The Witness Page 15

  “Okay. We’re going to start a relay. As each man calls, assign him to one of these names: top to bottom.” Stoney read off four names. “Note which man has which subject. Tell them I got Claude Davis. Instructions are they stay close, stay loose, and call whenever they can—most important, they are to stay with subject, right?”

  “Okay, Stoner. Good luck.”

  Stoner replaced the receiver, glanced down at the card of names. “Okay, buddy,” he said to the name before his eyes. “You lead me to my boy. Then I’m going to find Fat Man all by myself.”

  TWENTY-FOUR:

  CHRISTIE WATCHED EDDIE CHAMPION through the smudged glass of the telephone booth as she inserted a dime and heard the buzz of the dial tone. Carefully, her finger began to spin out the DA’s number. She glanced from Champion to the dial, then back to Champion. She smashed the receiver back into place the moment the incisive busy signal began. She immediately reinserted the dime and began dialing the second office number. Everyone was calling in. The whole squad was calling in to say they couldn’t find Eddie Champion. Get off the phones—get off the phones, damn it, answer.

  Champion removed a brown paper bag from the locker and held it in the palm of his hand. His face was averted from her and there were a lot of people moving about the vast arcade: tourists heading to or from the Central; passengers taking the shuttle to Times Square or searching for the IRT trains. The small fan inside the booth was blowing something that felt like tepid water directly on Christie’s face. There was a noise from within the receiver, a clicking of gears falling into place, then a split second of silence. The phone rang.

  Champion moved into the crowd and Christie hung up and darted into the stream of bodies. Champion followed a series of lights that directed passengers to the uptown IRT. He kept pace with the tide of human beings who shuffled along. Christie kept to his right and slackened her pace. She was close enough to reach out and touch him. To arrest him.

  But for what? Killing Billy Everett? No proof, no proof. The words pounded in her brain in time with her steps. Reardon hadn’t instructed her about Champion; the possibility of her coming upon him was so remote. But here he was. She could reach out and grasp him. New laws, new statutes, new penal code, new. I should keep up with these things, Christie thought; if I take him now, it might mess everything up. Might violate his rights. What are his rights? My God, if only someone had answered the phone. Patrolman Wheeler? Grab him for suspicion of murder? Too loose, no good. Stay with him; just stay with him.

  I don’t have a subway token.

  The thought filled her with panic. There were always at least two tokens in her pocketbook, but she had switched pocketbooks this morning. The IRT control gate was so complicated. In order to be admitted she would have to approach the booth, show her shield to the agent, and return to the small iron gate, which could not be released until the agent pressed a buzzer unlatching the gate. The exit doors were turnstiles, rotating in reverse. Her fingers dug into her small change purse, identifying pennies, nickels, dimes. She couldn’t move ahead of Champion and enter the controls before him; he might spot her. Maybe there wouldn’t be a long line at the booth; she’d buy a token.

  There were two long straggling lines before the booth. Champion moved toward the turnstile. He had a token. For a split second Christie thought of crouching under or leaping over, but that would attract too much attention. She pushed her way to the agent’s window, slammed her shield against the iron grillwork and instructed the woman. “Gate. Hurry, please.”

  She moved quickly to the gate and pushed against it as the buzzer sounded. She was through the controls, but Eddie Champion was gone.

  Christie forced herself to think logically. He must be heading uptown, to 125th Street. That was what the group had been planning. Apparently he had just been killing time, but now he was heading in a definite direction.

  Christie moved resolutely toward the uptown express platform and systematically sifted the crowd. Professionally, her eyes moved among the hundreds of bodies milling about the platform. She was looking for one man; therefore, she could dismiss everyone else. If his objective was 125th Street, Champion would probably head for the first car. Christie moved rapidly, but deliberately. She ignored the local side of the platform, assuming he would take an express train.

  The crowd moved toward the edge of the express side as a train rumbled far down the tunnel. Christie stepped back across to the local side for better perspective. She ignored the dry choking sensation in her throat and the squeezing and pressing inside her stomach. She concentrated on the absolute necessity of finding Eddie Champion in that crowd which was hardening, tightening, to jam onto the express train. She scanned the people about to enter the first car. He wasn’t there.

