The Penny Ferry - Rick Boyer (13 page)

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 check; 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!"