The Devil's Stocking

by Nelson Algren

  “‘What’s the trouble, officer?’ I asked him.

  “‘Nothing, Ruby,’ he told me, ‘we’re just looking for a white car.’

  “I dropped the girl off, drove to my own house, took my shoes off because my wife and daughter were sleeping. I got some money, came down and drove down Highway 40 to Rocky’s Hideaway. That was what I was doing the second time the police car stopped me. It was Officer Mooney again; but this time he wasn’t friendly.”

  “How long had it been since you’d left the Paradise?”

  “Hour, hour and a half.”

  “Did you go to the Melody Bar and Grill?”

  “No sir.”

  “Mr. Heim informs us there was an altercation in the Melody between the bartender and a black couple. Can you tell us something about this?”

  “I have never been in the Melody Bar and Grill in my life. I can tell you nothing.”

  “What happened after Officer Mooney stopped you for the second time?”

  “He said ‘Follow my car,’ then I seen three, four other police cars behind me. I followed Mooney and when we got in front of the Melody, Mooney told me, ‘Get out and open the trunk.’ I got out and opened the trunk. He kicked my boxing equipment around for a while. Then he told me, ‘Close it and get over by the wall.’ So I closed it and got over by the wall. There was quite a crowd in front of the Melody. A police van drove up and Mooney said, ‘Get in,’ so I got in. We left my car parked by the Melody and drove to General Hospital and I saw a man lying on a stretcher.

  “‘Is this the man with the gun?’ Mooney asked him.

  “He raised hisself up and looked at me: ‘No,’ he said, ‘that ain’t the one,’ and sank down again.”

  Heim had not recognized Calhoun as the man who’d had the altercation with Dude Leonard.

  Calhoun’s first fear was that, if he acknowledged his presence at the Melody he’d be volunteering for the electric chair. The only way he’d have out would have been to finger Red Haloways.

  When Ben Raymond had put that question to him, privately and directly in the attorney’s office, Ruby had replied without hesitation: “I have never been inside the Melody Bar and Grill in my life.”

  Ben Raymond had believed him.

  “How were you dressed, Mr. Calhoun,” he asked Ruby in court, “when you went to the hospital where you saw the man on the stretcher?”

  “The same as I am dressed now.”

  “Did you object to going to the hospital?”

  “No sir.”

  “Did the police search you?”

  “They never searched me. Only my car. I just stood there. There was a procession of officers in and out of that room the whole night. Some asked me questions. De Vivani didn’t come in until morning. No, he gave me no Miranda warning. How could he? Not even federal judges had it figured at that time. ‘We want to question you about the Melody Bar and Grill shootings,’ was the only clue he gave me about why I was there.

  “‘You’ve never used a gun?’ he asked me then. ‘That’s in the past,’ I told him. ‘When I say, “I don’t use guns” now, I mean my profession is my hands. It’s how I make my living.’”

  “He didn’t tell you, specifically, what had happened at the Melody?” Raymond asked.

  “All he told me was ‘shootings.’ When I was released I was told my car was in the police garage, and it was: all tore up. The panels had been tooken apart. The radio was hanging out. Every conceivable place somebody might hide something had been tore out.”

  “Did you remain in Jersey City, available to police?”

  “I went to Buenos Aires. I was arrested the day after I returned.”

  “Were you on the corner of Jefferson and Sixteenth on the evening of June sixteenth, nineteen hundred sixty-six?”

  “Never except when I was brought there by the police.”

  “Mr. Iello testifies that he saw you on that corner, coming out a tavern, carrying a gun.”

  “Never.”

  “Did you know a man named Dude Leonard?”

  “Never.”

  “Nick Vincio?”

  “I did not.”

  “Helen Shane?”

  “I did not.”

  “Eric Heim?”

  “I did not.”

  “What was the name of the bandleader that night at Rocky’s Hideaway?”

  “Valentine Easter.”

  Prosecuting attorney Scott now took up the witness.

  “Mr. Heim informs us that there was an altercation in the Melody Bar and Grill involving the bartender, Donald Leonard, and a black couple, a young man and a young woman. Were you the young black man involved, Mr. Calhoun?”

