The Devil's Stocking

by Nelson Algren

  IELLO: Baxter and myself, we were gonna do a B and E on this plant. Dex says I’ll go in and you stay on the corner and watch for police. After a while I walked across the street, there’s a soda machine there. I was drinking soda and I seen a white car come this way. I thought it was a Pontiac or a Chevy, I didn’t take a close look. So Baxter says to me, Who was that, so I says, just some fool nigger cruising around. I said that because the guy driving looked at me as he passed, just glanced. I seen a kind of brown hat, I think there might have been somebody in the back seat. I seen a dark figure there. Then I walked all the way down Garfield Boulevard.

  Down there they got trucks and stuff. I was lookin’ at a couple of pickup trucks they got there. They had a telephone number on them where you call if you want to get hold of the owner. I walked all the way back and talked to Dexter. What’s the matter, I ask him. I can’t get in, he tells me.

  So I told him I only got four cigarettes left, I’m gonna walk down for a fresh pack. You want anything? He says, No, he don’t want nothing, do what you want. I says I only got four left. He says, get yourself some more, stop bothering me for God’s sake. So I walk down to the bar as much for the hell of it as anything. Then I heard like two shots. I stopped and lit a cigarette. I thought they were shots because I didn’t think the Melody had any entertainment. Then I noticed a white car parked about three feet from the curb facing Jefferson.

  DE VIVANI: You thought it was the same white car you had seen earlier?

  IELLO: The same.

  DE VIVANI: Were you later shown photographs of the driver?

  IELLO: Let me finish. I thought it was Ruby Calhoun.

  DE VIVANI: I now show you a photograph of Ruby Calhoun. The face appears light because of the photo.

  IELLO: It’s possible. I’m not completely sure.

  DE VIVANI: Do you know the man when you see him? Had you seen him before?

  IELLO: I know Ruby Calhoun. I knew it was him unless he got a twin brother. You see, when the police came back with him he was dressed the same way and everything. I knew it had to be him, the same man I’d seen coming around that corner. When I seen him first he was wearing a light jacket, sports type, salt-and-pepper pattern.

  DE VIVANI: What corner?

  IELLO: The tavern corner. He was coming out as I went in.

  DE VIVANI: What did you do then?

  IELLO: I went inside.

  DE VIVANI: Now let me say this, Nick. You don’t have to mention anything that happened inside that bar that might incriminate you. You can tell me everything else. Now you know I have a suspicion. I firmly believe that this man with the gun went there purely for the motive of revenge because there’d been a shooting, a few hours earlier, of a black man by a white, only a few blocks away. I firmly believe that this man with the gun did not go anywhere near the cash register. All he was thinking of was getting even. Don’t tell me anything that might incriminate you.

  IELLO: I don’t intend to incriminate myself into anything. Are we going to go through that whole bar scene again?

  DE VIVANI: We don’t have to go into detail. I want to know exactly what happened when you went into the Melody Bar and Grill.

  IELLO: Exactly?

  DE VIVANI: Of course. No, not exactly. You can eliminate certain phases. Was it true you went to the woman on the floor?

  IELLO: Yeah. She, uh, there was a man sitting at the bar, but I could see he was like, uh, he didn’t know was he coming or going. Before I had a chance to say anything, he stood up and staggered off. Where the hell he staggered to I have no idea.

  DE VIVANI: Did anyone else appear in the tavern?

  IELLO: The girl. I said, “You better stay outside.” She didn’t stay outside. She walked into the bar an’, uh, fuckin’ screams. She went out.

  DE VIVANI: Did you telephone the police?

  IELLO: Yeah. I looked in my pockets for change. I didn’t have one fuckin’ dime. I had some quarters. I didn’t have no dimes. I went behind the bar and I seen the money been thrown around and, uh, a guy was twisted up back there. I knew he was dead. So, uh, I went to the cash register. There was money layin’ on the floor. So I, uh, took out a dime. That was all I took. Just a dime. Then I stand there lookin’ at the rest of it, and I took a two-bit piece. Just a two-bit piece. Then I look again and this time I took a couple singles, and then a couple more singles, and then a ten-spot, and that was all I took.

