PART 35 (3 page)

“I'm Mr. Bemer, this is Mr. Luca.” Sam motioned toward an empty cubicle. “Grab another chair, will you, Sandro?” said Sam. Sandro took a chair from another cubicle, and the three men surrounded one of the small tables. They looked at each other silently. The adventure of life and death was about to begin.

“As you probably already know, Mr. Alvarado,” Sam plunged in, “we've been appointed by the court to defend you on the charge of murder in the first degree. We don't know anything about what happened, or what this is about. We can only go by what you'll tell us. Now, what's the story?”

Alvarado had not stopped studying them. His eyes went from one to the other, watching. He listened attentively as Sam spoke, his tongue just poised on the edge of his bottom lip.

Now he shrugged, his two hands shrugging too. “I know little as you,” he said with a Spanish clip to his English. “These guys arrest me, beat my ass, and I here. They keep sayin', ‘You know, man, you know what happen on that roof.' And then one of these gentlemens, a big fuck, a baldie, he do like that”—Alvarado gave a short, violent straight punch to the air—“and they get me right here.” Alvarado placed his fist at the center of his chest, just beneath his breastbone. “They gave me a lot of punches. I told them nothing. They gave me more. Then I go out.”

“You went out where?” Sam queried.

“On d'floor. An' I gasps for breath. But I couldn't get none.”

“When you say you went out, you mean unconscious?” Sandro suggested.

“Unconscious, yeah,” Alvarado nodded, looking at Sandro.

“Wait a minute,” said Sam. “Let me get some facts from the beginning. Where do you live?”

“I was have a room on South Ninth Street, Brooklyn.”

Sam took out a pad, wrote July 26, 1967, on the top, and then began to make detailed notes of everything Alvarado said.

“Married or single?”

“I got a wife in Puerto Rico, but I ain't living with her for years.” His word
years
, Spanish-clipped, sounded like
jeers
. “I living with a woman here for a while though.”

“Children?”

“Sure. Two in Puerto Rico, and four here.”

Sam looked at him. “Four children with this other woman?”

“Yeah. I got two other childrens with some other woman, but I don't see her for a long time.”

“Eight children all together. Any more?” Sam was noting everything.

“I don't know any more if they are,” he smiled briefly, looking to both lawyers. They didn't smile. Alvarado wiped his hand across the smile, quickly removing it from his face. He twisted sideways in his chair, leaning his back against the wall. He looked out through the glass partition to see where the guard was.

“You got a match for me?” he asked, keeping his eye on the guard. He took a crushed package of Pall Mall from a trouser pocket. Sam slid a book of matches across the table.

“Now, what do you know about this crime, about the cop on the roof?” asked Sam.

“Like I said, I know nothing. The cops gotta get somebody, so they get me, but I don't know enough as them how it happen.” Alvarado saw the guard's attention distracted. He struck a match and took a long drag. He palmed the cigarette, fanning the air constantly to distribute the smoke. He slid the matches back to Sam.

“Look, we have to know the truth if we're going to be able to help you in any way,” said Sam. “So don't bullshit us. I'll lay it right on the line, bullshit won't do you any good with us.”

“I know it. I know it. I swear to you, I don't know what these men are sayin'.” He took another drag, then continued the sweeping motions, which dispersed the smoke. “I went home and I stopped to see the super. Jorge is the super. I went into his apartment.”

“When was this?”

“The night the cops got me, July, I think third. Yeah, July third, late night, like one
A.M.
No Independence Day for me, believe me. Three cops were waiting upstairs. They been there all along, but I wasn't home, so they waiting, and when I go to his apartment, Jorge says, ‘Luis, did you kill a copy?' An' I look at Jorge. I say, ‘Jorge, you crazy? Why you ask a thing like that to me, Jorge?' And he tell me, ‘The cops are here, waiting upstairs, three detectives.' I looked at him, you know. I say, ‘Jorge, is this a joke?' and he said, ‘No, Luis, three guys are waiting.' I say to Jorge, ‘Come on. I got nothin' to hide. Let's see these cops.'

