The Penny Ferry da-2 Read online

  "Ordered? Who would order him to do that?"

  "You know who."

  "The Mob? Oh, and that's why DeLucca's name upset you. You knew it was the Mob. Why would they be interested in evidence from the case? And how do we know the thing doesn't clear Sacco and Vanzetti?"

  "Those two questions exactly were what was bothering me earlier when I was pacing around in your yard, while the rest of you ate lunch. They bothered me a lot. Okay. Either the Wise Guys want the damning evidence to blackmail the Italian-American community- to threaten to make it public if they're not paid off- or else they simply want to destroy it. I kind of suspect the latter possibility. Much as I hate the Mob, I admire the way they usually look out for the rest of us, especially us Calabrians and Sicilians. But you never know. For the past twenty years the Wise Guys have had everybody believing they don't traffic in hard drugs. Everybody thought it was the blacks and Hispanics. Not so. The Mob is heavy into horse. Why? Because it pays. Pays like there ain't no tomorrow. Now, if they knew the evidence or whatever in Andy's envelope could pay, they might steal it and hold it for ransom."

  "And if it got out? The effect on the North End?"

  "Disaster. My talk with Gus confirmed that. It'd be a major blow to the community's morale. The thing would travel across America like a shock wave. And Italians wouldn't be the only ones hurt by it. The labor movement, the entire liberal left- hell. The neofascist bunch they've got in the White House now would get that much more ammunition to go after every splinter group, every bunch who's not lily white and WASP. I could see a major backlash?

  "I couldn't. And frankly, I don't see how anything carried in that envelope could be hot enough to kill over."

  "Yeah, but it was. Why don't you go say that to Sam?"

  "Joe? What if whatever it is proves they were innocent?" asked. Mary..

  "I just can't see it, Mare," he said, shaking his head, "and Gus can't either. That's why he's even more upset than I am. He's not telling a soul about this and neither of you better either. Mary, how can you sell good news? You can't. And there's no reason to hide it. There's no money or leverage in good news. The only reason people are going after that packet is because there's something Andy didn't want to get out. There's just no other explanation."

  I was afraid Joe was right. But I didn't say anything.

  "Charlie, you said there was no way they could've been guilty."

  "Yeah I know. And I still say it; But then, just as guilt was never really proven and there was no confession, innocence has never been proven either. I feel the weight of evidence remains overwhelmingly in their favor. But it was never a hundred percent."

  "Sacco's alibi. That's it. That's what Gus thinks," said Joe.

  "What about that other guy's confession?" asked Mary.

  "Madeiros? He was doomed anyway. Again, you can take it strongly either way, just like the rest of the case. Pro: Celestino Madeiros knew he was going to the chair and didn't have anything to gain by clearing Sacco and Vanzetti; he did it out of the last twinge of conscience he had left because he didn't want to see two innocent guys get fried. Con: just as he didn't have anything to gain, he also had nothing to lose. Why not make a last-ditch effort to save a few partners in crime?"

  "Unbelievable. Hollywood couldn't have written a better script," said Joe.

  "It's like one of those optical tricks, Mary. Is the picture with the curved lines an outline of a vase or two faces staring at one another? Is that stairway the top of the basement stairs, looking down, or the bottom of the attic stairs, looking up?"

  "Sacco's alibi," repeated Joe. "Both men had lots of witnesses swearing they were with them during the holdup. Sacco claimed he was in Boston that day, right in the North End, getting his passport ready so he could visit his relatives in Italy. He said he went to a local restaurant, a coffeehouse, and met a lot of people as he strolled around during the afternoon. But the jury found that suspicious. Why had this guy missed work- not shown up at his factory in Stoughton- on the very day of the holdup, when he never missed work? Ha! they said, very convenient."

  "And Vanzetti?" asked Mary, drawing her silk robe tight around her against the chill.

  "Vanzetti's alibi depended on neighborhood friends, who were mostly Italian too. But one legit Anglo-Saxon vouched for him: Melvin Corl, who was mending nets on the beach in North Plymouth. Also, Vanzetti was not absent from his place of business as was Sacco. Reason? He had no place of business; he came and went as he pleased."

