“Harry,” John Childress said, “kindly eschew obfuscation.”
“The answer consists, my brilliant warped friend, of a complicated combination of simple obvious reforms.”
“To wit?”
“My book will list them all. I’ll give you a few examples.”
The professor held up his hand and lifted one finger at a time in enumeration.
“One. Stop arresting drunks. They’re hurting nobody but themselves.
“Two. Stop arresting gamblers, prostitutes and the perpetrators of all other so-called victimless crimes.
“Three. Stop arresting drug addicts. Make narcotics cheap and easy to buy—on a par with alcohol and tobacco. This one always causes outraged indignant screams, but it’s only common sense. It won’t eliminate addiction. Nothing will. But it will eliminate crimes that the addicts commit in order to get money to buy the drugs that feed their habits. If they can get drugs cheaply they won’t need to mug us. I submit that’s more important than the self-inflicted ‘crime’ of addiction itself. If your son becomes a drug addict, that’s his problem. But if he robs me to get money to buy drugs, he makes it my problem. I seek to eliminate my problem by making his drugs available to him cheaply. It’s that simple. I’m not solving his problem—his addiction is a medical problem and that’s between him and his doctor—but I am solving my problem, and, by extension, society’s.
“Four. Tax every American citizen the sum of twenty dollars. With the money obtained, build prisons and courtrooms and staff them. Eliminate the bargained plea, the money bail system, and all systems of probation, parole and suspended sentences, except in extraordinary cases where there are abundant mitigating circumstances. Segregate these new expanded prisons according to severity of offense, in order to prevent hardened criminals from influencing minor offenders. Reduce penalties for minor infractions, but increase penalties for major offenses, and make them uniform. Take the power to set sentences out of the hands of judges and make the sentence for each offense depend on the crime, not the judge. In other words, five years—no flexibility—for any armed robbery first offense, and fifteen years for every second armed robbery and life imprisonment for every third offense. Why? Not to punish, not to rehabilitate, not to reform. But simply to keep the offenders isolated from society where they cannot victimize us again.”
Spalter interrupted him: “What about the death penalty?”
“The only remote justification for the death penalty” is the economic one. It is cheaper to execute a man than it is to sustain him in prison for life. But the value to society of life imprisonment only holds water when it really means life imprisonment—not seven years with time off for good behavior.
“Incidently there’s good reason to reduce the penalty for most murders. Most homicides are committed within families—husband against wife, that kind of thing. The likelihood of the murderer’s ever repeating his crime is usually remote; the crimes are committed in unique moments of passion, and anyway a woman who knowingly marries a man who killed his previous wife has to know the risk she’s running. I’d say five years in prison would be a sensible penalty for internecine homicide.”
“Where do vigilantes fit into your scheme?” Irene asked.
“Premeditated murder outside the family group,” he answered promptly. “If convicted, mandatory life imprisonment. Or the death penalty if society prefers.”
“A lot of people would disagree with that,” Spalter said. “A lot of people would rather have the vigilante run for mayor.”
The room broke up in laughter.
Paul said to Irene, “I see where you got some of your ideas.”
Childress had an arm around the professor’s shoulders; he was walking Chisum toward the bar, talking with sarcastic emphasis. The crowd milled and reformed its earlier knots of conversation and Paul heard words like impractical, visionary, sensible, utopian, cops, muggers, judges, lawyers, crime, prison, safety, civil war. And, he heard, vigilante.
17
¶ CHICAGO, DEC. 28TH—Two 14-year-old boys were slashed to death late last night by a 64-year-old man whom they are accused of having tried to rob.
The boys, Richard White, of 6513½ S. Paulina, and Michael Hayes, of 7418 S. Hermitage, cut with a kitchen knife in an alley near Kostner and Van Buren, fled from the alley and ran nearly 200 feet on Van Buren before they collapsed. Both boys died of their wounds almost immediately thereafter.
Captain William Marlowe, Commander of the Shakespeare District, said the two boys were looking for a mugging victim when they encountered Jorge Carrasquillo, 64, on Van Buren Street shortly after midnight. Mr. Carrasquillo had been drinking in a bar on Cicero Avenue and was homebound, on foot. Captain Marlowe has asked that Mr. Carrasquillo’s address be withheld to avoid harassment.
Allegedly the two boys forced Mr. Carrasquillo into the alley, where White acted as a lookout while Hayes tried to take Mr. Carrasquillo’s watch and money at gunpoint.
Mr. Carrasquillo wrested the gun, which later proved to be a toy, away from his assailant, and according to the police he then drew a kitchen knife from his coat pocket, cut Hayes across the neck, and then whirled around and slashed White, first on the hand, then across the throat.
The two boys were pronounced dead upon arrival at Cicero Hospital after Mr. Carrasquillo summoned police and an ambulance from a nearby public telephone.
Mr. Carrasquillo was released on his own recognizance pending a hearing to determine the facts of the case. A spokesman for the Cook County Attorney’s office said the prosecution would move to have the case ruled justifiable homicide.
According to Captain Marlowe, Mr. Carrasquillo started carrying the kitchen knife with him only three days ago. “He said he’d decided to do it after hearing about the vigilante,” Captain Marlowe said.
