Harlem Redux (56 page)

“The bullet entered the victim’s right
cheek
at a forty-five degree angle, producing an ovoid entrance. The barrel of the gun was held directly to the victim’s skin. There was some searing and blackening of the skin at the lower edge of the wound. There were also particles of soot and unburned powder in the wound track itself. However, as I said, that was only on the lower part of the wound. The upper external wound area was characterized by a radiating pattern of soot. This was the direct result of soot and gas having moved outward from that point where the barrel did not actually touch the skin.”

“So what does this tell you?” Nevin said.

“That while the gun was held firmly against the victim’s head, it was held held at a fairly low angle, with the gun pointing upward.”

“Would you say that the victim shot himself or that another shot him?”

“It could have been either way. If it was another, however, the person was no more than five-feet-five inches tall. It would have been difficult for someone taller to have shot the victim at that proximity and from that low an angle.”

David heard that and felt that another nail had been slammed into her coffin. He wondered if Nevin had caught the significance of Schmuck’s testimony. He didn’t seem to have. He was proceeding along with the testimony.

David glanced at the jurors. Their faces were blank with boredom. None of them had registered the meaning of Schmuck’s words, either.

Then again, why should they? For them, Schmuck’s argument weighed like a well-balanced scale that tipped sometimes this way, sometimes that.
Unfortunately,
thought David,
the decisive weight tipped the scales most certainly against him.
As Nevin had told him privately, “The problem for us is that Sweet left no physical sign, no proof, not even a hint that he intended to do away with himself. He neither said anything to anyone nor left a note to clearly demonstrate pre-meditated suicide. And accidental suicide would be equally hard to prove. What we need,” concluded Nevin, “is paper evidence.”

David closed his eyes. The pathologist droned on, his statements punctuated by Nevin’s brief, precise questions. David only half-listened. His head ached. He thought of the druggist report in his pocket.
Here’s your paper evidence, Nevin—here it is.
He felt nauseated.

Annie and Nella had given him the answer. Right at the beginning, they had told him what to look for. Annie had described how Sweet told Gem that he could never love “someone like her.” And Nella had told him that Sweet liked dark women. That should’ve told him immediately that Sweet’s words to Gem meant that he could never love someone light-skinned. And when he met Sweet himself, he had sensed immediately that Sweet would want a woman with street smarts, a fighter.

There had been so many signs, but he’d refused to heed them. He hadn’t wanted to. The direction in which they were leading him was too painful to follow. He had chosen to look away. And that first erroneous druggist report had helped him do it. It had reassured him. But this one—there was no mistaking the meaning of this one.
A homemade mixture—so well made it must have been done by an expert.

A fighter. An expert. A killer less than five-feet-five inches tall.

His thoughts went back to the parlor that day. He had seen the gun in Sweet’s right hand and suspected it for what it was. He’d flashed on seeing Sweet sign documents with his left hand, smoke with his left hand and known the gun’s placement to be false.

And yet he had moved to protect her. Why? Was it because he wanted to believe that she had done it to protect him? Why else would she have pulled the trigger? Why else?

Sitting behind him, Rachel was tense. She had caught the significance of Schmuck’s comment all right and she was wondering if David had, too. She was also more than a little worried about what she’d seen out in the hallway, that glimpse of David and Annie with their heads bent together. What did it mean? Did it mean anything? He’d barely glanced at her since returning to the courtroom. Something was wrong. Was her luck running out? No ... it couldn’t be. Not when it had held out this long.

She thought of Sweet, of that last wretched conversation with him, and again saw him dead on the floor. She hadn’t wanted it to end that way. She could say with all honesty that she’d tried every trick in the book to dissuade him from his plan. Nothing had worked.

He’d been upset. Had wanted to clear out, and had wanted her to go with him. Naturally, she’d refused.

“Don’t be silly. It’s worked out perfectly well. We both got what we wanted.”

“Got what
we
wanted? I didn’t get what I wanted—I wanted you! Who do you think I did it for? For you, woman! You, not me! It was you who wanted the big house, the fancy clothes. And not just any house. It had to be the McKay house, the McKay money.”

“You love money as much as I do. And you hate the McKays as much as I do. You’ve always hated dicties.”

“But my hate didn’t drive me out of my mind. My love for you did that. Damn it! I risked everything for you. I killed for you.” He shook his big fists at her. “How could you choose that yellow nigger over me? How could you? And after what he did to you?”

Her sweet face screwed up with contempt and though she was the shorter one, she managed to give the impression of looking down on him.

“Don’t you understand?” she hissed. “David is the one I want, the one I have
always
wanted. How could you have ever thought I loved you?”

Sweet’s face twisted bitterly. “Woman, don’t do this to me.”

“You disgust me, ‘cause you’re no better than me! But you don’t know it. Darkies like us—the world is never gonna let us amount to anything. We can’t do nothing for each other but bring each other down. We need to marry up to survive. You with your obstinate pride, your talk of Negro dignity—you’re a fool. A stubborn, stupid fool. I could never let myself love a man like you. Now go away. Build yourself another life while you have the chance.”

