PART 35 (20 page)

“I'll have this back to you within a half-hour,” said Sandro, as he and Mike left the store.

“This is terrific,” said Mike, excited at having found Willie. “Every piece is falling into place.”

“Yes, but the police know about these things. Yet they still have a case; they're still prosecuting Alvarado. They've got to have something we're not figuring on,” said Sandro.

“Yeah, well, we've got some stuff they aren't figuring on, like that guy with the guns in Soto's building, Salerno.”

“I'm waiting to talk to a cop I know in the narcotics squad about him. He's been tied up lately.”

“We can forget the whole case if we get the goods on this guy Salerno,” Mike said.

“Meanwhile, we can't forget the Italian woman and Asunta,” Sandro cautioned. “They're pretty sure to be state's witnesses. I wish we could interview them without running the risk of getting into a bind. Well, hell with that now. We've done enough today.”

CHAPTER XX

It was December now, and the street outside the building where Lauria had been killed was not filled with kids or people dancing or noise. It was filled with people moving quickly to keep warm. The only thing that escaped the mouths of the moving people was steam. Gone was the music, the cold
cerveza.

Robert Soto had moved from 153 Stanton Street to 161 Stanton Street. The front door to Soto's new apartment was covered by a sheet of metal. Sheet metal was used to cover the old wooden doors in these tenements so burglars could not punch a hole in the wood panel and open the lock by slipping a hand inside. The only chink in Soto's armor was made by the two small circles that were the cylinders for the door locks. Mike stood to the side of Sandro. Within, they heard shuffling.

“Who is it?” floated a voice through the metal.

“Mr. Luca, the lawyer,” Sandro replied.

A clunk of metal resounded as the steel bar wedged diagonally against the inside of the door was lifted. The people in these houses know how near terror and violence are. Their entire worldly fortune may consist of a television set bought on the installment plan and second-rate furniture also sold to them on time payments by some sharp trader on 14th Street, which furniture shall not endure so long as the payments. But they live within cages, locked inside with dead locks, double locks that require two keys, by barred, locked gates on their windows, and sheets of metal strapped to the front door. It is the poor, those who breed the core of the criminal world, that are hounded by the criminal, much more than those in the luxury neighborhoods filled with wealth and valuables.

“Come in, come in,” said Soto, succeeding in loosing all the locks on the door. He stood shoeless, in black chino pants and a wrinkled T-shirt. He was hastily donning a sweater, which was a mass of wrinkles and creases and looked as if it had been stored in a ball on the floor in a corner. Within, two of his children sat on a couch covered with worn material, watching cartoons on television. A third child, wearing only a diaper, was dragging himself across the linoleum floor. The walls were painted a washed-out pink. The paper window shade was pulled down across the otherwise barren steel-gated window. There was a lone, naked bulb in the ceiling, and the walls were bare. The other furniture in the room consisted of a small, free-form, Formica table—it couldn't be considered a cocktail table: the Sotos didn't drink cocktails—and an upholstered chair occupied by a pile of unironed clothes, blankets, sheets, shirts, diapers, sweaters.

“Sit down, sit down,” said Soto, pointing to the couch. “Go inside now,” he commanded the children. He snapped off the cartoons. The children started howling. One of them attempted to turn the television on again. Soto stopped him. The child hit him in the leg. Finally, the children were repulsed and turned to another room, where they began to fight among themselves.

Sandro and Mike sat. Soto sat on the radiator just beneath the window with the paper shade pulled down.

“How've you been?” asked Sandro.

“Oh, okay.” He smiled a little.

“I see you've moved since the last time I saw you.”

“Yeah. We're just fixing this place up, you know?”

“Yes? Have you seen any policemen or people who know about the case since I saw you last?” Sandro inquired.

“I see Mullaly all the time, you know. He comes around to see me when I get home from work, to say hello. And I talk to him about the case, you know. I try to see if he'll tell me something I don't know yet, or something. He trusts me, you know. I'm not like them other people around here who don't care.” Sandro studied Soto's face. “I said I'd help him, and anything I find out I'll tell him. So he tells me everything. We sort of sit and talk about it. He can talk to me. I learn good English.”

