Boston a novel
foreign anarchy and Bolshevism. And what have we got? Very few Yankee
witnesses! A string of wops--worse than at Vanzetti’s trial!”
The lawyer began to count on his fingers--the scores of witnesses
he had been able to find. On the day of the South Braintree crime,
Bart had been selling fish, and digging clams and bait in Plymouth,
and had met few Yankees. He had stopped and chatted with one Yankee
fisherman--but the jury would say this fellow had got mixed up on
the date. Bart had bought some cloth from a Yiddish peddler, of whom
Katzmann would make a monkey. For the rest, they would have to depend
upon Alfonsina and Lefevre Brini, and Antonio Carbone and Angelo
Giadabone--hardly the sort of names to impress a Yankee jury!
As for Nick, he had been in Boston that day, but talked to only one
American he could remember. He had had lunch with Guadagni at Boni’s
restaurant, and later there had been two other Italians present; he had
paid some money to an Italian grocer, and then gone to the consulate,
to get his passport--but the man who waited on him there had gone back
to Italy, and all they had was a deposition, not very convincing to a
jury.
So much for the alibis. And then for the identifications; what
perversity of fate that so many of them depended upon wops! Why did
it have to be that Goodridge had been working for an Italian at the
time of the crime, and that his former employer was also an Italian?
And the men in the pool-room, to whom Goodridge had declared that
he could not recognize the bandits! Such names as Magazu, Arrigoni,
Mangoni, D’Amato! And then a bunch of men who had been working on a
trench in the street when the bandit car passed; a whole gang who
would testify that they had seen the bandits in the car, and that
none of them resembled Sacco or Vanzetti. But what good would it do?
“It’s just no use to put on a string of Italians, Nonna--three are
better than thirty, because you bore the jury and get them cross. Fred
Katzmann will make some playful remark--‘What is this, a Columbus Day
parade?’--and after that the jury will never stop smiling.”
There was a long silence. “Remember, Nonna, this means death for both
of them. There is no middle ground.”
“I know it, Lee.”
“And if we don’t win the verdict, don’t fool yourself about the future.
Remember, so long as Web Thayer lives, he stays the boss of this case;
the supreme court of Massachusetts has seldom reversed a verdict in a
capital case--only two or three times in its entire history. So it’s
now or never.”
“I know, Lee.” Cornelia’s voice was faint.
Again a silence. The lawyer’s somber look was fixed upon her, and she
could not meet it.
“Do you really want to save those boys, Nonna?”
“Of course I do!”
“Then why don’t you do it? Why not testify for them?”
“You told me you couldn’t use character witnesses.”
“I don’t mean that sort of witness, Nonna. I mean, why don’t you let
me fix you up a story, about how you went down to Plymouth on April
fifteenth of last year, and spent the day with the Brinis, and had
lunch with Bart, and later walked on the beach and saw him digging
clams? That’s the way to win this case, Nonna; it will end right
there--a knockout!”
VII
What was it--some instinct buried deep in Cornelia Thornwell, something
in the very fiber of her being, that made it necessary for her to be
shocked by these words--even though the idea had been haunting her mind
for months? Nothing really new that Lee Swenson could say to her--yet
she had to let him say it, and act as if she had never thought of it!
“Oh, Lee, I couldn’t do it!”
“Why couldn’t you? Did you really never tell a lie?”
“Never one like that!”
“Little ones, Nonna, for little occasions. But this is a big occasion!
This is life or death!”
Again a pause. When the lawyer resumed, his voice was grim, and he
dropped the playful nickname. “I am not going to try to put pressure on
you, Mrs. Thornwell, as I have on other witnesses in my life; for after
all, it is your case--Bart is your friend, far more than he is mine,
and why should I want to save him more than you?”
“Don’t put it that way, Lee!”
“But that is the way to put it! You have your friends, and you have
your principles, and you must weigh them, and decide which you value
more. We all have to make such choices--Bart made one, you remember, he
lied for his friends. Those lies he told in the police-station were to
save Boda and Orciani from sharing the fate of Salsedo. He will tell a
different story on the witness stand, and whether it is the truth or
not--judge for yourself!”
Another pause. “What is it, Mrs. Thornwell? Have you religious scruples
about an oath? Do you believe God will blast you to eternity if you
save these boys from the electric chair?”
“No, it isn’t that.”
“Is it patriotism? Do you think it will help your country to let a
bunch of crooks kill a pair of idealists, as a means of frightening the
others?”
“No, not that.”
“Then it’s just a matter of good form? It’s that you are a lady, and
such things are not done!”
“No, not that, either. As a matter of fact, they are done all the time.
My sons-in-law are lying in business, and they will lie on the stand to
back each other up.”
“Exactly!” And to himself Lee Swenson thought, “She has been debating
it with herself!” Aloud he said, “What is it, Mrs. Thornwell?”
“It is just--I wouldn’t know how to do it!”
“But if that is all that troubles you, here’s a thoroughly qualified
expert to take charge. Put yourself in my hands, as if it were a
surgical operation, and I’ll guarantee we’ll have Nick on the street
before the Fourth of July, and we’ll start a move to get Bart pardoned!”
