Paperback Jack, page 17
“My God,” Jacob said. “That’s Kafkaesque.”
“There’s also the possibility you could be charged with contributing to the delinquency of minors, but that’s a fight I can win. Writing a scurrilous book and handing a teenager a loaded revolver aren’t the same thing.
“On one hand,” he went on, “they’re saying the right of free speech doesn’t cover the dissemination of prurient material, while on the other they’re saying it does, and therefore no laws have been broken—for their purposes.”
“Scratch Kafka. That’s Orwellian.”
“I’d counsel you against using literary allusions on the stand. They’ll think you’re pompous and turn up the heat.” He looked at Ellen. “Will you be attending?”
“I don’t think we can afford it. The government is only paying Jacob’s expenses.”
“Try. It makes a good impression when the witness’s loyal wife is sitting behind him; the cameras pick her up whenever they cut to the testimony. It helps that you’re attractive; but not too attractive.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“Don’t be offended. Too much glamour sends a carnal message rather than a domestic one. Dress nice; but dress down, and go easy on the powder and paint.”
Jacob said, “She’ll be sitting behind me? Are the seats assigned?”
“You let me worry about that.”
“Mr. Ter Horst,” he said, “are you going to bribe a page?”
“An incentive. They’re not public officials.” He opened a drawer in the desk and pushed a dog-eared paperback across the blotter with the cover facing up. It was the movie edition of The Fence. “Will you sign it?”
“You’re a fan?”
“My wife found it under our son’s mattress. We joked about shipping him off to military school. Then I read it. I’m no judge of literature, but it’s hard to put down, and based on what I’ve heard from my colleagues in criminal law, quite accurate as to detail.” His smile was abashed. “It fell right open to the scene depicted on the cover.”
Ellen, blushing, murmured to Jacob: “I’m so glad Phil replaced me with Grace Kelly.”
* * *
His testimony was scheduled for January 1952. He spent two months being mock-interrogated by Ter Horst, who shed his office manners to assume the role of a member of the House Select Committee on Pornography and Juvenile Delinquency. Jacob wondered if he rehearsed his bully act in private.
“Mr. Heppleman, would you tell us which of your books you’d recommend to someone unfamiliar with your work?”
“I suppose that would be Katt’s Alley.”
“Not Chinese Checkers? I believe that was your first.”
“It was good enough at the time I wrote it, but my work has improved a great deal since then.”
“I should hope so. I read Chinese Checkers. Can you tell us what Katt’s Alley is about?”
“It’s about a teenage tough named Billy Katt, whose gangland empire occupies the alley behind his apartment house. He sells drugs, leads brawls against rival gangs, sexually assaults a female prep-school student, and shoots himself in the head when the police come to arrest him.”
“And you consider this an improvement over your earlier work?”
“It’s a cautionary tale.”
“But the young man doesn’t really pay for his crimes, does he?”
“I’m sorry. I thought I said he committed suicide.”
“But that’s closer to divine intervention than the right and proper exercise of law enforcement by officials sworn to keep the peace, is it not?”
“I don’t understand, Congressman. I—”
“Congresswoman.”
He grimaced. “How was I to know you’re Mrs. St. John now? You were Roger Wellborn of Massachusetts last time.”
“Don’t break character. What don’t you understand, Mr. Heppleman?”
“The boy put a bullet in his skull. It wasn’t God with His finger on the trigger. What’s the difference, so long as he paid for his poor choices? It would prevent most young people from making the same mistakes.”
“I fail to see how. They would just shrug and say they won’t shoot themselves. Can you tell us about the warehouse burglary?”
“What warehouse burglary?”
“Can it be that I’m more familiar with your work than you are, or have you committed so many sins against decency you can’t keep them all straight?”
“I object.”
Ter Horst smiled. “That’s my job, although I won’t be exercising it as often as I’m sure you’d like. It loses its edge through repetition.” He switched personalities again. “I’m referring to the warehouse burglary in Katt’s Alley. Not only do you provide a detailed plan of the crime, but your publisher saw fit to diagram it on the back cover. Frankly, this strikes me as a primer for crime.”
“I made up the warehouse. It doesn’t exist. The plan was a product of my imagination. I’ve never robbed a warehouse.”
“And you don’t consider this contributing to the delinquency of minors.”
“Excuse me, Congresswoman, but is that a question?”
“Counselor,” Ter Horst corrected. “Now I’m Brian P. Castor, attorney to the committee.”
“Is that necessary? In the hearing room I’ll know who’s asking the questions.”
“Would you rather I made the rehearsal easier than the real thing, or harder? Answer the question.”
“Counselor, I would never consider contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I have an infant daughter.”
“And when your daughter is, say, age thirteen; would you recommend she read Katt’s Alley?”
“Why not? I’d like her to know what her old man does for a living and whether he’s any good at it.”
“Mr. Heppleman, you and I differ significantly in our interpretation of what’s good.”
“Who are you now?” Jacob said.
“Does it matter?”
