What Are You Doing Here?
I pulled the apartment door shut behind me and led the way to the entrance of the restaurant. I unlocked the door under the sign that read, ‘Walt’s Special, on Broad.’ I bent to grab the newspaper from the sidewalk, then held the door for David to walk in. I went in behind him and locked the door again because I didn’t want anyone to think the restaurant was open for business. I started to cross the dining room toward the bar. Behind the bar was the swing door into the kitchen, which is where I was trying to lead us.
David didn’t follow me. He hesitated in the entryway to gawk at his surroundings. “This place is incredible.” He said with his voice full of hushed awe. “How come you have a key?”
I paused between two of the pure white tables with the chairs turned up on their tops. I waved at the elegant yellow and white dining room with its brass chandeliers and green damask drapes. “The place belongs to my husband, Walt.” I realized my statement wasn’t precisely true and corrected myself. “I mean, it belongs to both of us, but it was his dream. He’s the head chef and I’m one of his assistants.”
“You’re a cook?” David asked with an incredulous tone in his voice.
“I’m an assistant chef.” I corrected the man from my past. “Walt and I live upstairs. We live in one of the apartments. The other one is empty right now. A friend used to live in it, but she decided to get married, so it’s empty.” I realized that David probably didn’t care about the apartment which Bea Arlott’s betrothal had left vacant. I stopped my rambling and explained why I didn’t invite David into my home. “I didn’t invite you into our apartment because Walt needs his sleep.”
David checked his wristwatch and apologized. “I’m sorry. I just got into town on the overnight train from Cleveland. I’ve been on trains for days. I felt so helpless all the time I was traveling. When I got in this morning, I couldn’t wait to finally do something. I forgot that city people don’t get up as early as farm people. I should have waited.”
“It doesn’t matter, David.” I insisted. “I’m awake now. Come into the kitchen with me and tell me why you’re here.”
I moved deeper into the dining room and crossed between the two halves of the long, walnut bar. I pushed open the swing door that led to the kitchen and waited for David. He came towards me with long, efficient strides. “What time do you get up?” He asked as he passed in front of me.
“Usually between ten and noon.” I said as I released the door and showed David to a square metal table which served as the break area for the kitchen staff. “It depends on how much prep the day’s entrée needs. The restaurant opens at four and we stop seating at ten. Walt and I usually don’t get to sleep until one or two in the morning.”
David checked his watch again and shook his head in disbelief. “It’s the middle of the night for you!” He blurted. “I’m sorry! I’ll go!”
“DAVID!” I barked to be heard over his urgent apologies. “Skip it. I’m awake. You’re here. I’m here. You said you need help. What’s going on? Why are you back?”
David’s face wore a red cast of shame as he lowered himself into a chair at the break table. I sat opposite him and crushed my forgotten cigarette in the ceramic ashtray. I lit another and blew a plume of smoke at the ceiling.
David rubbed his big palms together in front of himself. The callouses on his hand made a sandpaper scratch that sounded loud in the quiet of the idle kitchen. I remembered the nervous mannerism from when I knew David before. I thought it was funny how nothing had changed over the years. David finished rubbing his hands and knotted them together in a tight double-fist which he rested on the green and white speckled surface of the table.
“My son, Larry, is in jail for murder.” David said to give me the headline of his story. “He ran away from the farm right after Thanksgiving. I had no idea where he was until I got this letter.” David leaned back in his chair and unbuttoned the top of his suit jacket to access the inside pocket. He drew out a legal-size envelope which bore the printed image of a keystone to represent the state of Pennsylvania as the Keystone State. From the envelope, he produced two typewritten sheets. He passed them across the table for me to read.
The first sheet was a letter and the second was a filled-in, typewritten form. The form was familiar to me from my time on the police force. It was a sheet commonly used to book a suspect for a crime. The form was completed in the name of Lawrence (Larry) Ploughman for the crime of murder. I scanned down the form until I reached the description of the crime. The text I found was damning.
It read: ‘On or about the night of Friday, February 6th, 1953, one Lawrence Ploughman (18) did willfully and with malice aforethought, batter the person of Theodore Danton (21), and did thereby bring about his death through means of extensive traumatic injury.’
