PART 35 by John Nicholas Iannuzzi

know that he’s been getting rifles and guns, and he keeps them in his house. And then there’s something else.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    Soto thought for a moment. “Oh yeah. After he talks to me a couple times, one night he comes up to me and asks me about if I got everything back. I figure I’d fool him. I say I got everything except the money. I told him they stole my wife’s pocketbook, you know. There was really only five dollars gone, but I told him that there was three hundred dollars in there missing, and he told me I was a liar. You know, he told me I was a liar, and it was my wife’s pocketbook. I mean, you know what I mean? It sounded kind of funny that he would say something like that.”
    â€œIt sure is,” said Mike. “This guy who collects guns seems to know a lot.”
    â€œWhat’s this fellow’s name?” Sandro asked.
    â€œSalerno. Tony Salerno,” Soto replied.
    Mike made a note.
    â€œWell, try and keep an eye on him. Remember what he tells you. And don’t get reckless. If this man is really involved, he might be dangerous. Have you heard anything about anyone else who might have seen something that happened on the roof?”
    â€œNo, nobody. Only the ones I already told you, you know, the Italian lady who lives across the yard, and the other ones I told you about.”
    â€œWell, this is terrific, Robert. It helps a great deal. I’m proud of you.”
    â€œI like to help. This is my country, too, you know?” Soto smiled. They started down the stairs and said good night to Soto at his apartment.
    â€œYou know, Sandro, this is great, about this Salerno guy,” Mike said, as he followed Sandro down the stairs.
    â€œIt’s peculiar, anyway,” Sandro allowed.
    â€œSure. If Alvarado didn’t do it, somebody had to. Now, here’s a guy who could have killed the cop, run across the roof to another building, and walked out into the street and not even be noticed. Everybody knows he lives over here, so seeing him on the street wouldn’t even be remembered.”
    â€œIt’s a possibility,” said Sandro. “But there’s nothing else to point to him. No witnesses, no evidence, nothing.”
    â€œIt won’t hurt to check it out.”
    â€œYeah, you’re right. We have to check out everything. A regular San Juan Sherlock Holmes I’ve got.”

CHAPTER X
    â€œHiya, Counselor,” said Joe, swinging back the huge door to the Tombs. “How was the weekend?”
    â€œFine, Joe, fine.”
    â€œBack to work now, hanh?”
    â€œYeah, I guess so.” Sandro was beginning to feel as if he lived here, and the idea appalled him.
    The guard in the lawyers’ waiting area admitted Sandro in turn. While he sat, he watched the guard pace constantly from the wall of bars to the far wall, back and forth, like a polar bear spending the summer at the zoo. Was the guard, Sandro wondered, less imprisoned than Alvarado? This man spent his main waking, living, breathing time, eight hours a day, forty hours a week, two thousand hours a year, behind bars. By the time he retired, with time off for good behavior, that would be equivalent to serving a seven-year sentence.
    Sandro looked at the other guards, the men behind the desks, the deputy wardens passing through the room. They were all prisoners.
    â€œAlvarado,” the guard intoned, accepting a slip of paper passed through the Judas eye of the door in the far wall. Sandro stood and entered the interview room. The guard locked the great door behind him. Across the room, Alvarado sat on the bench with several other Negro and Puerto Rican inmates. As Sandro came into view, Alvarado nudged the man seated next to him, smiling proudly, and pointed to Sandro. In prison, when there is still hope, lawyers are talked about, admired, bragged about, fawned over in place of pinups and cheesecake. Lawyers, after all, are more useful