PART 35

by John Nicholas Iannuzzi

  The clerk studied the picture. He looked up at Sandro.

  “Yeah, he was here.” He was quite positive. “The police already asking me about this.”

  “When was this?”

  “Oh, they were here, I don’t know, a few months ago. When it happened, this thing. They come over and show me some pawn ticket, and they want the stuff this guy here pawned.” The clerk tapped Hernandez’s picture. “I showed the stuff, it was a detective, I think, and they put a stop on it.”

  “You sure this fellow was here on July third?” Sandro repeated.

  “Sure. I got his name in the book. I seen him before. His name is different there in the paper, but he came in before and put down in the book Antonio Cruz. I showed the cops. I’ll show you.” The clerk walked around to another counter where large ledgers were kept.

  “What’s the trouble, Willie?” asked a thin, nervous-looking man who came out of the front office. He was obviously Sid Goodman or Sid Goodman’s successor.

  “No trouble,” replied Willie. “This is about that radio that some guy pawned over here and the cops came in and put a stop on it. Remember? I think you have the slip up there on the cash register.”

  “Oh, yes, yes. I think I remember that,” Goodman answered cautiously. “What’s the difficulty.”

  “No difficulty,” Sandro answered. “I am an attorney and represent one of the people involved in that case.” Sandro handed Goodman a card. He studied it. “I understand one of these men was here pawning things,” Sandro continued. “I need some information. If this fellow was here pawning something, he couldn’t also be at the scene of a crime.”

  “Well, I don’t know what time he was here or even if he was here,” said Goodman curtly. “Do you know anything about this, Willie?” His tone intimated that Willie didn’t either.

  Willie had carried a large ledger to the counter where Goodman stood facing Sandro. He opened the book to “July 3, 1967.” “Here, you see his name here,” Willie pointed. “Antonio Cruz. That’s the name he use. Antonio Cruz was the same guy in the papers there,” he pointed to Hernandez. “Only I didn’t know his real name. You have the signature card on the cash register,” Willie said to Goodman.

  Goodman shrugged and walked to the cash register and searched through a pile of papers. Willie went over and took up the search. Goodman watched, somewhat nervous. Willie selected a slip of paper and brought it back to Sandro. “Here, see. See where the cops wrote on it, and they said to hold the radio and not let the goods out. That’s why I remember, because the cops made us keep the goods.”

  “And did he sign that book there?” Sandro asked.

  “Yes, here. See.” Willie twisted the book around so Sandro could see it. At line number 43 on the page was written Antonio Cruz, Radio, $12.00.

  “It’s Hernandez’s handwriting, all right,” Mike observed. “Like a small kid’s.”

  Sandro nodded. “Could you tell me what time Cruz was in here that day?”

  “Well, I don’t know ‘zactly,” said Willie, studying the list of names.

  “Well, it’s pretty far down the list,” Goodman contributed, warming up. “I would say, from my experience around here, that it must’ve been sometime in the afternoon. I couldn’t tell you exactly what time though.”

  “Yes. It must have been sometime in the afternoon,” Willie agreed. “I can’t tell you ‘zactly, but I know this Antonio Cruz, whose name is here, is that guy who was in the newspaper. I seen him in the papers the next day, and I seen him here before.”

  “Is there any question in your mind that this fellow in the papers was in here that afternoon on July third?” Sandro pressed.

  Willie studied the picture and shook his head. “He was here, okay.”

  “What did he pawn?”

  “A radio. I have it still upstairs.” Willie left and went up a stairway at the back of the shop. He returned with a package wrapped in brown paper. “This is the radio. See, it says here Hold on it. The cops made us hold this thing and wouldn’t let us do anything with it.”

  “Do you know which policemen that was?” Sandro asked.

  “It says here Detective Mullaly,” Willie read. “And it got his phone number here. He was the one.”

  Willie opened the package and showed Sandro a portable radio in a brown leather case.

  “I’d like to write down some of the facts for my own records, so that I’ll remember all the things that happened,” said Sandro, taking out a pad.

