You Play the Black & the Red Comes Up Up (16 page)

"Oh," they said, "so it just walked up there?"

"I don't know," I said. "I just found it."

They got fingerprints off it and said I had stolen it from some drugstore and had tried to poison Sheila. They dug her body up again and looked for poison. Two doctors said there was no trace, but one doctor said he had a special test which showed minute traces. Figure that out.

Finally a lawyer came in to see me, and he sat down and asked me to tell him the real truth so's he could prepare a defense. I thought maybe he was a stool pigeon, so I wouldn't tell him anything except what I'd told police.

It was funny. The only one that stuck by me was Mamie. That was funny. She was the one I'd tried to murder, if they'd only known it, and she was the only one stuck by me.

She got in one day with the lawyer, and she had on her white robe and gold sandals. And the lawyer was much more interested then. The Ecanaanomic Party was going over like wildfire and thousands of people were joining. The papers were full of it. They didn't call me the tiger man any more. They said:
PEP Leader to Stand By Spouse in Chute Slaying.

And they had pictures of Mamie and Patsy and a Big story about how Mamie said she would stand by her husband.

Then one day they came in with photographers and took pictures. They took pictures of Mamie kissing me through the bars, and then of Mamie and Mr. Beckster, the lawyer, talking to me through the bars, and then pictures of Mamie and Patsy in their robes kneeling outside the bars and pra
y
ing for me with their hands crossed over their chests.

Mamie told me the Ecanaanomic Party had held a big prayer meeting for my release and how Patsy had made the greatest speech ever known, and five women had fainted, and they'd collected three thousand dollars for a defense fund. The papers said twelve thousand, but Mamie told me really it was only three thousand. With that money Mr. Beckster got another lawyer, a big shot named Mr. Rocleigh, to help him.

They asked me to tell them everything I could remember. I told them the truth except I didn't let on about trying to murder Mamie. I couldn't do that with her standing by me and everything and sitting right there. I even told them about Lois and Dickie. They went right off down to San Diego, but they were too late. Lois had seen it in the papers, and she'd gone to
the police, and they got every
thing out of her they could. She had showed them the scar on her forehead where she'd fallen against the stove. She told them I'd beaten her with a poker back in Oklahoma. And the papers all started calling me Tiger Man again, and said how I had left a trail of wives across the country.

Of course, Mamie was sore about Lois, First off she started to yell and call me everything she could think of. I thought she was going to blab all about the holdup, and I was so sick and tired of it all I didn't care whether she did or not. She went out of the police room where we were and the lawyers went after her. Beckster came back after a while and said I wasn't to worry.

"We've talked to her," he said, "and she's going to stand right beside you through thick and thin. That's the kind of woman she is. And Patsy Perisho is going to stand beside you loyally, too."

"I don't give a goddam what they do," I said. And I didn't.

"Well, get that off your chest now," he said, "but don't talk like that in court. After the case is over you can do what you want, but remember, if we're going to have a ghost of a chance, you've got to let Mamie be loyal to you; through it all. We've got to have her sitting in court—and Patsy, too. Get that in your head."

MURDER IN THE FIRST DEGREE

T
he thing that got me was the way it all fitted together. That district attorney had everything right back from the beginning.

He started off with how I had gone over the hill from the Marines and he would show that and what respect I had for an oath.

Then he would show how I married an unsuspecting girl and how I mistreated her until she couldn't stand it any longer and had to run away. Then he would prove how dangerous I was by showing that I threatened the life of the people who protected her from me.

Then, he said, that unable to reach her because of loyal friends,
I
took up with Mamie and never told her about my real wife. He told the jury that they had better be careful how they became sympathetic to me because I had such a lying exterior that even when my real character was unmasked women still believed in me, like the poor misguided woman whose pathetic loyalty even now brought her to sit in court with me. That was Mamie he meant.

Then, he said, he would prove that I was a tiger seeking what I could devour and not content with the infamy I had brought to two women I practiced my wiles: upon another one.

Then he got started about Sheila. He said:

"I want you to picture this girl. I want you to remember that she came to him pure and undefiled. Although above his own station in life this trusting, gentle soul, seeking the affection that all young American womanhood is taught to
expect, was soon entirely under this man's spell."

"In all my long years of service as prosecuting attorney I have never felt more impelled to shield from the eyes of the pitiless world the private soul of pure womanhood than I do in this case. But this is a court of law, and I must ask you to bear with me, to follow me into the story of hopeless passion which ultimately blighted this girl's life.

"And I shall not lead you by inference. I shall bring you proof—always proof. Reluctant though we may all be, we must hear the testimony of medical experts who will tell you how the trusting love of this girl brought to her, alas, the natural outcome of this man's passion.

"We will bring you witnesses to swear of the time and place when this man practiced his wiles on the girl who saw this monster only as a Sir Galahad—a knight.

"We will show that, when he learned of the natural consequences of his association with this girl, the prisoner's mind turned to one horrible solution. Murder!