  DE VIVANI: If that’s the truth, stay with it.

  IELLO: That’s the truth.

  DE VIVANI: Isn’t it possible that, in your hurry, you dropped money onto the floor?

  IELLO: No, the money was already on the floor. I’ll tell it like it was. When I came around the bar the register was open. Money was laying all over the floor. I knew that there was no robbery but I said to myself, Should I clean the fuckin’ place out? On second thought I said, Fuck it, I’ll take a little spendin’ money is all, a little pin money. I put a few bills in my pocket then like I told you. I took it outside and said to Baxter, Here.

  DE VIVANI: Where was Baxter?

  IELLO: Still working on that goddamned door. He couldn’t get it open. I told him, “Dex, there’s been a shooting down at the bar. You better split because there’s gonna be cops all over this place. I gotta stay because when I came down here a broad was in a window and seen me. If I take off they’ll say I was involved.” “Well,” Dex tells me, “don’t do that. ’’?“Look, man,” I tell him, “get the fuck out of there. Just go, man, go. For your own sake—go!” “Well,” he tells me, “I might as well wait around for you.” “Don’t wait for me, Dex. I’m in it. You are not. Save your hide, man—go!There’s been a shooting!” All he says is, “Did you see the car?” I tell him again—“Are you going to go or not?” “Iello,” he asks me, “who do you think was in that car?” “I think it was Ruby Calhoun was in that car,” I tell him. “Listen, man, why don’t you just go?” “That’s who I think it was, too,” he tells me. I could not get him to move. Not one solitary inch. All he says is, “What is this?” And I tell him again, “Take the fuckin’ money and go!go!go!Man, go!”

  DE VIVANI: You never took an exact account of this money?

  IELLO: I’m levellin’ with you, it could not have been much. Then I figure if I call the police maybe they’ll get there and save somebody’s life. I called the operator and said, “Everybody is dead in here. I’m the only one alive. Give me the police.” I don’t think she believed me ’cause she asked me what street I was on. I’d been in that tavern before but I couldn’t think what street, I was a little fucked up myself. I went out the front door and looked to see what street. There’s a street sign on the corner but I didn’t notice it. I went back inside and told the operator, How do I know what street, it’s the Melody Bar and Grill and there’s dead people all over the place—look it up. So she says all right, I’ll look it up.

  DE VIVANI: How was it that when the police brought Calhoun back, you did not identify him immediately?

  IELLO: I was scared to do that. See, uh, I’m no fuckin’ good and I been in a lot of jails, and everybody is out idolizin’ Calhoun. If anything should happen, how I figured, I’d be provoked and harassed every time I walk down the fuckin’ street.

  DE VIVANI: Have you been harassed by anyone since that time or warned to keep your mouth shut?

  IELLO: I told Officer Mooney about the day I got cut loose I went into the R and R Grill and there was a colored girl and a redheaded colored man setting there. I know a good many people momentarily, so I said “Hi!” and the girl said, “You were mixed up in that Melody Bar and Grill thing.” So me like a fuckin’ jerk I say, “Yeah.” So the guy says, “You know who this is?” and he pointed to the girl. I says, “No.” “This is Ruby Calhoun’s girl friend,” he tells me. I figured right then it was time to split. I turned around and walked the fuck out.

  DE VIVANI: Were you given warning not to talk to the police by either of these people?

  IELLO: Not in so many words. But wh
at I took it to mean, when I was told this was Calhoun’s girl friend, was I’d better not mention Calhoun to the cops. Look, in my own mind I know you can’t do a thing about that money from the register. No matter what happens, you’re going to bring me to court whether I fuckin’ lie or tell the truth. So why shouldn’t this Calhoun pay for a fuckin’ crime? This was me, I’d be hung long ago.

  DE VIVANI: There are laws of men and laws of God, Nick. If Calhoun did this he not only violated the laws of man, he also violated the law of God which says, Thou Shalt Not Kill.

  IELLO: I know that’s right.

  DE VIVANI: There’s people innocently drinking beer and minding their own business …

  (Tape cuts off here.)

