A Handy Death

“He finally admitted carrying it on a few occasions. At first he denied it — after all, he had no New York City permit for it, and the Sullivan law is still a tough one — but a witness from the ball club, one of the other players, said he had seen the gun on Dupaul once, and Dupaul told him he wore it when he went into neighborhoods he had been told were dangerous.”

“Which covers about all of New York today,” Ross said dryly.

“Yes, sir. Anyway, Dupaul swore up and down he had left the hotel without the gun that night, but he couldn’t offer any more than his word.”

“Could he have gone back for it? After those drinks in that second bar he was in — the one on Lexington? And been too drunk to remember?”

“I doubt it. The timetable wouldn’t have permitted it.”

“It must have been pretty easy for the prosecution,” Ross said. “Here’s a witness, who admits being so drunk he can’t remember most of the things that happened, being positive on that one particular score.”

“Well,” Steve said, “he wasn’t drunk when he left his hotel room.”

“True. What about his roommate? This Marshall boy. Had he already gone back to Queensbury by this time?”

“He left that day, actually. But the room clerk who testified said that Marshall had checked out at least an hour before Billy Dupaul came down and went into the bar.”

Ross picked up a hot cup of coffee, removed the lid, added sugar and stirred it absently, his mind considering the facts Steve Sadler had given him. At last he sighed.

“Well, possibly I owe poor Al Hogan an apology, but I’m damned if I’ll dig him up to give it to him. I think he could have gone into a lot of questions in far greater depth, but in the end I’m afraid I’m forced to agree with you, Steve. On the basis of the evidence, including the pistol and including the flimsiness of Dupaul’s story, I can understand the jury finding the boy guilty. And Judge Demerest handing down that sentence. Still—”

“Unless,” Steve suggested, “it was Mr. Hogan who invented that flimsy story and saddled the boy with it.”

“I doubt it,” Ross said positively. “Al Hogan was a drunk, but he always had imagination. He not only would have come up with a better story, but he had a perfect one right to hand.”

Both Sharon and Steve stared at him. Ross smiled. Steve frowned.

“But what story could possibly have explained away that gun?”

“There was no need to explain away the gun. When you can’t explain something away, you merely incorporate it.”

Ross reached for a Danish, aware of the curiosity his statement had engendered, thought of his waistline, and reluctantly changed his mind. He wiped his lips and leaned back in his chair, dismissing for the time being the first case of the People of the State of New York versus William Dupaul. He motioned toward the casette recorder; Sharon, understanding, reversed the tape and prepared to continue.

“All right,” Ross said. “What happened to put him back in jail as a second-offender?”

Steve sipped his coffee, made a face, and put the cardboard container aside. “Awful,” he muttered under his breath, straightened his glasses, and dug into his pile of papers.

“He got into a fight.”

“When?”

“Well, he served—” Steve found the proper reference and checked it “—forty-three months on the first sentence, getting out in 1968, in June, for good behavior. The second offense occurred in December of the same year, about six months after his release.”

“All right. Go ahead.”

“He got into this fight in a bar. He was working—”

“Dupaul sounds like the sort of fellow who ought to stay out of bars,” Ross commented dryly. “Anyhow, bars aren’t supposed to hire ex-convicts. Not in this state.”

“True,” Steve said, “only he wasn’t working in the bar. He was wrestling beer kegs for a living, working for a brewing company. Either he didn’t want to go back to baseball, or more likely baseball didn’t want him back with a record. In any event, he was handling these beer kegs into this bar this day and one of the customers recognized him and started to needle him.”

Sharon had cleared the table, putting the refuse aside to be disposed of later. Now she was back with her stenographic book, noting the interruptions on the recorder meter. Steve referred to his papers and went on.

“In this case there were plenty of witnesses, all willing to testify. The bar was fairly crowded, but it was early afternoon and nobody was drunk. Unfortunately, most of the witnesses — like witnesses anywhere — had thirteen different stories. Still,” Steve added, “this time I find it a lot harder to excuse Mr. Hogan.”

“Al Hogan was his lawyer again?”

“Yes, sir. Appointed by the court again. Dupaul was broke, of course. And that was about all the work Mr. Hogan was getting in those last days. I imagine the courts must have felt sorry for him.”

“I felt sorry for him, too, but a little consideration for the rights of the accused to decent counsel wouldn’t have been too amiss, either,” Ross said evenly. “So what happened in this bar?”