Fatherhood (2 page)

“Well, let's go get him,” Rogers said.

J.R. didn't move.

“You don't want to come along, J.R.?” Rogers asked him.

J.R. waved his hand dismissively, then returned his gaze to the dead girl.

“Name's Frank, the factory manager,” Rogers said, glancing at his notes as he and the other men headed for the door. “Leo Frank.”

J.R. was having a cigar, sitting massive behind his small wooden desk in the detective bull pen when Rogers and the others appeared again, Leo Frank in tow but barely visible as they bustled him among the empty desks toward Newport Langford's office. Watching, J.R. saw only an oily flash of black hair, a glint of spectacles, the gold wink of a cuff link, the rest obscured by a flowing curtain of wrinkled suits.

He blew a column of smoke into the air, leaned back, sniffed, planned his method of approach when they finally dragged Jim Conley into the bull pen. He was still lining up the questions, planning how he'd lurch forward from time to time, plant his huge face directly in front of Conley's, close enough, as he imagined it, for a little spit to hit him in the eye with each question, when the door to Langford's office swung open. It was a crude persona he'd adopted before, in such cases, often to hilarious, but always telling, effect.

“J.R.,” Rogers called. “Chief Langford wants you in on this.”

J.R. rose ponderously, put his enormous frame in motion, fat like congealed air around him, forever walking, as it seemed to him, through a thick, invisible gelatin.

The room was hot, crowded, rancid with tobacco smoke. Frank sat in a plain wooden chair, facing Newport Langford. He was dressed in a black suit, freshly starched white shirt, with gold cuff links, a small, skinny man, so short his feet dangled a good half inch above the floor. He didn't smoke, and from time to time he lifted his hand and waved away the curls of smoke that swirled around his nose and eyes. The lenses of his glasses occasionally glinted in the light that fell over him from the high window behind Langford's desk. He cleared his throat every few minutes and sometimes coughed softly into a tiny, loosely clenched fist.

To J.R. the idea that such a man might have anything to do with the murder of a teenage girl was, to use the phrase he intended to use should such a possibility be offered, “patently absurd.”

“How many girls do you have working there at the factory, Mr. Frank?” Langford asked.

“About a hundred.”

“And you handle the payroll?”

“Actually, Mr. Shiff pays the girls.”

“Well, you were paying them on Saturday, weren't you?” Starnes asked, a sudden, accusatory note in his voice.

“Yes.”

“What do you pay them, by the way?” Rogers asked.

“The girls make twelve cents an hour,” Frank answered.

Black smiled. “What do you make, Mr. Frank?” he asked. He glanced at the other detectives. “In case I ever got interested in managing a pencil factory, I mean.”

The men laughed. Frank didn't.

“My salary is sixty dollars a week,” he said.

“And you say you've got a hundred girls working for you, Mr. Frank?” Langford asked.

“About a hundred, yes.”

“That's a lot of girls,” Starnes said. “All young, right?”

Frank gave a quick, jerky nod. “Most of them are young, yes.”

“You like them that way?” Rogers asked. “Young?”

Frank looked at him silently.

“As employees, he means, Mr. Frank,” Langford added softly.

Frank glanced about nervously. “I don't have any preference, really. As to age, It just happens that most of the girls are young. I think you would find that in any factory of this kind, that most of the girls are …”

“What about Mary Phagan?” Starnes interrupted. “When we went to your house, you said you didn't know who she was.”

Frank tugged gently at his right cuff link. “At first, I didn't recognize the name.”

“So you don't know the names of the people who work for you?” Rogers asked.

Frank allowed himself a quick, jittery laugh. “Well, there are so many …”

“A hundred, yes,” Black said sharply. “A hundred girls.”

Frank's eyes darted away, settled briefly on J.R.'s, then fled back to Newport Langford. “Once I saw her … Mary … I knew who she was. I mean, I recognized her.” He adjusted the cuffs of his shirt unnecessarily, twisted his cuff links. “That it was Miss Phagan.”

