A Matter of Conviction

His own personal gauge was a prospective juror’s eyes. He always stood very close to the man or woman he was questioning, and he liked to believe that he could read intelligence or lack of intelligence, fairness or prejudice, empathy or antagonism in that person’s eyes. Perhaps his gauge was fallacious. He had certainly empaneled jurors in open-and-shut cases only to have the verdict go finally against him. But if the eyes were not the windows of the soul (and he had forgotten who made that original observation) he did not know which part of the body was a more accurate measure of what went on inside a man.

He called Karin at six to say that he would not be home for dinner.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said. “That means I’ll be eating alone.”

“Isn’t Jennie home?”

“No, she’s gone out.”

“Where in the name of God does that girl go all the time?”

“There’s a new Brando picture at Radio City. She went with some of the girls.”

“Neighborhood girls?” he asked pointedly.

“No. The neighborhood girls seem to be avoiding our daughter. She called some friends from school.”

“What the devil,” Hank muttered. “Can’t they even leave her alone? What time will she be back, Karin?”

“Not too late. Don’t worry about it. There are two detectives prowling the house like sentries. One of them is very good-looking. I may invite him in for dinner.”

“Ja, ja, you do that.”

“Would it make you jealous?”

“Not in the slightest,” he said. “But it may lead to a homicide in Inwood. Honey, I may be home very late. Don’t wait up for me if you don’t feel like it.”

“I’ll wait up. Hank, if you get lonely, call me again, will you?”

“I will.”

“All right, darling. Goodbye.”

He hung up, smiling, and went back to work.

At 7:10 P.M. his telephone rang. Absent-mindedly he lifted it from the receiver and said, “Hello?”

“Mr. Bell?” a voice asked.

“Yes,” he said.

There was no answer.

“Yes, this is Mr. Bell.”

He waited. There was still no answer.

“Hello?” he said.

The silence on the phone was unpunctuated, unbroken. He waited with the receiver in his fist, saying nothing, listening, waiting for the sound of the phone being hung up on the other end. The sound did not come. In the stillness of his office, the silence on the phone seemed magnified. He was aware all at once that his hand was sweating on the black plastic of the receiver.

“Who is this?” he said.

He thought he could hear breathing on the other end of the line. He tried to remember what the voice which had said “Mr. Bell?” sounded like, but he could not.

“If you have something to say, say it,” he said to the empty phone.

He wet his lips. His heart was pounding, and he resented the foolish staccato beat in his chest.

“I’m hanging up,” he said, not expecting the words to find voice, surprised when they did. His statement had no effect on the party at the other end. The silence persisted, broken intermittently by staticlike sounds, the minute impulses of electricity on any telephone wire.

He slammed the receiver back onto its cradle.

When he picked up the outline on Louisa Ortega, his hands were trembling.

He left the office at nine that night.

Fanny, her white-thatched head drooping slightly, opened the doors of the one elevator which was still running.

“Hello, Hank,” she said. “Burning the midnight?”

“Got to wrap up this Morrez case,” he told her.

“Yeah,” she said. She closed the doors. “Well, what’re you going to do? That’s life.”

Solemnly, remembering the shaggy-dog story, Hank said, “Life is a fountain.”

“Huh?” Fanny said. “What do you mean, life is a fountain?”

He looked at her with a mock stunned expression. “You mean life isn’t a fountain?”

“Hank,” she said, wagging her head, “you’re working too hard. Close the windows in your office. Don’t let the sun in.”