“But Lee, how could I do such a thing?”
“If you mean it as a technical question, nothing more simple: you take
the stand and swear that you were in Plymouth that day, and you recite
the details of some other day when you were actually there. It can all
be worked out, very easily. You were in the habit of going there off
and on, nobody can dispute that. You remember the date, because of
something that happened the day before or the day after. Perhaps there
was a concert you had just been to, or there was to be one, and you had
to leave in order to attend it. We can go back and find a public event
to tie to; or perhaps you have a diary, or some letters.”
“But suppose I did something in Boston on that day?”
“There’ll be a way to get round it. You understand that, according to
your story, you only had to remember back three weeks. As soon as you
heard Bart was arrested, you naturally looked back, and realized that
you had been with him the day of the crime. But anybody who is going to
refute you has got to begin now, and remember back a year--which isn’t
apt to happen. If they have documentary evidence, like a letter--well,
the trial will be over a day or two after you testify. There might be a
scandal among your friends, but nothing serious, and anyhow, the boys
will be free--you understand that when a jury has acquitted them, they
can’t ever be tried for South Braintree again.”
VIII
Lee kept his promise not to put pressure on her. What he did was to go
over the case, telling what each government witness would testify, and
just how that testimony had been “made.” As a piece of prophecy it was
a miracle, but Lee claimed no occult powers. With bitterness he said,
“If I want to know what the other side is doing, I figure what I would
do myself.”
He had talked with some of these witnesses; others, who had refused
to talk to him, had become the subject of “reports.” So he knew their
motives, and how they would be controlled. When there had been need
of “rough stuff,” the police had done it. The more subtle work had
been done by college-bred gentlemen of the district attorney’s office,
who had learned to manufacture in weaker minds like Mary Splaine and
Frances Devlin what the psychologists term a “false memory.” They would
take these women to the jail again and again and show them Sacco and
Vanzetti; they would present pictures of Sacco and Vanzetti, insisting
that these were the bandits, these were the men whom the women had seen
in the bandit car; until in the women’s minds the prison memories and
the photograph memories became superposed upon the bandit memories, so
completely merged with them that they could no longer be separated.
There were a thousand tricks that successful prosecuting officials
knew. They stood in with the political ring, they could promise
favors--contracts and business, a job for a man who needed it, immunity
from trouble with the police. “I am a friend of Mr. Jones, in the
district attorney’s office”--such a statement would tear up an auto
tag, or suppress a liquor charge any day. “It is what we call power,”
said Lee Swenson, “and those who hold it know how to use it.”
Like Virgil, leading Dante through successive stages of the infernal
regions, Lee Swenson conducted the widow of Governor Thornwell into
the interior of the Boston “ring.” He knew the way, because in the
Ettor-Giovannitti case he had had these forces to deal with, and
other lawyers associated with the case had “put him wise.” Indeed,
the factional quarrels in the political gang had been such that one
side had betrayed the other, and Lee had seen documents that would
have entitled leading statesmen to spend the rest of their days in
Charlestown prison. When you had listened to his stories for an hour or
two, you understood Lola Andrews’ statement that it was “dog eat dog”;
you forgot the Emersonian notion of making truth count in Boston!
Cornelia, probing her own soul, confessed to a certain snobbery in her
attitude toward perjury. It was a thing she associated with foreigners
accused of crime, and with Irish politicians. The City Hall belonged
to the Irish, so it was called the “steal works”; but the State House
with its golden dome was run by gentlemen, and was a sacred spot. Now,
however, Lee Swenson declared there was ten times as much graft in the
State House--the only difference was that it was legalized; such things
as fixing up laws to enable great corporations to plunder the public.
There under the golden dome you would encounter a blue-blood banker who
wanted his attorney made into a supreme court judge, so that the banker
would be safe forever after; or a state bank commissioner who wanted to
become president of a bank; a great lawyer who wanted to use his inside
knowledge of politics to plunder the clients of banks; a financier who
was lending money to legislators, who were passing bills to multiply
the value of his public utility holdings.
Cornelia understood all these references; Lee Swenson was attacking
the Thornwell family, undermining its claims to moral superiority. He
was pointing to scandals in which her family was involved--some that
were in the public prints, others that were whispered in the gossip of
the clubs. And she knew it was all true; she knew that Rupert Alvin
and Henry Cabot Winters and John Quincy Thornwell were busy right now
framing up their perjury in the Jerry Walker case. When an I.W.W.
lawyer hinted this possibility, she did not rebuke him. She did not
even protect her family dignity when he mentioned that her son-in-law
had begun his legal career as counsel for the Boston streets railways,
which meant that he had done most kinds of dirty work known to the
legal profession.
“Believe me, Nonna, I can tell you,” said the man from the wild west.
“I began with the Great Northern Railroad, and spent my time gyping
poor workers out of damages. I was paid five hundred a month, very nice
for a young fellow, and I had the way clear before me, right up to
the top, maybe a seat on the supreme court bench--that is how you get