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.