A Matter of Conviction

(Carol does not move. Her eyes wide, she stares at the blood-smeared fists thrust at her. Angela suddenly offers her hand, and the blades are clasped into it, one, two, three, and then the boys are running again, heading for the safety of their own turf. Angela rushes to the nearest stoop, climbing to the top step, which is shielded from the rain. She sits quickly, thrusting the knives under her skirt, pulling the skirt over them, feeling the long thin blades against her naked flesh, thinking she can feel the oozing blood on each separate long blade.)

CAROL: I’m scared. Oh God, I’m scared.

ANGELA: Shhhh, shhhh.

(The rain lashes the long street. A squad car skids across Third Avenue, its siren wailing. Another squad car, ignoring the One Way sign, enters the other end of the block.)

CAROL (whispering): The knife! One of the knives — it’s showing. Pull down your skirt!

ANGELA: Shhh, shhhh. (She reaches beneath her skirt, thrusting the knife deeper beneath her thighs. There is a narcoticized look on her face. The sirens ring in her ears, and then come the terrifying sounds of two explosions, the policemen firing in the air and the rushed babble of many voices, and then Carol again, whispering beside her.)

CAROL: They got ’em. Oh, God, they’re busted. What were they doing over there alone? Angela, they stabbed a guy!

ANGELA: Yes. (Her voice is a whisper now, too.) Yes, oh yes, they stabbed him.

CAROL: What should we do with the knives? Let’s throw them down the sewer. Now. Before the cops get to us.

ANGELA: No. No, I’ll take them home with me.

CAROL: Angela...

ANGELA: I’ll take them home with me.

“We found them here, sir,” Larsen said. “In the girl’s dresser drawer.”

“Why’d you accept the knives, Angela?” Hank asked.

“I don’t know. I was excited. The boys were so excited, I guess I got excited, too. You should have seen their faces. So they offered the knives to me. So... so I took them. All three of them. One after the other. And I hid them. And then I took them home with me and put them in a paper bag and put them in my drawer, at the back of the drawer where my father couldn’t see them. He’d have got mad as hell if he saw the knives. He’d have begun telling me a good girl shouldn’t have taken the knives like that from the three of them. So I hid them from him.”

“Why’d you call the police?”

“Because I later realized I done wrong. I felt terribly guilty. It was wrong what I done, hiding the knives like that. So I called the cops and told them I had them. I felt terribly guilty.”

“You said that Danny told you Morrez had japped them. Is that exactly what he said?”

“Yes.”

“That he’d been japped?”

“No, that a spic had tried to jap them and they stabbed him. That’s what he said. At least, I think so. I was very excited.”

“Have you read anything about this case in the newspapers?”

“Sure, everybody on the block is reading the stories.”

“Then you’re aware, are you not, that the three boys claim Morrez came at them with a knife. You know that, don’t you?”

“Sure. I know it.”

“Is it possible that Danny Di Pace said nothing at all about being japped? Is it possible you only think he said that — after reading the boys’ claims in the newspapers?”

“It’s possible, but I doubt it. I know what I heard. I took his knife, too, didn’t I?”

“Yes. Yes, you did.”

“You know something?” the girl said.

“What?”

“I still got the blood on my skirt. I can’t get the stain out. From when I was sitting on the knives. I still got blood there.”

At the dinner table that night, he looked across at his daughter Jennifer and wondered what kind of girl she’d have been had she lived in Harlem. She was a pretty girl, with her mother’s hazel eyes and fine blond hair, a bosom embarrassingly ripening into womanhood. Her appetite amazed him. She ate rapidly, shoveling food into her mouth with the abandon of a truck driver.

“Slow down, Jennie,” he said. “We’re not expecting a famine.”