The Penny Ferry da-2 Page 9

  Quite a case.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Tom Costello was miserable, and irritable.

  "But the insurance will cover everything, Tom. Every buck."

  "Great! But what about me? Know how thilly I thound over the phone?"

  "I've still got the casts; it won't take as long as the first time."

  We made the necessary appointments for the rebuilding of the anterior bridge. It would take a lot of extra time and neither of us was happy about it. I would not bill him for the extra hours it would cost me, of course. As he was leaving I asked him what he knew about Sacco and Vanzetti. He harangued me for twenty minutes about what a raw deal they'd gotten, mostly because they were Italians. Considering his name was Costello, it figured. But then I bumped into Jim DeGroot at the liquor store. I asked; him and he shrugged his shoulders, saying that if a Massachusetts court found them guilty and all the appeals and motions of delay and new trials didn't work, then they probably were guilty.

  "But what's the sense in talking about it now? They're dead anyway, right?"

  Figured.

  Then I asked Moe Abramson, and he said that he pitied not only the two innocent men who were sent to their deaths but the whole sick and bigoted Yankee-WASP establishment plutocracy that set them up. Then he went into a discourse on punishment and guilt, and quoted by memory whole passages from Dostoevski, Freud, Malraux, and others.

  Figured.

  "You know who I think really convicted them, even more than that bastard judge Thayer? It was the jury foreman, Ripley. He hated Italians. He was a cop who wanted more than anything to 'get the dagos.' Can you imagine allowing ga jury like that? They should've had some Jews on that jury. It never would have happened."

  "Why?"

  "Simple. Of all the people who have suffered from prejudice and persecution, we've suffered the most. But we're not like the other groups, who then can't wait to dish out hatred to the next bunch of unfortunates. The Jews don't do that. We've never done that and never will; we stay with the underdog. Listen Doc, more than anyone else it was two Jewish men who tried to get Sacco and Vanzetti off the hook: Felix Frankfurter and Herbert Ehrmann. Wanta see my new tank?"

  "No."

  "Get in here this instant." He held his office door open and I followed reluctantly. I stayed two feet behind him and got ready to shield my eyes. The new tank was high and narrow and filled with bright coral fans. Several brilliantly colored fish wafted about. Surprise, surprise; Moe's taste was improving.

  "Salt water," he said. "Those are tangs. Nice, eh?"

  "Great. I'm surprised that you-"

  But I stopped short, speechless with revulsion at what I saw at the bottom of the tank. The sand there came alive in a flapping, rolling, undulating mass of writhing flesh.

  "Good God!" I groaned.

  "What? The skate? He belongs there, Doc. Part of the scheme of things."

  The horrid bulbous eyes darted about as if on stalks. Four vents behind each eye opened and shut rhythmically. The scaly tail twitched. I spun about-face and departed.

  " 'Bye, Moe. We'll resume our chess game when you get rid of the tank."

  "Remember, Doc," he yelled after me, leaning out of his doorway, "every creature deserves a home, even ugly ones."

  "Don't be a sap," I said.

  I went home at five-thirty, went for a run, took a sauna and shower, sat with a cold mug on the porch, and started to read the first book about Sacco and Vanzetti. After twenty pages I was disturbed. After eighty I was distraught. Surely this was some kind of joke. Certainly the author did not know what he was saying… So I put it down and tried another. Worse. Okay, I told myself, the third time's the charm. So I picked up tome number three. Disastrous. I put the books down and gave the far wall a thousand-yard stare. I felt bludgeoned. If it weren't so sad it would be almost humorous. The proceedings of the case, and the various assumptions, allegations, denials, and refusals, had all the earmarks of a vaudeville skit.

  Mary came home. I heard her high heels clicking and snapping around the kitchen linoleum. I heard a shopping bag rustle, the refrigerator door open and shut.

  "Charlie?"

  "Mmmmph."

  "What are you doing home? What's the matter?"

  I explained the reading material. She replied that of course they were innocent men. Of course they'd been railroaded to the chair. Where had I been?