I set the form aside and nursed smoke from my cigarette while I read the letter. The letterhead told me the paper had been issued from the office of the Philadelphia Public Defender and sent by an attorney named Alexander Scofield. Scofield asserted that he was writing on Larry’s behalf. The letter was a plea for help from Larry to his father. The letter admitted that Larry knew he was a disappointment to his father, but he hoped David would be willing to help him given the severity of the trouble he found himself in.
Once Scofield finished his plea on Larry’s behalf, he made his own plea to David. “Your son is facing indictment and trial for a capital crime. If he is convicted, he could face the death penalty. If you have any paternal feelings left for young Lawrence, he needs your aide and support now more than ever.”
I read the next few lines, enough to see that the rest of the letter was formality. I skimmed the formal portion and set the letter and the booking form aside to think about. I had one last puff on my cigarette and crushed it out in the tray while I thought. I decided that the letter surprised me. The text of it was very personal, like the lawyer who wrote it was deeply concerned about the welfare of his client. The few lawyers who I knew personally were all too jaded for a display of feeling like that.
I assumed the reason for the emotional letter was, despite his impressive name, Alexander Scofield was likely a very young man. I assumed he was inexperienced and perhaps fresh out of law school. His youth would account for both his idealistic compassion and his low-paying position with the public defender’s office.
I thought some more while I felt in my pockets for another cigarette. My left hand found the revolver which had weighed down the left side of my robe. I drew it from my pocket to set it on the table like an oily paperweight. David commented on the presence of the gun. “What’s that for?” He asked.
I answered him with a leading question. “How would you answer your front door if someone came hammering on it in the middle of the night?”
“With a scattergun in my hands.” David replied.
I didn’t bother to comment on David’s reply because it didn’t seem to require a comment. He’d answered his own question. Instead, I asked a question I hoped would help me understand the circumstances behind the serious trouble David’s boy was in. “Have you spoken to your son or this lawyer?” I asked and set my unlit cigarette in front of me on the table.
“No.” David said. “When I got the letter, I packed a bag and left. I sent a wire from the telegraph office at the train station in Billings to let the lawyer know I was on my way.”
I didn’t like David’s answer because it meant we had no idea how much time we had to work with. Lacking an official timeline, I tried to reason out the likely schedule of events. The crime was committed on February 6th and the letter from Scofield was dated the 18th. The newspaper I’d taken from the sidewalk when I brought David into the restaurant told me the date was Thursday, March 5th, 1953. A month had passed since the murder. I assumed, in that time, Larry had been arraigned and indicted and the trial date set.
My reasoning brought me to the unhappy conclusion that we weren’t working with a lot of time. The cliché about the wheels of justice turning slowly is only true for crimes which don’t make the headlines. Capital crimes are another matter. They have the power to influence public opinion and to make or break political careers. Because of their high-profile nature, those cases go through the machinery of the justice system at a much faster pace. Depending on the caseload of the courts, we might be left with as little as two weeks before Larry’s case would go to trial.
Once the court got a hold of it, the likelihood that I’d be able to influence the outcome would be much lower. If Larry was innocent, and I didn’t know that he was, the best thing I could do was prove it to the police with the hopes of getting them to drop the case before the trial started. After the case went to court, my ability to influence the outcome would be far lower.
I set those unhappy thoughts aside and asked for some details. “Tell me what happened between you and your boy. You said he ran away. This letter says he thinks he’s a disappointment to you. What happened?”
David hesitated to speak. As he stalled, he thumbed the edge of the old-fashioned peak lapel on his four-button suit jacket. I wondered about the suit again but didn’t ask any questions because the suit wasn’t important to the story. I waited. At length, David started his story with a question. “You know how things can be one way for a long time, and then something happens and everything changes?”
I nodded my agreement and picked up my cigarette to light it. I struck a paper match on the back of the book and held it to my cigarette. I drew the smoke in and blew a lungful of it at the ceiling. David watched the smoke as it swirled and flattened against the white painted surface. He sighed at the dissipating cloud and told his tale.
“Ted was the thing that happened. He changed the way things were.” David cocked his head at the papers I’d set beside my place at the table. “That form calls him Theodore. I suppose Theodore was his given name, but we knew him as Ted. He was a drifter who came to the farm last spring. He said he was a mechanic, and he wanted to work.
“I almost sent him on his way because I never thought I needed a mechanic. He looked eager though, so I took a chance on him. Modern farms are chock full of equipment with engines. I can keep them going, but when they break down, I don’t always know what to do. Ted was different. He could speak the language of the machines like some men can speak the language of horses. The farm never ran so well as when we had him.
