CHAPTER 8

The White Sheep

A plea of not guilty was entered for Derby when he was arraigned, and since the murder had created so much public indignation his examination was scheduled for three days later. He was bound over to the grand jury and it held him for trial without bail. This was all predictable.

When Ryan returned to work, it was as a hero. His routine and Jablonski’s were disturbed for several days by newspaper reporters, Sunday feature writers, magazine researchers, photographers and true crime story authors. At first their questions alarmed him. But when he came to realize that these interrogations were directed less toward discovering anything than to proving an already-established point of view, he began to relax. Circumstances had conspired to make him a temporary public figure; Ryan accepted it and after the initial reluctance even entered in with quiet-mannered willingness. His mother and sister complained about the constant telephone calls at home, but he noticed that his mother was never too busy in the kitchen to dry her hands and come to the telephone, and that when a photographer was coming, Eleanor usually had on a new dress and fresh makeup.

Meanwhile, the department had engaged in the usual tedious and vital routine. The bullet taken from the dead woman’s head was found to have been shot from the revolver found in Derby’s room. The money that Derby had spent at the delicatessen was recovered and as far as could be told might have been one of the tens that Mrs. Connors had obtained from the bank. The partial fingerprints found in the apartment did not check out; they were the dead woman’s. But there were two loan sharks named Morgan who worked the docks; one hung around Pier Ninety in Manhattan, the other in Brooklyn. The first did not know Derby and was eager to testify that he had never loaned him money. The second did know Derby and had occasionally done business with him. But when two detectives found him he had been smoking opium in a Williamsburg flophouse for forty-eight hours, and was white and sweating. He was glad to admit that he had not loaned Harry Derby any money recently.

Far more important, McGinnis and Minor went out to Derby’s house and talked to his sister, a thin, blond-haired girl with the calm detachment of resignation. She worked as librarian for a midtown athletic club, and when they asked if she had seen her brother Harry on the afternoon of the Connors murder she said she had not because she developed a sick headache that day and had gone home early in the afternoon.

McGinnis asked whom she had seen there, and she said the house had been empty. Other careful questions elicited that she had arrived home before two p.m., and that she had been alone in the Derby apartment on East Seventy-third Street from that time until sometime between six-thirty and seven, when her younger brother had come home from work. That shattered Derby’s alibi that he had been enjoying a nap there that afternoon.

A child found a small black change purse a block from the Connors’ apartment; it bore a faint smear of blood which the lab proved was Mrs. Connors’. A police scientist in the lab spent most of one day extracting tiny particles of plaster dust from the hairy wool of Derby’s jacket. The spectroscope proved beyond doubt that the particles came from the lamp used to bludgeon Mrs. Connors.

Shortly before Jablonski retired he and Ryan went downtown to the district attorney’s office and spent forty minutes with Assistant District Attorney Gil Tilbury. He proved to be an excessively thin young man in an expensively tailored suit, buttoned-collar shirt and casually correct striped tie. He laughed often and confidently, and lolled back in his chair until it creaked to show how supremely at ease he was. He told Ryan and Jablonski that he couldn’t wait to try this case and that Derby was as good as in the death house. He twiddled a Phi Beta Kappa key.

That evening Ryan sat at home watching a fight on television before leaving for work; he was now on the late tour, midnight to eight a.m. His mother had gone to a card party and his sister was in her bedroom doing something intricate and time-consuming to her hair.

Ryan in sweatshirt and slippers felt lazy and relaxed after sleeping all day. It was a nice way to feel, lying on the couch watching two other guys over at St. Nick’s Arena do the heavy work for a while. Occasionally the camera swept the ringsiders, and one of them was a girl who looked like Gee Gee. Probably he ought to call her again. But he’d called twice and missed her each time, and he didn’t want to appear anxious. Maybe tomorrow it would be all right. The doorbell rang.

Ryan lifted himself off the couch and groped his way from the darkened living room to the hall. When he reached the front door he saw through its window that the caller standing outside on the porch was a man and that he was tall and lean.

Then the man moved his head and Ryan caught his profile.

It was Derby.

Even while Ryan watched incredulous, Derby turned and gave the bell an irritable double ring.

Ryan began taking long tiptoe strides back the way he came through the living room and into his own bedroom. He removed the pistol from the holster on the bureau. He cocked it and picked up a flashlight, then returned quietly to the hall. He could feel the beat of his heart.

