Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir Read online

  The chief is in a Catch-22 dilemma. If he asks for a warrant, he is admitting to the possibility that Private Williams committed the crime. This absolutely can’t happen or the cracking wall that braces the chief’s predicament will fall. He tries a new tack: Judge, would you accept a breach of peace warrant just to let him come back to Connecticut.

  The chief knows the answer the judge will give and listens to him give it: The boy has to be charged with a felony before we can do anything.

  The chief has no choice but to call Captain Egan at Hartford headquarters and tell him to go through the opening motions of obtaining the warrant.

  Egan says, In the middle of the night?

  Yeah.

  Egan knows the chief is following orders and also knows that, realistically, there is no getting a motion until morning.

  The chief returns to the Army interrogation room exasperated, stands over Private Williams, and asks him, Why are you telling me this story?

  I want to get it off my chest.

  Are you sure you aren’t telling it to me so you can get out of the Army, get out of the court-martial you are facing here?

  The private smiles and says, No, I like the Army.

  With that, the chief commands the Hartford officer who accompanied him to Fort Devens, Sergeant Ralph McGuinness, to lie down on the floor. McGuinness is taken aback, but immediately does as his chief asks.

  The chief says, Private Williams, I want you to demonstrate what you did to that little girl.

  I told you, I strangled her.

  Show me.

  Private Williams gets down on the floor and pretends to choke Sergeant McGuinness with his hands.

  Now get up.

  He does.

  Describe the terrain again. The place where you strangled her.

  I have a headache. I’m sick of this.

  The chief has been at Fort Devens a long time and his response to Williams is, So the hell am I. The last words the chief utters on his way out the door are directed at the provost marshal. He says, Turn that little shit over to the MPs and see to it that he be court-martialed. On a charge of AWOL, not murder!

  As the chief is racing back to Hartford, he gets a call on the police radio from the provost telling him that not only is Private Williams still insisting he killed Irene but that he cut off a lock of her hair, which he hid. The soldier wants to tell the chief where he hid it, and he won’t speak to anyone else. Chief Godfrey hangs up, radios Hartford, and tells the dispatcher that he will not accept any more calls from Fort Devens.

  Within minutes there comes another call, this time from the commissioner telling the chief to go back, find out where the lock of hair is, get it, and arrest John Williams.

  The chief explains to his boss that the coroner determined that Irene’s hair was intact. He fabricates without the slightest hesitation.

  Upon arriving back in Hartford, Chief Godfrey is able to make everyone gathered at the commissioner’s home in the middle of the night see that the soldier’s confession is a hoax because of the scarf business, and besides that, his own suspect is about to confess at any second.

  The commissioner and the Hartford politicians relent ever so slightly, giving Chief Godfrey the rest of the night to get a confession from Bob Malm. He will have till 9 A.M, seven hours. If he doesn’t get it by then, he is to charge the soldier at Fort Devens with Irene’s murder and arrest him. It is pointed out to Chief Godfrey that Malm was a model prisoner at the Wethersfield State Prison for five years; his parole officer can’t say enough good things about him; and his success at his job at the Cedarcrest Sanatorium has proven him to be an upstanding citizen.

  Chief Michael J. Godfrey tells the politicians the same thing he told the provost at Fort Devens but in a much calmer tone. He says, The soldier, John Williams, is guilty of being absent without leave.

  And then he walks out without another word and heads for the Hartford County Jail.

  In his car, he calls his man, Egan, asks him if Malm has heard about Williams’s confession. Egan says, Course not.

  The chief orders him to see to it that Bob Malm does not hear of that confession no matter what. Then the chief asks Jimmy Egan, Who’s with you?

  Mancini.

  Put him on.

  John Mancini is an officer with the Hartford County Police, a jurisdiction that must be represented in a capital investigation taking place within the county. The chief gives Mancini the same order he gave Egan.

  Then to Egan again: I’ll be over there in twenty minutes and our goddamn time is running out.

