The darkroom hadn't been totally restored since the burglary, but it was certainly operational enough to run some big prints from the negatives. It was obvious to me immediately that the film was not old. If the shots were of old things, then they were copies, and probably made within the past five or ten years. After running a test strip I made a big print of each negative on sixteen-by-twenty-inch Brovira paper. I put the prints into fresh developer, then stop-bath, and then fixed them. We tried to decipher them in the dim illumination of the safelight but couldn't. Then I took them from the fixer and put them in the wash tray. I had to stack them to fit, so we could only see one print at a time. I lit up the room. The five of us crowded around the wash tank when I was finished. We looked down at the first of the four big sheets that lay stacked underwater when I turned on the light. Well, it was hot all right. It was so hot I'm surprised the wash water didn't start to simmer. Here's what we saw:
The first print was a photograph of an old letter, written in longhand and without letterhead, to Frederick Katzmann, the prosecuting attorney. It was from John Vahey, the attorney for the defense who was later replaced by Fred Moore and finally by William Thompson. It was Vahey who told Bartolomeo Vanzetti not to take the witness stand in his own defense for the first crime he was tried for: the attempted holdup of the White Shoe factory in December1919. Vahey told Vanzetti, an accomplished orator, that to speak in his own defense would only prejudice the judge and jury against him. Wishing to cooperate, Vanzetti finally agreed. His failure to speak on his own behalf was later mentioned- twice- by Governor Fuller as the single most incriminating piece of evidence in the entire trial. Apparently his special commission agreed with him, and as a result they supported the earlier convictions of the Dedham courtroom. The letter proved beyond any reasonable doubt • that Vahey, the defense lawyer, and Katzmann, the prosecuting attorney, were in cahoots. No surprise then that they later became law partners. • that the trial was rigged from the start, with the prosecution and defense planning and executing an entire scenario that would railroad Sacco and Vanzetti straight to the electric chair. This, then, was the origin of the orchestration, the smoke-filled room and the mysterious "third hand" that I had sensed from the moment I began to read the histories of the case. • that Judge Webster Thayer knew of this cabal and perhaps even had a hand in its formation. The letter was not clear specifically as to the second point, but left no doubt as to the first one. • finally, that Katzmann and Vahey owed much of their plan's inspiration and execution to a brilliant and energetic young industrialist-lawyer: Joseph Carlton Critchfield.
We read and reread the letter, which was copied in typescript underneath the original photographed copy of the handwritten note. Brian broke the silence with a low whistle.
"Unbelievable! Dynamite, eh? The whole damn thing was rigged. Except I can't believe that stuff about Critchfield. That's hooey. Pure bull."
Joe looked at me quickly. We didn't say anything. We read the next letter. This was typed, and bore the letterhead of Whitney amp; Steele, a textile firm in Fitchburg, now defunct. The letter was written to a Mr. Lloyd Prill, Katzmann's assistant, and was dated January 23, 1927. It explained that the greatest obstacle to the final conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti, which, as the assistant prosecutor knew, was vital to the interests of' American democracy and industry, lay in the broad sympathy the pair of renegades had managed to stir up in the working class. This must be undermined, the author of the letter said, and at the same time the alibis of both men must be discredited. He then proceeded to outline two alternative plans to accomplish these goals. The letter mentioned several other actors in the drama of Dedham by name, among them Brockton Police Chief Stewart; Harry Ripley, the jury foreman who hated Italians; Judge Thayer, who apparently was a close family friend of the letter writer; and others. It was signed by the house counsel for Whitney amp; Steele: Joseph Carlton Critchfield.
Underneath, instead of a typed copy of the letter, which was unnecessary, were three affidavits from handwriting-analysis institutes in Albany, Paris, and Toronto, stating to Mr. Dominic Santuccio that the signature affixed to the letter matched other specimens known to be those of Mr. Critchfield and that it was genuine. Below these were two notarized statements, one from a museum and one from a laboratory, attesting to the authenticity and age of the letterhead, paper, and typeface.
We stood in silence reading and rereading this second tidbit.
"I still don't buy it," said Brian. "The Critchfield family… it's as big as the Adamses, the Lowells, the Peabodys, His grandson's going to be governor. Hell, the old man wouldn't be involved in this."
"There's a good reason for you to start buying it, Brian," said Joe. "Just before he died from Sam's bullet, Carmen DeLucca whispered the name of the man who paid him to put the hit on Johnny Robinson and Andy Santuccio. Tell him what Carmen said, Doc."
"He said three words to me: Old Joe Critchfield. Then he died. Where does Critchfield live, anyway?"
"I think he's got a big estate up in Danvers or Andover," said Mary. "Someplace like that."
"It's Andover. When they had you locked in the john, DeLucca mentioned that they had nowhere to go, not even Andover. Well Brian?"
Our police chief paced back and forth as if doing a slow waltz step, looking at the floor.
"Hmmmph! I'll be damned. Well, assuming that only part of it's true, it's no wonder old Critchfield wanted the film. I wonder how he knew it even existed, unless Santuccio himself told him. But I wonder why Santuccio didn't make it public."
"We'll never, ever know those answers," said Joe. "In fact, we still don't know the answer to the most important question of all: were Sacco and Vanzetti guilty? We know now that their trial was rigged, their lawyer was crooked, and so on. But we've always suspected that. But were they guilty?"
Then we examined the last two prints. One was a typed page. It was not a letter; it was a typed explanation of the photograph, which was the fourth and final frame in the negative strip. And that was the heartbreaker.
