Black Sheep, White Lamb

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “I thought the young men of Hillside were opposed to gambling,” he said.

  Neither mother nor daughter answered him.

  Bassett stopped at the police station to talk with Kearns before setting out to find Phil Daley. Whatever the police chief’s shortcomings, he had a pretty good line on the origins and habits of most of the people in the town. He was standing at the stationhouse window when Bassett drove up, and was still there when the detective went inside. He motioned Bassett to join him, and pointed down the street. Georgie Rocco was getting into an old Dodge coupe.

  “Where did he get that?” Bassett asked as Georgie drove off.

  “Mike Pekarik’s. One of his pals. It’s Mike’s father’s, but the old man doesn’t drive it. Won’t get glasses. Rocco’s just been in seeing his prospective father-in-law. Look.”

  The two men watched Gerosa come out of his shop, trying to put on his coat and lock the shop door at the same time.

  “He’s in a hurry,” Bassett said.

  “And he’s mad. I wouldn’t want to get in his way right now.” The chief turned from the window. “What can I do for you?”

  Bassett hesitated, watching Gerosa half-run, half-walk to the corner where he turned up the hill. A domestic crisis—to which, he had no doubt, young Rocco was the chief contributor. Suddenly he had too many leads to follow at once.

  “Phil Daley. What do you know about him, Chief?”

  Kearns rooted among the cigar butts in the ashtray and selected the largest of them. “Not much. Always been a cold fish, even as a kid. Lives alone with his father. Old man works at the plant. The kid does odd jobs around the docks. Quit school early. Good fireman, one of the best on the truck. Hunts a lot … I don’t know what else. No money. A cold kid. Nobody ever seems to get next to him. I don’t know how else to put it.”

  “Doesn’t seem like the kind to pal around with Georgie Rocco,” Bassett commented.

  Kearns thought about that. “You can’t just tell. If you were going to put a couple of different types together, they’d make a pretty good team.”

  Bassett grunted. “Where does he live?”

  The detective found Phil Daley oiling his rifle at the kitchen table. His father was preparing the evening meal, using the crowded sinkboard as his base of operations. Bassett, for reasons that he had not undertaken to examine, had throughout the day been thinking of the odd Biblical phrase—sometimes in, sometimes out of context—in Hillside the children were father to the men.

  Bassett identified himself to young Daley. His father had not acknowledged the detective’s presence. In any case, he and the boy had met before—at the firehouse bar after the Rocco fire on Friday night. Bassett asked him what he had been doing up to the time of the fire.

  “Playing gin with my friend, Pekarik. After I left the hangout, that is, till the old man here got home. Then we sat around jawing about MacAndrews.”

  Pekarik owned the car Bassett had just seen young Rocco driving, the detective remembered.

  He asked, “Any of you have ideas then how he’d got killed?”

  “Pa said it was a heart attack.”

  Whoever had killed MacAndrews, Bassett thought, must have gotten quick relief from their anxiety with Kearns’ prognosis. “What time did you leave the Crazy Cat?”

  “Quarter to ten, something like that.” Daley looked down the sight line of his gun.

  “What made young Rocco back out of the game?” the detective asked.

  Daley made some adjustment in the gun, shrugging the while. He never looked at you directly, just a glance that slid off without ever having made contact. “Football. Homework. I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t have any money.”

  “But he had planned to sit in on your game?” Bassett said.

  Again Daley shrugged. This was a town of shrugs. “Lots of guys plan. If they show up, swell. If not, the hell with them.”

  “But I asked you about Rocco—if he had planned to play cards with you.”

  “Seems like.”

  “You left the Crazy Cat together, didn’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t say together. Same time, maybe.”

  His eyes weren’t the only thing that slipped away ahead of direct contact with his interrogator.

  “Where was Pekarik then?”

  “How should I know? I started home and he came along and gave me a lift.”

  “And you decided to have a game of gin.”

  “We’d already made up to play cards. He just happened to come along in time to give me a lift.”

