But Farrell found no solace in the quiet peace of his neighborhood; the interview with Lieutenant Jameson had left him in a puzzled and uneasy mood.
At nine the following morning Farrell sat with Jimmy in the lieutenant’s office. The day was bright and clear, and sunlight filled the room, brightening the surfaces of desks and filing cabinets, and revealing the seams and cracks of age in the plaster walls and old wooden flooring.
Ward and his son, Andy, had arrived first, and Jameson had already heard Andy’s story. Now he was listening to Jimmy, a cigarette burning in his fingers, his careful eyes studying the boy’s face and hands. Jimmy was making a good impression, Farrell felt; he told a straightforward, believable story, and his occasional lapses of memory and errors in minor fact only strengthened its credibility. Jameson interrupted him a few times to establish or clarify certain points, but for the most part he listened in a close, serious silence, a faint frown above his careful eyes.
The lieutenant knew his job, it was obvious to Farrell; he had gained the boys’ respect by impressing them with the gravity of their accusations.
When Jimmy finished his account Jameson picked up his phone and told Sergeant Cabella to bring Duke and Jerry upstairs to the Detective Division. Then he smiled faintly at the two boys, giving the impression, it seemed to Farrell, that this was a rare indulgence. “We’ll go outside in a moment or so,” Jameson said. “Duke and Jerry will be there. With them will be three other men who look about their age. One of them is the House Sergeant’s son, the other two are young patrolmen. They won’t be in uniform, of course. Your job will be to pick out Duke and Jerry from this group. There’s nothing for you to be worried about. You do your part, then we can do ours. Do you understand?”
Both boys nodded solemnly, and Jameson said, “Very well. In we go. One thing, Mr. Ward and Mr. Farrell, I’ll have to ask you not to say anything while I’m talking to your sons. Is that clear?”
Farrell said, “Yes,” and Ward nodded and patted his son on the back. “Let’s give them hell, Andy.”
In the Detective Division’s wardroom five young men stood with their backs to the long wooden counter, flanked by Sergeant Cabella and a plainclothes detective. The metallic voice of the police radio cracked through the room and Ward, after a last worried glance at his son, sat on a windowsill and fumbled for his cigarettes.
Duke was at one end of the line beside Sergeant Cabella and Jerry was in the middle, his big powerful body dominating the group. Both wore red sweaters with black Indian heads sewn on the front, and they seemed unaffected by the businesslike tension in the room. Jerry’s blond hair was still tousled from sleep and he yawned occasionally and ran a hand over his broad, dull features. Duke leaned against the counter, his weight supported on his elbows, and his feet crossed negligently at the ankles. He was startlingly handsome, Farrell thought, with clear, fresh skin glinting like copper in the strong sunlight. He was carefully groomed, the points of a white shirt vivid against his sweater, and thick, black hair brushed smoothly back from a high, well-shaped forehead. His expression was arrogant, but his features were saved from mere toughness by the alert contempt in his dark-lidded eyes.
Jameson sat down in a straight-backed chair with the boys on either side, his arms about their shoulders. “All right, let’s get this over with,” he said in a pleasant voice, and with that a silence settled over the room. “Now, Andy,” he said, “tell me this: do you recognize any of these young men? Have you seen them before? Take your time. We’ve got plenty of that.”
Andy hesitated; he rubbed his red hair and touched the lump on his nose with a tentative finger. He stared at the line-up with a tense little frown gathering above his eyes. “What?” he asked in a high, surprised voice. “What did you say?”
“Do you recognize any of these men?”
Duke, Farrell noticed, was smiling softly, watching the two boys with what seemed to be good-humored interest. Turning his eyes toward Cabella he murmured, “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Shut up!” Cabella said.
“Will you answer my question, Andy?” the lieutenant said.
Andy Ward frowned at the floor. “It was a long time ago,” he said.
“Now, Andy, you told me that two boys made you give them money, ten dollars, wasn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
“And because you didn’t give them an extra five dollars they beat you up. Are these boys in this room?”
“Well, it was kind of dark.” Andy nodded vigorously without lifting his eyes from the floor. “That’s why I can’t — I mean, it was real dark. Night time. It was hard to see anything.”
Farrell could almost feel the boy’s fear; it was a physical thing, as much a part of the room as the smell of cigar smoke, dry paper, as tangible as the chairs and desks and old cracked flooring. The expression on his son’s face troubled him; Jimmy was obviously as frightened as Andy Ward, but he was watching Duke with fascination, a reluctant but unmistakable admiration shining in his eyes. Duke probably seemed a heroic figure to him, Farrell thought; arrogant, contemptuous of authority, a lone and swashbuckling cavalier, a more glamorous figure than prosaic, businesslike cops, a more adventurous one than fathers concerned with the humdrum details of daily existence. The reflection disturbed Farrell. That Jimmy and Andy had lied and stolen out of fear was not the whole truth; half of it maybe, but not all of it. There was something else...
Lieutenant Jameson questioned Jimmy then, but Jimmy parroted Andy’s story, a painful flush of fear and shame riding up in his cheeks. The lieutenant went over his palpably made-up story twice, using a patience that Farrell couldn’t help admiring, but Jimmy stuck stubbornly to the one important point: it had been dark when he met the boys and he didn’t know what they looked like.
Finally Jameson got to his feet. To a plainclothes detective he said, “Take Duke and Jerry downstairs and hold them there.” He did not appear to be surprised or disappointed at the way things had turned out; his manner suggested that this was simply the daily grind, routine and typical. To Sergeant Cabella he said, “I’m going to talk to Mr. Farrell and Mr. Ward in my office. Would you find something to interest their boys for a few minutes? Let them look through the wanted file, or show them how to take fingerprints. We won’t be long.”
Duke straightened up from the counter and smiled indulgently at the lieutenant. “Look, we’ve been nice and cooperative so far, but would it be too much to ask what this is all about?”
“I think you know,” Jameson said.
“Honest, I don’t. I’ll look it up in my diary, if you’ll just give me a line on the date.”
Jerry put a hand over his mouth to smother a laugh, and Jameson said sharply, “Downstairs with them, I told you.”
Sergeant Cabella took Duke’s arm. “Move, hero,” he said.
Duke shrugged and smoothed a strand of hair from his forehead. He turned then and looked directly at Andy and Jimmy. “You’re good kids,” he said. “If they put words in your mouth, spit ’em out.”
Sergeant Cabella gave him a shove that sent him sprawling along the counter. “Didn’t you get the message?” he said.
Duke smiled faintly and smoothed his hair down again, but as he sauntered from the room, Farrell saw the cold fury in his eyes.
Lieutenant Jameson closed the door of his office and asked Ward and Farrell to sit down. “Well, they were too scared to identify them,” he said, perching on the corner of his desk and lighting a cigarette.
“Wait till I get Andy home,” Ward said. “I’ll give him something to be scared of in spades.”
“That’s up to you,” Jameson said. “But I don’t imagine it will help things much. We have this problem with adults, too, you know. Sometimes out of fear, sometimes downright laziness. Whatever the reason lots of good witnesses simply won’t help us prosecute.”