  “Was there any time,” Epstein continued to question De Vivani, “when Baxter and Iello were together long enough to compare statements?”

  “There was no contact beyond the men greeting each other. After Iello had made his statement I spoke to Baxter. ‘I understand you want to give us a statement?’ ‘Lieutenant,’ he answered me, ‘do you know how long I’d last out in population if it ever got out I gave you a statement?’

  “‘I’ll tell you this much,’ I told him then, ‘first of all, we’ve already gone before a court in order to have you remanded here. Secondly, I guarantee you protection around the clock.’ Then I went back in and we had coffee while he was reading the statement. Iello took longer than Baxter. He’d make changes and initial the statement to one side after he had read it. Then we brought Baxter back in.”

  “How did you first meet Baxter, lieutenant?”

  “I was in the detective bureau, on another matter, when an officer told me, ‘Baxter wants to talk too.’ The following morning he escaped. He walked out of the visiting room, away from his sister, went down to the river and swam across it. We didn’t pursue him. Just waited on the other side and brought him back soaking wet. Then he got mad at all of us and tells us we can all go to hell including his sister. What he’s bringing in his sister for I have no idea. His big fear was of being locked with friends of Calhoun. I advised all county detectives to do whatever they could to protect him.

  “All Iello had to do was to walk down to the corner mailbox and there would be charges. Then the receptionist would ring me and say, ‘Your adopted son is here, lieutenant.’ ‘You would do well to lay off booze, Iello,’ I tried telling him. ‘Every time you drink you come on like a Comanche.’ When I’d ask him what he wanted from me he’d give me an ultimatum: ‘Either you get me out of this fix or I’m going to tell them New York newspaper bums what they’re after me to tell them.’

  “I tried to warn him not to tell me about taking money from the register but he blurts it out anyhow—‘I took the money’—all the same.”

  “Did you threaten to get him a hundred years?”

  “Certainly not. But when he was in the Hudson County jail I got a hurry-up call from him. When I asked him why he’d sent for me he said, ‘Them bums threw ammonia on me.’ ‘Why don’t you go to work, Iello?’ was all I had to say to that. When I got back my phone was ringing: Iello’s father. ‘You’ve let my boy down,’ he tells me. ‘Now you have got to be putting me on,’ I told the old man, ‘I’ve done more for him than you have done as his father. Every time he would break up your furniture and you’d send for me to quiet him down. Mister, you have got to have one crazy hell of a nerve, tell me now how I’m letting him down. You must be as nutty as he is. Who did that little alley fink of yours ever know that he didn’t let down? I can only tell you one thing, Mr. Iello. Kindly go fuck yourself.’ Then I hung up.”

  “It is our hope,” one of De Vivani’s notes read, “that the Morris County sentence will be concurrent with the Union County sentence and that the same thing happens in your county.”

  Epstein then asked De Vivani, “Do you consider this some sort of promise?”

  “I do.”

  “Did you ever tell prosecutor Scott you had made such a statement?”

  “Never.”

  “Was Mr. Raymond furnished with a copy of Iello’s testimony?”

  “I do not believe so.”

  “You wanted to follow through on your promises to Iello and Baxter, did you not?”

  “To the best of my ability.”

  “Baxter was extremely hesitant,” Sergeant Mooney recalled of his interview with Baxter. “I then asked the guard to leave the room so that Baxter might speak more freely. He then told us that the man he had in mind was Ruby Calhoun. We assured him we would try to get him yanked out of the place as soon as we got back.”

  “Had the jury been apprised of the true facts,” Epstein advised the court, “it might well have concluded that Baxter had fabricated testimony in order to curry favor from the state.

  “Lieutenant De Vivani is a professional detective who knows,” Epstein summed up the lieutenant’s testimony, “that it is the tiny particulars that make a case and not the direct interrogations, and not the flat statements, and not the open no-yes answers. This is attributable to training and skill. De Vivani is…”

  “All right,” Judge Turner interrupted, “he’s not trying for promotion here. He is an able man doing his job, that’s all.”