"We will bring you a poison bottle from his haunts. We will bring you testimony that his fingerprints, and his alone, were on that bottle. We will bring you medical testimony that traces of that poison were present in the body of the deceased.

"But poisons, gentlemen of the jury, are not always effective in the hands of the inexperienced. We will bring you evidence by toxicologists to show that overdoses of this poison often are as harmless as no poison at all.

"Thus, his first attempt failing, he laid in his evil mind an even more horrible plot.

"First he loosened the guard rail of the tower on which he worked. We will bring you a witness who saw him at that work. Then, step by step, we will show you the details of a cold, premeditated crime. Not one committed in anger, but one in which the accused laid his plans with calculating skill.

"We will bring you proof that will give you the picture of this man the night before the crime. Alone in his bed, his foul mind still planning, he heard in the next room that the trusting woman who thought she was his wife was asleep.

"Rising, he wrote the letter decoying the girl he had seduced to her doom. Some time between midnight and six a.m. he mailed that letter—when no one could see him.

"The next morning he rose and purchased himself a railroad ticket in preparation for his escape. He went to his haunts on the tower, waiting. He had not told the poor girl where to meet him, but he knew that her love would lead her to him no matter where he was. So, like the spider, he waited until the trusting girl who loved him before even her own honor appeared.

"And then, what happened? Gentlemen of the jury, I will tell you. This man with his own hands pushed the girl who loved and adored him to her death in one of the blackest and foulest first-degree murders committed in my memory of over twenty years of service in the courts of this fair state of California!"

He went on with some more stuff about California and its fair name, and American womanhood, and its fair name, and then he asked the jury to be sure to remember to bring in a first-degree conviction.

It all sounded so perfect that it looked silly to go on with the trial at all. It was just a waste of time, because even I knew that they were going to hang me.

The trial took an awful long time, what with everyone making speeches before we could really get going.

When it started, Mamie sat in court with me. She had bought a special new white robe and sandals that she wore. Patsy was busy for me too. She held big meetings and made speeches, and the people of the Ecanaanomic Party paraded outside the court while the trial was on. I saw a picture in the paper where they were all marching with cardboard signs about the Ecanaanomic Party and me, and then there was another picture of them all praying in the street outside the court house. They were kneeling and praying and most of them were women wearing white robes like Patsy. Patsy was right in the front of the picture praying only instead of kneeling she was standing and had her hands turned up to the sky.

Mamie used to clip the pictures out, and she had a big scrapbook of them. Sometimes they were the same pictures that ran in different papers, but she pasted them all and wrote in the dates and the papers they came from.

But all that marching and stuff didn't do any good. The
State had its story too good. They had everything.

They had Lois, and I was hoping she'd bring Dickie into court so's I could see him; but she didn't and afterward I thought maybe it was just as well.

Then they had the little guy that rented us a cabin that time, and he was all dressed up in his best clothes so's he could tell about it.

They got Smitty up, too, and he did his best not to say what the prosecuting attorney wanted him to. So the prosecutor called him names, like he said he was a hostile witness, and he shouted at Smitty until the poor guy got all balled up. And when he was through Smitty was sweating like a bull, but I waved a highball at him to tip him off like I knew he hadn't wanted to talk. I never saw a guy look so sick as poor Smitty did when he got down off that chair.

They had Sheila's mother there, too. She didn't testify or anything, but only wore a black veil and fainted in court and was carried out. She didn't look like Sheila at all. She looked like a pretty tough, wornout dame to me.

And that's the way they went on, linking up all the things together just like the prosecutor said they would.

Some of it was wrong and some of it was right and some of it was what I had planned to do to Mamie; but they patched up what was and what wasn't and what might have been till you couldn't tell which was which, and even I could hardly remember which way things went.

Then the jury went out
and a special guard of Ecanaan
omic women in robes prayed outside the courthouse for my freedom. They prayed all night. And in the morning the jury found me guilty and I was sentenced to be hanged.

DEATH ROW

I
was in the death row when Genter came to see me. I had seen him in the courtroom lots of times, but he'd never made any sign, not even when they put his poison bottle on exhibit.

The guard brought him up and let him into the cell with me, and then locked us in and stood by the door.

I didn't say anything, and Genter came and sat on the cot beside me. He put his hand on my knees and said, "Richard. You look terribly sick."

I laughed. I said, "Well, the sun don't shine on you where I am now."

"Do you think about the sunshine?" he asked me.

"No. I don't think so."

"What do you think about?"

"I don't know."

"Try and remember. You must try to remember what you think about."

"I don't think of anything mostly," I told him.

"But you must try to tell me. It's important. What do you think of each day -knowing you are going to die soon? What were you thinking just before I came in. Try to remember, please."

"Before you came in? I don't know. I was reading this letter from a lawyer that said Lois has got a divorce in Nevada and they've awarded her the custody of the child, it being proven I am an unfit parent."

"Oh, and what were your reactions to that?"

"I don't know."

"But you must know. Try to think how you feel."

"I tell you I don't feel nothing," I shouted. I was getting sore. "I don't feel. It's like I'm dead. I don't give a darn about anything. It's like I'm dead already and don't feel anything any more. When you don't feel anything you must be dead. And that's the way I am now. I feel like I'm dead."