  As she moved toward the second car, there was an explosion of tumultuous movement. Faces came toward her as people exited from the newly arrived train, bringing with them a blast of human heat and a resolve not to be forced back onto the train.

  Eddie Champion entered the first door of the second car and Christie Opara drew in one great breath of relief and forced herself into the second door of the second car.

  Champion leaned against the closed door and was visible to Christie from the waist up. He stared vacantly at the subway advertisements and Christie observed him without looking directly at him. At the 86th Street station, he stepped out of the car to allow other passengers to detrain, then moved inside the car and resumed his leaning position at the door. Christie hadn’t moved from her place in the center of the car. The warm enamel post was filled with hands clutching for balance and she managed to hold on with three fingers. She kept her head low, for Champion was glancing around, then his face settled into a mask of subway staring.

  Christie felt moisture running down her back. Her dark dress clung damply to her back and shoulders. She licked beads of sweat from her upper lip but the heat didn’t really bother her. She was too intensely aware of her own uncertainty. That brown paper bag. Was there a gun in that bag? The gun he used to kill Patrolman Wheeler? The possibility was so strong that she had stood momentarily poised at the 86th Street station, her fingers moving inside her pocketbook, touching her own revolver. She should have taken him then, when he backed off the train, her gun jammed into his stomach, quietly, effortlessly. She should have. But what if he didn’t have a gun? What if he had a sandwich or a pair of socks in the bag? Or anything but a gun. At this very minute, maybe Stoner Martin or Bill Ferranti or someone had just located Champion’s gun. If she grabbed him now, could she make the arrest stick? Christie thought of the squad bulletin board and the endless sheets of mimeographed papers tacked up haphazardly for their information. She never read them—not all of them; she never had time.

  If she lost him now. He has a gun. I know he has a gun in that bag. I’ll stick with him and play it from here. There’s nothing else to do. If only Stoney were here, or Ferranti, or Ginsburg. Or Casey Reardon. Or somebody. Anybody. She steeled herself against a wave of panic and forced herself to listen to a strong, familiar, inner voice, devoid of all emotion: Handle it. However it turns out, it’s yours. Handle it.

  The train stopped at 125th Street and just as she knew he would, Eddie Champion detrained. As she walked, Christie tied a navy blue kerchief over her light hair, even though it wouldn’t be much help. She was emerging into a world of darkness and that kerchief wasn’t going to do much good.

  TWENTY-FIVE:

  STONER MARTIN MUTTERED AN obscenity into the telephone. “If he calls again, hang up. I don’t want any insurance. You won’t hear from me again for a while.”

  There were four other detectives in the vicinity and each of them was in visual contact with one of the four other closest friends of Eddie Champion.

  Stoner Martin watched Claude Davis play with the glass of beer on the bar before him. It was a cinch this kid didn’t care much for beer. He was a big boy, slow-moving and deliberate, and his mind seemed far away. He looked at his watch for the th
ird time in fifteen minutes; then, satisfied that it was time for whatever it was he had in mind, Claude Davis, without looking behind him, left the bar.

  Detective Stoner Martin followed right after him.

  TWENTY-SIX:

  CHRISTIE WAS RELIEVED AND surprised by the number of white faces she spotted in and out along the swarming streets. All youth workers and case workers and members of the Mayor’s various community groups had been mobilized and they were out: mingling, speaking good-naturedly, jostling among the kids, gossiping, easing things to a climate she hadn’t anticipated. It was like some huge neighborhood festival with everyone converging on the spot where a platform truck had been set up at the intersection of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue.

  All traffic had been diverted and small children were taking advantage of the vast, soft, tar gutter free for once of vehicles. They darted in and out, behind legs and bodies, grinning and shouting, excited by the strange things that were happening around them. Technicians were testing loudspeakers and amplifiers. All over, voices shrieked, and sudden sharp piercing electronic sounds were echoed by whistles and hoots and shouts from the children.

