SARAH SHIFTED THE BASKET FROM HER LEFT ARM TO her right. She’d been a little overgenerous in filling it, and now she was paying the price. Not only was the basket heavy, but carrying it along crowded sidewalks was difficult. She kept bumping people with it, earning irritated looks and even more irritated curses as she made her way down Mulberry Street.
When Mrs. Wells had described where Emilia’s family lived, Sarah had immediately recognized the area. She’d delivered several babies in these tenements. Few of those babies lived to celebrate their first birthdays, but at least they’d arrived alive and well into the world.
The fall weather was holding, and today was even warmer than yesterday, with the sun shining brightly. All the residents of Mulberry Bend seemed to be out in the street, standing on their fire escapes or leaning out their windows, shouting back and forth to each other. Women of every age sat lined up on the curbs and stoops, some nursing babies, some screaming at children who had wandered too far away, others just talking and gossiping.
Sarah’s basket bumped a young mother carrying an infant in a sling. “Excuse me,” she apologized.
The woman smiled. “Signora Brandt?” she asked.
Sarah looked more closely. “Maria?” Sarah had delivered the baby who slept so peacefully at his mother’s breast. “How is your baby doing?”
Maria was carrying some vegetables in her apron, but using her free hand, she obligingly shifted the fabric of the sling to reveal the child. He looked healthy and fat.
“Buono,” Sarah said with an approving smile, using one of her few Italian words. She stroked the baby’s thick, dark curls.
“Sì, è bello, ” Maria agreed, smiling back. “He is fat like pig!”
“That proves your milk is good,” Sarah said. “You’re a good mother.”
Maria beamed with pride. “You here… more baby?” she asked.
“No, I’m visiting the Donato family. Do you know them?”
Maria nodded, and her smile faded. “I know Emilia, before she go away.”
“Have you heard what happened to her?”
Maria shook her head warily.
“Someone murdered her.”
Maria’s eyes widened in surprise. She crossed herself quickly and murmured what might have been a prayer or a blessing.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah said. “Were you good friends?”
Maria shrugged one shoulder. “I know her. That is all. Who kill her? Lucca?”
“Who is Lucca?” Sarah asked, trying not to sound too eager.
Maria glanced around nervously, afraid someone would overhear. “He bad man,” she said.
Sarah knew there had been two bad men in Emilia’s life. One of them had been named Ugo. “Was he her pimp?” Sarah whispered, wondering how she would explain this if Maria wasn’t familiar with the word.
Maria’s dark eyes grew wide again. Sarah supposed she was surprised Sarah knew the word. “Sì,” she said, nodding vigorously. “Very bad man.”
“Do you know his last name?”
She shook her head. “He just Lucca. Very bad man,” she repeated firmly, as if afraid Sarah hadn’t quite understood.
“Thank you, Maria. I’ll be careful.”
“Sì, careful,” Maria agreed. “Molta attenta.”
Sarah smiled to reassure the girl. “Could you show me the alley where the Donatos live? I brought them a basket of food from the mission.”
Maria didn’t smile back. “Signora Donato, she not be sad Emilia dead,” she warned.
Sarah was actually counting on that. She hoped the woman’s anger at her dead daughter would loosen her tongue. “I know.”
Maria studied her face for a moment, making sure Sarah wasn’t going to waiver in her mission of mercy, before saying, “Come, I show you.”
“Do you know Emilia’s brother, too?” Sarah asked as Maria fell in beside her.
“Sì, Georgio. He play… organ?” She wasn’t sure she’d chosen the correct word.
For a moment Sarah pictured a man in a tuxedo playing a pipe organ in an enormous cathedral. Then she noticed Maria moving her hand in a cranking motion. “He’s an organ grinder,” she guessed.
“Sì.” Maria was pleased she had made Sarah understand. “He… no foot,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward the ground.
“He lost his foot?” This would explain his organ grinding. He wouldn’t be able to hold a regular laboring job.
“No, he… born, no foot.”
Sarah nodded her understanding. She thought of Brian Malloy’s misshapen foot and wondered if Malloy knew how lucky his son had been, even in his misfortune. At least Georgio Donato had managed to find a profession of sorts, even if it was nothing more than glorified begging.
“Does he play around here?” Sarah asked.
Maria grinned at Sarah’s naivete. “No, he play Macy’s,” she said, naming the popular department store on Sixth Avenue.
Of course, Sarah should have realized an organ grinder would have to go where people had enough money to give him coins for the entertainment he provided. She’d seen various musicians lining the streets in those neighborhoods, looking for alms from the passing throngs, but she’d hardly ever paid attention to them.
Maria had led her down one of the twisting alleys and now she stopped and pointed at the next building. “There,” she said. “Tre steps.” She held up three fingers and pointed up. Sarah understood the Donatos lived on the third floor.
She thanked Maria, wished her well, and insisted she take one of the small cakes from her basket as a reward. When the girl had gone, Sarah drew a fortifying breath and continued with her objective. By the time she had reached the third floor of the Donatos’ building, she was extremely sorry she’d filled the basket so full. She only hoped the Donatos were grateful enough to accept her offerings, because she had no intention of carrying them back down again.
