Condemned (47 page)

“
Oye
,” Tony Balls said to the young man behind the counter inside the store. The clerk was short, dark, wearing a vest over his bare, well muscled upper torso. He nodded warily to the two men in suits. “Un sandwich Cubano,” Tony Balls said to the clerk.

The clerk nodded. Another man, one of the on-lookers at the domino game came into the store, studying the two suits as he bought a pack of Marlboro from the cashier.

“This is lawyer Luca,” Tony Balls introduced Sandro in Spanish. The clerk shot a momentary glance at Sandro as he took a prepared sandwich from a counter showcase. “He is the lawyer for the woman from around the corner who is accused of killing her child.”

The clerk put the sandwich into a heating press as he glanced at Tony Balls.

“You know the woman I mean?” Tony Balls continued in Spanish.

“No,” the clerk shook his head as took the sandwich out of the press, wrapping it in waxed-paper. He sliced the sandwich in half through the paper.

“This man is a lawyer, trying to help the woman,” Tony Balls continued. The clerk was placing the sandwich into a small brown paper bag. Another spectator from the domino game came into the
bodega
to listen. “We are not from the Police or the District Attorney. This is the woman's private lawyer, trying to save her from death. You know the bastards downtown want her put to death.”

“She deserves it,” one of the men who had come in from outside said to the other. He was very dark, wearing a straw hat.

Sandro stood quietly, as more of the men from outside entered the
bodega
Their complexions ranged from white, to tan, to black.

“If you, or someone you know, was accused of a crime, no matter what crime, you'd want a lawyer to defend you, right? This lawyer is trying to help a woman accused of a very serious crime, so that they won't put her to death.”

A murmur stirred through the group as they spoke in Spanish among themselves.

“Do you remember the incident?” Tony Balls said to the crowd.

“The black one who killed her baby?” said the very dark man with the hat.

“That is what she is accused of,” said Tony Balls.

“Any woman who would do that ought to die,” said another of the men.

“She's black,” said another man with a knowing nod.

“But that's what the lawyer is fighting against. The woman is saying that she didn't do this,” Tony Balls said, “and that is why the lawyer is fighting. He's trying to find out anything about the woman, about what happened, so he can help her. You know, if a private lawyer doesn't help her, those bastards downtown surely are not going to help her.”

“You're a public lawyer?” one of the men said toward Sandro.

“No,” replied Tony Balls. “The lawyer doesn't speak Spanish.”

“She paying for him to help her?”

“No, the woman has no money. This is a very famous lawyer,” Tony Balls indicated Sandro with a nod of his head, “and he wants to help her, even though she can't pay, because he knows if he does not, and if people in the street do not, the officials will throw her to the dogs.”

“If she killed her own child—” one of the men shrugged.

“But she did not,” said Tony Balls. “That is why it is important for us to find people who can give us some information, so we can help her. If something like this happened to you, you would want people in the neighborhood to help, right?”

Some of the men nodded, others shrugged.

“Any of you know this woman?” said Tony Balls.

“She's not Spanish,” said the very dark one with the straw hat. “She's black. You're not Spanish; him either. Why do you two care?” he said to Tony Balls.

“My woman is Puerto Rican, from
Ponce.
She taught me the good language—in the middle of the night.”

“I come from Ponce, too,” said one of the men. “The best place on the Island.” The others laughed. “It is,” the man said with a serious nod of his head.

“You want anything to drink with the sandwich?” the clerk said to Tony Balls.

“Ice tea.” The clerk went into a refrigerator and selected a can of tea.

“Do any of you know any of the people this woman was friends with? Anyone she knows, or who knows her?” asked Tony Balls.

“I think the
morena
has a Spanish husband,” said one of the men. He too wore a straw hat, this one with a bright plaid hat band.

“You know any people?” another man inquired into the group.

“I live on the Avenue, around the corner. I would see this woman. I saw her picture in
El Diario
when it happened. I saw her many times with her husband. He's Spanish. Clean. Nice-looking.”

“What is he doing with her?” said one of the others.

“You know the husband's name?” asked Tony Balls.

