PART 35 (12 page)

“That's right. You remember the fellow with the one-hundred-dollar bill being here?” asked Sandro.

“No. I didn't see him. I do remember Annie telling me about the one-hundred-dollar bill.”

“You okayed it cause I had to get somebody to okay changing the bill,” Annie said to him. She turned to Sandro. “I can't change no more than a twenty without gettin' it okayed by the assistant manager or the manager.”

“Did I, kid?” the assistant manager questioned the girl. “If you say so. I'm not sure. I do remember you telling me about it the very next day. What day was it?”

“The policeman was killed on Monday, July third. You were probably closed the next day, Independence Day. The picture wasn't in the paper until Independence Day. July fifth was a Wednesday,” Sandro explained.

“That's when I showed it to you. Wednesday, when I came in,” Annie said. “His picture was all over, in the newspapers, on TV. I knew him soon's I seen the pictures. I said to my husband, ‘That man was in the store yesterday.'”

“Is there any question that this is the man who was here?” Sandro asked.

She looked at the picture again, then up at Sandro. “That's the man all right. I know I seen him here that day. Cause I seen him on television the next day. I was off. That was the day all right.”

“Did you know him? Was he a friend of yours before that day?”

“Except he changed another hundred-dollar bill here, a few days before, I never seen that man before in my life.”

“Now, what time was he here that day?”

She studied the floor for a moment, her left hand to her chin. “Well, I just finished my break. I work ten till three. Only part time. And about one, one fifteen I have a break. I got back from my break that day, and then I seen him and changed the bill.”

“Could it have been before one o'clock?” asked Sandro.

“No. Had to be after one. Maybe a little later. One fifteen, one twenty. Something like that.”

“I want to have Mr. Rivera write down these facts. So I'll have a record for my file and I won't have to inconvenience you again.”

“I won't go to no court,” she said firmly.

“No, no. I just want this statement for my records. Let's face it, you know the police aren't going to give a Negro a soft time, especially when a cop was killed. I'd appreciate your cooperation.”

“He's not Negro,” Annie said flatly.

Sandro looked at her. Alvarado was darker by far than she was.

He turned to Mike. “Start writing,” he whispered.

“What good is a statement if she won't go to court?” Mike whispered back, taking out his pad.

“Just take the statement. We get that now, and I'll worry about court later.” Her reluctance to help Alvarado was more comforting than eagerness would have been.

Mike started writing. He handed the finished statement to Sandro:

My name is Annie Mae Cooper. I am 34 years old. I live at 346 Havemeyer Street, Brooklyn. Married, my husband's name Johnny. I am employed at Associated Five & Ten store at Broadway and Roebling Street, Brooklyn.

In regards to Mr. Luis Alvarado and July 3rd, 1967, I remember that Mr. Alvarado was in the store that I work in on that day because he had come into the store and had asked me to change a one-hundred-dollar bill. On that day it was raining and I was off from work the next day. I had returned from my lunch that day about 1:15
P.M.
, a few minutes more or less, and a few minutes later Mr. Alvarado came and we kidded about him changing the hundred-dollar bill. I changed the bill and he left the store. I would say this was around 1:20
P.M.

Sandro nodded. He handed the statement to Mrs. Cooper. She read it and signed it.

Sandro and Mike walked back to the car. Sandro felt more at ease now. Not that he was sure beyond doubt. It was possible that these people were friends of Alvarado and lying to him. But it was a good start.

When he arrived back at his office, Sandro photostatted the two statements and placed the originals in a sealed envelope in his safe. He wasn't leaving anything to chance or police snooping.

The intercom buzzed. “Dr.Travers from Bellevue is on the wire,” said Elizabeth.

“Hi, George, how're you?” Sandro was ready to jump on the desk and dance if the Bellevue records had been found.

“Fine, Sandro. I called in reference to that Alvarado thing you asked me about. There are four or five ways of checking when Alvarado was here and where he was treated, and obtaining his hospital chart. I've checked just about every one of them so far, and none of them checks out. There are a couple more things I could try, but so far it doesn't look promising.”

