The Accused Part 3

None of the boys had actually been much interested up to this point. The Portagee girl looked much like any other girl and was probably as dull a playmate. Now the heavy accent identified her as an outsider and her soft obstinacy offered them the opportunity to defy authority, the authority of her father, without risk. They surrounded her and one boy mocked her accent.

"What right has your fodder to say you can play here? He doesn't own Abram's Rock!"

The girl--she was very thin, Morlock noticed--began to tremble. Tears formed in the outer corners of her eyes but she repeated stubbornly, "My fa'der say I can play here."

Morlock pushed two of the boys aside. "Let her alone," he said as fiercely as he could. "She isn't bothering anybody."

They had a certain respect for Morlock. He was not as big as some of the boys in the group but he actually worked after school and earned money. Not nickels for running errands but half dollars and dollars for cutting lawns and hoeing gardens which he gave to his mother. He could be identified with authority. More to the point, they were bored and maybe a little ashamed of the incident. They ran off shouting, leaving Morlock with the girl. That had been his first meeting with Marian--actually her name was Marianna--Cruz....

Morlock, lying in the sagging hotel bed, remembered this as he had remembered it on a hundred nights, waiting for sleep to transport him back to a time when he had been happier than he had ever been since.

Chapter 3.

Gurney: On the night of December 22--they call you Snapper, is it?

Fangio: I already told you that.

Gurney: You have testified that you met the accused on the night of December 22. When did you next see him?

Fangio: The next night. He and the other guy, Dodson, came around. We decided to go to the Balboa Club. They were having a dance.

Gurney: That was Morlock's idea, wasn't it?

Liebman: Objection.

Cameron: Sustained.

Gurney: Let that go, Snapper. Did Morlock meet a woman at the dance?

Fangio: Sure he did. That's what we went there for.

Gurney: Did you introduce them or did he pick her up?

Liebman: Your Honor-- Cameron: I have cautioned counsel against repet.i.tious use of that phrase. Mr. Gurney, you will please refrain from using it.

Gurney: Snapper, you, Dodson, and the accused went out on that second occasion for the avowed purpose of finding women. From your own testimony and Dodson's, Morlock and Dodson had been unsuccessful in an earlier attempt to pick--to make the acquaintance of Lucy and Audrey Zonfrillo. Did he drop his standards? Wasn't he anxious to meet any woman at all by the time you went to the Balboa Club?

Liebman: Your Honor, I object to counsel's leading questions.

Cameron: Sustained.

Gurney: Snapper, who was the woman the accused met at the Balboa Club?

Fangio: Her name was Louise. Louise Palaggi.

Gurney: Did you know her prior to that time?

Fangio: I'd seen her around.

Gurney: Did you introduce her to him?

Fangio: No.

Gurney: What did you do after the dance?

Fangio: We went to another place.

Gurney: Just the three of you?

Fangio: We took them along.

Gurney: Them?

Fangio: The women we were sitting with at the dance.

Gurney: And where did you go then? To still another place?

Fangio: We went to Morlock and Dodson's Hotel.

Gurney: With the women?

Fangio: Yes.

Gurney: And who was the woman with the accused?

Fangio: Louise Palaggi.

The Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts vs. Alvin Morlock. Redirect testimony of Gino Fangio.

When Morlock and Dodson met him in the bar on the following evening, Snapper had said, "If you want to pick something up you could do better than hang around here. They come in here, all right, lots of them, but they're too smart. You ought to go to a dance. There's one on tonight at the Balboa Club. That's a Dago joint on the Hill."

Morlock had spent an uneasy day. He had killed time at the public library as a hypocritical sop to his conscience. Dodson had slept through the afternoon and Morlock had fully intended to tell him, when he awoke, that he was going back to Ludlow. He was ashamed of the incident with Audrey and Lucy which, in daylight, seemed cheap and contemptible.

Dodson would not hear of it, taking the att.i.tude that Morlock's departure would spoil his, Dodson's, vacation. After dinner Morlock felt the familiar, wistful night magic and agreed to stay on another day.

There would be no more barroom entanglements, Morlock promised himself. A movie, perhaps, and then a sandwich and coffee before he went back to the hotel. But that was before Snapper's suggestion.

Dodson was enthusiastic. They went to the dance in Snapper's car.

The hall was crowded when they arrived and bought tickets. The band was just coming back to the platform after an intermission. Morlock sensed a heady excitement as the musicians warmed up with little runs and trills; he remembered those high school dances. Pretty soon they would come in with that big solid opening beat.

Dodson had been looking around the room. "This is more like it," he said.

Morlock, a.n.a.lyzing his own mood, missed the elation that had been there the previous night. Antic.i.p.ation there was--there were any number of pretty women in the room--but it was not a l.u.s.tful antic.i.p.ation. Further, there was a cynical facet to his character; he had long ago recognized it. If it controlled him this night he would find himself on the sidelines, not dancing, criticizing the dancers with a sardonic smile on his face. The cynicism, he supposed, was a form of sour grapes.

Snapper became expansive. "I told you there'd be plenty of women here," he said. "Most of them will be looking for rides home when this is over. Thing to do is move in early. Let's go downstairs to the bar and get a drink."

Morlock had promised himself to drink very little. He had had too much the previous night and for once it had not made him sick. Miracles were seldom repeated. But Snapper bought a round and Dodson and then it was his turn.

The glow came and he danced, starting with the younger girls in the crowd. Dodson, he noticed, avoided the younger and prettier women and selected the older, less attractive ones--who could be expected to be grateful, Morlock thought, and remembered wryly that it had been Ben Franklin who had originally advised such selection.

