Hail to the Chief (87th Precinct), page 10
“Here in Turman?”
“Right. Here’s the address, have you got a pencil?”
“Shoot,” Grundy said.
“304 West Scovil Lane. Ring a bell?”
“I know the area. Whose house is it?”
“Belongs to the suspect’s aunt, woman named Martha Walsh. She told us she keeps it closed during the winter, but the suspect has a key.”
“You still haven’t told me his name,” Grundy said.
“Big Anthony Sutherland.”
“That would be ‘Pig,’ huh? And the second kid?”
“No help.”
“I’m on my way,” Grundy said.
While Meyer Meyer told an assorted collection of not-so-virginal college girls that a rapist was a seriously disturbed individual who was incapable of enjoying a normal sex relationship with a woman, Detective Al Grundy drove along tree-shaded Scovil Lane, and located a yellow house with white shutters bearing the number 304 on the mailbox outside. And while Meyer told his audience that a rapist expects his victim to be terrified, and that this terror-reaction adds to his own excitement, Grundy went up the front walk past the tar paper-covered fig tree, and knocked on the front door and got no answer, and forced the lock.
“Now some of you may feel that rape is not such a terrible thing. It is penetration by force, true, it is a violation of your body, true—but if you submit to this violation, perhaps you will not be hurt. Perhaps. But remember that part of the psychological interplay that makes rape appealing and exciting to this man is the very taking-by-force aspect of what he’s doing. And where there is force involved, there is the attendant danger of being severely beaten or even killed.”
There was a sleeping bag on the floor of the living room, and bedclothes on the living-room couch. An empty pizza carton and two empty cans of beer were on the floor. An ashtray brimming with butts rested on the end table alongside the couch. Grundy sniffed the butts on the off chance they might be marijuana roaches. They were not. He went into the kitchen.
“I don’t want you to become neurotic about rape, I don’t want you to start screaming if a panhandler taps you on the shoulder. He may only want a quarter for a drink, and you’ll start screaming, and he’ll try to shut you up, and the next thing you know he’s broken your neck. That’s as bad as being assaulted by a real rapist. I do want to frighten you a bit, however, and the first thing I want to frighten you about is hitchhiking. If you’d like to get raped, the best way to accomplish your goal is to go outside and start hitchhiking. I can’t guarantee that if you hitch a ride tonight, you’ll positively be raped. But I can guarantee that if you hitch from the same spot at the same time each night, someone will try to rape you. It might take a week, it might take longer. But someone will try. And it will have nothing whatever to do with how you look. You can be standing on that corner wearing a potato sack, with your hair in curlers, and a fever sore on your lip, and that won’t discourage the rapist. He is a sick man; you are presumably a healthy individual. Don’t, for God’s sake, foolishly place yourself in hazardous or vulnerable situations.”
There were two six-packs of beer in the refrigerator, a carton of milk, some cold cuts, and a package of sliced bread with half the loaf gone. Used paper plates were on the kitchen table, and the trash can was full of empty cans—baked beans, soup, vegetables, hash. Cups, silverware, soup plates, and knives were piled in the sink, unwashed. Grundy went into the bedroom.
“Like in the song from The Fantasticks, there are many different kinds of rape. If you’re out on a date with a man you know, and you’re necking in his automobile, and he decides to take you by force, against your wishes, that’s rape—even if you’ve known him since he was six years old. In a situation like that, I would advise that you stop necking for a moment, stick your finger down your throat, and vomit into his lap. The more serious rape, if rapes can be classified as to seriousness, is the one that can lead to bodily injury or death. A man jumps out at you, he threatens you at knife point. Don’t begin telling him what a disgusting animal he is, don’t start cutting him down to size, because he may decide to cut you down to size—literally. He is emotionally unstable, he does not need his ego further bruised. I’ve known victims who have talked themselves out of being raped by treating their attacker with human kindness, understanding, sympathy, and humility. This doesn’t always work, but it may at least buy you some time until either help comes or you can effect an escape. One girl bought time by telling the rapist she knew he’d been following her, and thought she was the luckiest girl alive, because here she was just a plain, dumpy little thing, and he was such a big handsome man. She put her arms around his neck and got very affectionate—something totally unexpected by the rapist—and he lost his erection and was momentarily incapable of performing. By the time he got back to the business at hand, which was taking this girl by force, don’t forget that, some people wandered up the street, and the girl was saved from attack.
