A woman so strikingly successful was bound to be ugly as sin, Calhoun assumed. Instead he found himself confronted by a beigehued Elizabeth Taylor. One who carried herself just as dramatically.
No public relations firm could have devised a finer camouflage for her irresistible aggressiveness than Adeline Kelsey had devised for herself. Slight, low voiced, she concealed a relentless drive beneath a manner almost shy.
Her hidden fury, when it burst out, usually burst out against white men. Kerrigan was standing in a queue before the visitors’ desk at Athens, when a woman’s voice behind him said, “Excuse me,” and stepped in front of him, “if you don’t mind.”
Kerrigan was not a man to be pushed lightly to one side by anybody. “I do mind, madam,” he assured her and stepped in front of her.
He felt a sharp kick on his ankle and backed out of the line. He stood back, rubbing the ankle contemplatively. Almost all the people in the line were women, most of them black. All were smiling quietly at Adeline Kelsey’s triumph. They had, most of them, seen her in action before.
Kerrigan lifted her off the floor, put her down toward the end of the line and told her, “I can get rougher than this, if you want.”
The other women appeared pleased to see her put into her proper place; some of them smiled softly but said nothing.
“Oh, I see the kind you are,” Adeline informed him; but she did not try to get in front of him again.
While waiting for Calhoun in the prison library, neither acknowledged the presence of the other. Neither knew that both had come to visit the same prisoner. When Calhoun came in, smiling, and introduced them, Kerrigan gave her a small nod but she gave him no nod at all.
It wasn’t until Kerrigan began speaking to Calhoun about Don Kessler that Adeline began getting interested in him.
Kessler, a white man not yet thirty, had put twelve years into New Jersey prisons, six of them locked with Calhoun.
He had also locked with Baxter at Bordentown.
Kerrigan had gotten wind of Kessler through Esteban Escortez. When Kerrigan found Kessler, Kessler had served his time and was living with a girl from Fort Lee in Hackensack. He was on parole and was planning to marry the girl.
Kerrigan had found him in an expansive mood. He assured Kerrigan that Baxter had told him the same story to which Esteban Escortez had already brought witness. Baxter had told him, too, that he had never laid eye on Ruby Calhoun; and that he had borne witness against him for the sake of reducing the sentences he had been facing.
“Take me to meet him,” Miss Kelsey demanded of Kerrigan.
Kerrigan shrugged, “Why not?”
He drove her over to Kessler’s place the following week. Less than a week after that she had Kessler on an afternoon TV show for a full hour. Kerrigan watched it from his office; Calhoun watched it in the auditorium at Green Meadow.
Adeline had tried to get a black interviewer, but had not been able to swing that. It was the only aspect of the program that did not swing her way.
“Baxter was in Bordentown,” Kessler explained to his interviewer, Mark Sellinger, “because the prosecutor had made arrangements to keep him out of Athens. His life would be in peril there.
“Baxter’s job was sweeping the block down,” Kessler recalled, “what we called a runner. He brought in candy and cigarettes, on the sneak, and other prisoners accepted them without accepting him. They’d take the stuff but they wouldn’t talk to him.
“I asked Baxter why he had testified against Calhoun, and he told me he had not only been facing eighty years, but that the prosecutor had threatened to charge him with the murders if he failed to support Iello’s identification of Calhoun.
“Over and above that,” Kessler went on, “Baxter felt he had a good chance to collect the reward. I asked him whether he didn’t feel badly about sending another man to prison for life and he told me, No, because as soon as Calhoun appealed, he (Baxter) was going to cut him loose.”
“How did Baxter get money for candy and cigarettes?” Sellinger asked Kessler.
“The only people Baxter had outside was a mother and a sister and they didn’t have a dime between them. Somebody was putting walking-around money on him, but he didn’t say who.”
“Where was he coming from?”
“He’d been at Brookhaven but he was going to Yardville, he told me. The prosecutor had arranged that, he told me, because after testifying against Calhoun, it was dangerous for him to be anywhere else. He was very nervous about who he came into contact with. If a new inmate came in, Baxter would go to his own cell and have himself locked. He talked to me like I was some kind of leaning block, like he needed to get his troubles off his chest.
