PART 35 (42 page)

“He said two three-dollar bags a day,” Sandro replied.

“That's not much of a habit.”

“And you'd say such a habit would not cause a convulsion six days after withdrawal?”

“I've never seen anyone have any kind of seizure—I've never even heard of it—at any time after withdrawal from heroin.”

“Does it matter about dosage, Doctor?” Sandro asked.

“No, that wouldn't even be a factor. Heroin just doesn't cause convulsions. And, I'll tell you, with the quality of heroin that is sold in New York, it's even more unlikely.”

“You mean the way it's cut down?” asked Mike.

“Exactly.”

Mike looked at Sandro and smiled. “That's a nice start on the medical question, isn't it?”

“Does that help you?” the doctor asked.

“Sure does. Doctor, I don't know all the medical aspects of this. Where can I get myself trapped? What could the D.A. come up with to show that the convulsion resulted from withdrawal and not from trauma, from a beating?” asked Sandro.

“Barbiturates! Barbiturates can be far deadlier than heroin, if you can imagine that. We expect convulsions with barbiturates.”

Sandro tried to remember if Alvarado had ever mentioned barbiturates.

“A lot of addicts want a change of pace and take barbiturates for a while, then heroin,” the doctor continued. “They get their kicks different ways—so their bodies don't get tired of the same old destruction.”

“How do we get around that?” Mike asked.

“I doubt we have to,” said Sandro. “Alvarado says he had a heroin habit. That's all there was; that's all he'll testify to. How can Ellis dispute that?” Sandro paused a minute. “Unless, of course, he can offer some junky a break for testifying that he saw Alvarado taking pills.”

“Barbiturates didn't cause this convulsion either,” said the doctor, matter-of-factly. “The period of separation from drugs was much too long.”

“You trying to get me old before my time?” asked Sandro, smiling.

The doctor grinned. “A barbiturate convulsion, which is very common—and more often than not it causes death—occurs after withdrawal, within, say forty-eight to seventy-two hours, two or three days. Then the danger subsides. Six days later is just too late, too remote for drugs to have caused this convulsion.”

“Doctor, I'd like you to testify in court just as you've explained it to us here.”

“When?”

“I'm not quite sure, yet. Perhaps the end of next week. Thursday or Friday?”

“Make it the following Monday, and you've got a deal. I've got to teach on Thursday, and Friday's out too.”

“Okay,” agreed Sandro. “I'll call you in advance and let you know exactly when.”

“And, of course, you'll have to compensate me for the time I have to spend in court.”

“Of course, Doctor. I'll get the judge to sign an order for it. It may take a couple of weeks for the comptroller's office to make out a check, but I'll get it for you.”

“Fine.” The doctor rose.

Sandro and Mike rose and shook hands with him.

“Thank you, Doctor. Talk to you at the beginning of the week.”

Mike and Sandro left and drove across town to the office of Dr. Arthur Fulton, a well-known neurologist.

Dr. Fulton, a tall, well-tanned man with steel-gray hair, ushered them into his office and listened attentively while Sandro summarized the symptoms that Alvarado had had, and the history leading up to his seizure. He explained about the beating in the police station, how Alvarado's head had hit the lockers, and the convulsion six days later.

“Could this beating have caused the convulsion Dr. Maish found on July tenth?” Sandro asked.

“Certainly,” Dr. Fulton said in a soft, firm voice. “Trauma can easily cause such a reaction. But I'm not too sure about the effects of narcotics.”

“I've got a narcotics expert who will come into court and testify that narcotics did not cause the seizure. Heroin never causes convulsions, and he says too much time had elapsed for barbiturate convulsions.”

Mike nodded.

The doctor smiled. “Very well, if you have an expert in the field who says that there is no cause of convulsion there, then I can safely testify that an injury such as the beating you've described could easily be the cause of a convulsion.”

“What about the time factor?” Sandro asked. “Couldn't the beating also be too remote from the convulsion to be causally connected?”