“But let’s suppose a man begins hitting you the moment he drags you into the bushes. Your natural reaction, even if you plan not to resist, even if you plan to go limp—which may cause the same thing to happen to him—is to turn your head away from the blows, or bring up your hands to protect your face, or in some way involuntarily show resistance or fear, which will only provoke him more. Let’s say nothing you’ve said or done has worked, you are on the ground, he is still striking you, he is going to rape you. The question now is whether you want to be raped, and maybe killed, or whether you want to hurt this man. Only you can decide that. If you choose not to be a victim, I can tell you how to hurt him, and how to get away from him.”
The bedclothes were rumpled, the sheets were stained with blood. A leather-thonged cat-o’-nine-tails was on the floor near the footboard. The window was wide open. Grundy went to the window and looked out. The ground was some four feet below the sill. He carefully tented his handkerchief over the leatherwrapped handle of the whip, and then tagged it for identification and subsequent transmittal to the police lab in nearby Allenby. A girl’s handbag was resting on the seat of a straight-backed chair near the bed. Grundy opened the bag.
“Remember that the unexpected is the best approach. You are flat on your back, and this man is about to rape you. Instead of trying to twist away, instead of trying to shove him off you, begin to fondle him. That’s right. Fondle the man. Fondle his genitals. And then drop your hand to his testicles and squeeze. Squeeze as hard as you can. You are going to hurt this man, but you are also going to end the rape that very minute. You may wonder whether he will be able to chase you afterward, perhaps hit you harder than he did before, perhaps even kill you. I can guarantee that you can run clear to California and back, and that man will still be lying on the ground incapable of movement. This is one way of stopping a rape, if you do not choose to become a victim. There is another way, and I suspect your reaction to it will be, ‘I’d rather get raped.’ That, of course, is up to you. I can only offer you options.”
The girl’s handbag contained three lipsticks, a package of Kleenex, two sticks of chewing gum, four subway tokens, three dollar bills, forty cents in change, and a card showing that she was a member of the Student Organization of Whitman High School in Riverhead. The name on the card identified her as Margaret McNally. There was nothing in the house or on the grounds outside that in any way identified the two boys who presumably had killed her.
“Again, do the unexpected,” Meyer said. “Put your hands gently on the rapist’s face, palms against his temples, cradle his face, murmur words of endearment, allow him to think you’re going along with his plans. Your thumbs will be close to his eyes. If you have in yourself the courage to push your thumbs into a hardboiled egg, then you can also push them into this man’s eyes. You will put out his eyes, you will blind him. But you will not be raped. There is never a moment, during a rape in progress, I can guarantee this, when you will not have the opportunity to fondle the man’s genitals or to put your hands on his face. These are his vulnerable areas, and if you behave unexpectedly and do not seem to be preparing an attack, he will not suspect what is coming until it is too late. Squeezing his testicles will incapacitate him, but may not permanently injure him. Putting out his eyes is a drastic measure, and you may feel with some justification that doing this is worse than what the rapist is trying to do to you—that the means of preventing the rape are worse than the crime itself. The choice is yours.”
Meyer wiped his brow with his handkerchief, and then asked, “Are there any questions?”
The way them Scarlet niggers got hold of Big Anthony and Jo-Jo was pure accident, and it was what started all the later trouble. I wouldn’t be up here now, if it wasn’t for what happened yesterday. I had got a call late Thursday night, it must’ve been three or four o’clock in the morning, it got me out of bed. My people know that I’m available at all hours of the day and night, that’s what being president means. You serve the people. I am always cheerful and courteous on the telephone, no matter what time it is. The phone in my house is in the kitchen, and I went out there in my undershorts, and it was very cold, they cut off the heat in the building at about eleven o’clock each night, that’s to discourage the rats from coming out of their nice warm hiding places. I’m making a joke, but it’s true there’s no heat from eleven at night to maybe seven or eight in the morning, those cheap landlords. Anyway, I’m standing there freezing in my underwear, and Big Anthony tells me he’s calling from a phone booth outside a diner on Route 14 in Turman and that he had to take very severe measures with Midge. That’s a code thing we have in the clique, the “severe measures.” It means, you know, that he had to like kill her.
