PART 35 (26 page)

“Look, Doctor, I don't know of any other doctor who has your inside knowledge of this narcotic stuff. I need your help. How about talking to my man,” Sandro suggested. “I'll get you into prison. I'll even bring the witnesses who know he wasn't at the scene of the crime here to talk to you. Will you help us then?”

“When is this trial coming up?” He was stuck now.

“In about two or three weeks, I believe,” replied Sandro.

“Don't you know yet?”

“No. The D.A. likes to keep defense counsel as much in the dark as possible.”

“Well, I got this dinner coming up. I won't, under any circumstances, come to court before the dinner. I'm trying to get all the judges and D.A.'s to come to the dinner, trying to get their help. I can't go into court and screw them up before the dinner.”

“But you will testify after the dinner?”

“I'm not saying that,” the doctor replied, standing, stretching onto his tiptoes, flexing his chest. He shook his head vigorously. “Boy, I'm tired. And I've still got the clinic all night.”

“You look like you're in good shape, Doctor,” Mike remarked.

He smiled, pleased. “You're not kidding, boy.” He leaned forward, bending his arm and extending the flexed muscle toward Sandro. Sandro touched the arm and looked impressed. Mike too.

“You really keep in shape?” said Mike.

“Every day.” He flexed his chest again. “I've got to stay in shape, otherwise I wouldn't be able to keep up this pace.”

“Okay, now that we've got you where you'll testify after the dinner,” said Sandro.

“Wait a minute, I didn't say that. I said I'd consider it. You've got to show me first.”

“Right. I'll get back to you with the proof. All I want to know is that you will testify, if I can satisfy you that this is a case where the man is worth helping. Right?”

“You come on back, and we'll talk about it.” He was playing cute. “I still think your man is the man who did it. I mean I got the word already, right after it happened. Not just now, but right after it happened.”

Sandro restrained his impatience. “I appreciate your time and your cooperation.” He rose and extended his hand and waited for the crush the doctor would put on his hand. The doctor's hand met Sandro's and pressed it hard. Sandro tightened his grip on the doctor's hand equally hard, returning the doctor's stare.

“You're not the only one who knows where the gym is, Doctor,” said Sandro.

The doctor laughed. Mike and Sandro left his office, walked out past the painted glass door, through the crowd of junkies milling in the night, waiting to get in. They walked to the car.

“Well, what do you think, Sandro?” asked Mike.

“I think that guy is a phony.”

“I think he hates junkies,” Mike added. “He thinks they're all no-good liars and bums. He doesn't give a damn about junkies.”

“You know, you're right. I didn't think about it exactly like that, but I think you're right. He's only interested in the grand, glorious spectacle of himself that he creates by being a crusader in this field. A hospital! He wants a hospital! I think he really just wants to be seen, have his name at the top of some list. And that muscle bit goes right along with his personality. The junkies are just poor saps, a means to an end.”

“What a lousy shame, what a rotten crime,” said Mike.

“What's that?”

“This creep is one of the only ones in the city who knows enough about this stuff to help Alvarado, and he's just interested in bullshit. He'd let the guy die.”

“But think of what a shame it is for the dumb junkies in this world. He's the only one who wants to help them right now, and even he doesn't care. Well, we'll find someone else. Some other doctor. I wouldn't even talk to that creep again.”

As they drove from the curb, they passed the painted glass windows and the crowd huddled hopefully outside.

CHAPTER XXVII

It was late afternoon, and Nick Siakos sat at Sandro's conference table, totally absorbed in Willie Morales's statement, which confirmed that Hernandez pawned a radio at Sid Goodman's Pawnshop in the early afternoon of July 3rd.

“This is terrific, Sandro,” Siakos exclaimed. “You know, I think we have a once-in-a-lifetime case. These fellows may actually be innocent, and the cops might actually have the wrong guys.”

“Nick, from all I've uncovered so far, these men
are
actually innocent.”

“They may be innocent, you know that,” Siakos mused aloud, not having heard Sandro. “Maybe we'll pull these cats out of the bag. What a coup it will be. These statements you have are terrific! This proves Hernandez pulled that job uptown in El Barrio, and pawned the stuff. He couldn't be two places at once.”

