A Handy Death

“I’m going to have to give you two different stories now, Hank: the one told by Dupaul on the stand and the one told by Neeley. What I’ll be giving you now will really be the summation of many transcripts of testimony, together with the conclusions drawn from this testimony — not conclusions on my part, but on the part of the prosecution on the one hand, and of the defense on the other. And, as I said before, it will give you two completely different stories told by the two men.”

“And the jury believed Neeley’s story.” It was less a question on Ross’s part than a statement.

“I’m not so sure,” Steve said. “What I mean is that I think if I’d been on that jury, I would have had to find the boy guilty no matter whose story I believed. It’s a question of credibility. I know that old Mr. Hogan was blamed for poor defense by a lot of people after the trial, but they must have been people who got their information from the newspapers, people who didn’t really follow the trial at firsthand very closely. On the weight of the evidence...” His voice trailed off.

“Well,” Ross said in a reasonable tone of voice, “let’s assume we’re the jury here in this room. Let us hear the two versions.”

“Right,” Steve said. “Well, first, here’s the Dupaul version. Actually, of course, Neeley testified first, since he was a prosecution witness, but I’ll give it to you in this order.

“In this Mountain Top Bar, Dupaul said he sat down at the bar and found himself sitting next to a woman. He said she was pretty old; his exact words were ‘middle-aged, in the neighborhood of thirty or thirty-five’ but remember, at the time he had just turned nineteen. He said she was very good-looking and very sexy. He said they got talking and she told him her name was Mrs. Neeley, but he could call her Grace. She also said not to let the Mrs. bother him as her husband was away on a business trip. He also said he thinks he remembered that other people in the bar called her by the name Grace—”

Ross interrupted with a frown, the twiddled pencil still.

“He testified he thinks he remembered?”

“His testimony was full of ‘I think’ and ‘I’m not sure, but I seem to recall’ and ‘if I’m not mistaken’ and phrases like that.” Steve shrugged. “Naturally the prosecution tore him into little shreds on a good part of his testimony, but the boy freely admitted he was very drunk and therefore extremely hazy as to details.”

“Great!” Ross said in disgust. “All right. Go on.”

“Well, despite Dupaul’s testimony, the bartender in the place said he never heard of a Mrs. Neeley — Grace or any other name — and he didn’t notice the boy with anyone in particular, or anyone at all. The bartender said he cut Dupaul off after three drinks because he was obviously out on his feet. Dupaul denied this—”

“Were there any other witnesses to these events?”

“None that the defense called. The prosecution didn’t need to call any others.” Steve added, “In that regard, Hogan can be criticized, I think. I don’t believe he truly tried to find any corroborative witnesses.”

“All right,” Ross said. “I’ll try not to interrupt so much.”

“Right.” Steve referred to his paper, shoving his glasses back. “Dupaul’s story was that he was with Mrs. Neeley and in fact even bought her a drink and paid for it. The bartender said that lots of people, after being cut off, try to pull the gag of pretending to buy a drink for someone on an adjoining stool, but he still had no recollection of any woman. He also testified he was working the other end of the bar when Dupaul left and therefore couldn’t say if the boy went out alone or not. The place was busy and the bartender said he couldn’t keep track of every drunk around.

“At any rate, Dupaul’s story goes on that they went to an apartment on West Sixtieth Street by taxi — the taxi records were checked by the prosecution and no record of a trip to that address that night was found, but that doesn’t mean too much — it could have been a gypsy. Dupaul stated that he thought he remembered the woman leading him to a mailbox and pointing out the name ‘Neeley’ on it; the prosecution had a lot of fun with that, since the letter box is behind the stairs and out of the way, and why would the woman do it? Not that they denied that Neeley lived there.

“Anyway, Dupaul said he thought he remembered going up in an elevator and going into this apartment. He said he remembered sitting on a bed while the woman undressed him, and he remembered feeling very dizzy—”

Ross said, “Do you have his direct testimony there?”

“Right here. Do you want it?”

“No. Just give Sharon the page numbers. I may want to check it out later.”

“Right,” Steve said. He dug through one of the stacks, checking page numbers. “Pages 116 through 122. It starts — the part I’m describing now — on line 5 of page 118. Okay?”

Sharon nodded and marked the footage on the recorder meter. Steve went back to his notes.