“I turned and Jorge walked with me outside, and when I start up the stairs outside—the stoop—these three cops got their guns point-in' at my brains. I ask them, ‘What's this about?' And one of them says to me, ‘You'll find out.' I had a paper with me and in there was the story about the cop being shot, and I said, ‘You're not bringing me in for this?' And I pointed to the paper, cause there in the subway I read about the cop killed. And it said there the cops were looking for a tall Negro, five nine or five ten, so I know it couldn't be me. And the cop tells me, ‘You'll find out at the station house. You'll tell us about the roof.'

“Then they take me to the station house, you know. And I walk in, and the place is full with peoples. And they sayin' to me, ‘Hello Luis, hi, Luis,' and I don't know any of these peoples, and I thinkin', how they know me? One cop, I don't know his name, a baldie, but red hair like fire on the sides, takes me up the stairs, and we go up to this room, all the way up, on the third floor, and there are these… these”—Alvarado motioned a rectangle with his hands—“closets, little ones, of ‘eye-ron,' metal.”

“Lockers?” suggested Sandro.

“That's it, lockers rooms. And they put my hands in my back with handcuffs, you know, like this.” He demonstrated. “And they asked me I know Chaco? I says, I know someone called Chaco.”

“Who's this Chaco?” asked Sam.

“That's Hernandez, the other guy the cops bring here.”

“He's the one who told the police your name, the one who lived on the block where the cop was killed?” asked Sam.

“Must be he tol' that to them,” Alvarado answered.

“Then what happened?” prodded Sam.

“About seven, eight other cops, without uniforms, I think off duty, come in, and they get around me like a circle, and one of them, the big baldie guy, give me punches here.” He again demonstrated with his fist in the center of his chest. “And they ask me, ‘What happen on that roof?' And I tell them, ‘I don't know nothin' about that roof, cause I wasn't there.' Then this baldie starts working on me some more. Then I go out, like I said before. And one cop, an old guy with red face, says, ‘You ain't out yet, spic,' and two guys pull me up and hold me, and this big baldie keeps punch-in' me, and I keep tellin' him I don't know what happen, I wasn't there.”

“How long did this go on?”

Alvarado studied the air for a moment. “I can't tell you that, but I believe it was a long time they was beatin' me. Maybe one hour.” Alvarado took a long drag, then stepped on the tip of the half-finished smoke, and preserved it carefully in his pocket.

“Go on.”

“They keep it up more. Once somebody was comin' up the stairs, so they listen at the door, and one guy puts his hand on my chest and listen to my heart, and he put his fist in my face and told me keep quiet. And then somebody who came go away, and they start again with punches, askin' about the roof. And I told them, ‘You gonna kill me here, cause I don't know what happened.'

“Then I went out a couple times more. I don't know for how long. I remember next they pick me up, and told me I was going to tell them about the roof, cause Chaco already told them about me. And I told them that if he already told them, they didn't have to ask me. And this big guy make his teeth show and he hit me. I was ascared of this guy. He was big, and he was like crazy. And he smell like whiskey, you know.”

They watched Alvarado as he spoke, Sam looking down intermittently to make notes. Alvarado was calm and unhurried.

“Then another cop says, ‘Don't hit that man again.' And they stop the punches, but they keep askin' these questions about the cop and the roof, and all. I tell them I wasn't the guy, and if they want to kill me, okay, but I wasn't the guy.”

“Then they pick me up in the air. One guy picks up one leg and holds it behind me, and the other guy pulls my other leg to the front. You know, they holding me up in the air by my legs wide open, and one of them says, ‘Okay, kick him in the balls.' And I scream and beg them and tell them I got a operation there and a kick will kill me. They let me down and keep workin' punches on my chest. Later, they tell me wash up cause the district attorney was coming and I was going to speak to the D.A. They bring me downstairs again and I wash my hands, my face, and they puts handcuffs behind me, in my back, on a chair, and they say, if I tell the D.A. about what happen, you know, beating me, I don't know what a beating is yet. And I waiting for the D.A., and they clean my nails, take some stuff from my nails. And another cop puts some toilet paper on my hand.”

“Toilet paper?”

“That's what it look like, toilet paper, you know, long, and they put it here, on my palms. That's what it's call, right?”