“All right, George. Just cover every possibility there is. A man's life is at stake, and I have to have the answer. From what he says, he was there about July tenth.”

“Well, unless somebody has removed his record and is looking at it, I don't know where it could be. But I'll keep at it and get back to you as soon as I can.”

“George, you're a prince. Thank you.” Sandro hung up the phone. The day seemed suddenly gloomy.

CHAPTER XII

Sam and Sandro sat next to each other in adjoining jury-box seats. This was the favorite roost of defense counsel while waiting to have cases called for disposition or trial. An assistant D.A. and another lawyer were sitting in the second row at the other end. A defendant was being arraigned. He had been charged with assault in the first degree, and, after a conference at the bench with the judge and D.A., defense counsel announced that the defendant was willing to plead guilty to assault in the third degree, a misdemeanor, to satisfy the entire indictment. The D.A. recommended the acceptance of the plea. The court accepted it.

“The D.A. must have had a weak case,” said Sam.

“The hell with that case. What do you think about the barber shop and the hundred-dollar bill?”

“It sounds great—if it's true. Even if we get some people to testify, it doesn't mean they're telling the truth. They might be friends of Alvarado's, trying to help him.”

“I thought of that, too,” Sandro said.

“You'd better check them out with a lie detector. I mean, what the hell kind of bullshit is this? Every time you go to the Tombs, Alvarado's got a new story for you. He must have people in the street working for him, getting him witnesses, telling him what to say.”

“But he doesn't have any visitors.”

“He doesn't need them. There are so many Puerto Ricans, junkies, going in and out of the Tombs every day, he's got his own private messenger service.”

“You think his story is a phony, then?” Sandro asked.

“How the hell do I know? It sounds great, perfect. But how about those witnesses Soto told you about. Why would the people who live on the block where the cop was killed say they saw this guy Alvarado that day? They have no reason to lie. They're independent witnesses. That's what the jury'll believe, anyway. They'll think this barber and salesgirl are friends of Alvarado, people he knew from before.”

“I may be getting sucked in,” said Sandro, “but I believe Alvarado.”

“That's fine. But it's what the jury believes that counts,” Sam cautioned. “I've handled too many murder cases to get hopped up about the statement of some witness or other. They'll come in later and change their story, or you'll find their story full of holes, or they'll be horrible witnesses whom the D.A. destroys on cross-examination. Look, this is good experience for you. You'll be an even better lawyer after getting a case like this under your belt. But I don't want to see you getting yourself all tied up in knots over one case for some lousy junky.”

“I just want to see the case through and see it through right.”

“Okay, but don't set all your hopes on these people. They sound great. But you can't trust these spics—any witnesses for that matter. They're treacherous. Especially junkies. They tell you anything, just for a fix, for a few bucks. They have no conscience.”

“Well, the barber and the salesgirl aren't junkies, and she's not even Puerto Rican.”

“Okay, you got a Puerto Rican and a nigger. I doubt it makes much difference in front of the jury.”

Sandro shrugged. Sam was cynical, he thought, but he might also be right.

“I've seen too many of these things go wrong to get all excited or go
shlepping
all around those neighborhoods, maybe get stabbed,” Sam went on. “We'll see what else you discover. By the way, I saw Ellis in the corridor before. He was talking, and I was listening.”

“What did he have to say?”

“Nothing much, just talked about this and that. He's pretty smug about it. I'll bet he really has a confession from this son of a bitch Alvarado. What do you think of that?”

“Alvarado said he was in Brooklyn at the time of the killing. And now we have witnesses who agree that he was in Brooklyn.”

“Not enough. You've also got independent eyewitnesses who saw him in Manhattan. Let me tell you where it's at. In Bellevue! If he went to Bellevue bleeding, then the rest of the stuff—the beating, the alibi—fits together. If we've got that going for us, the jury'll take all the rest along with it, everything. Without it, you've got a bunch of bullshit.”

“I've got a doctor by the name of Travers on the staff over there checking out the story. He's a brother of someone I went to law school with. But he hasn't come up with any record so far.”