“He and Iello had stumbled into this bar, he told me, and these people had already been shot up. They began robbing the dead, he told me, Iello going through Mrs. Shane’s handbag. That was how they got involved, he told me. Then he said he had seen Iello pitch a gun into the river—but whether this was right after the murders, or long after, he didn’t tell me.”
“Did Baxter tell you he had seen Calhoun after he had left that bar?”
“He’d seen nobody, he told me. All he wanted was to get the hell out of there.”
“Is your recollection of this clear?”
“Perfectly clear. ‘Do it our way,’ he said De Vivani told him, ‘and you make the reward money and the street, both. Do it the other way and we really stick it to you.’”
“Did Baxter tell you he concocted the whole story as he told it on the stand?”
“He told me that that story was made up between De Vivani and Iello. He was just there, that was all, Baxter said.”
“Would you like to be of help to Calhoun?”
“I’d like to see the man get a fair shake, that’s all. The way Baxter explained things, there’s no way Calhoun could be. guilty. No way. I was locked next cell to his when he got the news that the New Jersey Supreme Court upheld the verdict in the first trial, and the way he took it convinced me he is not the man who committed the murders.”
“How did he take it?”
“He went clear out of his gourd. Simply raved for four full days. A couple of Black Muslims came up and stood guard at his cell to keep the P.B.A. people from moving him to Vroom City. We wondered would he ever come out of it. I listened all the while his mind was at large, raging and raving. Not once did he so much as mention the Melody Bar and Grill, the names of the people murdered there, or the previous shooting at the Paradise.
“That was what convinced me he hadn’t been there. How could he have been there, and yet not recall it in a delirium? Calhoun took, to me, the truest type of lie-detector test right there: there is no way of lying when you’ve lost control of your mind, is there?”
“What kind of guy is Baxter outside the joint?”
“I never knew him well outside the joint. I know that, inside, he could stand up under some pressure. Iello was, to me, the weak one. Definitely the weak one. How they arranged things between themselves I have no idea. Baxter seemed to know what it must be like for Calhoun. He seemed to have some touch of feeling about Calhoun doing all that time.”
“Was Baxter lying to you or telling you the truth?”
“He had no reason to lie to me.”
“How many conversations about Calhoun did you have with him?”
“Quite a few. I listened because I didn’t want to blow the cigarettes and candy and stuff he kept bringing into the unit.”
“How much time have you spent in prison yourself?”
“Almost thirteen years.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Are you telling the truth?”
“I am.”
Hardee Haloways stopped by Jennifer Calhoun’s house, accompanied by a white man whom he did not introduce beyond mentioning his name: Kerrigan.
“I’ve been hanging around the Melody,” Kerrigan explained himself to Jennifer, “looking for Esteban Escortez.
I haven’t been able to find him.”
“Are you an attorney?” Jennifer asked.
“No. State investigator. I knew your husband before the shooting.”
“Bordentown,” Jennifer decided to let him know.
Kerrigan shook his head, No. Escortez had been released from Bordentown. “I know a bar in Fort Lee where he hangs out. But where he hangs out when he isn’t hanging out there, they won’t say.”
“Are you assigned to Ruby’s case?”
“It isn’t a case yet, Mrs. Calhoun. I just have a gut reaction, nothing more. I’ve got to have more than that for the state to get into it.”
Roddy Nims came in with Doc Lowry and his new light-heavy, Eddie Sykes of Dublin; then Max Epstein and Floyd Calhoun; then Don Kessler and his new bride.
Kerrigan was a man of quiet energy. Even while sitting still, his confident spirit lifted spirits around him. A feeling rose among these people that the world was starting to come right-side up once more. Somehow, people believed, when Kerrigan announced that he was in pursuit of recantations from both Baxter and Iello, that he was going to get them.
Both informers possessed a unique capacity for disappearing themselves. Whenever one of them was jailed, Kerrigan would show up immediately after his release; and no one would give him a clue.