  Bassett nodded. Neat. Everything seemed so neat. He said, “I want you to come down to the station with me now. Tell it to Chief Kearns. I think he’d be interested.”

  “Anything to oblige.” Daley put the gun barrel on the table. “Don’t mess around here, pa.”

  His father said, “When are you going to eat?”

  “I’ll eat.”

  Bassett’s only purpose in taking Daley down was to be sure he was not in contact with Pekarik before the detective could get to him.

  But his visit to Pekarik yielded no further information. Pekarik was a scared boy, Bassett thought, but either he was telling the truth or what he told had been drilled into him by a mighty tough drillmaster. That, the detective surmised, was Daley. Rocco was too mercurial. He might lead a flamboyant charge, but Bassett doubted he could organize a retreat. He remembered the merest chance by which Rocco had led the Hillside football team to victory. Good God! He was back to that again.

  After he left Pekarik, Bassett returned to the police station. Daley and the police chief both went home to their supper. There wasn’t anything to keep either of them from it, Bassett thought grimly. He crossed the street and climbed the flight of stairs to Martin Scully’s apartment. Scully, his sleeves rolled up, had just given the place a good cleaning.

  “Something’s different,” Bassett said, looking around.

  “Telephone,” Scully said with a touch of pride. “I finally had one put in … for Johanna in case they move in here. Jo didn’t have enough trouble. Now her mother’s gone off with the boy friend.”

  “I see … and they’re all going to move in here?”

  Scully laughed bitterly. “Not quite. Just the Roccos—if Jo and Father Walsh can break up the romance.”

  Bassett understood then the girl’s close liaison with the priest.

  “I don’t know. It’s crazy,” Scully said. “The night of the fire Jo wanted me to take her away—to get out of here. Now I wish to God I had. Her mother means trouble, Mr. Bassett. She always has.”

  “To say nothing of her brother,” Bassett said. Scully looked at him, waiting. The detective sat down heavily. “No proof,” he said.

  Scully, in spite of himself, drew a deep breath of relief. He said: “I hate to discourage you, Mr. Bassett, but there are things buried in this town that aren’t ever going to be dug out, even murder.”

  “And that’s how it’s going to be with MacAndrews?”

  “I didn’t say that. But there are things everybody knows and nobody tells.”

  Bassett just sat for a moment. “Any word from the Graham office?”

  Scully shook his head. “The status is still quo.”

  Bassett got up. “What are you doing for dinner?”

  “I generally go down to the diner.”

  “Is that the best place in town?”

  “No. That’d be the Halfway Inn.”

  “Come on,” Bassett said. “I’ll stake you to dinner there.”

  Scully grinned. “Don’t you have a home either?”

  “It’s funny, stranger that I am in this town, I feel more at home here just now than in my own house.”

  “Couldn’t be you’re getting to like it here,” Scully said.

  Bassett shook his head. “But there’s something. There’s something.”

  They were going out the door when the phone rang. Scully grinned at his new possession, and went back to answer it. Bassett waited downstairs.
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  “I should have had that put in long ago,” Martin said rather too heartily when he rejoined the detective. “It just appointed me night manger of Graham Manufacturing.”

  “Congratulations,” Bassett said with measured enthusiasm.

  “I start training with the day man tomorrow. Seven A.M.”

  “And the night shift?”

  “Back on next week.”

  “I guess it’s better than never.”

  “Sure,” Scully said.

  When they reached the Halfway Inn a number of cars were parked alongside the building. Scully said, “Rotary night.”

  “Good. That’s an aspect of Hillside I haven’t been exposed to.”

  The Halfway Inn had been, in the nineteenth century, the stopping place for the railway travelers from the north and west who chose to rest before finishing by water their journey to New York. From the outside the clapboard building looked much the same as it had in the old days, but the inside was modern: chrome and red artificial leather. A fiberglass partition separated the dimly lighted bar room from the dining room, and this being the night of the Rotary meeting, tables for diners who were not associated with the club were provided on the bar room side of the partition.