18
ASPIRAL of potato skin hung from the paring knife. She sat on a straight chair and her feet barely touched the floor. “I warn you right now. I always have been, am, and probably will continue to be a lousy cook.”
Paul manhandled the cork out of the bottle. “Glasses?”
“Up there.” She stabbed the knife toward the cabinet. “No, the next one. I think that’s why he divorced me. Too many burnt hamburgers while I was working on a brief instead of inventing five-course feasts. But I got my revenge. He’s gained twenty pounds since the divorce. I, on the other hand, remain as you see—malnourished or svelte, it depends on your point of view.”
“You look damn good to me.”
“Well thank you kind sir. My goodness this is nice wine. At least two dollars a bottle, what?”
“At least,” he said gravely. He held his glass up to the light. “My friend Sam Kreutzer used to go on for hours about the nose, the hue, the tongue, the palate. I never knew what the hell he was talking about.”
“Neither did he. Blindfold those guys and they can’t tell red wine from ketchup.” She dropped the potatoes into the miniature cauldron. “You’ve got a surprising little sense of humor, Paul.”
“Standard survival equipment for CPAs.”
She opened the oven and looked at the meat thermometer and picked up her glass. “Let us retire to the drawing room, sir.”
The apartment was tidy and small: it was three paces from the kitchenette to the couch. Bookcases hung cantilever from the walls; evidently she was a voracious and catholic reader—only one section contained law books.
She waved him away when he fumbled for matches; lit her cigarette with a table lighter and sat back peering at him through a smoke-induced squint.
He said, “Do you ever play poker?”
“No. Why?”
“You’d be a killer at it.”
“Am I so inscrutable? I don’t mean to be.”
“I keep wondering what you’re seeing when you look at me like that.”
“A rather sweet guy who’s still trying to get himself sorted out after the world fell down around his ankles. And, I might add, probably a pretty good
poker player himself. Are you?”
“I haven’t played in months.”
“But you used to.”
“Every Thursday. I held my own but I’m no Cincinnati Kid. It was just a social game—the same friends every week.”
“Do you miss them? Your New York friends.”
“Some of them. Sam Kreutzer. The office wit—sort of a fledgling Childress. But I’ve never been much of a social animal, I guess.”
The cat leaped to a bookshelf and began to clean a paw. It was a grey and white tiger—inobtrusive, vigilant. Paul said, “I like people, in small doses, but I don’t need to have them around me night and day. I don’t really know what it means to have the kind of close binding friendship people talk about. Well, Sam was damned kind to me when my wife died—he stayed close by, helped me keep things together. But that’s courtesy, isn’t it. I mean it didn’t bother me that I’d be leaving those people behind by moving to Chicago.”
“What about your daughter?”
“We were fairly close. At least I think we were. But we weren’t friends, really. Parent and child—I was very protective, maybe too much so. Maybe possessive. It’s hard to know.”
“I’m the same way,” she said. “I was an only child. Actually I feel privileged. Liking people, but not needing them desperately. It makes you much freer, don’t you think?” She left the burning cigarette on the rim of the ash tray and picked up her wine; she said in a different voice, “But still it seems worth a lot more if you have a little love along the way.”
19
THE WIND had blown the snow off the trees but it lay deep in Washington Park coated with a frozen crust. The roadways and sidewalks had been cleared after a fashion but the night’s hard cold had left glazings of ice and two black women walked with slow care balancing their supermarket bags in their arms. On the bench Paul watched them from the edge of his vision, propping the newspaper against the wooden rail. Wind fluttered the corners of the newspaper and he could see the black women’s breath. Beyond them, beyond the trees and the end of the park he could see the slum houses: porches rotting off, cardboard in the windows. Two young men near the edge of the park were throwing snowballs at passing cars.
The two women approached the sidewalk and prepared to cross the road but one of them slipped on the ice. Paul saw the parcels fall. Groceries from the split bags sprayed across the snow, sliding on the glaze. The woman got to her feet with her friend’s help.
The two youths went toward them, tossing snowballs aside.
Paul folded his newspaper and slipped the glove off his right hand and gripped the gun in his pocket. He got to his feet and moved toward them.
The youths reached the women, who watched without expression—expecting anything. Paul moved from tree to tree, unnoticed, fifty feet away from them.
He saw one of the young men speak; the wind was wrong, Paul couldn’t hear the words. The woman who had fallen nodded bleakly.
But her friend smiled a little and then the two youths began gathering the scattered groceries.
A taxi went by, tire chains jingling. The paper bags were beyond use, broken in shreds; the woman stuffed things in the pockets of her threadbare coat and the two youths gathered armloads: a box of soap powder, a chicken wrapped in transparent plastic. The four of them waited for a truck to pass and then went slowly across the road.
Paul watched, moving forward without hurry. They might be Good Samaritans. Then again they might be going along until they had the women in a more private place. The woman who still had her packages had a handbag slung from her shoulder and women who did that much shopping at one time probably had cash in their purses.
Cut-Rate Liquors. First Baptist Church. The four pedestrians turned off into a dismal street of attached tenements.