“Not really. There's no great significance in that. A seizure following a brain injury can occur abruptly, or it may be delayed for days, weeks, even months or years. Post-traumatic seizures have been reported as long as twenty years after an injury. Most of them, however, follow immediately after, within two or three months.”

“Well, that keeps us in the ball game. What about the fact that there have been no more seizures since that first one?” Sandro asked, trying to anticipate Ellis.

“A seizure doesn't have to be recurrent. A patient can have single or periodic post-traumatic seizure. There's no way of telling if they'll recur until they do.”

“Doctor, would a week from Monday be a good day for you to testify?” Sandro asked.

“Monday? I have office hours that day. From two thirty to five. Can you fit me in before then? I'll be at the hospital in the morning, and then go to my office. But if you can squeeze me in around lunchtime, I'll do it.”

“How about if I work it out with your secretary? I'll talk to the judge and see what time schedule we can get. I'd like you to go on the stand right after the narcotics expert, and then we can let you get right back to your practice.”

“Fine. You call her and tell her where you want me, and I'll be there. Of course …”

“I know, you will get a check from the City of New York. It'll take a couple of weeks after I get the order signed.”

“Fine. Good seeing you.” Dr. Fulton stood and shook hands with Sandro and Mike.

“That's quite a nice piece of work, Sandro,” said Mike. “I got a little hung up in the middle on some of that stuff, but it comes out in the end sounding great for our side.”

“That's what it's got to do for the jury too, end up creating the impression Alvarado was seriously injured. That's all. Once we do that, Ellis has to prove the police didn't injure him. And he can't possibly do it.”

“Why do you say Ellis can't possibly show that Alvarado wasn't injured by the cops?” Mike asked.

“First, he doesn't have anything except what we have, Dr. Maish's report from the Tombs. Second, for anything else he'd have to get a physical examination of Alvarado. The United States Constitution guarantees that no person can be forced to be a witness against himself. Alvarado can't be forced to submit to a physical examination.”

Mike nodded, impressed.

CHAPTER XII

Monday, April 8th, 1968

The court session did not begin until eleven. At ten forty-five, Siakos entered the courtroom accompanied by Mrs. Hernandez. She sat alone in the first row of the spectator's section until the jury was polled and the judge sat on the bench. Siakos called her to the witness stand. The eyes of the jurors followed her with curiosity, watching as she was sworn. She stood tall, her strong, firm body accented by a clinging red and black silk dress.

Mrs. Hernandez testified, through the interpreter, that at about 8:30 the morning of July 3rd her husband drove her to the factory on East 121st Street where she worked. She next saw him about noontime; they ate in a nearby luncheonette. Some of her fellow workers, she said, were there at that time. At about I
P.M.
she went back to work and gave Hernandez a dollar to buy gas. The next time she saw her husband, he was under arrest, charged with murder.

At the station house, where she arrived at approximately 6
P.M.
that day, the police kept her in a side room on the second floor. She was under constant observation and was not allowed to go to the ladies' room or anywhere else. At one time, the police moved her to a bench in the hallway near the stairs. After a while, she saw Hernandez coming down the stairs with some detectives. He had no shoes on, his hair was disheveled, and he was wearing only his undershirt, trousers, and socks. He looked quite racked.

When the detectives walking with Hernandez realized who the woman was who was sitting in the hall, they immediately had her moved back into the small room, where she was watched by two policemen. Mrs. Hernandez testified that she remained there for many hours. When Alvarado was brought into the station house about 1:30
A.M.
, he was taken into that room. Much later, about 4:30
A.M.
, she was taken into another room, the office of detectives. There was a large steel cage in the corner. In the cage, on the floor, moaning and groaning, holding his stomach, was Hernandez. Alvarado was on a chair in the middle of the room, his hands handcuffed behind his back. Mrs. Hernandez said that except when the police took her home to search her apartment, she was kept in the police station until 9 o'clock the next morning.

Siakos had no further questions. Sam stood to cross-examine. Mrs. Hernandez testified that when Alvarado was brought into the small room where she had been detained, one of the detectives hit him across the left side of the face with a vertical karate chop. Alvarado's nose began to bleed.