I remained very calm, I am always calm. I told Big he had probably done the right thing, if in his judgment the thing had to be done, and I asked him if there had been any witnesses, and he said, No, he did not think so. I told him in that case he should go back to his aunt’s house and just keep cool, stay out of the city, we would keep close watch on the situation and see what developed. That was on Thursday night—well, really it was Friday morning already. On Saturday you guys came around and talked to me in the ice cream parlor, with your phony story about first a holdup of a gas station and later you changed it to wanting Midge for a mugging, all of which I knew was absolute bullhenge. You guys thought you were being so clever, but there’s nothing gets by me. Actually, you were doing me a favor. Because you were letting me know the truck was hot, and that you were looking for Big Anthony in connection with Midge’s murder. That’s all you accomplished by your little visit. I gave you the name of Big’s girl because I couldn’t see no harm in your going to see her, especially since I planned to phone her the minute you left. Which I done, of course, and warned her to keep her mouth shut, to tell you she didn’t know where Big was, and she never heard of nobody named Midge. The minute I hung up, I called Big at his aunt’s house in Turman, and told him to get rid of the truck, as it was hot. I also told him to get out of Turman and get back here to the city, because I knew all the heat would be there, you dig, and nobody would think of looking for him back here. That was smart thinking. I’m always on my feet and looking how to outfox the other guy.
So it gets to be Sunday, yesterday, and no word from Big. At first I thought he was playing it extremely cool, that he had got back to the city with Jo-Jo, and the two of them were holed up someplace and didn’t want to risk even making a phone call, because like who can tell what’s bugged and what isn’t these days? The way I figure it, if we can put in a bug, why then, anybody in the whole United States can put one in. What’s to stop them? And maybe Big was thinking the same way, and was afraid to call. I was watching the football game on television, just me and Toy. My mother was across the street, visiting her sister. My old man was out drinking, as usual. He’s on welfare, and he’s got tuberculosis, but that don’t stop him from putting away the sauce. He can’t pass a bar without marching in there and drinking himself into a stupor. He’s very proud of me because he knows I’m president of an important clique. I respect him and honor him except for the drinking. I can’t abide anything done to excess. He is foolish to drink so much, and to lose control of himself. Control is the important thing. To be in control all the time is my watchword. Anyway, I was glad he was out of the house because it gave me some time to relax with Toy and to watch the football. The game was a very exciting one, and it took my mind off why Big hadn’t called yet. I didn’t want to think that something had happened to him that maybe he had been picked up by the Turman fuzz before he’d made it back to the city.
The telephone rang about three o’clock in the afternoon, just at a very exciting play in the game. I went out in the kitchen to answer it, hoping it would be Big. Instead, it was Mighty Man, the war counselor of the Scarlets.
Hello, he says, how’s every little thing up there on Dooley Avenue?
Just fine, I tell him, to what do I owe the honor of this call?
We got two of your boys, he says.
What boys? I ask him. What are you talking about?
Well, he tells me what he’s talking about. What he’s talking about is that by the craziest freak accident, Big and Jo-Jo stumbled into a party of Scarlets and they took them both prisoner. Now this is the way it happened. The Scarlets will tell you all kinds of bullhenge about how Big and Jo-Jo had defected, but that ain’t the truth. It was accident, pure and simple, they are both loyal men.
The minute they ditched the truck, Big and Jo-Jo figured if the truck was hot, then their clique jackets were hot, too, because of what’s painted on the back—our symbol, you know? So they took off the jackets, and rolled them up, and started hitchhiking in just their sweaters. I mean, man, Saturday was a cold mother of a day, am I right? They hiked for maybe two hours before somebody picked them up, and he dropped them off just near the bridge, and they walked over and then took the subway up to Riverhead. It was when they got off the subway on Hitchcock that they ran into trouble.
