A Matter of Conviction

He looked up. For a moment, he did not recognize the young lady standing before him, the long blond hair, the face with the questioning look of a woman, the firm bosom, the narrow waist and long legs. My daughter? he thought. A woman already? When did you leave my knee, Jennie? When did you join the mysterious sorority?

“Are you all right, Dad?” she asked. There was concern in her voice.

“Yes,” he said. “Just having a last cigarette before I turned in.”

“It’s a nice night,” Jennie said. She sat on the stoop beside him, pulling her skirt over her knees.

“Yes.” He paused. “Did you walk home from Agatha’s?”

“Yeah. The kids are still there, but I left. It was a big drag.” She paused. “Lonnie wasn’t there.”

“Lonnie?”

“Lonnie Gavin.”

“Oh. Oh, yes.”

They sat in silence for several moments.

“It sure is a nice night,” Jennie said.

“Yes.”

The silence closed in on them.

“You... you didn’t see anyone in the street, did you? On your way home?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Some boys?”

“No. Nobody.”

“You shouldn’t go walking around alone at night,” he said.

“Oh, there’s nothing to be afraid of around here,” she answered.

“Well, still.”

“Don’t worry,” she said.

Again they were silent. He had the oddest feeling that Jennie wanted to talk to him. He felt it would be good for the two of them to talk together, but instead they sat like strangers in the waiting room of a small-town railroad station, uncommunicative, ill at ease.

At last his daughter rose and smoothed her skirt.

“Mom up?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Think I’ll have a glass of milk with her,” Jennie said, and she went into the house.

He sat alone in the darkness.

At nine o’clock the next morning, he started his working day by requesting the assignment of a team of detectives to a twenty-four-hour surveillance of his house.

Five

The entrance to the candy store was on the right-hand side of the shop, its door opening on the three tightly cramped booths which sat alongside the wall there. A fountain with four stools was opposite the booths closest to the rear wall. A telephone booth stood against the rear wall next to a curtained doorway which led to the back of the store. A glass display case upon which was an assortment of chewing gum and a cash register was just inside the door, forward of the fountain and stools.

There was a combined feeling of shoddiness and hominess to the candy store. For whereas the place was badly in need of a paint job, whereas the leatherette of the booths was stained with hair oil and thumb smears, whereas the penny candy in the display case looked stale and unpalatable, the store exuded an atmosphere of relaxed comfort. Standing in the doorway, he could understand why the Thunderbirds had chosen the spot as their hangout. He walked into the shop just as the telephone rang. The proprietor went to answer it, and he remembered for a moment the days in Harlem when telephones were not to be found in every apartment. The owner of the candy store would answer the phone and then send a kid to get whomever the call was for. The rules stated that the messenger rated a tip — usually a nickel, sometimes a dime. The rules further stated that the tip had to be spent in the store. There was always a mad rush from the street whenever the telephone in the candy store rang. Today, on a similar side street in Italian Harlem, the kids barely looked up when the phone rang. Telephones were no longer a luxury. They were as essential to day-by-day living in Harlem as were television sets. The rooftops bristled with electronic antennas, irrefutable testimony to the effectiveness of installment buying.

The proprietor of the store held a brief conversation with whoever was on the other end of the line and then hung up. The four boys sitting in the booth closest to the phone did not look up as he walked back to the display case. He was a short man with a spotlessly clean white apron and a spotlessly clean bald pate. He walked with a slight limp, but the limp — rather than weakening him — seemed to give him a strength of character which was totally lacking before the limp was noticed.

“Help you, Mac?” he said to Hank.

“I’m looking for the members of a club called the Thunderbirds,” Hank said. “I’ve been told this is their hangout.”

“Somebody told you wrong, mister.”

“The somebody who told me was Detective Lieutenant Richard Gunnison of the Twenty-seventh Squad. He’s not a man who makes mistakes.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Where are they?”

“And who are you?”

“Assistant District Attorney Henry Bell.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The boys in the rear booth looked up. One made a motion to rise, but a second boy laid a hand on his arm, and he sat instantly.

“Well, well,” the proprietor said, “we never had a D.A. in this store before. I’m honored.”

“Where do I find the Thunderbirds?” Hank gestured to the rear booth. “Are those boys members of the gang?”

“I sure as hell wouldn’t know, mister,” the proprietor said. “All I do is run a candy store.” He extended his hand across the case. “Name’s Joey Manetti. Pleased to know you.”