  "The whole thing is screwy," Mary said.

  "Yeah," I said. "But Joe's right. The jury tended to believe Vanzetti a bit more than Sacco. It's the old double. reverse again, don't you see? Sacco's alibi was doubted because it was so good, so coincidentally foolproof. Why would a man decide to go into Boston and be absent from his work on the very day the robbery was committed? To the jury it meant only one thing: a false and carefully prearranged alibi. Add to this Sacco's twinlike resemblance to Mike Morelli… and there you have it."

  We struggled to our feet and stood over the lacquered tea table. I felt as if a great weight had descended upon me. I knew what they were thinking, and felt sad. Everybody knew- had known since the arrest and trial- that there was always a chance that it would be shown that the shoe trimmer and the fish peddler had really pulled the job. That they were both guilty of armed robbery and murder and deserved to die.

  We trudged back to the house. Joe was silent. He finally announced that he might resign from the force. Mary told him to cut the bullshit and help plan dinner. This helped some, but I was quick to notice that he did not pitch into the kitchen activities with his usual gusto. Instead he trudged around like a robot, slicing and peeling here, tasting, there, trimming here, all with a look of black depression on his big dark face.

  I called Tom Costello to confirm our appointment for early the next morning, since the original appointment had been scrubbed because of our wrecked house. During the course of our conversation I happened to mention Joe, and Tom replied that he'd like to see Joe again soon. I remembered then that the two men liked each other. I told Tom in all frankness that he'd be pretty sore tomorrow after my work on him, and suggested that perhaps a little jaunt with us would take his mind off the discomfort. He agreed, and it was set up.

  "I told ya, Doc, I don't want to go," Joe said a few minutes later. I'm dropping this thing and so are you. Frankly, I hope the whole thing blows over. All I want to do is to get Carmen DeLucca. Dead or alive. Preferably dead."

  We sat on the high stools near the butcher block and talked and smelled the onion soup and halibut cooking. Joe got a wee bit brighter over the deep sadness. He still said he wasn't going.

  "After today I don'; wanna hear about those two greaseballs anymore. Not now. Not ever."

  "We're going down to Braintree tomorrow at ten. Be at my office, Joe. Be there."

  "Not on your life."

  He was.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I had Tom in the chair, tilted far back, for an hour and a half. He was getting purple in the face. If it had been a set of lowers I was putting in, he would have remained sitting upright, but the uppers require the patient to be almost horizontal so I can look right into the upper gums and sockets from the tooth's point of view. The saliva ejector squeaked and hissed and kept his mouth dry.

  I had prepped Tom's eyeteeth, or canines, by grinding them into pegs over which the ends of the six-unit bridge would fit. I spent the better part of an hour checking and rechecking the fit, using De Mark and articulating paper to locate humps and high spots I wanted to remove. I checked his bite and removed the interferences with a greenstone and the polishing wheel. When the occlusion, or bite, was perfect, I was ready for Susan to mix the cement. Susan mixed it perfectly in one minute. It was a brand-new wonder cement that creates a chemical as well as physical bond between the bridge and the teeth. Called glass ionomer, the cement contains ions of fluoride which slow-release into the teeth constantly and prevent decay. Great stuf
f!

  I applied the cement, inserted the bridge firmly and finally, and it was done. The entire upper permanent bridge lit in flawlesslybetter than any glove. There would be no wiggle or waggle. No fuss, no muss. Tom could eat anything _and his permanent front dentures would not come out or slip. He would not have to put them to sleep in a glass every night. He would not have to buy Polygrip, Dentu-Creme, or any of that elderly stuff.

  I liked doing this kind of work because it demanded a lot of skill and patience. And when I was finished my patients were always very happy with the result.

  "You do good work, Doc," said Tom, admiring himself in the mirror. "And I can talk now too. You can't imagine how sick I was of sounding like a dress designer. The only thing is, my mouth feels all tingly and fuzzy."

  "Well enjoy it while you can, old sport," I said as I cleaned up and hung up the white smock. "Because when the local wears off there'll be some discomfort for a while. Now here's Joe in the parking lot. Let's go."

