He stayed overnight with a friend, Vincent Colarossi, and next
morning, Sunday, had breakfast with him and Felicani in Scollay
Square; later they had dinner at Boni’s with a group of friends. They
spent the afternoon at the Naturalization Club in East Boston and at
the end of the day Vanzetti had gone back to Plymouth.
On Monday he went around Plymouth looking without success for a job.
The next day he tried to get fish from Antonio Carbone down on the
pier, but fish seemed as scarce as jobs. He was at Carbone’s house
that evening paying a bill for fish and Carbone had just given him
two cigars when Chief of Police Armstrong came in to tell them an
Italian fisherman named Pacci had drowned. Two days later Vanzetti
happened to visit the dock, and there was a dory near the wharf with
Pacci’s body in it and the undertaker’s car waiting on the siding. He
told the men in the dory it would be easier if they brought the body
to the shore and took it up the three cement steps to Water Street.
All that week he could find neither work nor fish. On Saturday he
went to Boston, again staying with Colarossi. At their Sunday meeting
in the Naturalization Club his friends asked him to go to New York on
their affairs and he left that night. Three days later he returned,
coming back on the Providence boat.
May Day found him again in Boston with Colarossi, and the next day
there was the usual get-together at the Naturalization Club. Monday
morning he spent at the fish piers; everywhere he went he found the
prices too high. In the afternoon he took the train to Stoughton and
stayed overnight at Sacco’s house. Next day he spent around the house
while Sacco went to Boston to pick up his passport. In the evening
Sacco came back with Orciani on the latter’s motorcycle, and the
three of them agreed to meet the following day.
That last day he and Sacco cut wood while Rosina packed. Just by
chance he had pocketed four shotgun shells he found on Sacco’s
kitchen cabinet.[10] Vanzetti told in detail about the evening of May
5: how Orciani, with Boda, had gone on ahead, and how he had composed
a notice for the next Sunday’s meeting. Sacco had thought the notice
too long, so he had cut out some of it. Although they had agreed to
meet Orciani and Boda at Elm Square, there was no sign of them when
they arrived. Only when they were walking over the railroad bridge
near Simon Johnson’s house had they seen the motorcycle coming along
from Brockton.
After talking about the license plates with Johnson they had given up
their project. Boda had then told Vanzetti: “I and Orciani go with
the machine and you take a car and you go home. We will look for a
new number. When I am ready I will tell you and we will come here
some other day. We will come to take the automobile.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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