The Accused Part 4

Cameron: I will ask you once again, Mr. Gurney, what is the purpose of your line of questioning? What are you trying to establish now?

Gurney: The sordid nature of Morlock's relations.h.i.+p with Louise Palaggi prior to their marriage.

Liebman: Oh, objection!

Cameron: I'm not going to rule on your objection at this moment, Mr. Liebman. Mr. Gurney, can you amplify your last comment? The Court realizes that by admonis.h.i.+ng you to show consideration for your witness we may perhaps have disarmed you. I am going to let you have some lat.i.tude in establis.h.i.+ng your point.

Gurney: It has already been established by competent testimony that, the accused met the deceased, Louise Palaggi, at a dance without the usual formality of an introduction and at a time when he was deliberately seeking a woman. It has been shown that on the very night he met her, he took her to his hotel room and that thereafter he visited her home on several occasions. It is not stretching credulity to a.s.sume that he used the humble awe she felt for his position as a means to seduce her on that very first occasion, and that thereafter he pursued her with all the purposeful directness of a rutting boar-- Cameron: Order! I will have order in this courtroom!

The Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts vs. Alvin Morlock. Direct testimony of Attilio Palaggi.

Louise Palaggi had attended convent school until she was twelve years old. By the time she was fifteen--her mother had died while Louise was an infant--she was attending a city high school. She had put the teachings of the nuns far behind her and had already acquired the beginnings of notoriety on Federal Hill.

Her p.u.b.erty had coincided with the era of the big name bands: the Dorsey Brothers and Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw. When they played New England they usually played a stop at a road house fifteen miles from Providence. Louise was in her second year of high school when one of the big bands was booked in for a playing date that happened to fall on the last day of school. She was already considered wild by the women of her neighborhood, who clucked about it and wondered why Attilio--he had money enough from his contracting business--didn't marry again to provide her with a mother. She was pretty, they agreed, too pretty for her own good. And she picked out her own clothes and why couldn't Attilio see that she got them too tight over* her bust and her behind?

She had already had dates with boys in the neighborhood. The dates thus far had included movies and school dances, canned beer, drunk warm and daringly in the back seat of an automobile, and love-making carried on in the same place. The love-making had been mild at first; lately there had been panting efforts to touch her fine b.r.e.a.s.t.s and to put hot hands on her slim bare legs. She had not, thus far, permitted it to go beyond that point although she had been aware of a growing desire of her own. Fear of her father and her four brothers stopped her. They adored her, the single woman in their house, and they would have killed the boy involved if she got into trouble. Beyond that, some faint vestiges of the chast.i.ty urged by the nuns at the convent school remained with her.

One day she had stopped after school for a magazine. On her way out of the drugstore she nearly b.u.mped into a man not much taller than she.

He caught at her arm to steady her and said, "Sorry, Miss--" and then paused to stare at her. She was accustomed to such a reaction by this time and knew that he would now make a pa.s.s. She had two reactions of her own for these occasions. She would adopt an air of cold contempt, or she would smile. '

"Let me buy you a cup of coffee," he said.

She had meant to use contempt. He was small and she liked taller boys. But he was older than the boys of her own crowd and very well dressed. Clothes-conscious herself, she liked that.She said, "All right."

It developed that his name was Eddie Mason and that he was at the track, an expression that puzzled her briefly until she realized that he meant the race track which operated just outside Providence.

"I've got three mounts tomorrow," he said. "How would you like to come out to the track and watch?"

Not for the world would she have admitted that she had to go to school. "Sure," she said.

It further developed that he had a new car and that he liked to dance. Before they separated she agreed to meet him later in the evening on the corner of the street where she lived. They would go to the roadhouse where Tommy Dorsey was playing a one-night stand.

She had never been to a roadhouse; she knew that her father would refuse to let her go if she asked. At supper she said that she was going to the movies with Frances Adiano, a rather plain girl who wors.h.i.+ped her and whom she treated with a casual contempt.

It was not only the day of the big name bands, it was a day of big songs. "I'll Never Smile Again," and "String of Pearls." Louise Palaggi was fascinated by the music and the surroundings. She had discovered a new world that she never proposed to leave.

Later, in Eddie Mason's car, she learned the price of living in such a world. She paid it, if not cheerfully, at least without more than token protest.

Her father would be waiting up, so Eddie left her a block from the house. While she walked that block she rehea.r.s.ed the att.i.tude she would use when she walked in. She was completely aware of the strength of her position in the Palaggi home; she had developed a naivete to center the attentions of her father and her four brothers on herself and away from any infractions of the few family rules that applied to her. But it was almost two o'clock in the morning, and she knew she would have to use a different tactic.