“What chance? He knows. Don’t you understand? He
knows.”

“He doesn’t know. He suspects. And he only suspects you—not me.”

“Rachel.” Sweet’s chest heaved. “We go together or not at all. Either you come with me or I tell everything.”

“You would do that to me?”

“I’d have to.”

She was quiet a moment, then said, “I see.” She turned away. She could hear him breathing heavily behind her, waiting for her decision. Her shoulders sagged and she seemed to deflate. All the fight appeared to leave her, like hot air seeping from a balloon.

“All right,” she said in a listless tone. “When do you want to go?”

“Right now.”

She was standing at the writing table. Her large purse lay on top of it. She went into it and took out her compact. While she dabbed her nose, she watched him in the mirror and noted how far away he stood. “Won’t I have time to pack?”

“No.”

She went back into her bag, dropped the compact, and found the other item she wanted. It had taken her an hour that morning to find where Gem had hidden it in Lilian’s bedroom. She had started looking the moment David left to see Nella.
Time well spent.
She felt Sweet come up behind her and left her hand hidden within her purse. He gripped her shoulders.

“It’s better this way,” he whispered. “You wouldn’t have been happy here. With him.”

“No, perhaps not.” She turned to face him, her right hand dropping deftly behind her back.

“We belong together,” he said. “We’re two of a kind, you see.”

He took her in his arms and she raised her face for him to kiss. He closed his eyes and she, at the last moment, pulled away––just before she put the gun to his cheek, and fired. For a split second, he looked surprised, then all expression was gone. She sagged to her knees at his side. She’d just curled his fingers around the handle of the gun when David appeared.

Lies and whispers. Whispers and lies. Where would we be without them?
Was that a line from a song she’d heard? If it wasn’t, it should be.

Sitting in court, she stared at David’s profile. How many more days would she have to drag herself to this damn courtroom? She was sick of the reporters, the neighbors; sick of having to play the loyal wife; of having to visit her “beloved” in that stinking jail. When would this stupid trial end?

Her eyes went to the jury members, two rows of pale strangers: They had the power to convict David, to put the period at the end of his sentence. She smiled grimly. Only once the jury spoke, could her life—the life she dreamed of—go on.

The trial went into its third day. Nevin took stock of the situation. There seemed to be no way to prove that Sweet had killed himself. He had tried to introduce evidence that Sweet’s death was the brutal end to a chain of homicidal events, but the strategy had backfired. Baker had objected to the introduction of the allegation, and Richter had bent over backward to oblige. The judge had ruled out any testimony that extended beyond the immediate murder of Jameson Sweet, yet in effect had given Baker leeway to use the allegation to bolster his own case. David’s belief that Sweet killed Gem, Baker said, provided David with an additional motive to commit murder.

David, too, had done his share in tying Nevin’s hands, with his adamant refusal to let Rachel testify or seek help from his friends in Philadelphia. As a result, Sweet’s reputation remained pristine; David’s was ruined. The hundreds of backbreaking hours he had logged in Philadelphia were dismissed; the lives he had salvaged forgotten.

Nevin now turned to David and said in a fierce whisper, “All right. We play it your way. You get to testify. But remember: If you say one wrong word—just one—you’re dead. Those good citizens on that jury will lynch you. And they’ll do it legally. They’ll fry your ass in the electric chair at Sing Sing. A flick of the switch and you’ll be as dead as a nigger hanging from a southern tree.”

David rose slowly. He straightened his tie and walked forward. Climbing the steps into the witness stand, he placed one hand on the Bible offered him and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Nevin led David through a formal restatement of his innocence and a description of his confrontation with Sweet, and then paused dramatically.

“Your Honor, members of the jury, and honored guests, because the claims against my client hinge on his alleged motivation, I think it would be appropriate to hear my client himself speak to this matter.” Nevin turned to the prosecutor.

“Does my learned colleague concur?”

Baker nodded. “No objections.”

Nevin turned back to David. “You’re up to bat now,” he whispered. “Don’t strike out.”

David looked out over the courtroom. He was intensely aware of Rachel. And of Canfield. The influential lawyer resembled an eagle waiting to pounce. David decided to look beyond them to Annie and Toby’s mother. To Nella and Snyder. And Roy, crowded into a seat in the back. David took in all the faces of those present, the faces of poor people, people educated not by books but by hard knocks. It was these people, as much as the white jury, who would decide his future. Even if he convinced the jury, but failed to sway the folk, he was doomed. For himself, he was unconcerned. But his parents deserved better. They had worked hard to make something of themselves and the family name. His friends and all those who had written to him in jail or otherwise extended their support—they too deserved better. Holding his head high, he began.

“When I left Harlem four years ago, I never intended to be gone long. I thought the job would take a week, two at most. But my life was about to change. I just didn’t know it.”

Every soul in the courtroom hushed. They had been waiting for this. Most of the black onlookers were southern. David’s words evoked pictures they had hoped to forget. As he touched the crucible of his tale, they listened uneasily.