The Devil's Stocking

by Nelson Algren

  “Objection,” Scott switched fast to the witness’ side.

  “I don’t give a good goddamn whether you believe me or not, Mr. Epstein,” Iello assured the defense. “You asked me so I told you, that’s all.”

  “Your recantation,” Scott put in almost breathlessly, “is then a complete falsehood?”

  “Look,” Iello replied with the note of utter weariness returning to his voice, “look, we had a contract, they were supposedly my agents and they were in contact with different people in New York. They went over but I didn’t. I didn’t want to go way over there.

  “What Hauser had in mind was to start a big argument going on the tapes calling De Vivani every name in the book—it ain’t hard to get De Vivani hot you know—and then putting weight on him with that recantation play. Hauser said, ‘Good, now if we can get Newark involved in this, we get all the free publicity and who the hell cares who goes free or who doesn’t go free, we got a good book to sell. We got the story, them guys in New York got nothing, they got to come to us.’

  “That was how it started out. Then Sigorski comes to me and says, ‘What do we need Hauser for? We drop him and me and you split fifty-fifty.’ I said, ‘Okay by me.’ Then Hauser comes to me and says, ‘What do we need that stupid Polack for? We drop him and you and me split fifty-fifty.’ I says, ‘Okay by me.’

  “Then they get together and decide the one they really don’t need is me. So they go over to New York with the tapes and come back with so much money they’d bought new money clips. The day Hauser declared hisself bankrupt in New Jersey, he was shopping for a new Lincoln in New York and Sigorski was pricing a twelve-room house in Montauk. No, I don’t know where they got it but I’m sure they never used a gun.”

  “Have you no shame, Mr. Iello?” Epstein asked the witness.

  Iello chewed leisurely, studying the lawyer. After a while he shifted the wad in his cheek and asked quietly, “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  Epstein evaded the challenge. “Sir,” he asked, “are you trying to tell us that your recantation, which you swore on oath to be true, was actually false?”

  “Actually and absolutely, Mr. Epstein. There was not one line of truth in that recantation. The first story I told Lieutenant De Vivani was true.”

  Epstein, pale as ashes, started circling the courtroom and waggling his head. Everyone watched him wondering where he thought he was going. He himself didn’t know. Judge Oritano watched him with a flicker of sympathy. De Vivani watched with no sympathy at all. Finally Epstein turned back to the witness.

  “Mr. Iello, did you apply for a reward of twelve thousand dollars for your identification of Ruby Calhoun?”

  “I forgot about that years ago.”

  “Why were you applying for it then in nineteen seventy-four?”

  “To rattle Hudson County’s cage. I felt Hudson County had gave me the shaft. I was having a lot of problems. I was sick at the time. I came out of a hospital. These two guys kept telling me we can get quite a few dollars. You yourself were even calling me.”

  “Did you not swear, before Investigator Kerrigan, in an affidavit on October first, nineteen seventy-four?”

  “I was lying.”

  “You swore to this story in order to further your financial possibilities—is that what you’re telling us now?”

  “Now you’ve got it.”

  “No, mister, I have not got it,” Epstein’s voice reflected his rising anger. “You will now explain the statement you just made, to the effect that your recantation, the one sworn and notarized before Mr. Kerrigan, is untrue. If I’m not asking too much.”

  “Not at all. Don’t mind at all. I’ve had people after me, ever since that first trial, to get me to recant. One person after another, a newspaperman, a TV producer, a state investigator. Once three came in on me at once, when I was locked in the Bergen County jail. Kerrigan was one of them. I was ill and despondent. The newspaper dude offered me a job on his paper if I would recant. It would mean a lot to him, personally, he said, if I would. When I got out I’d go to see him and he’d take good care of me. ‘Between you and me, Berwyn,’ I told him, ‘the man who committed those murders was Ruby Calhoun.’ You know what he said? He said, ‘Jesus Christ, Nick, don’t ever let anyone hear you say that.’

  “The TV producer promised me a thousand bucks for a documentary about the murders. Then Kerrigan put it to me, ‘You need money, Nick?’ Who doesn’t need money? ‘What do you mean by “money”?’ ‘I can’t put it on you in here,’ he tells me, ‘but I can open an account for you to draw on as soon as you get out.’”