“Has he told you anything that you haven't told me?” Sandro pressed.

“No. There's that Italian woman across the rear yard. Did I tell you about the ladies in the factory? He told me that there were some ladies on the top floor of the factory doing their work and they saw this guy, the dark guy, running across the roof after the cop was shot.”

Sandro felt a wince proceed directly up his back.

“Do you know who these women are?” asked Mike.

“No.” He shrugged.

“Were they the women at the police station the night you went there after the murder?” Sandro asked.

“No. I never saw any of them.”

Sandro turned to Mike. “I guess we'll just have to canvass every woman in the factory.” Mike looked unhappy. “Okay, anyone else?” Sandro asked, returning to Soto.

“No. That's all I know so far. But if Mullaly tells me anything more, I'll let you know. I want to help if I can, cause I know what you say is so, about nobody's going to help this guy. I mean, if he didn't do it, I don't think he should go to jail for that.”

“That's right. And that's what we're trying to do, help this fellow,” added Mike.

“This Italian woman you spoke about. She saw this Negro on the fire escape?” Sandro asked.

“Yeah, that's right. She seen this dark guy inside the apartment, looking out the window, you know? So she watched. Soon she seen him again. He was coming down the fire escape from the roof. He goes to the window and bends down and opens the window. Then she seen him go back up to the roof. And then she seen the other guy taking some stuff out of my apartment.”

Sandro walked over to the window overlooking the rear yard. He peered through the crisscrossed folding iron gates at the apartment where the Italian woman lived. As he stood there, Sandro noticed that in addition to the swivel lock ordinarily found on windows, Soto had a screw-type safety lock attached to each one. It was like a long screw with a rubber head on the end of it. If you tightened the screw, the rubber head was pressed into the window, which could then not be lifted.

“Did you have this kind of lock and gate on the windows in the other house?” Sandro asked.

“Sure. I always put them on.”

“When you went to work the day the cop was killed was everything locked?”

“I don't remember. But my wife would know, because she was home after I went to work.”

“Where is she now?” Sandro asked.

“Why do you want her?”

“Don't worry. She's not going to court or anything, Robert. She won't get involved.”

“Yeah, I know, but she's a woman, you know. I mean, I don't want her to get involved in this thing, you know. She only knows what other people told her, a couple of people like Asunta and the Italian lady across the way.”

“I just want to talk to her,” Sandro said calmingly.

“She'll be here soon. She just went to her mother's a couple of minutes before you got here. She just went for a minute. She'll be here right away.”

“I'd like to talk to her a little. Just to see what she remembers. She was the last one in the apartment before the burglary, right?”

“That's right.”

Sandro and Mike returned to the living room and sat on the couch until Mrs. Soto returned. Alma Soto could not have been older than twenty-two, but her face bore the marks and lines of a woman much older. She was dressed in clothing that hung about her like a sack. Soto explained that Sandro wanted to talk to her. She moved the clothing from the chair and placed it on the floor. She sat and watched Sandro.

“Alma, the day the policeman was killed, you were still in the apartment when Robert went to work, weren't you?”

“Yes. I was there until I went out about eleven thirty. I went to my mother's.” She watched Sandro intently.

“When you went out, did you lock the windows?”

She nodded. “I always lock the windows before I go out.”

“And the safety locks, were they screwed tight?”

“Always. Before I go out, I make sure all the locks on the windows are locked. There are a lot of robberies in the building, you know? So I make sure I lock all the windows.”

“And you're sure they were locked before you went out that day?”

“Positive. When I finally got back in at night, you know, about eight o'clock the cops let us back in, the locks were open and the gates were still shut. But I know the locks were shut tight too before I went out.”

“Okay,” Sandro said, slightly puzzled but going on. “You went to the police station that night, didn't you, Alma?”