"Oh," he said. "Now I know. It is true. I know how it is now. You can't feel anything and you can't taste anything, and no matter what you do your senses can't react. No matter what you try life doesn't taste any more. And that means you must be dead."

All of a sudden he began to cry. The guard looked round, but I didn't give a damn, because you know no one can do anything more to you. So I tried to make Genter feel better.

He was crying and saying Latin to himself. He was very religious sometimes and believed in God. He cried into his
hands and kept saying
"Mea maxima culpa."
He; said that over and over.
“Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."

"Come on, don't be that way, Genter," I said, and I patted him on the back. "Anyhow, you've been a good friend to me."

"I, a good friend?" he said, and he started to cry worse. "Oh, may God and the Holy Saints have mercy on me! I a friend!"

"Sure you are,"
I
said. "Ain't you the first friend I ever had when I come to California? Why, you're the only one that's ever come in here and cried for me. Even Mamie don't come any more. Look, even if I've got to die I feel good about you. Didn't you try to help me figure out those troubles? Weren't you always nice to me and Sheila? Didn't you give her all those pretty things that time?"

He was crying bad. "Don't," he said. "I'm not your friend."

"Oh, nuts, you are too," I said. "So don't feel bad about me. Come on, quit crying."

"Don't you cry?" he asked me.

"No. I guess I wasn't made that way. Honest, I don't feel bad. Truly I don't care what happens. Now Sheila isn't here it feels like it doesn't matter whether school keeps or not."

"You truly loved her?"

"I loved her like nothing ever was. You know how it is, I guess."

"No," he said
,"
I n
ever loved anyone. I can't. Tell me how it is."

“Gosh," I said. "You can't tell. There's just not anything else in your mind but the one you love. Like all day long I wouldn't see things I was looking at, only I would see Sheila's face; and all the time I was away from her I would be pretending I was talking to her; and any time
I
saw anything nice I would pretend
I was showing it to her and lis
tening to what she said back; and when I did see her it was
like I started breathing something different instead of air and the world wasn't like an ordinary place. I guess
it was like what you said once,
that I was a body and she was a soul. I guess now she's dead I’m just a body again and there's nothing else left inside me"

He began to cry again, and I didn’t know what to do to stop him. Then he said, gabbling very fast:

"And she stood there garbed in white silk, with the aura of her asphodel soul abou
t her nobly, and the pollen cas
caded from the lilies and plundered her loins, I always see that, Richard."

Then he started saying "
Mea
maxima culpa"
again, and I had to do something to stop him. So I said:

"Well, don't worry. I guess I got what was coming to me. If I didn't do what they said, I guess I tried to do as much to someone else. So I guess that when one door opens another door closes, like. I planned things and if seems like justice works out and I get if anyhow, even if I didn't do it. I guess it was justice."

“That's it," he said, and his voice went funny and whispery. "That's what I can't stand. It's all too pat. It's like a Hays-office ending to a movie plot. The dramatic balance is there. Even life is becoming like a movie plot. And it shouldn't be. It should be illogical, unbalanced, bravely strong. I wanted it like that. And now even life is trite."

"Don't worry," I said. I wanted to talk of something else. So
I
said, "How are the movies?"

"’Look," he whispered. "I'll tell you something. I m
ade my last picture, and it was
so bad that I thought even the company would know it. And you know what they did? They sent for me and said it was the greatest box-office bet of the year. And every phase was false and bad. But they offered me fifty thousand dollars a picture for three more pictures in a year."

I had got him stopped crying now.

"Well,
you're
sitting,
pretty,
then" I said. "That's great." "I'm not. I refused it."

"Gosh, what'll you do?''

"I have an offer of seventy-five thousand dollars to do a picture abroad."

"That's better still."

"No. I can't go abroad, either. You know why?"

"No."

"It's because," he whispered, “because the rest of the world is a movie. I know. I've tried. I've made a picture in Baffin's Bay and I made one in Sumatra. And it's no good.

Because the places are exactly like a movie travelogue. They won't be different. Wherever I go the world won't be itself. It
becomes a movie set the moment
I
get there. And I
can't go any farther. If I go to Europe that will become a movie, too. Everywhere I went it would become a process shot or a travelogue, until there'd be no world left. Only a movie of the world. Then the world would die—it would become two-dimensional—it would be the end of the world. It would be Armageddon. Armageddon, I tell you! You don't know what it's like!"

He yelled that out real high. It was the first time I ever heard him yell when it wasn't in a whisper. It was so loud that the guard tamed round and told him time was up and smacked back the bolts so they went like a pistol shot.

Genter said, "I shall pray for you, Richard."

"Don't worry," I said. "I feel all right. I don't feel like I've got to die. I just feel like I died when Sheila did, and they can't do anything to me any more."

"But I'll pray for you."

"Okay, if it makes you feel good."

"But don't you want me to pray for you?"

"Sure," I said. "I would like it very much if you would pray for me."