  Members of the FFA stood around the platform, earnestly speaking with groups of people who threw questions at them. Units of TPF men stood near the platform, directed by a captain. They moved police barricades into place and worked quickly. The Mayor and his aides were expected momentarily.

  On the surface, it was a friendly gathering, yet Christie felt the undercurrents: strong, sullen, dangerous. She spotted some detectives moving among the crowd, but she didn’t know them. She could tell that they were cops: wary, tense, alert. If she could just find one familiar face, anyone from the squad, anyone she knew. She was close to Champion and he was standing close to Gerald Friedman and the other FFA people.

  Here? Now? What if he resisted? Fought, managed to get his gun out? One wrong move and this false gaiety could turn ugly and savage, could explode into uncontrolled and uncontrollable disaster. She could not risk setting it off.

  There was a loud, steady scream of sirens and the policemen stiffened. A deputy inspector came from behind the platform and scanned the nearby rooftops; his troops were in place to guard against any hurled missiles. His face was drawn and tired.

  Television cameramen pulled at cables, admonished a group of teen-agers to stop yanking at the lines in exchange for a promise that they would be included in a shot. Familiar faces appeared on the platform: civil rights leaders, moderate and fiery; a Negro Congressman; some sweaty, red-faced commissioners; Gerald Friedman; and a well-known liberal TV commentator, who looked hot and somewhat bored.

  The young Mayor emerged from his shiny black limousine, his famous smile encompassing them all. He acknowledged both the cheers and the hoots with a large, friendly wave of his arm. He ran his fingers through his light hair and the resultant disorder added to his youthfulness. He loosened his tie, then tossed his jacket back into the car and rolled his sleeves up as he walked. As he moved into the crowd, his hands trailed in back of him, grasped and touched and clung to an excited group of young children. Someone bumped into his leg and there was a wail. A detective moved quickly between the Mayor and a crying child. The Mayor moved to one side and grinned at the lump of chocolate ice cream that trickled down his trouser leg.

  “Hey, son, I should cry, not you. I don’t even like chocolate.”

  The child grinned shyly and accepted a coin which the Mayor put into his damp hand. He bounded up the wooden steps of the platform, his manner outwardly as relaxed and casual as the stance of his police officers was stiff and tense. He shook hands with various people on the platform, scanned the faces before him and noted with satisfaction that all his neighborhood liaison people were out in force and seemed to have established a good climate.

  The crowd around the platform had tightened into an unyielding wedge of bodies and the air was filled with calls and yells and hoots and jokes. The Mayor fielded whatever comments reached him and his responses drew both laughter and cheers, and Christie saw mostly smiling faces around her. But Eddie Champion wasn’t smiling and, in profile, his face was frozen and strange and frightening.

  The Mayor walked to the front of the platform and held up his arms. The noise subsided somewhat and he introduced a tall, dignified, familiar Negro minister. The deep, resonant voice did not need the assistance of the microphones as solemnly he recalled to them the reason they were here. His heavy sad words seemed a rebuke to the cheerfulness of the Mayor, whose face became serious and unmoving.

  The minister intoned a prayer and there was a hushed quietness now interrupted by a calling out: Amen, amen to that. “And bless the soul of our beloved Billy Everett.” The minister’s voice caressed the name; he paused for a moment and then continued. “He was the bravest of our youth, the finest of our progeny.” (Amen. Yes, sir, amen.)

  Slowly at first, then periodically and insistently, there was a loud, ugly calling out of words, first from one direction, then from another: young voices, hard and ugly. Christie felt the climate change swiftly and the change was reflected on the faces of the policemen, white and black, in a narrowing of their eyes and in the rigidity of their posture.

  “Whatcha going to do there, Mr. White Man, about that black boy killed by your Gestapo? Huh? Huh? Whatcha going to do?”

