The Witness Read online

  “Kill the bastards!”

  “Give them what they gave us!”

  “No more lying down. Let’s do it their way!”

  “No,” Billy Everett called out, “no. We have made our choice!”

  “Get the goddam vans pulled up and load them in. Fast!” the police captain ordered; then, his white-gloved fingers trying to hold Billy’s arm, he told the police officer nearest to him, “Put the friggin’ cuffs on this bastard!”

  Billy Everett felt his arms being pulled behind him and he turned, puzzled, and tried to raise his hands to his friends. A cry went up, directly in front of him: “The bastard cops put the cuffs on Billy!”

  Billy shook his head wildly. “No, no. It’s okay,” he said, but his voice was lost.

  Barbara Reardon pulled herself free without looking at Christie and she caught Billy’s arm and held fast, ignoring Billy’s words which tried to tell her, to tell them all, No, this isn’t what we want; this isn’t our way.

  Christie threw herself at the girl and spun her about. The girl’s face was a white, frozen, unseeing mask. Christie’s eyes went to Billy Everett’s face at the exact moment that the air was ripped by the explosion of a revolver. Billy Everett’s face suddenly tightened into a bewildered, stunned expression. His mouth fell open and he went down without a word, but Christie did not watch his descent to the dirt. Her eyes saw something that her brain could not interpret: A long brown hand smashed a .38 service revolver into the empty right hand of a patrolman, and Christie, without blinking, moved her eyes from that brown hand upwards, and for a fraction of a second, over the shoulders and bodies around her, Christie was confronted by the oddest eyes she had ever seen. They were glazed and nearly yellow, and strangest of all, they were somehow familiar.

  Even before Billy’s dead body had fallen, a voice cried out, “They killed Billy. The cop shot Billy!”

  Barbara Reardon turned, and her voice was a low wailing sound as she picked up the chant: “They killed Billy! Oh my God in Heaven, the cop shot Billy!”

  NINE:

  CHRISTIE OPARA MOVED ABOUT the living room, touching familiar objects without seeing them. Her body ached from stretched and twisted muscles, and her right elbow and both knees stung and burned where the skin had been rubbed off. She sat on the couch and stretched her bare legs before her and examined the messy wounds. Christie felt a longing to be with her young son. Poor Mickey, how many skinned knees had she shrugged off with a quick dab of antiseptic and a Band-Aid. She hadn’t remembered how these things could sting.

  She heard a car pull up in front of her house, heard the motor cut off and the sharp slam of a door. Rising quickly, Christie pulled the edge of her sleeveless shirt down over her shorts and opened the door before Reardon rang the bell. Not that the soft chimes would disturb Barbara. The girl was still in a deep sleep. Reardon looked directly toward the stairway, his chin lifted inquiringly.

  “She’s still sleeping,” Christie said. “Mr. Reardon ...”

  He walked past her and into the living room. “This has been one hell of a day,” he said, more to himself than to Christie.

  “Mr. Reardon ...”

  “What have you got that’s cold and comforting?”

  Christie could see his face clearly now. Beneath the remnants of freckles and under the sparkle of short stiff bright red bristles that crossed his square chin, there was a faded look, the paleness of exhaustion. The lines across his forehead were like deep bloodless cuts, and his eyes, shaded by the thick orange lashes, were almost colorless. She tried again to get his attention, but he leaned back in a chair, loosened his tie and rubbed the palm of his hand over his forehead. “Let me come to, Christie. Be a good girl and get me a drink.”

  In the kitchen, Christie measured out a shot of Scotch. She yanked at the ice tray, then jumped on one foot as the tray slid from her grasp and crashed on her bare toe, heavy as a rock. She retrieved two ice cubes, rinsed them, dropped them into the glass and sloshed the liquid around, then added water, then wondered if he would have preferred it straight. She hoped the drink would revive him. It had taken all day to reach him by telephone, and when she started to speak he had asked if Barbara was all right, then, reassured, told her anything else would have to keep.

