The Penny Ferry da-2 Read online

  Their lips were purple and wet and slick as the underside of a lily pad. Mary said that she didn't care if the punk look was the rage, they looked like cheap whores. No doubt about it, they looked a bit tawdry. They looked wanton. They looked wicked and nasty. They looked terrific.

  The guys, between the three of them, were wearing more gold than Fort Knox. Necklaces, crucifixes, St. Chris medals, St. Francis medals, St. Jude, St. Anthony, St. Peter, and so on. Rings, I.D. bracelets, watches, buckles. If they tried to board a plane at Logan Airport the metal detector would get a hernia. They wore continental-cut jackets with a little sheen to them, black calfskin boots with heels- they needed the heels to be taller than their datesand pants that were skin-tight at the crotch to show the world that they were hung like seed bulls. Their hair looked a lot like their dates' hair. All of them had mustaches; one also wore a beard. Their white silk shirts had big collars and were open to the navel, this to reveal both the array of chains and charms and medals and the chest rugs. Each guy's bosom looked like a coconut-fiber doormat. I've heard it rumored that Caesare's Men's Boutique sells not only hairpieces but chest rugs too, for those who aren't naturally endowed. I could use one. Another item that purports to move well at Caesare's is a padded-cup jock for guys who want to look hung like a seed bull but aren't. I could use one…

  "Well at least you can tell the boys from the girls here," I said.

  "That's refreshing anyway." Never had I seen such blatant sexuality; never was human sexual dimorphism more exaggerated.

  "And don't bother staring at their pants, Mary; they're just wearing those padded jocks."

  "If I have another glass of wine I think I'll go check," she said.

  "By the way, I notice you haven't taken your eyes off that tall girl's ass since she walked in."

  "Huh?"

  "Don't 'huh' me, buster. How would you like me to dress like that?"

  "I'd love it."

  "Hey Joe! Joey!" A fat man with an enormous mustache was working his way over to our table. Joe jumped up and pumped his hand. Then his arm slowed down. He was looking at the man's face. He had obviously been crying.

  "Joey-" the man said quickly, and he leaned over and whispered in Joe's ear.

  "I know."

  "Oh, sorry," the man said, turning to us, "didn't mean to do that. Something sad just happened. Sorry."

  Then he turned back to Joe again and leaned over him. "Can you come for a few minutes anyhow?"

  "Yes," answered Joe. "We'll be right over when we finish."

  The fat man left, his eyes glancing to and fro- as if looking for others to accost. We dove into our ice cream, and Joe explained that they had Andy Santuccio laid out at Langone's funeral parlor a couple of blocks away and that he was going to stop by and pay his respects. We said we'd come along.

  The place was crowded. People of all shapes and ages milled about, talking in low tones. They kissed each other, embraced, sobbed quietly, and said the rosary. About half spoke English, half Italian. There was a lot of black, especially worn by the older women. Men wore dark hats. It almost resembled a congregation of Orthodox Jews on the Lower East Side. The parlor room which held the remains was packed with flowers. Two old aunts stood at the casket, shaking hands with mourners and wiping their eyes. Many people came and went from the chapel room. The only things missing were the street procession and the men with the trumpets following behind, playing the dirge. Otherwise it very closely resembled the Sicilian funeral scene in The Godfather. I made this observation to Joe, who suddenly realized something.

  "Follow me," he said, leading us back past the offices to a small room crammed with mementos and pictures on all the walls. Joe looked through several volumes of photographs and newspaper clippings before showing me a picture of Hanover Street crowded to overflowing with spectators as a pair of hearses inched down the street. All the men wore hats: skimmers, fedoras, bowlers, even top hats. The women wore wide hats with flowers on top and big, full-skirted dresses. The hearses looked about 1920s vintage.

  "What's this?" I asked him.

  "The funeral procession of Sacco and Vanzetti. Look. See the armbands worn by all the mourners? Look, here's another one."

  He turned the page and I saw a grisly photo of two dead men on slabs. They were partially draped, but their upper torsos and heads were visible. Their faces had the vacant, collapsed look of death. Then Joe turned another page and we saw the two men formally laid out in suits, placed in caskets with the lids propped open, and covered with flowers, much as poor young Andy was next

  door. But a crowd was tightly pressed around the corpses. The people in the crowd were holding up a huge banner, which read: DID You SEE WHAT I DID TO THOSE ANARCHIST BASTARDS THE OTHER DAY?

