A Matter of Conviction

Gunnison walked back to the group of boys, stopping before the third one, a dark boy with black hair and brown eyes. Fright crouched behind the wide white of those eyes.

“Your name?” he said.

“Aposto,” the boy answered. “Anthony Aposto.”

“How old are you, Anthony?”

“Sixteen.”

“Okay,” Gunnison said. He turned to Larsen. “Mike, talk to this Di Pace kid in the clerical office, will you? I’ll question the others here. And before we get the A.S.P.C.A. down on our ears, you’d better call Di Pace’s parents and tell them their little darling’s been arrested.”

“Right,” Larsen said, and he led Di Pace from the room.

“So now,” Gunnison said to the two remaining boys, “you killed somebody, huh?”

The boys did not answer. The tall boy glanced sideward at Aposto.

“Or didn’t you know he was dead?” Gunnison asked.

Reardon, the tall one, said, “We just had a little scuffle, that’s all.”

“With knives, huh?”

“You didn’t find no knives on us,” Reardon said.

“No, because you probably dumped them down a sewer or handed them to some pal on the street. We’ll find them, don’t worry. And even if we don’t, your clothes are all smeared with blood. How long were you planning this thing, Reardon?”

“We didn’t plan anything,” Reardon said, and again he glanced at the dark, frightened Aposto.

“No, huh?” Gunnison said. “You just happened to be walking down the street, and you saw this kid, and killed him, is that right?”

“He started it,” Reardon said.

“Oh? Is that right?”

“Yeah,” Reardon said. “Ain’t that right, Batman? The spic started it, didn’t he?”

“Sure,” Aposto said. “He started it, Lieutenant.”

“Well, now, isn’t that interesting?” Gunnison said. “How did he start it? Let’s hear about it.”

“We were walking down the street, like you said, the three of us. And he stopped us and started looking at us funny,” Reardon said.

“He was wearing his bopping hat,” Aposto put in.

“His what?” the D.A.’s stenographer asked, looking up from his notes.

“His bopping hat,” Gunnison explained. “A high-crowned, narrow-brimmed fedora.” He turned back to the boys. “So he was wearing his bopping hat, and he stopped you, is that right?”

“Yeah,” Reardon said.

“And then what happened?”

“He began giving us dirty looks,” Reardon said.

“That’s right,” Aposto agreed, nodding.

“And he started saying we had no right on his turf, like that. Then he pulled a blade.”

“He did, huh?”

“Yeah. And he come at us. So we had to protect ourselves, didn’t we? He woulda killed us otherwise. We had to protect ourselves, can’t you see that?”

“From this kid who stopped you and gave you dirty looks and pulled a knife and came at you?” Gunnison said. “That’s who you had to protect yourselves from, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Reardon said.

“Do you know who this kid was?”

“Never saw him in my life. We were just out for a little stroll. What the hell, who expected to get japped?”

“Get what?” the stenographer asked.

“Japped,” Gunnison said. “Ambushed. This kid ambushed you, right?”

“Sure. He stops us with a blade in his fist. Man, we didn’t want to get killed, so we fought back. Naturally, we fought back. Anybody would.”

“And you killed him.”

“I don’t know whether we killed him or not. But whatever happened, it was self-defense.”

“Sure,” Gunnison said. “That’s easy to see.”

“Sure,” Reardon agreed.

“The boy’s name was Rafael Morrez, did you know that?”

“No,” Reardon said.

“No,” Aposto said.

“You didn’t know him until you had the fight, right?”

“Right.”

“And he stopped you, and gave you dirty looks, and warned you about walking on his street, and pulled a knife and came at you, right? That’s your story, right?”

“Right,” Reardon said.

“And you didn’t know him until he stopped you tonight, is that also right?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s pretty obvious,” Gunnison said.

“What do you mean?” Reardon asked.

“Rafael Morrez was blind,” Gunnison said.

They took three sets of fingerprints from each boy, one to be forwarded to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, another to be sent to the New York State Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and the third copy to be sent to the city’s own B.C.I. that night, so that fingerprint information would be ready and waiting at Centre Street before lineup the next day. They made out two arrest cards for each of the boys, and then they took them down to the desk in the precinct muster room and formally booked them.

In the blotter, the desk lieutenant wrote down the names of the three boys, their addresses and the time of day. The desk lieutenant also entered the time of the accident, and the name of the detective assigned to the case, and the case number, and he wrote “arrested and charged with homicide in that the defendant did in concert with others apprehended and arrested herewith commit the crime aforesaid.”

The record listed Detective Lieutenant Richard Gunnison and Assistant District Attorney Albert R. Soames as present at the time of the entry. The boys were searched and their property was confiscated, put in separate envelopes and listed in the record.