“Yes. I met Robert there, me and my mother.”

“Robert was there before you, right?”

“Yes. I didn't want my mother to worry. So I went to her house first. Robert went ahead.”

“Did your mother see or have anything to do with this?”

“No. She just came with me, you know. I was scared.”

“You speak English well. Do you read English?” Sandro wanted to know if her statement would have to be taken in English or Spanish.

“Living with Robert you have to know English. I don't think in all the time I know him, he said two words to me or my mother in Spanish. He won't even let me speak Spanish to the children. English. They have to learn English.”

Soto smiled. Mike studied him, as if trying to figure Soto out.

“Did you see anyone else there, at the police station? Did you see Asunta there?”

“She was leavin' the station house when I was goin' in,” Mrs. Soto announced. “Her and the girl from downstairs in our old building.”

“Which girl from downstairs?” Sandro asked.

“You know, that guy's wife who's collectin' guns,” Soto added. “They musta had everybody from the block down there that night.”

“Have you talked to that fellow any more?” Sandro asked Soto.

“No. I've been careful, like you told me, keeping away from him.”

Sandro returned to Mrs. Soto.

“Have you spoken to Asunta since then?”

“About this case?” she asked. She shook her head.

“How about the woman who lives across the yard?” Sandro asked. “Was she at the station house when you were there?”

“Yes, I was sitting next to her.”

“Did you speak to her while you were there?” Sandro asked.

“Sure. You know we were all talking about it, about what happened. And I was talking to her. And me and Robert talked about her.”

“At the station house?”

“No. Since then we talk about her.”

“Did she tell you what she saw that day.”

“She said she saw a colored guy on the fire escape. She was sitting sewing, and she looked up and saw this guy.”

“Did she say it was Alvarado, the man I represent? The man who was at the station house?”

“I didn't ask her that. I don't know. Let's see. I think she was just saying that she saw this colored guy lookin' out. I don't know if she knows it was that guy or not.”

“Looking out?”

“Looking out the window. Didn't she say that, Robert, or did you tell me that?”

“She said that,” Soto agreed.

“And later,” Mrs. Soto went on, “she saw him come down the fire escape, and she didn't think nothing of it, you know. She thought it was the person who lived in the apartment. Then she seen him try to open the window, but he couldn't get it open, so he went back to the roof.”

“Did she identify Alvarado?”

“I don't know. We looked separate through the window at the police station.”

“Did she tell you anything else?”

Mrs. Soto thought a moment, then shook her head.

“Do you remember seeing a car double-parked in the street that day?”

“When I came home and I couldn't get into the house because of the police, I saw a car double-parked across the street, over by One sixty, down from the factory.”

“Alma, for my records, Mike will write down what you said, so I'll have it and I won't have to bother you for it. Okay?”

She shrugged. “Okay.”

Mike wrote the statement. Mrs. Soto signed the pages. Mike and Sandro bid the Sotos good-bye and left their apartment.

“Let's get going. I've got something to do this afternoon, for my wife,” said Mike as they walked down the stairs. “Saturday is her day.”

“Let's just walk over to the factory. I want to see where these women were who saw the man running along the roof.”

They walked to the front of 153 Stanton Street. Across from it was a three-story building with large doors and platforms at the street level for trucks to back into.

“You see what I see?” asked Sandro.

“The factory, you mean?”

“Yes, but look at how many floors in that factory building!”

“One, two, three. How many on this building?” Mike turned and looked up at the facade of the building where Lauria had been killed. “This one has five.”

“I know.” Sandro smiled.

“How the hell could they see someone running on the back of a roof two stories above them?”

“That I don't know! I don't think they could. And look at the windows on the factory. All of them are frosted, except for some where there are air-conditioners. Some windows aren't frosted but have steel screens across them. That means even if someone was standing at those windows, they couldn't put their head out far enough to see a car double-parked down near One sixty. That'd be down there,” said Sandro, pointing.