  “Able?” Epstein countered bitterly. “I know he is able. I know how able. Very able. He is the clever guy who tricks the little guys who don’t know the tricks. Calhoun didn’t even know what the lieutenant was talking about, but the lieutenant knew. Calhoun was not told he could remain silent. He wasn’t told that what he said might be used against him. He was not charged with anything but he was charged all the same. He was not given a single warning, not a single cautionary word, as he surely would have been had he been white.”

  “I don’t blame Calhoun for wanting to be free,” De Vivani interrupted Epstein, “but if I were responsible for any man spending a single night in a cell for a crime he had not committed, I could not live with myself.”

  “Lieutenant De Vivani,” Scott immediately supported the lieutenant, “told Mr. Calhoun that he was questioning him in connection with the shooting at the Melody. Further, Lieutenant De Vivani advised Mr. Calhoun that he could answer his questions or not as he wished, and that whatever he said might be used against him in court. He was cut short by Calhoun when Calhoun told him, ‘I don’t need a lawyer, I use my fists, not guns.’”

  “When the prosecution,” Epstein explained, “rather than a jury, screens evidence, we know something has gone wrong; the sanctity of the jury verdict has been violated. The prosecutor is required to disclose any evidence which might prove helpful to the defense. Should this plea for disclosure be upheld, rights of defendants to inspect police records will be greatly enhanced.”

  Epstein then presented affidavits to the court, from a dozen businessmen, offering Calhoun employment.

  Vincent De Vivani, a corrupted racist, arrogant, contemptuous and cunning, was the living epitome of what had gone wrong with justice in New Jersey.

  That, at any rate, was the implication made daily by the New York City TV establishment. New Jersey justice no longer existed, was the story; and De Vivani was its most representative voice.

  Celebrities of the films and the stage, each with a film or a play to plug, fighters and soccer players and everyone in the public eye who was dependent upon TV and radio, jostled one another for the chance to denounce De Vivani as a bigot.

  De Vivani made no reply. Either he didn’t read the papers, or look at TV. Was it possible he didn’t care?

  Not even when TV people, irritated by his refusal to sit stage center on a talk show (while being derided on both sides by famous people) employed a blow-up of him looking ominous, did he deny any charge.

  Justice, it now became plain, could never miscarry in New York as it had in New Jersey vs. Calhoun. Not only were New York policemen more efficient than New Jersey cops, but they were more compassionate to the common man as well. New York judges and New York lawyers, it further developed, were—compared to those in New Jersey�
��compassionate and just. The glow of utter righteousness, which filters so lovingly through stained glass upon a pulpit, began to shine just as lovingly about the heads of New York TV talkers.

  The TV talkers continued to exploit the public fear of a bad guy wearing an officer’s badge. De Vivani began appearing ominous and threatening. The talkers left the impression that De Vivani and his goons might come through the Lincoln Tunnel any night.

  New Yorkers have always looked down, from their million-windowed metropolis, upon those two-story houses across the river. They smile when they say “New Jersey” as though being told, “I’m off the farm.” They speak of New Jerseyans as clam diggers. A New Jerseyan had always appeared clownish to the New Yorker, now he also looked like a hoodlum. The TV talkers put down the New Jersey police, the New Jersey courts and the New Jersey politicians day after day.

  Neither the NAACP nor the Southern Christian Leadership Conference would touch New Jersey vs. Calhoun in the years when his support came from white law-and-order New Jerseyans, many of them in enforcement, some merely old-time fight fans. Now both organizations, sensing the political value of supporting Calhoun, came in swinging both fists.

  The New York talkers never mentioned, even once, the name of the clam digger who had stuck by Calhoun from the beginning and had built up his case independent of any organization: Barney Kerrigan.

  Bob Dylan, whose poverty of spirit could be sensed in the emptiness of his voice, slapped a few words together, called it a lyric and sang it to a packed house in Madison Square:

  Jedge said you crazy nigger

  Woo-woo

  You done pulled the trigger

  Woo-woo…

  and when he entitled this wheezing whinny “Calhoun” a million liberals bought it before he could get to the bank. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference announced it would construct a tent city in Trenton which it would sustain until Ruby Calhoun was a free man.