Thrill Kids (13 page)

I
N THE INTERROGATION ROOM
his father was standing near the door. When Johnny came in, he stood awkwardly before him, unable to look him in the eye. He said nothing. Then Richard Wylie put his arm around the boy’s shoulder.

“It’s all right, son,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“Do you want to tell me about it, John?” “I didn’t do it, Dad,” he said. “I wasn’t even there when it happened.” “Neither time, John?”

“The first time I was,” Johnny said. “But it wasn’t like they say. We didn’t make that girl take all her clothes off. Just her blouse and stuff.” Johnny looked shamefacedly at the floor. “Bardo was the one who kicked the boy.”

“You didn’t touch the boy or the girl, then?”

“The girl,” Johnny mumbled.

“You did something to the girl, son?”

“No! I mean I just — you know, I felt of her b-breast.”

“I see.” Richard Wylie sighed and walked over to sit down on the bench near the window. He shook his head slowly. “And then?” he said.

“Nothing. I just — did that, and that was all.”

“You just felt her breast. Period.”

Johnny said, “Oh, God, Dad! I feel like some kind of maniac. A sex maniac or something.” “Is that all you did, son?”

“Yes, sir. I don’t know why…. I don’t know. This summer I’ve been thinking about things a lot. I’ve been thinking about — girls. I just don’t know.”

“Go on, John. Tell me the rest.”

Johnny stood holding onto the back of a chair, not facing his father.

“The other night, sir,” he said, “I lied. I said I was taking Lynn Leonard to a movie. Well, we weren’t going to a movie. We — we were going up on the roof.”

“Why did you lie about that?”

“Because we were going to — I can’t talk about it, Dad.” “I think I understand.”

“Anyway, she didn’t show. I was sore or something. I wanted to go off. I remembered Bardo saying the gang was meeting up by the children’s park, up at Ninety-sixth, so I just went.”

“And then?”

“I was late. When I got there it had already happened.” “You’re sure of that, John?”

Johnny whirled around. “Don’t you believe me?” he shouted.

“Easy,” his father said. “Just calm down, young man.”

“Thrill-killers,” Johnny said. “That’s what they’re calling us. They brought a paper to us, and that’s what it said. And all this stuff about a club. What club? I didn’t even know about it!”

“Look, son,” his father said. “If you are innocent — and I believe you, by the way — then you’ll be cleared. But some of the dirt’s going to rub off on you, son. You’ve got to be prepared for that.”

“I know it, Dad. I know it.”

“Now let’s go over everything in detail. That’s why I insisted that your mother stay home, so we could get everything straight. Start from the very beginning, and don’t be ashamed to tell me about the girls. O.K.?”

“All right,” Johnny said.

As he talked, John Wylie had the odd sensation that he was talking about some other person. It was the same as when he had read the newspapers that morning. He felt sorry for Manny. Manny had cried all night over the snake. Bardo Raleigh had comforted him, his calm voice prevailing throughout the hours until dawn.

“That’s all right, mister. They won’t hurt that snake. Your snake will be fine.”

None of it seemed real to Johnny.

And Lynn Leonard … Johnny couldn’t even see her face on the screen of his memory any more, or recall the sound of her voice. But sometimes he could swear he could smell the lilacs; he could swear he could. And the ache in him would begin. He would think of how he had waited, of how it might have been if she had come; how different from the way it was. He thought of her reading the newspapers, reading the part about the girl they said had been forced to take her clothes off, and inside of him he died, only to be resurrected again and given his choice of nightmares.

When Johnny finished telling his father about it, he was sobbing.

“That’s about it, Dad,” he said.

Richard Wylie walked across the interrogation room and took hold of his son’s shoulders. “It was a mistake, son. It was a big mistake.”

“I know it, Dad.”

“Thank God you weren’t involved in the murder.”

