Ed McBain: Kiss

"It was last ...”

"It'll always be yesterday," she said.

Teddy missed this. Carella signed it to her.

She nodded.

"Until I can look that bastard straight in the eye," Louise said.

Carella had already looked that bastard straight in the eye. Had rammed the muzzle of his service revolver into the hollow of Sonny Cole's throat, had heard Detective Randy Wade whispering beside him, "Do it." He had not squeezed the trigger, although in the narrow corridor of a house surrounded by vacant lots this would have been the easiest thing in the world to do. He had not done it.

Now, seeing the look in his mother's eyes, he wondered if he'd been right.

"I'm coming to the trial," she said, and nodded curtly.

"Mom ..." Angela started.

"What time next Monday?" she asked.

"Nine o'clock," Carella said, and sighed heavily. "The Criminal Courts Building downtown.”

Even though Henry Lowell had received his undergraduate degree from Duke and his law degree from Harvard, locker-room gossip maintained that he'd once gone to Oxford University. Either way, his record was an impressive one. Since starting work at the District Attorney's Office three years ago, he'd racked up twenty-six convictions as opposed to a sole acquittal. He had never tried a murder case.

Six feet four inches tall, beanpole thin, lank dust-colored hair hanging on his broad forehead and crowding his hazel-colored eyes, Lowell stood with Carella just inside the massive bronze doors that opened onto the marbled lobby of the Criminal Courts Building on High Street downtown. It was ten minutes to nine on Monday morning, the seventh day of January. It had taken almost two weeks to select the jury; this morning the trial would begin in earnest.

Carella again wondered, as he had the first time they'd met, why Lowell sported a - British accent rather than a Southern one, or for that matter any regional American one. He also wondered how the accent would sit with a jury composed of three white males, four black males, two Hispanic males, one white female, one Hispanic female, and one Asian female; you heard plenty of exotic accents in this city nowadays, but hardly any of them were British.

"I must tell you straightaway," Lowell said, "that I hope this doesn't break down into a trial of issues rather than of substance.”

Carella didn't know what he meant.

"I don't need to mention," Lowell said, "that in this city there have been recent incidents of Italian-Americans attacking and harming African-Americans ...”

Carella hated both those labels.

"... and conversely there have been incidents of African-Americans attacking and harming Italian-Americans. Point is, we have here a case of two African-Americans attacking an Italian-American ...”

My father, Carella thought.

"... and in fact inflicting upon him the most grievous bodily harm.”

Killing him, in fact, Carella thought.

"One of the perpetrators is still alive, and will be tried today and in the days to come. I'll do my best, of course, to convict him, but I don't want this trial to disintegrate into an ethnic contest. Point is, I'd be much happier if your father's name were Smith or Jones, but unfortunately it isn't.”

Wasn't, Carella thought.

"I don't have to tell you, I'm sure, that there is still a lingering prejudice in this country against people of Italian descent. The paisans in your own precinct didn't help matters any when they ...”

"If you're referring ...”

"... when they chased a black kid into St.

Catherine's and later went in there and made a mess of the place.”

"They're no paisans of mine," Carella said.

Lowell looked at him.

"Do you ever get over to England?" he asked.

"No," Carella said.

He wondered what that had to do with the price of fish.

"I was there a short while ago," Lowell said, "I love it there, well, Oxford, you know.”

He smiled in reminiscence. He had a good smile. Carella imagined he had used that smile to great advantage in the twenty-six cases he'd successfully prosecuted.

"Point is ..." he said.

Bad verbal tic, Carella thought. Point is.

"... during my stay, I ran across an interview in a newspaper called The Guardian. If you're not familiar with it ...”

"I'm not.”

"... it's a liberal newspaper, quite respectable. The piece was written by a man named John Williams. Its title was `Of Wops and Cops.`”

"Uh-huh," Carella said.

"As I recall, the subject of the interview was some cheap American thriller writer of Italian descent. Point is, neither Mr.

Williams nor his newspaper seemed to realize just how offensive the use of the word wops was. They could just as easily have titled the piece Of Niggers and Triggers, do you catch my drift?”

"No, I'm sorry, I don't," Carella said.

"It's unconscious. Even there in England, thousands of miles away, a presumably respected journalist like John Williams ... is the name familiar to you?”

"It is now," Carella said.

"John Williams ...”

"I'll remember it.”

"... can feel free to slant an interview into an ethnic attack. Point is, however much you may deplore it, there'll always be people who'll find satisfaction in equating you with those paisans, those guineas, those wops, yes, who invaded St.

Catherine's Church.”

"I see," Carella said.

"So if we allow this trial to become a name-calling contest ...”

"Uh-huh.”

"One minority group against another ...”

"Uh-huh.”

"An Italian-American victim versus ...”

“I find that word offensive, too," Carella said.

"Which word?”

"Italian-American.”

"You do?" Lowell said, surprised. "Why?”

"Because it is," Carella said.

He did not think that someone with a name like Lowell would ever understand that Italian-American was a valid label only when Carella's great-grandfather first came to this country and acquired his citizenship, but that it stopped being descriptive or even useful the moment his grand-parents were born here. That was when it became American, period.

Nor would Lowell ever understand that when we insisted upon calling fourth-generation, native-born sons and daughters of long-ago immigrants "Italian-Americans" or "Polish-Americans" or "Spanish-Americans" or "Irish-Americans" or-worst of all- "African-Americans," then we were stealing from them their very American-ness, we were telling them that if their forebears came from another nation, they would never be true Americans here in this land of the free and home of the brave, they would forever and merely remain wops, polacks, spics, micks, or niggers.

"My father was American," Carella said.

And wondered why the hell he had to say it.

"Exactly my ...”

"The man who killed him is American, too.”

"That's how I'd like to keep it," Lowell said.

"Exactly the point I was trying to make.”

But Carella still wondered.

"And thank you for the insight," Lowell said. "I won't use either of those words during the course of the trial. Italian-American, African-American ... gone from my vocabulary as of this moment." He smiled again, and then abruptly looked up at the clock. "It's time we went upstairs," he said. "I hope your mother hasn't got lost.”

Carella looked up the corridor. His mother had gone to the ladies' room some fifteen minutes ago. He saw her coming toward them now, dressed in black, moving with a slow, steady pace over the marbled floors and between the marble columns.

There was a white, lace-edged handkerchief in her right hand. Her dark eyes looked moist.

He wondered if she'd been crying.

"Mom?" he said, going to her and putting his arm around her.

Just that single word.