  When Christie entered the living room, it hit her immediately. He had made the room his own. He flicked the television on, then turned it off. He glanced without interest at a collection of art books piled at one end of the bookshelves which lined the long wall of the room, then turned and reached for the drink.

  “What about you?”

  Christie shook her head. Reardon held the liquid in his mouth for a moment before he swallowed. He sat down in an easy chair and watched as she sat stiffly on the couch directly opposite him.

  “This is one hell of a situation,” Reardon said, his voice accusing her.

  Christie cradled her throbbing elbow in the palm of her hand and agreed with him without accepting responsibility. “Yes, this is one hell of a situation.” She hadn’t anticipated Reardon’s anger, but it was present. Through his exhaustion she could sense it and she felt on guard, and because of that she was angry, too. The urgency of the information she had to relay to him receded.

  “Jesus, Opara, couldn’t you have gotten her out before this thing happened?”

  What reached her was not only his irritation; it was the underlying, subtle tone of disappointment. “Mr. Reardon, you didn’t give me any idea what to expect. If you had—”

  “I didn’t think I’d have to spell it out.”

  “I’m not clairvoyant, Mr. Reardon and—” She stopped abruptly because anything she said would sound defensive.

  Reardon’s eyes narrowed and darkened. The drink seemed to have stimulated him. He pulled himself upright and put the glass on the table beside him. “Okay, let’s start again. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t really think my daughter would go to the construction site. If she had gone to school, there wouldn’t have been any reason for you to know the possible alternatives, right?”

  He always made things sound so logical, after the fact. “Yes, that would be right, except that she didn’t go to school.”

  Reardon reached for the drink again, but his eyes never left her face. “Well, we’re agreed on that. Now, I know you are practically bursting to tell me what happened, and from our telephone conversation I assume Barbara is okay, so ...”

  “Yes, she’s okay.” Christie was filled again with the information she had to convey to him. “I tried to get you all day to tell you—”

  Reardon held his hand up. “Relax. You’re here. I’m here. Let’s take it a step at a time, right? Nice and easy.”

  Her eyes were glaring at him and she bit her lower lip, but she nodded.

  “Right. Now, tell me about it. First, about Barbara. What did she see?”

  “I’ll tell you what she thought she saw. She thought she saw the patrolman—what’s his name? Linelli—shoot Billy Everett.”

  His question was sharp and precise. “What does that mean: ‘She thought she saw’?”

  “It means that your daughter got caught up in the hysteria. There was a shot. Someone began to scream, ‘The cop shot Billy.’ Then everyone, including Barbara, was screaming it, over and over again: ‘The cop shot Billy.’ She’s absolutely convinced she saw it.”

  “You sound absolutely convinced that she didn’t see it. Why?”

  She had waited all day to tell him and now she hesitated and savored the fact that she was about to shake Casey Reardon, who always knew everything. “She didn’t see the cop shoot Billy Everett because the cop didn’t shoot Billy Everett.”

  She had known Reardon long enough to expect no overt reaction, yet she was annoyed by the casual way he lifted the glass to his lips, swallowed, rotated the glass between his palms. But his voice changed. It had the familiar cold alertness, the special, sharp District Attorney’s demand for information. “Did you see who shot Billy Everett?”

  “Ye
s.”

  Reardon closed his eyes for a moment and frowned. Christie wanted to speak, but she waited for him. Let him ask. He put the glass down and stood up, not facing her. “How close were you to Everett?”

  “I was facing him, within touching distance. Your daughter was wedged between us, facing me.”

  His eyes studied the carpet thoughtfully. “Go on.”

  “I was looking directly into Everett’s face. There was a lot of commotion; missiles were flying back and forth.”

  “Get to the shooting,” he said impatiently.

  “Right. I was looking directly into Everett’s face. There was a shot and—”

  “No good,” he said, interrupting her tersely. His eyes were on hers again. “Did you see who fired the shot?”

  “Yes and no.” Christie spoke quickly, anticipating his objections, but he let her continue. Her voice had the flat, unemotional quality of a testifying witness. “At the instant of the shot my eyes were on Everett’s face, but I looked immediately at something that caught my attention. I saw a hand holding a police service revolver and—”

  “You saw a hand? For Chrissake, you going to identify a hand?”