  “Well, I don’t know anything about it,” said Goodman, backing off again. “If you want to, Willie, it’s all right with me. But I don’t know how you’re going to tell them exactly what time this fellow was in here.”

  “I don’t know what time, but I know he was here in the afternoon,” said Willie.

  “You know that for a fact?” Goodman asked Willie suspiciously.

  “Yeah. See his name on the list, number forty-three out of seventy-six people all that day. And the morning is always slow. And here’s the cutoff at sixty-nine. We draw a line when we go to the bank at four o’clock, and that’s after sixty-nine that day. So he must’ve been here in the afternoon,” Willie explained. “Besides, it was after my lunch for sure.”

  Goodman picked up the book with its various markings, looked at Willie, pursed his lips, and as if having some confusion on the point, studied the pages. He shrugged, looked at Willie again, then at Sandro, and handed the book back to Willie.

  “You say you saw this fellow in the shop before?” Sandro inquired as he wrote.

  “Yes. He use the name Antonio Cruz, but I have seen him before in this shop.”

  “And you’re sure this fellow in the newspaper whose name is Hernandez is the same fellow who came in and used the name Cruz?” Sandro watched Willie’s face.

  “Yes. I’m sure about that.” Willie was. “The police came in and spoke to me about the radio a couple of days after I saw this in the paper. When I first saw it in the papers, the day after the police was shot, I remembered this man from the shop on the same day the police was kill. I say to myself, my God, you know, I wait on this guy the same day the papers say he kills somebody. It was funny, you know? I remember when the police were here. And that makes me remember now.”

  “And what time was it. Can you approximate it?” asked Sandro.

  “In the afternoon.”

  “About what time?”

  Willie studied the book again. He shrugged. “I know it was after my lunch.”

  “What time do you eat?”

  “Sometime between one and two.”

  “Is that every day?” Sandro asked.

  “Every day!”

  “So this fellow came in after two on July third?”

  “Probably earlier. A little after I got back.”

  “You sure about that, Willie?” Sandro pressed.

  “Sure.”

  Sandro wrote quickly.

  “Is this the number on the radio?” Sandro inquired, writing all the details on his pad. Willie nodded. Now if only he could tie this radio up with Hernandez’s July 3rd burglary in El Barrio, Sandro thought. “And do you have a piece of paper that you say Hernandez signed when he came in?” Sandro asked.

  “You have that signature card, Mr. Goodman,” Willie said.

  “I do? Oh, you mean this one,” said Goodman, pushing the signature card across the counter.

  “Are you sure that this is the same fellow, Willie?” Goodman asked.

  “Yes, that’s the fellow. The same fellow Hernandez as in this picture,” replied Willie, pointing to the clipping.

  “How can you be sure, Willie? I mean, so many people come in here.” Goodman studied Willie’s face, obviously impressed by his conviction.

  “Because this is the same fellow who sign and pawn a radio, and he’s Hernandez. And I remember because the police made us put this signature card to the side. Remember when the detective was here?” Willie looked at Goodman.

  “No. No, I don’t remember too
well,” answered Goodman. “But if it was up on the cash register, then it must be there for a reason. I guess the police did tell us to put it there. If you remember, Willie, that’s what happened.”

  “May I have this signature card? I don’t mean to keep it. I’d just like to take it to get a photostat of it,” Sandro requested.

  “Well, the police told us not to misplace it, to take care of it,” cautioned Goodman.

  “Mr. Goodman, a man’s life is at stake,” Sandro said acidly. “The state wants to put somebody in the electric chair for a crime that he couldn’t possibly have committed. The man was here in your store at the time he was supposed to be committing the crime. Willie saw him! And yet the police say he was on Stan ton Street, about ten blocks from here at the same time. If you were accused, Mr. Goodman, would you want someone to help you if you were innocent?”

  Goodman looked sheepish.

  “I’m not going to destroy this signature card,” said Sandro. “I’m just going to make a photostatic copy of it. You’ll have it back within a half-hour from the time I take it.”

  “Well, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want to get involved with this at all,” said Goodman.

