“All right,” he said, looking at the slip of paper in his hand. “Which one of you is Danny Di Pace?”
The boys hesitated. Behind them, the rain oozed monotonously against the glass panes. Night had come in earnest, following instantly on the spikes of the rain. Neon smeared its color splash against the windows; the squad room was curiously silent except for the whisper of raindrops against the asphalt outside.
“You hear me?” Gunnison said.
The boys did not speak. The tallest of the three, a powerfully built youth with dark-brown eyes, stood between the other two, presenting — because of his size — the natural apex of the triangle. The lieutenant took a step closer to him.
“You Danny Di Pace?”
“No.”
“Then who are you?”
“My name is Arthur Reardon,” the boy said.
“How old are you, Arthur?”
“Seventeen.”
The lieutenant nodded. He turned to the redheaded boy on Reardon’s left. “And you?”
“I’m Di Pace.”
“Why didn’t you say so when I asked you?”
“I’m only fifteen,” Di Pace said. “I won’t be sixteen till September. You can’t hold me here. You can’t even question me. I’m a juvenile offender. I know my rights.”
Gunnison nodded sourly to the assistant D.A. “We got a lawyer in our midst,” he said. “I got news for you, sonnyboy, and you better listen to it carefully. The upper age limit for a juvenile offender in New York State is sixteen years old.”
“That’s what I said—”
“Shut up and listen to me!” Gunnison snapped. “The New York code states that a delinquent is a child who violates any law or any municipal ordinance or who commits any act which, if committed by an adult, would be a serious crime, except — and get this, sonnyboy — except any child fifteen years of age who commits any act which, if committed by an adult, would be a crime punishable by death or life sentence. Now homicide, whether you know it or not—”
“Excuse me, Lieutenant,” the assistant D.A. said firmly.
“Yes?” Gunnison said. He turned to face the young man, his hands still on his hips.
“I’ve no desire to interrupt your interrogation. But in all fairness, the boy hasn’t yet been charged with anything.”
Gunnison was silent for a moment, weighing his years of police work against the young man’s inexperience, weighing too their comparative ranks. Calmly, he said, “A homicide was committed.”
“True. And the boy was brought in for questioning in connection with it. He hasn’t yet been booked as either a defendant or a material witness. Besides, you left out an important part of the penal code.”
“Did I?” Gunnison said, and he hoped the sarcasm did not show too clearly in his voice.
“Yes. You forgot to mention that a judge can make and file an order removing the action to the Children’s Court.”
“The fact remains,” Gunnison said levelly, “that homicide is a crime punishable by death or life sentence, and I don’t expect any fifteen-year-old snot to go spouting law texts at me.” He glared at the assistant D.A. as if to make it clear he didn’t expect twenty-five-year-old snots to go spouting law at him either. The young man seemed unruffled.
“May I talk to you privately for a moment, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“Sure,” Gunnison said. His eyes held the hard flat glare of contained anger. Purposefully, he walked to one of the desks inside the slatted rail divider which separated the squad room from the corridor outside.
“What is it?” he asked.
The assistant D.A. extended his hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met before,” he said. “My name is Soames.”
“Glad to know you,” Gunnison said by rote.
“About procedure,” Soames said, “and I’m only anticipating later objections from whoever defends these boys. But you know as well as I that a fifteen-year-old kid isn’t supposed to be interrogated in a police station. All right, granted there’s no place specifically provided for this theoretic interrogation. But most police officers—”
“Most police officers handle the interrogation in a separate part of the precinct so that the rule is at least given some sort of observance. I’m well aware of that, Mr. Soames. If you don’t mind my saying so, however, I just this minute discovered the kid was fifteen.”
“I didn’t mean to imply—”
“I’m sure you didn’t. But I’d like to find out how old the third boy is before I separate the adult killers from the baby killers. With your permission, of course.”
“Go right ahead,” Soames said.
“Thank you.”
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?”