Harlem Redux (54 page)

“They’re good people and they would. But I’m not going to ask them to.”

Nevin shook his head, frustrated. “All right. We’ll leave it alone for now. But we do need character witnesses. It’s crucial. So you think about it.”

He looked down at his notes, scribbled a comment, and sighed. “While we’re on this difficult topic, we might as well broach another. Your best witness, you know, would be Rachel.”

“No.”

“I figured you’d say that.”

“No one will believe her. She’s my wife.”

“She was present when you struggled with Sweet. She can speak to his suicidal intent. People will wonder why she doesn’t testify on your behalf. Even if they’re set against believing her, they’ll want to hear her. Her appearance in court is crucial.”

“I won’t have her exposed like that.”

Nevin rubbed his forehead and sighed. “David, I—”

“My answer’s no. Now let’s move on. I take it the second part of our strategy has to do with dressing down Sweet?”

Nevin looked at David and shook his head. He paused to rearrange his thoughts, then went on. “If you don’t want Rachel to testify, we have to find another way to convince the jury that Sweet chose to die. That means, we’ve got to provide a motive for suicide. A good, strong motive that’ll compensate for the lack of physical evidence, like a note. To show motive, we’ve got to shore up your contention that Sweet killed Gem. Make them believe that he preferred to die rather than face a humiliating trial. The fact that the prosecution will put Sweet on a pedestal could then work in our favor. Sweet was a man with a lot to lose. Many proud men in his position have taken the same way out.”

Gray skies heavy with rain clouds darkened lower Manhattan on the opening day of the trial. A loud, angry crowd assembled before the courthouse. Authorities decided to bring David into the building through a side entrance. They posted twenty policemen in front of the courthouse and sent another ten inside to guard the courtroom.

With a blow of his gavel, Judge Sylvan Richter called the session to order, and District Attorney Baker took center stage. A skeletal man with parchment-colored skin and raven-black hair, Baker had small, marble-like eyes that seemed curiously dead behind round, rimless spectacles. He launched his case by calling Dr. Hubert Thatcher to the witness stand. Thatcher was broad and squat, with bulbous eyes and pencil-thin lips. His nose was so flat that it barely rose from his face and his nostrils were merely horizontal slits. With his pale, waxy skin, oddly tinged green, he resembled a large toad struggling for dignity in a tight black suit.

Thatcher began by testifying as to the time of death. His first statement was not a matter for contention; his next one was.

“I can say without doubt that the blood and human tissue found on David McKay’s right hand and coat collar belonged to the victim, Jameson Sweet.”

“Did you conduct a laboratory analysis?” asked Nevin in cross-examination.

“I didn’t need to,” said Thatcher. “Everybody can tell a Negro’s blood just by looking at it.”

Nevin checked a smile of satisfaction and glanced at Baker. A look of irritation flashed across the D.A.’s face. His first expert witness had just revealed himself to be both a racist and a sloppy technician, the second quality being by far the worst.

Nevin turned back to Thatcher.

“Could David McKay have picked up the blood and tissue through contact with another person at the death scene?”

David’s breath caught. How could Nevin do this, when he’d pleaded with him not to involve Rachel?

Thatcher’s eyes shot over to Baker hoping for a hint as to how to answer. Finding none, he looked back at Nevin. A thin layer of sweat enhanced the waxy sheen of his forehead. “I suppose it’s possible. But I, uh … I find it highly unlikely.”

“But it
is
possible?”

Thatcher hesitated. “Yes, it’s possible.”

Thatcher was dismissed. Baker then sought to demonstrate that David was the last person to see Sweet alive. He called a reluctant Annie to the stand. Since she was a hostile witness, he was given leeway in questioning her. She answered with brief sentences and her eyes never left David. An expression of relief crossed her face when Baker sat down and Nevin rose to cross-examine her. He gave her a chance to emphasize that she was sure, “Mr. David was outta the house when it happened.” But on re-direct, Baker asked her whether she’d actually seen David leave and she had to admit that she hadn’t.

Next came Byron Canfield. He told his story with devastating simplicity. David was forced to listen to an amalgam of circumstantial evidence that maligned and misrepresented him.

To back up Canfield’s testimony, Baker summoned Frank Nyman, the white private detective Sweet had hired. David took one look at Nyman and sensed danger. Nyman was the kind of witness who could do damage. He was small, wiry, and scruffy. He was poor and made no attempt to hide it. He had chosen to wear a shapeless black suit and dusty shoes. His tie was crooked and his shirt none too clean. His hair was unkempt and a shock of it, black mixed with gray, fell over his narrow, lined face. His heavy-lidded eyes were as black as pitch. His lower lip was full and fleshy, and his upper lip, thin and cruel. He was indisputably ugly and more than slightly seedy, but David saw at once that none of that mattered. None of it made a damn bit of difference because Nyman was also utterly charming. In fact, his ugliness made his charm all the more disturbing. It allowed him to sneak up on you, to take you unawares. Humor flashed in his eyes, wisdom rested in the corners of his lips, and an easygoing lassitude rode his shoulders every time he shrugged. Despite his rough, uncouth manner, or perhaps because of it, he was entirely credible. He knew exactly what was expected of him and he delivered. He seduced the members of the jury and they never knew what hit them.

