PART 35 (25 page)

“Yeah, so he cheered up. And, sure enough, they got worse.”

CHAPTER XXVI

Footsteps echoed down a corridor. They stopped. There was the sound of knocking on a door.

“
Quién es
?” The voice sounded muffled. It was coming through the door.

“Rivera.”

“
Quién
?”

“Rivera.”

After a few seconds, a squeaking noise, as if the door were opening.

“And then this little, skinny, dark-skinned broad in her late twenties is staring at me,” Mike said. He sat with Sandro in the car parked around the corner from Stanton Street. They were listening to the small tape recorder Mike had hidden in his briefcase play back his visit to Asunta. “You should have been there to see it. I thought I was going to be killed.”

“I thought you had been,” said Sandro. “You were gone twenty-five minutes. Another five minutes, and I would have been knocking on that door, even if it would have screwed up everything. What the hell is all that howling?” Sandro asked as the tape continued. The voices in the background varied from a single, rapid-fire Spanish to a howling, screaming, mass confusion.

“Asunta had her sister-—she's about the size and color of a gorilla—and some guy and some other dumb broads there. Man, as soon as they knew who I was, they began screaming, yelling. They told me I was okay, but you were a pain in the ass and a fuck.”

“They said that, just like that?”

“That's not all they said,” added Mike.

“Why me?”

“Cause you're always nosing around the neighborhood. You're an intruder. As bad as that cop Mullaly.” Mike winked. “Listen, here's the important stuff, now. She said here that she didn't know anything about the killing of Lauria.”

“She said she didn't know anything?”

“That's right. She said she was at her sister's apartment. The fat gargantua was her sister. Here, that's her sister screaming. She had some mouth on her,” Mike chuckled. He translated her remarks for emphasis. “Now she's saying Asunta was at her house on Norfolk Street when the cop was killed. She came back to her apartment only after the cop was already shot.”

“You sure they said that?”

“Sure. I had them repeat the story a couple of times. Don't worry, it's there on the tape. Nobody could mistake it.”

“What about identifying Hernandez's car to the police? Did you ask her about that?”

“That she did. She was standing down in the street in front of her house watching the ambulances. The cops started thinking it was funny that a car was double-parked with the window open. It was raining, right? So they asked if anybody knew whose car it was. She said she told them it was Hernandez's. That's all.”

“Was she down at the station house that night.”

“Yeah, I asked her that,” said Mike. “She said she went down there. Soto was there only the last minute or so before she left. She left with that Salerno broad—some combination!—and Alma Soto came in as they were going out. Asunta said she told the cops she never saw the colored guy before in her life. She told me she was telling them the truth. She doesn't know Alvarado from a hole in the wall.”

“I guess Alvarado just had his witnesses confused,” said Sandro. “He couldn't see who was on the other side of that mirror.”

“And we just about told that bastard Soto that we were worrying if Asunta identified Alvarado. He passed it on to Mullaly, and Mullaly must have told him to play it up.”

“Well, it eliminates a witness for us. That helps,” said Sandro. “Won't she be surprised to hear her own voice making her a liar if she
is
a witness at the trial. Let's go. It's just about time for Dr.Schwartzman to be in his clinic.” He glanced at the clock in the lighted window of a
bodega.
“It's already ten o'clock. You know, we ought to get Sam Bemer out here doing some of this leg work. Keep him in shape.”

“Yeah, what about that guy? What the hell is he doing on this case?” Mike started driving again.

“He's waiting for us to bring him the stuff. What the hell, he's letting me have a free hand. I can't complain about that. I hope I know what I'm doing.”

“What street does Dr. Schwartzman have his office on?”

“I think it's Catherine Street near the river,” replied Sandro.

After a short drive, Mike stopped the car in front of a tenement-type building. Sandro stood on the sidewalk. He could smell the river spicing the air. A short stoop led into the building. To one side was a storefront with great panes of glass painted dark from the inside. A group of people huddled about the entrance to the store.

