The Devil's Stocking

by Nelson Algren

  “Now come off that,” Uriah reproached Truman, “about liking people without money. How many poor people mix with the rich aboard that luxury yacht you sail to the isles of Greece?”

  “That luxury yacht isn’t mine, Uriah. It belongs to the Whaleys. I just go along for the ride. It’s the quickest way of getting to Greece, that’s all. I don’t organize the guest list. If I did I’d invite your wife.”

  “She wouldn’t accept, Truman.”

  “On the contrary, she already asked if she could come along.”

  “But what do you give the Whaleys in return?”

  “Conversation. Just conversation. Better conversation, indeed, than this one you and I are having.”

  “Sure you do. Sure you do. You accepted the Whaley’s hospitality and then you wrote about them critically. Was that fair, Truman? Was that fair?”

  “Who are the Whaleys?” Dovie-Jean asked Fortune.

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Writing isn’t a matter of being fair, Uriah,” Truman assured him. “If I hadn’t’ve written as I did you’d now be charging me with whitewashing in return for a yacht trip. Anyhow, I didn’t make them out to be nearly so vile as you’re now implying I am: an alcoholic, an addict, an irresponsible ingrate, a narcissist—anything for a cheap thrill.”

  “What’s a narcist, Fortune?”

  “Somebody who looks in a mirror all day, can’t get enough of himself.”

  “Why are you so angry, Truman?” Uriah asked.

  “I’m not in the least angry. I knew before I came on your show how you operate. And I really don’t mind too much. After all, how can you hurt me?”

  “You’re telling me I don’t respect you, Truman. That isn’t true. I love you and respect you.”

  “I doubt you love anybody, Uriah. I’m sure you respect nobody. However, we can still be friends so long as you don’t mind my loving your wife.”

  Fortune switched the program off.

  “What did you switch it off for, honey?”

  “There’s nothing on the air,” Fortune assured her.

  “What your trouble is,” Fortune told Dovie-Jean the following morning, “is no damned business of mine. But if you want to split the rent on this joint, you’d be welcome.”

  “I’d love it, Fortune,” Dovie-Jean told her, “but all I got in the handbag is a couple of fifties. When that’s gone, I don’t know. I can’t go back to Playmates—he’ll be looking for me there. I was working at another joint in my week off, on Eighth. But I sure can’t go back there.”

  “Stick around,” Fortune urged her, “you can keep house. Can you cook?”

  “Simple things, southern style.”

  Fortune lived three stories up in one of those airless nineteenth-century tenements shadowed by multitudes who’d been born in these narrow rooms, had climbed these narrow stairs for a lifetime and had died in these small rooms, leaving for remembrance only the odor of cabbage soup up and down the stair.

  By morning now, Dovie-Jean walked past packs of instant noodles wrapped in cellophane, and metal tubs holding staring bloody heads of enormous fish; lacquer ware, plastic flowers, and bitter melons would be stacked along the walks.

  Before the morning had well begun uptown, it was half over on Mott Street and down Doyers. Purple yams, white radishes, taro roots, fuzzy squash, bokchoy leaves, winter melons, cabbages, garlic, ginger root, scallions and lotus root had been unpacked.

  By noon the bustle would die down; an air of somnolence came into her open window above the street. Then, half-sleeping, Dovie-Jean would envision a dim clownish face and hear, far off, a hoarse voice singing:

  Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends,

  Mm, I’m gonna try with a little help from my friends.

  Oh, I get high with a little help from my friends,

  Yes, I get by with a little help from my friends,

  With a little help from my friends.

  9

  Second

  Trial

  The jury looked better, to Max Epstein, than the original jury had looked to Ben Raymond. The first had been an all-white jury. The present one impaneled six white men, three white women, an elderly black man, an elderly black woman and a young black man.

  Scott built his prosecution upon Violet Vance’s identification of the white getaway car, then expanded the case in order to oppose what he termed “the threat of the event-shaping Madison Avenue boys,” as he designated New York City’s media people who had conducted a campaign of contempt for the New Jersey judiciary, the New Jersey police and, in general, the civilization of New Jersey for many months. He made racial fear a motive of the murders.