“I keep thanking God,” Johnny said. “I keep asking Him to forgive me.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow, John. Along with your mother. By the way,” he said, fumbling in his suit pocket, “she wrote you a little note. And here’s another one.” He handed them to Johnny. Then he hugged the boy to him. “You’re our boy, John,” he said. “We wouldn’t want any other boy but you.”

Johnny wept until the guard came.

Back in the single cell they had assigned him that morning, he opened the note from his mother:

The second note was from Lynn Leonard, and it said:

A guard rattled Johnny’s cell door, opening it. “O.K., Mr. Big Kicks,” he said. “The D.A.’s got a few more questions. Put away the fan mail, Mr. Thrill.”

• • •

The office was comfortable. The desk was large, with papers scattered on top, and a few books. A package of cigarettes was open and two ash trays were filled with butts.

The doctor looked up at Heine. He was standing framed by the window behind him; he held a report in his hand. “Hans Heine?”

His eyes were cool, neither kindly nor condemning. “Yeah.”

“I’m Dr. Wetman. Sit down, Hans.”

Heine sat down and braced his hands on his thighs.

“Relax, Hans. We’re just going to chat.” He took a cigarette from the pack and offered the pack to Heine. “Smoke?” he said.

“I don’t smoke or drink,” Heine answered.

The doctor’s voice was not cold, and he smiled at Flip. “Not even marijuana?” he said.

“Naw,” Flip said. “I just had that for a gag.”

“Your folks were here an hour or so ago, weren’t they, Hans?”

Flip said, “Uh-huh.”

He hated to remember the scene in the interrogation room. His mother had looked shabby and old and out of place there, and suddenly she had looked very little to Flip too, and pathetic. She had not been able to stop crying; she had cried the whole time, making any conversation between them virtually impossible. But his father had talked to Flip. His father had said he had warned Flip that something like this would happen; he had warned him, hadn’t he? His father had wanted to know how Flip thought the whole family felt with his picture on the front page of the
Daily Record.
His father had said, “Are you satisfied now, Hans, that you have dragged our good name in the mud?”

“How did it go?” Dr. Wetman asked.

“Rough.”

“Why, Hans?”

“Man, like, they just never did dig me. You know?”

The doctor nodded.

“I mean I’m an American.”

“Yes,” the doctor said.

“I couldn’t even read comic books. What kid doesn’t read comic books? All American kids do.”

The doctor reached for something on his desk. He handed it to Heine. It was a battered copy of
Night of Horror.

“Is this the sort of thing you read?”

“That’s it. Only, like, not all the time, man,” Flip added unsurely, afraid now of what this man would think of him.

“I notice,” the doctor said, “in this one they have several characters carrying switchblade knives.”

“Yeah. They go in big for that.”

“You had a knife like that, didn’t you?”

Flip said, “Yeah. That’s the knife I used. Police took it.”

“Do the others read these comics, Hans?” “Didn’t you ask them?”

“I’m not examining them,” Wetman said. “I asked Judge McKeon to let me talk with you a few times before the trial.”

“Why me?” Flip said. Then his hand went to his shorn head. “My head, huh? Because I shaved off my hair for a gag? Like, I’m crazy or something?”

“You see, the main reason for an examination,” Wetman said, “is to determine a point of legal sanity or insanity. The doctor you talked with yesterday was in charge of that.”

“And I’m nuts, huh? I told him how my head happened.”

“I know, Hans. No, you’re not nuts. No, you see, I’m interested in discovering what attraction these comic books have for young people. I’m informed you’re something of an authority.”

Flip grinned. “Man, like, I must of read millions, I guess.”

“And you like what in particular about them?”

“Oh, you know — all those knives sticking out of people’s middles.” Flip laughed, and at the same time he wondered why he had said it. He wanted the doctor to be interested in him, to want to talk with him. It was funny; the doctor was a foreigner too — he had an accent — but Flip liked him. Why had he liked him so immediately? There was something about his mildness.

“Is that all?”

“Nobody gets pushed around.” “Nobody?”

