“What’s your name?”
“Hosie Russell. Hey, what is this? I was just sleepin’ off a drunk, man. C’mon, gi’ me a break, man. I jus’ got out of the joint. My daughter kicked my sorry ass out of the house.”
Thornby can smell the truth of at least part of that statement. He looks Russell over carefully. Close up, he is a lot older than the initial description, closer to fifty than thirty. And his shirt is red, bright red, not blue. Not a blue picture. He hesitates. Russell catches this and smiles, says ingratiatingly, “C’mon, blood, gi’ me a break. I’ll jus’ move along uptown …”
Thornby frowns. The guy could be just a wino, but Thornby doesn’t like that receipt; he hates the receipt. More than that, he doesn’t like being called “blood” by a skell. He whips Russell around and snaps the cuffs on him.
The crowd rumbled as they emerged. Some people clapped. There were two more blue-and-whites parked in the street, their lights flashing. Thornby brought his prisoner across the courtyard to the young actor, waiting with the sergeant.
“Is this him?” Thornby asked.
“Yes, definitely. Only he was wearing a different shirt.”
Russell rolled his eyes and said,“Bull-shit, man! He don’ know what the fuck he talkin’ about. I never was in his fuckin’ place. What he mean, all niggers look alike.”
As if to confirm this statement, an elderly white man in a rumpled tan suit, who was standing on the curb, shouted out, “That’s not the guy. I saw the whole thing. The guy who stabbed the girl was a different man.”
Russell nodded his head vigorously. “See? He saw it! It wasn’t me. Hey! What you doin’, man? Hey! It wasn’t me!”
As he continued to shout these and other protestations, he was muscled into a blue-and-white and driven off to the Sixth Precinct.
At a commandeered desk in the detective squad room of that precinct, Karp finished his preliminary interview with the Digbys. The couple were sensible, straightforward people, and they had seen the fleeing defendant at close range. They would have made superb witnesses had it not been for their Dukes of Hazzard accents, which for most New York juries indicated either slowness of wit or racial prejudice or both. Nevertheless, they had assured Karp that they could identify the man.
A detective walked over and said that Cimella was on the phone.
“We got him,” said Cimella. “He was in a basement on Barrow Street. One of the uniforms found him, and we got a positive ID from a tenant in the building-guy ran through his apartment a few minutes after the stabbing. Name’s Hosie Russell. They’re bringing him in now.”
“Great,” said Karp. “Okay, run him by a lineup with the Digbys and the other people who chased him. Then stick him in an interview room and make sure nobody talks to him before I do.”
Karp hung up and called his own office and asked Connie Trask to get someone to run a check on whether a black male named Hosie Russell had ever come to the attention of the law. Then he went over his interview notes until, ten minutes later, Cimella walked in with Hosie Russell and a black patrolman. They put Russell through a lineup, and the couple from Kentucky had no trouble picking him out. Neither did the young actor, Shelton.
Karp was introduced to Thornby, who filled him in on the details of the arrest.
“The funny thing was, the guy Shelton, he said Russell had a blue shirt on and was carrying something when he ran through the apartment, but he was wearing red when I found him. No shirt. No handbag. I thought for a minute he was just a piss bum on the coop. You think it really is the guy?”
“I don’t know,” said Karp. “We don’t have any physical evidence, and it’s hard to build a homicide case on just eyewitnesses, especially white eyewitnesses on a black perp.”
Thornby looked startled. “Homicide? Holy shit, she’s dead? I didn’t know that. I thought it was an armed robbery and assault. But I do have some physical evidence.” He handed Karp the receipt. “Does that help?”
Karp looked at the little slip of paper and then, sharply, back at the patrolman. “Where did you get this?”
Thornby told him.
“You didn’t find the handbag?”
“No, it wasn’t in the boiler room. The sarge got people out checking trash barrels and sewers. We didn’t find his blue shirt either. Or the knife.”
The phone rang, and it was Mel Channing, one of Karp’s junior attorneys, with a copy of Hosie Russell’s criminal record. Karp asked him to read it over the phone while he made notes. It took five minutes.
“What was that?” asked Cimella when Karp hung up.
“Our boy’s yellow sheet. From here to Mars. Fifteen felony convictions-robbery, assault, larceny, burglary. Guy’s fifty, can you believe it? He’s spent a total of-let’s see …” Karp made a rapid calculation on the pad he had used to take notes. “Twenty-two years in the slams, total.”
Cimella said, “Gosh, maybe our system of rehabilitation isn’t working. In any case, it looks good he’s the guy.”
“Oh, it’s him, all right,” said Karp. “He grabbed the cash out of her purse and didn’t notice that the receipt was crumpled up in it. But it’s nice to know he’s not a pillar of the church. Okay, let’s take a look at this sweetheart.”
Karp and Cimella went into the interview room. Russell stared at them blankly. His eyes were red-rimmed, and the room was full of his sour odor. Karp introduced himself and explained the rights of the accused.
“Do you know why you’re here, Mr. Russell?”
“Yeah, the cops fucked up. They got the wrong guy.”
“Uh-huh. Tell me, what were you running from when you ran through Mr. Shelton’s apartment this afternoon?”
“Who?”
“You ran through an apartment at 58 Barrow Street. The tenant saw you clearly and identified you to the police. What were you running from?”
“I din’ run nowhere. I was drunk all mornin’. My head feel like shit. Could I get some aspirin?”
“In a minute. Let me tell you what we know for sure. At about twelve-fifteen you stabbed and killed a young woman named Susan Weiner in the doorway of 484 Hudson Street and took her purse. Reliable witnesses have identified you. Do you have any statement to make at this time?”
“Yeah, I want some aspirin. And a lawyer.”
Karp shrugged and walked out of the room. A cop took Russell to the holding cells. Karp and Cimella went back to the squad room.
Karp said, “125.25; 160.15; 265.04, okay?”
Cimella said, “Sounds good,” and so they booked Russell for murder in the second degree (two counts, one for murder in association with a felony and one for intentional murder), first-degree robbery, and first-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
“What’s wrong?” asked Cimella, observing the tight expression on Karp’s face. “You expected him to confess?”
“Hell, no. I’d just like to have the shirt and the bag and the knife.”
“Why? We got the slip Thornby found on him.”
“Yeah, but that’ll be challenged on probable cause. Why did the cops pick on a poor innocent derelict? We’ll probably win that, but we could lose it too … what’s all that?”
There was a commotion, sounds of shouting and crashing furniture from the lower floor of the precinct house.
Cimella trotted down the stairs, and Karp limped after him. There they found police officers holding back a large, conservatively dressed black man who had apparently been trying to attack a prisoner. Approaching, they saw that the prisoner was Hosie Russell.
“What the hell’s going on here, Maury?” Cimella demanded of the uniformed sergeant.
“Damned if I know, Charlie. This guy”-indicating the large black man-“came in and asked the desk who was on that Hudson Street thing, so I gave him your name and he headed upstairs. Then Ryan and Hardy came through with this mutt on the way to the cells, and the guy sees the mutt and yells, ‘You swine!’ and goes for his throat.”