PART 35

by John Nicholas Iannuzzi

  “Who told you that?” Sandro asked.

  “I don’t know. I spoke to so many people.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Later, when the other guy, from down the block, went down to get his car, the cops grabbed him. I think cause that Asunta told them on him.” Soto looked from Sandro to Mike to see if there were any questions.

  “And you think this Asunta said she saw Alvarado walking out of the building?” asked Sandro.

  “I think she did. I didn’t talk to her. But I heard, you know, that she saw the dark guy, Alvarado, walking out of her building after the cop was shot. She saw him escaping.”

  Sandro nodded gravely. Alvarado’s fears were confirmed.

  “She knows a lot about this case,” Soto added.

  “Oh? You think Asunta may know more about the killing than she’s telling?” Sandro asked.

  “Yeah, she knows everything that goes on in the neighborhood. I mean, she always has people in and out of her apartment, like maybe she knows what jobs are being pulled and all.”

  Mike made a note. “Maybe she’s a fence,” he said to Sandro.

  “You know what you said about your guy maybe not doing it, not killing the cop,” Soto said, moving to new ground. “I think I know who did do it.”

  “You do? Who?”

  “There’s a guy I think he’s a junky, who lives on the second floor,” explained Soto, “an Italian guy, and him and me, we were never friendly or nothing, you know. I never talked to him before. And his wife and my wife don’t know each other neither. But after this happened, this guy starts talking to me when he sees me in the street, and he wants to kid around, be friends, trade comic books, you know.”

  “Did you say, trade comic books?”

  “Yeah, and he wanted to buy me a ice cream one night by the Good Humor. And there he asked me about what the cops said, and about if I got the television set back and all. And his wife, she invites my wife to this party, a Avon party, or something, when they buy lipsticks and everything. So I think, how come this guy is so interested, you know? So I been watching him. A lot of guys come to his apartment, all a’ time, and they stay, and then some of them have packages. And I know that he’s been getting rifles and guns, and he keeps them in his house. And then there’s something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  Soto thought for a moment. “Oh yeah. After he talks to me a couple times, one night he comes up to me and asks me about if I got everything back. I figure I’d fool him. I say I got everything except the money. I told him they stole my wife’s pocketbook, you know. There was really only five dollars gone, but I told him that there was three hundred dollars in there missing, and he told me I was a liar. You know, he told me I was a liar, and it was my wife’s pocketbook. I mean, you know what I mean? It sounded kind of funny that he would say something like that.”

  “It sure is,” said Mike. “This guy who collects guns seems to know a lot.”

  “What’s this fellow’s name?” Sandro asked.

  “Salerno. Tony Salerno,” Soto replied.

  Mike made a note.

  “Well, try and keep an eye on him. Remember what he tells you. And don’t get reckless. If this man is really involved, he might be dangerous. Have you heard anything about anyone else who might have seen something that happened on the roof?”

  “No, nobody. Only the ones I already told you, you know, the Italian lady who lives across the yard, and the other ones I told you about.”

  “Well, this is terrific, Robert. It helps a great deal. I’m proud of you.”

  “I like to help. This is my country, too, you know?” Soto smiled. They started down the stairs and said good night to Soto at his apartment.

  “You know, Sandro, this is great, about this Salerno guy,” Mike said, as he followed Sandro down the stairs.

  “It’s peculiar, anyway,” Sandro allowed.

  “Sure. If Alvarado didn’t do it, somebody had to. Now, here’s a guy who could have killed the cop, run across the roof to another building, and walked out into the street and not even be noticed. Everybody knows he lives over here, so seeing him on the street wouldn’t even be remembered.”

  “It’s a possibility,” said Sandro. “But there’s nothing else to point to him. No witnesses, no evidence, nothing.”

  “It won’t hurt to check it out.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. We have to check out everything. A regular San Juan Sherlock Holmes I’ve got.”

  CHAPTER X

  “Hiya, Counselor,” said Joe, swinging back the huge door to the Tombs. “How was the weekend?”

