The arresting patrolman took the boy to the squadroom upstairs, where Detective Bert Kling was talking to Hawes on the telephone. Kling signaled for the patrolman to wait with his prisoner on the bench outside the slatted wooden rail divider, and then buzzed Murchison at the desk downstairs.
“Dave,” he said, “we’ve got a homicide in the alley of the Eleventh Street Theater. You want to get it rolling?”
“Right,” Murchison said, and hung up.
Homicides are a common occurrence in this city, and each one is treated identically, the grisly horror of violent death reduced to routine by a police force that would otherwise be overwhelmed by statistics. At the muster desk upstairs Kling waved the patrolman and his prisoner into the squadroom, Sergeant Murchison first reported the murder to Captain Frick, who commanded the 87th Precinct, and then to Lieutenant Byrnes, who commanded the 87th Detective Squad. He then phoned Homicide, who in turn set into motion an escalating process of notification that included the Police Laboratory, the Telegraph, Telephone and Teletype Bureau at Headquarters, the Medical Examiner, the District Attorney, the District Commander of the Detective Division, the Chief of Detectives, and finally the Police Commissioner himself. Someone had thoughtlessly robbed a young woman of her life, and now a lot of sleepy-eyed men were being shaken out of their beds on a cold October night.
Upstairs, the clock on the squadroom wall read 12:30 A.M. The boy who had broken off twelve car aerials sat in a chair alongside Bert Kling’s desk. Kling took one look at him and yelled to Miscolo in the Clerical Office to bring in a pot of strong coffee. Across the room the drunk in the detention cage wanted to know where he was. In a little while they would release him with a warning to try to stay sober till morning.
But the night was young.
They arrived alone or in pairs, blowing on their hands, shoulders hunched against the bitter cold, breaths pluming whitely from their lips. They marked the dead girl’s position in the alleyway, they took her picture, they made drawings of the scene, they searched for the murder weapon and found none, and then they stood around speculating on sudden death. In this alleyway alongside a theater the policemen were the stars and the celebrities, and a curious crowd thronged the sidewalk where a barricade had already been set up, anxious for a glimpse of these men with their shields pinned to their overcoats — the identifying Playbills of law enforcement, without which you could not tell the civilians from the plainclothes cops.
Monoghan and Monroe had arrived from Homicide, and they watched dispassionately now as the Assistant Medical Examiner fluttered around the dead girl. They were both wearing black overcoats, black mufflers, and black fedoras; both were heavier men than Carella who stood between them with the lean look of an overtrained athlete, a pained expression on his face.
“He done some job on her,” Monroe said.
Monoghan made a rude sound.
“You identified her yet?” Monroe asked.
“I’m waiting for the M.E. to get through,” Carella answered.
“Might help to know what she was doing here in the alley. What’s that door there?” Monoghan asked.
“Stage entrance.”
“Think she was in the show?”
“I don’t know,” Carella said.
“Well, what the hell,” Monroe said, “they’re finished with her pocketbook there, ain’t they? Why don’t you look through it? You finished with that pocketbook there?” he yelled to one of the lab technicians.
“Yeah, anytime you want it,” the technician shouted back.
“Go on, Carella, take a look.”
The technician wiped the blood off the dead girl’s bag, then handed it to Carella. Monoghan and Monroe crowded in on him as he twisted open the clasp.
“Bring it over to the light,” Monroe said.
The light, with a metal shade, hung over the stage door. So violently had the girl been stabbed that flecks of blood had even dotted the enameled white underside of the shade. In her bag they found a driver’s license identifying her as Mercy Howell of 1113 Rutherford Avenue, Age 24, Height 5' 3", Eyes Blue. They found an Actors Equity card in her name, as well as credit cards for two of the city’s largest department stores. They found an unopened package of Virginia Slims, and a book of matches advertising an art course. They found a rat-tailed comb. They found $17.43. They found a package of Kleenex, and an appointment book. They found a ballpoint pen with shreds o f tobacco clinging to its tip, an eyelash curler, two subway tokens, and an advertisement for a see through blouse, clipped from one of the local newspapers.
In the pocket of her trench coat, when the M.E. had finished with her and pronounced her dead from multiple stab wounds in the chest and throat, they found an unfired Browning .25 caliber automatic. They tagged the gun and the handbag, and they moved the girl out of the alleyway and into the waiting ambulance for removal to the morgue. There was now nothing left of Mercy Howell but a chalked outline of her body and a pool of her blood on the alley floor.
“You sober enough to understand me?” Kling asked the boy.
“I was never drunk to begin with,” the boy answered.
“Okay then, here we go,” Kling said. “In keeping with the Supreme Court decision in Miranda versus Arizona we are not permitted to ask you any questions until you are warned of your right to counsel and your privilege against self-incrimination.”
“What does that mean?” the boy asked. “Self-incrimination?”
“I’m about to explain that to you now,” Kling said.
“This coffee stinks.”
“First, you have the right to remain silent if you so choose,” Kling said. “Do you understand that?”
“I understand it.”
“Second, you do not have to answer any police questions if you don’t want to. Do you understand that?”
“What the hell are you asking me if I understand for? Do I look like a moron or something?”
“The law requires that I ask whether or not you understand these specific warnings. Did you understand what I just said about not having to answer?”
“Yeah, yeah, I understood.”
“All right. Third, if you do decide to answer any questions, the answers may be used as evidence against you, do you—?”
“What the hell did I do, break off a couple of lousy car aerials?”
“Did you understand that?”
“I understood it.”
“You also have the right to consult with an attorney before or during police questioning. If you do not have the money to hire a lawyer, a lawyer will be appointed to consult with you.”
Kling gave this warning straight-faced even though he knew that under the Criminal Procedure Code of the city for which he worked, a public defender could not be appointed by the courts until the preliminary hearing. There was no legal provision for the courts or the police to appoint counsel during questioning, and there were certainly no police funds set aside for the appointment of attorneys. In theory, a call to the Legal Aid Society should have brought a lawyer up there to the old squadroom within minutes, ready and eager to offer counsel to any indigent person desiring it. But in practice, if this boy sitting beside Kling told him in the next three seconds that he was unable to pay for his own attorney and would like one provided, Kling would not have known just what the hell to do — other than call off the questioning.
“I understand,” the boy said.
“You’ve signified that you understand all the warnings,” Kling said, “and now I ask you whether you are willing to answer my questions without an attorney here to counsel you.”
“Go fly a kite,” the boy said. “I don’t want to answer nothing.”