Ed McBain - Another Part of the City

“Yes, I wanted an advantage,” Reardon said, “that’s right. The man who raped Frances Monoghan...”

“Your Honor...”

“Let him finish,” Abrahams said.

“Thank you,” Reardon said. “The man was armed with a switchblade knife. He cut her across the face with it, disfigured her for life. Yes, I wanted an advantage when I went in there.”

He glanced toward the jury box. Juror number five, an attractive woman in her late twenties, he guessed, was leaning forward intently, listening as carefully as was Harold Jurgens.

“And you fully enjoyed your advantage, didn’t you?” Barrows asked.

“I don’t know what that means,” Reardon said. “What’s the question?”

Barrows walked back to the defense table. He glanced at his client, and then picked up a glossy eight-by-ten photograph lying near his briefcase. “Your Honor,” he said, “I would like this marked as evidence, please.”

“What is it?” Abrahams asked.

“A photograph taken of Harold Jurgens two weeks before the arrest. We’ve had it enlarged from a snapshot. I would like the jury to see it.”

“Let me see it first, please,” Abrahams said. Barrows handed the picture up to the bench. Abrahams looked at it and then turned to the assistant district attorney prosecuting the case. “Mr. Koenig?” he said.

“No objection,” Koenig said.

“Mark it Exhibit One for the defense,” Abrahams said, handing the picture to the clerk of the court.

“Thank you,” Barrows said.

Reardon watched him as he walked to the jury box and handed the photograph to the elderly matron who was the foreman, forewoman, foreperson, whatever the hell they were calling them these days.

“This is what Harold Jurgens looked like two weeks before his arrest,” he said. “Would you please look at it, and pass it on?”

He went back to the defense table and picked up another eight-by-ten.

“Your Honor,” he said, “I would similarly like this marked as evidence, please. It’s a blowup of the mug shot taken at Police Headquarters shortly after Mr. Jurgens was booked there.” He approached the bench and handed the photo up to Abrahams.

“Mr. Koenig?” Abrahams said.

“No objection.”

“Mark it Exhibit Two,” Abrahams said.

Barrows carried the second picture to the jury box, and handed it to the foreman again. She glanced at Reardon as she accepted it. Seemed to be taking his measure. The picture started down the line. As juror number five accepted it, she looked squarely at Reardon.

“That is what Harold Jurgens looked like shortly after his arrest,” Barrows said. “You will notice that his left eye is discolored, his lip is bruised and swollen, and there are cuts and lacerations all over his face.”

He looked at Reardon. Reardon looked at Koenig, sitting at the prosecutor’s table. He was doodling on a lined yellow pad. Barrows came back to the witness box.

“Mr. Reardon,” he said, “have you seen these pictures?”

“I’ve seen the mug shot,” Reardon said.

“Then allow me,” Barrows said, and walked to his briefcase and opened it. “Your Honor, may I show him prints of those photos?”

“Yes, yes,” Abrahams said impatiently.

Barrows took two eight-by-tens from his briefcase and carried them to the witness box. He handed them to Reardon. Reardon looked at them. The identical photos the jury had just seen. Juror number five was staring at him more intently now.

“A remarkable difference, wouldn’t you say?” Barrows asked.

Reardon said nothing.

“Mr. Reardon?” Barrows said. “Would you like to comment on the difference between the photographs? You do see a difference, don’t you?”

“I see a difference, yes.”

“How would you account for the difference, Mr. Reardon?”

“I have no way of accounting for it.”

“Was Mr. Jurgens’s face bruised and lacerated when you broke into his apartment at...?”

“I didn’t break in,” Reardon said at once. “I went there with a warrant.”

“Was his face bruised and lacerated?” Barrows insisted, taking off his glasses and shaking them at Reardon. “ Was his eye discolored? Was his lip swollen?”

“No,” Reardon said.

“But the mug shot attests that these bruises, these lacerations, these marks of violence were there after Harold Jurgens was questioned at the Fifth Precinct.”

“If you’re suggesting...”

“I am stating as a fact. Mr. Reardon, that a confession was coerced from the accused.”

“That’s a lie!” Reardon said. “I never touched...”

“Did you not say in the presence of Police Officer Anthony Aiello that prison was too good for Mr. Jurgens?”

“I said that, yes.”

“Did you not say, again in the presence of Officer Aiello, that Mr. Jurgens should be dragged through the street behind wild horses?”

“I said that, too.”

“And when you were alone with Mr. Jurgens, allegedly questioning him, did you not then decide to take the law into your own hands, and...?”

“No, I did not, ” Reardon said tightly.

“Did you not. in fact, use in your questioning a back-room, rubber-hose technique forbidden by the very laws you are sworn to uphold?”

“I did not. ”

“Then how do you account for the differences in those two photographs?”

“He wasn’t mugged and printed at the Fifth,” Reardon said. “That was done at Headquarters, where he was booked. He was in with a lot of other prisoners there. Most criminals don’t particularly appreciate either rapists or child molesters. I don’t know how he got those bruises, but it’s entirely possible...”

“No further questions, your Honor,” Barrows said.

Koenig rose at once from the prosecutor’s table. “No questions,” he said.

Reardon stepped down from the witness box. Juror number five was still watching him. He sat beside Koenig and whispered, “You could have objected, you know.”

“Why?” Koenig said, and smiled. “He convinced me.”

Not far from where Reardon, on the phone with Lieutenant Farmer, was complaining that Koenig had let their case go down the toilet, two men sat in the corner office of a brokerage firm in the Equitable Building on Broadway, between Cedar and Pine, almost directly across from the huge black Merrill Lynch building at One Liberty Plaza.

Lowell Rothstein was thirty-eight years old, darkly handsome, with wavy black hair and brown eyes he liked to think of as soulful. He was wearing a suit hand-tailored for him at Chipp’s, and smoking a Dunhill cigarette he had just lighted with a gold Dunhill lighter. A gold Rolex watch ticked off minutes on his slender wrist. His partner, Joseph Phelps, was a year older, a plain-looking man going bald at the back of his head, wearing a rumpled gray flannel suit and black shoes that badly needed polish. He looked extremely worried. He sounded worried, too.

“Why does she want to see us?” he asked, and shook his head. “All the way from Arizona?” He shook his head again. “Her brother’s here selling some paintings, isn’t he? Do you think this is just a social visit?”

“The Kidds don’t make social visits,” Rothstein said.

Phelps glanced at the clock on his partner’s desk. “What time did she say?”

“Eleven,” Rothstein said. “Relax, will you?”

“The very rich make me nervous,” Phelps said.

“The very poor make me nervous,” Rothstein said. “Or at least the ones who can’t forget they were poor.”

“I was poor, yes,” Phelps said. “Very.”

“You’re not poor now.”