Swann, meanwhile, had been in touch with the State Department about a possible extradition. The people in Washington recited a very sobering statistic handed down from Frank Polk, the same man who had been shot in the cheek all those years ago in the attempt on Mayor Mitchel’s life. He still had the scar. Polk related to Swann that “of twelve Italians tried in Italy for crimes committed in the Unites States, during the past four years, not one has been convicted.”
While Swann’s office still held out hope that they would be able to put a living, breathing Alfredo Cocchi on trial on American soil, Commissioner Woods quietly tried to work his own angle. Judge Zucconi had turned down any official police envoy, so Woods sent a man named Joseph Grigg to report on Cocchi and any other evidence the Italian police were finding. But Grigg was not a cop; he was a reporter for the Sun. Woods deputized him in secret and gave him his orders. Having done work in London, Italy, and France, Grigg was perfect for the job, and Woods hoped that Grigg could keep an eye on the case for him.
Once Grigg arrived in Italy, he was threatened almost immediately. He was soon named in papers as Woods’s personal detective. Within days, Grigg received Black Hand letters that told him he would share the fate of Petrosino if he didn’t abandon the case forever. Woods considered pulling him back but did not.
By early July, Wallstein was thinking about calling Inspector Faurot, Captain Costigan, and even Deputy Commissioner Scull himself to testify. Readers who were following the hearings in the papers were anxiously awaiting upcoming witnesses as if they were hitters coming in to face Bob Shawkey. For though grand jury records were confidential, quoted testimony from the Wallstein hearings was reprinted almost daily on the front page of the Sun. Readers were especially waiting for July 6, when Grace was scheduled to at last tell the whole story of her successful search for Ruth Cruger’s body. To prepare, Wallstein planned to work through the weekend.
Just before the July Fourth holiday, Wallstein called Henry Ankenmann, one of Cocchi’s errand boys, who had worked at the shop until August. Ankenmann gave Wallstein the names of a number of motorcycle cops whom he had seen rub elbows with Fish. Ankenmann also said that he did not think that the source of Cocchi’s supposed clout was anything other than friendships with the local motorcycle policemen who worked in his neighborhood. After all, wouldn’t it make sense that the Harlem motorcycle shop owner knew all of the Harlem motorcycle cops?
Ankenmann did admit that he helped Cocchi dig under the sidewalk pavement outside the shop. Cocchi had told him it was part of some plan to bring motorcycles into the cellar more easily. Cocchi said it was because he needed more dirt to fill in the floor of a path under the sidewalk. Ankenmann also remembered how Cocchi once boasted that he did not need a motorcycle license because he knew the police so well.
When Independence Day came, New York City was ablaze with red-and-blue streamers and portraits of the new symbol of America, a fictional character called Uncle Sam, who had white hair and stern, glittering eyes. On July Fourth, Governor Whitman ordered Wallstein’s investigation finished. Without any warning, Whitman asked that all evidence and paperwork be delivered to District Attorney Swann for the transition to a grand jury investigation. Summons were served that same day on several officials at police headquarters and at Fourth Branch. As the feared envelopes slid across desks, into mailboxes, and into shaking hands, policemen looked up in anger and disbelief. Whitman assured everyone that shuttering Wallstein’s inquiry would be only temporary and that it would resume sometime in the future.
Wallstein gathered every square inch of paperwork he had and sent it down the line to District Attorney Swann, the Tammany Hall man. Wallstein, who was the chairman of the same Humanitarian Cult that had helped Charlie Stielow years before, worried what might happen to his case now. Mayor Mitchel was equally furious. “We were attempting, and I think succeeding in our attempt, to make a complete investigation of police methods,” he said.
As Wallstein was leaving the city to take a delayed vacation, he commented on the astonishing ease with which his investigation had been shut down. He told a reporter that he had been asked “to fade out of the case … and that he was now in the act of fading.” “I have stopped dead in my tracks,” Wallstein said. New Yorkers understood his tone. Many felt the same way. They felt like pieces on a gameboard dwarfed by large, invisible players.
“The issue in this case,” said Wallstein, “was boneheadedness vs. criminality. Boneheadedness was proved. Criminality has yet to be proved.” This meant that for all of the finger-pointing and outright tampering of evidence, there was a good chance that no one would be punished. As Wallstein left the stage, Assistant District Attorney John Dooling and Alfred J. Talley picked up the grand jury investigation, which would be presided over by Judge McIntyre. Instead of working on their golf game over the holiday, as they had planned, the staff was recalled to look over legal transcripts. They laid out their papers on tables in places emptied of their usual workers. They read and searched for answers.
In Italy, Judge Zucconi was equally frustrated by the presence of outsiders in his business. He had read about Joseph Grigg, the man sent by Woods to keep an eye on things in Italy. Zucconi called him in; he wanted to explain a few things about the Italian judicial system. American newspapers were starved for news from Bologna. The transcripts had already been unofficially leaked; rumor and news were becoming the same thing.
“I understand how great is the interest in America,” Zucconi said, “to find out if possible, through the Cocchi case, whether any connivance existed between the American police and the series of so-called elopements of girls under age that have occurred frequently, without, as a rule, the men culprits being discovered.
“The law is equal for all,” Zucconi explained. “As long as the investigation lasts, no one can be allowed to interfere with it, directly, or indirectly. I hope America will not take offense if, while we are not allowing even the accused’s lawyer to see the papers in the case or interrogate the prisoner, we also forbid the representative of the American police having any such privilege.”
The Americans had questions for Cocchi, but they were not allowed to participate in any process—even discovery—of Cocchi’s trial. Zucconi, and Italian law, had frozen them out. Zucconi then added that they could submit their questions through the magistrate, though this would take much longer than they were usually accustomed to.