  Bassett, facing the door, recognized a number of the men arriving for the meeting: Mayor Covello, Lodini, the fire chief who also ran the Triple-X garage, the postmaster, Gerosa, the tailor. Being there, Gerosa had apparently settled whatever domestic crisis had sent him scurrying home. He still looked dour. Kearns arrived, out of uniform and wearing a fresh cigar. The owner of the inn, tending bar himself, hailed one and another of the men. Their response was terse: not a gay crowd. Gerosa had not even answered him.

  Bassett took a sip of his scotch and soda. “Are they usually this glum?” Scarcely a murmur of conversation could be heard from the other side of the partition although the tinkle of glassware and silver was clearly audible.

  “No. It’s usually pretty noisy,” Scully said.

  “Maybe they think I’m spying.”

  “I don’t think anybody noticed you.”

  Bassett said, “You mean I’m beginning to blend in?”

  “We’re all beginning to blend in,” Scully said, and Bassett knew he was brooding over the new job.

  “How long do you think you’ll stick it out, Martin?”

  “I don’t know. Long enough to justify the men anyway. They’ve got a good man heading up their strike fund—the young fellow who said they’d go out, fund or no fund, remember?” Bassett nodded. “He’s going to represent power some day, and that’s what they need. I never had it. I didn’t want it: that’s the truth. I can see that now myself.”

  “A voice crying in the wilderness,” Bassett said.

  “That’s right,” Scully said. “That’s exactly right … a voice preparing the way.”

  The two men talked, over a second drink and the shrimp cocktail, of matters not concerning the Hillside of that day—the origins of the town, first as a rail terminal, then as the site of the Graham plant. They talked of themselves, their families. Bassett was particularly interested in Martin’s grandmother: she had left Italy as the very young bride of a man who had worked for her family, and she in turn had been no more able to dominate her children than her parents had succeeded in holding her to their traditions. Not even money had been able to hold the clan together, and the old lady had quite a lot of it. “Three of my uncles are teachers,” Martin said.

  “And everybody knows teachers don’t need money.”

  “The funny thing about my grandmother,” Scully said, “she’ll give you petty cash maybe, but when it comes down to a solid amount, she won’t give it to you for what you want. That way you might think she was trying to buy your affections.”

  “Will she give it for what you don’t want?”

  “Yes,” Scully said speculatively. “At least she’ll offer it for what you don’t want. Me, for example, she offered to put me through pharmacy school. But law school, no, sir.”

  “Suppose you’d taken her up on the pharmacy school?”

  Scully said, after a moment’s thought, “I think she’d have had nothing but contempt for me.”

  In a way, Bassett thought, that perverse independence ran through the whole town. In their day the Tonellis had made their mark on it.

  In the dining room, a hum of conversation had finally risen.

  A large, heavy-jowled man came into the inn. Taking off his topcoat, he called to the bartender, “How are you, Joe? Good crowd tonight?”

  “Hello, Doc.”

  “I’m late,” the man said, hanging up his coat, smoothing his hair with the palms of his hands.

  “Who’s that?” Bassett asked as the man nodded at them and started toward the dinner-meeting.

  “Doctor Tagliaferro.”

  The minute the doctor passed beyond the partition, silence again prevailed in the dining room. A sound ensued that caused Bassett and Scully to look at one another questioningly. It was a few seconds before Bassett said, startled, “They’re hissing him.”

  Somebody rapped on a glass with his fork, but the hissing persisted, merging then with a chorus of boos.

  Scully put his napkin on the table. “Something’s up.”

  The bartender was hurrying around the bar. In the dining room men were shouting, others loudly placating. Bassett heard one phrase: “Sit down, Gerosa.”

  “Let’s see what this is all about,” Bassett said. He got up and watched from the end of the partition. Tagliaferro was standing a few feet from the long table, his hands on his hips. Two men were trying to hold onto Gerosa, a little man who, Bassett thought, wanted his hands free for gesticulation more than anything else.