Attilio and her brother Dominick were waiting for her in the kitchen. The old man had drawn his trousers on over the heavy winter underwear that he wore to bed. His white hair was rumpled and his eyes were reddened with weariness and worry. Dominick, Louise's oldest brother, sat at the table, his arms folded across his chest. His eyes were hot and sullen. She was more frightened of him than of her father although, queerly, she sensed that he loved her more than her other brothers.

He stood up and pushed his father back when the old man would have risen. "Where have you been all night?" he demanded. "And don't lie about being at the Adianos'. We talked with Frances."

She was thankful that she had not tried the old approach, the innocent smile. Dominick, she thought, would have slapped her if she had.

Her one defense was attack. "You're not my father," she said. "If pa wants to know where I was, he'll ask me.

Attilio looked up at her. "I ask," he said tiredly. "Where you been, Louise, till such a time?"

She said contritely, "I'm sorry I'm so late, Pa. Some of the other kids got up a crowd to go dancing. I didn't think we'd be so late."

Dominick was watching her closely, looking at her clothes. He asked more quietly, "You all right, Louise? Nothing happened?"

She said angrily, "You see, Pa? He acts as if I was a wh.o.r.e or something just because I stayed out a little with the kids. He's got no right!"

She had, as she had planned, made the issue not her lateness but Dominick's criticism of it. Attilio turned to stare at Dominick.

"Such words I hope never to hear my daughter use," he said, "But she is right. Dominick, never say again to me that Louise is a bad girl."

Dominick and his brothers still treated the head of the family with Old Country deference. Dominick, who had said nothing of the sort, stood up angrily. "All right, Pa," he said bitterly. "If it was my say I'd give her a licking."

The old man said, "Is not your say. I am the head of this house."

Later, in her bedroom, Louise felt a little sorry for Dominick. He would be mad for a couple of days. Then he would bring her a present and make up. She thought, before she went to sleep, of the fun she would have at the race track with Eddie Mason. Thinking of Mason, she felt the last small twinge of conscience about what they had done in the back seat of his automobile. She could have stopped him if she really had wanted to. She hadn't wanted to and now that it was over it didn't seem such a terrible and mysterious thing. Forgetting the pain.

Eddie picked her up at noon, by prearrangement.

She had started from the house as if to go to school and spent the morning in the library. He had another man with him, a stocky man in his thirties with a loud voice and shrewd, piggish eyes.

"This is my agent," Mason said. "Herb Clark."

Herb would stay with her, it developed, during the races. When Mason had seated her in a box seat he gave her two fifty-dollar bills. "Have a ball, kid," he said. "But don't bet on any of the pigs I'm riding."

Herb said, when Mason was gone, "You better let me bet that money for you if you decide you like something, kid. The mutuel clerk might ask you how old you are. How old are you, anyway?"

"Eighteen," she said. She didn't like Herb. He was too patronizing. "And I've bet for myself before."

She hadn't. She had never been to the track before, but she knew about betting from hearing her brothers talking about it. In the first race she bet five dollars on a favorite. The horse ran second. She told Herb that she had bet ten and shrewdly put five in her purse. In the second race she bet a horse that he picked, betting ten dollars this time. The horse won, paying her more than a hundred dollars, and she changed her mind about Herb. When he offered to buy her a drink, she accepted. They drank cold beer at the mezzanine bar where the crowd was thick and the bartender had little chance to pay attention to her apparent age.

When Eddie joined them after the sixth race--he had no more mounts for the day--she was more than two hundred dollars ahead and was becoming shrilly drunk.

Herb, winking at Eddie, said, "We ought to get on out of here before the last race."

The ride toward Providence with the windows of the car open sobered her to the point where she realized the danger in facing her family--particularly the suspicious Dominick--with the smell of beer on her. They would, all of them, be working until dark on one of her father's construction jobs. She got into the house before they returned and went to her room, closing and locking the door. When, one by one, they came to knock softly on the door and inquire was she all right, she rea.s.sured them that she just didn't feel very well and that she would be up after a while. Turning away, they nodded wisely to each other. Louise, they told each other, was growing up. Probably this was her time of the month.

She saw Eddie Mason almost daily after that but she never again made the mistake of coming in after midnight, which had been established as her curfew. On the third date he asked her if she had a friend that she could get for Herb Clark so that they could double date. Louise had never completely outworn her original dislike for Clark and she was still a little frightened by him. Her first impulse was to say no, she didn't know any girl who would go out with the agent. She rejected the impulse lest Eddie think it odd that she knew no girls. "Sure," she said. "For tomorrow night."

Eddie nodded. "Just don't bring no rube," he said. "Herb--well, you know him."