  “Your honor,” Scott came to life at last, “these men—this reporter, this producer, this investigator—are the worst kind of lying opportunists. They think that by labeling themselves ‘liberals’ they gain immunity from the law. This recantation of Iello’s was worked up at WNIT and calculated to get as high a rating as Kojak. Trial-by-television, your honor: Calhoun would be exonerated without benefit of jury. Rather, the viewing public would be his jury. Thumbs up, thumbs down.

  “What are our courts of law for, your honor? Leave us bring men to trial by media. Leave the public decide innocence or guilt. If a man is found guilty he can then be executed under TV lights, in prime time! Think of the sponsors ready to pay big money for that! If he is innocent he can sign a film contract and perform in nightclubs.

  “Your honor, I can understand why Mr. Iello would be tempted by the opportunity offered him by the New York media to be a TV hero, a man of stricken conscience finally redeemed by testifying for the man against whom he had once testified falsely. Barbra Streisand would be fine as the feminine lead. Carol Burnett would be even better.

  “Your honor, this producer, this reporter, this investigator seek nothing but their own aggrandizement and their own enrichment. They manufacture news and sell to the highest bidder. They pervert justice. Before this trial is over each and every one of them is going to be subpoenaed.”

  The crowded courtroom, until now in complete support of Calhoun, was shaken. In the uneasy silence that followed Scott’s address, one could feel the sand shifting under the feet of the defense.

  More than sand was shifting beneath Epstein’s feet. With Iello’s repudiation of his recantation, his whole case began collapsing.

  He had been cordial to Dovie-Jean Dawkins but had not considered her testimony vital to Calhoun’s defense. Now, that suddenly, she was all he had.

  And he had no idea how to find her. And find her fast.

  Hardee Haloways, watching him from a corner of the corridor, read Epstein’s anxiety when he was talking to Jennifer. He saw Jennifer shaking her head, No.

  Hardee approached her after Epstein had left her. Yes, he had been asking for Dovie-Jean but she had not been able to help him. “All I could tell him was I suppose she was in New York,” Jennifer informed Hardee. “She came out one weekend but she didn’t say where she was staying. Or what she was doing.”

  “I know what she was doing,” Hardee decided. “Did she come alone?”

  “No, she was with a little friend. A Chinese woman. I forget her name.” “Thank you,” Hardee told her, and walked away.

  Hardee Haloways drove his half-brother out to his new suburban home. Hardee had married and was as proud of his bride as he was of his new Peugeot. He’d sold the Paradise and was doing well in his law practice.

  After his wife had served drinks, and Hardee had tapped the ash out of his cigar, he studied Red a long minute.

  “How’s the girl making out?” he asked at last.

  “It’s what I come to see you about, Hardee,” Red told Hardee miserably. “I don’t know where she is. She took a powder last week. Well, a week and a half. Two weeks say.”

  No use, Red thought, going into that scene with Moonigan in the areaway.

  “What does the trial look like to you, Edward?” Hardee sounded Red out.

  “It looked pretty good, by the papers, yesterday,” was as far as Red would
commit himself.

  “What do you think happens if Calhoun beats the state?”

  “He goes free is all I know.”

  Hardee offered him the box of panatelas. Red declined. Hardee lit one himself, blew out smoke and came to a decision.

  “What a lousy pimp you are, Edward.”

  “Pimping isn’t my trade, Hardee,” Red assured his half-brother. “I’m a bartender.”

  “It looks to me, Edward,” Hardee answered with a smile, “like Calhoun is going to beat the state. Which means that there’s going to be a warrant out, triple homicide, for a crazy nigger who used to be a sparring partner of Calhoun’s.”

  “It might be your ass too, Hardee.”

  “Never, Edward. I am no way involved. I have a solid alibi for that night. You have not. Do you think you still beat the lie test, Red?”

  Red shrugged. Hardee gave him the answer.

  “No way. Neither did Calhoun. If that girl gets on the stand, Red, Calhoun will beat the state. Or don’t you think she’ll testify for Calhoun?”