  “Let me go!” Gerosa wrenched his arms free. He shook his fist at the doctor. “Here he comes—in a crowd. To me he isn’t home. He knows! I’ll put him like another sputnik in the sky!”

  “Aha!” the doctor said. He had a great, booming voice that would carry over a hall. “Do you want to hear my side of the story?” He moved in to stand in front of one of the unoccupied places at the table.

  “I’ll kill him,” Gerosa said. “I spit at him. Abortionist!”

  Covello rapped on the table with the handle of his knife. “Gerosa, you’re out of order!”

  That, Bassett thought, was putting it mildly.

  “Please,” Gerosa said, “I am a father. You are a father. Let me talk.”

  “All right, shut up and talk!” somebody shouted.

  Covello said, “Sit down, Doc. Sit down, Gerosa. Then talk.”

  Gerosa talked, but his voice was quivering almost to the point of incoherence. “That man—he took my daughter to that New York place of his. He examined her in such a way … my daughter, sixteen years old … and he tells her she is pregnant …”

  The doctor’s face turned purple. Bassett thought it looked as though it were going to burst the skin, his eyes bulging.

  “That’s a goddamned lie!” the doctor shouted.

  Other diners were crowding in behind Bassett and Scully to see what was happening. The bartender tried to herd them back to their places.

  “This is George Rocco’s doing,” Bassett said to Scully. “He was with Gerosa this afternoon.”

  “Then why do you take her in to the hospital, then, what for, eh?” Gerosa challenged. And to this all the men on Gerosa’s side of the table responded, reinforcing his point.

  “I didn’t take her! She came in. She was dragged in by a rotten little blackmailer of a kid.” The doctor had a temper of his own. “I examined her—yes! In my nurse’s presence. Tests could prove whether or not she was pregnant. But by examination I could tell she was a virgin. There’s a difference, you know, in being not pregnant and being a virgin!”

  “What difference?”

  Tagliaferro threw up his hands. Then he drew a deep breath and reached for a glass of water. But his hand was trembling so much that he did not try to pick up the glass. “I suspected a trap,
that she was being used to get me into trouble. I swear to God, Gerosa, I did only what any doctor would do to protect himself, found out the truth from her. Then I talked to her like a father. That boy Rocco, I told her, she should not go with him. She is an innocent child. He is—I don’t know what he is … a monster.”

  “He is a good boy,” Gerosa shouted. “He came to me, her father. He told me everything. You said if anything was wrong, in New York you can take care of it.”

  “That’s a lie! Did you ask your daughter?”

  “I ask her—and I beat her! Yes, it kills me, but I beat her, and I ask her, and she says yes, Georgie is telling the truth.”

  Tagliaferro stared at the man; then he looked from one hostile face to another. “You believe him? All of you?”

  It was Lodini who said, “Why the New York hospital, Doc?”

  Scully, touching Bassett’s elbow and indicating that he wanted to quit the scene, said, “That’s the question, all right.”

  Tagliaferro shook his heavy jowls. “A doctor must use what faculties are made available to him. All my life I’ve worked in this town. For this?”

  Bassett followed Scully through the people who had closed in on them. The remains of their dinner was cold. “Let’s have coffee at the diner,” Scully said. “Okay with you?”

  “He’s quite a lad, Georgie, isn’t he?” Bassett said when they were outdoors.

  “Tag operated on his mother,” Martin said. “And the truth is, he’s very quick on the knife, especially with women.”

  “Hysterectomy, you mean?”

  “That’s his specialty,” Scully said.

  “The remarkable thing about this Rocco boy,” Bassett said, “he has an uncanny instinct for finding out men’s weaknesses—and using them. He’s found something in every one of us to play on—even me and my son who were virtual strangers to him. He has a natural instinct toward evil, that boy has. And I’m beginning to think it’s going to take the whole town to stop him—or nobody will.”