We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [57]
They came to ask if there was any to be had.
And they received their answer.
They walked up the Lower East Side until they reached the police station on Twelfth Street. Grouped close together, they filled the width of the sidewalk, and passersby had to step aside to make way for them. Deep down they still felt ashamed that they'd failed to deal with O'Connor themselves. Here were seventeen large, broad-shouldered men, used to hard work, coming to beg others for justice—on one man.
Was the law something only the weak resorted to?
They reached a grimy yellow building whose sign proclaimed it to be the home of the law. When they entered and saw men not unlike themselves being dragged in from the street by policemen, for a moment they weren't sure which side of the law they belonged on. But they went over to a counter and stood there, nudging one another hesitantly. Albert ended up doing the talking. He told the police officer about the murder of Giovanni, and the Swedish second mate showed him his blinded eye.
The officer wrote a report. The moment they saw their words being committed to writing, something changed. They could look one another in the eye again and stand up straight. They were no longer a group of frustrated men whose complaints merited no more than a disdainful shrug.
Two police officers accompanied them back to the ship. O'Connor was sitting in his chair on the deck, his dog lying at his feet. They knew he had a loaded revolver in his pocket—but you don't shoot the law. If you shoot a police officer, ten more will take his place.
They saw O'Connor's astonishment. He glared at the crew of the Emma C. Leithfield one by one. And when none of them looked away, he understood. They'd done the unthinkable. They hadn't beaten him up, or arranged a counterattack, or tried to murder him—all of which would have met with his approval. Indeed, he'd have wanted it, because that was the language he spoke and understood. But now they'd acted in a way that was incomprehensible to him, in which might and right didn't share a meaning.
For a moment he hesitated as he took head-to-toe measure first of them, and then of the policemen. The officers' faces betrayed no reaction upon seeing the giant with the grotesquely scarred face, the tattered clothing, and the obvious bulge in his nankeens that revealed I the presence of a revolver. But the crew saw them stiffen as their hands sought the butts of their own weapons.
O'Connor spotted it too, and displaying a cunning they would not have credited him with, asked the police officers what the problem was. They replied that he'd been accused of murder and assault and that the witnesses were the men standing next to them. They informed him that he was under arrest.
O'Connor handed over his revolver voluntarily. The men saw him trying hard to look smaller as he was led away between the two policemen. O'Connor!
They exchanged glances.
The law was so strong that a mere snapping of its fingers could reduce even the most bloodthirsty monster to a lamb.
They'd never have believed that O'Connor had the gift of the gab. He'd certainly never provided them with evidence of an extensive vocabulary. Grunting and roaring had been his favorite forms of expression. But now he revealed a completely new side of himself. They'd noted a flash of deviousness in his eyes when he agreed to go with the officers voluntarily. Now, in court, they began truly to understand what sort of calculating fiend was lurking within that brutal mass of flesh.
When the charge against him was read out in court, O'Connor grabbed the Bible and kissed it with a passion that he'd hitherto reserved for outbursts of rage. He held up his hand and swore that he'd never, in all his life, laid a finger on any man. Then he clasped his maimed head and turned it from side to side, as if his neck were a socket and he was attempting to unscrew it.
"Look at this face," he cried. "Is this the face of a killer?"
He stared directly at the judge and then at the public gallery.