  “I have never been inside the Melody Bar and Grill in my life.”

  “Were you the young black man involved, Mr. Calhoun?”

  “No. How could I have been?”

  “When Officer Mooney drove you to the hospital, you were confronted there by a man who’d been shot in the face. Was he still so drunk that he was unable to identify you as the man who’d shot him?”

  Raymond took immediate objection. “Nowhere in the record is there anything to indicate that Mr. Heim was drunk at any time during the course of the evening of June sixteenth, nineteen sixty-six. Was he drunk when he went to his lawyer’s office later in the year, and described the killer to his lawyer as a man six feet in height, light-skinned, with a pencil-line mustache’”

  “Objection sustained,” Judge Turner ruled.

  “From the day that you were picked up until today,” Raymond then asked Calhoun, “you have protested your innocence. Is that not true?”

  “True.”

  “Now you are charged with discharging a weapon causing the deaths of three people. Would you turn to the jury, Mr. Calhoun, and tell them how much truth there is in this charge? Take off your glasses.”

  Calhoun removed his glasses with deliberation. He put his hand to his eyes as though to rest them; then turned his face slowly to the jury.

  It was a face sculptured in dark bronze. The strength of the jaw was supported by the absolute firmness of the eyes. Calhoun looked at each juror, individually, one by one.

  “I had nothing to do with the killings,” he repeated. “I use my fists, not guns.”

  Humphrey Scott was a Civil Rights attorney, an activist who had opposed the war in Vietnam. “Good law enforcement is cheap and bad law enforcement is expensive.” He put himself on record as politician as well as lawyer. “I am philosophically opposed to the death penalty—unless I can be satisfied that there will be no significant effect upon the crime rate; I could then overcome my reservations. Too often we employ social conditions as an excuse in enforcing the law, saying we cannot reduce crime until we improve those conditions. I say we ought to stop making excuses and do the best with what we have.

  “The original report on Mr. Calhoun,” Scott continued, “was knowing, intelligent acknowledgment of the man’s rights. Lieutenant De Vivani did not have to inform Mr. Calhoun that he could have a court-appointed attorney if he wanted one.”

  “Is Mr. Iello telling the truth?” states attorney Scott asked the jury, “or do you think he is merely hopeful of the reward? Is his statement tailor-made? Just look at the discrepancies. If Iello and Baxter were so interested in that reward, why didn’t they get their stories straight? Baxter said he had seen Calhoun only once. He could have said he’d been Calhoun many times.”

  Scott then emptied three bags of bloody clothing onto a table directly in front of the jury; each bag into a separate heap. Beside each heap he placed a photograph of the murdered person.

  “There was once a man,” he continued gravely, “a human being by name of Donald Leonard, a bartender at the Melody Bar and Grill in Jersey City, and he wore this shirt I now hold before you. And he looked like this [holding Leonard’s photograph up before the jury] when he was sent into eternity by a gunman with a thirty-eight caliber pistol in his hand.

  “There was once a man, a fellow human
being by name of Nicholas Vincio, and he had the misfortune of going to the Melody Bar and Grill on June sixteenth, nineteen sixty-six, and this [holding Vincio’s photo up to the jury] is how his life ended, murdered in cold blood by a thirty-eight caliber revolver.

  “And there was once a human being, a woman by name of Helen Shane, and she wore these clothes, these bullet-ridden clothes, when she was shot not once, but twice. Two of the bullets passed through her body and she clung to life for nearly a month, and finally passed away, and this is what became of this human being from a thirty-eight caliber revolver shot.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, on the question of punishment, the facts of this case clearly indicate that, in the early morning of June seventeenth, nineteen sixty-six, Ruby Calhoun forfeited his right to live. The state asks that you extend to him the same measure of mercy he extended to Donald Leonard, Nicholas Vincio and Helen Shane. And that you return a verdict of murder in the first degree to all charges without recommendation.”

