don’t know. It’s better for my peace of mind. A car crashes. The two men in it are armed and dead. A girl leaves the scene of the accident, and you keep it a secret. That’s good … And you’re sending the stuff up to me—that’s very kind of you.” He put the phone down, looked at Shirley, shook his head, took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to her. She thanked him and accepted, and he lit it for her, and then he asked her how she felt.
“Lousy,” Shirley replied.
“You’re not hurt. You don’t want us to send you to the hospital?”
“I’m fine,” Shirley said. “I just feel lousy. I thought there was a limit to how men behave.”
“Not at all,” Burton said. “No limit. You were in that car?”
“Like I said.”
“You want to tell me about it again.”
Shirley repeated her story, and this time Burton interrupted more frequently with questions. While they were talking, a patrolman entered, carrying a wire basket. In the basket, there were two pistols, one of them with a silencer, a switch-blade knife, and a large brown envelope. He put it down on Burton’s desk, and Burton asked Shirley to excuse him for a moment or so.
“Can I go now?” Shirley wanted to know.
Burton said no, she’d have to stay for a while, and was she hungry?
“That’s a laugh,” Shirley said. “Hungry! No, Lieutenant, I am not hungry.”
He said that they didn’t like to have anyone go hungry, and that they might be at it for a while. He had a can of peanuts on his desk. “Try some,” he said. She shook her head. He took a handful and began to munch.
The brown envelope held the personal possessions of the two men in the black car. Burton emptied it onto his desk and sorted it out, two wallets, a roll of money, some keys, cartridges for, the guns. Shirley watched him go through the wallets, and from one of them he took the two pictures. He stared at them, and then passed them to Shirley.
“They’re pictures of you, Miss Campbel.”
Shirley looked at them. Each was a portrait head, not simply snapshots, but excellent pictures taken by a professional or an extremely competent amateur. Staring at Shirley from one of the pictures, the face of a dark-haired beautiful girl, straight brows, dark eyes, the lips bent, a strong, square chin, hair parted, combed straight down and out at the chin-line. In the other picture, the girl’s face was full of sadness beyond recall, and under the sorrow, there lurked a suggestion of great fear and great despair.
Shirley looked at the pictures carefully and then shook her head. “No.” She handed them back to Burton.
“You say they’re not you?”
“No, they’re not.”
“I think it’s you,” Burton said.
“Then you’re wrong. I ought to know.”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean—maybe? It’s like with my name. I can’t get a cop to believe that I know how to spell my name. Now I can’t get a cop to believe that I know who I am.”
“I believe you know who you are, Miss Campbel,” Burton smiled. “But I also think that people forget times they were photographed.”
“I’m not Elizabeth Taylor. I don’t have my picture taken every day.”
At that point, the officer who had brought in the basket returned and said to Burton that if he had finished with the stuff, they would like to process it. Burton put everything back into the wire basket except the two photos.
“I’ll keep these for a while,” he said.
Then he gave the officer a five-dollar bill and asked him to send up some coffee and sandwiches and Danish pastry. The officer left with the basket, and Burton explained to Shirley that he had to call his wife. “I’m supposed to be off duty at ten. It doesn’t work out that way.”
“No overtime either,” Shirley nodded. “It’s a ball to work for the city.”
“It is,” Burton smiled, and then he called his wife and argued with her and put down the phone with a bleak face. He shrugged and pushed the photos toward Shirley.
“I say they’re you.”
“You know something, Lieutenant—”
“No, but I’ll listen.”
“All right. Look at those pictures. I never been that sad—not once in all my life. I never had a reason to be that sad. Look at the other picture. I have never been that sad, because if I was, I guess I would have gone to the window and jumped or blown out my brains or something.”
“You’ve contemplated that?”
“Who hasn’t? I just haven’t been worried enough to do any more than contemplate it.”
“I see. And how do you account for the hairdo?” Burton asked. “You don’t see many girls wearing their hair like that today. The kids tease their hair today. They build it up in a ball on top of the head or something like that—not parted the way your hair is and chin-length and combed straight.”
“I like it that way,” Shirley said. “So it’s a coincidence.”
“Why do you like it that way?”
“What is this? I got to tell you why I like my hair the way I comb it?”
“You don’t have to, no. I’m just curious.”
“All right. All right, Lieutenant—I’ll tell you. You remember in Life magazine, they ran an article about how you tell the difference between a rich girl and a poor girl?”
“I remember.”
“All right I read that article, and all I could think was, Drop dead, the whole lot of you. I don’t know why it rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe I’m a kind of professional poor girl. But one thing struck me—the way they comb their hair. They all wear their hair the same way. You remember?”
Burton nodded.
“So I said to myself, I’ll fake them out, them and their big theories. What’s to stop me from cutting my hair that way? So that’s what I did. So I liked it. No pins, no curlers, no permanents, no teasing. I don’t even have to go to the beauty parlor. I need it cut, my friend Cynthia, she takes a pair of scissors and cuts it. She thinks I’m nuts. She says to me, ‘Shirley, you got to be out of your mind to wear your hair that way. What do you think people think when they see you with your hair that way?’ So I tell her, ‘I know what they think. They think I’m a rich girl.’ So she says that I should have my head examined if I think that anybody thinks that I’m a rich girl. All right. I like it this way. Sue me.”
He was studying the pictures again as she finished, and he nodded, lifting his eyes and staring at her.
“You’re an unusual w
oman, Miss Campbel.”
“Come off it.”
“Do you mind telling me where you were born?”
“All right. What else? The Bronx. April 7, 1942.”
“Was your father’s name Campbel? Did he spell it that way?”
“With the spelling again! What gives with you people? Look, I never seen my father, you understand? I only comb my hair this way, I didn’t grow up this way. My mother says my father’s name is Campbel. I’m using my mother’s name which is Clark, and I decide to use my father’s name, because it don’t do a girl any good to walk around with her mother’s maiden name. So I spell it wrong and it stays wrong—” Shirley’s face was tight, her dark eyes narrow and sullen, and inside she was hating Burton and the room and everything that had ever happened to her.
She stood up suddenly. “I don’t have to stand for this. I don’t have to answer your questions. I came here of my own free will and told you what happened. Now I’m going home.”
She rose and started toward the door. Burton’s voice was surprisingly gentle as he said to her, “Please, Miss Campbel—wait a moment.”
“For what?”
“You can’t leave. Not yet.”
“You mean you won’t let me?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Whirling on him, Shirley demanded, “Why? Why not? What did I do?”
“You killed two men,” Burton sighed.
“What? Are you out of your mind? I never killed anybody—ever!”
“The two men in the car,” Burton said.
“You’re accusing me of killing them?” Shirley cried indignantly.
“You admitted it, Miss Campbel.”
“What did I admit? Two hoodlums come to take me for a ride, and I try to stay alive, and you’re calling me a murderer?”
“No. It’s not murder, Miss Campbel. But it is manslaughter.”
“And what’s manslaughter?”
“Killing without premeditation—or in self-defense, or in an accident or a fight. I’m not saying that you’re guilty of any crime or were even involved in a crime. But that’s what I am trying to find out, and that’s why you can’t go.”