“And you remembered paying her on Saturday, is that right?” Rogers asked.

“Yes, she came to my office.”

“On the second floor,” Starnes said.

“That's right.”

The men stared at him silently.

“She asked for her pay,” Frank added. “I looked it up. The amount, I mean. How much I owed her. Then I gave her what she was due.”

“And she left?” Starnes asked.

“Yes.”

“And you stayed put,” Black said.

“At my desk.”

“For how long?” Rogers asked.

“At least two hours.”

The questions and answers continued, J.R. listening idly, glancing out into the bull pen from time to time, hoping to see McCorkindale or some other uniform escort Jim Conley into the room. He'd learned by then that Newt Lee was denying everything, claiming that the murder was being “put off” on him. He thought of the notes Craig Britt had found beside the body, the low, subliterate writing scrawled on them.

“Let's get back to Mary for a moment, Mr. Frank,” Langford said.

Frank fingered a gold cuff link.

“Had she ever been in your office before?”

“Not that I recall.”

“What about the other girls?” Starnes asked. “Were they in the habit of coming up to the second floor?”

Frank looked at Langford quizzically, then turned back to Starnes. “In the habit?”

“Did you bring these girls up to your office on a regular basis?” Black snapped.

“I never brought them up,” Frank said.

“Well, they been seen up there,” Rogers told him.

“To get their pay,” Frank replied.

“Do they ever come up there just to see you?” Starnes asked.

“Me?”

“Pay a call, you might say.”

“No.”

“No girl ever comes up there alone?” Black asked doubtfully.

“To get her pay, she might,” Frank said.

“Never for anything else?” Starnes asked.

Frank shook his head.

“How about Mary Phagan,” Langford said. “Had Mary ever been in your office before yesterday afternoon, Mr. Frank?”

Frank's right hand moved from his lap to his left cuff link. “Not that I recall. No.”

“Well, you would recall it, wouldn't you?” Starnes asked. “If she'd come up there before?”

“Not necessarily,” Frank answered. “I mean, I have …”

“A hundred girls, yeah, we know,” Black said sharply. He looked knowingly at the other men. “We've heard all about it.”

Frank lowered his eyes, and for a moment J.R. tried to read the gesture. Embarrassment? Fear? Something else? The notes returned to him. He tried to imagine Conley writing them in the shadowy corner of the basement, hunched, apelike, over Mary Phagan's dead body, dabbing the tip of the pencil on his thick red tongue, eyes rolling toward the ceiling as he tried to figure out exactly what he should “wright.”

“You're not from around here, are you, Mr. Frank?”

It was Starnes going at him again.

“I was born in Texas,” Frank said.

“Texas?” Black asked. “You don't sound like you're from Texas.”

“My family moved to Brooklyn when I was a baby,” Frank said. He offered a quick, nervous smile.

“My wife was born here in Atlanta, though. A native. Her father is head of the B'nai B'rith.”

“What's that?” Starnes asked.

Frank's smile vanished. “An association.”

“Of what?”

Frank grabbed his knees, squeezed. “Of Jews,” he said, glancing about. “Of Jewish people.”

Langford nodded softly. “How long did you live in Brooklyn, Mr. Frank?”

“Until I graduated from college.”

“What did you study, may I ask?”

“Mechanical engineering.”

J.R. felt something shift in his mind. Could the notes have been planted by someone else? Someone a lot smarter than Conley? Able to figure out a double insinuation, put the murder on an inferior being. Conley, by making it seem that he, Conley, had tried to implicate a second inferior being. Newt. Knowing all the time that Newt would never fit the bill, but that Conley would. J.R. smiled at the idea of such a scheme. Clever, he thought.

“Normally, you wouldn't have been at the factory on a Saturday, is that right, Mr. Frank?”

It was Mr. Langford asking, softly, politely, always adding, “Mr. Frank” at the end of it.