  When Egan hangs up the phone, Bob’s antennae have raised. He asks, You boys got a problem?

  Egan’s fists are curled and tight. He wants to kill Robert Malm. Mancini can see this and steps in. Mancini has been around, and as a county officer rather than a city cop, he is less encumbered by politics. This gives him the leisure to think rather than connive, and he has been thinking.

  He leans toward Bob and says nonchalantly, Girls get to be eleven, twelve years old, ya know? And it’s just at that time they choose one road or the other, right, Bob? A girl can take the good road or she can take the road to wayward behavior. We fellows all know about dirty girls, don’t we, Bob? I mean, there’s a lot of talk in the neighborhood that possibly the girl accosted you, not the other way around. Matter of fact, I had an argument with my wife about that myself. This morning, even.

  Egan sees the hint of a smile on Bob’s face. Bob, he is sure, is connecting the question to the phone call. Bob senses the break he believes he’s finally getting. He raises his hooded eyes. He says, She winked at me.

  Mancini doesn’t move a muscle. Egan swallows so he’ll sound calm and carefully says to Mancini, You continue on here with Bob and I’ll be right back.

  He saunters out the door, closes it behind him, and runs for a phone just as Chief Godfrey is dashing into the jail. The two come face-to-face. Egan says, We got the motherfucker.

  thirty-four

  CHIEF GODFREY doesn’t waste more than thirty seconds casually apologizing to Bob for having been gone so long. The chief can see that Bob is no longer in the agitated state he left him in. He says to Bob, After the girl winked at you, did she say anything?

  Yeah. She said hello to me.

  Do you suppose she thought she knew you?

  Maybe. Acted like she did.

  Then what happened?

  Oh, I was just talking with her, walking along, making conversation . . . Bob lights his thousandth Old Gold . . . until I saw some kids coming. I took her across an empty lot and we hid under a boat. Boat was up on a few concrete blocks.

  The girl went willingly with you, Bob? Agreed to hide with you? Crawled under the boat and all?

  Yeah, she did.

  Then what happened?

  Those kids I saw came right up to the boat. The little snots started throwing rocks. I yelled at them and they ran away. Then I took the girl out from under the boat with me and we went to the back of the lot and there was a fence.

  What did you do?

  I helped the girl over the fence.

  Helped her?

  Yeah.

  She was still going along with you willingly?

  Yeah.

  Then?

  I took her through some backyards to the next street. Then we crossed that street, and we went down this driveway to the backyard of some house.

  Bob takes an especially deep drag on his cigarette. The chief waits. Bob continues: There was this shed in the corner of the yard behind a picket fence and we tried to get in it but the door was stuck or locked, I don’t know.

  Did she say anything?

  Yeah.

  What?

  She said she had to get home before her brother did.

  Anything else?

  No.

  What happened next?

  I helped her take her clothes off and then she laid down on her coat, and we . . . ya know . . . we fooled around.

  You didn’t rape
her?

  Nah.

  Did you ejaculate?

  I think so.

  The chief let that one go by.

  Then?

  Then I left.

  You left after you strangled her with her scarf?

  I didn’t strangle anyone.

  You tied a scarf around her neck. You tied it real tight.

  Well, yeah, but that was to teach her a lesson.

  What lesson?

  She said she was gonna tell her mother.

  Chief Godfrey thinks, Vera was right. He didn’t kill Irene because she resisted. He killed her because she said she would tell her mother what he did. He thinks, Malm has placed the onus of his crime on little Irene. It’s all her fault.

  He says, So, Bob, she died? I mean, from the scarf?

  I figured she could be dead.

  What did you do after you figured she might be dead?

  I told you, I left.

  No thought to resuscitating her?

  Bob Malm looks at the chief as if he’s hearing a foreign language. The chief asks him if he’ll go over the information again so it can be put in writing.

  Sure.

  Egan dashes out for a typewriter, returns, and puts paper in the roller. All three cops look up at Bob Malm. He repeats what he’s said while Egan types like he’s never typed before. Chief Godfrey arrests Bob for the murder of Irene based on his confession.