The occasional anonymous phone call was the only encouraging aspect of his search. These came usually fast and hushed and Kerrigan was seldom home when they came. His mother would take them, but could never keep the caller on the line for long. These leads led Kerrigan nowhere. Then one came of just two words: “Bergen County.”
Kerrigan wheeled over to the Bergen County jail, found Iello there and arranged to talk to him.
Iello didn’t offer to shake hands. The county pants and jacket hung on him loosely. He’d lost weight.
“I got nothing to say to you, mister,” he assured Kerrigan. Had he had any choice, it was plain, he would have remained in his cell.
“At times he seemed to be listening a little,” Kerrigan told Jennifer, “other times he would just shut me out. It was like talking out of the window then. Only when I told him that the statute of limitations on perjury suits had run out on him, he perked up a little. I saw that this information, that he was now protected against suit by the state, had impressed him. ‘Think it over, Nick,’ I told him, ‘I’ll be back.’
“It was a week before I got back to him. This time he asked questions. He got scared when I told him Baxter was going to recant. He knew this would leave him holding the bag. Then I told him about Kessler’s interview. He hadn’t viewed it directly, but he knew about it. He had more to fear now, I told him, from street people than he had from the law. And I think he had.
“‘That goddamned De Vivani,’ I heard him say,” Kerrigan reported to Jennifer, “and I knew what he meant. I knew exactly what he meant. He meant that, although De Vivani had gotten him off various charges before, and had given him protection, too, he hadn’t done a thing for Nick Iello lately.
“Iello had assumed he had gained immunity from imprisonment, that he could now steal at will, and De Vivani would always be there to keep him out of jail. Now that goddamned De Vivani was no longer lifting a finger for him. There wasn’t anything more, it looked like, that De Vivani was going to do for Iello.
“‘He thinks,’ Iello told me, ‘he’s the chief dago. But if I once start talkin’ he’ll find he’s just one more wop.’”
Kerrigan talked to Iello again in the following week. Two days later, and just out of jail, Iello phoned Kerrigan that he was ready to sign a statement that he had perjured himself in identifying Ruby Calhoun.
“I recognize now that I made a grave mistake about Ruby Calhoun,” the statement read. “I realize now that, at the time of the trial, I identified the wrong person. I spoke in a moment of fear and instantly regretted it. I was under constant pressure and was confused at the time. The pressure came from the prosecutor’s office and from the police. The police suggested to me constantly that it was Ruby Calhoun I had seen. If I didn’t testify that it was Calhoun, they’d put me in jail for not testifying, they said.
“Then they were talking about the ten thousand-dollar reward; I told them I wasn’t sure that I wanted to do this and they told me I’m going to do it whether I want to or not.”
Kerrigan dropped in on De Vivani without an appointment. De Vivani didn’t mind people dropping in. If he was occupied he ignored them; if he was unoccupied he was pleased to have company. De Vivani was not a hard man to get along with.
He was over six feet and put together solidly: tough cop. Yet he was not as tough as he appeared. When he saw a chance to give some prisoner a break, he gave it. De Vivani was not a mean man.
“A friend of Ruby Calhoun’s is a friend of mine,” he greeted Kerrigan, “coffee?”
“Ruby was the best middleweight in the world for a while,” Kerrigan made conversation, blowing on the coffee in the paper cup, “but who I want to talk to you about is Vince Le Forti.”
“That poor sonofabitch.” De Vivani laughed wryly. “He was committed and released, then the black kids began beating him up on the street. He couldn’t go down to the corner without getting slugged. So he had himself recommitted, voluntarily. He’s at Marlboro now.”
Kerrigan was only half-listening. He was casing De Vivani’s office with an investigator’s eye and Kerrigan had an extremely shrewd eye. He took in every drawer of both big desks. He studied the files without touching them.
“How’d he get out in the first place?” Kerrigan asked about Le Forti, just to feign interest. He was eliminating the files, in his mind, where the tape could not be.
“Vince had a smart lawyer,” De Vivani answered.