  "Our folks talked about that case all the time when we were kids in Schenectady. Didn't Joe tell you?"

  "Joe just left here. He ate the biggest submarine sandwich ever constructed. He just ate a Trident-class sub. He's taking us to dinner tonight at Joe Tecce's. Now let me be; I want to reread key parts of these books again to make sure there's no mistake."

  I did. Then I read them again., Mary came in and said it was time to get ready. She asked me why I was reading and rereading the books. .

  "Because I'm hoping that I've overlooked something; that something will change if I keep reading it over."

  But it didn't. It was with a weary heart that I donned the fancy duds. Even the sight of Mary prancing around in her undies didn't cheer me up, and she looks nice in 'em. We got in the Audi and got on to Route 2 for Boston. I had a tape of Mozart's Concerto No. 2 for Horn playing, and it helped a bit, but not much. By mistake Mary first popped in the cassette of Jeannie Redpath singing Scottish ballads. That can have you bawling in five minutes even if you're in a good mood. We drove along and I puffed on my pipe in silence. Mary turned off the tape.

  "Okay, Charlie. Tell me about it. What's gotten you so depressed? We've got the time now. Spill."

  "Everything I read about Sacco and Vanzetti points not only to a trial that was unfair but to an inexorable machine of destruction pointed straight at them."

  "So what's new about that?"

  "I've got to read the stuff more carefully, but getting into it fast, I saw the sweep and size of the monster. Most people have now acknowledged the unfair-trial part. After all, Sacco and Vanzetti, while never even accused of any crime whatsoever prior to their arrest, were radical anarchists. Anarchists killed President McKinley in 1901, and started the First World War by killing Archduke Ferdinand in 1914. So they were unpopular. This is old. What's new to me is the sense of orchestration behind the events of the trial and subsequent appeals. I keep seeing in my mind's eye a smoke-filled room somewhere with a small group of very rich and well-dressed men puffing on cigars, planning the whole thing. And this cabal could set the machinery in motion, Mary. Ah, yes… just as easy as throwing a switch in one of the textile mills, setting all those flywheels spinning, those loom arms thumping, those bobbins twirling…"

  "Well hasn't that been said before?"

  "Kind of. It was alleged vaguely. It surfaced during the seven years of the trial and appeals-"

  "Seven years!"

  "Oh yeah. During the ordeal some of the undercurrents were visible. But when you look through seven books all at once you see the entire thing, as if from a space satellite. I can't help seeing a great mechanized thing, fueled by power and wealth, running down those two steerage-class troublemakers without even missing a beat."

  "You sound like Jack London."

  "Don't mean to. And, of course, they could have even been guilty. But guilty or not, they had that machine set after them like the Hound of Hell. As sure as we're sitting in this car."

  "What happened? The crime, I mean."

  "On April fifteenth, nineteen twenty, there was an armed robbery of a shoe factory in South Braintree. It was the Slater and Morrill factory on Pearl Street. The spot is probably less than a mile from where the South Shore mall is now. In the robbery the two payroll guards were shot dead. They didn't try to go for their guns or anything; they were just shot down in cold blood. Murdered. About fifteen grand was taken by five holdup men, who escaped in a large touring car."

  "They stole money, not shoes?"

  "They robbed the payroll. It was payday. In those days workers weren't paid by chec
k; they got cash in pay envelopes which were toted around in strongboxes and armored cars like Brinks trucks. It was like the old Westerns, in which gold was carried on trains and stagecoaches. But your point about stealing shoes is interesting, because only people with a great familiarity with the factory and its procedures could have pulled off the heist, which went like clockwork. They even dribbled out a stream of tacks behind the car so pursuing vehicles would rupture their tires. They got clean away."

  Mary sat in silence for a second before asking the obvious sequitur: "If they got clean away, then when were Sacco and Vanzetti arrested?"

  "Twenty days later, on a streetcar in Brockton. It was about ten at night. Both men were armed with handguns. They had spare ammunition too. When asked about their business that night, and where they were on the day of the robbery, they lied."

