The bank robbery occurred in late June. Early in August, a Brooklyn man
went berserk.
It happened in Canarsie, a section in southeast Brooklyn near Jamaica
Bay. This particular area of Canarsie was a residential neighborhood,
composed of one and two family houses. The man who went berserk was a
Motor Vehicle Bureau clerk named Jerome Higgins.
Two days before, he had flunked a Civil Service examination for the
third time. He reported himself sick and spent the two days at home,
brooding, a bottle of blended whiskey at all times in his hand.
As the police reconstructed it later, Mrs. Higgins had attempted to
awaken him on the third morning at seven-thirty, suggesting that he
really ought to stop being so foolish, and go back to work. He then
allegedly poked her in the eye, and locked her out of the bedroom.
Mrs. Higgins then apparently called her sister-in-law, a Mrs. Thelma
Stodbetter, who was Mr. Higgins' sister. Mrs. Stodbetter arrived at the
house at nine o'clock, and spent some time tapping at the still-locked
bedroom door, apparently requesting Mr. Higgins to unlock the door and
"stop acting like a child." Neighbors reported to the police that they
heard Mr. Higgins shout a number of times, "Go away! Can't you let a
man sleep?"
At about ten-fifteen, neighbors heard shots from the Higgins residence,
a two-story one-family pink stucco affair in the middle of a block of
similar homes. Mr. Higgins, it was learned later, had suddenly erupted
from his bedroom, brandishing a .30-.30 hunting rifle and, being
annoyed at the shrieks of his wife and sister, had fired seven shells
at them, killing his wife on the spot and wounding his sister in the
hand and shoulder.
Mrs. Stodbetter, wounded and scared out of her wits, raced screaming
out the front door of the house, crying for the police and shouting,
"Murder! Murder!" At this point, neighbors called the police. One
neighbor additionally phoned three newspapers and two television
stations, thereby earning forty dollars in "news-tips" rewards.
* * * * *
By chance, a mobile television unit was at that moment on the Belt
Parkway, returning from having seen off a prime minister at Idlewild
Airport. This unit was at once diverted to Canarsie, where it took up a
position across the street from the scene of carnage and went to work
with a Zoomar lens.
In the meantime, Mister Higgins had barricaded himself in his house,
firing at anything that moved.
The two cameramen in the mobile unit worked their hearts out. One
concentrated on the movements of the police and firemen and neighbors
and ambulance attendants, while the other used the Zoomar lens to
search for Mr. Higgins. He found him occasionally, offering the at-home
audience brief glimpses of a stocky balding man in brown trousers and
undershirt, stalking from window to window on the second floor of the
house.
The show lasted for nearly an hour. There were policemen everywhere,
and firemen everywhere, and neighbors milling around down at the
corner, where the police had roped the block off, and occasionally Mr.
Higgins would stick his rifle out a window and shoot at somebody. The
police used loudspeakers to tell Higgins he might as well give up, they
had the place surrounded and could eventually starve him out anyway.
Higgins used his own good lungs to shout obscenities back and challenge
anyone present to hand-to-hand combat.
The police fired tear gas shells at the house, but it was a windy day
and all the windows in the Higgins house were either open or broken.
Higgins was able to throw all the shells back out of the house again.
The show lasted for nearly an hour. Then it ended, suddenly and
dramatically.
Higgins had showed himself to the Zoomar lens again, for the purpose of
shooting either the camera or its operator. All at once he yelped and
threw the rifle away. The rifle bounced onto the porch roof, slithered
down to the edge, hung for a second against the drain, and finally fell
barrel first onto the lawn.
Meanwhile, Higgins was running through the house, shouting like a
wounded bull. He thundered down the stairs and out, hollering, to fall
into the arms of the waiting police.
They had trouble holding him. At first they thought he was actually
trying to get away, but then one of them heard what it was he was
shouting: "My hands! My hands!"
They looked at his hands. The palms and the palm-side of the fingers
were red and blistering, from what looked like severe burns. There was
another burn on his right cheek and another one on his right shoulder.
Higgins, thoroughly chastened and bewildered, was led away for burn
ointment and jail. The television crew went on back to Manhattan. The
neighbors went home and telephoned their friends.
