A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [116]
“Kid all right?” asked the cop.
“Fine,” the intern told him, “just suffering from shock and parentinitus.” He winked at the cop. “When she wakes up,” he said to Katie, “remember to keep telling her that she had a bad dream. Don’t talk about it otherwise.”
“What do I owe you, Doc?” asked Johnny.
“Nothing, Mac. This is on the city.”
“Thank you,” whispered Johnny.
The intern noticed Johnny’s trembling hands. He pulled a pint flask from his hip pocket and thrust it at Johnny. “Here!” Johnny looked up at him. “Go ahead, Mac,” insisted the intern. Gratefully, Johnny took a long swallow. The intern passed the flask to Katie. “You too, lady. You look as if you need it.” Katie took a big drink. The cop spoke up.
“What do you take me for? A orphan?”
When the intern got the flask back from the cop, there was only an inch left in it. He sighed and emptied the bottle. The cop sighed, too, and turned to Johnny.
“Now. Where do you keep the gun?”
“Under my pillow.”
“Get it. I got to take it over to the station house.”
Katie, forgetting how she had disposed of the gun, went into the bedroom to look under the pillow. She came back, looking worried.
“Why, it’s not there!”
The cop laughed. “Naturally. You took it out to shoot the louse.”
It took Katie a long time to remember that she had thrown it into the washtub. She fished it out. The cop wiped it off and took out the bullets. He asked Johnny a question.
“You got a permit for this, Mac?”
“No.”
“That’s tough.”
“It’s not my gun.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“No——Nobody.” Johnny didn’t want to get the watchman in trouble.
“How’d you get it then?”
“I found it. Yes, I found it in the gutter.”
“All oiled and loaded?”
“Honest.”
“And that’s your story?”
“That’s my story.”
“It’s okay by me, Mac. See that you stick to it.”
The ambulance driver hollered from the hall that he was back from taking the man to the hospital and was Doc ready to leave.
“Hospital?” Katie asked. “Then I didn’t kill him.”
“Not quite,” said the intern. “We’ll get him on his feet so’s he can walk to the electric chair by himself.”
“I’m sorry,” said Katie. “I meant to kill him.”
“I got a statement from him before he passed out,” said the cop. “That little kid down the block: he killed her. He was responsible for two other jobs, too. I got his statement, signed and witnessed.” He patted his pocket. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I got a promotion out of this when the Commissioner hears.”
“I hope so,” said Katie bleakly. “I hope somebody gets some good out of it.”
When Francie woke the next morning, Papa was there to tell her that it was all a dream. And as time passed it did seem like a dream to Francie. It left no ugliness in her memories. Her physical terror had blunted her emotional perceptions. The terror on the stairs had been brief—a bare three minutes in time—and terror had served as an anesthetic. The events following were hazy in her mind on account of the unaccustomed hypodermic. Even the hearing in court where she had to tell her story seemed like a part in an unreal play in which her lines were brief.
There was a hearing, but Katie was told beforehand that it was a technicality. Francie remembered little of it except that she told her story and Katie told hers. Few words were needed.
“I was coming home from school,” testified Francie, “and when I got in the hall, this man came out and grabbed me before I could scream. While he was trying to drag me off the stairs, my mother came down.”
Katie said: “I came down the stairs and saw him there pulling my daughter. I ran up and got the gun (it didn’t take long) and I ran down and shot him while he was trying to sneak down the cellar.”
Francie wondered whether Mama would be arrested for shooting a man. But no, it ended up with the judge shaking Mama’s hand and hers too.
A lucky thing happened about the newspapers. A soused reporter, going through his nightly routine of calling up the station houses for police-blotter news,