Masterson and Brock stood in the hallway. They were both well over six feet tall, each weighing about 200 pounds, both wearing slacks and short-sleeved sports shirts that showed the bulge of their chest and arm muscles. Frankie, standing in front of them in the open door, looked very small, even though he was five feet ten inches tall and weighed 165 pounds.
“Frankie Pierce?” Masterson asked.
“That’s right,” he answered.
“Get your hat, Frankie,” Masterson said.
“What’s the matter?”
“We want to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“Get your hat.”
“I don’t wear a hat. What’s the matter?”
“We want to ask you a few questions, Frankie.”
“Well…well, why don’t you ask them then?”
“You gonna be a wise guy?” Brock asked suddenly. It was the first time he had spoken, and the effect of his words was chilling. He had slate-gray eyes and a thick nose, and a mouth drawn across his face with a draftsman’s pen, tight and hard, and barely moving when he spoke.
“No, look,” Frankie said. “I don’t mind answering some questions. It’s just I have a date, that’s all.”
“You want to finish tying your tie, Frankie?” Masterson asked. “Or do you want to come along the way you are?”
“Well…well, I’d like to tie my tie and…you know, I want to polish my shoes and…” He hesitated. “I told you, I have a date.”
“Yeah, you told us. Go tie your tie.”
“Is this gonna take long?”
“That depends on you, don’t it, Frankie?”
“What do you mean?”
“Tie your tie.”
He went to the mirror and finished the Windsor knot he had started. He was annoyed when he noticed his hands were trembling. He looked in the mirror at the two detectives who waited for him just inside the door, wondering if they had noticed, too, that his hands were trembling.
“You want to shake a leg, Frankie?” Masterson said.
“Sure, be right with you,” Frankie said pleasantly. “I wish you guys would tell me what this is all about.”
“You’ll find out, Frankie.”
“I mean, if you think I broke parole or something, you can give my parole officer a call, his name’s McLaughlin, he can tell you…”
“We don’t have to give nobody a call,” Brock said in that same chilling voice.
“Well…well, okay, let me just put on my jacket.”
He put on his jacket, and then walked to the door, and followed the detectives out, and locked the door behind him. There were a lot of people on the front stoop of the building and hanging around the candy store, and he was embarrassed because he knew everybody in the neighborhood could smell a cop from away the hell across the street, and he didn’t want anybody to think he was in trouble again. He kept telling himself all the way crosstown to the station house that he wasn’t in trouble, this was probably some kind of routine pickup, somebody done something, so they were naturally rounding up all the ex-cons in the neighborhood, something like that. It would just be a matter of explaining to them, of making them understand he was going straight, had a good job with a good salary, wasn’t even seeing any of the guys he used to run with before he got busted.
The two detectives said hello to the desk sergeant on their way into the building, and then Brock said in his chilling voice, “No calls, Mike,” and they walked him to the back of the building where the detective squadroom was, and then into the squadroom itself, and then into a small room with the word INTERROGATION lettered on the frosted glass door. Brock closed the door, took a key out of his pocket, locked the door, and put the key in his pocket.
“Sit down, Frankie,” Masterson said.
Frankie sat. He had heard what Brock said to the desk sergeant, and he had seen Brock lock the door and put the key in his pocket, and he was beginning to think that maybe something very serious had been done, and he wanted no part of it, whatever the hell it was. At the same time, he knew he was an ex-con, and he knew that it was only natural for them to go looking up a guy with a record if something was done, but once he explained, once they understood he was straight now…
“How long you been out, Frankie?” Masterson asked.
“Since November fifteenth.”
“Castleview?”
“Yeah.”
“What were you in for?”
“Third-degree burglary.”
“You were a good boy, huh?”
“Well, yeah, I didn’t give nobody any trouble.”
“That’s nice, Frankie,” Masterson said.
“How long you been living down there on Horton?” Brock asked.
“Since I got out.”
“You working?”
“Yeah. I got a job.”
“Where?”
“The Esso station near the bridge. Right where the approach…”
“What do you do there?”
“I’m a mechanic.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I worked in the automobile shop up at Castle—”
“Doing what? Making license plates?” Masterson said, and Brock laughed. His laugh was a curious thing. It never made a sound. It came into his throat and erupted there only as a series of muscular spasms.
“No, I learned a trade,” Frankie said. “Listen, I was good enough for the garage to hire me.”
“That’s nice, Frankie,” Masterson said.
“What’s this all about?” Frankie asked. “Somebody pull a job?”
“Yeah, somebody pulled a job.”
“Well, it wasn’t me,” Frankie said. “I learned my lesson.”
“Did you?”
“Five years was enough for me.” He shook his head. “No more. Never again.”
“It’s good to hear that, Frankie,” Masterson said.
“Well, I happen to mean it. I’m making eighty bucks a week now, and I work like a dog for it, but it’s clean, you know. They deduct all the taxes from it, and what’s left is mine, earned honest, no problems. I report once a week to my parole…”
“Yeah, Frankie, you know a guy named Randolph Norden?”
“Sure I do. He was my lawyer.”
“Was?”
“Yeah. When I had the trouble. Was. Why? What’s the matter?”
“How do you feel about him, Frankie?”
“He’s a good lawyer. Why?”
“A good lawyer? He got you sent up, didn’t he?”
“That wasn’t his fault. He wanted me to plead not guilty, but this guy I knew, he was a kid in and out of jail since he could walk, he told me I should cop out, that maybe I’d get a suspended sentence. So I argued with Norden, and he kept saying not guilty, not guilty, but I told him I’d decided to cop out. So I copped out, and got ten years. Some jerk I was, huh?”
“So you liked Norden, huh?”
“Yeah, he was okay.”
“Maybe he shoulda argued a little more, don’t you think? Convinced you? Don’t you think that’s what a good lawyer shoulda done?”
“He tried to, but I wouldn’t listen. I figured all I had on my record so far was juvenile stuff, you know, rumbles, and once when I was carrying a zip gun, the Sullivan Act. But I figured, what it amounted to, the burglary rap was a first offense really, and I figured if I copped out they’d go easy, maybe make it a suspended sentence. Instead, we got a judge he figured I’d learn a lesson behind bars for a little while.” Frankie shrugged. “Maybe he was right.”
“You’re a pretty nice fellow, ain’t you, Frankie? You forgive Norden for steering you wrong, and now you’re forgiving the judge for sending you away. That’s real nice of you, Frankie.”
“A judge only has a job to do,” Frankie said, and he shrugged again. “Listen, I don’t understand what this is all about. What’s this go to do with…?”
“With what, Frankie?”