  "Huh? I never heard it that way."

  "Probably not. Not in an Italian-American family you wouldn't. But it's true. So you see they weren't off to a good start. Add these circumstances to the fact that they had both gone to Mexico as draft dodgers during the Great War, and the fact that Sacco was not at work on April fifteenth- he missed that day and only that day- and the fact that Vanzetti, a fish peddler, had no regular job or employer who could vouch for him, and you can see how their troubles multiplied pretty quickly."

  "Jeeez, Charlie. Maybe they were guilty!"

  "May be."

  We drove on past the Fresh Pond Bowladrome and fruit stand. I could feel Mary glaring at me.

  "Don't play games, dammit! You've got me hanging now. Did they or didn't they?"

  "Did they what?"

  She punched me in the arm. It hurt. She'd make a good featherweight, I thought, and I told her so. She hit me again.

  "Okay, okay," I said. "An interesting thing was this: right after the South Braintree robbery the police in New Bedford were closing in on a known gang of robbers they were watching because of a suspicious license plate and a stolen car that might have been used as the escape vehicle. This gang, called the Morelli gang, was based in New York and Providence. One of the Morelli brothers lived in New Bedford. But the New Bedford cops cut short their investigation."

  "Why?"

  "Because in early May they heard that the criminals had been arrested: Sacco and Vanzetti. So they dropped it. It's a shame they did, too, because the Morelli gang had a history of robbing factory freight cars, especially those of Slater and Morrill. In fact, some of its members had cased the Slater and Morrill plant more than once.. ."

  "And how did they know that the cops in Brockton had the right guys?"

  " 'Cause the cops in Brockton said so. Chief Michael Stewart of Bridgewater was obsessed with the idea that a band of anarchist robbers was living in the South Shore area, and that they kept their getaway car in a shed. Finding such a shed and having been told that the car usually kept there wasn't running well and was being repaired, Stewart ordered a stakeout on the local garage that was fixing the car. It was an Overland, a now-defunct make of auto. Four men came to the garage to claim the car. Told it wasn't ready, they departed. Two left riding a motorcycle. Two left on foot and boarded a streetcar: Sacco and Vanzetti."

  "And what were they doing at night getting a car and carrying guns? Huh?"

  "They wanted to use the car to collect some radical literature they'd recently distributed. An associate of theirs, a guy named Salsedo- Andrea Salsedo- was held illegally and interrogated by the FBI in New York. He was also detained for eight weeks in a fourteenth-story room of a building there. All this was done without formal criminal charge, you understand, in violation of his fundamental rights. On May third his crushed body was found on the pavement below. The Feds said that he must have leaped to his death. Suicide, or so they said. Sacco, Vanzetti, and the rest of the anarchists were scared stiff. They feared the same fate. That's why they were armed; that's why they were out trying to get the car rolling so they could make the rounds and get rid of the incriminating literature."

  "And why weren't the two other guys accused of the crime too?"

  "They were. One had an alibi through his employment and the other was very short- so short all of the witnesses agreed he couldn't have taken part. So the police got Sacco and Vanzetti by process of elimination. Even then, their fingerprints did not match any found on the getaway car when it was discovered abandoned. The prosecution later dropped the whole question of prints."

  "Charlie: were they guilty?"

  "From what I've read, I'd say no. Armed robbery was against their characters as revealed by their lives. They simply weren't violent men or criminals. Protestors, yes. Angry men who disagreed with the status quo, yes. But killers and robbers, no. And the prosecution's claim that they pulled the job leaves too many ends dangling, too many details unexplained and floating in a vacuum. Where were the guys who helped them? Not only did the defendants not tell, but there was nothing about their past histories or personal associations that connected to the robbery. The fifteen grand that was taken- where was it? The defendants didn't have it. Moreover,. there was not a trace of it anywhere around the two men. Certainly the sick old car they came to collect wasn't the one used in the lightning-quick robbery. No sane person would use it in any robbery. The guns they were carrying seemed to be the most damning and inexplicable pieces of evidence. Yet the ballistics tests performed by the prosecution were misinterpreted and used to mislead the jury. Finally, both men did have alibis."