The photograph was an old one. It was a street scene in Boston. We could tell it was taken a long time ago by the old landmarks, now gone, and the absence of present-day buildings. Also, of course, we could tell by the clothes the people in the photograph were wearing. It didn't take us long to fix the location: Boston's North End, right along Atlantic Avenue at the Commercial Street intersection, looking northeast across the harbor to East Boston. The warehouses of Battery Wharf were unmistakable. The picture was filled with pedestrians, some faintly blurred because of their walking. A lot of the harbor was visible, including many boats and ships that spouted great black plumes of coal smoke as they headed out to sea or up toward the Mystic and Chelsea river channels. In fact, we soon decided the picture was of the harbor, not the street. Two old tin lizzies were parked along the Atlantic Avenue curb. In the foreground was a group of three men who stood chatting, oblivious of the camera. They were standing quite still, because there was no blur about them. They stood out clear and crisp.
"That's him," said Mary, "on the far right. See? He's holding his derby hat in his right hand."
She was right. There stood Nick Sacco, bare-headed and instantly recognizable, talking with two friends. In his left hand, the one nearest the camera, he held a piece of paper that was not newsprint. It appeared to be a picture. If it was, then I knew the tremendous significance of the old photograph, for Sacco's errand to the North End on April 15, 1920, had been to take a family photograph to the Italian consulate as the first step toward applying for passports to Italy. As it turned out, the photo he took to the consulate office was too big. He was turned down, and consequently had no written proof of his visit that day. I explained this to Joe and Brian. Both were slightly skeptical.
"Too pat," said Joe. "That picture was taken from about twenty feet away. Why would anybody do that? And it just so happens that you've got Sacco in the picture, posing, with his passport photo very conveniently displayed. Nah. Sacco was a typical southern Italian type. Somebody got a ringer for him and posed that shot"
"I agree," said Brian. "I'd like to think it was genuine, but I guess I want to know how come a passerby just happened along at just the right time and decided to snap that shot."
"But wait," said Mary. "The shot isn't of the men; they just happened to be in the foreground. The picture is of the harbor. It's a good view too."
We all stared at the scene in silence. Sam's finger went to the very center of the picture and rapped on it.
"What's this?" he asked in a low voice. "What's goin' on here?"
He had pointed to a steamboat, bow toward the camera, that was heading for a pier abutting Atlantic Avenue. Directly in the path of the steamer, and broadside to it, was a smaller steam launch. Upon looking more closely, we finally saw what it was that had drawn Sam's sharp eyes. The launch was canted over unnaturally. It was then clear to us that the bigger vessel was in fact colliding with the smaller one, about two hundred yards out in the harbor. And the collision scene, though by no means major, had been sufficient to draw the attention of a sightseer with a camera at hand, for the picture was framed around the two boats. They were the object of the picture, though casual inspection wouldn't reveal it.
"That's one of the old penny ferries," said Joe. "I've seen a lot of pictures of them. They operated between Eastern Avenue in the North End and Lewis Street in East Boston. Fare was only a penny for foot passengers. It was before the Callahan Tunnel was built."
"I remember the penny ferries," said Sam. "They were for the working people, the people who worked in the factories… it was the only way they could get to their jobs, so they kept the fare low."
"Listen to this," I said, laying out the dripping print of explanatory text on the worktable. I then read aloud to them the following explanation: This photo was taken on the afternoon of April 15, 1920, by Mr. Louis Perez of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, during a visit to Boston. Mr. Perez's widow claims he was walking down Commercial Street when he came within view of the harbor. Having his camera ready for a panoramic picture, he planned to walk to the water's edge. However, at the intersection of Commercial and Atlantic, just opposite the old ferry landing, he saw that a collision between the ferryboat Ashbumam, inward bound from East Boston, and the cargo launch Grenadier appeared to be imminent. He took the picture, unaware that Nicola Sacco was standing on a nearby corner talking to his friends Dentamore and Guadagni, who promptly left the scene for a coffeehouse. Unfortunately, they were also unaware of the photographer. Damage to the vessel Grenadier was minor, and the incident, in spite of delaying the Ashburnam's four-minute channel run by eight minutes, was soon forgotten by both crews. However, the Coast Guard, which dispatched the rescue vessel Felicia to stand by, recorded the collision as having occurred at approximately 3:26 P.M., April 15, 1920.
I replaced the print into the washing tray with the others. Nobody said anything. Sam went to the tray and picked up the wet print again. He held it up, and I looked over his shoulder at the face of the little dark man holding the picture. He was smiling. He was smiling because he was going on vacation to Italy to see members of his family whom he hadn't seen in years. But at the very instant the shutter was released, Alex Berardelli and Fred Parmenter lay dying on the roadside twelve miles away in South Braintree while the Morelli gang piled into the big touring car and sped away with the loot. And probably at the same instant Bart Vanzetti was sitting on an overturned dory on the beach at North Plymouth, thirty-five miles southeast, talking with Melvin Corl, the Yankee fisherman. They were probably talking politics, workers' rights, socialism, and all the other things that got Bart into trouble. And the events in Braintree would sweep along and engulf these two men who scarcely knew one another, would sweep them along as if they were in a riptide, so that within a month they would find themselves taken off a Brockton trolley car and arrested. And from the police station in Brockton they would follow an inexorable course that ended in the low, rambling, dusky hills of Charlestown, in the prison death house. Ironically, Sacco's ultimate destination lay just outside the photo, to the left.
And it broke my heart.