This appears to be a signal, because an instant later a large touring car,. a big Buick, roars down the street and stops. The bandits begin to jump in, but one of them hesitates and walks back to Berardelli, lying in the street. He takes deliberate aim and shoots the fallen man point-blank, killing him, then returns to the car and gets in. The car, a dirty greenish-brown in color (or was it dark-blue? The witnesses later argue), speeds off down the road, a wicked-looking shotgun protruding from the rear window. At the railroad crossing gate the big car stops and the bandits order the gatekeepers to raise the drop gate immediately or they will be shot. They do this, but not before one of them gets a good look at one of the killer bandits and hears his voice. The car roars off, turning left at the intersection and speeding away, the occupants flinging special round-headed tacks (which always land point upward) behind them.
Ingeniously, the driver of the big car reverses direction in a two-wheeled hairpin turn half a mile down the road and heads back toward the scene of the crime on a parallel road. This incongruous reverse has its intended effect; the pursuing police are totally confused and allow the big Buick to proceed unchallenged out of town.
The robbery, planned carefully and executed like clockwork, is successful. But two men have been gunned down in cold blood. Neither guard had a chance to draw his sidearm; they were shot down without reason. Parmenter didn't die right away, however; he lived just long enough to describe to the police the man who shot him. Other witnesses, leaning out of factory windows when they heard the noise or watching the car speed by, saw him too. And these, along with the gatekeeper, described a man who looked exactly like Nicola Sacco… .
"What did you say, Doc?" asked Tom, who was staring at me. I came to and realized I had been standing dead still and staring at the rubble field and smokestack. And worse, I had been muttering to myself too.
"I said that of all the days to pick to miss work and go off on an all-day errand, Nick Sacco had to pick April fifteenth. And at the same time here's a guy standing right about where you are now who looks just like him, pumping shots into those, guards…"
Tom scraped gravel back and forth with his toe, like a batter at the plate, and shook his head slowly. His hands were deep in his coat pockets and he was hunched over. Joe was behind him, standing near the road in silence.
"Oh I don't know, Doc. Jeeez. I mean, maybe he did do it. Sure looks like it anyway. I was so sure he didn't because all my life I was told he didn't. Like all good Italian, boys I was taught the basics, you know: don't eat meat on Friday, go to confession, FDR is the greatest President who ever lived, Joe DiMaggio is the world's greatest ballplayer… and Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent."
"Sounds pretty good to me," I said. "So what's changed?"
"Lots. For instance, we eat meat on Fridays now, right? We don't go to confession much anymore, right? And it looks like Roosevelt made some mistakes."
"What about Joe DiMaggio?"
"You kiddin'? He's still the greatest. That's not changed. Except there might be one just as good since-"
"Who might that be?"
"Rico Petrocelli. Who else?"
"Let's get out of here. I'm getting depressed. Hey Joe!"
We got in the car and rolled away. Joe didn't say much either. We stopped at the McDonald's across the street and bought coffee. I asked the girl at the register if she knew the significance of Pearl Street. She didn't. And she'd never heard of Sacco and Vanzetti either. She couldn't have cared less.
"Sounds like a kinda spaghetti, dudn't it? Like Ronzoni?"
In a few minutes we were purring along on 128 again, heading back north. Neither Joe nor Tom wanted to make the second stop at Dedham after what we'd encountered at Braintree, but I insisted. The old film clips had entranced me and I wanted to see the courthouse and the jail where the two defendants had spent seven years while the whole world watched and waited.
The courthouse had not changed a bit; it was still the gray, quasi-Greek classical building with a high dome and an American flag on top. When we reached the second floor, which was the entrance to the courtroom and judges' chambers, a security officer approached us quickly and asked if he could help us. In a case like this everybody knows that "Can I help you?" really means "Get the hell out of here." But Joe flashed his badge and we went inside. The courtroom had not changed at all except for one detaiclass="underline" they had removed the medieval prisoner's cage at the far end. Otherwise I could almost see Katzmann and Thayer, Thompson and Ehrmann, the jury and its foreman, Harry Ripley (who was a former police chief and who hated "dagos"), and the two defendants locked in their cage. We cased the whole place, looking for photographs on the walls, plaques or markers, perhaps a framed statement or scroll. There was nothing. I asked the rather plump, pale woman in the county clerk's office about the case. As soon as heard the names she brought her index finger up to her pursed mouth.
"Shhhhh!" She giggled. "We don't talk about that!"
We left and walked around the courthouse. Twice. Aside from a historical plaque set in a boulder telling about some early schoolhouse, there was nothing. Not any kind of plaque or marker- even one hostile to the defendants. There was nothing. And that seemed strange, considering the fuss New Englanders make over history. They're forever holding parades for people who've been dead a hundred years. But here, where the world's attention had been riveted during the summer of 1927, there was not a thing to mark the occasion or any mention made of it.
We went on to the jail. Things had not changed much there either. Again Joe flashed the badge and we went through the lobby and into the cell blocks. We were shown the cells that Sacco and Vanzetti occupied during their long incarceration. We saw the courtyard where they exercised. It was in this very courtyard that Celestino Madeiros caught Sacco's attention one day. He whispered:
'Wick! I know who pulled the South Braintree job!"
Sacco ignored him and returned to his cell. Why? Ehrmann said it was because he feared that Madeiros was a plant, a spy put there by the government to get a confession out of him. They had tried that the year before. But there could be another reason Sacco had ignored him: because he, Sacco, had pulled the job.
The courtyard was ringed with barbed wire and a new, shiny type of concertina wire that was drawn from a flat strip of metal with prongs extruded from its edges. It looked like old ripped-apart tin cans. It looked about as attractive as a swarm of maggots. Then I recalled two things from the reading I'd done. One was the reminiscence of a guard who one day overheard Sacco and Vanzetti arguing about who had the best singing voice. To resolve the dispute, each convict sang to the other. The song they sang was "Let Me Call You Sweetheart." The other thing wasn't so cute; it was the recurring periods when one or both of the prisoners had to be taken to Bridgewater State Mental Hospital for treatment and observation. It seemed that the length of the confinement, and the men's inability to accept or believe what was happening to them, drove them crazy now and then. It was supposedly especially hard on Sacco, who missed his wife, son, and infant daughter dreadfully. Of course, the other side of the coin was the argument that the men were faking to buy time and public sympathy.
Is it a vase, or is it two faces? Is it the top of the basement stairs or the bottom of the attic stairs?
"Let's get the hell out of here," said Joe with a groan. "I've had enough for one day."