PART 35 (10 page)

“And then?” Sandro prodded.

“Well, the Italian lady—I found out she lives across the yard.” Soto pointed over his shoulder.

“Show me where she lives,” said Sandro, walking toward the rear of the roof. Soto stood at his side, gazing down to the rear yard.

“She lives over there, in that building.” Soto pointed to a building directly behind them. There was a large yard between the two buildings, the Stanton and Rivington Street sides bisected by the rotting fence. Soto pointed out windows on the first level, approximately eight feet from the ground. There were four windows. The middle two shared a fire escape.

“In which apartment, the one on the right or on the left of the fire escape?” asked Sandro.

“I think the one on the left.”

“What does this woman look like?”

“She's Italian, short, a little heavy, nice-looking, you know.”

“What color hair?”

“Sort of light, blonde, brown, something like that.”

“Go ahead. What did she do?”

“Well, she called the cops when she seen the guy on the roof. So she stayed by the window, waiting, you know? And then seen the dark guy in the window. Alvarado, right?”

“Right, you have it now,” Sandro agreed wryly.

“Well, then they took the stuff up to the roof. Then she seen the dark guy go down the fire escape and fool around with the window. Then the cops come to the backyard, and she yelled to the cops and one cop runs up the fire escape, and the other cop, she saw him run down the alley to the front of the building.

“Then the dark guy ran and hid behind the stairs,” Soto continued, “over there.” He pointed to the small bulkhead shed which covered the top of the stairway. Mike was standing near the doorway in the side of it. He was holding the door open with his foot, using the light from the inside to see his notebook. Soto walked to the shed and crouched beside it. “Like this. And the cop came up the fire escape and across the roof, and he sees the guy from down the street on the roof, up in the front. So he put up his gun and he says, ‘I'll fire, stop,' and he walks to the guy. He didn't see the dark guy behind the wall here. And when he's just walking past, his gun in the air, the dark guy hits his arm with a pipe. Then they struggle, you know, wrestle, and the dark guy got the cop's gun and shot him a lot of times.

“The other cop got on the roof after they all ran,” Soto continued. He was pleased to have such undivided interest. “The two guys ran across the roof and down into the other guy's house. The cop that was shot was on the roof, bleedin' and all. He wasn't dead.”

“He wasn't?” asked Mike.

“No. And he told the other cop that a Negro, not too tall, jumped him.”

“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.”