The trouble had to do with cops, and it was just a crazy kind of coincidence thing, because what happened was that a pack of dogs was attacking this little kid in the street, and there must’ve been a thousand cops’ cars there trying to get the dogs off her—Big told me later he never seen so many cops in his life. And cops were running from all over the neighborhood, too, to help out with this wild-dog situation; somebody must’ve called in an assist-patrolman or something, the whole area was swarming with fuzz. So Big figured the next thing was one of the cops would spot him, maybe they had a description of him, and he’d be languishing downtown in Calcutta, that nice little jail you have, and so he done what I would have done under similar circumstances. He got back on the train and rode it to the next stop.
The next stop happened to be Gateside Avenue, which is where the Scarlets have their clubhouse. Big knows where the clubhouse is, and he had no intention of going any place near it. Him and Jo-Jo was going to circle Scarlet territory and head back downtown, hoping the fuzz would be gone by the time they got there. But they were both very hungry by now, this was maybe like four o’clock in the afternoon, it was already starting to get dark. They hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast that morning because the minute I called them they left the house and ditched the truck and started for the city. That must’ve been about, I don’t know, what time did you guys find me in the ice cream parlor? Eleven-thirty, something like that? Anyway, it was now the afternoon, and they were hungry, so they stopped in this pizzeria and ordered a large pie with sausage, and they were eating it when five big black guys came in the place, and they’re all wearing those red jackets with the white sleeves, they’re all Scarlet Avengers.
There was no way for Big and Jo-Jo to get out of the place in time. They were eating pizza in one of the booths there, and next thing you know the booth is surrounded, and Big and Jo-Jo aren’t carrying because they’re afraid they might get picked up and they don’t want no weapons on them if that happens, and all the niggers are armed. One of them shows Big this .45 he’s got under his coat, and he tells Big to get out of the booth nice and easy and come along with him or he’s going to blow his brains out all over the pizza.
Big and Jo-Jo are brave men, they will never back out of a fight. But the odds here were just too much, so they went along with the Scarlets, and that was what started the whole prisoner issue. What Mighty Man was telling me on the phone was that he had Big and Jo-Jo in his custody, at a place we would never find, and that he would not release them until we negotiated a peace that was satisfactory to his clique. He also mentioned that he was showing the Rebs a great deal of consideration by not executing Big and Jo-Jo on the spot, since they were members of a clique responsible for killing their president and his wife and kid. How do you like that reasoning? I had ordered last week’s Sunday night hit because I was trying to speed up peaceful negotiations, so now Mighty Man was telling me he considered members of my clique to be criminals! You see how devious that kind of thinking is? You go along with that kind of thinking, and then anything you do to protect yourself, or your honor, or your sincere efforts to bring some peace to this neighborhood becomes like you’re doing something bad instead of something good. Man, I wasn’t buying Mighty Man’s line for a minute, I can tell you that. I know what’s right, and it ain’t right to pick up two guys who are eating pizza and minding their own business, and then holding them prisoner, and using them to get terms you wouldn’t otherwise get.
So I told Mighty Man there would be no further negotiations till Big and Jo-Jo were released, and Mighty Man says there will be no release until we negotiate further. He also says, What about killing Lewis and his wife and his kid, and I tell him I don’t know anything about who killed any of those people, but I certainly will join him in finding the criminals once he releases the prisoners he is holding and we can negotiate a just peace. I also tell him that if he harms either Big or Jo-Jo, he had better watch his ass. I never curse, as I told you, but I was dealing here with a disgusting animal, and I had to talk to him in his own language. I made it even more perfectly clear to him. I told him that if anything happened to Big or Jo-Jo, he had better plan on spending the rest of his life in Fort Knox, because that would be the only place we couldn’t get to him. And I told him he better have both of them back to us by midnight that night, which was Sunday, or on Monday he would begin to think that what had happened to his president was only playing jacks with little girls.
