"Daniel da Cruz - Texas Trilogy 01 - The Ayes of Texas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Da Cruz Daniel)

[Texas Trilogy 01] - The Ayes of Texas
By Daniel Da Cruz
Scanned by BW-SciFi

2 MAY 1943
"NAME?"
"Gwillam Forte."
"Spell it."
Gwillam Forte spelled it.
"Age?"
"Fourteen."
"Race?"
"White."
"Address?"
"Liberty Towers."
The desk sergeant's pen paused in midair. He looked down sternly at the young man. "Get smart
with me, boy, and I'll boot your ass all the way down to the drunk tank-Address?"
The arresting officer coughed discreetly. "That's where he lives, Sarge. I checked."
"The Liberty Towers is a whorehouse."
"Right. The kid here helps out at the bar in the Kit Kat across the street. He works from ten at
night to five in the morning-same working hours as the Liberty. Charley Miller-he owns them both,
you know-lets him sleep on the pool table downstairs."
"What about his family?"
The arresting officer shook his head.
"How long's he been at the Liberty?"
"How long, kid?" The officer hadn't bothered to ask earlier.
"Since November," Forte replied.
Six months. Desk Sergeant Pyle put down his pen. He asked other questions, but those answers
too were not reassuring, and he didn't write them down. The boy had been brought in for assault
with a deadly weapon- a barroom stool-on a Kit Kat customer who proposi-tioned him. The
customer was in the emergency room with multiple contusions and scalp wounds. As a minor,
Forte would appear before Judge Landrum of Juvenile Court. Landrum was a hanging judge. The
sexual provocation was bad enough; he would like even less the Kit Kat's violation of the child
labor laws, and that young Forte worked at night behind a bar and slept in a cathouse by day, and
had been doing so for months in Sergeant Pyle's precinct without him knowing about it. Suddenly,
his chances of making the next lieutenant's list began to look thin. There was one ray of hope,
though: the kid was big for his age. And Pyle hadn't yet written down the particulars of the charge.
Maybe he could work something out.
"Know what the penalty is for assault and battery, young fellow?"
Forte shook his head.
"Three to five years," Pyle said, looking sharply at the arresting officer, who was about to correct
him. Considering the circumstances, even an adult would probably get off with a warning or a
suspended sen-tence. Forte, however, wouldn't get even that. Under common law, he was a
child, presumed incapable of committing a crime. In fact, Judge Landrum would probably pat the
kid on the back for putting a pervert in the hospital. But it wouldn't do to tell the kid that.
Forte licked his lips, but said nothing.
"Yes, some judges would give you three," Pyle went on, his tone grave, "but others would give you
five. Depends on the mens rea."
"Huh?"
"That's lawyers' talk for criminal intent."