“It’s been done. I guess Weiss has that much coming. Let’s get down there.”
We went down to the room where they processed prisoners who were being released. Sammy Weiss was already there. He was gathering up a small pile of debris they had taken from his pockets when he had been jailed, and counting the few dollars of his own he had had. The $25,000 was stolen property. Weiss didn’t even ask about that money.
“Hey, Danny,” he said to me. He grinned all over his moon face. His eyes were not grinning, not yet. A life sentence was still too close behind him like a dark, perched vulture.
“Good deal, Sammy,” I said.
Gazzo said, “Take a lesson, Weiss.”
“I learned, Captain, yeh.”
He put his possessions and few dollars into his pockets. He stood there. All the police in the room watched him. I smiled. The police didn’t smile. They had seen it all before, and they had seen too many like Weiss go out one day and come back the next.
“Well,” Weiss said. He looked around. “That it, Captain?”
“That’s it,” Gazzo said. “You get home on your own.”
“Ride in free, eh, only no free ride back?” Weiss joked. Even he didn’t laugh. “It’s okay, sure. I’m out, right?”
Still he did not move. It was as if the open door was too much. He was afraid to take that first step toward the open door because maybe that door would close in his face just as he got there. Doors always closed for Sammy Weiss.
We were all looking at that door when Detective Bert Freedman walked in through it. Freedman did not notice Weiss. He walked up to Gazzo.
“You wanted to see me, Captain?”
“Weiss is being released,” Gazzo said.
Freedman let his eyes turn until he saw Weiss. His thick body became rigid, and those always-ready fists began to clench. A deep red color spread up his neck to his cold face. He stood that way for almost a full thirty seconds. Then he laughed:
“Maybe next time, bug. I get you next time.”
Inside I was close to praying. I had wanted Weiss to have this moment over Freedman. I had wanted Freedman to be humbled by one of his victims. I had wanted too much. Whatever Weiss had found inside him in prison, he was still Sammy Weiss. He tried to meet Freedman’s eyes, and failed. His flabby face began to sweat.
I said, “Someday, Freedman, you’ll make a mistake, and hound a man too far, and it’ll be your last mistake.”
“You think so, Fortune?” Freedman said. “I think you better stay out of my beat.”
“That’s enough, Freedman,” Gazzo said.
“No!” Weiss said, cried, almost shouted.
His voice was too loud, like a great croak. “No! I didn’t do nothin’, and you pushed me around. You don’t push no innocent guys around no more! I got rights. You go make sure I done somethin’ first, you hear?”
It wasn’t much defiance, but for Weiss it was heroic. Freedman’s red face turned scarlet, and his fists clenched tighter, but he said nothing. Weiss stood his ground and tried to square his fat shoulders. He didn’t quite make it, but he took that first big step toward the open door. He went out through the door almost walking tall.
I went after him. He didn’t wait for me. When I reached the sidewalk, he was a half block away and already starting to run in the cold morning sun. I watched him vanish.
He had had his small moment. I did not fool myself that it would last. Soon he would be the same Sammy Weiss back at the old stand-rooting for a shaky dollar, running from his shadow, and out to prove every second that next time he would ride the pot all the way. He wouldn’t. That much change happens to few men this side of death.
Deirdre Fallon would pay for nothing she had done, and she would not try the same tricks again. Her excursion into violence had risen from a precise combination of circumstances that would not repeat. She was a smart girl; young and beautiful. The men would still fall over themselves to let her use them. She would be fine.
Mrs. Gertrude Radford would go on exactly the same; unhappy, maybe, but comfortable.
George Ames would forget.
There was little justice in it, and less morality, but as I stood in the snow and morning sun of the city I began to feel good. An innocent man was free. Weiss wasn’t much, but he had been innocent, and better to let a thousand guilty escape than have one innocent man suffer. At least, that’s what we’re supposed to believe.
Weiss was free, Agnes Moore owed me some money, and my woman, Marty, would be back from Philadelphia soon. I felt fine.
It’s a world of percentage and partial victories, and on the whole I figured that right had limped home a shade ahead this time.