  "Do you know about that quote, Doc?"

  "Yeah. It was supposedly said by the judge at the trial, Webster Thayer, when he was playing golf with friends in Worcester. It showed he was just a wee bit biased. It doesn't say very much for American jurisprudence, does it?"

  "Nah. It sure doesn't."

  The fat man with the watery eyes and walrus mustache came into the room and looked at the pictures with us for a few minutes. He kept apologizing for interrupting us and Joe kept telling him he wasn't. His name was Gus Giordano, and I liked him immediately and intensely. Like Moe Abramson, he seemed to be a giving person.

  "So sad," he said, looking down at the photographs of the funeral procession. "So very sad."

  Big drops were falling on the pictures. Giordano was crying. He wiped his eyes and looked at Mary. He managed a weak smile and she hugged him.

  "But you should see the real thing. The films of it. Joey, you know Frank Bertoni?"

  "Never heard of him."

  "He lives just up the street. He's a film nut, you know? Collects all kinds of old movies. He's put together a film based on old newsreels of the trial. Took him years to get all the footage. We've shown it at Sons of Italy and sometimes-"

  "Wait a minute," said Joe, looking up quickly. "Hey, I think I've seen that film. It's like old-time movies? Like Chaplin?"

  "That's it," said Giordano. "Well, if you've seen it already.. ."

  "But we haven't," said Mary. "Do you think it's possible for us to-"

  "For you, the world," said Giordano, and went to a phone.

  He returned in less than five minutes and handed Joe a slip of paper with a name and address on it.

  "He's a great guy and he loves to show the film; it's his pride and joy. I'd go too but I really should stay awhile. Arrivederla."

  After Joe spent another ten minutes pumping hands and giving hugs, we left Langone's and walked four blocks to the apartment building of Frank Bertoni, who let us in at the front door and walked us up two floors. He was young and blondish and wore wire-rimmed granny glasses. His apartment was small but neat, the walls covered with old movie posters. There was a photo of Charlie Chaplin in a repairman's suit, wielding a huge wrench to giant machinery. There were posters featuring Gable and Lombard, Tracy and Hepburn, Jane Russell, and lots more.

  Frank had prepared for our arrival; armchairs were set up in the living room in a row facing a screen. Behind the seats sat a projector on a table. He switched the projector on, the house lights off. The whirring of the projector was the only noise in the room. The movie was silent, the seconds ticked off by a line like a radar blip that moved counterclockwise in a circle: 5… 4… 3… 2… 1. ..and

  then we saw the title in black and white: THE NEVER-ENDING WRONG

  a film by

  Francis J. Bertoni

  The window was open, and the street noises of babbling pedestrians and car traffic that filtered up through the window were a natural accompaniment to the crowd scenes and protests we saw on film. The film was, of course, a spliced collection of the original film footage. The moving images on the screen bore all the earmarks of age, with ropelike streaks that moved back and forth across the pictures, making them look like it was raining, and great white blobs and {la
shes that exploded continually all over the screen. Most striking, though, was the high-speed, Chaplinesque puppet dance of the people, which failed to lend the necessary comic relief to the grim scenes that paraded before us.

  The first thing we saw was a huge crowd of protesters carrying signs and banners in the rain. I was puzzled to see a gigantic pillar in the center of the picture. A shot from farther back revealed it to be the base of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square. Tall-helmeted bobbies milled around the fringes of the mob. Flash to Paris, where a similar throng stood and pranced around the Arc de Triomphe, the primitive camera making the solemn marchers look like square dancers as they jumped and turned and sashayed arm in arm. On to Moscow, where, as one would suspect, they were going bananas. Whole trainloads of protesters, probably encouraged by the state, filed off railroad cars and drummed through the wide streets as they met farmers driving troikas and oxcarts. Around St. Basil's the multitudes in tall hats and billowing skirts shouted and raised their hands together, sang, and hopped about like bunny rabbits. In Rome the crowds were tumultuous, as might be expected in the home country of the accused. Though lightly clad in comparison to their northern cousins, the crowds in St. Peter's Square engaged in the same tragicomic square dance.