  “Mr. Goodman, you won’t become any more involved than you are now,” Sandro assured him, letting a threat seep into his voice. “I’ll have to subpoena these papers and books to court anyway when the trial begins. So what’s the difference if you let me have them now? It’ll be back here in half an hour. No one will be hurt, and you’ll have done a service to humanity.”

  Goodman studied Sandro. He wasn’t too concerned with humanity, but the price was right. He didn’t have to do anything.

  “Well, if you get it right back to me. I want you to give me a receipt for that. Give me your card and I’ll write a little something on it, and you can sign it. At least I’ll know who took it, you know. I won’t get in trouble.”

  Sandro handed him a business card. Goodman scrawled words of receipt on it and handed it back. Sandro signed his name.

  “I’ll have this back to you within a half-hour,” said Sandro, as he and Mike left the store.

  “This is terrific,” said Mike, excited at having found Willie. “Every piece is falling into place.”

  “Yes, but the police know about these things. Yet they still have a case; they’re still prosecuting Alvarado. They’ve got to have something we’re not figuring on,” said Sandro.

  “Yeah, well, we’ve got some stuff they aren’t figuring on, like that guy with the guns in Soto’s building, Salerno.”

  “I’m waiting to talk to a cop I know in the narcotics squad about him. He’s been tied up lately.”

  “We can forget the whole case if we get the goods on this guy Salerno,” Mike said.

  “Meanwhile, we can’t forget the Italian woman and Asunta,” Sandro cautioned. “They’re pretty sure to be state’s witnesses. I wish we could interview them without running the risk of getting into a bind. Well, hell with that now. We’ve done enough today.”

  CHAPTER XX

  It was December now, and the street outside the building where Lauria had been killed was not filled with kids or people dancing or noise. It was filled with people moving quickly to keep warm. The only thing that escaped the mouths of the moving people was steam. Gone was the music, the cold cerveza.

  Robert Soto had moved from 153 Stanton Street to 161 Stanton Street. The front door to Soto’s new apartment was covered by a sheet of metal. Sheet metal was used to cover the old wooden doors in these tenements so burglars could not punch a hole in the wood panel and open the lock by slipping a hand inside. The only chink in Soto’s armor was made by the two small circles that were the cylinders for the door locks. Mike stood to the side of Sandro. Within, they heard shuffling.

  “Who is it?” floated a voice through the metal.

  “Mr. Luca, the lawyer,” Sandro replied.

  A clunk of metal resounded as the steel bar wedged diagonally against the inside of the door was lifted. The people in these houses know how near terror and violence are. Their entire worldly fortune may consist of a television set bought on the installment plan and second-rate furniture also sold to them on time payments by some sharp trader on 14th Street, which furniture shall not endure so long as the payments. But they live within cages, locked inside with dead locks, double locks that require two keys, by barred, locked gates on their windows, and sheets of metal strapped to the front door. It is the poor, those who breed the core of the criminal world, that are hounded by the criminal, much more than those in the luxury neighborhoods filled with wealth and valuables.

  “Come in, come in,” said Soto, succeeding in loosing all the locks on the door. He stood shoeless, in black chino pants and a wrinkled T-shirt. He was hastily donning a sweater, which was a mass of wrinkles and creases and looked as if it had been stored in a ball on the floor in a corner. Within, two of his children sat on a couch covered with worn material, watching cartoons on television. A third child, wearing only a diaper, was dragging himself across the linoleum floor. The walls were painted a washed-out pink. The paper window shade was pulled down across the otherwise barren steel-gated window. There was a lone, naked bulb in the ceiling, and the walls were bare. The other furniture in the room consisted of a small, free-form, Formica table—it couldn’t be considered a cocktail table: the Sotos didn’t drink cocktails—and an upholstered chair occupied by a pile of unironed clothes, blankets, sheets, shirts, diapers, sweaters.

  “Sit down, sit down,” said Soto, pointing to the couch. “Go inside now,” he commanded the children. He snapped off the cartoons. The children started howling. One of them attempted to turn the television on again. Soto stopped him. The child hit him in the leg. Finally, the children were repulsed and turned to another room, where they began to fight among themselves.