* * *
He came home from these sessions wrung out, with no energy to make the rewrites Elk had insisted on in Coal-Blooded Murder. He fought with Ellen, shouted at Millie when she wouldn’t stop crying. He drank more. Many nights he passed out in his chair in front of the TV test pattern.
Ellen and Millie moved out after the first month.
“Not permanently, Jake. This isn’t the environment for Mildred. Call me at Mom’s when you want to get together. But not when you’re moody or drunk. That isn’t the environment for me.”
“You said you’d stay by my side through this.”
“I’ll give you encouragement when you need it, and I’ll be in the hearing room. Mom can look after Mildred while we’re in Washington.”
“Without you here, things will just get worse.”
“Don’t act like you have no choice. You’re an adult, not one of the kids who sneak your books into their rooms.”
“Now you sound like Ter Horst trying to sound like the literature police. This is a nightmare.”
She smiled and took both his hands in hers. She had on her traveling suit, which fit her again at last. She’d been working out with Jack LaLanne on television.
“They can’t do anything to you, dear. It isn’t as if you ever actually broke the law.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
In January, a face jumped out at Jacob from page six of The Greenwich Clock. The flat features and protruding eyes looked even more grotesque in a police mug shot than they did in person. It was the first time he’d seen him without a hat: His dull, nappy hair clung to his skull like the felt on a pool table. The headline read:
UNDERWORLD’S “MERCHANT OF MENACE” GETS LIFE
Ice pick killer henchman turns state’s evidence to beat Death Row
Jacob read the short article without emotion. Not so long ago, Irish Mickey Shannon behind bars would have brought him relief, but now a vengeful government with a piece of paper seemed almost as terrifying as a dwarf with a pistol.
Page two was more compelling. The tabloid had begun covering the hearings of the House Select Committee on Pornography and Juvenile Delinquency in a close-printed column that resembled the shipping news. It was a combination digest of the proceedings and box score, with forthcoming witnesses listed at the bottom. Philip N. Scarpetti was slated to testify on the fourteenth.
The paper’s (i.e. Sam Rosetti’s) stand was clear. A sidebar, bordered in black like a death notice, quoted Rep. St. John’s opening remarks from the first day of the third week of the hearings:
Ten years ago, this kind of literature was not easily obtained in this hemisphere: One had to visit certain disreputable neighborhoods in Paris, France, and smuggle it home in a plain brown wrapper. I assumed, naïvely, that it could never be popular in America. But judging by sales figures and the proliferation of these two-bit presses since the end of the war, I must conclude that something drastic happened to us over there, and that we lost something we may never get back.
His respect for the congresswoman from Nebraska went up a notch. The naïveté, of course, was in thinking there had never been a pornography industry in the western world; but ten years ago, the speaker had been Mrs. St. John, housewife, and unlikely to visit the shops where such material was available in her own backyard. He understood her bereavement for the loss of innocence. Her mistake was in trying to turn back the clock.
* * *
“State your full name for the record, please.”
“Philip Nunzio Scarpetti.”
Margery St. John did most of the questioning; why became apparent as Jacob and Ellen watched the televised interrogation. She was the only woman on the committee.
“You are a professional illustrator, is that correct?”
“No, ma’am.”
“From—pardon me, did you say ‘no’?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re not a professional illustrator?”
“No, ma’am. I’m unemployed at present.”
“But your profession is illustration?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I appreciate your politeness, Mr. Scarpetti, but I prefer to be addressed as either ‘Congresswoman’ or ‘Representative.”
“I’ll try to remember that, Congresswoman.”
“From 1946 until last year you were employed by Blue Devil Books to illustrate its covers, were you not?”
“I was, Congresswoman.”
Scarpetti’s dark complexion washed out under the harsh lights. He wore a checked sportcoat over a pale shirt and dark tie. Jacob had never seen him look so respectable. His responses were calm, but his Adam’s apple worked after each question and before each answer. He sat alone behind the microphone on the witnesses’ table, no lawyer in sight.
St. John nodded at someone out of frame. The cameras panned to a pull-down screen set up in a corner of the big room visible to the committee and spectators. A slide made from a blowup photo of a Blue Devil cover appeared: A woman in a torn slip strapped to a tilted operating table faced forward, her expression a rictus of fear. In the foreground, in three-quarter view facing her, a leering man in a white lab coat brandished a scalpel.
“Let the record show this is a reproduction of the cover of a book titled Dr. Sadisto, by Hugh Brock,” said St. John. “Mr. Scarpetti, did you paint this cover?”
“Do I have to answer that?”
“Are you invoking your Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination?”
“No, I’m embarrassed to own up to that painting. I was pretty crude in the beginning. The answer is yes.”
“Crude, as opposed to now?” She nodded again.
A new slide shuttled into place. A woman, naked but with certain body parts camouflaged by cactus, was staked spread-eagle on a desert floor, staring bug-eyed at a savage Indian standing over her, wearing only a breechcloth.
“Let the record show this is a reproduction of a book titled Cry Comanche, by Cliff Cutter. Did you paint this cover, Mr. Scarpetti?”
