“Sure,” Mike said. “And Mullaly was faking us out of our jocks about the woman across the yard. He got Soto to keep us worrying about her and not even thinking of Salerno’s wife. I hope the next time I run into Soto, I’m in my car.”
“Now’s your chance. We’re going to Stanton Street for some pictures of that fire escape. Sam is going to pose.”
“To quote Mike,” Sam snorted, “this guy’ll burn before I go back to that lousy neighborhood.”
CHAPTER VII
Sandro had called Jerry Ball’s studio and found that he was out shooting and was not expected back before 5:30; by then, there would be too little daylight to take photographs in the rear yard. Sandro was holding his own camera as Mike Rivera knocked on the door of Apartment 1B, where Mrs. Santos used to live. It was also the apartment directly under the Salernos’. Sandro wanted to get out on the fire escape to take pictures of the view above.
The door eased open an inch. A man’s eyes, watery and red, peered through the opening. Behind him, the apartment was black. Mike addressed the eyes in Spanish. There was a curt reply, and the door shut quickly.
“What did he say?” asked Sandro.
“He didn’t want us to go in. He said if we wanted to go on the fire escape we could, but to go through the yard.”
“Wonder what’s happening in there,” Sandro said.
Mike shrugged. “Something. Who cares? Let’s go.”
Sandro climbed the ladder at the side of the one-story extension in the rear. He stepped carefully onto its roof. His eye level was now about five feet below Mrs. Salerno’s window. He looked up to study the Soto fire escape and the steel slats that formed its platform. They were approximately two inches wide, with three-quarter-inch spaces between.
“If someone had been standing up there,” Sandro called softly down to Mike, “Mrs. Salerno would have had to look up at him through the bottom of the fire escape, through the steel slats.”
“She wouldn’t even be able to see his face that way,” Mike gauged.
“Right. That’s why Ellis had to have her testify that the man leaned over to look down at her.”
“That’s great. Except if a burglar is looking down, sees her looking straight up at him, and then she disappears, would he stick around to wonder was she maybe calling the cops?”
“Of course not. It’s illogical,” Sandro replied. “The story she told the cops the day of the shooting makes more sense. She saw the burglar, he didn’t see her, and she didn’t see his face.”
“Yeah, but how’re you going to get around her saying that she did see this guy leaning over?” Mike asked.
Sandro studied the fire escape overhead. “You know, Mike, I’ll bet that even if a man did look over the rail of that fire escape, the way Salerno said he did, she couldn’t have recognized his face. Especially a very dark Negro.”
“Why not? It doesn’t look that far away.”
“It’s not. But from where you’re standing, the angle is different. From here, looking straight up, there’d be nothing as a background but the sky. He’d be silhouetted. Like someone on a stage where all the light is in back of him.”
“Yeah,” Mike exclaimed, smiling. “How can you recognize a very dark Negro in silhouette?”
“Mike, go up to Soto’s fire escape. Let’s take some pictures before all the light is gone. First, I’ll take you standing straight on the fire escape, through the slats. Then you bend over the rail and look right down into the camera. If we can’t see your face, how could we see the face of a very dark Negro?”
Mike walked back to the alley and disappeared. Sandro waited, camera in hand, standing on the shed. He wondered what was going on inside the Santos apartment. Perhaps another crime was brewing, another defense would be needed. Mike whistled from above. He was on the fire escape.
As they drove uptown, Sandro wound the film and removed the exposed roll so that Jerry Ball could develop and enlarge the pictures for the morning.
“What street does Dr. Waxman live on?” Mike asked.
“Eighteenth. Three-oh-eight east.”
“He’s expecting us, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Sandro replied, “he said this was about the only time he could see me.”
“Well, it’s more than my wife can say. She doesn’t get to see me at all. Which isn’t so bad, now that I think of it.”
Mike drove to 18th Street and parked the car. They walked to the doctor’s house, and Sandro rang the bell. A young man with a blond crew cut answered the door.
“Dr. Waxman?” Sandro asked.
The young man nodded. “You Mr. Luca? Come on in.”
The furniture was sparse, and there were many paperback books.
“Doctor, here’s the medical report you made out at Bellevue in the early hours of July tenth, 1967.” Sandro handed the single sheet to Dr.Waxman. “Do you remember Alvarado? Can you tell me about that night—what Alvarado looked like, if he had any signs of a beating?”
The doctor shook his head. “There are so many cases in Bellevue. I don’t remember this.” He read his report. “Apparently, I checked out what he was sent for, and I didn’t find any bleeding or signs of bleeding.”
“How about the other things that were in Dr. Maish’s original diagnosis? Clonic seizure, Cheyne-Stokes breathing, all the rest. Do they have anything to do with.internal bleeding?”
“No.”
“Did you check anything about his head, Doctor, any head X-rays, or EEG?”
“No, apparently not. We just checked out the internal bleeding. We were only for consultation. The doctor in the prison was in charge of the case.”