“Not only do I have that statement, Nick, but I have the pledge books from the other shop he went to. I've seen his signature; I know what he pawned; I know how much he got for it. I've got your whole alibi for you.”

“And you know, Sandro, these statements throw the lie to that confession Hernandez was supposed to have made naming Alvarado. The confession says he met Alvarado and they were in Brooklyn in the morning, then went driving around, and things like that, then killed the cop.”

“You saw the confession?” Sandro asked with surprise.

“Sure. I was at Ellis's office one day. He showed me the confession, wanted me to talk to Hernandez about being a witness against Alvarado. They offered me manslaughter in the first if he testified,” Siakos said.

“Are you going to do it?”

“I told Hernandez about it. This is murder one, I told him. Maybe the chair. Manslaughter one the maximum is twenty years. But he says that he will fight.” Siakos seemed disappointed. “More so because he got your man into this. He wants to testify and tell what really happened, about the beating. He says he didn't do it, he wasn't near Alvarado all day.”

“Did you see Alvarado's statement there?” Sandro pressed.

“I read it, yes, but I can't remember it too well. I remember that I don't think he did confess to the D.A. As I remember, he didn't admit anything to the D.A.”

“Don't you remember what it said?”

“I can't.” Siakos shrugged and shook his head. Sandro was fighting his anger. “I really can't. You know, I have some people who work with Mrs. Hernandez at the factory, and they tell me that Hernandez was at the factory with his wife at a Hundred-and-tenth Street and First Avenue, the morning of the crime.”

“Do you have statements?” Sandro asked.

“Some. These people saw him drive her to work in the morning. And I have another fellow who saw Hernandez come back there to meet her at lunch hour, around twelve fifteen. After Hernandez pulled the job in El Barrio, he went back to lunch with his wife or something, and this fellow who works in the same building saw them together.”

“Do you know his name?” Sandro asked.

“Ortega. German Ortega. Better than that, I've got his signed statement that he saw them together in El Barrio around lunchtime.”

“Was Alvarado with him?”

“No. German just said he saw the two of them, Hernandez and his wife.”

“That's fine. Another link in your alibi, Nick. Has Ellis asked you for the names of your alibi witnesses in this case?” Sandro wondered.

“No. Has he asked you?”

“No. I'm hoping that he doesn't. We'll be able to stuff this case right down his throat if he doesn't.”

Siakos relished that with a high-pitched laugh. “Will you give me a copy of that statement you took from Morales, from the pawnshop?” Siakos asked.

“Surely,” Sandro agreed. He had been pondering how to get Ortega's statement from Siakos. “I'll give you a copy of this, and you give me a copy of the statement you got from Ortega.”

“Fine. I've got it right here.” Siakos leafed through his briefcase and brought out a sheet of yellow paper. Sandro read the statement. Sandro gave both statements to Elizabeth to photocopy.

“Well, Sandro. I have to get going,” Siakos announced, putting his papers in his briefcase. “I have a closing on a luncheonette this evening. I have to get out to Brooklyn.”

“Okay, fine. Let me know what you're doing, so we can work together from here on in,” suggested Sandro. “The trial is too close to work separately now.”

Elizabeth handed the Ortega statement and a copy of the Morales statement to Siakos.

“Fine, I'll talk to you, Sandro.” Siakos rose. Sandro walked with him to the door. Siakos bade a profuse, courtly good evening to Elizabeth and left. Sandro turned.

“Elizabeth, get Sam Bemer on the phone for me.” He walked inside to his office.

“Hi, Sandro,” Sam said as he picked up the phone.

“Hello, Sam. I was just talking to Siakos. I told you that we were trying to put together an alibi for Hernandez to stuff down his throat if he testified against us.”

“Right.”

“Well, now we've got it. Back to front, solid. We know where he was, at what time, and we have people who will testify to his whereabouts on July third. And none of it has to do with Alvarado or even the scene of the crime. We can establish he wasn't anywhere near it.”