A black officer came in holding an envelope up to De Vivani’s view.
De Vivani nodded. From the corner of his eye, Kerrigan observed the officer pull out the middle drawer of the big desk and deposit the envelope. “Did they beat him up bad?” he asked De Vivani.
There was no beating victim upon earth which interested him less than Vincent Le Forti.
“The first time they hospitalized him for a week. They seemed to let up on him, just a little, after that. All they do is punch him out until he’s unconscious. Vince was always crocky, of course. Now he’s really punchy. We can’t let him carry a gun like we used to. He’d mow down anything he saw that was black, even if it were a cow.”
“I knew he had a sheet before he shot old man Haloways,” Kerrigan told the detective, “What was that about?”
De Vivani shook his head, No. “A public investigator ought to know better than to ask a police officer a question like that,” he reproached Kerrigan. Officer Motley appeared in the doorway and gestured to De Vivani. He rose and talked to Motley, low-key, just beyond the door. Kerrigan sat tight. Then heard their footsteps fading down the narrow hall.
He went directly to the middle drawer, ran his fingers down the file to “Iello,” yanked it, put it in the briefcase, locked it and returned to his chair opposite De Vivani’s.
When De Vivani returned, ten minutes later, Kerrigan was at ease. He had what he’d come for.
De Vivani was grinning.
“Had to pull a couple of Puerto Ricans apart,” he explained, “over a woman, of course. It’s always over a woman. Good thing we took their knives off them or they’d both be dead or in the hospital. They don’t fight like us, you know.”
“How do they fight?”
“They pull hair, go for the eyes with the fingernails. Like women. More coffee?”
“No thanks,” Kerrigan extended his hand. “Thanks for the information on Le Forti, Vince.”
“Always pleased to help an old enemy,” De Vivani assured Kerrigan. Kerrigan took care not to walk hurriedly to the door.
He didn’t hear the tape until he got to the recorder in his office. He was alone when he put it on. At its first sound Kerrigan knew he’d had a lucky day.
“After you’ve read your st
atement over,” Kerrigan warned Iello, “and have made any changes you feel are necessary, I’ll get it notarized and have you swear that everything in it is true, so help you God.”
“So help me God,” Iello agreed.
Iello had agreed.
STATE OF NEW JERSEY AFFIDAVIT
COUNTY OF HUDSON June 15, 1974
I, Nicholas Iello, of full age and of sound mind, upon my oath do swear that the following is a complete and true statement which I give to State Investigator Barney Kerrigan for the purpose of making sure that the truth is told.
On the morning of June 17,1966, Kenneth Kelley drove me and Dexter Baxter to the Apex Supply Company. Baxter went to work on the company’s back door and I walked into the Melody Bar and Grill while he was trying to force the door.
I was sitting inside having a beer when a colored broad walked into the bar then walked out. Right after that everything went down.
Right after the colored broad left a black man came in the front entrance and fired five shots into the bar. I was sitting next to this broad who wound up with three bullets in her. I heard her say, “Oh No, My God, Oh No.” I believe I might have used that broad to get out of the bar. She was more or less a shield for me.
Baxter never seen anything. He wasn’t around there when things were going down. I believe the colored broad who came in earlier was involved.
I never told the cops I was in the bar at the time of the shooting because I didn’t want to get involved.
I am willing to take a lie-detector test on everything I have said in this statement because it is the truth, so help me God.
(signed) Nicholas P. Iello
“Baxter dear,” Mother Baxter insisted on filling Baxter in after supper, “your parole officer dropped by this afternoon. He was most polite. He asked whether you had found work. I told him you were looking and looking, every day.”
Baxter had come out of prison with nothing more to show he had aged than a gray streak in his brown mop. He was a tall, pale youth who would have been passably good-looking had it not been for the look of apprehension in his eyes: like that of a cat with one paw raised ready to scamper. Everything Baxter had ever gotten in his life had been on the scamper. Snatch and run was how he made it. Local police had nicknamed him Rabbit Baxter.
The Devil's Stocking Page 17