“Could you identify the man you say hit Alvarado if you saw him again?” Sam asked.

“I believe so,” the interpreter said.

Sam had the five detectives brought into the courtroom again. Mrs. Hernandez studied them a moment. She stepped off the stand, on her firm, taut legs. Her dark eyes were narrowed. She walked to the railing on the other side of which the officers were lined up. She walked past each, her eyes looking straight into theirs: Garcia, Johnson, Tracy, Jablonsky, Mullaly. Mullaly was looking over her head at the wall. She poked her finger out at him, almost puncturing his chest.

“Him!”

“Let the record show she has pointed to Detective Mullaly,” said the judge.

The detectives left the courtroom, and Mrs. Hernandez took the stand again. Sam had no further questions.

Ellis stood in place, rolling a pencil between his hands.

“Have you ever seen your husband sick from want of drugs?”

“Yes.”

“By the way, did you ever give him money to pay for drugs?”

“I paid for food and the rent, never for drugs,” she answered firmly.

“When Hernandez was sick for lack of drugs, did he moan and groan.”

“Yes.”

“And when you saw him in the cage, on the morning of July fourth, when he was moaning and groaning, was it the same as when you had seen him sick from want of drugs?”

“Yes,” she said softly, without hesitation. Her honesty was compelling.

“I have no further questions.”

“Look at that jury,” Sam whispered. “They respect her.”

Sandro looked at the jury box. The jurors continued to watch Mrs. Hernandez, seeming to admire her spirit and fearlessness.

“She sank her own husband a little just now. As the jury sees it, she's got to be telling the truth,” Sam continued. “And if she's telling the truth, then what she saw Mullaly do to Alvarado must be true. We got some great mileage out of that.”

“Ellis doesn't even dare ask her about that karate chop,” said Sandro.

Siakos called as the next witness on the voir dire, Dr. Joseph Waters, the Tombs doctor who had examined Hernandez on July 3rd, 1967.

Dr. Waters was short and graying and wore glasses and a white, knee-length medical coat. Somehow the coat made him look more like a butcher than a doctor. He took the stand and was sworn. Siakos handed him Hernandez's medical cards. He read them.

“Did you give this man a physical examination, Doctor?”

He read the cards. “Yes, yes. There was the usual examination upon commitment. I don't remember the man.” The doctor looked up to study the counsel table. He didn't know which man was Hernandez. He shook his head.

“What sort of physical was it, Doctor, gross or detailed? Can you tell from those records?”

“We observe the men, mostly observe, to determine their condition.”

“What were the results of this examination?”

The doctor looked at the cards. “Nothing remarkable. Nothing on the heart, no venereal history. He was an addict.”

“Do you have his blood-pressure reading?”

“No, that wasn't done.”

“Or heart evaluation?”

“No.”

“Those cards say no marks on the man's body, do they not?”

“Yes, right here. No marks.”

“And if there were any unnatural or unusual marks you would have noted that fact?”

“Yes.”

“Does it note there any puncture holes and scar tissue on each arm from constant injection of heroin?”

The doctor studied the card again. He shook his head.

“Don't shake your head, Doctor,” the judge admonished. “The reporter must hear your answers, and unfortunately he can't hear your head shake.” The judge twisted and winked toward Sandro.

“No.”

“Doctor, will you look at this man's arms? May we, Your Honor?”

“Certainly.”

Hernandez was brought forward. The doctor examined his arms.

“Are there scars and marks that were not recorded on these cards?”

“Yes.”

“Old scars and marks?”

“They do not appear to be recent.”

Siakos nodded. “Does the card indicate anything else, Doctor?”

“Yes, there's a diagnosis of traumatic pleuradynia, here.”

“What is pleuradynia, Doctor?”

“An inflammation or difficulty with the pleura.”

“Where is the pleura, Doctor?”

“Behind the ribs, by the lungs.” He pointed to the middle of his own chest.