As David listened to Nyman testify, his heart sunk. Nyman’s comments, though succinct, were colorful. With a few vague words and several fairly explicit gestures, he implied much while saying little.
An out-and-out con man’s trick,
David thought,
but the judge and jury bought it.

At one point, Nyman hinted that there was much he could tell about David’s “relations with white females,” but he would prefer not to “out of respect for the ladies present.”

Nevin objected. This testimony had nothing to do with the murder charge, he said. Baker countered that the testimony was directly relevant since it elaborated on the personality of the accused. Richter found for the prosecution. He not only approved further testimony along the same lines but ordered Nyman to “give details.” First, however, he said, the courtroom would have to be cleared of women and children. There was a flurry of movement; the courtroom doors opened and closed behind little feet and straight skirts. Then Richter told Nyman to continue. The private detective obliged with a graphic description of how David had “preyed on innocent white women who had no idea they were being seduced by a Negro.”

There was a hush in the courtroom, then a murmur, then an angry hum. David thought of bees when they discover an intruder who’s trying to steal some of their honey.

Richter banged for silence. Again, Nevin moved to have Nyman’s lascivious descriptions stricken from the record, and again Baker objected. Richter denied Nevin’s motion to suppress, and whites in the all-male courtroom erupted in vigorous applause.

“My God, Nyman’s destroying me,” David whispered to Nevin.

He patted David’s hand. “Don’t worry. The prosecutor’s entitled to a few good moments.”

David shot Nevin a troubled look. “Let’s just make sure he doesn’t have too many of them, shall we?”

Nevin gave David a reassuring smile. “I got some good news this morning that’ll give this case a whole new complexion.” He chuckled at David’s expression and patted his hand.

Despite his outer calm, Nevin knew that David’s concern was justified. Nyman had been convincing. It was time for damage control. For more than an hour, he cross-examined the private detective, trying to get him to admit that much of his report was regurgitated hearsay. He did get Nyman to concede that some of it was based on secondhand gossip, but Nyman wouldn’t budge about the core of his report: David McKay’s pretense of being white was a well-documented fact.

“There’s no end to the proof,” Nyman said.

He’d collected Philadelphia newspaper reports on David’s cases and statements from white friends and colleagues who were shocked at the mere suggestion that the man they knew might be black.

Nevin thought it wiser to stipulate that David had indeed lived as a white man in Philadelphia—arguing against a given fact would simply decrease David’s credibility—but he asked the jury to remember: “This does not constitute proof that he killed Jameson Sweet.”

David’s guilt seemed to be a given, however, for the city at large. Front-page speculation, innuendo, and rumor continued to characterize news coverage of the trial. Someone in the D.A.’s office leaked a copy of Nyman’s provocative report to the press. Many newspapers thought Nyman’s direct testimony too offensive to quote extensively, but they reprinted his written report in full. Once again, as the trial went into its second day, officers posted outside had to stand off a mob.

Baker called Peters to testify about the crime scene itself, to tell what he saw when he entered the McKay parlor that day. Peters delivered his statement in a dry tone that contrasted vividly with the gruesome details he conveyed. Baker asked Peters how he had come to arrest David McKay. Peters looked David straight in the face and said: “The defendant admitted to knowing that Sweet had the goods on him, but he only gave himself up when he knew his wife would have to take the fall.”

Not only the whites but also the black viewers in the courtroom shook their heads.

Baker had Peters describe Sweet’s fatal wound, but he noticeably failed to ask about any gunpowder residue on the hands of the accused or fingerprints that might’ve been found on the murder weapon. Nevin asked, though, in cross-examination, “Whose fingerprints were lifted from the gun?”

Peters licked his lips and joggled one knee. This was a question he would’ve preferred not to answer.

“Detective?” prompted Nevin.

Peters cleared his throat. “There were two sets of prints. One belonging to the victim; one belonging to the defendant’s wife.”

“Are you telling me that the defendant’s prints weren’t found on the gun at all?”

“No, they weren’t.”

“A little louder, please. It’s only fair if those people in the back rows can also hear you.”

“No,” said Peters a bit louder, in a faintly squeaky tone. “David McKay’s fingerprints were not found on the gun.”

There was an instant of heated murmuring before Richter stopped it with a bang of his gavel. Baker began his redirect.

“If David’s prints weren’t on the gun,” he asked Peters, “then why did you arrest him?”

“Because he was on the scene; he had the best motive and, of course, the best opportunity.”

“Once more, Detective: Was this the typical wound of a suicide?”

“No,” said Peters with renewed confidence. “I’ve never known a suicide to shoot himself in the cheek. It’s usually the temple. Almost always, the temple.”

Late that afternoon, Nevin began to present his case. Nella had offered to testify as a character witness in David’s defense.

“I’m going to let her,” Nevin
said. “She’s a prominent person.”

David had his doubts. “Nella’s not just prominent. She’s white and she’s a woman. What all-white male jury will heed a white woman defending a colored man? Do you think they’ll listen, especially after what Nyman said about me? She means well, but her testimony could do more harm than good.”

Nevin conceded the danger, but said: “We need her. She’s not just the best witness we’ve got. She’s nearly the only one.”