Juvenile Delinquent
by Richard Deming
Everybody was sure the boy was a killer. Nobody even wanted to prove him innocent — except Manville Moon.
1
I was having breakfast at my usual hour, noon, when Ed Brighton dropped by to see me. When I opened the door I was a little startled, not only because he hadn’t visited my flat for some years now, but because it’s always a little startling to be confronted unexpectedly by a man as big as Ed. He goes six feet six and weighs approximately two hundred and seventy-five pounds, most of it muscle except for a slightly rounded stomach.
When I had recovered from my surprise, I said, “Hi, Ed,” and held out my hand.
He shook it jerkily, at the same time giving me a rather uncertain smile, and I got another surprise. He was stone cold sober.
But he had the jitters so bad he was nearly shaking apart. Which wasn’t surprising. You can expect them if you suddenly sober up after keeping yourself at a certain alcoholic level for five straight years.
At forty Ed Brighton was still in pretty good physical shape in spite of his heavy drinking, largely because his job involved heavy labor and daily he sweated out a good deal of the whiskey he’d consumed the night before. But his eyes were always a little puffy and he always smelled faintly of alcohol. At least before today. Today his eyes were perfectly clear and he smelled only of clean shaving lotion.
As I stepped aside to let him come in and he moved past me into my front room, I said, “I’m just having breakfast. Like a cup of coffee? Or maybe a coffee royale?”
He shook his head. “No whiskey, thanks. Maybe some coffee, if you don’t have to make it extra.”
I led him out to the kitchen, poured him the last cup from the pot and sat down across from him to resume my meal of sausage and eggs.
“You off the stuff temporarily?” I asked curiously.
“Permanently,” he said.
I grinned at him. “Sure. I swear off permanently myself every time I get a hangover.”
“I’ve got a reason to stop.” He raised his coffee cup, spilling a little even though he held it with both hands.
“You thought you had a reason to start five years ago too,” I said around a mouthful of sausage.
When he remained silent, I went on, “Maggie was a wonderful gal, and maybe losing her was an excuse to hit the bottle. But five years seems like a long time to need an anaesthetic. I’ve never preached to you before, because I believe in letting people live their own lives. But trading everything you had for the bottle wasn’t very kind to young Joe.”
He took another sip of coffee and managed to get the cup back on the saucer with only a faint rattle. “Joe’s my reason for swearing off, Manny,” he said huskily. “If it isn’t too late. It took a sledgehammer over the head to make me see what I’ve done to him, but it’s a permanent cure. I’ll never take another drink as long as I live.”
“You finally woke up to what a slum environment was doing to him, eh? I could have told you that three years ago.”
“I wish to God you had.” Then he added moodily, “Not that I’d have listened. I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to see what bringing a kid up in a neighborhood that breeds nothing but criminals would do to him.”
I took a bite of egg. “Now, he isn’t that bad, Ed. Joe’s a little too big for his pants, but he’s a long way from a criminal.”
“That’s what you think,” he said with a mixture of savageness and despair. “He’s in jail right now on a murder charge.”
I laid down my fork and blinked at him. “Young Joe?” I asked incredulously.
“Young Joe,” he affirmed. “Or, more accurately, Knuckles Brighton, as he’s known by his fellow members of the Purple Pelicans.”
“The Purple Pelicans? What in the devil’s that?”
“A so-called club,” Ed said wearily. “Bunch of teen-agers. They all wear purple jackets and hats with purple bands. It’s supposed to be just a social group, but in reality it’s a juvenile gang. I think they must pull petty crimes like stealing hub caps and so on, because they seem to have a lot of spending money. I never stopped to wonder where Joe got his until this happened. I was too busy trying to make the distillers work overtime. But now I realize he’s had a devil of a lot more to spend for the last couple of years than I ever gave him.”
“A teen-age gang, eh?” I said thoughtfully. “One of those bunches that carry switch blades and zip guns?”
Ed nodded. “When they arrested Joe, they found a switch knife on him, and both a knife and a zip gun on the dead kid.”
“What happened?” I asked. “The Purple Pelicans have a rumble with some other gang, and Joe accidentally killed somebody?”
Ed shook his head. “Worse. On something like that, they’d probably only stick him with manslaughter. He’s clipped for premeditated murder, for knifing the leader of his own gang. The cops think it was a fight over leadership. They caught me when I was drunk last night, and before I knew what had happened, and got out of me that Joe was vice-president of the damned club. I also kindly identified the murder weapon for them before I learned it had been found sticking in young Bart Meyers’ chest.”
He brooded a minute, then added almost as an afterthought, “Joe says he didn’t kill the kid.”
Ed explained that the knifing had taken place in the basement club room of the Purple Pelicans, and Joe had been caught practically red-handed. The police had raided the place on an anonymous tip that a marijuana party was in progress, and found nobody on the premises but Joe and the dead boy. Joe insisted he had walked in only a few moments previously for a prearranged meeting with the juvenile gang leader, and found him dead when he arrived.
But the murder weapon, still sticking in the boy’s chest, was a hunting knife which had belonged to Ed Brighton for years. Ed hadn’t had occasion to use it for years, and as a matter of fact had even forgotten he owned it, but he recognized it immediately because a small cross was burned into the plastic haft. It had been so long since he’d thought about the knife, he couldn’t even tell the police where it had been kept, but he assumed it must have been in a small trunk at the rear of his closet, which he used as a storage place for similar little-used items. The police assumed Joe had found it while rummaging through the trunk and had been carrying it around stuck in his belt with the jacket buttoned over it, as the knife didn’t possess a sheath.
“What’s Joe say?” I asked.
“That he never saw the knife before. He asked the cops with some logic why he’d carry a hunting knife when he already had a switch knife, but they just brushed that off.”
“When all this happen?”
“Last night about ten. I was drunk, as usual, so I didn’t really get into action until this morning, when I went down to headquarters to talk to both Joe and the cops. What I came to see you about, Manny, is... well, I don’t know the ropes about stuff like this. I thought maybe you could talk to the boy, arrange for a lawyer and so on. And, if you think Joe’s innocent after talking to him, poke around and see if you can uncover anything to clear him.”
“Sure, Ed. Be glad to.”
“About your fee,” he said hesitantly. “I’m not very well fixed right now, but I make pretty good wages down on the dock when I work, and when I’ve been off the liquor awhile...”
He let it die off when he saw my face redden.
“Well, you do this kind of work for a living,” he said defensively.
“Just mention it again and I’ll flatten out your pointed head for you,” I informed him.