  Christie inhaled in sharp annoyance and broke the quiet cadence of her recitation. “Mr. Reardon, will you let me finish? You keep interrupting and—”

  Reardon sat down again. He waved his hand. “All right, all right. Go on.”

  “I saw a hand holding a service revolver and then I saw that hand jam the revolver into the officer’s right hand.”

  For the first time her words had some visible effect on him. He sharpened and tensed and leaned forward. “Did you see the face that went with the hand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well?”

  “Oh. I thought you wanted to keep asking me specific questions. You want me to continue?” Her voice was innocent but Reardon caught the needle and he wasn’t amused. “Well, he was a Negro male, light tan skin, thin nose and lips, twenty to twenty-five years old. And, he had, well, his eyes ...”

  “What about his eyes?”

  “Well, they were ... peculiar.”

  Reardon whistled between his teeth, rubbed his thumb over his mouth. “Peculiar? In what way? Were there three of them? Were they crossed? What about his eyes?”

  “Well, they were ... yellow.”

  “Yellow eyes? He had yellow eyes? What the hell was this guy, a cat?”

  Christie ran a fingertip lightly over her skinned knee and spoke quickly, not looking at him. “They were sort of ... they were the color your eyes are sometimes, Mr. Reardon.”

  “The color of my eyes? Yellow?”

  She looked up and nodded. “Well, sometimes, your eyes look, well, yellow. Yellowish. And that was what struck me about this man. That his eyes were ...” Christie shrugged and her voice faltered. “You know ...”

  Reardon dug at his eyes for a moment, muttered something to himself, then spoke to Christie. “All right, let’s leave it at that—the guy has yellow eyes. How was he dressed?”

  “He wore a white cotton knit shirt. I couldn’t see his trousers.”

  “How tall?”

  Christie considered for a moment, then stood up. She held her hand over her head. “I’m five-five; I’d say he was just under six feet.”

  “That is one hell of a story,” he said quietly. The mocking sarcasm of his remark startled Christie.

  “That is exactly what happened, Mr. Reardon. I saw it!”

  Reardon was unimpressed by her vehemence. “I have twenty-five college students who are ready to sign sworn affidavits to the effect that they saw Patrolman Linelli shoot this kid.”

  Christie crossed the room to the desk that jutted out from the wall of books. She picked up several typewritten pages and handed them to Reardon. “I’ve put it all on paper and I’m ready to swear to what I’ve just told you.”

  Reardon glanced at the papers and wordlessly rolled them into a cylinder which he tapped lightly against the arm of the chair. The gesture infuriated Christie. She had waited all day, tried desperately all day to reach him, to tell him that the reports that blasted on radio and the TV news were wrong. Patrolman Linelli had been framed. She had seen what really happened. And now he was dismissing her statement with a careless lack of enthusiasm. Her mind raced, searching; then she stood in front of him. “What did Patrolman Linelli say?”

  Reardon gave a quick nod of approval; she had found the logical question. But his voice was flat and noncommittal. “Patrolman Linelli said that there was a scuffle and that there was a shot and that suddenly his gun was shoved into his hand. His right hand.”

  Christie spread her hands out. “Well, then, there you are.”

  Reardon shook his head slowly. “No, not really. Yes and no, as you said before. We know Linelli didn’t fire the gun. There was no chemical evidence to indicate that he had fired any weapon within the last twelve hours prior to the shooting, but—”

  “So what’s the problem? I saw what happened!”

  Reardon made a short clicking sound of annoyance between his teeth. “You know, Opara, sometimes I wonder about you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re acting like a little kid. Here’s the fact of the matter, so boom-boom-boom. There’s the solution. For Christ’s sake, grow up. I’ve got twenty-five emotional demonstrators coming in tomorrow to swear they saw the cop shoot the kid. We’ve had civil rights leaders from all over the city and state demanding that we arrest the cop forthwith and release the forty people who were arrested today. In about fifteen minutes that TV set will be blasting all over the city, calling for action. And speaking of action, the entire PD and the Fire Department are on riot alert. City Hall is being picketed. Police Headquarters is being picketed. There are mobs of hot, angry, emotional people on the streets of Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Jamaica and God knows where else. And what have I got? I have Patrolman Linelli’s story, and now I have your story about some mysterious hand and some mysterious face.”

