“It’s too early to say what may be important and what may not be. Still, anything unexplained is always potentially important. Maybe Billy Dupaul wasn’t celebrating; maybe he was commiserating with himself for one reason or another. Feeling sorry for yourself is a far more common reason for getting drunk, especially among youngsters, and especially among youngsters who are athletes and don’t drink as a general rule.”
He looked at Sharon. She read the footage of the tape, marked it down, made a note in her book, and bobbed her head. Ross turned back.
“All right, Steve, let’s go on.”
“Yes, sir. Of course,” Steve said, “as far as Dupaul’s reasons for getting drunk that particular night, we can always ask him when we get around to interviewing him at the Tombs.”
“Except I like to have independent evidence whenever possible. Clients, even clients facing a life sentence, often lie. They think they know better than their defense counsel what can help them and what can hurt them. As witness Billy Dupaul changing counsel in midstream, going from Louie Gorman to Al Hogan. I don’t love Gorman, but compared to Al Hogan he has to look like Clarence Darrow.”
“Yes, sir,” Steve said. He returned to his sheet of paper. “Well, speaking of this drunk he went on, he started in his room. He had a bottle there and he testified to having a few drinks before going downstairs. Then, downstairs in the hotel bar, he ordered another drink—”
Ross raised his hand, interrupting.
“I know it’s legal at eighteen in New York, but did anybody in the bar ask him for any identification?” He smiled and tilted his head toward Sharon. “When Sharon first came to work here she was — well, past eighteen — but whenever we went out to eat, the waiter wanted to bring her a Shirley Temple or Coca-Cola with her meal.”
Sharon laughed. “I had some time!” She wrinkled her nose. “Unfortunately, they never ask any more...”
“Nobody asked him for identification. If you’d seen him, you’d know why. I never actually saw him myself, but I’ve got his statistics here, and they’re impressive. He was a big kid, and I imagine he’s a big man now,” Steve said.
“Okay,” Ross said, and looked at his watch. “Let’s get on.”
“Right. In any event, Dupaul had a drink at the hotel bar and then went out on the town. He stopped at a place called Marco’s on Lexington near Eighty-fifth and had a couple of drinks there. The bartender says he was talking to some character and then wandered out. The bartender also said it was a good thing he did, because in his state he wouldn’t have served him any more. Then, about twenty minutes to a half hour later, according to the timetable established, he was in a spot called the Mountain Top — it’s actually in a basement — on Fifty-fourth between Seventh and Eighth.”
“Quite a distance,” Ross commented, and frowned. “Odd.”
“Plenty of time to get there, especially in a cab.”
“I don’t mean that. Usually, when a person goes out on a binge, or even a simple, everyday pub crawl, he sticks to bars that are fairly close to one another. He doesn’t jump around. He doesn’t take cabs. There are certainly enough bars around Eighty-sixth and Lexington to satisfy the most demanding thirst.” He frowned and looked up from the pencil he had been twiddling. “Did Billy Dupaul claim to have any particular reason for going over to this Mountain Top Bar?”
“There’s nothing about it in the transcript.”
“Sharon, make a note of that. All right, Steve, what happened next?”
Steve Sadler shuffled some papers together, straightened his glasses, and shook his head.
“I’m going to have to give you two different stories now, Hank: the one told by Dupaul on the stand and the one told by Neeley. What I’ll be giving you now will really be the summation of many transcripts of testimony, together with the conclusions drawn from this testimony — not conclusions on my part, but on the part of the prosecution on the one hand, and of the defense on the other. And, as I said before, it will give you two completely different stories told by the two men.”
“And the jury believed Neeley’s story.” It was less a question on Ross’s part than a statement.
“I’m not so sure,” Steve said. “What I mean is that I think if I’d been on that jury, I would have had to find the boy guilty no matter whose story I believed. It’s a question of credibility. I know that old Mr. Hogan was blamed for poor defense by a lot of people after the trial, but they must have been people who got their information from the newspapers, people who didn’t really follow the trial at firsthand very closely. On the weight of the evidence...” His voice trailed off.
“Well,” Ross said in a reasonable tone of voice, “let’s assume we’re the jury here in this room. Let us hear the two versions.”
“Right,” Steve said. “Well, first, here’s the Dupaul version. Actually, of course, Neeley testified first, since he was a prosecution witness, but I’ll give it to you in this order.
“In this Mountain Top Bar, Dupaul said he sat down at the bar and found himself sitting next to a woman. He said she was pretty old; his exact words were ‘middle-aged, in the neighborhood of thirty or thirty-five’ but remember, at the time he had just turned nineteen. He said she was very good-looking and very sexy. He said they got talking and she told him her name was Mrs. Neeley, but he could call her Grace. She also said not to let the Mrs. bother him as her husband was away on a business trip. He also said he thinks he remembered that other people in the bar called her by the name Grace—”
Ross interrupted with a frown, the twiddled pencil still.
“He testified he thinks he remembered?”
“His testimony was full of ‘I think’ and ‘I’m not sure, but I seem to recall’ and ‘if I’m not mistaken’ and phrases like that.” Steve shrugged. “Naturally the prosecution tore him into little shreds on a good part of his testimony, but the boy freely admitted he was very drunk and therefore extremely hazy as to details.”
“Great!” Ross said in disgust. “All right. Go on.”
“Well, despite Dupaul’s testimony, the bartender in the place said he never heard of a Mrs. Neeley — Grace or any other name — and he didn’t notice the boy with anyone in particular, or anyone at all. The bartender said he cut Dupaul off after three drinks because he was obviously out on his feet. Dupaul denied this—”
“Were there any other witnesses to these events?”
“None that the defense called. The prosecution didn’t need to call any others.” Steve added, “In that regard, Hogan can be criticized, I think. I don’t believe he truly tried to find any corroborative witnesses.”
“All right,” Ross said. “I’ll try not to interrupt so much.”
“Right.” Steve referred to his paper, shoving his glasses back. “Dupaul’s story was that he was with Mrs. Neeley and in fact even bought her a drink and paid for it. The bartender said that lots of people, after being cut off, try to pull the gag of pretending to buy a drink for someone on an adjoining stool, but he still had no recollection of any woman. He also testified he was working the other end of the bar when Dupaul left and therefore couldn’t say if the boy went out alone or not. The place was busy and the bartender said he couldn’t keep track of every drunk around.
“At any rate, Dupaul’s story goes on that they went to an apartment on West Sixtieth Street by taxi — the taxi records were checked by the prosecution and no record of a trip to that address that night was found, but that doesn’t mean too much — it could have been a gypsy. Dupaul stated that he thought he remembered the woman leading him to a mailbox and pointing out the name ‘Neeley’ on it; the prosecution had a lot of fun with that, since the letter box is behind the stairs and out of the way, and why would the woman do it? Not that they denied that Neeley lived there.