Read Online PART 35 by John Nicholas Iannuzzi - Free Book Online

defense on sand and it crumbles beneath us. Don’t let me make a bad decision now only for you to regret it later.”
    â€œI won’t bullchitting you. I tell you the truth. I wasn’t there.”
    An inmate from the prison maintenance crew wheeled a steel cart around the corner toward the cell. He stuffed waxed-paper-wrapped jelly sandwiches through the bars, counting two sandwiches for each man as he went. He also passed a paper container of tea for each into the cells.
    The guard entered the cellblock. “Alvarado, Hernandez,” he called out. “You want to go outside, Counselor, while I bring the prisoners down?”
    Sandro descended and walked out to the courtroom.
    â€œHello, David,” he said to the assistant district attorney, walking back toward a bench.
    â€œHello, Sandro, how are you?” Ellis rose as Sandro motioned with his hand. They walked toward the back of the courtroom and out to the corridor.
    â€œWell, you’ve got a tough one here. I know you have a good man, Sam Bemer, with you, but I think this case is beyond help.”
    Ellis was shorter than Sandro. He was about fifty, his black hair thinning on top. His eyes were a faded blue.
    â€œDavid, I know you don’t have to come through on this point—but it might help us in disposing of the matter, and it’s been done in other cases. Can you sec your way clear here to fill me in on whether there are actually confessions in this case?”
    â€œOh, there are confessions, all right. This guy of yours confessed to the whole thing, in detail.”
    â€œNo doubt about it?”
    â€œNone at all.”
    â€œWould you let me read the confession. I think it might be to our mutual advantage if defense counsel knew the score. It might eliminate the necessity for a trial.”
    â€œI can’t show you the confession.”
    â€œYou can’t, or you won’t?”
    â€œHave it your way; I won’t. I’ve got a case to prepare, and I’m not going around giving out the evidence.”
    â€œI’m not asking you to give out the evidence, David. We’re basically on the same side, the side of law and order, I mean, I’m court-assigned counsel, not a defendant. If these men are guilty, and you can show me where they said so to you, what’s the point of a trial?” Sandro didn’t believe that. He would fight the confession, if he thought for a minute that it had been beaten out of Alvarado. But he wanted to flush Ellis out.
    â€œI’m sorry, Sandro. I can’t.”
    They walked back into the courtroom.
    â€œLuis Alvarado,” called the clerk. Alvarado, escorted by a guard, stepped forward. “Are you Luis Alvarado?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd are Alessandro Luca and Samuel J. Bemer, represented here by Alessandro Luca, your lawyers?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou are charged with murder in the first degree and in that, on the third of July, 1967, you did willfully, feloniously, and of malice aforethought shoot and kill one Fortune Lauria with a pistol. How do you plead to that charge?”
    Alvarado looked to Sandro. “You my only man, Mr. Luca.” Sandro shrugged. “Not guilty,” he whispered.
    â€œNot guilty,” Alvarado repeated aloud.
    â€œYou are further charged with the crime of burglary in the third degree in that on or about the third of July, 1967, with intent to commit therein the crime of larceny, you broke and entered the dwelling house of one Robert Soto at One fifty-three Stanton Street, County of New York. How do you plead?”
    â€œNot guilty.”

CHAPTER VI
    Sandro walked through the narrow streets of Little Italy, only a few blocks west of where Lauria was killed. Mott Street, Mulberry Street, where for a century Italian has been as much the native tongue as English, perhaps more. It was hedged on the south by an area where, for the same length of time, Chinese has been more the native tongue