CAROL: What happened?
DANNY: A spic tried to jap us. We stabbed him. Take the knives! Take them!
(Carol does not move. Her eyes wide, she stares at the blood-smeared fists thrust at her. Angela suddenly offers her hand, and the blades are clasped into it, one, two, three, and then the boys are running again, heading for the safety of their own turf. Angela rushes to the nearest stoop, climbing to the top step, which is shielded from the rain. She sits quickly, thrusting the knives under her skirt, pulling the skirt over them, feeling the long thin blades against her naked flesh, thinking she can feel the oozing blood on each separate long blade.)
CAROL: I’m scared. Oh God, I’m scared.
ANGELA: Shhhh, shhhh.
(The rain lashes the long street. A squad car skids across Third Avenue, its siren wailing. Another squad car, ignoring the One Way sign, enters the other end of the block.)
CAROL (whispering): The knife! One of the knives — it’s showing. Pull down your skirt!
ANGELA: Shhh, shhhh. (She reaches beneath her skirt, thrusting the knife deeper beneath her thighs. There is a narcoticized look on her face. The sirens ring in her ears, and then come the terrifying sounds of two explosions, the policemen firing in the air and the rushed babble of many voices, and then Carol again, whispering beside her.)
CAROL: They got ’em. Oh, God, they’re busted. What were they doing over there alone? Angela, they stabbed a guy!
ANGELA: Yes. (Her voice is a whisper now, too.) Yes, oh yes, they stabbed him.
CAROL: What should we do with the knives? Let’s throw them down the sewer. Now. Before the cops get to us.
ANGELA: No. No, I’ll take them home with me.
CAROL: Angela...
ANGELA: I’ll take them home with me.
“We found them here, sir,” Larsen said. “In the girl’s dresser drawer.”
“Why’d you accept the knives, Angela?” Hank asked.
“I don’t know. I was excited. The boys were so excited, I guess I got excited, too. You should have seen their faces. So they offered the knives to me. So... so I took them. All three of them. One after the other. And I hid them. And then I took them home with me and put them in a paper bag and put them in my drawer, at the back of the drawer where my father couldn’t see them. He’d have got mad as hell if he saw the knives. He’d have begun telling me a good girl shouldn’t have taken the knives like that from the three of them. So I hid them from him.”
“Why’d you call the police?”
“Because I later realized I done wrong. I felt terribly guilty. It was wrong what I done, hiding the knives like that. So I called the cops and told them I had them. I felt terribly guilty.”
“You said that Danny told you Morrez had japped them. Is that exactly what he said?”
“Yes.”
“That he’d been japped?”
“No, that a spic had tried to jap them and they stabbed him. That’s what he said. At least, I think so. I was very excited.”
“Have you read anything about this case in the newspapers?”
“Sure, everybody on the block is reading the stories.”
“Then you’re aware, are you not, that the three boys claim Morrez came at them with a knife. You know that, don’t you?”
“Sure. I know it.”
“Is it possible that Danny Di Pace said nothing at all about being japped? Is it possible you only think he said that — after reading the boys’ claims in the newspapers?”
“It’s possible, but I doubt it. I know what I heard. I took his knife, too, didn’t I?”
“Yes. Yes, you did.”
“You know something?” the girl said.
“What?”
“I still got the blood on my skirt. I can’t get the stain out. From when I was sitting on the knives. I still got blood there.”
At the dinner table that night, he looked across at his daughter Jennifer and wondered what kind of girl she’d have been had she lived in Harlem. She was a pretty girl, with her mother’s hazel eyes and fine blond hair, a bosom embarrassingly ripening into womanhood. Her appetite amazed him. She ate rapidly, shoveling food into her mouth with the abandon of a truck driver.
“Slow down, Jennie,” he said. “We’re not expecting a famine.”
“I know, Pop, but Agatha’s expecting me at eight-thirty, and she’s got some creamy new records, and Mom said dinner would be at seven, but you were late. So it’s really your fault I’m gulping my food.”
“Agatha’s creamy new records can wait,” Hank said. “You slow down before you choke.”
“It’s not really Agatha’s records that are causing the speed,” Karin said. “There’ll be some boys there, Hank.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Well, for Pete’s sake, Pop, don’t look as if I’m going into some opium den or something. We’re only going to dance a little.”
“Who are these boys?” Hank asked.
“Some of the kids from the neighborhood. Actually, they’re all bananas except Lonnie Gavin. He’s cool.”
“Well, that at least is reassuring,” Hank said, and he winked at Karin. “Why don’t you bring him to the house sometime?”
“Pop, he’s only been here about eighty times already.”
“And where was I?”
“Oh, preparing a brief or giving some witness the rubber hose, I guess.”
“I don’t think that’s very funny, Jennie,” Karin said. “Your father doesn’t beat his witnesses.”
“I know. That was just a euphemism.”
“And I suggest you brush up on your figures of speech, which are more incriminating than your original statements,” Hank said.
“Hyperbole?” Jennie asked.
“That’s more like it.”
“We’ve got a creep teaching English,” Jennie said. “It’s a wonder I learn anything. They ought to shoot him up with the next Vanguard.”
She seized her napkin, wiped her mouth, shoved her chair back, and kissed Karin briefly.
“May I please be excused?” she said as she rushed from the dining room. He could see her applying lipstick to her mouth, standing in front of the hall mirror. Then, unself-consciously, she tugged at her brassière, waved back at her parents, and slammed out of the house.
“How about that?” Hank said.
Karin shrugged.
“I’m worried,” Hank said.
“Why?”
“She’s a woman.”
“She’s a girl.”
“She’s a woman, Karin. She applies lipstick like an expert, and she adjusts her bra as if she’s been wearing one all her life. Are you sure it’s all right for her to go over to this Agatha’s house to dance? With boys?”
“I’d be more worried if she were dancing with girls.”
“Honey, don’t get glib.”
“I’m not. For the information of the district attorney, his daughter began to blossom at the age of twelve. She’s been wearing lipstick and bra for almost two years now. She has, I believe, been kissed.”
“By whom?” Hank said, his brow creasing.
“Oh, my God. By many boys, I’m sure.”
“I don’t think that’s wise, Karin.”
“How do you suggest we prevent it?”
“Well, I don’t know.” He paused. “But it doesn’t seem right to me that a thirteen-year-old girl should go around necking with everybody in the neighborhood.”
“Jennie’s almost fourteen and I’m sure she chooses the boys she wants to kiss.”
“And where does she go from there?”
“Hank!”
“I’m serious. I’d better have a talk with that girl.”
“And what will you tell her?”