The doors to some of the flats stood open to catch the breeze from the stairwell. This allowed some feeble light to guide her in the windowless area. When she reached the third floor, she saw a woman in one of the flats. She was sitting at her kitchen table. The makings of paper flowers lay on the table before her. Many families in the tenements made flowers or other crafts to sell in the street, putting children to the task as soon as they were old enough to do the work. This woman was simply staring blankly at the wall today. Sarah thought she looked like someone who had just lost her daughter.
“Mrs. Donato?” she tried.
The woman looked around slowly, squinting to make out who was standing in the shadows. Sarah stepped into the doorway. “Are you Mrs. Donato?”
“We pay rent,” the woman said defensively.
Sarah tried a reassuring smile. “I’m Sarah Brandt,” she said, too late realizing Malloy might have told them she was the one who had identified Emilia’s body. “I met Emilia at the mission,” she hurried on. “I was very sorry to hear what happened, and I brought some things I thought you might be able to use.”
Mrs. Donato gave no indication she’d ever heard Sarah’s name before. Count on Malloy to be discreet. When Mrs. Donato also didn’t offer any objection, Sarah pulled back the cloth covering the basket to reveal an assortment of delicacies she’d purchased at the bakery near her house. She’d been careful not to choose anything that might look like charity or indicate she thought the family couldn’t provide regular meals for themselves. “For the funeral,” she said. They would need something special to serve the mourners after the service.
Mrs. Donato’s round face darkened. “No funeral,” she said bitterly. “She no Catholic no more. She… mission.” She said the word as if it were a curse.
Sarah remembered what Mrs. Wells had said about Emilia giving up her “popish” ways. She knew how important their faith was to Catholics. No wonder Mrs. Donato sounded bitter. Sarah stood there for a moment, wondering what on earth she could say. That was when she really looked at the other woman and saw what a trained nurse should have seen immediately.
“Mrs. Donato, when was the last time you had something to eat?”
Mrs. Donato’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “We have food. No need charity.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” Sarah agreed, “but when was the last time you ate any of your food? You look as if you might be a little dehydrated.”
“No sick,” she protested, probably not recognizing the word. Few people would, even if they spoke fluent English.
“You will be sick if you don’t eat something soon,” Sarah warned. “I’m a nurse and a midwife. I delivered Maria Fortunato’s baby,” she added, hoping that would give her some credibility. “I just saw her down on the street, and she showed me where you lived.”
Mrs. Donato made a sound in her throat. Sarah didn’t know what it meant, but she chose to interpret it positively. She saw a coffeepot on the stove and stepped over to see if it was still warm. The kitchen was small enough, she only needed to take one step.
Warm enough, she decided, and took a cup down from the shelf and filled it. On second thought, she poured a second one. Sarah would sit down with her and force the woman to see her as a guest. With any luck, Mrs. Donato would feel obligated to treat her with some small bit of hospitality. She set the cups on the table, then got a plate from the shelf, too. Digging in the basket, she found some cookies and a sugar cake. She set them on the plate, breaking the cake in half. Then she sat down at the table, too.
“Please,” she said, “eat just a little to be polite.”
Mrs. Donato looked up at her in surprise, and Sarah smiled encouragingly.
“It really is delicious,” she added, breaking off a small piece of the cake and popping it into her mouth to demonstrate.
Slowly, almost grudgingly, the other woman reached out and did the same, bringing the morsel cautiously to her lips.
“Isn’t it good?” Sarah asked, but she didn’t wait for an answer. “I didn’t know Emilia very well. I only met her once. Someone asked me to visit the mission to see the kind of work they do there, and that’s when I saw her. She seemed like a lovely girl.”
Mrs. Donato wasn’t gratified at the compliment as most mothers would have been. “Emilia… mistake,” she said after searching for the correct word.
“I know she made mistakes,” Sarah commiserated. “But many young girls get fooled by evil men. She was trying to change, though. She’d learned how to sew, so she could get honest work.”
The eyes that stared back at her were full of suppressed rage. “No,” she said slowly and deliberately, trying to make sure Sarah understood. “She mistake, from before born!”
“Because she was a girl?” Sarah asked, not really certain what the other woman meant. She knew many people, especially the foreign born, preferred sons.
“No, because she is!”
Now Sarah thought she understood. “You didn’t want another child after… I know your son is crippled.”
But that wasn’t it either. She leaned forward, desperate for Sarah to comprehend. “Emilia child of Devil!”
Sarah couldn’t let Mrs. Donato remember her daughter only for the tragic mistakes she’d made in her short life. “No child is born evil,” she tried.
Mrs. Donato made a growling sound in her throat. “She child of Devil,” she repeated. “On ship to America, I get lost one day. Sailors find me.” The pain in her eyes left no doubt as to what the sailors had done to her. Sarah instinctively reached out, laying a hand on the other woman’s arm in comfort. She didn’t even seem to notice. “I never tell what they do. I too ashamed. I never tell. Then I get baby.”