  “The most incredible thing you have heard in this case,” Raymond assured the jury, “was from a man who admits to having a lengthy criminal record. ‘Yes, I am a thief,’ he tells us. While his pal was breaking into the Apex Supply Company, he decides to go down to the Melody to buy a pack of cigarettes. In front of a smoked-fish place he hears two shots coming from the bar. Yet he continues to walk directly toward the sound of gunfire.

  “That is fantastic. That is incredible. A parolee, acting as lookout for his pal trying to break into a supply house, hears gunfire and heads right toward it as though it were a promise of terminating his parole. The witness may be none too bright, but he is not insane.

  “As he approaches the bar, his story becomes yet more incredible. He sees a Negro approaching him, carrying a revolver, but he doesn’t say, ‘I turned and ran.’ He says, ‘I kept walking toward him and it was only when I got to nine or ten feet away that I turned and ran.’

  “If Mr. Iello saw a man who just shot down four people coming around a corner, you can be certain that Mr. Iello would not be here to tell us about it today.

  “What Mr. Iello did next was yet more amazing. He went back into the tavern, he says, where, seeing the carnage, he demonstrates his compassion by pushing Mrs. Shane’s hand away when she tried to hold him and said to him, ‘Help me!’ Instead of helping her, Mr. Iello ran around the bar, stepped over the dead body of Mr. Leonard, grabbed money, stepped back over the body, ran out into the street, didn’t stop to phone for an ambulance or for anything like that. He ran back up the street and delivered the money to his pal. Then ran back to the tavern because he had glimpsed Violet Vance in the window and knew he’d better get back there and explain what he was doing around the place and called the police—the operator testified she had heard only a low male voice and a brief message—‘Everybody is dead here and I’m the only one alive.’

  “The interesting thing about Mr. Baxter is that he saw this white car going in a directly opposite direction from what his pal Iello saw it. That one factor is enough to raise doubt in our minds and to demonstrate that they are both lying.

  “When Baxter heard the shots he too ran into the alley and over to Jefferson to see what was going on, and observed what appeared to be his pal in front of him. Iello was rather distinctively dressed, with that kind of outfit on, that kind of hair; but yet Baxter wasn’t sure this was his pal, but he kept closing in on him because he was pretty sure it was his pal. And then he makes identification of a man who was behind his, friend whom he cannot recognize, identification of a man he’d seen once in his life, riding in a passing car. He then turns about and runs back up the street into the alley where he waited for Iello to bring him the money from the register. This may make sense to you. It makes no sense at all to me.

  “Iello and Baxter don’t tell their story to the police until some time in October, four months after the murders. They tell it at precisely the time when they are in desperate need of a story to get them off the hook. Iello faced twenty years worth of charges at that time and Baxter was facing eighty.

  “Baxter then withholds information that he returned, after the shootings, and finally broke into the place. This is the type of witness you are supposed to heed when a man is being tried for his life.

  “There is an air of desperate tragedy in this procedure. I represent a man sitting here with his life in the balance, and the state keeps presenting evidence which is altogether mysterious. I don’t have the gall to suggest that Iello, or Baxter or Kelley committed this terrible crime. I wouldn’t have the gall to suggest that because these jackals, now bearing witness, are not killers. They are sneak thieves.

  “‘Why,’ Mr. Scott will protest, ‘he sounds as though he is putting Iello and Baxter on trial.’ Not really. I’m fighting for a man’s life here,” Raymond explained, looking directly at the black juror. “If Iello and Baxter live forever, that’s all right with me. But I do wish to point out to you people of the jury that their brand of testimony entitles you, if you disbelieve any part of it, to disbelieve it all.

  “And if you disbelieve their tissue of lies, you must find the defendant not guilty. I submit you can make no other finding.

  “Is there any accounting for either of these young men? They are suave, well dressed, self-assured. Iello, when asked why he did not identify Ruby Calhoun immediately, replies, ‘Because I recognized the fact that I was on a conspiracy to break and enter, and as I walked up the street I got involved in murder. I realized that if I had recognized Calhoun, he had recognized me. I realized that if I ever took a fall and went back to the reformatory, then there was another objection, a seriouser one, so I thought I should just tell my crime and the court said, “Proceed” and the witness said, “I don’t have anything further to say.”