  Out on 128 Joe told Tom about recent developments in the case, including a brief and bloody bio of one Carmen DeLucca. Tom said he was sick of hearing about the Mob the way the Germans must be sick of hearing about Hitler. But like me, he couldn't believe for a second that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty. However, the more we explained to him, the more silent he became.

  At the South Shore Plaza shopping mall we got coffee and studied a map of Braintree. Pearl Street, where the old Slater and Morrill factory stood, was about a mile away. We drove over there, and found nothing.

  Joe drove while Tom and I consulted the street map and one of my library books which had a detailed map of the robbery scene. As we passed up and down the section of Pearl Street indicated, we saw not even the slightest indication that it was anything special. No historical marker, no privately erected sign, not even a memorial water bubbler for the two watchmen killed. Nothing.

  "I'll be damned," mused Joe as he nursed the cruiser along in a crawl. The guy behind us leaned on his horn and Finally passed us right in the middle of an intersection. As he flew past he glared at Joe and shouted, then roared on and ran the next red light.

  "Where the hell are the cops when you need 'em?" said Joe, staring out of his unmarked car.

  "Pull over here," said Tom, pointing. "This is right smack dab where it happened."

  We got out and walked around. Nothing was left of the Slater and Morrill factory. In its place was a rubble-strewn field of weeds. About a hundred yards down the road and pretty far back I saw the remains of the Rice and Hutchins factory: a rickety red-brick smokestack just like the one Andy Santurnio had been found in. I pointed it out to Joe.

  "Surely that's more than coincidence, Joe."

  "Don't be too sure. There are lots of old smokestacks left behind when they pull down factories. It's because they're too tall to wreck; they can't get the wrecking ball up high enough, even on the biggest derricks. The only really safe way to take them down is to build a scaffolding around them and do it piece by piece, which is too expensive. Only way to do it cheap is to dynamite 'em, which they should do, because they're a hazard. They fall over and it's like a bomb."

  We strolled along the fields, using my book as a reference to key spots. The railroad track was right where it had been in the 1920s, minus the depot shack where the money was delivered in the morning. On the day of the robbery, the payroll had been kept there until mid-afternoon, when the two guards, Parmenter and Berardelli, came and took it away in two locked boxes. But they never

  made it to the factory. We walked through the scene, trying to reconstruct it, and half-closing my eyes, I could almost take myself back to April 15, 1920.

  The men in the depot shack received the money as scheduled when the train pulled through that morning. They paid little attention to the men lounging nearby, watching the train. Later, on the witness stand, they recalled that these early-morning visitors were obviously casing the job, making sure the money had indeed arrived. Things were quiet until just before three o'clock…

  I squint my eyes and look across the road to the nibble field, but now it's a red-brick factory with a belching smokestack and people in skimmer hats in the yard. Some of the workingmen wear cloth caps. Two men emerge from the building and walk purposefully along the road, which is Pearl Street, then across it toward the shack. They go in. A few minutes later they come back out, each carrying a metal bank box. They are armed but guns aren't drawn. They usually make the transfer by car or wagon, with a shotgun guard, but today for some strange reason they walk.

  Back across the street, then up along the road past Rice and Hutchins, they approach the grounds of Slater and Morrill. As they near the big red-brick factory, two men who have been leaning idly against the wall step out and walk toward the street, intercepting the two guards with the metal boxes. As they get within a few feet of the guards, guns appear in their hands. There are a few shouted orders. Quickly and without warning one of the bandits shoots, and the chief guard, Frederick Parmenter, falls mortally wounded, clutching at his middle. Alessandro Berardelli, his assistant, panics. He drops his box and begins to run back across Pearl Street, where he is cut down by pistol fire. Then one of the gunmen raises up his pistol and fires a lone shot into the air.

