The prosecutor resumed. “Between the time you saw old Caspar’s throat cut by someone and the time you screamed, did you take your eyes off the man who did the cutting even for an instant?”
“I did not,” she said firmly.
“You keep using Kennedy’s name,” the prosecutor said. “Did you even know him before this? Do you have anything against him?”
“I learned his name here in the station house. I never saw the man before.” She left the room.
Fred and Terry, young powerful men employed in the subways, agreed with Mary Jones’s statement. They had been standing near her engrossed in conversation, but they recalled three men passing a few minutes before the woman screamed. When they looked up, they saw the street was empty except for the dazed victim and “the man in the white shirt” whom they identified as Kennedy.
“When I saw him,” Fred said, “he was only a short distance from old Caspar. No one else was on the street. Couldn’t be anybody else did it but this man. I lit out after him. He turned two or three corners, but I ran wide and I never lost sight of him. I collared him and then the rest came and started to beat him up.”
“You didn’t see him do the cutting?”
“No, but it just had to be him. Nobody else was in sight.”
The prosecutor asked each in turn:
“When you turned around, was this the man in the white shirt near Caspar or near the far corner?”
They were sure he was near Caspar.
“How many drinks did you have in you?”
“We weren’t drunk,” Fred said sturdily. “I had maybe two shots but I knew what I was doing. I couldn’t be wrong. Not this wrong.”
And there it stood. Three eyewitnesses, an immediate hue and cry, the chase, and capture. It was a simple case.
Yet Schreiber seemed unhappy. “You better talk to the boy.”
Hennessy, of Homicide, a red-haired intellectual with the manner of an instructor in philosophy at a military academy, put the questions.
“I don’t know what this is about,” Kennedy protested. “I was just walking around after supper with these fellows, Butch and Louie. We had a beer apiece at about ten o’clock on Canal Street. We walked along the river front for a while and then turned into this street. I was never on the side where the old man got knifed. We walked on the opposite side to the corner and were standing there when we heard a mob yelling and running at us. We all ran away together. I didn’t run because I stabbed anybody. I ran because I was afraid. This is a mixed neighborhood. I saw they weren’t white. I thought it might be a riot. I don’t know where Butch and Louie live. I don’t know their last names. They’re fellows I met around the neighborhood.”
“This is a serious business,” Hennessy said. “You’d better know where to get Butch and Louie.”
The prosecutor asked, “Do you claim the police beat you?”
“No, they saved my life. But they act like I did it. I had nothing to do with this at all. Why should I hurt him? I don’t even know who he is.”
“Did you see anybody else on the street at the time who could have cut him?” Hennessy demanded.
Kennedy was trembling. “No, I didn’t.”
“Somebody did it and they all say it was you.” Hennessy waited a moment. “You could make it easier for yourself by telling the truth.”
“I’ve told you the truth.” Kennedy conceded a minor record of delinquency, neither good nor bad. He had a spotty employment record. He lived with his family. “What reason would I have? Answer me that,” he asked.
“Whoever did it had no reason,” Hennessy said, “and it might as well be you.”
Kennedy was taken outside and the investigators sat around in the inner room, drinking soda pop, and standing in the breeze of the fan. “What do you all think?” the prosecutor asked.
Schreiber finished his bottle. “Let’s try the old man. He ought to be coming around now.”
Kennedy was taken to the hospital where old Caspar lay in the emergency ward with a wad of bloody cotton at his throat. The prosecutor put questions but the old man could not talk because of the blood welling up in his mouth. Schreiber and Hennessy brought in Kennedy and the prosecutor asked, “Is this the man who cut you?”
For a moment the old man could not move. Then with an effort he raised himself and pointed at Kennedy and nodded. He sank back weakly and closed his eyes.
“Now what does that mean?” Schreiber asked heavily.
“It means we charge this Kennedy with assault,” the prosecutor said. “If the old man dies, we’ll arraign him again for homicide.”
“I didn’t do it,” Kennedy protested.
The officials stood on the hot street in front of the hospital and summed up. Three eyewitnesses questioned separately had given a story which made the prisoner’s guilt appear unmistakable. The victim had pointed him out. His “alibi” of Butch and Louie appeared to be fictitious.
“Still, I don’t like it,” Schreiber grumbled. “This is a vicious crime. I don’t for the life of me see how this kid could do it. He’s a weakling.”
The prosecutor also had his doubts. “I don’t like it for another reason. If he was the kind who could commit this assault, why doesn’t he invent a story? He’s too passive.”
“Well, you’re right,” said philosopher Hennessy, “but what can you do against three eyewitnesses?”
“We can get a plate of borscht — that’s what we can do,” Schreiber said, and they adjourned to a dairy restaurant on nearby Delancey Street.
That afternoon the old man died, and automatically the charge against Kennedy became homicide.
There seemed no chance of mistaken identity. The harmless life of the victim ruled out a planned killing. It was a neighborhood affair, a cutting done on impulse. Little further police work was indicated. Ordinarily, with that kind of evidence, a prisoner immediately would be indicted, tried, and convicted for murder. Kennedy had neither the brains, the resourcefulness, nor the money to fight his way out of the trap.
However, neither the police nor the prosecutor were satisfied. They continued to worry and work. Schreiber continued to dig around the neighborhood. On Monday, Margaret Kennedy, the prisoner’s sister, applied at the district attorney’s office for a pass to see her brother in City Prison.
The prosecutor made it a rule to interview members of the family and he invited her to his office. The young woman was good-looking with an intelligent air, but with a definitely hostile manner. She worked in a millinery shop on Second Avenue as a sales assistant. “My brother’s innocent,” she said bitterly.