A Matter of Conviction

“There’s the excursion boat,” she said. “I wish we could go one day. Could we, Hank?”

“What?”

“The boat...” She paused and studied him. “I thought it might be fun.”

“Oh. Oh, yes.”

For a moment, a cloud had passed, fleeting, ephemeral, disturbing him with the puritanical fact that he had not been the first with Karin Brucker. Well, it was wartime, he told himself, what the hell. She’s my wife now, Mrs. Henry Bell, and I should be grateful that an incredible beauty like Karin chose me over the competition, but why the hell did there have to be competition, well, it was wartime, it was... and yet, Mary would not have.

Mary.

The name sprang into his mind full-blown, as if it had been waiting to leap from a dark corner of his memory. Mary O’Brien. Not any longer, of course. Married now. To whom? What was his name? If he had ever known, he had now forgotten. Besides, she would always be Mary O’Brien to him, untouched, pure... You can’t compare them, damnit! Karin lived in Germany, Karin was...

Suddenly he asked, “Do you love me?”

She turned to him, startled. She had not yet made up her face. There were laughter wrinkles at the corners of her hazel eyes, and her unpainted mouth parted in slight surprise and then, very softly, she said, “I love you, Hank,” with a note of wonder and chastisement in her voice and, in what seemed like embarrassment, she went into the house quickly. He could hear her moving noisily about in the kitchen.

Mary, he thought. God, what a long time ago.

He sighed and looked out at the Hudson, dizzily reflecting the early-morning sun. He rose then and went into the kitchen for his briefcase. Karin was picking up the breakfast dishes.

Without looking at him, she said, “About the boat ride, Hank.”

“Yes?”

“For it to be fun, it shouldn’t be on a Saturday or a Sunday.” She raised her eyes to meet his. “For it to be fun, Hank, you would have to take a day away from the office, sometime in the middle of the week.”

“Sure,” he said. He smiled and kissed her briefly. “Sure.”

He got off the subway at Chambers Street, emerging into the bright slanting heat of the city. He knew there was a subway stop closer to Leonard Street and the district attorney’s office, but he preferred the longer walk each morning. Rain or shine, he disembarked at Chambers and then walked toward City Hall, watching the change of geographical climate. It was almost as if the mayor’s shrine were the unofficial border station between the world of big business spreading out from Wall Street and the world of law which had its nucleus on Centre Street.

You walked through the park outside City Hall, and the pigeons pompously strolled like old men deep in thought, and the sunshine washed the painted green benches, and suddenly the towers of business were behind you and ahead lay the impressive gray structures of the law. They squatted together, these formidable buildings somehow smacking of ancient Rome, pillared, strong in their simplicity, their very architecture symbolizing the inevitable power of justice. He felt at home among the buildings of the law. Here, he felt, no matter what damn foolishness they wreaked at Bikini, no matter how many governments changed or severed heads, here was order, here was the true basis of man’s intercourse with his fellow man, here was the law — and here was justice.

And here, passing the County Court Building on the way to his own office, he looked up to the huge triangle of the façade, past the pillars supporting the stone, and read again the legend chiseled there: “The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government.”

He thought simply, Yes, and quickened his pace.

The Criminal Courts Building was at 10 °Centre Street. The district attorney’s office, like a Siamese twin irrevocably united to its mate, lay back to back with the other building at 155 Leonard Street, just around the corner. He entered the building and said “Good morning,” to Jerry, the uniformed cop who sat at a desk in the entrance lobby.

“’Morning, Mr. Bell,” Jerry answered. “Lovely morning, isn’t it?”

“Lovely,” Hank said tonelessly, wondering why people insisted on equating summer heat with beauty.

“If it don’t rain,” Jerry added doubtfully as Hank moved toward the elevators. For reasons unknown to Hank, the elevators in the district attorney’s office were run by women, all of them in their middle years. Fanny, a white-haired sprite who addressed the D.A., his assistants, and even judges by their first names while maintaining a cool “Mister” relationship with the building’s custodian, brought her car to a stop, slammed open the doors, said “Good morning, Hank,” and peeked into the corridor.

“Good morning, Fanny,” he answered.

“Nice day for a murder, ain’t it?” she said, stepping closer to her control panel, closing the doors, and setting the car in motion.

Hank smiled but said nothing. The car moved up the shaft silently.