  This appears to be a signal, because an instant later a large touring car,. a big Buick, roars down the street and stops. The bandits begin to jump in, but one of them hesitates and walks back to Berardelli, lying in the street. He takes deliberate aim and shoots the fallen man point-blank, killing him, then returns to the car and gets in. The car, a dirty greenish-brown in color (or was it dark-blue? The witnesses later argue), speeds off down the road, a wicked-looking shotgun protruding from the rear window. At the railroad crossing gate the big car stops and the bandits order the gatekeepers to raise the drop gate immediately or they will be shot. They do this, but not before one of them gets a good look at one of the killer bandits and hears his voice. The car roars off, turning left at the intersection and speeding away, the occupants flinging special round-headed tacks (which always land point upward) behind them.

  Ingeniously, the driver of the big car reverses direction in a two-wheeled hairpin turn half a mile down the road and heads back toward the scene of the crime on a parallel road. This incongruous reverse has its intended effect; the pursuing police are totally confused and allow the big Buick to proceed unchallenged out of town.

  The robbery, planned carefully and executed like clockwork, is successful. But two men have been gunned down in cold blood. Neither guard had a chance to draw his sidearm; they were shot down without reason. Parmenter didn't die right away, however; he lived just long enough to describe to the police the man who shot him. Other witnesses, leaning out of factory windows when they heard the noise or watching the car speed by, saw him too. And these, along with the gatekeeper, described a man who looked exactly like Nicola Sacco… .

  "What did you say, Doc?" asked Tom, who was staring at me. I came to and realized I had been standing dead still and staring at the rubble field and smokestack. And worse, I had been muttering to myself too.

  "I said that of all the days to pick to miss work and go off on an all-day errand, Nick Sacco had to pick April fifteenth. And at the same time here's a guy standing right about where you are now who looks just like him, pumping shots into those, guards…"

  Tom scraped gravel back and forth with his toe, like a batter at the plate, and shook his head slowly. His hands were deep in his coat pockets and he was hunched over. Joe was behind him, standing near the road in silence.

  "Oh I don't know, Doc. Jeeez. I mean, maybe he did do it. Sure looks like it anyway. I was so sure he didn't because all my life I was told he didn't. Like all good Italian, boys I was taught the basics, you know: don't eat meat on Friday, go to confession, FDR is the greatest President who ever lived, Joe DiMaggio is the world's greatest ballplayer… and Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent."

  "Sounds pretty good to me," I said. "So what's changed?"
r />   "Lots. For instance, we eat meat on Fridays now, right? We don't go to confession much anymore, right? And it looks like Roosevelt made some mistakes."

  "What about Joe DiMaggio?"

  "You kiddin'? He's still the greatest. That's not changed. Except there might be one just as good since-"

  "Who might that be?"

  "Rico Petrocelli. Who else?"

  "Let's get out of here. I'm getting depressed. Hey Joe!"

  We got in the car and rolled away. Joe didn't say much either. We stopped at the McDonald's across the street and bought coffee. I asked the girl at the register if she knew the significance of Pearl Street. She didn't. And she'd never heard of Sacco and Vanzetti either. She couldn't have cared less.

  "Sounds like a kinda spaghetti, dudn't it? Like Ronzoni?"

  In a few minutes we were purring along on 128 again, heading back north. Neither Joe nor Tom wanted to make the second stop at Dedham after what we'd encountered at Braintree, but I insisted. The old film clips had entranced me and I wanted to see the courthouse and the jail where the two defendants had spent seven years while the whole world watched and waited.

  The courthouse had not changed a bit; it was still the gray, quasi-Greek classical building with a high dome and an American flag on top. When we reached the second floor, which was the entrance to the courtroom and judges' chambers, a security officer approached us quickly and asked if he could help us. In a case like this everybody knows that "Can I help you?" really means "Get the hell out of here." But Joe flashed his badge and we went inside. The courtroom had not changed at all except for one detail: they had removed the medieval prisoner's cage at the far end. Otherwise I could almost see Katzmann and Thayer, Thompson and Ehrmann, the jury and its foreman, Harry Ripley (who was a former police chief and who hated "dagos"), and the two defendants locked in their cage. We cased the whole place, looking for photographs on the walls, plaques or markers, perhaps a framed statement or scroll. There was nothing. I asked the rather plump, pale woman in the county clerk's office about the case. As soon as heard the names she brought her index finger up to her pursed mouth.