“No,” Frank said. “I wouldn't have been there at all if it hadn't been raining.”

“What's that?” Rogers asked.

“I'd planned to go to a baseball game with my brother-in-law.”

Starnes smiled. “Baseball? You like baseball?”

Frank looked at him. “Why does that surprise you?”

Starnes' face turned grim. “Who was playing?”

Frank shifted slightly. “Well, the Atlanta team, I believe.”

“The Crackers,” Black said.

“Yes.”

“Who were they playing?” Starnes asked. “Who were the Crackers playing yesterday?”

Frank was silent for a moment, then shook his head. “I don't.…”

Starnes smiled thinly. “Birmingham,” he said. “The Birmingham Barons.”

Frank shrugged. “I …”

Langford leaned forward, his eyes boring into Frank now. “Mr. Frank, one thing bothers me. Why did you call Newt Lee down at the factory on Saturday afternoon?”

Before he could answer, Starnes leaned forward. “After you'd left. Two hours after you'd left.”

“I wanted to make sure everything was all right at the factory.”

“Why wouldn't it be?” Rogers asked.

“Well, Newt is new at the factory, and so …”

“He was even newer last Saturday,” Starnes said. “But you didn't call him then.”

Frank shrugged. “I just wanted to check on things.”

“On Mary Phagan?” Black asked.

Frank stared at him quizzically, one hand drifting toward the left cuff, tugging at the cuff link. “Mary Phagan? Why would I …”

“Maybe you wanted to find out if anybody had found her yet,” Rogers asked starkly. “Is that why you called Newt?”

Frank shook his head. “Of course not,” he said, then went on, sputtering. “I had no idea that anything had … that-that Miss Phagan was … no idea.”

J.R. eased his weight from the wall, watching Frank's hands, something he'd noticed, the way Frank's slender, delicate fingers toyed with the gold cuff links each time he heard Mary Phagan's name. J.R. thought of the notes again, how cleverly they'd been constructed, pointing at guilt by pointing away from guilt, which pointed back to guilt again. He wondered if Conley could ever have hatched such a scheme. He was smart, but was he that smart? He considered both the nature and scope of Conley's intelligence, both his shrewdness and its limits. His shrewdness would inform him of his limits. Which meant, J.R. reasoned, that since Conley was smart, he'd know better than to get himself mixed up in a contest of wits with a mechanical engineer. He would know that he could never outsmart so superior a person. This, J.R. reasoned, was an argument that worked both ways. For just as surely, Leo Frank would know that he could outsmart Conley. This logic applied with telling force, J.R. mused, on the notes Britt had found beside the body. For although Conley would know that he could never hope to write like Leo Frank, Frank would no less clearly perceive that he, Frank, could quite easily imitate the crude sublanguage of such a brute as Jim Conley.

“You must admit, Mr. Frank, that that call is somewhat of a problem,” Langford said.

Frank stared at him silently.

“It seems out of character, you see,” Langford explained politely.

Frank's eyes took on a strange, animal agitation. “Out of character? In what way?”

“In that a man like you, Mr. Frank,” Langford said, “if you'll permit me saying so”—he tapped the side of his head—“a man like you has a reason for everything he does.”

Frank started to answer, but the door to Langford's office swung open suddenly, and Luther Rosser strode in.

“I'm Mr. Frank's lawyer,” he declared. “There will be no more questioning of my client without my being present.”

Langford stood up slowly, shook hands with Rosser, then let his gaze drift down to where Frank sat, completely still, in his chair. “You may go, Mr. Frank,” he said. He smiled at Rosser. “I'll walk you to your car, Luther,” he added brightly.

The detectives shifted about, muttering, then drifted away from Frank, giving him room to straighten himself, watching silently as he buttoned his coat, adjusted his tie. Then Frank turned and headed for the door, J.R. standing massively in his path, so that he slowed suddenly, as if a great stone had suddenly rolled into his path.