A Handy Death

“Seven and a half to twenty years as a second-offender.”

Ross whistled. “That’s quite a penalty for a random fight in a bar, especially considering that nobody got killed or permanently injured.”

“Well,” Steve said, “I suppose the man could have died. And the DA’s office, pushed by Gorman, as I hear it, really poured on the law-and-order bit; bloodthirsty killers roving the streets — those were his exact words. It must have had the proper effect on the judge to get Dupaul that stiff a sentence.”

“And he’s served so much of it, so far?”

“Well, he went in in late December, 1968, and this is late October... A few months less than four years. Incidentally, when Louis Gorman became Chief Assistant District Attorney, he served notice on the parole board that when, as, and if Dupaul ever became eligible for parole, he, personally, would oppose it vigorously. That was before Raymond Neeley died, of course. Now he’s pushing for the murder charge for all he’s worth.”

Ross looked surprised.

“Where did you get that information about Gorman’s statement to the parole board?”

Steve Sadler grinned. “That’s off-the-record information, Hank. From friends in the trade, so to speak.”

Ross knew enough to drop the matter. All professionals had their inner sources of information, much as the police department did, and it was enough that they had them without the need to discuss them. Instead, Ross pursued another angle.

“Why the extreme vindictiveness on Louie Gorman’s part? Directed, it seems, solely against Billy Dupaul?” Ross shook his head. “I know there are people that Gorman doesn’t like — myself being number one on the list, probably — but in general I wouldn’t call him a vindictive man.”

Sharon cleared her throat.

“Maybe I can help you there, H. R. I was—”

Ross grinned at her. He said, “You were just a little girl back in those days. What would you know of the affair? Or remember?”

“I wasn’t all that young, but thank you kindly all the same,” Sharon said, and smiled back. “After all, this Billy Dupaul was just nineteen when he went to prison, but you can be sure he remembers everything that happened, even if he was a bit fuzzy about what happened the night he got drunk. And I was older than Billy Dupaul at the time.”

Ross raised both hands in mock surrender.

“I won’t ask how much older. All right; what do you know of Louie Gorman and his grudge?”

“I was working for Mechles and Hutton in those days,” Sharon said. “The story went through every law office in town, I guess; if you’d have been in the country you would have heard it, too. Louie Gorman didn’t have too many friends, certainly not among his help, and they passed it on. Probably with a good deal of pleasure.

“One day, it seems, after Judge Demerest appointed him as Defense Counsel for Dupaul, Mr. Gorman mentioned to his wife that he, personally, thought the boy was guilty as the devil. They were at dinner, or in the sanctity of their bedroom — anyway, in the privacy of their home — when he said it, but his wife belonged to a bridge club, and I imagine she was so used to being held down at home that she took the opportunity to be a fountainhead of knowledge with her bridge-playing cronies, so she passed it on. And one of the women there passed it on again, and it went from lip to lip as these things do, and it finally reached a gossip columnist who used it as a fill-in. Without names, of course, but too easily recognizable. Well, Billy Dupaul saw it and recognized it. And showed up at Gorman’s office, steaming at the ears, and demanding an explanation.”

Ross was listening intently. Sharon smiled impishly and went on.

“Of course, if Mr. Gorman had simply denied the entire story, that probably would have been the end of the matter, but that wouldn’t have been like Mr. Gorman. Instead, he refused to make any comment to the boy at all. He simply said that his private opinions were his own, and that in any event they never entered into a case, nor had the slightest effect on the thoroughness of his defense—”

“You know?” Ross said musingly. “I believe he meant it.”

“Maybe so, but Billy Dupaul, even though only nineteen, wasn’t buying that argument. To him, a defense counsel had to believe his client was innocent, whether he was or not—”

“Which simply proved that Dupaul was innocent regarding the law,” Steve said with a broad smile. “Whether or not he was of the shooting.”

“Anyway,” Sharon continued, “Billy Dupaul not only fired Gorman on the spot as his attorney, in front of the entire office staff, and using the then-current teen-age vocabulary in doing it, but he also used physical force on him.”

“Physical force?”

“He slapped him,” Sharon said. “In front of everyone. And Mr. Gorman has never forgiven him.”

“Slapped him?”

“The story was that he said, ‘You’re too little to hit, and too big to forgive, so take this.’ And he slapped him a few times.”

“In front of his entire office?”

“Everyone. He dragged him from his office to do it.”