  Oritano permitted Scott to list all the actors, writers, filmmakers, publishers, studio executives and advertisers who had served on Calhoun’s New York City committee. Scott’s strongest weapon was the backlash aroused in New Jersey by the New York media.

  “As much as I would like to say that the killings did not happen out of revenge,” Scott contended, “revenge was the reason they happened all the same.”

  Max Epstein possessed a disdainful personality and he played it directly into Scott’s hands. He kept his back to the jury except for brief occasions when he glanced over his shoulder, as much as to say: “schmucks. ’’Scott sat back and watched Epstein destroying his own case.

  Neither Scott nor Epstein were aware that Nick Iello had recanted his recantation. Therefore Scott fought to keep him off the stand and Epstein fought to keep him on.

  De Vivani had it in hand, and he waited his moment. While he waited he sat and watched the lawyers going at one another like two boxers unaware that each is wearing the other’s trunks.

  De Vivani cared no more for the prosecution lawyers than he did for the New York Jews of the defense. Personally, he liked Calhoun and respected him; but he had no respect for lawyers at all. He sat at the back of the courtroom listening to Scott pleading, in the jury’s absence, to keep the recantation off the stand.

  “This man has revealed himself to be a perjuror,” Scott was advising the judge. “Whether Iello had been lying in his original identification of Calhoun or whether he had been lying in his recantation, makes no difference. The man is a liar under oath, and if he is permitted to take this stand it will be a mockery of the jury system.”

  “The credibility of the witness is not the basis, under law, by which identification might be withheld from a jury,” Judge Oritano ruled. “The only relevant issue here is whether there have been improper suggestions from the police. This witness’s constitutional right to due process has not therefore been violated.”

  Iello would be permitted to testify.

  Epstein, with Iello’s recantation in hand, was quietly jubilant. The case, he sensed, was as good as over and he whispered something to Calhoun. “For the first time since this trial began,” the press took note, “Calhoun smiled.”

  Once, while Epstein was giving the judge a long, circuitous argument, Oritano rose and walked off the bench into his chambers.

  “Judge!” Epstein called after him. “Judge! I don’t like it when you walk off in the middle of a sentence!”

  “Too bad,” everyone in the courtroom heard Oritano’s rumble from somewhere offstage. “Too, too damned bad.”

  “Was it a two-inch or a five-inch taillight?” Epstein demanded to know of Violet Vance, as if implying that any witness not carrying a tape measure at 2 A.M. must be guilty of complicity.

  The witness had been uncertain in her original identification. “It was like the same car,” she had testified.

  “I don’t know, Mr. Epstein,” she now answered, “all I know is that the car I seen leaving and the car I seen returning was the same car.” And burst into tears. “I didn’t do anything, Mr. Epstein.”

  She had done more than she realized. She had greatly strengthened the prosecution’s charge that it was the same car. Epstein had frightened her into so stating.

  Out of the jury’s presence
, Scott then requested that the court allow him to introduce an unprecedented motive: racial revenge. When Oritano permitted Scott to use it, Epstein charged Oritano openly with “turning this trial into a racial nightmare.”

  Scott objected and was sustained. De Vivani covered his mouth with his right hand. Epstein repeated the charge. De Vivani covered his mouth with his left hand. Scott objected again and was again sustained. De Vivani bowed his head forward and appeared to be choking. Epstein persisted.

  “Sit down Mr. Epstein,” the judge finally instructed him in a bored tone, “sit down.”

  There was no mistaking the threat behind the instruction. Epstein went to his table waggling his head in personal outrage.

  “Don’t waggle your head, Mr. Epstein,” the judge cautioned him.

  Epstein sat down and ruffled his papers angrily.

  “Don’t ruffle your papers, Mr. Epstein.”

  De Vivani rose and conducted a one-minute check, from a standing position, upon Max Epstein. He did not waggle. Neither did he ruffle.

