“And this is your solution to the case?”
I nodded my head solemnly. “I’m afraid it is, Mom.”
Mom was silent. She was looking thoughtful, abstracted, far away from our conversation and the dining room. This is peculiar behavior for Mom. On Friday nights, when I tell her about my latest case, she usually maintains a sharp, scornful attention. No sooner am I finished with my story than she pops out with cryptic questions, mysterious hints, sarcastic references to my thickheadedness. And finally, with great relish, she presents me with a complete, logical, inescapable solution based on her everyday experiences with scheming butchers, nosey neighbors, and selfish relatives. And so, this sudden frowning silence from Mom made me wonder.
A second later Mom’s unusual mood vanished. Her head snapped up, a gleam of triumph was in her eye, and her voice sounded as vigorous as ever. “He’s afraid it is. He should be afraid. He’s got something to be afraid about. The whole police force of New York City — a bunch of grown-up men with pensions coming to them any day now — and all they can think of when they got a body on their hands is to blame it on a little five-years-old boy!”
I felt a pang of hurt pride. “I’ve given you all the facts, Mom. Who do you want to blame it on?”
“I’ll tell you,” Mom said, “right after you answer me three simple questions.”
I sighed. Mom’s “simple questions” are well known to me. Generally they’re so “simple” that they leave me ten times more confused than I was before. “Ask away, Mom,” I said.
“Question One,” she said, raising her forefinger. “This little boy, Kenny — did he go in much for games? Was he the athletical type?”
“Oh, I see why you’re asking that,” I said. “You want to know if he was really strong and agile enough to push his Uncle Nelson off the roof. Well, the answer doesn’t prove much. The kid didn’t go in much for athletics, because he didn’t have many friends. In the neighborhood where he lives, it just happens that most of the kids are older. He was too small to play games with them — in fact, that may be one reason for his shyness and loneliness. On the other hand, he’s a husky kid for his five years. Strong muscles, lots of stamina, excellent health. And his Uncle Nelson, as I pointed out, was sick and rundown—”
“Yes, yes, this I know.” Mom interrupted impatiently. “Now, Question Two.” She raised two fingers this time. “Little Kenny, what sort of books did he read?”
“Books, Mom?”
“Books, books. You remember, what you used to open up now and then when you was at college — though God knows, with the crazy profession you decided to go into, you certainly didn’t need them much. This little Kenny was shy and lonely, you said. He spent a lot of time by himself. So little boys like that, usually they do a lot of reading.”
“I don’t see the point of the question,” I said, “but you’re right. The kid is a big reader. His room was full of books. Comic books mostly. Superman, Batman, space travel, that sort of thing. He’s a little too young yet for anything better.”
“Good, good,” Mom said, nodding her head. “Question Three. This is the most important question of all.” She fixed her eyes on me hard for a moment, then brought it out: “Yesterday, when Uncle Nelson got killed, it was late in the morning. I was busy in the meat market all morning — a little misunderstanding over my lamb chops, which I had a discussion about with Perelman the butcher — so I didn’t notice what the weather was like outside. Was it nice and sunny, or was it dark and cloudy?”
I just stared at her. “That’s the most important question of all? Mom, what’s the point of it?”
“Never mind the point. Only give me an answer.”
“It was a bright sunny day yesterday. The hottest day so far this summer. But I don’t see—”
“You don’t,” Mom said. “But I do.” Then she nodded her head and went back to her food.
After a while I cleared my throat. “You do what, Mom?”
“I see. Exactly what I suspected. Exactly the solution that was in my head right at the beginning.”
“You mean the little boy had nothing to do with it?”
“Who said so? The little boy had everything to do with it.” Mom enjoyed my confusion for a few moments, then she gave a sigh and a shake of her head. “Davie, Davie, don’t you see the mistake you was making all along, you and the Homicide Squad? All this talk about little boys that want their Mama’s affection, and they’re jealous of their uncles, and they get a Papa fixation and steal things and it’s just like kicking the nurse — this is very clever, only it isn’t what goes on inside the head of a little boy. It’s only what you personally think ought to go on inside the head of a little boy.”
“And you know what does go on inside a little boy’s head, Mom?”
“Why shouldn’t I? For a lot of years didn’t I have a little boy’s head right under my nose here in this apartment? A lot of tsooris it gave me, that head, but believe me I found out what went on inside of it. And you yourself, you and Shirley, you could find this out too. If you stopped reading psychology books for a minute and — All right, all right, no propaganda, back to the case. The main thing you should remember about a five-years-old boy is that he’s only five years old. Only five years he’s been alive in this world, and half that time he was learning how to talk English.
“So how much can you expect such a little baby to find out about life in five years? What’s true, what isn’t true? If you put your finger into a candle flame, you get a burn. But you put your finger into a sunbeam, and it only feels nice and warm. So how can a little baby find out the difference till he tries it for himself? When Papa comes home, you can throw your arms around his neck and kiss him on the cheek. But what about the nice man on the television set — how come you can’t throw your arms around him and kiss his cheek? Mama tells you a fairy story before you go to sleep — you hear Papa talking about a story from the newspapers about a little boy who got kidnaped. So which one of these stories is true? Which one is only for fun, and which one should you be frightened at? Which one of them really happened? Is there anything in this world that couldn’t happen?
“It’s like my baby brother Max, your Uncle Max, when he was seven years old and we came to America. Ever since he could remember, Max heard about the gangsters in America. Only what was a gangster? How old was a gangster? Did he look like other people? Anybody bigger than Max, who shouted at him and hit him, anybody like that, for Max at age seven could be a gangster. And wasn’t it his bad luck, the first neighborhood we moved into, near Delancey Street, to meet a couple little boys ten years old that wasn’t exactly the sweetest, kindest little boys in the world? So he asked them one day, ‘What’s a gangster, Sammy? Are you a gangster, Charlie?’ So Sammy and Charlie winked at each other and said, ‘Absolutely, we’re a couple of gangsters, we’re the worst gangsters in the whole city. We’ve got big guns in our pockets right now, and we’re going to shoot you.’
“And didn’t poor little Max believe them? Naturally he believed them. For weeks and weeks he was scared to death of them. He hid his face whenever a policeman passed by. He lost his appetite. He hated to step out of the house. And one time, when they told him they were going to come into his room in the middle of the night and kill him, he laid awake shivering in his bed, and when he heard the door squeak he practically jumped out of the window. Believe me, if the window had been opened a little farther, my brother Max wouldn’t be your Uncle Max today.”