In the morning she went to the Adiano house. Frances was in the kitchen, was.h.i.+ng dishes. She was almost seventeen, a coa.r.s.e-haired, dark-skinned girl. She did have a good figure. She was too happy to see Louise to be surprised at the visit. Usually she had to seek Louise out.

Louise had made up a careful little lie about Clark and Mason. "You'll like them," she explained. "They're not like the boys around here."

Frances was doubtful. Her family was deeply religious; she doubted that they would let her go out with strangers.

Louise ridiculed her. "You don't have to tell them," she mocked.

In the face of her ridicule, Frances agreed to meet her later in the evening. They would go, it had been agreed, to a drive-in movie.

Herb and Eddie picked Louise up first. Herb was curious about Frances, wanting to know not what she looked like but, "If she knew the score."

If she admitted that Frances was a quiet, religious girl with practically no experience with men, Herb would be furious. Eddie would also resent Louise's selection of Frances. In full knowledge of what Herb meant by asking if Frances knew the score, Louise said, "Sure she does, even if she don't act like it."

She watched Herb closely when they met Frances. He did not seem to be disappointed at her lack of prettiness. When they were parked in the far reaches of the drive-in--there were no individual loud-speakers then, only one great one that drowned out all conversation--she could feel the vibration of a struggle in the back seat over and above the disturbance she and Eddie were making. She heard too the m.u.f.fled protests and the low cursing of Herb. After a time she heard a cry of pain and a wail from the back seat. Eddie sat up and said, "What the h.e.l.l?"

Sobbing, Frances broke away from Herb and flung open the door to the back seat. Before she could get away Herb grabbed her and drew her back. "Get going!" he snapped to Eddie. When they were clear of the range of the loud-speaker Frances' sobbing quieted some. She moaned to Louise, "He did it to me. He did it to me, Louise!"

The two men let them out a block away from Frances' house. When they stopped the car, Herb looked curiously at Louise. "You b.i.t.c.h," he said, and then they drove off.

Frances had by this time stopped her moaning. Louise, out of a new fear, said, "You better not tell, Frances. It would only make things worse."

She had to argue the point for several minutes before she convinced Frances; even then she had little hope that the other girl would not run immediately to her parents.

She lived in fear for the next two days but there was no word from Frances' parents. Going to market in the morning, she saw Frances herself, white-faced, but they did not speak. On the following afternoon, when she was beginning to hope that nothing would come of the incident at the drive-in, Louise came home to find her brother Dominick sitting at the kitchen table staring moodily into s.p.a.ce.

"You're home early, Dom," she said brightly. "Sick?"

He stood up. "Frances Adiano went to confession this morning," he said flatly. "The priest told her she better tell her folks what happened to her the night she was out with you."

Louise backed against the kitchen sink. "It wasn't my fault," she whimpered.

Dominick said something obscene in Italian. "They are going to send her away," he said. "You know something, you little b.i.t.c.h? They are going to send her to Boston to her uncle's house. I'll tell you something else. Her mother is wearing black for her." He took two steps toward her and slapped her with his callused hand, knocking her to the floor where she crouched, afraid to cry out. Dominick bent over her, his face contorted. "What am I supposed to say when I see her brother or her father? You tell me that, you hear?" He straightened and wheeled away only to turn back. "The Adianos won't tell Pa. They've got shame for Frances. If he finds out, I think I'll kill you."

Louise was sufficiently frightened by the incident to keep to the house for the next week or so. After that she called Eddie at his hotel and arranged to meet him again. By the time the horses moved on to another circuit, taking him with them, she was known in a half a hundred cafes and night clubs on the Hill. She became a pet of the small-time mobsters who congregated in such places. She had money when she needed it. The gamblers in the places she frequented would make small bets for her for luck when they phoned in their own bets. She became skillful at shuffleboard. There was a table in almost every bar and she could challenge the best players on even terms. She did so only when she had to. It was easier to find some half-drunk player who didn't know her or of her and she did not hesitate to cheat on the scoring when it was possible to do so, confident that her patrons would protect her against any accusations if she was caught. She never went back to school.

Dominick seldom spoke to her. The old man, Attilio, seemed to age overnight and to shrink inward like a winter apple. The other brothers, in their turn, tried to reason with her and they became enraged at her defiance and came to follow Dominick's example. It was not a happy house.

About a year later, when her reputation was completely shattered, old Attilio fired a drunken laborer. The laborer, frantic with rage, cursed at the old man. When he could not find enough bitter things to say about the old man himself, he screamed, "You think you so much, you! That girl of yours, she is no better than a wh.o.r.e anybody on the Hill can sleep with."