“He and Larry took up together. They got along. Ted taught Larry about engines and Larry taught Ted about farming. I encouraged them. I was happy to see my boy learning something that I couldn’t teach him. I was also glad he made a friend. The children always had each other, but with the farm so removed from town, it was hard for them to have friends. I liked that Larry had a friend close to his own age.”
“How many children?” I asked as a way to better understand the dynamic of David’s family.
“Nine.” David answered.
“NINE?” I thundered in disbelief.
Dusky pink color rose in David’s face as he lowered his embarrassed gaze to the table. “A lot of farmers have large families.” He said in his defense.
“Sure, David.” I agreed and smoked some more of my cigarette. I blew the smoke out and urged him to go on with his story. “You said something changed. What was it?” I elaborated on my question. “Larry and Ted were getting along. You were happy with Ted’s work and glad Larry made a friend. The whole situation sounds nice, but something happened which brought both those boys here to this city. What was it?”
David’s face squeezed down into a miserable grimace of emotional pain. He rubbed his hands together in front of himself again before he spoke. “It’s my fault.” He said in a low voice haunted by remorse. “Thanksgiving was early this year, the 20th. By then, we already had the harvest done. We never finished that early before. Because we were early, I beat a lot of the other farmers to market, so I got a premium for my wheat. The dry peas paid even better. With the extra money I earned, I paid off the seasonal help and put a down payment on a new tractor.
“I gave my Larry the first bonus money I ever paid to any of my children. He’d just turned eighteen and I wanted to reward him for all the hard work he’d put in on the harvest. I also told Ted that he could stay through the winter. I wanted him to help us get ready for springtime. The cold weather is when we get all the equipment in shape for the thaw. When spring planting comes, the machines need to run. If we have a breakdown and don’t get the plowing or the seeding done, we can lose whole fields.
“Besides the help Ted could be, I didn’t want him to go away and leave Larry without his friend. The boys were always together. They were such great friends. For both reasons, I told him to stay.”
David paused for a breath. He swiveled his head to look at the kitchen we sat in. He commented on it. “This is a big kitchen. How many people work here?”
David’s comment about the kitchen seemed to be a way for him to stall his story. The delay frustrated me. I was also frustrated over the lack of conclusion to the story. David had provided a lot of background detail. He’d also hinted about the event which drove the boys away, but he seemed unwilling to come to the point. I puffed on my cigarette and used the smoke as breath to demand he do just that. “DAVID,” I barked at him, “WHAT HAPPENED?”
David’s miserable expression returned. He heaved a breath to prepare himself to tell me the difficult details. “The Monday after the holiday, my wife, Abby, took all the younger children to her mother’s house for a visit. I had an appointment in town to finish paying for the tractor and to make arrangements to have it delivered. My second oldest boy, Eddie, planned to go with me. Larry was going to stay on the farm with Ted to work on the equipment.
“Eddie and I were ready to leave when I remembered that Ted had said something about a new drive belt for the thresher. I left Eddie to warm up the truck and went to the machine shed to find out what size belt Ted needed. I guess he and Larry thought we had already gone. They must have thought they were the only ones left on the place because when I opened the door to the shed, I caught them.”
David trailed off into silence and didn’t say more until I urged him to. “Caught them?” I asked.
“They were…they were having relations.” David admitted.
I finished my cigarette and crushed it out. The movement caught David’s attention and broke his concentration from the story. He paused, but only briefly. “I’m ashamed of how I dealt with what I saw. I was so shocked that I shouted. Poor Larry, he looked so scared. I should have stayed. I should have let them get dressed and talked things out right then. That’s not what I did. I was more worried about my appointment at the bank than I was about my own son. I told them that we’d talk about things later. I took the drivebelt off the workbench and left with Eddie. When I got back that night, they were gone.”
David finished his story and pleaded with me for help. “Because of what I did, my son is in jail for murder. I have to help him, but I have no idea how. I need help to help him. I have no right to ask you for anything, Law. You’ve already done so much for me. Everything I have, I owe to you. My farm and my wife and my children, you made all of it possible, and I never gave you back a thing. I never even wrote you a letter. I’m ashamed to come here after all this time and ask for your help, but I ask you just the same. I have to ask. I ask you for my Larry. Please, Law, help me save him.”