  “I see,” Red acknowledged, “I see what you mean. She’d take the stand for Calhoun all right. She said she would, way back.”

  “Would she take the stand for you?”

  Again the shrug.

  “Would she take the stand for you?”

  “If she took the stand for Ruby, how could she take the stand for me?”

  “Now, you’re beginning to see your situation, my dear brother.”

  Fortune Foo came down the stairwell of Playmates of Paris at four A.M. with a small umbrella folded beneath her arm. Facing the morning fog, she hesitated as to whether she should open the umbrella for the short walk to the bus. “Good morning, baby,” a black man’s voice greeted her, but she could not make out his face. She kept the umbrella closed but held its point in the direction of the voice. One funny move and he’d get it.

  “Let me talk to you, baby.”

  She made no reply and he fell in at her side. The lights of Fifth Avenue, bemooned by mist, glowed hopefully ahead. A car wheeled to the curb, a big figure emerged and the black man’s voice said, “Easy, Moon. Take it easy. Nobody gets hurt.”

  Fortune jabbed at the big figure, saw it leap back and cry out in pain. Then the umbrella was wrenched from her and she was in the rear seat of the big car with the big man holding her fast and the one with the black voice at the wheel.

  “Nobody going to get hurt, baby,” the driver reassured her, and in the shadowy light she saw a trickle of blood down the big one’s face where she’d caught him with the umbrella.

  At Washington Square they wheeled to the curb and the driver turned about to face her. The big hand across her mouth moved to the nape of her neck. It felt as if it could snap the neck like a rabbit’s.

  “You got the wrong party, fellows,” Fortune assured them without permitting a hint of fear into her voice.

  “All we want is my old lady’s address,” the black man told her, “Dovie-Jean. She’s living with you. Nobody gets hurt.”

  “If nobody gets hurt,” Fortune asked, “what is this big ape holding me by the neck for?”

  The hand on the back of her neck eased slightly.

  “Address, baby?”

  No reply.

  Mott Street was starting to lighten. It is a narrow, dingy street whose unswept litter is less noticeable under the bright glow of its commercial evening than now, when all the lights were out and all the tourists gone. Great trucks bearing Italian names were making early-morning deliveries of seafood. The neon of the Jade Room, Chinatown’s only topless bar, had been darkened. The driver pulled to the curb on Mulberry and Mott.

  In the growing light she saw that the trickle of blood on the big one’s cheek had dried. He tossed her handbag to the driver. A slip from her dry-cleaner’s was all he needed: 22 Doyers Street.

  Not a cop in sight.

  The dark and narrow doorway to 22 Doyers looked ominous to Fortune. She got out of the car only when the big one got his arm about her waist and had put her handbag back in her hand.

  Red went up the stairwell before Fortune. Behind her came the big blond. At the first landing Red looked back and told the big man, “You wait there, Moon. I’ll handle her.”

  Fortune paused then, but the big man shoved her ahead. He was not the waiting kind.

  There were two doors to every flight. On the third flight the driver—she could now see he was a redheaded black man—read her name on a small metal panel. For some reason he did not knock at the door, but scratched at it, like a cat, with his fingernails.

  Dovie-Jean, in a blue bathrobe, opened the door, then tried to shut it, but Red had his foot in.

  “They made me, honey!” Fortune called to Dovie-Jean. “They made me!” Then Red was inside and Fortune was after him, with the big blond pushing in heavily and closing the door quietly behind him.

  Dovie-Jean sat on the bed’s edge trying to make sense of this early-morning visit. The only one who fitted the scene was Fortune. What, in God’s name, had Red brought along the Bear for? Her fear of this man was so great she could not, even now, look at him as he went prowling about the room, lifting small objects here and there and setting them down.

  Fortune sat in a corner of the divan, her umbrella still in her hand. It was not the redheaded driver on whom she kept her eye, but the big blond.

  “Say what you’re doing here, Red,” she heard Dovie-Jean tell the redhead, “then get the hell out. This is my home. I don’t want you in it. I don’t have to tell you why.”

  Red sat in an armchair looking like a schoolboy being reproached by a teacher.

