You Have the Wrong Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

sex crimes.
    I went over to the counter and looked down. The bubbly scrap in its congealing web made me reconsider contacting the police. Something didn’t add up. I had to be firm and canny all at once. I had to be one step ahead of Pamela and one step ahead of my own first instincts. My first instincts keep me within the routine patterns of good deeds, indifferent allowances, and blank permissions that normal people live their lives by. Let the poor be poor, the murderers be jailed, the average citizens be left alone. If I wasn’t always exactly innocent, I knew which side of right and wrong I was meandering in, and I knew something more. I knew about crimes of loneliness, and this was shaping up to be one. I could not be sure if my niece wasjustified in what she had done, but there wasn’t any reason to call the authorities. This was a family matter.
    I called the emergency desks at Rhode Island Hospital and at Miriam Hospital and asked the receptionists if anyone had come in. I asked them if a young man with a facial cut had registered to get care. Neither hospital would tell me if such a boy had arrived. One receptionist said that there were always a lot of nose injuries because of all the car wrecks. The nose was the first to strike the dashboard, it was the “pointer.” “People are lucky if it’s just the nose. A nose can be reconstructed.” It’s really just a decorative appendage, like an awning, and it could be reaffixed. I called all the hospitals. I interrogated the emergency-room receptionists for Pamela’s sake. She watched me as I talked to the switchboard operators, the nurses, the interns. She looked very peaceful, pleased I was doing everything I was expected to do. She listened as I told one hospital receptionist that my son was supposed to be there, he had a bad laceration, a dog bite, and could they tell me his condition. The receptionist told me she couldn’t give me the information I wanted, but just between her and me, there was nothing like that, no dog bites had come in for days. She asked me if we owned a pit bull terrier. The hospital had to report pit bull incidents directly to the Providence police.
    I asked Pamela what she wanted me to do with the bit of flesh. I could wrap it in something and put it in the freezeror I could destroy it, I told her. Flush it like a goldfish with tail rot, a condom in its rumpled length.
    “You decide,” she said.
    “The toilet,” I said.
    “Good,” Pamela said, and she stood up to hug me. She went upstairs. In a few minutes I heard her dialing the telephone on the landing. She was telling Leon about the attack. Her voice was breathless, yet perfectly modulated as it expressed her alarm, her pain, her triumph. I put my face close to the gooey lump and studied the snip. I pushed it up and down the Formica, making sure. Pamela kept talking to Leon, explaining how her teeth were loose. There was something in her tone that made me shut my eyes and throw my head back. I listened to her talk to Leon, tell him how he never should have left her on her own. He should come over. She would forgive him. I took the piece of flesh over to the sink and pushed the faucet open. I rinsed it under the stream, passing my hand back and forth until it felt clean, rubbery, then I bounced it lightly in my open palm.
    Tripe. I had thought so. It was a relief, but it was a sad confirmation.
    I greeted Leon at the front door. He looked truly upset and I wanted to tell him what I knew. He shouldn’t assume any responsibility for Pamela’s performance tonight. When Pamela joined my household, I had felt such rich swells of a permanent kind—one might call it loyalty or love. Now I was forced to feel caution. Forced! I watched Leon climb the stairs. I studied his narrow hips, the hollow of his broad shoulders beneath his shirt, which suggested brute strength at rest. Brute strength looks vulnerable this way. I heardPamela lock the bedroom door after him. When I went to bed,