“If it ever existed! And even if it did, the cops may have already destroyed it anyway.”

“You think they could do something like that?”

“Could they beat a guy and lie about it? Could they lie about having warned him of his rights? Why couldn't they throw away a couple of sheets of hospital records? You keep forgetting, a cop was killed here. You think letting a couple of pieces of paper disappear from a city hospital is a big deal? The same city that the cops work for? Don't put anything past these people. If they want you, they can get you.”

“Alvarado's cellmate saw him bleeding and being sent to the hospital. He can testify.”

“A con! Who the hell will the jury believe, a con or a cop? Listen, I know and you know that a cop is only a man, and he can lie like anyone else. But the jury thinks that all cops are good guys. Juries go in and jerk around, and nobody knows what the hell they talk about. Maybe they play cards. And they throw a man's life up in the air, and come out and send him to the electric chair not because he did it but because they think spics can't tell the truth or junkies are no good.”

“You think the jury won't believe the cops beat Alvarado?”

“They'll think that's the usual story some wise-guy lawyer made up.”

“But if the guy was bleeding?”

“They'll think—or the D.A.'ll make them think—he did it to himself,” said Sam. “The jury'll stretch their imagination to any length to believe the cops. And the cops'll go to any length to sink a cop-killer. I know what the cops can do. I was a D.A. myself for fifteen years. Listen, I remember Judge Chapansky, now on the bench in Brooklyn, when he was a D.A. He went to a station house one night to get a statement, and just as he approached the station house he heard this horrible scream. He went inside and asked what happened, who screamed? And the cops looked at him like he was crazy, like they heard nothing. Then he went to see this guy who was supposed to give the statement. The guy was as white as a ghost. He looked like death. Judge Chapansky told the cops he wouldn't take the statement. That if they thought that he'd take a statement from a man in that condition, they were nuts.

“You know, years later,” Sam continued, “when I was a D.A., I had to go to Sing Sing one night. I spoke to an orderly there, and when he heard I was a D.A. from Brooklyn, he was my slave. He confirmed Judge Chapansky's story. He was the guy from that station house. He was up for something else when I saw him, but he told me the same story the judge told me. And he told me that they had pierced his back with something. It was his liver they got, he later found out. He screamed like a stuck pig and they told him they'd kill him if he didn't talk to the D.A. Fortunately, there was a man like Chapansky there that night. Most D.A's wouldn't give a damn. They stick with the cops and take the statement.” Sam fingered one of the cigars in his breast pocket momentarily.

“I remember another instance. Where a D.A. from Brooklyn went out to take a statement with a new stenotypist. You know these stenos are supposed to take down everything they see and hear in the station house. So this night they go to a station house and they're taking a statement. In the middle of the statement, the prisoner starts to falter, and one cop gives him a roundhouse right to the chest. The steno put down in the statement a description ‘At this juncture, Detective Dolan delivers a forceful blow to the chest of the prisoner.' When the steno got back to the office and typed the statement up, the D.A. called him in and he says, ‘Are you out of your fucking mind?' And the steno tells him that he took an oath to report everything he saw and heard, and that's all he was doing.

“You know, usually the experienced steno knows when to take his hands off the keys, while the witness falters or blurts things out which'll tend to confuse the confession,” Sam said. “This steno put everything in. He was civil service, so he stayed on the job, but he never rode felony again. They made him a clerk in the office. That's why I don't get too excited about any case, especially when a cop is killed. The cops got us over a barrel, and we can't tell what'll happen.”

“But we have an alibi, witnesses.”

“And what do you think the cops'll do to those witnesses when they get their names and addresses?”

“We won't give them to them.” Sandro was angry now.

“Listen, the law says—look at the Code of Criminal Procedure when you get back to the office, I forget the section numbers—but it says the D.A. can move for a bill of particulars about an alibi up to eight days before the trial. And we have to give him full disclosure of the names and addresses of all the alibi witnesses so that he won't be surprised at the trial. If we don't give them the names, we can't use the witnesses. Practically speaking, if we do give the names, the cops'll be up to see these people in ten minutes.”