“Okay, kid. That's great.”

“Now that we've done it, Sam, instead of being worried about a severance from Hernandez because he'd testify against us, maybe we ought to move for one ourselves and be tried without having Hernandez or his confession as a stone around our necks.”

“That's not a bad idea, Sandro. Not bad at all. Because even though the judge'll instruct the jury that whatever Hernandez might have confessed, including accusing Alvarado, can't be considered evidence against us, the jurors would have to be goddamn atom scientists to handle all that in their heads.”

“I think we're in pretty good shape,” said Sandro. “Why let Hernandez's confession stink up the trial?”

“Good thinking, Sandro. Really good. You want me to draw up the papers?”

“I'd love you forever if you do.”

“Goddamn. I can't pass that up. I'll send you a copy of the papers. When do you want to get together on the other stuff, Sandro?”

“I'll call you in a couple of days, Sam.”

CHAPTER XXVIII

The mornings now were warmed with a promise of spring. Those who awoke before the daily traffic rolled and rumbled could even hear birds.

“Who is the colored guy up there?” asked Jerry Ball, standing with Sandro and Mike in the rear yard of 153 Stanton Street.

“A client of mine named Shorts. He's working off the fee he owes me.”

Mike stood next to Sandro, hands stashed in his pockets, eyes bleary from lack of sleep. Sandro gave a signal. The Negro on the roof stepped onto the fire escape and started down. Jerry's motion-picture camera began to whirr, following the moving figure. Shorts walked down one flight, moved behind the steps, bent down at the window, and climbed back to the top again. He followed the routine twice more, as Jerry filmed it.

“Now, I want you to take still pictures of this guy standing up there, looking down here.” Sandro gave the man on the fire escape another signal.

“Okay.”

“Take the pictures from directly beneath these windows,” Sandro whispered, pointing toward the Italian woman's windows.

Jerry moved into position and began to assemble his still camera. A window just above their heads slid open.
The Italian woman's window
!

“Keep taking your pictures, Jerry,” Sandro whispered quickly. “Don't worry about a thing. Just keep snapping.” Sandro turned and looked up.

“What you do?” inquired an old woman.

“We're from the insurance company,” answered Sandro. He heard Jerry's camera clicking. “We're just taking some pictures of that building.”

She looked up at the man on the fire escape, back to Sandro, shrugged, and shut the window.

“Must have been the Italian woman's mother,” said Sandro. “Finished yet, Jerry?”

“In a minute, Sandro.” He continued focusing his lens on the buildings.

“Mike, go and give Shorts five bucks so he'll be happy.” Sandro handed Mike the bill. “Tell him thanks for going up on the fire escape for us.”

When Jerry finished, he packed his cameras, and he and Sandro started out of the yard. Sandro turned to look at the Italian woman's apartment. No one was at the windows. They walked through the litter-strewn alley that ran the length of the block behind the buildings. Someone had had a fire in one of the apartments and had thrown the burned furniture out the windows to add to the debris. When they got to the car on Suffolk Street, Mike was nowhere to be seen.

“Where's Mike?” Sandro wondered.

“Maybe he's having coffee.”

Sandro looked into a
bodega.
Mike was not there. “Might as well put our equipment in the car, Jerry.”

“Right.”

Jerry and Sandro sat in the car and waited. In a short while, Sandro spied Mike turning the corner from Rivington Street. Mike waved and smiled broadly.

“Where the hell did you go?”

“I went to talk to that old Italian lady,” Mike explained.

“You did what? I told you we had to be careful about people's witnesses.”

“You didn't see her;
I
did. I spoke to her.”

“Great.” Sandro smiled. “What did she have to say?”

Mike smiled broadly. “Nothing. She said she knew what we were doing. Her daughter was the one who saw the guy, but she said the daughter can't say what the guy looks like. She didn't see his face.” Mike studied Sandro.

“Are you kidding?”

“Sandro, would I kid about that?”

“Is the daughter at home now?”

“No.”

“But the old lady told you the daughter definitely didn't see the guy's face?” Sandro repeated.