Carlo Balboni, a night fireman at the Cordage, said he had left the plant at six in the morning and gone directly to the Fortinis’ to pick up the eels he had ordered the day before. Vanzetti was still in bed when he got there and Mrs. Fortini had gone upstairs to wake him. John DiCarlo, a shoemaker on Court Street, said that on December 24 he had opened his shop as usual at 7:15 and was just starting to sweep the place out when Vanzetti came in with a package of eels. DiCarlo could even remember that they weighed a pound and a half. Rosa Balboni of South Cherry Street said that Vanzetti had delivered the eels she had ordered in the afternoon, but she had also seen him early that morning as she was going to the baker’s. Enrico Bastoni, the Cherry Street baker, told the court that Vanzetti had come to his shop the day before Christmas just before eight o’clock to see if he could rent a horse and truck for the day. But that day Bastoni needed them himself. It was a little before eight when Vanzetti arrived, for just afterward Bastoni heard the second Cordage whistle blow. Terese Malaguti, also of Cherry Street, said that she had bought eels from Vanzetti the same morning and that he had come about seven o’clock, when the first whistle blew. Adeladi Bongiovanni remembered that she had bought three pounds of eels at forty cents a pound. The boy brought them to the door and she had offered him two dollars, but as he had no change she had gone out in the street and paid Vanzetti herself. Just as the boy arrived she had been cooking polenta, and while she was out chatting with Vanzetti the polenta caught fire. Her next-door neighbors, Margherita Fiochi and Emma Borsari, told how they had also bought eels from Vanzetti that morning, as did a high school student, Esther Christophori, living in Suosso’s Lane, and young Vincent Longhi of 42 Cherry Street, both of whom testified in English.
In dealing with this solid block of testimony Katzmann tried to discredit it generally. He asked the witnesses how they could recall the details of one particular day among all the other days of the year. Might not Vanzetti as easily have delivered his eels on the twenty-third as the twenty-fourth? His landlady, for example, although she said she had called him at quarter past six the day before Christmas, could not recall what time he got up the day after Christmas, or New Year’s Day or Washington’s Birthday or any other specific day.
The most important witness for Vanzetti was thirteen-year-old Beltrando Brini. The defense claimed he had been Vanzetti’s helper on his morning round delivering the eels. Nicknamed Dolly, he was an intelligent, nervous boy, small for his age, looking rather helpless in his Norfolk knickerbocker suit and high boots. On the night of December 23, he told the court, two men had brought a half a pig to his house in Suosso’s Lane. His father had ordered the pig for Christmas. That same night Vanzetti had stopped in to ask if the boy would help him deliver eels next day. Dolly promised he would. On that damp and muddy morning before Christmas he met Vanzetti first in front of Maxwell’s Drugstore. Near the drugstore Dolly’s father had run into him, taken one look at his boots, and told him to go home and get his rubbers. At first the boy could not find them. By the time he had located them under the stairs and hurried back to Vanzetti’s house in Cherry Street it was eight o’clock, for as he trotted along he could hear the Cordage whistle blowing.
Vanzetti was putting his packages of eels in his pushcart and an extra wheelbarrow when Dolly arrived. He told the boy he had wanted to hire a horse and cart but could not find one. The two of them started out with wheelbarrow and pushcart, making their deliveries to the regular customers up and down Cherry Street, Cherry Place, Cherry Court, and finally down to Court Street. Dolly had worked from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon, when Vanzetti paid him off.
On Christmas Eve, Vanzetti dropped in at the Brinis’. When he left he noticed the children’s stockings hanging by the mantel and put two half-dollars in each one. On Christmas Day Vanzetti stopped in again, and Dolly thanked him for the half-dollars and showed him his Christmas presents.
Katzmann began his cross-examination with deceptive gentleness, calling the boy “son” and asking if he would like to testify sitting down. As he continued, his voice hardened and he began to box the boy in with questions. How many times had he told his story? How many times had he gone over it with his parents? With Mr. Vahey? Had he learned it just like a piece at school? Who corrected him when he left something out? The district attorney stalked him through all the details of the morning: the houses where the boy had left packages, the weight of the basket he carried, the time he started and the time he finished his deliveries. Had he finished at one-fifteen, or was it one-twenty? The boy squirmed and looked pleadingly at Judge Thayer, but there was no relief coming from that stiff-robed parchment-faced figure. Young Brini had to admit that he had repeated his story a number of times to his parents and others, and that when he repeated it and omitted anything his father would correct him.
Beltrando’s parents, Vincenzo and Alfonsina, both testified. Vincenzo told of meeting his boy in the lane on the morning of December 24 and sending him back for his rubbers. He also mentioned the side of pig that had arrived the night before, when Vanzetti dropped in for a visit. Vanzetti’s mustache was untrimmed then, just the same that night as it was now. Alfonsina corroborated her husband. In a lengthy cross-examination Katzmann tried to force her into admitting that she had coached her son in his story, but the most she would say was that she had listened to him tell it a number of times.
John Vernazano, the Court Street barber who had shaved Vanzetti and cut his hair for the last five or six years, now took the stand to say that he had never trimmed Vanzetti’s mustache, that it had always been just as it was today. He received unexpected confirmation from two non-Italian members of the Plymouth police force. Officer John Gault said that he knew Vanzetti and had seen him three or four times a week for several years. Gault had never noticed any change or alteration in the Italian’s mustache, but under Katzmann’s cross-examination he admitted that he had not paid any particular attention to it. Officer Joseph Schilling had seen Vanzetti off and on several times a week in the months before his arrest, and his mustache had always looked the same. It might not have been the same, Schilling admitted, but he had never noticed any difference.
Cross-examining Vernazano, Katzmann asked him if he knew William Douglass, the proprietor of the Samoset House, and if the man had a mustache. The barber said he knew Douglass by sight and that he had a small light mustache. Katzmann then produced the clean-shaven Douglass on the stand to say that he had never had a mustache.
On this inconclusive note the defense ended its case on Monday morning, July 1. Judge Thayer, in a short, conventional charge to the jury, instructed them that no inference should be drawn against the defense witnesses because they were Italians. However, in spite of the judge’s words, the Italians’ embarrassment as they spoke through their interpreter undoubtedly made the Anglo-Saxon jury feel that—in Vanzetti’s later words—“all the wops stick together.” If the headmaster of the Plymouth High School or the wife of the local Congregational minister had testified to buying fish from Vanzetti on the morning of December 24, that would have been as good as a directed verdict. But these swarthy aliens were suspect.