The man with the bright hat band shook his head. “Nice-looking, clean. I see him once in a while.”

“When was the last time you saw the husband?” asked Tony Balls.

“A few days ago, maybe a week. I was sweeping in front of the building. I'm the Super at Five Twenty-Five. I was sweeping. And he came by. He says hello. I said hello. That was it.”

“You know what number building the woman lives in?” said Tony Balls.

“Probably Five Sixty-Four.”

“You handle accident cases,
Abogado
?” said one of the men in accented English.

“Yes. You have a case?”

“No, but I know a lot of people over here. They're always in trouble around here.” Others murmured, some laughed, agreeing. “Maybe I can send you some cases. You have a card?”

“Sure,” said Sandro, taking a business card out of his wallet, handing it to the man.

“Can I have one,” said another man. Sandro handed the second man a card, then one to each of the others.

Tony Balls took some bills out of his pocket and paid the clerk for the sandwich. He unwrapped half of the sandwich and began to munch on an end of it.

“Now, listen, gentlemen,” said Tony Balls in Spanish, chewing on his sandwich. “This is a great guy, this lawyer. He's trying to help this woman, not hurt her. You'd want him to do the same thing for you, no?”

“She used to come in here once in a while. She was always on something, you know,” said the clerk from behind the counter. “High, like.”

“You would see her in the area,” said the man with the bright colored hat band. “But I never talked to her or nothing.”

“No. She's black.” said the dark-skinned man in the hat. “Spanish people don't hang around with the blacks. And they don't hang around with us.” He shrugged. “That's the way it is.”

“That's right,” said another man. “We don't hang around with black people.”

“Anybody know what her husband's name is?” asked Tony Balls.

There were many shrugs.

“You know who would know that,” said one of the men. “Titi.”

“Who's Titi?” asked Tony Balls.

“He's the Super for a lot of buildings on that block. He lives over there, too. In the first tall building on this side,” the man motioned, indicating the south side of the street.

“You say the Super's name is Titi?” Tony Balls unwrapped the other half of his sandwich and continued eating.

“Yeah,” said one of the men.

“There's a guy called Titi, who might know something” Tony Balls said to Sandro. “Maybe we ought to find this Titi?”

“Let's do that,” said Sandro.

“Thanks a lot,
Senors
,” said Tony Balls, moving toward the door of the
bodega
carrying the end of his sandwich in one hand, a can of iced tea in the other. Sandro shook hands with each of the men, thanked them, and followed Tony Balls out to the street.

When they reached 3rd Street, Sandro and Tony Balls walked toward a six-story building with a front stoop. They entered the building and studied the mailboxes. Many of them had been pried open, their doors bent; others had no door at all. Most of the slots for identifying the names of the tenants were empty. One of the slots on the bottom of the panel had the letters “SUPER” scratched into the paint. Sandro pushed the bell button.

“If that bell works, I'll eat the next sandwich with the paper and all,” said Tony Balls.

“You probably will anyway.”

“Very funny guy.”

A Spanish woman came to the front door. She inquired in Spanish as to what they wanted. She said she was the wife of the Super.

“We're looking for Titi,” Tony Balls replied in Spanish.

She told them that Titi had gone to the Bronx to see his daughter, who was having a baby. Tony Balls asked her if she knew the woman who was accused of killing her baby. She made a face, and said she didn't know her. But she had lived with a man on the fourth floor of the building, apartment 4R.

“You know the name of the husband?” asked Tony Balls.

“I think it's Tony,” the woman said, shrugging.

“Is he up there now?”

“I don't know,” the woman said.

The interior of the building was much the same as many New York walk-up tenements: yellow plaster walls scored to look like limestone blocks, brown iron railings and balusters, linoleum floors on the landings. There was an acrid smell throughout, and Spanish television sounds bled through doorways into the hall. In the center of each landing were two doors, inside of which was a toilet for the use of the three apartments on each end of the hall.

In the back part of the fourth floor were three apartment doors. One directly at the end of the narrow passage, another at each of the side-walls. Tony Balls knocked on the left door, which was marked 4R. The sound of a television set in the apartment opposite suddenly lowered. A sound came from behind the peephole in that apartment. Tony Balls knocked on 4R again. Tony Balls turned and knocked on the door across the hall. There was no sound or answer from behind that door, either. Tony Balls knocked again. Still no sound.