  “Perhaps you ladies and gentlemen can make some sense of all this. I cannot. If he is afraid of Mr. Calhoun why did he not identify him immediately and thus get him off the streets? Why permit him to walk around free for months if he were guilty? Mr. Calhoun walked out of the police station, having been cleared by the polygraph and was given back his car. ‘Drive away!’ he was commanded.

  “I asked Mr. Iello, ‘Did you tell Officer Greenleaf that the man coming around the corner carrying a gun was thin built, six feet in height, light-skinned?’ His reply was, ‘Yes.’

  “Can you condemn a man upon the strength of such memory? The bench has stopped me from implying that Iello and Baxter had something to do with the murders. Yet I will imply, with all my might, that there is more to the story of Iello, Baxter and Kelley than has yet appeared.

  “I know that Mr. Scott, when he sums up, will present the evidence of the white car. But the manager of the Citgo station, from whom it had been rented, stated clearly that this was not the only car of its color and its kind in the area.

  “But from beginning to end,” Raymond added, looking once again at the black juror, “the question which has gone to the heart of everything here is Baxter saying, ‘That Negro over there.’ What is ‘that’? An animal? Why didn’t he say, candidly, ‘That animal over there’? Because that is what was in his voice, and that is what has been in the prosecution’s voice from the very beginning of this case.

  “The prosecution has depended upon a single accusation, ‘Negro, Negro, ’I have heard it in Baxter’s voice and in Iello’s voice and I have heard it from every living soul in this courtroom. When Mr. Scott told, specifically, how this Negro—the Negro sitting over there—the Negro with the shaven head—walked into a tavern with a revolver, how he shot this one then that one, all of that, I was shattered. Its lack of evidence was so bizarre that it sounded like a soap opera. I still cannot believe that anyone would have so little sense of responsibility as to make such statements in a court without a shred of evidence to support them.

  “Because neither of these two ghouls—Baxter and Iello—saw Ruby Calhoun coming around the corner of a tavern. Nobody found a weapon. Did the police stop the right man? Have they proven to y
ou, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this man is the right man?

  “The issue here is not merely life or death, ladies and gentlemen. The issue is: Who counts? A man because he is white and wears a badge? Or because he is black and forthright? I challenge you to find a single instance wherein Mr. Calhoun did not come forward. He has faced you wearing the same jacket as he did that night, and with the same attitude he has carried all his life.

  “Could anything be more contradictory than that any man who’d done such a dastardly deed would ride slowly about the streets and be stopped a few blocks from the scene of his crime? Calhoun showed no fear. He took no flight. He offered no resistance. He abused nobody. ‘Here is my license,’ he told police, ‘the registration is on the wheel. What is wrong, sir?’ ‘Nothing. Routine check. Have a good night.’

  “But what of the white car that went streaking out of town? What about that car first seen by the sergeant? What about the people he chased and made all those loops out to Route 20 and then came rushing back? What about that car? It could not have been the same as the one in which Calhoun was stopped, could it? Would you not think that that was important if you were a Jersey City police officer?

  “And then where was one little witness whom nobody wants to talk about. The police just wish he would go away. A little man, who came in early this week, named Esteban Escortez. He came from Bordentown and he went back to Bordentown. He is in custody in Bordentown. ‘Did Baxter tell you,’ I asked him, ‘that on that night he had not even seen the defendant?’

  “‘Yes, sir,’ Mr. Escortez told me, ‘Baxter said to me, “How would you like to make it easy on yourself?” I said, “I don’t want to get involved worse than I am now. I’d only get hurt. Calhoun has friends who will do anything for him. If I should get sent away I could get hurt bad.’”

  “‘What,” I asked him then, ‘did Baxter tell you about the case?’ ‘He told me he was pulling a breaking and entrance.’ ‘Where were you when he asked you to cooperate with him in informing?’ ‘In the cell next to his.’ ‘What cell was that?’ ‘The first cell.’ ‘Where was Baxter?’ ‘In the next cell.’