Sandro and Mike made their way through. Eyes in the crowd viewed them suspiciously. On the door was a small sign,
ARNOLD SCHWARTZMAN, M.D.
Sandro knocked. A narrow strip of light appeared as a girl opened the door only enough to see who was knocking.

“I'm Alessandro Luca. I've an appointment with Dr.Schwartzman for ten.”

“Just a minute.” She shut the door. Sandro turned to see the eyes watching every move. In a few moments, the door opened wide. “Come in, please.” The voices of the throng behind Sandro stirred into activity for an instant, dying as the door was closed again. Mike and Sandro were ushered into a small office.

The man sitting behind the desk was talking on the telephone. He was about thirty-five, with thinning black hair. There was an unusual, pale, bluish quality about his lips. His face was trim.

“You're clean now? That's swell, great,” the doctor said. “See what you can do if you really try? Now I want you to keep working.” He motioned Sandro and Mike to sit. “And if you have any difficulty at all, I want you to call me. I don't care what time it is. I'm always available to you. You feel good? That's swell. I just want you to stay that way. Okay. Let me hear from you right away if anything starts going wrong. Okay?”

The doctor hung the phone back on the cradle. He looked at Sandro. “That was a fourteen-year-old kid who got hooked, and now we're getting her off the stuff. Her old man came in here one night to the clinic crying, actually crying about the kid. And now we've got her clean for three weeks, and working, and the old man is ecstatic.”

“Fourteen years old? That's a little young, isn't it?” asked Sandro.

“It sure is, as years go. But to become a junky, they're never too young. They've just got to be pushed enough, cramped enough, and then they break and they need some stuff, and there's always some punk around to give them a fix or so.”

“Well, you're doing a fine job, Doctor. I've seen you on television, discoursing on narcotics, about what it does, about what the city hospitals aren't doing for addicts,” said Sandro.

“I've been on television a lot. Matter of fact, on Lew Reston's network show twice. He's going to be at my dinner as M.C. We're trying to raise six hundred thou' to build a hospital for addicts here in New York. Instead of treating them like criminals, they've got to be treated like patients. Addicts have just given in to human weakness, but instead of being addicted to gambling, whiskey, cigarettes even—some escape—they're addicted to narcotics. It's different, sure. But junkies are junkies for the same reasons some people drink too much and others even eat too much. They need relief from pressures around them.”

“You mean to say fat people are junkies?” Mike asked.

“Sure. Food-junkies. But it's not different—not the reason they start. The ones who get involved with this stuff, most of the time, Puerto Ricans, Negroes, they got nothin' going for them in life. Junk gives them kicks, you know?” The doctor spoke the street argot easily.

“And you run this entire project yourself?” Sandro asked.

“You're not kidding. I've got my regular practice, and then I've got this clinic every night from ten to three in the morning. I've got one of the only ambulatory addict clinics in the U.S. of A., and I put up all the bread to keep this joint going. Fortunately, we're getting a lot of people interested in the project.”

“I know. I see your name all over these days.”

“We're going to have a terrific dinner on the twenty-fifth of April. You can buy a couple of tickets if you want,” he urged. “Twenty bucks a throw.”

“Maybe we can do that,” said Sandro.

“Mary. Bring in some of the folders you're sending out, will you?” Dr.Schwartzman called to a secretary in the other room. The girl who entered was not the same girl who had let them into the clinic. “Here's some of our literature.” He handed the leaflets to Sandro. Sandro handed some to Mike. They described the history and purpose of the clinic, and there were pictures of the doctor in clinics, pictures of the doctor with television personalities or celebrities, as well as abstracts from magazine articles written about the doctor.

“I don't want to waste too much of your time, Doctor,” said Sandro. “I'm here, as I told you over the phone, because I've been assigned to represent an addict charged with murdering a cop on a rooftop over on Stanton Street last July.”