  Bob says, The captain here told me I need a head doctor.

  The chief stares at his killer. He says, Yeah, you do. And you’ll get one.

  The chief orders a mittimus, a precept in writing under the hand and seal of a peace officer, which will be handed to the jailer of a prison, commanding him to receive safely and keep the person charged with an offense . . . herein named in the mittimus until he shall be delivered by due course of law. The jail where Bob is received safely and handed to the jailer is the Hartford County Jail, where my Uncle Chick works.

  THE BAN IS LIFTED; all the kids in the neighborhood can play outside again. No one says Irene’s killer is caught, or arrested, or put in jail or anything at all, but I know that must be what happened since my father tells me I can go outside after school and play again and also he doesn’t keep the newspapers from me anymore.

  He says, Don’t tell your mother I’m letting you read the papers again.

  Not to worry. I won’t remember what I read in the coming year’s newspapers for decades when I will see them again at the main branch of the Hartford Public Library. Except for one thing, that is. I know that Dondi does not age during the five days I missed reading the strip, or ever at all.

  thirty-five

  IN THE MIDDLE of my research, I catch a flu I can’t shake. I begin to lose weight and that cheers me up a little. But after six weeks of feeling crummy, I decide I must have diabetes. That’s because Tyler, as he enters middle age, catches a flu he can’t shake, loses weight, and just won’t come around. Then he even begins limping.

  He is diagnosed with adult-onset, type 2 diabetes, which my grandfather had, as do my Auntie Palma, Auntie Alice, and Uncle John Tirone.

  Tyler has to have his big toe amputated and soon after, retina surgery so he won’t go blind. His critter is blind by then, his one remaining black button eye gone. While Tyler is in Hartford Hospital, a number of staff come to gape at him and spread the word: We’ve got Rain Man on nine!

  Tyler asks the nurses to pose for him. He’s made sure to bring his trusty View-Master to the hospital in addition to the critter whose remaining three limbs hang by threads. Tyler’s doppelgänger as it turns out. One nurse asks his doctor if the critter can accompany Tyler to surgery. The doctor asks her if she’s lost her mind—the critter is beyond filthy. She promises Tyler she will hold the critter for him until he comes back to his room. He doesn’t put up too much of a fuss as she’s already injected him with a sedative.

  My mother visits him once. Tyler asks her would she clip his nails, something she used to do before she abdicated responsibility for his care. She says, No, Tyler, the nurse will do it.

  Then she kisses him good-bye and tells him she’ll see him at home. My Auntie Margaret and I stare at her back as she leaves.

  My mother has detached from Tyler as my father becomes more attached to him than ever. He will not leave Tyler’s side, sleeps in a chair in the room at night though the nurses assure him they will see to his care, promise to call him at home if Tyler asks for him. He says, I don’t want Tyler to have to ask for me.

  When my own flulike symptoms continue, I go to see a doctor even though both my big toes look fine. I go to my obstetrician, obstetrics being the only medical need I’ve ever had not counting the broken arm when I was three. She tells me that type 2 diabetes seems to affect half the siblings in a family, why, she has no idea. She does a test and that bit of wisdom applies to me; Mary continues to intercede. My doctor diagnoses a sinus infection, prescribes an antibiotic, and I recover.

  Then it’s back to the library.

  I CHRONICLE Robert Nelson Malm’s life, find what few facts exist. I don’t have to think about him too much if I am scribbling demonically in my notebook. I learn of the terrible circumstances of his birth, his initial arrests, his military career. In articles published by the New London Day fifty years ago, I read what Navy men have to say about their fellow sailor. They like him—pleasant enough fellow. Quiet guy. They refer to him as Bob. And I come to think of him as Bob.

  Bob, the heinous killer, gradually becomes real to me and soon I know exactly who killed Irene, so I write about Bob from the time he is born until he confesses to killing my friend Irene.

  I put it all in a folder and file it hoping I can make this Bob go away. I can’t.