“In other words, the clonic seizure could exist, as it apparently did, even though there was no internal bleeding?” asked Sandro.
“Sure. The clonic movement or seizure has to do with a brain dysfunction. It hasn’t anything to do with internal bleeding. It’s like an epileptic fit. Lots of people have them and don’t bleed.”
“And you didn’t rule out the possibility that a physical beating caused the clonic movements and Cheyne-Stokes and whatever else there was?”
“I didn’t get involved in that. I checked if he was bleeding internally. He wasn’t. I couldn’t tell you what caused the other things.”
“Let me ask it this way, Doctor: if you were called by the district attorney, could you say that the clonic movements and the rest were not caused by a beating?”
“I didn’t get involved in that. I examined him specifically for one thing. That’s all.”
“Fine. I guess I need a neurologist to give an expert opinion,” said Sandro.
“Can you wait about four years?” asked Dr. Waxman.
“In a word, no.” Sandro replied, smiling.
“Neither can I,” laughed Waxman.
CHAPTER VIII
Thursday, April 4th, 1968
“And in order for you to see this man,” asked Sandro, “the one you saw standing on the fire escape, Mrs. Salerno, you had to look up through the steel slats. Isn’t that right?”
The defiant dark eyes bored into Sandro. “That’s right,” she released through unmoving lips.
“I show you this photograph and ask you if you recognize what it depicts.” Sandro handed Mrs. Salerno the photograph of the Soto fire escape viewed from just below her window. “At the bottom of the picture is the window you were looking from, and in the background, at the top, is the fire escape you say the man was standing on, isn’t that correct?”
She studied the picture carefully. “Yeah.” She didn’t like giving Sandro yes answers.
“And it looks the same as the day when the man was there, doesn’t it?”
“Well, those things weren’t on the fire escape,” she said, pointing to the dark, round mass which appeared through the slats of steel.
“Well, other than these things being on the fire escape then, is this what it looked like?”
“Yeah.”
“I offer this into evidence, Your Hon
or,” said Sandro.
“Show it to Mr. Ellis.”
Ellis studied the photograph. “Your Honor, I have no objection to this being received in evidence, provided it is understood that whatever these things are that appear up on the fire escape, they were not present at the time.”
“On July third?” the judge inquired.
“Yes, sir.”
“May I see it, please?” the judge requested.
A court officer carried the picture to the judge. “Those dark objects which appear on the fire escape will be deemed deleted from the exhibit. Otherwise the district attorney has no objection. Received in evidence.”
“Defendants’ exhibit G in evidence,” said the clerk.
The court stenographer marked the photograph and handed it back to Sandro. He walked to the end of the jury box and turned. Mrs. Salerno’s eyes had never left him. It was as if she thought he would pounce on her if she let him out of her sight. Mrs. Santos must have told her of cruel tortures at the hands of the cross-examiners.
“Now, Mrs. Salerno, these things, these objects that you see on this photograph which weren’t there on July third, can’t you tell me what they are?” Sandro handed her the photograph.
“No, I can’t,” she said with relish.
“If I told you the objects were the feet of a man standing on the fire escape, would you disagree with that?”
She looked at the photograph again. “That’s what it looks like to me—a man.”
“Mrs. Salerno, didn’t you testify a moment ago that you couldn’t tell what the objects were up there.”
“I thought it was a man, but I didn’t—”
“I move the answer, as far as it’s gone, be stricken as not responsive, Your Honor,” Sandro said, turning to the bench.
“Strike it out.”
“Mrs. Salerno, didn’t you say a moment ago you didn’t know what these things were?”
“Yes, but I didn’t say what was inside, you know.”
“I move the answer be stricken as not responsive, Your Honor.”
“Strike out everything except ‘yes.’ Proceed.”
“May I show this photograph to the jury, Your Honor?”
“You may, sir.”
A court officer handed the photograph to the foreman. The jurors studied it minutely.
Mrs. Salerno, in answer to Sandro’s further questions, testified that on July 3rd, 1967, she didn’t know who lived in the Soto apartment, and that as far as she knew, the man on the fire escape could have been the tenant of Apartment 5B.
Mrs. Salerno testified that she had to lean far out of the window and twist to her left to see upward. She testified that it was not raining at the time she looked up, and no rain went into her eyes as she watched the man above.
“And while you were leaning way out, your head twisted to the left, you saw the face of a very dark Negro looking down?”
“I saw him, sure.”
“Did he have a moustache?”
“I didn’t say I saw that.”
“So you don’t know if the dark Negro looking down had a moustache or not?”
“I saw him, but…”
Sandro watched her sip a glass of water. He now picked up the photograph of Mike Rivera standing on the fire escape, leaning over the rail, looking directly down at the camera. Mike’s face appeared ninety percent shadow, the ten percent being the side of his face away from the building, lit by the late afternoon sun of the day before. He was unrecognizable.
“Can you recognize this?” Sandro asked, handing her the photograph.
“This is a man.”
“The same view as you saw from the window on July third?”
“Yes.”
