PART 35 (5 page)

A Puerto Rican in his late thirties, shorter than Sandro, stocky, with dark short-cropped hair, entered the room. His clothes were good. He walked toward Sandro.

“Hi, Mike,” Sandro greeted.

“Hello, Counselor.” Mike smiled as they shook hands. “What's your pleasure?”

“Well, I didn't want to go into all of it on the phone. What I want to do is talk to some of the people who live down where the cop was killed. Sam Bemer is talking about pleading Alvarado—that's our man—guilty. I'd like to get some idea for myself whether this is really the guy who did it.”

“And if he is?”

“Well, I'll have given him the very least I owe him as his lawyer. I couldn't just plead him without checking out some of the facts.”

“Then let's get going before it gets too late,” Mike said with enthusiasm, as they left the club.

Sandro let Mike drive. They headed out into traffic, through the streets alive with people and noise, turning onto the East River Drive. They emerged at Houston Street, into streets equally throbbing. Mike parked a few doors from 153 Stanton Street. They sat in the car for a moment, looking around to get their bearings. It was a typical Lower East Side street, with old buildings, their facades seeming to be as much fire escape as brick, their windows open, unwashed, an astonishing variety of window shades behind them, and people leaning out. Children ran and screamed back and forth across the sidewalks, dodging between cars, throwing beer cans at one another. Their parents and other adults, white, black, Latin, mixed, were also out, sitting on the stoops, sitting on milk boxes on the sidewalk, sitting on the sidewalk, propped against the sides of buildings, standing in the lighted doorways of
bodegas
and candy stores that were blaring music, drinking from beer cans, singing, throbbing to Spanish songs over blaring radios. Four children had already begun to rest on the trunk of Sandro's car.

In the middle of the block, a fire hydrant had been turned on, water gushing, and the kids were diverting the water skyward with a topless and bottomless barrel. A crowd of them stood in the falling, cooling spray.

“That must be the house up there, with the stoop,” Mike pointed. One fifty-three Stanton Street was a brick-faced building of five stories, with a fire escape entwining the length of its face and a short stoop leading into its entrance. On one side was a tenement of the same height, on the other side one that was two stories taller. On the street level, to one side of the stoop, was a shoe-repair shop, now closed for the night. On the other side was a
bodega
, a Spanish grocery. Two women lounged on the stoop.

“Let's go,” said Sandro, opening the car door.

As they approached the building, they passed a small group on the sidewalk. In the center was a short Puerto Rican dancing. He was naked to the waist, wearing only a pair of gray slacks, sandals, and a panama hat. His neck was encircled with a fine gold chain, from which a small crucifix hung. In one hand he held a can of beer, and with his arms keeping rhythm to the music he danced a slow circle around a heavy woman, who was smiling patiently, amusedly. A protruding belly bulged her thin dress.

Perspiration welled from Sandro's face. In this heat, a suit and tie became instruments of torture. His eyelids were pressing shut. He felt droplets rolling down his back. He had debated with himself whether to dress casually and pass as just a friend of Alvarado's or to dress as Alvarado's lawyer. The latter, he decided, so people would respond to his pointed queries. A friend could not command the respect or get the answers Sandro needed. Besides, no one would respect an
abogado
who couldn't afford a suit. Now he was afloat within that suit.

The two women on the stoop were machine-gunning Spanish at each other. Sandro and Mike started up the stoop. They stopped and eyed Sandro. His suit, his tie, his briefcase made him obviously an outsider, perhaps an enemy.

Sandro stopped as he reached them. “Do you know where the superintendent lives?”

One of the women was young, her hair pulled tight into a pony-tail. Her face was etched around the eyes and mouth with lines of hard work and struggle, lines that tenement women get when they have to yell at the super to collect the garbage, to send up hot water, to clean the halls. The other woman was older, heavy. She had the same look of weariness and mistrust.

“Down 'da hall. Apartment 1A,” surrendered the younger woman.