  The minister ignored the intrusions as though they had not occurred and finished his prayer. Commissioner of Human Relations Philip Moreley, a tall, powerful, handsome, light-skinned man with startlingly gray eyes, spoke next. He spoke with great emotion, but the catcalls had some effect on him and his speech was short and brusque. When he sat down, his eyes raked the faces before him, stopping and exchanging signals with his people in the crowd, instructing them with quick glances, and it seemed to work. They moved out, male and female, white and black, all experienced, all known on these streets, mingled with one group, another, spoke softly in the vernacular, telling the noisy parts of the crowd, “Let the man talk, we’re with you, baby, that’s what it’s all about.”

  The captain in charge of the police detail silently mouthed a Hail Mary and vowed a Rosary tonight if this damn thing would just get over and done with. It could blow. Oh Christ, how easy it could blow. That goddam idiot of a Mayor making out like this was one great big friendly little meeting with his community staff circulating around giving out handbills. Jesus, after the meeting the Mayor was planning to stay on and listen to a five-piece combo made up of neighborhood boys and there would be dancing on the streets. Dancing on the streets, for God’s sake.

  The Chief Inspector, the gold gleaming on his shoulders, explained in flat, official tones that the Police Department was in the middle of a very intensive investigation and was preparing a case in the matter of Billy Everett and he knew that the community would be satisfied with their complete and thorough and fair investigation. He continued speaking right through the growing catcalls and obscenities that greeted his words.

  The Commissioner of Human Relations then introduced Gerald Friedman, and Gerry, pale and trembling, began to speak about Billy Everett, whom he had known all his life. Christie kept her eyes on Champion; he was motionless, but a small smile pulled at the corners of his lips. The faces around her, beside her, were strange and unknown.

  “He one of your best friends, honkey?” a voice called out.

  The insult was followed by a roar of laughter and was repeated several times. Christie’s eyes were drawn irresistibly by the passion in Gerald Friedman’s voice.

  “Billy Everett was the best friend I ever had or ever will have. He was also the best friend any of you could ever have and you better believe it!”

  There was a surprising instant of almost complete silence. Something about the ragged nakedness of the white boy’s feelings reached out and touched nearly everyone in the crowd and they stood, for one bare moment, electrified by his emotion. Even the hecklers needed time before they began again.

  But they did begin again and Ger
ry controlled himself and forced himself to remember that he was not facing a group of demonstrators. There was no bond of understanding and communication uniting them to him. They were hostile and considered him an enemy. He tried. He tried harder than he had ever tried anything in his life, but he could not make it. He ended in the middle of a sentence that could not be heard over the loud jeering sounds.

  The Mayor of the City of New York stood beside the sobbing boy and turned him toward the row of chairs. He used an old trick. He spoke very softly, almost whispering into the microphone so that the crowd, more curious than courteous, settled down, hushed and leaned forward.

  Christie heard the Mayor’s voice, uninterrupted, begin to explain about the investigation that was under way, but her eyes were not on the man on the platform. Eddie Champion had moved. Some part of him had moved, was moving. There was a jostling next to her, then something hit her foot and she looked down. It was a brown paper bag and it had been kicked toward her by a youth standing next to Champion. Christie’s fingers dug into her opened pocketbook and located her gun and undid the snap that held the gun inside the holster. There was a sudden surging of bodies, and instead of moving closer to Champion she was shoved back and away but she had a clear view.

  Champion brought his right arm up, unnoticed in the crowd. He aimed the black revolver at the Mayor and as the loud blast shattered the air, several things, a million things, happened. Someone pounced on the Mayor, knocking him flat on his face. There was a surging and lunging and press and pull of bodies. There were cries and screams and curses, and shots and bottles and pieces of chain sailed through the air. There were hard muscular bodies forcing through the pliant, directionless mass of humanity.

  But Christie Opara saw none of these things. She was intent on pulling herself upright and flinging herself into the small circle of space that appeared around Eddie Champion. Still, no one seemed directed toward him and Christie’s main objective was to wrench the gun from his hand, which dangled loosely at his side, hidden and unseen. Champion turned his face; then his eyes, glazed and yellow, fastened on Christie Opara and he blinked and his mouth fell open in recognition. As though in a dream, there it was: that one haunting something from the Everett shooting. Those green eyes in that white face. He raised his revolver directly at Christie and pulled the trigger.