Sandro offered it into evidence, and it was accepted without objection. The officer handed the photograph back to Sandro. He held it in both hands and studied it momentarily. He wanted to pique the jury’s curiosity. Sandro looked up to the witness.
“Now, on the day that you viewed this dark Negro on the fire escape, his head was outlined against the sky as in this picture, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“In other words, the dark Negro’s face was silhouetted against the sky, wasn’t it?”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“There were shadows on the dark Negro’s face, weren’t there?”
“What do you mean by shadows.”
“You know what a shadow is, don’t you, Mrs. Salerno?”
“Yes.”
“Was the man’s face covered with shadows?”
“I don’t know exactly what you mean by shadows.”
Sandro looked again at the photograph in his hands.
“The dark Negro’s face had about the same amount of light on it as the face in this photograph. Isn’t that right?”
“About the same.”
“His face was covered with shadows when he was looking down, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know exactly what you mean.”
“May I show this photograph, exhibit H, to the jury, Your Honor?”
“You may, sir.”
The jury grabbed it up. Sandro walked to the counsel table and sat. He and Sam watched the jurors devour the photograph.
When they had all viewed the photo, Sandro continued to question Mrs. Salerno. She testified that when the police came, the man had long disappeared. She testified that the man she had seen, as far as she knew, might have even descended the fire escape and walked away through the yard before Lauria made his fateful climb.
Mrs. Salerno testified that she saw the police in the building after the shooting, and went to the station house that night. There, she viewed Alvarado through a two-way mirror.
Sam signaled him. Sandro walked over to the counsel table. Sam handed him the notes that the assistant D.A., Brennan, had taken at Mrs. Salerno’s interview. He leaned toward Sandro and whispered, “That sure as hell is your Italian woman. Here’s your chance to get her.”
Sandro introduced Brennan’s notes into evidence.
“You were not as positive in the station house, when you spoke to the D.A., as you are here at this trial, were you?”
“I don’t understand. You better say that again.”
“On July third, you said the man you saw in the station house only looked like the man on the fire escape.”
“I had my reasons for it.”
“You had special reasons for not telling the district attorney what you knew about this case?”
“Sure, I had my reasons.”
“Do you have special reasons for telling the jury what you’re telling them?”
“No, only then.”
Sandro studied her, as if to contemplate her reasons. The jury watched him.
“Do you remember talking to me in the hallway of One fifty-three Stanton Street early in August, 1967, Mrs. Salerno?”
“Yeah.”
“And do you remember telling me you knew nothing about this case?”
“Yeah.”
“That was a lie, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“You had a reason for that lie though, didn’t you?”
“That’s right.”
Sandro took a DD5 out from between the pages of his yellow pad and read it to himself slowly as he stood before the jury. Mrs. Salerno watched him.
“You remember speaking to the police in the very building where all this took place, on the very day it took place?” Sandro still studied the DD5.
“That’s right.”
“And they took notes of what you told them?”
“Yeah.”
“And did you tell the police”—Sandro read from the DD5 as he questioned—“that you saw a man on the fire escape?”
“Yes.” She stared at the paper Sandro was reading.
“And did you describe what he was wearing?”
“I don’t remember that. It was a long time ago.”
“I’ll let you read this
and see if this refreshes your recollection.” Sandro walked forward and handed the DD5 to Mrs. Salerno. She read it and handed it back.
“I tol’ ’em.”
“You said he wore a mustard jacket, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And black pants?”
“Right.”
“You said it was a real dark Negro, didn’t you?”
“Real dark? I don’t think I said that.”
“Here is the DD5 again. Will you read it?” She read the DD5 again.
“I told them that too.”
“And all that is written down there, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“And you also told the police that you didn’t see the face of the man on the fire escape?”
“Yeah.”
Sam was right. Ellis had prepared her to admit all the things in the DD5.
“And that was a lie to the police too?”
“Yeah.”
“And did you have reason to lie to the police too?”
“Yeah.”
“You wouldn’t lie to this jury, would you?”
“No.”
“But they have only your word for it?”
She studied Sandro. “So?”
“If you have a reason, you don’t mind lying, do you?”
“I ain’t lyin’.”
“Detective Mullaly knows you’re on relief, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“He told you he’d make sure you didn’t get relief money any more if you didn’t testify, didn’t he?”
“I object, Your Honor,” said Ellis, rising. “Unless the question is in good faith, unless there’s some basis for it.”
“Overruled. Mr. Luca may ask such questions, but is bound by the answer. He may not pursue it,” said the judge. “You may answer, Mrs. Salerno.”
“No.”
“Detective Mullaly knows your husband’s a junky, doesn’t he, Mrs. Salerno?”
Her jaw muscles were twitching with anger. “Yeah.”
“Did the police tell you your husband would go back to jail if you didn’t cooperate?”
“No.”
“That’s your reason for lying to this jury, isn’t it, Mrs. Salerno?”
“I object, Your Honor,” Ellis said, leaping up.
PART 35 Page 29