  “Fine, Joe, fine.”

  “Back to work now, hanh?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Sandro was beginning to feel as if he lived here, and the idea appalled him.

  The guard in the lawyers’ waiting area admitted Sandro in turn. While he sat, he watched the guard pace constantly from the wall of bars to the far wall, back and forth, like a polar bear spending the summer at the zoo. Was the guard, Sandro wondered, less imprisoned than Alvarado? This man spent his main waking, living, breathing time, eight hours a day, forty hours a week, two thousand hours a year, behind bars. By the time he retired, with time off for good behavior, that would be equivalent to serving a seven-year sentence.

  Sandro looked at the other guards, the men behind the desks, the deputy wardens passing through the room. They were all prisoners.

  “Alvarado,” the guard intoned, accepting a slip of paper passed through the Judas eye of the door in the far wall. Sandro stood and entered the interview room. The guard locked the great door behind him. Across the room, Alvarado sat on the bench with several other Negro and Puerto Rican inmates. As Sandro came into view, Alvarado nudged the man seated next to him, smiling proudly, and pointed to Sandro. In prison, when there is still hope, lawyers are talked about, admired, bragged about, fawned over in place of pinups and cheesecake. Lawyers, after all, are more useful to imprisoned men than pinups. Alvarado rose as Sandro pointed to an interview booth.

  “Hello, Mr. Luca.”

  “Hello, Luis. How are you today?” Sandro noticed that Alvarado was putting on weight.

  “All right. Good. How’s my case?”

  “Coming along. I was over to Stanton Street again last week.”

  “Oh? Listen, Mr. Luca. I was talking to a guy in church who was talking to Hernandez, and he said that Hernandez is going to court next Wednesday. Are we going to court next Wednesday?”

  Sandro thought for a moment. All he could conjecture was a severance for a separate trial, to allow Hernandez to plead to a lesser crime in exchange for testifying against Alvarado. “I’m not aware of any court appearance. I’ll check with Mr. Bemer. I doubt it very much.”

  “How come that rat is going to court? He’s going to be witness against me?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll find out. I was speaking to Robert Soto,” Sandro went on, “The fellow whose apartment was broken into. He told me who the woman was who saw you in the station house that night. And he told me about that Asunta, who might say she saw you coming out of the building, just as you told me.”

  “Them peoples don’t know what they talking,” Alvarado flared. Sandro had never seen his client angry before. It was reassuring.

  “The witnesses may not, Luis. But understand this. There are two worlds, one on the outside, the real world, and the other inside the courtroom. It doesn’t matter what really happened outside.”

  “I don’t get that, Mr. Luca. If I didn’t do this thing, they ain’t got no witnesses that says I did.”

  “Maybe you can understand it this way. Last year I was handling a burglary, and the woman whose apartment was burglarized came in and testified. I told the defendant she was going to identify him. He looked at me as if I were crazy. Said what you just said—she couldn’t testify to that, she wasn’t even in the apartment till he was two flights down the fire escape. Well, she testified that she saw him face to face in the apartment. The jury
bought it, and he was convicted. If witnesses tell the jury you were there—even if you weren’t—and the jury believes them, then you were there. What really happened doesn’t matter.”

  “The witnesses can’t say those things,” Alvarado protested.

  “Oh, they can. They may be mistaken, but the jury doesn’t know that. I know I asked you this before, but I must ask you again. Were you there?”

  “I wasn’t. I really wasn’t.” Alvarado was looking straight at Sandro, his eyes pleading.

  Sandro knew perfectly well how many times he had repeated these questions. But very often the criminal, in hopes of arousing the sympathy and fighting confidence of his attorney, lies about his involvement in the crime. And the lawyer, borrowing a technique from the police, goes over the same ground again and again, searching for possible inconsistencies.

  “Is there anything new that you remember since the last time we spoke?”