  Sandro and Mike sat. Soto sat on the radiator just beneath the window with the paper shade pulled down.

  “How’ve you been?” asked Sandro.

  “Oh, okay.” He smiled a little.

  “I see you’ve moved since the last time I saw you.”

  “Yeah. We’re just fixing this place up, you know?”

  “Yes? Have you seen any policemen or people who know about the case since I saw you last?” Sandro inquired.

  “I see Mullaly all the time, you know. He comes around to see me when I get home from work, to say hello. And I talk to him about the case, you know. I try to see if he’ll tell me something I don’t know yet, or something. He trusts me, you know. I’m not like them other people around here who don’t care.” Sandro studied Soto’s face. “I said I’d help him, and anything I find out I’ll tell him. So he tells me everything. We sort of sit and talk about it. He can talk to me. I learn good English.”

  “Has he told you anything that you haven’t told me?” Sandro pressed.

  “No. There’s that Italian woman across the rear yard. Did I tell you about the ladies in the factory? He told me that there were some ladies on the top floor of the factory doing their work and they saw this guy, the dark guy, running across the roof after the cop was shot.”

  Sandro felt a wince proceed directly up his back.

  “Do you know who these women are?” asked Mike.

  “No.” He shrugged.

  “Were they the women at the police station the night you went there after the murder?” Sandro asked.

  “No. I never saw any of them.”

  Sandro turned to Mike. “I guess we’ll just have to canvass every woman in the factory.” Mike looked unhappy. “Okay, anyone else?” Sandro asked, returning to Soto.

  “No. That’s all I know so far. But if Mullaly tells me anything more, I’ll let you know. I want to help if I can, cause I know what you say is so, about nobody’s going to help this guy. I mean, if he didn’t do it, I don’t think he should go to jail for that.”

  “That’s right. And that’s what we’re trying to do, help this fellow,” added Mike.

  “This Ital
ian woman you spoke about. She saw this Negro on the fire escape?” Sandro asked.

  “Yeah, that’s right. She seen this dark guy inside the apartment, looking out the window, you know? So she watched. Soon she seen him again. He was coming down the fire escape from the roof. He goes to the window and bends down and opens the window. Then she seen him go back up to the roof. And then she seen the other guy taking some stuff out of my apartment.”

  Sandro walked over to the window overlooking the rear yard. He peered through the crisscrossed folding iron gates at the apartment where the Italian woman lived. As he stood there, Sandro noticed that in addition to the swivel lock ordinarily found on windows, Soto had a screw-type safety lock attached to each one. It was like a long screw with a rubber head on the end of it. If you tightened the screw, the rubber head was pressed into the window, which could then not be lifted.

  “Did you have this kind of lock and gate on the windows in the other house?” Sandro asked.

  “Sure. I always put them on.”

  “When you went to work the day the cop was killed was everything locked?”

  “I don’t remember. But my wife would know, because she was home after I went to work.”

  “Where is she now?” Sandro asked.

  “Why do you want her?”

  “Don’t worry. She’s not going to court or anything, Robert. She won’t get involved.”

  “Yeah, I know, but she’s a woman, you know. I mean, I don’t want her to get involved in this thing, you know. She only knows what other people told her, a couple of people like Asunta and the Italian lady across the way.”

  “I just want to talk to her,” Sandro said calmingly.

  “She’ll be here soon. She just went to her mother’s a couple of minutes before you got here. She just went for a minute. She’ll be here right away.”

  “I’d like to talk to her a little. Just to see what she remembers. She was the last one in the apartment before the burglary, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  Sandro and Mike returned to the living room and sat on the couch until Mrs. Soto returned. Alma Soto could not have been older than twenty-two, but her face bore the marks and lines of a woman much older. She was dressed in clothing that hung about her like a sack. Soto explained that Sandro wanted to talk to her. She moved the clothing from the chair and placed it on the floor. She sat and watched Sandro.