Sandro and Mike entered the building. Apartment 1A was immediately to their left. Sandro knocked on the door. An old woman opened it and peered out cautiously. Her face looked kindly; her gray hair was gathered in a bun on the back of her head. “Yes? What is?” she asked. She must be from the old days, Sandro thought, when the neighborhood was predominantly Jewish and Slovak.

“My name is Luca. I'm a lawyer.” The old woman's eyes were curious on Sandro; then they moved to something at his left. Sandro turned to see the young woman from the stoop now at his elbow. He had been too curious a spectacle for her to resist. “I'm the lawyer appointed by the court to defend the man accused of killing the policeman on the roof.” Sandro pointed ceilingward for emphasis. “Luis Alvarado. He's the one the police took to jail.”

The old woman nodded. Her face was now creased with uneasiness. “I know nothing. I was in a hospital. My husband, he was sick. I was in a hospital.” She seemed pleased to plead ignorance about the day of the murder. Sandro made a mental note to check out the hospitals in the area.

“That punk,” the young woman at Sandro's left sneered. “You his lawyer?”

“That's right. You know something about what happened that day? Sandro turned to her.

“I know they oughta put that punk in the electric chair. He killed the cop.”

“Did you see what happened here that day?”

“Nah. I didn't see nothin'. But he did it, that punk. I know that.”

“How do you know if you didn't see it? I'm appointed by the court, not by the man. I want the facts, too. If you know something about it, I'd like to know. It's going to be difficult enough for this fellow to have a fair trial. He's Puerto Rican, and a cop was killed. The district attorney isn't going to be giving him any breaks. He's one of your own, isn't he?”

“Don't hand me that. I don't know nothin' about him. 'Cept he's a no good punk. He oughta be put right in the chair and burned.”

“Miss, if you were in his place, you'd want a fair trial and a lawyer. All I'm trying to do is find the truth. If he's guilty—”

“
If
he's guilty?” She was incredulous. “He did it!”

Sandro nodded slowly, turning toward the superintendent's wife again. “You weren't here, is that right?”

The super's wife smiled her uneasy smile again. “No. I was in a hospital. My husband.”

“Do you know if there is anybody in the building who saw anything that day? Anybody who saw the crime, saw the policeman on the roof? I'd like to talk to them.”

“No, I don't know,” she shook her head.

“How about you, miss? Anyone in the building who might know what happened that day?”

“We know what happened that day. He killed the cop.” She shifted stiffly from one foot to the other, crossing her arms.

“Thanks,” said Sandro, turning back to the superintendent. “Whose apartment was it that was broken into?”

“Soto,” she replied. “Top, in the back.”

“Thank you.”

Sandro and Mike turned, watched silently by the women. The hallway was narrow and dark. The stairway was on the right side of the hallway. On the left, along the side of the stairs and behind the superintendent's apartment, was a corridor leading to a rear apartment. There was a toilet closet under the stairs, its door next to the rear apartment.

“That's a sweetheart, that young one,” said Mike as they ascended. “If it was up to her, you'd be sunk.”

“You're not just kidding. Listen, Mike, you've got to talk to these people in Spanish. When you talk to this fellow Soto, make sure you tell him about Alvarado being Puerto Rican, and that if he doesn't help his own people, the cops and the district attorney sure aren't going to give Alvarado a break. Not when a cop's been killed. They'll throw Alvarado in the chair like so much dirt. That's probably what they think of him anyway. Understand? Tell him in Spanish as if I don't understand what you're saying.”

“Okay, Sandro. I'll tell him.”

As they climbed, they saw that there were two apartments on each floor. The front apartments were marked by the floor number and the letter A; the rear apartments had the letter B. They reached the top floor and walked to apartment 5B. Mike knocked on the frosted glass panel that was the top half of the door.

“Who?” The sound came muffled through the door.

“Tony!” Mike replied. Everyone knew someone called Tony.

The door opened. A naked fat-bellied child burst through the doorway, scampering quickly. A tall, thin young Puerto Rican man with a moustache snared and restrained the little boy. He eased the door shut to a small opening; only his eye appeared to search the callers. Within, Sandro could see two other naked children climbing over a soiled couch. A television set was playing loudly.