  I REMEMBER the Allyn Street Theater. In Hartford, every neighborhood has its own little movie house; my friends and I go to the Elm on New Britain Avenue, just over the West Hartford line in a tiny blue-collar enclave called Elmwood, where my father was raised and where my grandfather helped build the Luna Club. We don’t go to the downtown theaters except on rare occasions when first-runs are irresistible. I remember going to Main Street to the big theaters for two movies; once with my Auntie Palma, who takes me to see Showboat starring Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson, and also to the Strand, where, as a thirteen-year-old, I see Love Me Tender five times with my best friend, Linda. The manager of the Strand announces on the sound system that Elvis Presley is no different from any other actor and the audience is not to scream when he appears in a scene. But the audience proceeds to scream the minute the lights go down and throughout the entire movie. Then we weep bitterly when the Elvis character dies. I am one of the most enthusiastic screamers but I have to fake the crying part. My friend, Linda, doesn’t fake it. She screams and bawls authentically through all five showings. One day, Linda will become a nun, settle for a marriage to Jesus since the love of her life is beyond her charms.

  I went to the Allyn once, with my high school boyfriend because he really wanted to see The Creature from the Black Lagoon. I remember enjoying it terrifically because the half-man, half-amphibian was so sympathetic.

  In the library, I press the little button that moves my Hartford Times film along. I start with the article covering Irene’s funeral, and I notice a short unrelated article on the same page about the arrest of a man wanted in the assault of a girl on Beaufort Street, which had occurred two weeks earlier. The reporter was onto something.

  A librarian who has been helping me taps me on the shoulder and I jump. He says, I can get you the coroner’s report. It’ll take a few days though—they’re at another location.

  A few days? Good. I’ll need a few days to prepare myself. Also, as my father might put it, a short one will help, too.

  I HEAD TOWARD HOME on I-91 when my car decides to veer right and gets off the highway at the Brainard Field exit and aims west through to my old Hartford neighborhood. I drive down New Britain Avenue, past Hillside, and bear right onto Coolidge. When I get to Broadview Ter
race, I don’t make a right turn toward Nilan Street, where I once lived, but left, past Sequin Street, and then I take a right at Dart. At the bottom of Dart Street, I park. Across from me on the other side of Chandler Street, Charter Oak Terrace is laid out. It is now home to the Bloods and the Crips, to the truly impoverished; there are fires all the time. Irene lived in the corner of the grid in front of me.

  I get out of the car and walk up Dart Street away from Irene’s apartment. What had been woods on the right side of the street is now minuscule ranch homes in a derelict state. At the corner, I turn left onto Broadview Terrace until I get to the big iron mailbox on the corner of Sequin. I imagine Kathy Delaney and the other children, joined by Irene, climbing up on it, jumping off. On my right is the parking lot in back of St. Lawrence O’Toole’s Church where the kids went on to jumping off the retaining wall. I walk the arcing road onto Coolidge Street. The church where I was baptized, confirmed, and married is a sprawling unfaded blond hulk utterly out of place on the residential street. All the fine Dutch colonial homes on that end of Coolidge, though still very fine, seem small and quaint, smaller than I remember, the usual phenomenon experienced when you try to go home again.

  I cross the street, walk along Coolidge, and come to the library, still there, squat and menacing, my refuge. Here Coolidge merges with New Britain Avenue. I walk along that part of the sidewalk, which was once a tiny bridge crossing the brook. The brook is encapsulated by a culvert, which has been covered over with dirt and planted with grass. Too bad. It was a nice place to stick your bare toes on a hot summer’s day. The Brookside Tavern is there though the brook is not.

  I go into Jack’s store, now packed with food imported from Puerto Rico. Instead of a hotdog, I buy a bundle of cilantro. The clerk doesn’t ask me if I’m having a party. He says something in Spanish and I understand by his gestures—holding the bundle to his nose and taking in the citrus fragrance and then holding it out to me so that I can have a whiff too—that the leaves are fresh.