And so the blow was struck and perhaps even directly afterwards it seemed not to have happened and that the deed could still be halted. And then came that strange burial, the vain attempt at effacement.
“Then it was our plan to pour acid on the face in order to oblitterate the identity, in case of the finding of the body.”
But in the actual deed, suddenly it had seemed necessary, essential to go on pouring. “And when we were doing it, we continued pouring it also on another part of the body-”
“Where?”
“The private parts.”
Then wasn’t it after all a sex crime? Something sickening, to be hastily covered up, and turned away from? But the questioners had to be relentless. In that closed room, Judd was asked, “What made you do that?”
“We believed – yes, we were under the impression that a person could also be identified by-” He stopped.
In that intensely charged confession room, with all the men staring at him – Horn, Czewicki, the stenographer, as though staring through his clothes, and with all the dirty meanings in their eyes – could there then have flashed through Judd’s mind some image from his childhood, seemingly disconnected, undressing somewhere, naked, and fellows, maybe even his brother, making crude jokes? For myself, I recall an incident as a boy, in a shower room – one of the kids closing his legs so that only the hair showed and jumping around yelling, “I’m a girl! A girl!” And the ribald laughter. Could some such image have pressed itself forward? Could it perhaps have given Judd a shadowy hint as to the meaning of that attempted obliteration?
Thus, there was the deed, poured out, relived in that night of confession. The body dissolvingly anointed over mouth and genitalia, then pulled into the mire, pulled blood-flecked through the swamp water and pressed into the dark tube.
Then hurriedly away, dragging the bloodied robe, up the night lane. Wait. To scoop the earth with the sharp chisel, and bury the belt buckle which never would burn. And farther on a piece, bury the shoes under a crust of earth. Then as far as the road, the city streets and lights. And stopping at a drugstore, Judd to phone home – the dutiful son, “I’ll be a little late” – and Artie calling a girl – “I got held up, babe, detained, puss, make it tomorrow.” Then to Judd’s house, and parking the Willys a few doors away while pulling out his Stutz to drive his aunt and uncle home, leaving Artie calmly playing a hand of casino with Judah Steiner, Sr. And then Judd back – “Good night, sir,” as Pater retires upstairs – then both into the Willys, the robe, the clothes still inside it. Then to Artie’s house, sneaking down to the basement, the clothes bundled into the furnace, but not the lap robe – “It’ll make a stench. We’ll stuff it behind a bush, get rid of it tomorrow. If anyone finds it, that’s virgin blood – boys will be boys, ha ha.” But wait – the blood in the car. Take the gardener’s watering pail, wash off the worst of it – “Can’t see, that’s good enough,” says Artie. “Park the damn Willys in front of some damn apartment house. Clear the stuff out of it.” Then drive Artie home. “Wait – get rid of the frigging tool!” And driving along Ellis Avenue, Artie flinging the taped chisel out upon the stupid world…
“Premeditated – why, they planned this thing for weeks, months,” Horn told us when he emerged into the hotel corridor. “I’ve got a hanging case, no question. I don’t care how many millions their families throw in to try to save their skins.” He was not vindictive, not bloodthirsty. He was a man who had carried out a most difficult task and could be satisfied that he had handled it well.
The confessions were being typed up, he said. There was only one basic difference between them, and he chuckled at the predictable. “Each says the other struck the fatal blow.”
Soon we had their own words. Artie had pictured himself as driving. “I pulled up alongside of Paulie and said, ‘Hey Paulie’, and Paulie came over and I asked, ‘Want a ride?’ and Paulie said no, he was only a block from his house, and then I said, ‘I want to talk to you about that tennis racket you had the other day’, so Paulie said okay and Paulie got in beside me. I introduced him to Judd, who was in the back seat, and I asked Paulie, ‘You don’t mind if I drive around the block?’ and Paulie said okay, and I pulled away from the curb and as I turned the corner the blow came from behind, three or four quick blows on the head, and the hands were over Paulie’s mouth before he could yell, and then he was dragged into the back seat and a cloth stuffed into his mouth.”
For several minutes, Artie said, Judd had lost his nerve, crying, “Oh this is terrible, terrible!” And Artie had had to talk fast, make wisecracks, until Judd got hold of himself.
“This is terrible, terrible,” echoed to me. It was no extenuation. But what did it mean, there at that moment? That the reality broke in, for one of them at least?
For himself, Artie said, he noticed his pulse racing, he felt exhilarated, his blood beating intensely, from the moment the boy got into the car.
The way Judd told it varied mainly on the question of who was driving. He had been at the wheel, Judd insisted, with Artie in the back seat; the blows had come from the tool in Artie’s hand.
At the time, in the immense excitement of having the story, the dual accusation was only an ironic sidelight to the crime, and the fact that each accused the other only made them more alike in our minds. It was only later that the simple realization came that one of them must have been telling the truth.
To this day, the crime has been thought of as a deed in which they were organically joined, like Siamese twins. This may be true as to legal guilt. But understanding will never come through such an assumption. And if we see them as two beings who became wedded in the deed, then it does become momentous that one, here, had been telling the truth while the other had been lying.
I knew I had to phone Ruth. She should learn it all from me and not from the papers. In some shameful way, whatever I said would sound like a personal triumph. I procrastinated, telling myself I didn’t want to wake her with this news. Then when I finally called, she had already learned it, from a Tribune extra in the streets. Then she asked, “Sid, will you see him?”
“Maybe.”
“Sid, Sid.” It was as though she were crying, “Judd, Judd.”
We rushed out to interview the families. They had been wakened with the news, and the Strauses let us all in, begging for us to tell them – hadn’t it been the third degree? As soon as the boys had rested, and had some sleep, they would repudiate the story. It was absurd, insane!
Artie’s father left the room. Mrs. Straus held herself upright. “I won’t believe it,” she declared, “unless I hear it from Artie’s own lips.”
And at Judd’s house, his father, in his measured voice, repeated to us only, “No, no, this is some mistake, it cannot be true.” His brother Max told us, “It must be the boys’ idea of a joke. They must be sore at the cops for keeping them so long.”
After his confession Judd felt, if anything rather proud, as after making an unusually comprehensive report in class. He wished only that Artie had been there in the room – forgetting, momentarily, his rage at Artie for breaking down and talking. The crime had a certain altitude, he told himself; the action had a wholeness – the word was consistency. Now, through a trial, through an execution, he would maintain the same consistency, the same dignity of living and dying by a set of ideas. Even with the blunder, even with being caught, he and Artie had somehow achieved their aim. They had demonstrated something that was beyond the ordinary mind.
The State’s Attorney, to his credit, had carried out the interrogation in exactly the proper tone, with respectful curiosity. Thus when it was all over Judd had been asked if he would like to rest. He stretched out on a couple of chairs, and, the tension gone, for a tumultuous second imagined himself and Artie mounting the scaffold together. Repeating to himself that he had no fear, that he was consistent, Judd presently slept.