From the corner Paul watched them climb the porch. But then the two youths emptied tins and jars from their pockets, stacked everything neatly on the porch and went back down to the street. He heard one of the women call her thanks across the snow.
He turned away and walked back toward the park.
20
THE HOUSING on Cottage Grove Avenue was urban redevelopment, squat three-story boxes, shabby and hideous. He walked slowly, crunching snow—a lone white man in a good middle-class overcoat: an invitation to thievery. He kept looking up at house numbers—a bill collector looking for an address?
In his hand the pocketed revolver sweated cold against his skin.
Kids were building a snowman. They watched him walk by.
A snowball hurtled from behind, went over his shoulder and crashed beyond. He wheeled. His fist tensed on the gun.
He said aloud, “For Christ’s sake.” He got down on one knee and scraped a snowball together and threw it at the kids, not hard. It fell short and the kids laughed. He managed a smile, turned away and walked on. For Christ’s sake take it easy. But it was an unnerving place. The cheap modern boxes were so inhuman: there was less dignity in them than in any tenement; no possibility of any sense of belonging, community, home. An awesome architectural confirmation of human rootlessness. No one could have identity in a place like this.
He left the area, hurrying.
21
THE GIRL was nearly grown; she must have been at least thirteen but her father had her tightly by the hand. He was a big man, black-skinned, overcoat flapping in the wind. With her free hand the young girl held her hat, though it was battened to her head by a scarf tied round her chin. Together they executed careful negotiations of the ice slicks and plow-piled snow at the curb, stepping over it and crossing the street into the grey dusk.
The man in the beret followed them, and Paul followed the man in the beret: a pilgrimage from the pawn shop into the darkness.
Paul had been in his car watching the pawnshop. It had happened quickly; he’d hardly parked the car. The father and daughter had been in the shop when he’d arrived and he hadn’t seen them enter but it was likely they’d carried something in with them—something they weren’t carrying now—and that was what had attracted the man in the beret. Paul hadn’t seen that one either until the man had emerged from his post in the doorway beyond the pawnshop. There was no mistaking the fact he was following them; he put his own feet in the prints the father had left in the snow at the curb.
By the time the man in the beret stepped off the curb to cross the intersection the father and daughter had disappeared into the cross street beyond the movie house; the man in the beret was giving them a lead, possibly to avoid alarming them.
Paul crossed the street directly from his car, cutting across the man’s path; he gained distance that way and at the same time made it look as if he was heading toward the movie house on the corner.
A man was up on a ladder changing the movable letters on the marquee: one X-rated double bill died, another was born. Paul walked under the marquee and pretended to examine the posters advertising the lewdness within. The man in the beret went past the foot of the ladder and turned into the cross street. Paul kept his back turned until the predator was gone; then he went straight across to the far side of the cross street before he looked left.
Father and daughter were picking their slow careful way home hand in hand. The man in the beret wore soft black shoes—possibly sneakers: they made no sound. His stride had lengthened; he would overtake them in the next block.
Paul stayed close to the buildings; he moved in spurts from shadow to shadow. He’d thought days ago of tennis shoes but he’d had to abandon the idea; they’d have been out of place with his clothing. He could afford to do nothing that might attract notice.
The man in the beret was not tall but he had long legs and Paul had gained no ground on him by the end of the first block. Father and daughter were two-thirds the way to the second intersection and the man in the beret was only a half dozen paces behind; all three walked on the opposite side of the street from Paul.
He had to cross under the street light but the man in the beret didn’t look back.
Paul reached the curb and a car went across the intersection behind him, tires slithering a little: the temperature was a good many degrees below freezing and everything had hardened.
He took the right glove off and slid the naked hand into his pocket and formed it around the revolver’s grip.
Before he entered the darkness he looked to his right along the cross street—a random glance—and it made him stiffen: the car that had crossed behind him was a police car, quietly cruising. But it kept moving away steadily and he thought, All they saw was my back, and then he turned to search for the father and daughter and the man in the beret.
They had disappeared: the street was empty.
He moved swiftly, almost running, precarious on the ice; after half a dozen strides he angled toward the long ridge of snow the plows had piled up along the curb; he ran awkwardly, overshoes plunging ankle-deep into the snow, but it was better than falling.
He was scanning the doorways across the street. The lights were all gone: stone-throwing and sling-shooting kids routinely used them for target practice in streets like this. Here and there a dim glow splashed from a window imperfectly curtained; but the dusk had given way to night and visibility was very bad.
He was making a racket but scaring the predator off was better than nothing. He plunged his foot deeper than it should have gone—a chuckhole in the street; he fell into the hard snow and his cheek banged against the crusted ice.
He had to take his hand out of his pocket to push himself to his feet and then he took the first step gingerly, not sure whether he might have hurt his ankle. It was all right and he moved on, fumbling for the revolver.
A scream: it had to be the little girl’s voice. He searched the shadows. There was a strange whacking noise: loud, sudden; he couldn’t make it out. He ran along the edge of the street. The girl began to scream again and he heard the hard slap of flesh against flesh; the scream was cut off abruptly in its middle.
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