“Yes, ma—Congresswoman, I did. I’m kind of proud of the chiaroscuro. It’s hard to pull off and still get the effect of blazing sun and searing heat.”
“This isn’t an art class, Mr. Scarpetti. Next.”
Jacob cringed. It was Chinese Checkers. The Asian girl looked five times as menacing and her male victim ten times more exposed in the blowup.
“Mr. Scarpetti—”
“Yes, Congresswoman. I painted it.”
More slides followed: P. B. Collier’s Teen-Age Tramp, Arthur Burt’s Riddle of the Sands, Hank Stratton’s Strumpet Street, The Fence, by Jack Holly.
Ellen groaned. It was the original version, with the half-dressed woman undoubtedly inspired by her.
“Mr. Scarpetti?”
“Sorry, Congresswoman. I was admiring my work. I had to revise it for the movie edition, but I prefer this one.”
“Is that all you have to say about it?”
“To say anything more would be immodest.”
“Has it struck you your work has a recurring theme?”
“No. That is to say, it would be no great revelation. Blue Devil specializes in suspense fiction, so there has to be an element of danger on every cover.”
“I’m speaking of the subject matter. In every cover we’ve shown—and many we haven’t time to show—a woman is either in mortal peril or placing a man in that situation. These women are invariably in a state of undress. Does this tableau represent your views of the sex?”
“Those scenes were written by others. I only illustrated them.”
“Mr. Scarpetti, the members of this committee are aware of the contents of these books. In almost all the scenes you chose to paint, the women were fully clothed. In some cases, those scenes don’t even exist. Is your opinion of women so low that you can only depict them as either depraved predators or victims of rape?”
“Every member of the committee has read each book?”
“What is your point?”
“It just seems like a massive waste of government time and the taxpayers’ money.”
Roger Wellborn of Massachusetts spoke. “Are you attempting to lecture to this committee?”
“Far from it, Congressman. But as a taxpayer myself, I think I deserve an accounting.”
Counselor Castor covered St. John’s microphone with a hand and whispered something in her ear.
“To clarify,” said she, when the hand withdrew, “congressional aides read the books and provided the committee with detailed summaries of the plots. Answer the question, please.”
“The answer is no. I have no opinion of women, low or high.”
“Is it your observation that readers of the books you illustrate have a low opinion of women?”
“That’s not my job. I painted what I was paid to paint.”
“Are you married, Mr. Scarpetti?”
“No, Congresswoman. I’m a bachelor.”
“A confirmed bachelor?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed, but his voice remained steady. “I wouldn’t say confirmed. It’s just a fact of life.”
“You were convicted of armed robbery in 1941, is that correct?”
“It is.”
“You stole a bottle of whiskey from a pharmacy, then re-entered the store and attempted to rob the pharmacist at knife point; is that correct?”
“It is.”
“And you were sentenced to serve ten years in the New York State Penitentiary in Ossining?”
“Is that a question?”
“Answer it, please.”
“I wasn’t evading the question, Congresswoman. It sounded like a statement. I was released after four years for good behavior. I’ve been law-abiding ever since.”
“During those four years, did you know a convict named Charles Winthrop?”
“Yes. He taught me to draw and paint.”
“Is that all he taught you?”
He hesitated. “I don’t understand the question, Congresswoman.”
“Are you sure?”
Ellen’s hand clenched Jacob’s hard enough to hurt.
Scarpetti said, “I can’t answer a question I don’t understand.”
“Very well. I’ll spell it out. Mr. Winthrop served twelve years for statutory rape. When a man who can’t control his primal urges is forced to spend many years in the exclusive company of men—”
Scarpetti scraped back his chair and stood.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
“You haven’t been dismissed.”
“I’m dismissing myself.”
“I warn you, Mr. Scarpetti, you’re in danger of being incarcerated for contempt of Congress.”
“Well put. Good-bye, ma’am.”
“Sergeant-at-arms, please take Mr. Scarpetti into custody.”
Jacob got up and turned off the set. “Sometimes there’s just nothing on TV you want to see,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The hotel was comfortable enough, but the staff was indifferent. When, twenty minutes after the couple checked in, Jacob called the front desk to report that the TV wasn’t working, the phone rang eleven times before a bored-sounding clerk answered. Maintenance came six hours later.
Ellen’s mother was too busy fighting a kitchen fire to babysit Millie back home. Mrs. Boyle, a neighbor, filled in. She was a retired midwife and a fan of the Screamer Fairfax books.
“Anyway,” Ellen said, “the view’s not bad.”
He joined her at the window, through which they could see part of the Capitol dome. “Let’s hope I don’t leave it in handcuffs like Phil.”
* * *
“Welcome to D.C. Is this your first visit?”
Ter Horst, outside the committee room, took his hand in a mighty grip, like a firefighter grasping the wrist of a man hanging off the ledge of a burning building. His shaved head reflected light from every bump and declivity.
Ellen, her tweed suit freshly cleaned and pressed, nodded. “We hope to do some sightseeing while we’re here.”