“You know, man. Like, in one this guy started shoving this kid around, and the kid came back that night with some other kids and they made the guy dance to music. You know? They were whipping his legs.”

“Hmmm.”

“You can get a whip for three-seventy-five,” Flip said. “They advertise them.”

“Did you ever send away for one?” “Naw. Like, who needs it?”

Flip fumbled with his hands. It was curious; he was thinking of a song, the one with which his sister always opened the second set at the place.
“Du Lieblicher Stern.
He had been humming it to himself all day and remembering the way his mother always sighed and said,
“Ach, du schönes Deutschland!”

“What are you smiling at, Hans?”

“Was I smiling?”

“Yes.”

Heine shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s talk about comic books.” The doctor nodded. “All right.”

“Well,” Flip began, “in one there’s this bat man and his friend. I mean, this bat man really digs his friend, you know? He takes care of him and everything. He’s older, like, a lot older, and they hang around together. I remember in one,” Flip continued …

He wondered as he talked if he could keep the doctor sufficiently interested in him to want to see him a second time. Manny and Johnny and Bardo had their folks coming every day, coming and bringing them things. His folks wouldn’t be back, Flip felt. And then in the back of his mind the little poem his mother had spoken played over and over like a broken record:

“Man,” Flip said in a burst of desperate, feigned enthusiasm, “the comic books are the craziest! The things those cats think up. Like, in one there was this doll getting herself whipped and then …"

The guard led him through the block past the cells and up into the interrogation room. He walked in step with the guard and turned square corners. At the door of the interrogation room he saluted the guard. “O.K., General,” he said. “P’toon dis
-missed!”

He was smiling when he walked in. Ivy Raleigh stood looking at him, saying, “Bar! Bar!” He went to her and they embraced.

“Ummmm!” he said. “Arpège?”

“Chanel,” she answered mechanically, studying his face carefully.

“Now, Ivy,” he said. “I told you not to worry.” “But in the papers, Bar — they quote you as saying all those things.”

“Ivy, I told you yesterday. This is all trumped up! I wasn’t even with those infantile people. Leogrande will prove that at the trial.”

“Bar, even if the truth is terrible, won’t you tell me? Please, Bar, it’s important!”

“Ivy,” he said solemnly, looking into her eyes, “Bardo has never lied to you, has he?”

“No, darling,” she answered. She paced across the room, clutching her hands together. “Some of the quotes, though, Bar. They sound like you. You know, the way you use the third person? And you never did like bums. I’m just so — Oh, Bar, darling, darling — please tell me if you had anything to do with it!” She stood there, her hands outstretched toward her son.

“You look lovely,” Bardo said. “New dress?”

“No.”

“Perfect color for you. Bardo approves.” He smiled at her. “Ivy, dear, relax. I’ll be out of here in no time, and there’ll be some apologies from the authorities, you can bet. You know, John Wylie’s getting out. Well, I will too.” He took her hands. “I’m innocent, Ivy. This is all trumped up — all of it. You can thank your United Press for that! You have your eminent newsmen to thank for that!”

She dropped her hands from his and sat down on the bench. “But where were you, Bar? Where were you that night? You’ve never made it clear. Ernest can’t help you if you don’t confide in him.”

“Ivy, I was at the movies. I told you that.”

“No, Bar. You didn’t. You said — oh, darling, you said you were home.”

“I
was
home. Then I went to the movies. I went to see
The Conquest of Everest
at the Trans-lux on Madison. There now, are you satisfied? Really, Ivy. You do believe Bardo?”

“I want to, Bar. My baby.” She rested her face in her hands.

Bardo strolled about the room with his hands in his pockets. “You know,” he said, “the latrines in this place are kept in an infinitely filthy condition.”

“Bar, Bar — ” She watched him walk back and forth.

“Poor Pollack,” he said. “He’s a nice lad. I’m sorry he’s mixed up in this.”

“Is that Emanuel?”

“Yes.”

“The one with the snake?”

“Yes. Sincere,” Raleigh said. “Wonderful creature.”