  He watched her green eyes narrow, saw the deliberate intake of breath. Reardon laughed suddenly: a harsh, humorless sound. “Relax, Christie. I believe you. But at this point I need more. It would come out as one police officer covering for another. We’ve been moving all over the goddam city today looking for something tight, something concrete. I’m not going to throw you into the lion’s den without something strong to back you up, and back me up and back the whole damn case up. We got other lines out.” His eyes flickered over her and he reached out toward her leg. “What the hell did you do to yourself?”

  Christie sat back on the couch and bent over her skinned knees, touching them lightly with the tip of a finger. “It was rough out there, Mr. Reardon.”

  He gently lifted her toe with the tip of one shoe. “Didn’t you wear shoes this morning, either?”

  Christie looked down at the red bruise on her large toe. “I dropped the ice tray on it.”

  His voice was serious again and he sounded tired. “How’d you get Barbara here?”

  “She seemed to be in a state of shock. After the shot there was a terrific commotion. We all seemed to fall together. I just latched onto her and pulled. She didn’t realize what was happening. I just shoved and pushed until all of a sudden we were clear. We were a full block away before she stopped, and I showed her my shield and told her you had sent me. We caught a cab at Delancey Street.”

  Reardon nodded in admiration. “I don’t know how you managed, Christie. It was desperate.”

  “Were you there?”

  “Stoney and I got there about fifteen minutes after the shooting. It was hell.”

  “Well, we managed somehow. She never said a word until we reached the house and then she began to react. She couldn’t stop talking about it. She kept saying, ‘The cop shot Billy.’ Then she went into a cold sweat and starting shaking. I couldn’t reach you, so I called my doctor. Told him Barbara was a friend of mine who’d just got word that her fiancé was
killed in an accident. That her family was out of town. He gave her a shot to knock her out—until I could reach someone.”

  Reardon took the last of the drink, put the glass down. “Thanks, Christie.”

  She nodded. It was the first time he had ever thanked her for anything. Reardon glanced at his watch, then crossed the room and switched on the television. It was a small portable, set into one of the bookshelves.

  A sudden burst of frenzied voices filled the room, but it was an artificial sound: chanting from a half-remembered dream. Christie rose and watched beside him. Placards waved wildly across the screen. There was a rush of bodies, a quick, fleeting glimpse of Billy Everett’s face; his voice was heard briefly, calling out to his followers. The camera seemed to spin; there was a smeary streak across the screen, then first one face, then another, came into half focus as an expression of horror spread through the scene and the shouting became a terrified cry and the voices picked the words up with a dreadful clarity: “The cop shot Billy!” The sound dropped down and the strong voice of the commentator, dramatic and incisive, narrated. “That was the scene this morning at the site of the Abraham Lincoln Low-Cost Housing Development on the lower East Side at the moment that civil rights leader Billy Everett was shot. Now, with an on-the-scene report from Harlem, here is Tim Daniels.”

  A good-looking, intense young man appeared on the screen, clutching a small microphone. He hunched over and spoke directly into the mike as the camera panned around the area. “I am speaking to you from 125th Street and Lenox Avenue. There are angry people on these streets tonight and their mood is ugly. There is violence in the air and there have been several eruptions of violence in the streets. Several store windows have been smashed; several bottles and other missiles have been hurled from roofs. Miraculously, none of the police officers—who are the obvious targets—have been hurt. So far.” His voice became ominous. “Police reinforcements have been sent in in large numbers; the people have been kept moving, but the crowd has been getting larger by the minute.”

  The camera swept past the commentator and there were masses of dark, angry faces. A zoom lens zeroed in on a placard: a crudely drawn cartoon of a policeman, his face ugly and cruel, his hand holding a smoking gun against the head of a grotesque figure. Beneath it were the words: