Authors: John Nicholas Iannuzzi
“What do you mean, operations?” asked Sam.
“When they got a kid, you know?”
“Abortions?”
“Yeah. She live on that block in Hernandez house. She told the cops the double-park car belong to Hernandez cause she knows Hernandez robs apartments and she thinks he hit her apartment once. I think she tell them she see me too.”
“How do you know these things?” Sam queried.
“Cause they bring people when I waiting for the D.A., and the people, mostly womans, are on the other side of a glass, a mirror⦔
“A two-way mirror?” Sam asked.
“That's right. They could look at me, but I don't see them. But I hear them, I know people are there, lookin', and I'm bendin', sideways.”
“You don't know who was there?” Sandro asked.
“No. Only the one I say, the whore, cause I heard the cops on the other side talkin', thinkin' I can't hear, like they know this one. Asunta, that's her name.”
Sam made a note. “Anybody else you know was there?”
“No, that's the only one. They were others there. Womans. But I don't know their name.”
“Okay, then, if you didn't commit this crime,” said Sam, “where were you?”
“I got up late. I seen some guy. I do a couple things. I eat. In the afternoon, I go to my room. I go downstairs to see Jorge, the super.”
“The same Jorge you spoke to when you came home?” queried Sandro.
“Right, that's the same guy. And I had this whiskey, and I ask him, âJorge, you want to buy this?' And he says, âHow much?' So I told him, two bucks, and he says, âOkay.' Then I stayed and talked to him for a while, and then I went down the block, and after, I took the subway over to Times Square.”
“Where were you going?”
“I was going to Times Square, to the movies.”
“Who was with you?” Sandro asked hopefully.
“I was by myself.”
“Go ahead,” Sam suggested.
“That's all.” He lifted his hands in a gesture of finality.
“What are these marks?” asked Sandro, pointing to a small cluster of pinhole marks on the inside of Alvarado's arm near the elbow. “Are these fix marks?”
“No. They from a scab when I failed down in the station house, when these guys are beating me.”
“You are a junky?” Sam said rather than asked.
“Yes, sir. I have no fix now since I'm here, three weeks, so I'm pretty clean.”
“Before, you were using the stuff?”
“Yes.”
“Heroin?”
Alvarado nodded.
“How about pushing the stuff?” Sam continued.
“I was hustling in the street. I wasn't pushing, but sometimes a guy needed something, and he didn't know where to get it. I help him out, deliver it. Stuff like that.”
“You serve any time for it?”
“Yeah, I got busted three times.”
“When.”
“Once in '60, I did ninety days. Another time in '62, I did ninety days. And another in, I don't know, I guess that was '62, too. I got one year, nine months, to three-six in Sing Sing.”
“How much time did you serve?”
“I did two year and a half.”
“Listen, you know what the score is then,” said Sam. “If you're giving me a story, and we go into court and get buried, it's your hide that's going to burn, you understand that?”
“Yes, sir, I understand.”
“What movie did you go to?” prodded Sandro.
“I think it was something called
It Happened at the World's Fair
, with Elvis Presley. And there was another picture with Steve Reeves,
The Son of Spartacus
, something like that.”
“How much time did it take to see the movie?”
“I don't know, a few hours. I was nodding in the show.”
“What time did you go into the show?” asked Sam.
“About six.”
“You left Jorge about what time?”
“About three twenty, three thirty,” Alvarado replied.
“Okay, three thirty. How did you go to Times Square?”
“I took the subway. At Marcy Avenue. I change at Delancey Street and get the express to Times Square.”
“How long did that take?” Sam pressed.
“I don't know, forty minutes, forty-five minutes.”
“That makes it about four fifteen when you got to Times Square. What happened to the other hour and forty-five minutes?”
“When I got to the Times Square I walked, you know. I look in some windows. I look at things. I bought a cigarette lighter. I look at the pictures in the theaters. I ate a hot dog.” He was more calm than Sam at this point.
“Then you went inside and saw the pictures?”
“Right.”
“Two pictures?” asked Sandro.
“Yes, sir.”
“And you arrived home about one in the morning?”
“That's what time the cops got me, about one. They took the ticket from the movies, too. I had the little ticket, you know, that they give back to you. A cop took it from me.”
“Did you get it back?”
“No, and my money. They took my things. Maybe the ticket is with my things.”
“Make a note of that, Sandro. We'll have to check that stub out.”
“Did you take a fix in the movie?” asked Sandro.
“Yeah. While I was there, I had my fix. That's why I was nodding, you know.”
“Where did you get the works to take the fix?”
“I had it with me.”
“Then when the cops arrested you, you had the works with you?” asked Sandro, trying to shake his calm.
“No. When Jorge told me the cops were waiting for me, I threw the stuff in a garbage can. They didn't see me.”
“Listen, Sandro. I have to get going,” said Sam. “I have another appointment back at my office. You can stay. Or we can come back and continue this in a couple of days.”
“I have to get going, too,” said Sandro.
“Okay, Mr. Alvarado, we'll be back. Meanwhile, try to remember everything that happened. There may be something you haven't told us. Okay?” Sam stood.
“Okay. When you coming back?” Alvarado stood.
“In a few days. We have to scout up some facts in addition to what you tell us. Meanwhile, I want you to remember everything you possibly can about what happened.”
“Okay, sir. I remember.” He smiled and shook hands with both lawyers.
Sam and Sandro walked to the door. Sam took out a coin and tapped on one of the thick glass panels. The guard in the lawyers' waiting area unlocked it and let them out. As gates and doors were being locked and unlocked for them, Sandro thought of Judge Porta's words. In the abstract, a murder case was dramatic, exciting. But now, faced with an actual corpse, tangible death and violence, holding a man's life in the palm of his hand, Sandro felt the weight of the responsibility. At this moment, Sandro wasn't as much concerned with living up to Don Vincenzo's ideal of a beautiful lawyer as he was with getting out into the fresh air.
“What do you think of that story?” he asked as they reached the street. He wondered if Sam was uneasy, too.
“It stinks. At least if there was somebody with him in the movies or something.”
“Even so,” added Sandro cautiously, “the killing took place sometime in the early afternoon, about two thirty, according to the newspapers. All these details about Jorge and the whiskey bottle and the movies took place after three and have nothing to do with the killing at all. He could have killed the cop, gone home, then taken the subway to the movies.”
“Sure, he went to Times Square to get lost in the crowd for a while. This son of a bitch did it, all right. He was cool as a cucumber, too cool for a man under indictment for murdering a cop. He sat and talked about it like it was happening to someone else. He's guilty, this bastard.”
“We do have little as hell to work with. What kind of a defense can we devise?” Sandro paused, then continued, struck by another thought. “But didn't he say that he saw some guy and went someplace when he got up, before he saw Jorge later in the afternoon? Maybe those other things happened about the time of the killing?”
“I don't remember him saying that,” Sam replied. “I'll look at my notes later. Or ask him next time.”
The morning sun was hot as they turned the corner into Centre Street, walking past the huge doors of the Criminal Courts Building.
“He said the cops didn't advise him of his rights. We could get them right there, couldn't we, Sam?”
“Doesn't mean a thing, Sandro. Not a thing. People griped like hyenas when the Supreme Court required the cops to give admonitions. And what'd it do? The cops just have to change their testimony. You think if they can lie about beating a defendant, that lying about an admonition is a big deal?”
“I guess not,” Sandro admitted.
“You know, Sandro. I've been thinking of something else. Judge Phillips'll be sitting in the arraignment part when Alvarado pleads. A more liberal, lenient judge never sat on a bench. He's a defendant's man if there ever was one. Maybe the best thing we could do for our guy is to plead him guilty to something in front of Phillips.”
“What kind of a plea do you think the D.A.'d give us in this case?”
“Maybe murder in the second degree. He wouldn't give us anything less than that. He might not even budge from murder one. Suppose we plead to the indictment, to murder oneâthe D.A. can't stop you from pleading to what you're indicted for, can he?”
“No, I guess not.”
“And with Judge Phillips up there, this Alvarezâ”
“Alvarado.”
“Okay, Alvarado. Phillips'd never send him to the chair on a plea. He'd give him life sure. Otherwise, we'll have to try the case and end up with a conviction after five or six weeks. This guy is a sure fry in front of a jury.”
Sandro quickly chased from his mind a picture of Alvarado being strapped into the electric chair. “You've handled these cases before, Sam. I'll listen to you on that.”
“Let me sleep on it, and I'll give you a call. You take the arraignment, will you, Sandro?”
“Okay. I'll be able to check out those other places with Alvarado then, anyway.”
CHAPTER IV
Sandro brought the small convertible to the curb at Lexington Avenue between 120th and 121st streets. He sat and looked around him. The sky above the tenements was seared with the setting sun. The wilting heat was releasing its victim's throat, and the city was beginning to crawl into the night to revive. In many of the windows of the surrounding buildings, Puerto Rican men and women were propped motionlessly on pillows set on window-sills. Children in soiled pants and ripped shirts ran and screamed and climbed stoops or hopscotched across chalked sidewalks.
In a nearby storefront hung a sign, proclaiming
MEMBERS ONLY.
This was the entrance to the Friendship Social Club, domino champions of the United States and Puerto Rico. Sandro slid across the front seat. As club attorney and honorary member, he was the only non-Puerto Rican allowed inside. The front room had a desk and a phone. On the wall were pictures of the members, the flags of the United States and Puerto Rico crossed, membership lists, and newspaper clippings which described club victories in domino tournaments. The back rooms were filled with card tables and chairs. A clattering fan shifted the humid air where a dozen men were bent over the tables studying their dominoes. Some held cans of cold beer. Sandro walked to the back.
“Hey, Sandro, how are you?” smiled Juan, the president and moving force of the club.
“Hi, Juan,
com'esta usted
?” replied Sandro, shaking Juan's strong hand.
“
Muy bueno
,” Juan laughed, calling to one of the men to bring a cold
cerveza
for the
abogado.
The members looked up and acknowledged the lawyer with smiles and greetings. He pulled a chair up next to Juan, once again engrossed in the game. Juan held a small wooden shield in his lap, containing custom-made mother-of-pearl dominoes with red spots.
“So, what's news?” asked Juan.
“I'm waiting for Mike. We're going down to Delancey tonight to see the building where a cop was killed, and try to talk to some of the people.”
Delancey is a neighborhood on Manhattan's Lower East Side in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, sometimes called the Delancey Street Bridge. Just like the club's neighborhood, El Barrioâknown to the rest of New York as Spanish HarlemâDelancey is a low-rent area that gets handed down from one wave of immigrants to the next. The Puerto Ricans were the latest, and it was they who had taken to calling it Delancey.
Mike Rivera was a member of the Friendship Social Club. He was also a private investigator, whom Sandro had helped to obtain his license. It was through Mike that Sandro had become the club's lawyer.
“Mike should be here very soon, then.” Juan moved one of the dominoes from the shield in his lap onto the table. “You see these boys I play with here,” Juan taunted Jesus, his opponent, with mock sternness.
Jesus smiled. He had a prominent gold tooth. He nodded toward Juan. “When I'm finish with you, Juan, you be sorry you not gone, too, with Sandro.”
They exchanged moves on the table, frowning as they studied their remaining dominoes.
“You don't want to have put that one down, my boy,” Juan said to Jesus. “You don't, I'm telling you.” He added a piece decisively to the arrangement on the table. “Ah hah,” he crowed. “I tol' you. I think I am the champ now. Don't you think, Sandro?”
“
El campeon
,” Sandro allowed. “That is, until you play me, Juan.”
“Okay, I do that, too. I play you and Jesus at one time.” He laughed as he rose.
“
Un otro mas
” said Jesus.
“
Un otro? Tu eres loco
” Juan said, sitting again and starting to turn the pieces face down.