PART 35 by John Nicholas Iannuzzi

“jung.”
    â€œWas he Puerto Rican?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd he gave you a haircut around two fifteen or two thirty on the afternoon of the day the cop was killed?”
    â€œYes, sir. I remember it was about that time and there was another guy with me, Eugene,” Alvarado explained. “I gave a guy a dollar to let me go ahead of him.”
    â€œHow long did this haircut take?”
    â€œI don’t know. How long a haircut take?”
    â€œFifteen, twenty minutes?” Sandro suggested.
    â€œSomesing like that, I guess.”
    â€œAnd then what happened?”
    â€œThen home, like I told, took a shower, talk to Jorge, then got in the subway and wented down Times Square.”
    â€œAnd when you were in Times Square you went to the movies?”
    â€œYes, sir. First I look aroun’ for a while.”
    â€œAnd what time did you get out of the movies?”
    â€œI guess about twelve midnight, twelve fifteen, somesing like that.”
    â€œAnd then?”
    â€œAnd then I go home, and walking up the street I see Jorge’s lights on. I go in Jorge’s, and Jorge says, ‘Hey, Luis, you kill a cop?’ And I say, ‘What’s the matter, you crazy?’ And then he says, ‘No cause there’re three cops upstairs waiting for you.’ I walked to go up, and then the cops come jumping out the door.”
    â€œAnd when you were at the station house, they questioned you?”
    â€œQuestion me?” Alvarado gave off a bitter chuckle. His eyes grew wide, the black pupils round and hard. “They didn’t question me, they told me—with punches. They beating me and saying ‘We know you up there, Luis, make it easy on yourself.’ and I told them I can’t make it easy cause I was not there and I kill nobody. And they bring these things in, you know, a radio and a TV and they say, ‘Your fingerprints are all over these things.’ And I say, ‘You better go back to school to learn to read prints, cause they can’t be mine.’
    â€œAnd then this big red-hair baldie guy gives me a couple of punches in the stomach again. And then there was a skinny cop that stopped them from beating me. And he was sitting there with me. Last time I didn’t say to you what he told me. He sits down with me and he says, ‘Hey, Luis, you’re thirty-five, like me. Luis, he says, ‘you know when we arrest a guy we afraid too. Just we carry a gun, a badge, doesn’t mean we’re not ascared sometimes. Tell the D.A. you were on the roof and you got panicky, you know. You saw the cop and you fought with him and you got the gun and you were ascared and you fired the gun. You wind up with manslaughter.’
    â€œâ€˜You’re okay,’ I tell the guy, ‘but killing a cop is death,’ I tol’ him. ‘I didn’t do it. I not goin’ to say nothin’. An’ then this skinny detective says, ‘Well, it’s up to you, you know.’ And then there was the other detective behind the door. The guy who liked to beating me, and he comes out, he’s angry, you know, and he’s all red in the face. Even his baldie head was red. I smell whiskey on his breath. And he was listening, and he says, ‘You think you’re goin’ to beat this case, hanh Luis?’ And I said, ‘I think so. I don’t know, cause I wasn’t there.’ And he says, ‘Listen, Luis, we goin’ bury you. And I says, ‘Well maybe, if you frame me up. Sometimes I read books what open up my mind.’”
    â€œYou said what about books?” Sandro asked.
    â€œI says that sometimes I read books what open up my mind and I can understand things, and this cop says, ‘Books don’t mean chit. You can be sure we’re going to bury you.’ And I said, ‘I know you can frame up your own mother just to get an arrest.”
    â€œAre those fingerprints yours,