  The trial was not a racial nightmare. There was simply no way of keeping race out of the jury’s consciousness. Four whites and one black had been murdered, or had died, since June 17, 1966. One white man had gone to prison for killing a black. A black man was now, for the second time, on trial for his life for the killings of three whites. To conduct such a trial without racial feeling was not humanly possible.

  The boredom of the trial was suddenly relieved by the appearance of two clowns.

  One was a twenty-eight-year-old New Jerseyan named Joe Hauser. Hauser wore pants of royal blue, a light blue-and-white plaid jacket and a navy-blue lattice tie. He had dressed for the occasion and was obviously enormously pleased with himself. He knew that he had the admiration of everyone in court through his mere appearance. He put one leg up as though inviting viewers to admire the beauty of his knee.

  The other looked like something left over from Haight-Ashbury. He wore his hair long, had a single earring and wore a sheepskin and hadn’t shaved for days. His name was Sigorski.

  “I never put a word into Nick Iello’s mouth,” Hauser assured the court the moment he got on the witness stand, before being asked anything.

  “What is your trade, Mr. Hauser?” Epstein asked him.

  “Furniture dealer.”

  “What is your relationship to Mr. Iello?”

  “We planned to make a film. I was his agent. One of his agents. The other was Sigorski.”

  “Who was Sigorski?”

  “Iello’s other agent.”

  “I mean, what was his trade?”

  Hauser grinned as at some private joke. “Sigorski? That bum never worked a day in his life.”

  “Since your own trade is that of dealing in furniture, and Mr. Sigorski is unemployed, how did you plan to make a film?”

  “I can sell a chair without knowing how to make a chair, can’t I? Fact is we were going to do a book too. I don’t how to write a book either. It don’t mean I can’t run a tape recorder though.”

  “You made tapes then?”

  “Hours of them.”

  “With Mr. Iello?”

  “Iello is from the basement. Every tape he’s telling us a different story.”

  “With so many versions of the story,” Epstein asked him, “what made you think you’d found the true one?”

  “With so many versions,” Hauser replied complacently, “one of them was bound to be the truth.”

  Iello’s jacket strained across his chest when he mounted the witness chair. He was chewing gum or candy.

  “Do you remember being involved in other crimes, Mr. Iello,” Scott began on him, “before your involvement in the present one?”

  “It’s possible,” Iello conceded carelessly, “I don’t recall at the moment. If I did, I wasn’t arrested.”

  “You’ve never been arrested, Mr. Iello?”

  “Of course I’ve been arrested. Many times. I’m a thief. I’m a professional thief. I make my living as a thief. When I get caught I go to jail. I serve my time, whatever they hand out. When I get out I go back to thieving. Thieving is my trade. I thought you meant was I arrested in connection with the present case. I’ve never been arrested in relation to the present case, all I meant.”

  “Then it is safe to say that there are hundreds of crimes for which you have never been arrested?”

  “I object,” Epstein interrupted. “Is Mr. Scott merely playing to the audience now? Is he trying to entertain us at the witness’s expense? Does Mr. Scott want, seriously, to try this case or not? The question he is putting to the witness is ridiculous, your honor.”

  “The question is objectionable,” the judge agreed. “If Mr. Scott chooses to waste our good time, as well as his own, with such questions, I’ll permit him. You do have proof, Mr. Scott, that this witness has committed hundreds of crimes for which he has never been arrested?”

  “Your honor, have you listened to the tapes he made with his agents? The material in any one of them is staggering—staggering. …

  De Vivani, at the rear of the courtroom, closed his eyes at the farce being conducted up front. The sight of a state’s attorney trying to trap a witness, whom he regarded as having turned hostile, but one who would, shortly, switch to Scotts own side, gave the detective a pang of secret pleasure.

  “Will you answer my question?” Scott persisted.

  “You’ll have to repeat it. I forgot it.”

  “Are there not hundreds of crimes you have committed for which, sir, you have never been arrested?”