“Curious, but not that curious,” said Sandro.

“What do you want to do?” said Tony Balls.

“We'll leave a card, asking him to get in touch with us,” said Sandro, taking out one of his business cards. “Write on it. Tell them to call me,” he said to Tony Balls. When he finished writing, Tony Balls placed the card in the crack between the door and the frame, then, thinking of the peephole spy behind the door, took the card out of the crack in the door and slid it underneath.

“Had enough?” Tony Balls said.

“We haven't even started,” said Sandro.

“I was afraid you'd say that.”

“We're finished here for today, however,” said Sandro—

“That's good.”

“But we have a mass of other work to do.”

“Today?”

“Mostly from the office, by subpoena,” said Sandro. “We have a lot of documents to gather, school records, medical records, stuff that may show that Li'l Bit was a bit slow, mentally.”

“You think she was retarded?” asked Tony Balls.

“People who commit this kind of crime often are,” said Sandro. “And from meeting her, she seems a bit off, a bit mentally challenged, you might say. We have to dig into her background to show that she isn't some kind of criminal fiend, but a person who wasn't really able to fully appreciate the consequences of her actions, wasn't able to form the evil intent that might seem to surround this crime just based on the surface facts. This stuff is called mitigation, that's what the death penalty phase is all about.”

“Ain't you going to contest the facts of the case, like, did she really do it?”

“Not much of a shot there, Tony. She confessed, the man she was with confessed, and his lawyer has already indicated that he'd agree to testify against her to catch a break from the death penalty.”

“So you're hoping to catch a break on the death penalty side of the issue?”

“If the D.A. decides to go with it, yes,” said Sandro. “In order to do that, I have to track down people who knew her when she was a kid, people who could testify that she was always a bit slow—her teachers, her relatives. Red Hardie—”

“Red Hardie? What's he got to do with this?”

“Red knew her when she was a kid. That's why I'm involved with this case to begin with. He wanted me to help her. Gave me a bunch of information about her. He told me she had a brother, too, a doctor, on Park Avenue.”

“The woman who did this has a brother who's a doctor on Park Avenue?” said Tony Balls.

Sandro nodded. “Red told me the brother had changed his name, even told me what name he now used—I can't think of it at the moment. I have it in my notes. Let's get a cab, I have to be in court in forty-five minutes.”

Tony Balls put his fingers in his mouth and let out a loud whistle toward a cab half block away. The cab stopped.

“You've got to teach me how to do that. I've never been able to whistle like that,” said Sandro. Tony Balls laughed.

Washington Heights : August 10, 1996 : 10:45 A.M.

The Washington Heights section of New York City had been the site of Fort Washington during the American Revolution. Together with Fort Lee, high on the opposite palisades of New Jersey, the Fort stood over the Hudson River to keep that water route from British hands.

Now, the area was predominantly inhabited by Hispanics from the Dominican Republic. The stores, the traditions, the language of the area reminded one more of Santo Domingo than the Upper West Side. Many of the inhabitants who had actually been born here, none-the-less, spoke English as a second language. For that reason, the local public schools were bilingual. Many who criticized bilingual education as a recent and abhorrent pampering of foreigners who should be required to speak English, were unaware that there has always been bilingual education in New York City; in General Washington's time, the second language was German. Sally Cantalupo stood on the sidewalk of 192nd Street near Broadway, in front of a small brick building with a two-step stoop and a scarred half-wood, half-glass door. On the outer wall of the building, a small television camera was aimed at the street and sidewalk in front of the building. Down the block, several people were huddled, waiting, their eyes continuously watching the entrance of the building. Until a few minutes ago, Sally Cantalupo had been part of that huddled contingent. When the person in front of him on the line entered the building, Sally was cleared to move from the huddle to a spot directly in front of the building. There, he waited expectantly, shifting from foot to foot. He wasn't really hurting, but he was becoming anxious about getting a couple of bags just in case he started to hurt.