“For traces of gunpowder,” Sandro interpreted.

“No,” Sam corrected. “They haven't done that for twenty years. It must have been for palm prints.”

Sandro nodded.

“Then while I'm waiting, the cops bring in a radio, a TV, and they showed me fingerprints on them, you know, with white powder on them, and one guy says: ‘You better talk. We got your prints all over this stuff.' And I told him, ‘Maybe you take prints, but you don't read good, cause those can't be mine.'”

“Look,” Sam interrupted, “I told you, no bullshit. I'm your lawyer, not the D.A.”

“I know I got to tell you. I'm sayin' the truth. I got no reason to say a lie.” He was not excited.

“Well if you didn't confess to the cops, what the hell was the D.A. coming for?” Sam asked sharply. “The cops don't send for the D.A. just to waste time, not in New York County. They send for him when they've got something for him to listen to. Now, you were waiting for the D.A. What for, if you didn't confess?”

“I don't know. I was jus' there, and they say to wash, the D.A. is coming. And they tell me if I say anything to the D.A. about what happen in the lockers room, they'll show me what a beating is. Maybe the guy coming wasn't the D.A. I don't know why they tell me that.”

“Maybe you confessed to this crime. You know, I'll find out.”

“I know this. That's why I'm tellin' the truth. Maybe they got the D.A. to talk to Hernandez. He was there, too.”

“In the room with you upstairs on the third floor?”

“No, they take me down, and I was sitting in this room with the detectives, and Hernandez was in this cage, you know, waiting, too. Then the D.A. arrive, this guy they say was D.A. and he talk to Hernandez for a while in another room. Then they bring me to see the D.A.”

“What happened?” Sam asked.

“He ask me questions, too.”

“What questions?”

“I don't know. He say, I'm so-and-so from the D.A.'s, and this is so-and-so, the guy with the little machine.”

“The stenotypist?”

“Yeah. And the D.A. ask me questions. I told him I don't know about that roof, cause I wasn't there.”

“Did he advise you of your rights, about being silent, about having a lawyer?”

“Sure. But I tol' him, I didn't do nothin'. Why be silent, you know?”

“You sure you told the D.A. that you didn't commit this crime,” Sam pressed.

“I'm sure I say that.”

“Did the cops advise you of your rights when they questioned you?”

“The only thing they do is hit me right in my chests,” he replied quickly.

“The D.A. ask you anything else? You tell him anything else?”

“The D.A. told me Hernandez already told him I did it. And I told him Hernandez was
loco
, crazy, that I didn't.”

“Then one of the cops was behind the D.A., and he motion to me with his fist, you know? And then I told the D.A., ‘Yes, I did it.'”

“You told the D.A. what?” Sam looked up from his notes.

“I told the D.A., ‘Yes, I did it.' And the D.A. asks me, ‘You know what you're saying?' And I says, ‘Yes, but I don't really kill nobody, but I am being threatened by a detectives unless I says yes, I did it.'”

“Did a stenographer take this down on the machine?” asked Sandro.

“I know he was there, but he was behind me. I couldn't see his hands.”

“What did the D.A. do then?”

“He asks me about one or two more question. I told him I don't know nothing. Then I show him my wrist. See my wrist.” Alvarado showed the inside of his right wrist to the lawyers. There was a long thin scab across it. “That's from the cuffs the cops put on me.”

“The D.A. see that?” asked Sam.

“I show him. He got to see it. Maybe they got that in the pictures with no clothes on.”

“The what?” Sam asked.

“They make me take pictures with no clothes.”

“That's a new one to me,” said Sam. “Okay, tell me about that burglary. If your fingerprints are on the goods from that job, you haven't got a prayer. You know that, don't you?”

“I know that, Mr. Bemer. But I wasn't there. My prints can't be there, unless these cops can put them there. I know when a cop is killed, they can do anything. I don't even know the block where it happen.”

“One fifty-three Stanton Street,” Sandro supplied.

“That's the block where Hernandez lives, but I don't know that block. I wasn't there. I read that Hernandez car was double-park there and a woman, I think she's a whore, you know—and she does the womans' operations—she told the cops the car belong to Hernandez.”