  “Objection,” Epstein protested. “How is this relevant, your honor? We are now asking Mr. Iello if he wishes to incriminate himself in crimes totally unconnected with the one which this trial is about.”

  “I’m not going to permit him to go beyond that night,” Oritano assured Epstein.

  “He said ‘hundreds of crimes,’ sir,” Epstein reminded the court. “Is Mr. Scott talking about hundreds of crimes committed on the night of June sixteenth, nineteen sixty-six; or crimes committed on other nights? I ask the counsel to be specific. This is a court of law, not a cocktail bar for exchange of hearsay.”

  “Counsel for the witness is agreed,” Oritano agreed good-naturedly, “that we should use our sound and good judgment in attempting to save time.”

  “Do you remember,” Scott still addressed Iello, “saying that, on the night in question, you were all fucked up,’ to use your own phrase?”

  “I wasn’t messed up on alcohol or on pills, if that’s what you mean,” Iello replied.

  “You were not so messed up that you did not realize it would be an excellent opportunity to rob a cash register?”

  “Mister Scott,” Iello said wearily, shifting his body in the witness chair, “over and over I have admitted your charge and I admit it again. Yes, yes, yes, I took money from the register of the Melody Bar and Grill. I ran down the street with it. I handed it to Dexter Baxter. I ran back to the tavern. I called the telephone operator. I waited for the cops. I went to the station.”

  “I see that, after all, you don’t have memory problems,” Scott complimented the witness.

  “My memory is perfectly clear. It was very quiet in the bar. There was broken glass, a beer bottle smashed on the floor. There was a man slumped over the bar like sleeping. There was another man flopping around with the blood on his face. There was a woman lying on the floor. The man with the blood on his face began mumbling.”

  “You told Assemblyman Rawlings you had seen a colored male,” Scott asked, “wearing shades and a sports jacket, five foot eight inches in height, did you not?”

  “I did not swear everything exactly true to Rawlings. I had a reason for saying whatever it was I said to him at that time. Joe Hauser was right outside, we had rehearsed what I was going to say to Rawlings. I was looking to get even with Hudson County at that time. I had these two guys on my back who wanted a book. Some of the things I said to Rawlings were complete lies. They were said to
make an exciting book.”

  “Who were these two guys?”

  “Hauser and Sigorski. I was working for them at the time and they suggested a book. They said the actual story they couldn’t do anything with. They sent a letter to some guy Truman Capote. He was a writer, they were looking for a writer to write it.”

  Oritano swung about toward the witness, supporting his cheek upon his palm. This might be the first time, his attitude suggested, that he had had before him a witness who not merely identified himself as a liar and a thief, but proclaimed it. Iello revealed not the faintest trace of embarrassment.

  “Mr. Hauser made you say those things?” Scott asked.

  “I can’t say anyone made me,” Iello answered, “I could say we discussed them. Hauser said, ‘If you get in there and tell them what actually happened, forget it. Do the right thing and we got a good story we can sell to anybody.’ All the tapes were rehearsed with Hauser and Sigorski. It was why on the tape I said I never seen Calhoun. That made a better story, Hauser said, more mysterious-like.”

  “But that part was true—that you never saw Calhoun,” Epstein asked.

  “What was true? That I never seen Calhoun? Calhoun was in the white car when he passed me. Just like I told it to Lieutenant De Vivani. And when they brought the car back Calhoun was still in it.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say,” Epstein protested. “Your failure to identify Calhoun, as you swore in your recantation …”

  “Mr. Epstein, I just got through explaining: that was bunk. Pure bunk. The recantation was Joe Hauser’s idea, for the book. ‘Tell Kerrigan you were lying when you originally identified Calhoun,’ Hauser told me, ‘think of the publicity in that! And it’ll make you look good, too.’ Then I thought to myself: Look what it will make them stupid cops look like. Them that promised me so much then left me hanging …”

  “You don’t seriously expect us to believe what you’re telling us now, Mr. Iello?”