He moved quickly through the short hall, holding light and gun behind him, shifting the light at the last moment to the crook of his right arm as he reached the door, then pressing the latch with a quick left-hand to throw the door open and bring the gun up as he grabbed the flashlight under his arm.

Derby was wearing a neat bow tie of blue checks, a white shirt and a dark suit. A slouch hat of thin felt was pulled low over his right eye; he carried a trenchcoat and he looked young. He winked rapidly in the flashlight beam.

“What is this?” he demanded in an unexpected voice. “I want to see Mr. Ryan—Detective Ryan, I mean. Isn’t this where he lives?”

Ryan kept light and gun on him. Derby could not see beyond the light. He blinked uncertainly.

“All right,” said Ryan.

“Oh. My name’s Derby, Mr. Ryan. Ken Derby. I’m Harry Derby’s brother.”

Then Ryan understood—and suddenly felt ashamed of the .38 and thrust it into his slacks. He said, “What’s on your mind?”

“I just want to talk to you. Sort of off the record, as they say.”

“You’re talking to me.” It annoyed Ryan to have been frightened.

“It would be better inside.” Derby’s brother raised his face to the light. “This will take a little while.”

“Come on in,” said Ryan. He did not know exactly how to deal with this, and that annoyed him too. He followed the younger Derby into the living room, switched off the television in mid-commercial, said, “Sit down,” waved to the sofa and sank into the deep, worn, leather chair that had been his father’s. When he raised his hands negligently behind his head the pocketed .38 made a hard knot against his thigh.

“I’m Ken Derby,” said his visitor again. “Harry’s my—my older brother.”

“Quite a brother.”

“Maybe. Anyway, that’s why I’m here.”

“Why?” said Ryan.

Ken Derby looked uneasy. “I want to find out what’s happened to Harry,” he said with an air of dogged determination. “I’ve been talking to his lawyer. I just don’t get it.”

“Don’t get what?”

“Look. You’re a cop. I suppose that you figure anyone connected with Harry is a—crook, or a heel.”

Meeting only with affirmative silence, he continued, “We know what Harry’s record is. My sister and me, I mean. Harry’s like my father was. On the docks and—well, a bum. Let’s face it. But the rest of the family isn’t like that. My sister isn’t, and my mother wasn’t. And I’m not.”

Ryan kept staring at him.

“The hell with that. Here’s what I came to say. And understand, I’m on the level. You can ask about me down at Triple-A. I drive a truck for them—Triple-A Delivery on Varick Street. You ask if Kenny Derby’s okay. And my sister. She—”

“You went into that.” Ryan said it knowing it must anger Derby into saying more than he had come to say.

And Derby took it that way. He got to his feet threateningly—virtually as tall as his brother although not as muscular. Still, Ryan liked the feel of the .38 against his thigh.

“Okay,” said Derby. “Then I’ll go into this.”

“Before you do,” said Ryan, interrupting in a way that he knew would not soothe Derby, “just bear in mind that I’m a police witness against your brother. I can’t discuss details of a case that is going to trial.”

“You don’t have to discuss anything,” said Derby grittily. “You’ve just got to answer one thing. Maybe you don’t want to answer it. But I came here to ask it to your face, and I want to see your face when you answer.”

Ryan looked up curiously.

“You got a case against my brother,” said Derby. “I know that. And he’s got a bad record. But almost everything you’ve got against Harry could be coincidence. The witnesses, the ten dollar bills, all that. The one thing you’ve really got against him is that there’s some kind of dust on his jacket that is supposed to prove he was in that old lady’s apartment.”

Ryan said, “What gives you that idea?”

“It was mentioned at the examination.”

“So you’ve been talking to Harry’s lawyer.”

Derby looked alarmed. “Suppose I have? Is that against the rules?”

“No. But do you want to argue with the scientists? They say that dust—”

“I don’t want to argue with anyone,” said Derby doggedly. “If my brother is really guilty.”

Ryan did not feel like answering that.

A door opened behind him and he heard Eleanor say, “Oh, I didn’t know—” and concluded she had come out of her room without her dress on. He said evenly, “You said your brother is guilty. Do you have any doubts?”

“No,” said Derby. “I don’t have any doubts. I don’t have any doubts at all.” Ryan caught a subtle meaning in that and tried to ignore it.

“Then I don’t get you,” he said. But a premonition had flared in his mind, swift and ominous as the darkening of an ocean sky before a storm. “If you’ve talked to Farragut, you know that the scientific evidence—that the dust the lab men found on your brother’s jacket—is unmistakable proof.”