Dominick had driven a sand truck up in time to catch part of it. He leaped down from the cab without stopping to switch off the motor and was on the man, beating him to the ground in a shuddering huddle before he could say more. The old man turned away without speaking. He went home and never again came on a job. He would sit by the hour in the kitchen, not speaking. He treated Louise, whenever he saw her, as a little girl. When she would come in stupidly drunk, he never seemed to notice.

More and more often she began to stay away from home. For a month at a time she would have a room in a hotel. She made the winter tour of Florida with the race track crowd. When she came back after being gone three months, Attilio greeted her as if she were a child again and had just come home from school. A pattern was established that lasted until she was in her thirties.

Several weeks before she met Alvin Morlock for the first time, an icy fact was brought home to Louise. She was getting old. She had been sitting in a bar listening to two youths boldly discussing the women in the place. They had started with two girls at the far end of the bar and had worked their way back and she had complacently waited until they came to her. "There's something," they would say. "She could put her shoes under my bed any time." She had waited while they had discussed the woman next to her. Then one of the youths had said, "She was a real doll once. My brother used to go out with her." He was obviously referring to her, Louise Palaggi, and she could scarcely believe what she was hearing. She ordered another drink; while she drank it she remembered the spans of three and four days without a date that were becoming common now, and which she had put down as chance or coincidence. That night she studied her face and body carefully. The faint haze of black hair on her upper lip was becoming increasingly more difficult to hide. There were wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth and the skin of her throat had become papery. There was a definite thickening of her hips and lower body and the b.r.e.a.s.t.s that had been so firm were softening. She was familiar with the dramatically sudden aging of Italian women; she had seen it a hundred times. Almost overnight a red-lipped provocative bride could become a shapeless, s.e.xless old woman.

She could fight it but it would be at best a delaying action. Frightened, she began a deliberate search for security. She had sense enough to know that she would not find it in the sphere in which she then moved. She began a careful preparation by renewing certain old friends.h.i.+ps. This was not easily done. The girls--women, now--of her youth had to be carefully approached. She had openly and contemptuously violated the standards by which they lived, and it took every trace of a charm that had been considerable to overcome their wary distrust. But it had to be done. They had their clubs and their dances. To the dances came the retired mail carriers and the widowed grocers, the eager greenhorn paisans from the old country, and the substantial middle-aged men newly loosened by death from the silver cord that was so strong in Italian people.

She had felt that she could be, with ease, the belle of the local dances and she was frightened again when she was little more than a wallflower at her first discreet appearance. She studied the younger women, tight-breasted and slim-waisted, who competed for the available men and shrewdly concluded that she was overmatched. This first sortie took place at a dance sponsored by a parish womens' club. She conceded that she would have to lower her standards. Her visit to the Balboa Club on the night that she met Alvin Morlock for the first time was the result of that concession. On that night old Attilio had said to her, "You my good girl, Louise. You don't be out too late."

Chapter 5.

Gurney: Since counsel for the defense is obviously going to persist in obstructing any efforts to get the testimony of the father of the deceased woman into the record, we ask that Attilio Palaggi be dismissed and that Thomas Dodson be recalled to the stand.

Cameron: Mr. Palaggi may stand down. Thomas Dodson will be recalled. The bailiff will caution witness that he is still under oath.

Gurney: Mr. Dodson, getting back to the little excursion you and the accused made to Providence in search of women-- Liebman: Your Honor, this is a travesty of proper cross-examination.

Cameron: The Court agrees. Mr. Gurney, you have been repeatedly warned. Please save any further inferences for your summation.

Gurney: Very well. Mr. Dodson, how long did you and Morlock stay at the Hotel Compton?

Dodson: A little over a week. Through New Year's Eve. Then we had to get back for our cla.s.ses.

Gurney: Did Morlock see Louise Palaggi frequently during that period?

Dodson: I suppose he did. He didn't spend much time with me.

Gurney: He spoke to you of her?

Dodson: Yes.

Gurney: Did you go out in their company at any time during that week?

Dodson: No. I didn't see her again...

Gurney: Never mind. You didn't go out with them. How did he speak of her?

Dodson: I don't know what you mean.

Gurney: As a conquest? Was he in love with her?

Liebman: Objection. Any answer would have to be speculative.

Cameron: Sustained.

Gurney: But he did see her every night during the time you stayed at the Hotel Compton?

Dodson: Yes.

Gurney: Getting back to that first night you took the women to your rooms, were you intimate with your companion on that occasion?

Liebman: Will the court instruct the witness that he doesn't have to answer incriminating questions? He is not on trial here.

Cameron: You understand that you don't have to answer, Mr. Dodson?

Dodson: I understand. Under the circ.u.mstances I'd rather not answer.