In between dances they drank. To do this they held, by right of first possession, a table in the bar. There was another table jammed against their own and he became aware of two women at the table. They smiled each time he returned to the table from the dance floor. After a third or a fourth smile they acquired, by force of repet.i.tion, a relations.h.i.+p of sorts which Dodson noticed. After several dances he said, "I think we've, been missing something, Al. Let's ask them to dance." He sounded patronizing, Morlock thought. Dodson had been having a fine run of luck, not having been once rejected as a partner. As a result he had taken on a jaunty confidence and his offer to dance with the neighboring women was made with a princely condescension.

"Go ahead," Morlock agreed. "Ask one of them. I'll ask the one that's left."

Dodson, drunk with himself, rose and walked toward them. He held a brief conversation with the two women at the table. One of the two got up and linked her arm in Dodson's. When they moved away from the table Morlock covertly studied the second woman. She appeared to be in her early thirties and her face was quite attractive. Her figure, what he could see of it, was full blown with a disciplined firmness that suggested corseting.

He stood up, a shade uncertainly, and walked to her table.

"h.e.l.lo," he said, "are you having a good time?"

She smiled. Her teeth were white and perfect. "Very," she said. "Won't you sit down?"

He was grateful; he had been alarmed over the loss of perfect control of his legs. "Let me buy you a drink," he said. "My name is Morlock."

She acknowledged the introduction with a nod and another smile. "Mine is Louise," she said. "Louise Palaggi."

"h.e.l.lo, Louise," he said das.h.i.+ngly.

When Dodson came back to the table, towing the other woman whom he introduced as Rose but mentioned no last name, Morlock was already deep in conversation with Louise Palaggi. She seemed greatly interested in everything he had to say and demurely declined Dodson's offer to buy another round. When Snapper joined them with a woman of his own, she refused his offer of a drink too. Morlock didn't, and as he drank he recognized with wonderful discernment the difference between her and the other women who were loud, raucous, and superficial.

He told her of his job at Ludlow and let her guess that he very seldom came to places like this but that sometimes he got so fed up with ignorant students...

He indicated the loneliness of a sensitive man.

He had never known a woman to listen to him with such perception and sympathy. He told her this too.

He was quite drunk.

Louise told him, for her part, that she was lonely too. She had devoted the best part of her life, she let him guess, to the care of her father and her brothers, keeping up a home for them. She let him know, wistfully, that she was ignorant herself--she had had to leave high school in her second year to make that home--but that it was wonderful to be in the company of an educated man and she regretted that she knew so little.

He told her gallantly that she was one of the most intelligent women he had ever met--in a sense he was quite right--and that he could hardly believe that she had so little schooling.

She told him that she read a great deal.

Snapper and his woman and Dodson with his Rosie became aware, after a while, of the detachment of the couple. Rose thought it was cute; she said so, shrilly referring to them as lovebirds. Morlock, who would have been sickened ordinarily, smiled sheepishly while Louise protested; becomingly, he thought.

When the band played the last number and they got up to leave, Snapper suggested that they go to an after hours club where he was known. Morlock was watching Dodson, who seemed to be afraid of a refusal from his Rosie. He saw Dodson's face light up with relief and joy when Rosie was loudly enthusiastic at the plan.

Louise said shyly, "Well, I shouldn't--" but protested no more when Morlock was masterfully insistent.

After the club closed in its turn, they drove back to the hotel, Morlock and Dodson sitting in the back seat with Rosie and Louise. Dodson and Rosie were making love, openly and grotesquely. Morlock was embarra.s.sed. Louise Palaggi, with what he thought a charming and ladylike reticence, ignored them completely.

They would, it was agreed, go up to Dodson's room for a final drink.

She was diffident about it but she went with them. In the elevator Morlock began to regret that he could not go to bed. He'd had, for him, a tremendous amount of liquor. The surging lift of the elevator made him aware of it.

When Dodson had fumbled open the door of his room, he went at once to the bed with Rosie, falling on the mattress in animal abandon. Snapper and his woman found a chair. Morlock said unsteadily, "Let's go next door to my room."

He was physically and mentally aroused by her presence, by the woman smell and softness of her. In his room he fell on the bed and reached for her, pawing at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and trying to pull her down beside him.

"No," she said, and pulled away from him. She didn't seem angry. "No, Alvin."

And then he was sick.

Chapter 4.

Gurney: You have given your name as Attilio Palaggi. You are the father of the deceased woman?

Palaggi: Louise...

Gurney: Louise Palaggi was your daughter, wasn't she?-- Palaggi: She was my daughter, Louise. A good Catholic girl. She went to convent school for four years. She was a good girl, Louise.

Gurney: Mr. Palaggi, did the accused visit your home prior to his marriage to your daughter?

Palaggi: A good girl...

Liebman: Your Honor, there seems to be no point to this badgering of a decent old man. The defense will agree that Alvin Morlock visited the Palaggi home several times before his marriage to Louise Palaggi.

Cameron: Will Mr. Gurney inform the Court as to the purpose of this line of questioning?

Gurney: The prosecution only wishes to show that Morlock had every opportunity to observe the woman he met at the Balboa Club, to see that she was his inferior in education and upbringing, and that his marriage to her was not the result of any romantic attachment.

Cameron: You may continue, Mr. Gurney. Please be as considerate of the witness as possible.

Gurney: Very well, Your Honor. Mr. Palaggi, how many times did Morlock visit your home?

Palaggi: I don't know. I think, many times.

Gurney: During these visits he was frequently alone with your daughter, was he not?