  “I told you everything. Oh yes, I remember that when they were beating me, the cops, they brought Hernandez into the room. I didn’t tell you this. Well, I told you, but this is just more. They was beating on me and told me Hernandez said that I was the one from the roof. And I tolds them to bring Hernandez here. And they bringing him in and I look at him and say, ‘Chaco,’ I espeak Spanish to him. I say, ‘Chaco, why did you tell to these people what you tell them?’ And Chaco, he wink at me and say, ‘Yes, this is the man.’ You know, he wink at me like he was just telling them that. And they taked him outside and they were beating on me again. I know I was bleeding inside because when I come here one night I was bleeding in the mouth and in the ass, and they had to bring a doctor and bring me to Bellevue.”

  Sandro was thunderstruck. “You went to Bellevue Hospital? After you were brought here to jail?”

  “Yes, one night in my cell. I was bleeding in the mouth and the ass. And I had a lot of pain in the stomach. I lied down on my cot. The guard call the doctor, and they put a mask over my face with air in it, and I stayed there because I couldn’t breathe. I was lying on my bunk, and my chest, you know, from where they were beating me, was tremendous pains. The doctor come and send me over there to the Bellevue. You see I’m not telling a lie to you because these things happen to me when I was here. And they know. You can know they happen, too, because my medical card says that, and the doctor knows that, and my cellmate knows that it happen. I am not lie to you.”

  “You were sent to Bellevue from the Tombs?”

  “That’s right, in a ambulance. They mark the papers, internal bleeding.”

  If Alvarado wasn’t concocting a fairy tale, he was innocent. Hospital records were objective facts, easier to check and more reliable than witnesses’ stories.

  “Is there anything else I should know? You keep remembering more things each time I come. Can’t you think of them all and tell me at once to save time?”

  “I try, but sometimes I don’t remember. Remember I told you I was having a haircut when all this happened and then I went to the movies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, before I had the haircut, I met this friend of mine, this guy named Eugene, and together we wented to a five-and-tens, and I changed a hundred-dollar bill. In the five-and-tens store on Broadway near Roebling Street.”

  Sandro was confused. “A hundred-dollar bill? You changed a hundred-dollar bill?”

  “Yes. I changed a hundred-dollar bill with this colored girl. She was at the counter in the five-and-tens store, a big fat-face she was, like she got peaches pits in each cheek. I don’t know what her name is. And she changed the bill for me, and I remember we was kidding cause she changed a hundred-dollar bill a couple days before for me, and she says to me, ‘What are you, making these things?’ And I says, ‘Yeah,’ and then she changed the bill for me.”

  “Was Eugene in the store with you?”

  “No. I didn’t want a big crowd, you know. Maybe they think we rob somebody.”

  “Where were you getting these hundred-dollar bills?

  “No stealing. Believe me. Some guy on the street give me three hundred dollars—three hundred-dollar bills—to buy some stuff for him. You know, junk, and I was suppose to buy stuff for him, but I never did. And I have this money in my pocket, and I need some money, so I spend it.”

  It would be far better to be tried for hustling narcotics or stealing three hundred dollars than for murdering a policeman, Sandro reasoned.

  “And you’re sure you changed one of these hundred-dollar bills the day the policeman was killed?”

  “Yes. Before I went to take the haircut, and I was talking with Eugene. I walk in and change a hundred-dollar bill. And I think she can remembers me because we were talking and kidding.”

  “What time was it?”

  Alvarado studied the ceiling. “Maybe one thirty, a little later. Somesing like that.”

  “Where was this five-and-ten?”

  “On Broadway near Roebling Street. It’s a big store right on the side of the street there, a little bit from the corner.”

  “And it was a colored salesgirl?”

  “Yes. She works there because I see her there before, you know. As soon as you walking back, about two of them stands where they sell things, right in the middle.”

  “I’ll check it out. Is there anything else?”

  Alvarado studied the ceiling for a minute and, looking back to Sandro, shook his head. “I can’t think of anything.”

  “While I follow up on these leads, you keep thinking, and write down anything you remember that you haven’t told me, and tell me next time.” Sandro stood. “Are you getting any visitors while you’re here?”