On-duty policemen had been called in from practically all of the
precincts in Brooklyn. Among them was Detective-Sergeant William
Stevenson. Stevenson frowned thoughtfully at Higgins as that unhappy
individual was led away, and then strolled over to look at the rifle.
He touched the stock, and it was somewhat warm but that was all.
He picked it up and turned it around. There, on the other side of the
stock, burned into the wood, were the crudely-shaped letters, "The
Scorpion."
* * * * *
You don't get to be Precinct Captain on nothing but political
connections. Those help, of course, but you need more than that. As
Captain Hanks was fond of pointing out, you needed as well to be both
more imaginative than most--"You gotta be able to second-guess the
smart boys"--and to be a complete realist--"You gotta have both feet
on the ground." If these were somewhat contradictory qualities, it was
best not to mention the fact to Captain Hanks.
The realist side of the captain's nature was currently at the fore.
"Just what are you trying to say, Stevenson?" he demanded.
"I'm not sure," admitted Stevenson. "But we've got these two things.
First, there's the getaway car from that bank job. The wheels melt for
no reason at all, and somebody burns 'The Scorpion' onto the trunk.
Then, yesterday, this guy Higgins out in Canarsie. He says the rifle
all of a sudden got too hot to hold, and he's got the burn marks to
prove it. And there on the rifle stock it is again. 'The Scorpion'."
"He says he put that on there himself," said the captain.
Stevenson shook his head. "His _lawyer_ says he put it on there.
Higgins says he doesn't remember doing it. That's half the lawyer's
case. He's trying to build up an insanity defense."
"He put it on there himself, Stevenson," said the captain with weary
patience. "What are you trying to prove?"
"I don't know. All I know is it's the nuttiest thing I ever saw. And
what about the getaway car? What about those tires melting?"
"They were defective," said Hanks promptly.
"All four of them at once? And what about the thing written on the
trunk?"
"How do I know?" demanded the captain. "Kids put it on before the car
was stolen, maybe. Or maybe the hoods did it themselves, who knows?
What do _they_ say?"
"They say they didn't do it," said Stevenson. "And they say they never
saw it before the robbery and they would have noticed it if it'd been
there."
The captain shook his head. "I don't get it," he admitted. "What are
you trying to prove?"
"I guess," said Stevenson slowly, thinking it out as he went along, "I
guess I'm trying to prove that somebody melted those tires, and made
that rifle too hot, and left his signature behind."
"What? You mean like in the comic books? Come on, Stevenson! What are
you trying to hand me?"
"All I know," insisted Stevenson, "is what I see."
"And all _I_ know," the captain told him, "is Higgins put that name on
his rifle himself. He says so."
"And what made it so hot?"
"Hell, man, he'd been firing that thing at people for an hour! What do
you _think_ made it hot?"
"All of a sudden?"
"He noticed it all of a sudden, when it started to burn him."
"How come the same name showed up each time, then?" Stevenson asked
desperately.
"How should I know? And why not, anyway? You know as well as I do these
things happen. A bunch of teen-agers burgle a liquor store and they
write 'The Golden Avengers' on the plate glass in lipstick. It happens
all the time. Why not 'The Scorpion'? It couldn't occur to two people?"
"But there's no explanation--" started Stevenson.
"What do you mean, there's no explanation? I just _gave_ you the
explanation. Look, Stevenson, I'm a busy man. You got a nutty
idea--like Wilcox a few years ago, remember him? Got the idea there
was a fiend around loose, stuffing all those kids into abandoned
refrigerators to starve. He went around trying to prove it, and getting
all upset, and pretty soon they had to put him away in the nut hatch.
Remember?"
"I remember," said Stevenson.
"Forget this silly stuff, Stevenson," the captain advised him.
"Yes, sir," said Stevenson....
The day after Jerome Higgins went berserk, the afternoon mail brought a
crank letter to the _Daily News_:
Dear Mr. Editor,
You did not warn your readers. The man who shot all those people
could not escape the Scorpion. The Scorpion fights crime. No
criminal is safe from the Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS.
Sincerely yours,
THE SCORPION
Unfortunately, this letter was not read by the same individual who had
seen the first one, two months before. At any rate, it was filed in the
same place, and forgotten.