  Shot of a building. Bertoni announced that it was the Dedham courthouse, scene of the trial. Pan down the street toward another biggish building, which we cannot see. Then another shot. It is a prison, complete with high brick wall and coil of barbed wire, barely visible, creeping over the edge. Two watchtowers, and the big cell-block building itself, with barred windows. The Dedham jail looks the way we think a jail should look- perfect for a movie set. A crowd coming toward the camera, with all the people doing that old-time-movie polka dance that's usually funny but now is not. Close-up of four men. I see instantly that the two in the middle are Sacco and Vanzetti. They look young… and hopeful. Sacco even manages a weak and fleeting smile. Vanzetti looks stern. He is talking. He is holding hands with his fellow prisoner, a nice gesture. No, wait. They're handcuffed together. Their outer arms are also handcuffed, to the marshals beside them. Vanzetti is trying to say something, but he wants to use his hands and he cannot. He finally manages to bow his head and remove his worker's snap-brim hat, which he holds, and speaks to the camera. Shot of Sacco, saying nothing. Vanzetti is tall and handsome; his giant drooping mustache gives him the air of an orator. Sacco is short, stocky, and trim in his dark suit and bowler hat. Very close shot of Sacco's face. Typically Italian. Dark, with rather prominent nose and cheekbones. Intense and handsome. The face aroused much controversy because witnesses swore that it was Nick Sacco they saw at the scene of the robbery and murder. Nobody claimed to have seen Vanzetti. And yet Herbert Ehrmann, the young, bright assistant defense counsel, showed the striking resemblance between Sacco's typical Italian face and that of Joe Morelli, leader of the holdup gang in Providence. A resemblance that was not twinlike but clonelike. The prosecution and the state refused to consider the evidence.

  Back to Vanzetti, who finishes his speech and replaces his cap. The crowd moves on, jump-stepping fast down the street. Policemen in double-breasted coats with brass buttons bring up the rear, carrying shotguns. Switch to big car pulling up in front of courthouse. Car is fancy, probably a Stutz or Packard or Cadillac. Out pops a man in tails and top hat. Close-up as he tips his hat and smiles. judge Webster Thayer. His hair and mustache are trim and white. He looks prosperous, and is. Switch to beefy, truculent man charging down the sidewalk. Military carriage, firm bouncy step, skimmer straw hat. Fred Katzmann, the district attorney and chief prosecutor. He looks competent, trained, thorough, and absolutely merciless. He proves himself to be all of these, especially during the cross-examination of Sacco, in which his questions are directed toward Sacco's political beliefs, his American patriotism, his home and family life, and a dozen other subjects not related to the South Braintree crime but designed to inflame and prejudice the jury. Katzmann gives a false smile and quicksteps on. Crowd going up courthouse steps. They jump and swing their way up in double time. One can almost hear the dance caller and fiddle. As each person appears Bertoni identifies him for us. Then we are surprised to see the interior of the courtroom, and Bertoni explains that this was before the Lindbergh kidnapping trial, at which cameras of any type were banned from courtrooms.

  "It keeps getting darker and lighter," said Mary, breaking our silence. "Why's that?"

  "It was before high-intensity lamps," explained Frank. "They're lighting magnesium flares, one after the other."

  The courtroom is packed. Shot of curious looking wire cage in back of courtroom. Sacco and Vanzetti are sitting in it. Cage is solid except for space to peek out in front. Close-up of judge Thayer. Shot of someone testifying. Slow pan of pistols and bullets and cartridge cases on table. Shot of defense table, with attorneys Thompson and Ehrmann nodding and talking to each other. Shot of Katzmann again. Scary. Evil. But then the film was designed to convey that…

  Final close-up of Sacco and Vanzetti. Then the strange, snake-like scratches in the film, the dark vertical lines that weave about on the screen, seem to converge on the two men in the dock. They snake forward and back, growing thicker, almost blotting out the two faces. Close-up of Vanzetti, whose face has lost all of its former defiance and sternness. One now sees doubt in the handsome, youthful face. Doubt, and the beginnings of fear. The lines grow thick again. Big white blotches explode around the face.