  “No. My wife is away up in Westfield. They say I could write to her. I have a brother named José. But he is angry. You know, someone called him for me when all this happened, and he got all angry when this person call. I guess he’s, you know, he don’t want to be bothered. He’s a big citizen or something. He works in the Department of Sanitation, and he doesn’t want to know no trouble.”

  “He hasn’t come around to see you at all?”

  “No, he doesn’t- come here. When you get in trouble, peoples leave you alone: That’s why, Mr. Luca, I got all my hope in you, because you are the only one in this country that I have going for me. I didn’t do it, even, Mr. Luca.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” said Sandro. “I’ll see you again shortly.” He walked toward the barred door to get out, wondering what a Negro woman eating peaches’ pits looked like.

  CHAPTER XI

  Mike Rivera backed the car into a parking spot on Broadway in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Sandro got out, and Mike joined him. They walked to the corner of Roebling Street and Broadway.

  “Now the barber shop is supposed to be on the east side of the street, between Broadway and South Ninth. That’s this way,” said Sandro, turning left. He walked to the curb to scan the storefronts across the block, a myriad of colors and painted signs.

  “There it is, Sandro. The Imperial Barber Shop,” Mike exclaimed.

  “Right. Now we’ll know very quickly if there’s anything in all this,” said Sandro.

  “I hope the same barbers are still here,” said Mike.

  It was a small, three-chair shop. The linoleum on the floor was worn, with nailheads pressing upward from beneath. The mirrors were framed in wood that squinted through strokes of cheap paint. There were tattered girlie magazines strewn on the wooden chairs provided for waiting customers. No one was waiting. Two barbers were clipping their way around two Puerto Rican men. All the men, barbers and customers, watched the intruding reflection of Sandro and Mike in the mirrors. Their eyes lingered on the gringo.

  Mike spoke Spanish to the barber at the first chair. He was portly, middle-aged. Sandro caught a few words—abogado, policia, muerto. The eyes of all the men shifted to Sandro’s image watching more intensely.

  Sandro handed the newspaper clippings about the murder to Mike, who continued speaking to the older barber. He turned to Sandr
o.

  “He says he wasn’t working that day. This other guy was,” said Mike, walking down toward the third chair. The other barber was young, with a moustache. Mike spoke to him. Sandro could only catch an occasional word. The young barber nodded. Mike spoke to him at length. The barber stopped cutting hair and just listened to Mike. The customer forgot his haircut, watching the conversation.

  Sandro looked from Mike to the barber to Mike and back, feeling as if he were at a tennis match.

  Mike showed the news clippings with Alvarado’s picture to the barber. The young barber studied the papers.

  “Si.” He nodded. Then the barber walked across the floor to the wall opposite the mirrors, where the unoccupied chairs stood. He pointed at one chair with his scissors, speaking Spanish all the while. He walked back to the middle barber chair and pointed to it.

  “What the hell is he saying?” Sandro urged impatiently.

  “He says he did give Alvarado a haircut that day,” Mike explained. “Alvarado was waiting over here, and then he got a haircut in this second chair.”

  The young barber added something more.

  “And his moustache got trimmed,” Mike translated.

  Sandro looked at Mike, then the barber. Could it be so easy? Maybe it was a put-up job!

  “Ask him if he knew Alvarado before this, if he was a friend of his.”

  Mike asked. The barber answered. “He says he didn’t know him. He still doesn’t even know his name except for the newspapers. But he remembered the face, and he remembered the man being here. The morning after the murder, when these pictures were in the papers, he saw them, and he remembered that Alvarado was here the afternoon before. The only way he knows Alvarado’s name is he read it under the pictures in the paper.”

  “Is there any question in his mind about Alvarado? Is he sure that this man was here having his hair cut on July third?”

  The barber took the pictures in his hand. The other men all got up and crowded behind him, studying the pictures. The young barber spoke.

  “He says that that’s the man who was here that day. He remembers him coming in, having a haircut and his moustache trimmed.”