“Incidently there’s good reason to reduce the penalty for most murders. Most homicides are committed within families—husband against wife, that kind of thing. The likelihood of the murderer’s ever repeating his crime is usually remote; the crimes are committed in unique moments of passion, and anyway a woman who knowingly marries a man who killed his previous wife has to know the risk she’s running. I’d say five years in prison would be a sensible penalty for internecine homicide.”
“Where do vigilantes fit into your scheme?” Irene asked.
“Premeditated murder outside the family group,” he answered promptly. “If convicted, mandatory life imprisonment. Or the death penalty if society prefers.”
“A lot of people would disagree with that,” Spalter said. “A lot of people would rather have the vigilante run for mayor.”
The room broke up in laughter.
Paul said to Irene, “I see where you got some of your ideas.”
Childress had an arm around the professor’s shoulders; he was walking Chisum toward the bar, talking with sarcastic emphasis. The crowd milled and reformed its earlier knots of conversation and Paul heard words like impractical, visionary, sensible, utopian, cops, muggers, judges, lawyers, crime, prison, safety, civil war. And, he heard, vigilante.
17
¶ CHICAGO, DEC. 28TH—Two 14-year-old boys were slashed to death late last night by a 64-year-old man whom they are accused of having tried to rob.
The boys, Richard White, of 6513½ S. Paulina, and Michael Hayes, of 7418 S. Hermitage, cut with a kitchen knife in an alley near Kostner and Van Buren, fled from the alley and ran nearly 200 feet on Van Buren before they collapsed. Both boys died of their wounds almost immediately thereafter.
Captain William Marlowe, Commander of the Shakespeare District, said the two boys were looking for a mugging victim when they encountered Jorge Carrasquillo, 64, on Van Buren Street shortly after midnight. Mr. Carrasquillo had been drinking in a bar on Cicero Avenue and was homebound, on foot. Captain Marlowe has asked that Mr. Carrasquillo’s address be withheld to avoid harassment.
Allegedly the two boys forced Mr. Carrasquillo into the alley, where White acted as a lookout while Hayes tried to take Mr. Carrasquillo’s watch and money at gunpoint.
Mr. Carrasquillo wrested the gun, which later proved to be a toy, away from his assailant, and according to the police he then drew a kitchen knife from his coat pocket, cut Hayes across the neck, and then whirled around and slashed White, first on the hand, then across the throat.
The two boys were pronounced dead upon arrival at Cicero Hospital after Mr. Carrasquillo summoned police and an ambulance from a nearby public telephone.
Mr. Carrasquillo was released on his own recognizance pending a hearing to determine the facts of the case. A spokesman for the Cook County Attorney’s office said the prosecution would move to have the case ruled justifiable homicide.
According to Captain Marlowe, Mr. Carrasquillo started carrying the kitchen knife with him only three days ago. “He said he’d decided to do it after hearing about the vigilante,” Captain Marlowe said.
18
ASPIRAL of potato skin hung from the paring knife. She sat on a straight chair and her feet barely touched the floor. “I warn you right now. I always have been, am, and probably will continue to be a lousy cook.”
Paul manhandled the cork out of the bottle. “Glasses?”
“Up there.” She stabbed the knife toward the cabinet. “No, the next one. I think that’s why he divorced me. Too many burnt hamburgers while I was working on a brief instead of inventing five-course feasts. But I got my revenge. He’s gained twenty pounds since the divorce. I, on the other hand, remain as you see—malnourished or svelte, it depends on your point of view.”
“You look damn good to me.”
“Well thank you kind sir. My goodness this is nice wine. At least two dollars a bottle, what?”
“At least,” he said gravely. He held his glass up to the light. “My friend Sam Kreutzer used to go on for hours about the nose, the hue, the tongue, the palate. I never knew what the hell he was talking about.”
“Neither did he. Blindfold those guys and they can’t tell red wine from ketchup.” She dropped the potatoes into the miniature cauldron. “You’ve got a surprising little sense of humor, Paul.”
“Standard survival equipment for CPAs.”
She opened the oven and looked at the meat thermometer and picked up her glass. “Let us retire to the drawing room, sir.”
The apartment was tidy and smalclass="underline" it was three paces from the kitchenette to the couch. Bookcases hung cantilever from the walls; evidently she was a voracious and catholic reader—only one section contained law books.
She waved him away when he fumbled for matches; lit her cigarette with a table lighter and sat back peering at him through a smoke-induced squint.
He said, “Do you ever play poker?”
“No. Why?”
“You’d be a killer at it.”
“Am I so inscrutable? I don’t mean to be.”
“I keep wondering what you’re seeing when you look at me like that.”
“A rather sweet guy who’s still trying to get himself sorted out after the world fell down around his ankles. And, I might add, probably a pretty good poker player himself. Are you?”
“I haven’t played in months.”
“But you used to.”
“Every Thursday. I held my own but I’m no Cincinnati Kid. It was just a social game—the same friends every week.”
“Do you miss them? Your New York friends.”
“Some of them. Sam Kreutzer. The office wit—sort of a fledgling Childress. But I’ve never been much of a social animal, I guess.”
The cat leaped to a bookshelf and began to clean a paw. It was a grey and white tiger—inobtrusive, vigilant. Paul said, “I like people, in small doses, but I don’t need to have them around me night and day. I don’t really know what it means to have the kind of close binding friendship people talk about. Well, Sam was damned kind to me when my wife died—he stayed close by, helped me keep things together. But that’s courtesy, isn’t it. I mean it didn’t bother me that I’d be leaving those people behind by moving to Chicago.”
“What about your daughter?”
“We were fairly close. At least I think we were. But we weren’t friends, really. Parent and child—I was very protective, maybe too much so. Maybe possessive. It’s hard to know.”
“I’m the same way,” she said. “I was an only child. Actually I feel privileged. Liking people, but not needing them desperately. It makes you much freer, don’t you think?” She left the burning cigarette on the rim of the ash tray and picked up her wine; she said in a different voice, “But still it seems worth a lot more if you have a little love along the way.”
19
THE WIND had blown the snow off the trees but it lay deep in Washington Park coated with a frozen crust. The roadways and sidewalks had been cleared after a fashion but the night’s hard cold had left glazings of ice and two black women walked with slow care balancing their supermarket bags in their arms. On the bench Paul watched them from the edge of his vision, propping the newspaper against the wooden rail. Wind fluttered the corners of the newspaper and he could see the black women’s breath. Beyond them, beyond the trees and the end of the park he could see the slum houses: porches rotting off, cardboard in the windows. Two young men near the edge of the park were throwing snowballs at passing cars.