  "Well if they had alibis what was the problem?"

  "The alibis, on both counts, had serious flaws: they depended on the testimony of fellow Italians."

  Mary snapped her head around and let out a few choice exclamations. I blush even now to think of them.

  "Uh-huh. That's how a lot of your countrymen feel about it. Now as a comparison, when the case against the Morelli gang is considered, all- not some, but all- the loose ends are gathered up neatly and tied into a bow: the gang's need for money to pay for upcoming defense lawyer's fees and bail; the money itself, which appeared at the right time and in the right amount; the getaway car, which as I mentioned earlier first tipped off the New Bedford cops; the getaway route, which was accurately described by the guy who should've been the defense's star witness in a new trial; and finally… three big things."

  "What were the three big things?"

  One: the fact that the Morelli-gang hypothesis explains each and every participant in the crime, down to the last detail as described by the witnesses. Two: the Morelli gang was composed of robbers and killers; the past of each gang member ties him with robbery and crime as a way of life. And three: are you ready? Remember I said there should have been a star witness? He was a guy in jail with Sacco and Vanzetti at Dedham. He was the guy who sparked the investigation of the Morelli bunch in the first place. Know why? Because in nineteen twenty-six, six years after the holdup and a year before Sacco and Vanzetti were put to death, he confessed ta taking part in the robbery and described it in every detail. Know what else? He wrote out a sworn statement that Sacco and Vanzetti weren't there!"

  Mary squirmed in her seat and drew her breath in sharply, her eyes bugged out in her anger.

  "You're shitting me!"

  "Nope."

  "And those bastards executed them anyway?"

  "Yep."

  "Charlie, you're shitting me!"

  "Cross my heart…"

  "Bastards!" she shouted, smacking the dashboard with her fists. She does this on big slabs of clay to get the air bubbles out before firing. The clay could take it; the Audi, despite its engineering, probably couldn't.

  "Easy, kid. The guy's name was Celestino Madeiros, a Portuguese boy who was already indicted for murder in another holdup. He was executed the same night as Sacco and Vanzetti. He had nothing to gain by the confession. He said he felt sorry for the two guys held wrongly. He felt especially sorry for Sacco's wife, Rosina, and their son, Dante."

  We were now passing Mass. General Hospital, and swept around it and over
to Causeway Street. Then a right turn onto Washington and we were there. The whole time Mary sat silently, glowering through the windshield. We met Joe in the open-air patio court for a drink. I ordered a dry Tanqueray martini and got it wet, which invariably happens in any Italian restaurant, and we waited for our table. Mary sipped on a Campari, having forsworn peppermint schnapps forever.

  "What's the matter, Sis?" asked Joe, who couldn't help noticing her subdued state. She told him, and we launched into the case a am.

  "I agree with you, Doc. There was an invisible hand behind it all, pulling the strings and pushing the buttons. The worst thing though was the prosecution's constant claim that this and that evidence showed that the defendants could have committed the crime. Their alibi witnesses could be lying to protect their friends; therefore they were lying. The men could have been in South Braintree, so therefore they were there, and therefore they did commit the robbery. Bullshit! American law says the prosecution must prove guilt. It does not say the defense must prove innocence. They were marked men."

  He rapped the table twice as he said the words again: "Marked men."

  We went in and ordered dinner. I had the house specialty, which is steak a la Mafia. It was great. We all shared the antipasti and pasta, and a liter of good house red. Three couples came in, obviously young studs and foxy mamas from the North End. They wore the local outfit. The women, who were gorgeous, had on tight blouses, choker necklaces, and pants that were sprayed on. This ensemble was set off by four-inch stiletto heels. Their hair was swept back, short, thick, black, and slightly wet. Their faces were heavily made up and their cheeks blood-red.