“That’s just what I’m getting at,” said Derby.

“What, for God’s sake?”

“Mr. Ryan, how did that dust get on my brother’s jacket?”

Derby’s thin, light-eyed face burned across the lamplit room into Ryan’s mind, and time became endless. Ryan’s body flickered with impulses—to leap up, or kick over a chair or yell. Instead he must sit quietly and prepare to speak quietly.

“It got there,” he said, “when your brother smashed the lamp across that old woman’s head.”

“No,” said Derby. “It didn’t.”

“Then how?”

“I don’t know,” said Derby meekly. “If I knew, I could save Harry.”

Ryan snorted. “That’s only one part of the evidence against Harry. There were plenty of witnesses. There’s a bank clerk—”

Derby stood up, his lean frame drooping wearily.

“No.” His voice was weary too. “You don’t understand, Mr. Ryan. And I know you can’t discuss this and I didn’t come here to—to—well, try to fix anything. But it’s like I said. You have a case against Harry but a lot of it could be coincidence or mistaken identity or something. The one thing that’s impossible to figure is that dust. I was hoping maybe you’d be—be honest enough to tell me about that. But maybe you really don’t know about it.”

Ryan could stand this no longer. He too got to his feet. “Why?” he shouted. “What the hell do you want explained to you? Your lousy hoodlum brother killed an old woman. He’s guilty of murder. He deserves the chair and he’ll get it.”

Eleanor’s door opened again. Ryan heard her say, “Neill? Is there anything wrong?”

“Maybe he’ll get the chair,” said Derby steadily. “But he doesn’t deserve it. Because he’s not guilty of murder, Mr. Ryan… Harry did not kill that old woman. I know.”

“Neill?” called Eleanor anxiously.

Ryan could see only Ken Derby’s pale, taut face. He was conscious of the rise and fall of his own chest. “How do you know?”

“Because Harry was with me that afternoon,” said Derby; “No one will ever believe it because nobody knows it but me and Harry. He went around on my truck route. I was supposed to have a helper that afternoon and the helper, he didn’t show up—he’s a fellow that plays the horses and, well, you know. I had two big pieces to deliver way uptown that afternoon and I stopped off at the house and picked up Harry to help me. That’s against the rules, but I didn’t want to get Dom, that’s the helper, in trouble. And I knew Harry could use the dough. He’s been broke for quite a while.”

“But—” Ryan could not get his thoughts together. He was afraid to say anything or do anything that would make it any worse than it already was. An inspiration came from somewhere. “If he helped you make deliveries, then someone must have seen him.”

“I doubt it. You’re bonded on this job. If the company discovered I’d used an unbonded helper, let alone a guy with Harry’s record, I’d get fired so fast it’d make your head spin. Harry stayed out of sight, mostly. Oh, he ran a few light pieces in on the way uptown. But I really needed him only for the heavy work. One heavy piece was a refrigerator to an apartment up in Harlem and no one saw us take that in at all. The other was way up in the Bronx and we just dropped this stove on the porch of a new house. There were some carpenters working there inside, but—well, you know how much people notice something like that.”

There was silence. “That’s why I wonder about that dust, Mr. Ryan.”

“If he had an alibi,” said Ryan harshly, “why didn’t he say so?”

“I don’t think he really believes he needs one. And he knows it would get me in trouble if it came out he’d been riding with me—him especially with his criminal record. Harry’s funny. He’s sort of proud that I—well, I’ve got a job and always gone straight. And he still thinks that he can’t be convicted.” He added irrelevantly, “He wants to fight it through himself. He’d kill me if he knew I’d come here.”

The full meaning of it began to sink to the bottom of Ryan’s understanding. As it did he felt cold and shaky, and he knew Ken Derby was watching him.

Ignored, Eleanor firmly closed her bedroom door.

Derby turned and picked his hat off the sofa. Ryan’s gaze remained fixed on the emptiness where Derby had been.

“I hope,” said Derby, “that if you hear anything about that dust business, you’ll be honest.”

Ryan followed him to the door, said, “Good night,” and closed the door after him, and wasn’t aware of any of it.

He went back to the living room, lit a cigarette and inhaled it deeply. He snuffed it out, and then wished he had not snuffed it out and started to light another and then stopped. He had to pull himself together. He had to-think this straight through. He picked up a fresh cigarette and lit it.

Christ!

The clock tolled ten-thirty. It was time to start getting ready for work.

He was in great shape for it.