  “You’re my old lady, Dovie-Jean, I want you back.”

  The big blond turned slowly, eyeing first Red then Dovie-Jean. He did not have to ask, “Your old lady?”His expression was incredulous. At last he turned to the liquor cabinet, took a long drink straight from the bottle and put the bottle back. When he turned he made a sudden lunge at Fortune’s umbrella, then drew back grinning. She had had it half-raised.

  “It don’t matter what you want, Tiger,” Dovie-Jean assured Red, “if you want to play white, that’s all right. If you want to play black, all right too. But you can’t play it both ways. Not with me, you can’t. I’m a nigger woman, mister. I always been. I always will be. You want to pass, pass. But pass me by.”

  The big blond took another drink. Fortune kept the umbrella in hand. He turned toward Red.

  “I gave you the benefit of the doubt, mister. Now you got me locked into a deal with a nigger and a chink. How am I supposed to handle a deal like that?”

  “You got no deal with me, Tarzan,” Fortune assured him, “you muscled me here, you muscled me upstairs, and now you’re hanging on as though you’d been invited. Where’s the deal in that?”

  “I’ll leave when I think it’s time to leave,” Moon replied, seating himself with the bottle.

  “Here it is Easter again,” he announced solemnly, “and all of you, whoever you are, sit around here looking like the wrath of God. I took a scratch in the face and a kick in the balls from this little chink, and I still look better than all of you.”

  All three looked at him without the faintest understanding.

  “I said Easter is here again,” Moonigan persisted, “so here come the Easter creeps.”

  “Easter creeps?” Fortune asked.

  “Its what I said. The creeps who write the governor, this time every year, how it’s time to abandon capital punishment. Don’t you creeps even read the papers? You did, you’d know what I was talking about. Easter creeps I call them because every Easter they come creeping out of the wallpaper. They write the governor. What would have become of Our Lord had capital punishment not been the style then? How could the Son of God become the Son of Man? Do you realize what a blessing capital punishment has been to man?”

  “This bird is bonkers, Fortune,” Dovie-Jean told her friend, “I’ve heard him come on before. The sonofabitch has eaten so much cunt he can�
�t get it up naturally anymore. He needs medical attention.”

  Words that should not have been spoken, Dovie-Jean knew, as soon as she had spoken them.

  The big man put the bottle down slowly and rose, slowly, toward her. Fortune, on her feet, felt the umbrella broken in her hands while he shoved her to one side. Red rose, apprehensively. “Nobody gets hurt, Moon, nobody gets …” One big hand sent him stumbling backward. Dovie-Jean rose before him and held her hands to her breast as though protectively. She caught a curious odor, heavy and sweet as if from some far-gone time.

  Even when she felt his great hand holding the nape of her neck she kept her hands to her breast. Red put his arm tentatively against Moon’s. Fortune rose, her broken umbrella in her hands, and for the first time she felt afraid.

  “She didn’t mean anything, mister,” she began, and it was as though she felt that big hand upon her own nape. She caught the flash of the blow without seeing it. Dovie-Jean saw a white hen flutter up, up and up but she never saw it come down. When Moon stepped back she fell forward and for a moment an appalling stillness rose in the little room. The girl lay entangled in her blue bathrobe with her head held loosely to one side.

  Moon looked down. He had not meant to hit that hard.

  Then he saw, and turned slowly toward the door. He did not close it. Fortune went to the window and began screaming, “They’re killing a woman here!” into the empty night.

  Red, ashen-white, stood looking down. Dimly behind him he heard heavy steps moving down the stair. But he could not follow. He knew what he saw.

  Then Fortune’s scream aroused him and he turned, went slowly to the door and went down, in the early morning light, like a man walking in darkness.

  The police found him huddled against the building’s wall and lifted him to his feet, mistaking him for a drunk.

  In that black-and-white throng outside the courtroom, only guards and matrons looked like people who still believed in the triple murder charge against Ruby Calhoun. Even the journalists, so long aloof from commitment, had swung to support of the defense.

  A hope (as yet too dear to speak aloud) was in the very air. Everyone was hoping for acquittal.