“Señor Soto,” Mike inquired.

“Mr. Soto,” the man corrected.

“You speak English, Mr. Soto?” Sandro asked, stepping forward.

“Sure. Of course.”

“My name is Luca. I'm an attorney. I represent Luis Alvarado, the man who is accused of killing a policeman on the roof several weeks ago. I believe he was supposed to have burglarized your apartment too.”

“Yes, that's right.”

“I'd like to talk to you,” said Sandro.

“Can I put some clothes on first?” Soto asked.

“Sure. Go ahead. Why don't you meet us on the roof?” Sandro suggested.

“All right. I'll come right up.”

“We might as well get a look at it, Mike,” Sandro said as he led the way up. At the top of the steps was a door. They stepped out and found themselves at about the middle of the roof, halfway between the street side and the rear-yard side. The roof, with its tarred surface, was long and narrow, drab and unimportant, like thousands of other roofs in New York, except that here a man had been shot to death, protecting the pitiful possessions of people he never even knew. This was no place to make the leap to Eternity, Sandro thought. Nobody would ever pick it for a movie set.

Sandro and Mike stood looking toward the street side, almost unaware of being drawn to the noises and glow of light coming from there. On their right was the tenement of the same height. The two buildings were separated at the front by a brick wall taller than a man, at the center by a huge airshaft, and at the rear by a smaller wall, perhaps four feet high. On their left was the taller building, rising two stories of unbroken brick into the summer sky.

Sandro and Mike walked toward the street side of the roof, but could not look over because of the coping, which rose away from them at a forty-five-degree angle to a height of about seven feet. They went back to the rear of the roof. There was a low wall, and they could look down into the rear yards. The fire escape came up to the roof level here.

While waiting, Sandro drew a diagram for his records. Presently, Soto came up. He was smiling and friendly.

“What I'm trying to do, Mr. Soto, is get the facts about this case. If Alvarado is guilty, I want to know about it myself. If he's not, I don't want to see an innocent man convicted just because he's Puerto Rican.”

“No, that's not right. Even if he's not Puerto Rican,” Soto replied.

“That's true,” agreed Sandro. “I didn't say that because the district attorney is against Puerto Ricans, or we should save him just because he's Puerto Rican. But with a cop dead, Alvarado is going to have a difficult time showing he's not guilty—not only because he's Puerto Rican, but also because he's colored, and he's a junky.”

“Oh, yeah, that's right, he's a junky,” Soto repeated.

“You know Alvarado?” Mike asked.

“Which one is Alvarado, the dark guy or the guy who lives over here?” asked Soto, turning to point east across the rooftops.

“Alvarado is the dark one.”

“No, I don't know him. I seen him at the station house that night, that's all.”

Sandro's eyes widened as the words floated into the night from Soto's lips. “You were at the station house the night this happened, when Alvarado was there?” His eyes scrutinized every movement of Soto's eyes.

“Alvarado is the dark guy, right?” Soto inquired again.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I went to the station house and was sittin' there, you know, when they brought him in. They wanted me to identify the things that was taken from my apartment.”

“And who else was there?” Sandro hoped he sounded casual. “Was there a woman there, someone who saw what happened?”

“Let's see. I was there first, then a couple of minutes later my wife came over with her mother”—he was raising a finger for each—“the girl from down the block, Asunta, and an Italian girl. Five I know of.”

“This Asunta, is she an abortionist, Puerto Rican?” Sandro probed.

“I don't know what she does. She lives down the street. She was the one who told the cops that the other guy, the guy who lived down the street, he owned the car, you know, the one double-parked, that he lived upstairs.”

“Did she say anything about one of them coming out of the building?”

“I don't know.”

“Did you talk to her, to Asunta, since this happened?”

“After that night, you mean? No.”

“Is that all the people who were there?” Sandro asked.

“That's all when I was there. I don't know about before me or later. There was lots of people going in and out.”