A Matter of Conviction

“Karin, I’ve been afraid. I’ve been afraid for so long, so long. I think that’s the legacy of the streets. Fear. Fear that’s always there, always ready to explode inside you, a keg of gunpowder with a lighted fuse, waiting to explode, waiting to — to destroy you. I... I...”

“Hank, please don’t. Please, you mustn’t.”

“I carried it with me during the war, always there, always inside me, waiting, waiting, fear, fear! Of what? Of life! Of day-by-day living. Fear that started when I was a kid, until all I could think of was getting out of Harlem, getting away from the place that bred the fear, and when I did get out it was too late, because the fear was something that was a part of me, like my liver or my heart. And then I met you.”

She took his hand and she held it close to her face, and he could feel the wetness of her tears against his palm. He shook his head.

“You begin — you begin to doubt, Karin. You’re faced with the overwhelming terror of the streets, and inch by inch it eats away at you until you wonder who you are, what you are. Are you a man? If you were a man, why’d you lose your girl to someone else while you were away? Why’d you allow your grandfather to die? Why are you afraid all the time? What the hell are you? What are you?”

He pulled her to him suddenly, awkwardly. She could feel his body trembling in the darkness.

“And then you. You, Karin — warmth, and light, and wonder. And suddenly the fear left me for a little while, until — until I began thinking you’d loved someone before me, you’d known someone before—”

“Hank, I love you.”

“Yes, yes, but...”

“I love you, I love you!”

“...I wondered why there had to be someone else, why, why? And I was afraid I’d lose you, the way he’d lost you, what’s the matter with me, Karin? Don’t I know you love me, didn’t I know you broke with him, you wanted me, me, but it got all mixed up with the fear inside me until... until...”

He was crying now. She heard his tears, and she went weak with helpless terror. Her man was crying, and she did not know how to stop him, her man, her man, and there was no more pitiful sound in the universe than the sound of his tears in the darkness. She kissed his wet face, and she kissed his hands, and he said again, very softly, “I’m no crusader. Karin, it scares me. The enormity of it scares me. I know what I should do but I... I’ll go into that courtroom on Monday morning, and I’ll pick my jurors and I’ll try the case for first-degree murder because that’s the safe way, the easy way, because—”

“No. Don’t say it.”

“Because I’m—”

“Don’t!” she said sharply. “Don’t!”

They were silent for a long while. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and blew his nose. The clouds had covered the moon completely now. The flat rock was in complete darkness.

“Shall we go back?” she asked.

“I’d like to sit here for a while,” he said softly. “If you don’t mind.”

“Jennie will be coming home.”

“You go back. I’ll be all right.”

“All right.” She rose and smoothed her skirt. She stared at him in the darkness, unable to see his face. “Shall I make some coffee?”

“Yes. That would be nice.”

“Hank?”

“Yes?”

“You’re not a coward.”

He did not answer.

“You’re very brave.”

Again, he did not answer. She reached into the darkness and touched his cheek. “I love you, liebchen,” she said. “I love you.” And then, almost in a whisper, she said, “You make me very proud,” and she turned and walked off quickly into the trees.

He put out his cigarette and stared out at the water.

What is a lawyer to do? he wondered.

I must blame them.

Who else killed? Can I blame a culture which robs parents of identity, pressuring them, compressing them, sealing them in vacuum cans on the rat treadmill so that fathers are no longer sure they’re males and mothers are no longer sure they’re females? Can I impose the neuroses of society at large upon three kids who killed? But goddamnit, they killed, they killed! What is a lawyer to do?

Suppose you went into that courtoom, he thought. Suppose you went in there, and picked your jurors, and then presented the case so that...

No.

I’d never get away with it. Abe Samalson would smell a rat and stop the trial at once. And then he’d drag me into his chambers and ask me who the hell I was representing in this case, the killers or the people?

Aren’t the killers part of the people?

They are the defendants, and I am the prosecuting attorney, and my job is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they did willfully and with malice aforethought stab to death a boy named Rafael Morrez.

Aposto’ll be acquitted. You know that. He’s a mental deficient. You haven’t a prayer in hell of convicting him.

That leaves Reardon and Di Pace. And my job is to...