A Matter of Conviction

“All right,” Hank said. The door closed, the girl’s face vanished. He could hear the bar of the police lock being wedged back into place. Wearily, he went down to the street again. Gargantua was nowhere in sight. Neither was the old man in the undershirt. Hank looked at his watch, lighted a cigarette and leaned against the wall of the building. A stickball game was in progress in the middle of the street. The game went on excitingly, with the usual number of temper flareups and arguments. But the players might just as well have been in Yankee Stadium performing before thousands of people. In fact, there was possibly more violence in a major-league game than was evident in this street game played by teen-agers who conceivably were capable of slitting another teen-ager’s throat.

Standing on the front stoop of the building, he realized that Harlem, on its surface at least, was as well-ordered and nonviolent as any other community in the city. True, you could not equate a Harlem tenement with an apartment building on Sutton Place. You could not simply discount the fire escapes cluttered with the paraphernalia of living, could not easily ignore the lots covered with rubble, the flies crawling over the meat in the window of the butcher shop, the poverty which sprang from every darkened doorway. But the tempo here, the feel, was not much different from what you would find anywhere else in the city. These were people going about their daily tasks. There was no trace of a violent undercurrent running through the life of the community — not now there wasn’t, not at ten o’clock on a sunny morning in midsummer. Then why did violence erupt here? Why did three kids from Italian Harlem, three blocks and three thousand miles away, stride into this street and take the life of an innocent blind boy? He could not lay it all at the doorstep of racial misunderstanding. He had the feeling that this was only a symptom and not the disease itself. Then what was the disease, and what caused it? And if the three boys who killed were diseased, were sick, was the state justified in eliminating them from society?

The question startled him.

What else can you do? he asked himself. You don’t allow lepers to roam the streets, do you?

No. But you don’t kill them either, he reasoned. And even though no cure is known, you nonetheless keep searching for a cure.

Come on, he told himself. You’re not a psychologist, and you’re not a sociologist. You’re a lawyer. You’re concerned with the legal aspects of crime. You’re concerned with punishing the guilty.

The guilty, he thought.

He sighed and looked at his watch. Five minutes had gone by. He lighted another cigarette. He was flicking away the match when a young sailor came out of the building, squaring his white hat.

“Nice day, huh?” the sailor said.

“Lovely,” Hank answered, and he thought he could now safely assume that Louisa Ortega was free to talk to him.

“Man, I’m hungry,” the sailor said. “I ain’t had breakfast yet. Any good places to eat around here?”

Hank shrugged. “You can try a Hundred Twenty-fifth Street,” he said.

“Thanks. Which way is that?”

“Uptown. That way.” Hank pointed.

“Thanks a lot, Mac,” the sailor said. He paused on the stoop. “You, uh, going up there?”

“Yes,” Hank said.

The sailor winked. “You better have breakfast first. You’re gonna need all the strength you got.”

“I’ve already had breakfast,” Hank said, smiling.

“Okay,” the sailor said. “Well, I be seeing you. Stay out of jail.” And he walked off toward Park Avenue.

Hank put out his cigarette and went upstairs again. This time Louisa opened the door for him. She was wearing a flowered pink wrapper belted at the waist. Her long black hair hung over her shoulders. She wore no make-up and no shoes. Her face was thin, but her body was well curved, and she smiled somewhat embarrassedly and said, “Come een,” and Hank entered the apartment.

“I’m sorry I keep you waitin’,” the girl said. She closed the door behind him.

“That’s quite all right,” Hank said.

“Si’ down,” Louisa said.

He looked around the room. A rumpled, unmade bed was against one wall. A rickety wooden table and two wooden chairs rested against the opposite wall alongside an old gas refrigerator and a sink.

“The bed is mos’ comfortable,” she said. “Si’ there.”

He went to the bed and sat on the edge of it. The girl sat at the other end, pulling her legs up under her.

“I’m tired,” she said. “I di’n get to sleep all night. He was bodder me every fi’ minutes.” She paused. With complete frankness, she said, “I’m a hooker, you know.”

“I assumed.”

“Sí.” She shrugged. “Iss nothin’ wrong with hookin’. I radder sell my body than sell dope or somethin’. Verdad?”

“How old are you, Louisa?” Hank asked.

“Nineteen,” she said.

“Do you live with your parents?”

“I got no parents. I come here from dee islan’ to stay with my aunt. Then I move out. I like it better to be free, entiende?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Iss nothin’ wrong with hookin’,” Louisa said again.