  Cut to Boston Statehouse. Big crowd on Beacon Street and up the steps. Cops with brass buttons and billy clubs holding the crowd back. Huge car pulls up. Much bigger than Judge Thayer's. A real limo. Out pops a man in a sporty three-piecer, with skimmer. He jumps up the statehouse steps, removes the skimmer, and waves it to the crowd. Governor Alvan Fuller. He looks rich, and is. He owns the Packard dealership in Boston. He wants to be President. Close-up of Fuller speaking. Then a shot of three middle-aged men. Very distinguished trio. Bertoni tells us they are the special commission chosen by Fuller to review the case. They look as alike as Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod. All have white hair and trim mustaches like judge Thayer. All have well-cut suits with tails, and top hats. They look as if they're going to a ball. The credentials of the commission were flawless: Robert Grant was a former judge, Samuel Stratton was president of M.I.T., and A. Lawrence Lowell was president of Harvard. In fact, the towns of Lawrence and Lowell were named after members of his family, who put up the money to build the factories and dams and canals to make even more money. But they meant well, those three top-hatted gentlemen. I guess;

  Cut to crowds of protesters on Beacon Street again. Cut to Trafalgar Square, Paris, Moscow, and Rome again. Cut to a grim crowd of silent people standing around a big prison. Now, even the old time movie camera cannot make them jump or dance. They are frozen. Waiting.

  "This is Charlestown Prison, the afternoon of the execution," said Frank.

  The camera pans the faces of the crowd. All is still. Then the shot we aren't ready for a small crowd of prison officials opening the gates, and behind them people carrying out the two black coffins…

  The film hissed and crackled. The wavy black lines snaked along over the picture. The white splotches exploded on the screen.

  Cut to Langone's funeral parlor, the place we had just been to see Andy Santuccio. Then a shot of the inside, where the open caskets are resting on sawhorses, the big banner with Judge Thayer's quote up behind them. It looks, just like the photographs we'd seen earlier. Then the final scene, a slow procession of the two hearses down Hanover Street, decked in flowers. Cut to a quote:

  None of my enemies will be mourned as I am.

  – Bartolomeo Vanzetti, 1927

  The film crackled loudly, snapped through the gears of the machine, and flipped round and round until Frank Bertoni switched it off. We sat, stunned. Mary's mouth was halfway open. She didn't twitch a muscle. Finally Joe broke the silence by thanking Frank.

  "Was it really that big, Frank?" asked Mary. "People protes
ting all over the world?"

  "Oh yeah. In fact a lot of people, in retrospect, think that the protesters did as much as anything else to send them to the chair. It got too big. Too threatening. The big shots in the system felt that half the world was against them and willing to help 'the reds.' It scared hell out of 'em, and they convinced themselves they had to snuff out this radical menace before it got out of hand and overpowered them. It became a battle of ideology and class, not a criminal trial."

  We had some of Frank's Amaretto and departed. We stopped to buy coffee beans and spinach pasta, then went to the car. Joe asked us over to his place on Pinckney Street, so we went. After all, he treated us to dinner, and I think he wanted a chance to pay us back for the weekends in Concord. But my heart wasn't' in the visit. The film had done me in. Mary too. We sat and listened to records and shared a bottle of bubbly. Joe sensed our depression.

  "Movie got to you eh? Yeah. Thinking back now to when I first saw it, I remember feeling pretty depressed too. Well as I said before, the case makes the Commonwealth of Massachusetts look like a ninety-pound pile of dog doo."

  "Any luck on finding Johnny Robinson's courier pouch?" I asked, changing the subject.

  "Naw. It'll never turn up. They destroyed it I'm sure."

  "You say he wore it every day?"

  "Yep. Wore it to bed practically."

  "Did he wash it often?"

  "Huh? How the hell do I know? What kind of question is-"

  "Nothing. I was just wondering. Well Mary, let's get moving."

  So we went and got home forty minutes later. It was close to midnight. I sat on the couch reading a book about French vineyards.

  "Wait here, sport," said Mary, disappearing upstairs. Ten minutes later I heard labored footsteps on the carpet, and felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up and couldn't believe my eyes.

  Mary was standing there in skin-tight pants and a pink sweater that would've been too tight on a Barbie doll. She had half her make-up cabinet on her face, her hair down, and was scarcely able to retain her balance on five-inch spiked heels.