The D.A.’s officer turned to the lawyer. “There isn’t any need for a habeas corpus, and there isn’t any need to take him before a magistrate because we don’t want to charge him.”
“How did you get him down here if he wasn’t arrested?” Bertha asked.
He tried ignoring her question, and said to the lawyer, “Now the clerk at the hotel takes a look at this guy’s picture and says he thinks this is the bird. All we want to do is to take him into the hotel. The clerk takes a look at him. Now that’s reasonable enough, ain’t it?”
For a fraction of a second the lawyer hesitated. Bertha Cool reached out with an arm and shoved him to one side as easily as though he’d been just an empty bag of clothes. She pushed her face up in front of the deputy from the D.A.’s office and said, “Well, it isn’t all right, not by a damn sight.”
A little group had gathered. Passengers from one of the airliners that had come in, a few of the ground crew, and a couple of aviators. The red spotlight was out of my eyes now, and I could look around and see their faces grinning. They were getting a great kick out of Bertha Cool.
Bertha said, “We know our rights. You can’t identify a man that way. If you’re going to charge him with murder, you lock him up. You put him in a line-up, and you be goddam certain there are two or three other men in that line-up who have the same build and physical characteristics as the man you’re looking for. Then you bring the clerk in and let him look at the line-up. If he picks Donald, that’s an identification. If he picks somebody else, that’s different.”
The D.A.’s man was bothered.
The lawyer said, “As a matter of law, officer, you know that’s absolutely correct.”
“But we don’t want to cause this bird a lot of trouble. It may be just a flash in the pan. If he isn’t guilty, what’s he making such a squawk for?”
I said, “Because I don’t like the way you did this. I told you I’d come down with you voluntarily tomorrow morning, go into the hotel, and talk with anyone you wanted; that I couldn’t leave tonight, that if you brought me down in that plane tonight, you’d have to put me under arrest.”