“Yeah. I know the case. I remember it. The guys that come here were all talking about it after it happened.”

“I need your help, Doctor. You're one of the only ones in New York, it seems, who knows what this junk stuff is about and how it affects people. My man says he was beaten and he never confessed. The other fellow says he was beaten and named my man when he couldn't think of anybody else. I want to find out how debilitating the habit is. If a guy on the stuff gets a beating, can he withstand any punishment, or is it torture in itself just to stand around and wait until he needs a fix?”

“These guys all give the same bullshit,” the doctor exclaimed.

Mike looked at Sandro.

“You know, I don't like to get involved with these guys,” the doctor continued. “They go in, do whatever they do, and then want to blame it on junk. You know, when a guy is on the stuff, he still knows goddamn
A
that he's pulling a trigger. So don't let them give you that shit that they didn't know what they were doing.”

“That's not the case here, Doctor,” Sandro explained. “My man indicates he was beaten. The other fellow, too. My man isn't claiming he didn't know what he was doing. He wasn't even there. I can prove that to you. And now the cops say these fellows confessed to something. I'm concerned with the capacity of a junky to resist a beating. In other words, whether or not a beating to a junky is more violent because he has less power of resistance.”

“Yeah, they all give that bullshit about beatings. I had a guy here, swore he was beaten, swore he wasn't near the scene, had all kinds of people swear the same thing. And the son of a bitch did it, and the D.A. proved it. I got in that case, and I messed myself up with the people at City Hall.

“How's that, Doctor?” asked Sandro.

“I'm trying to get a hospital going, trying to raise money, get approval from City Hall and all that. When I go into a case, and I'm the expert on narcotics, and I screw up the people's case, I get a black eye with the city, if you know what I mean. I mean, I need their help, and they say ‘screw you' when I go in and mess up one of their cases. I don't like to get involved.”

“But, Doctor, if you don't help an addict, you who are supposed to be the one who understands addiction as a medical and not a penal problem, who
is
going to help them? You know once the cops discover a prisoner is a junky, anything goes, and any crime conceivable is blamed on them.”

“Yeah, I've heard that. But don't bullshit me about confessions, will ya, fellas. I know that story from way back.”

“Doctor, I don't know which story you're talking about,” said Sandro. He was trying to keep from being curt. “All I want to know is the truth. I'm not telling, I'm asking.”

“Sure it could be. A lot of things could be. I'd have to know more about the facts, more about the fellow, how long he's been on it, what he's been taking.”

“Let me give you the information, then make up your mind. Doctor, I'm trying to save a man's life. And that's what you're devoted to, isn't it? Especially here, Doctor. I'm asking you to help an addict.”

“I'm telling you, I don't want to get involved in a case where I'm going to throw a monkey wrench when the guy is guilty and he's trying to cop out of it by saying it was the junk that made him do it, or something like that. I'm trying to help thousands, and I can't jeopardize it on one case.”

“Doctor, this man is headed for the electric chair, and you want to sacrifice him for some people who may come into the picture sometime in the future. This man is for real, and right now.”

“Who said he didn't do it?” the doctor asked. “Don't let them bullshit you. I told you about the other case I was in where everybody swore the guy didn't do it, and the lousy bastard did it. You know these junkies can bullshit you to death. They can do anything, say anything, fake anything, just for some junk. Besides, the word is out that these are the guys who did it.”

“Which word is that, Doctor?”

“The boys that come into the clinic. This is a small community, these addicts. They all know each other. And right after it happened, some of the guys who know these guys were here and said that these were the guys.”

“You must be kidding me, Doctor,” Sandro remarked. “You just told me you can't believe junkies, and now you're telling me my man is guilty based on what a junky told you.”

The doctor looked at Sandro closely. A thin smile wrinkled his face. He called to his nurse to tell the people waiting that he wouldn't be much longer. He turned back to Sandro. “I told you, you've got to know them to tell. I can tell, just talking to them, when they're being straight and when they're not.”