How horrible that must have been for her! She hadn’t been able to share the pain of being raped, and then to get pregnant from it. If the child was the result of the rape, she’d be a constant reminder of it for the rest of her life. “She could have been your husband’s child,” Sarah tried.
“I pray it is so. I do not know until I see her. I afraid, all a time afraid. Then I see her, and I know. One sailor, yellow hair. Baby with yellow hair. I know. Child of Devil.”
No wonder Emilia had felt unloved. Her own mother had seen her as a symbol of shame and degradation. “Did your husband know, too?”
She shook her head vehemently. “I never tell. Never tell no one until now. Now you know. She not good. Child of Devil.”
Poor Emilia. The shame of her conception had destined her, in her mother’s eyes at least, to a life of disgrace. Then she had fulfilled her mother’s expectations in the worst possible way. “She was trying to change,” Sarah offered.
“She never change,” her mother insisted. “Better dead.”
Sarah managed not to wince. She’d seen too many women express such a sentiment. Only the rich could afford the luxury of cherishing their children. A baby born to a poor family was a burden, another mouth to feed that wouldn’t be able to contribute to its support for many years. Worse, it might get sick and further drain the family’s resources.
Many times the babies Sarah delivered were considered a curse, not a blessing. No wonder so many women drank noxious potions to abort their pregnancies. No wonder abortionists grew fat and wealthy. No wonder babies were left in alleys to die. No wonder thousands of homeless children roamed the streets, scrounging and thieving and prostituting themselves just to stay alive. At least the Donatos had raised Emilia instead of turning her out. That was probably Mr. Donato’s doing, since he had no reason to suspect she wasn’t his child. As loveless as her home was, she’d had one, which was more than far too many children could claim.
“Mrs. Donato, do you have any idea who might have killed Emilia?”
The other woman narrowed her eyes in suspicion again. “No. We no see her, long time.”
Sarah decided to take a chance. “What about Ugo or Lucca?”
Mrs. Donato reared back as if Sarah had slapped her and muttered what might have been a curse in Italian. “Get out my house,” she said, pushing herself to her feet. Her face had paled, but Sarah judged she was more angry than shocked. “You go now.”
Sarah wanted to bite her tongue. What had she been thinking to mention those names to Emilia’s mother? “I’m sorry if I offended you…”
“You go now. I tell you nothing.”
Sarah rose to her feet. “Let me leave these things for you,” she said, reaching into the basket and setting another cake onto the table.
“We no need nothing,” she insisted, her voice rising along with her color.
“I know you don’t, but please accept it as a gift.” Remembering her pledge not to carry these things back with her, she relentlessly continued to empty the basket, setting the things out on the crude kitchen table as quickly as she could before Mrs. Donato threw her out physically.
She hadn’t quite finished, but she could see from the way the other woman was breathing that she was working herself up to an emotional outburst. Sarah quickly gathered her basket and said, “I’m very sorry about Emilia. If I can do anything, please let me know.”
An empty platitude, if ever she’d uttered one. Mrs. Donato would have no way of contacting her except through the mission. Sarah figured the woman would starve to death before contacting the mission about anything.
When she reached the door with her basket over her arm, Sarah looked back to take her leave. For an instant she thought she saw tears standing in Mrs. Donato’s eyes, but she couldn’t be sure in the poor light. “Please, try to eat something,” she said lamely before making her hasty departure.
As she groped her way down the dark stairs, she sent up a silent prayer that Malloy would never find out about this visit. Not only hadn’t she learned anything useful, but she’d alienated Mrs. Donato, which meant she’d never be able to go back again.
As she left the building, she had to pause a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the bright sunlight. A group of ragged children were playing stickball in the alley, shouting and running and screaming at each other for not performing as well as they might have. All of them, she noted, had dark hair, just as Malloy had observed. Emilia must have felt very strange growing up in this neighborhood.
Sarah remembered the goodies left in her basket, the ones Mrs. Donato hadn’t given her time to unpack. She strolled over to the group and asked if they wanted something to eat. When they saw what she had, greedy hands quickly relieved her of every last crumb.
A few mumbled “grazies” trailed after the children as they darted away, disappearing into nooks and crannies with their treats, lest she change her mind. Watching them running away so nimbly made her think of Brian and wonder if he would soon be able to run like that. Which made her think of Emilia’s brother Georgio, who had never been able even to walk.
Maria had said he played his organ outside of Macy’s. How difficult would it be to find an Italian organ grinder with one foot? Sarah wasn’t sure what he would be able to tell her, but she really couldn’t know any less than she already did about Emilia. If nothing else, she’d be able to tell Malloy where to find him.
The Canal Street Station of the El wasn’t too far. She took the train to Fourteenth Street and walked over to Sixth Avenue. The sidewalks were crowded with the buxom wives of successful businessmen who were doing their duty by spending the money their husbands earned.
As she walked along, Sarah realized she’d never really paid much attention to the people who came here for the purpose of earning their daily bread by performing for the passing crowd. Everyone understood that they were beggars, but if they juggled or played a musical instrument or performed in some other way, people could maintain the fiction that they were earning a living. No one wanted to see real beggars on the sidewalks.
Macy’s occupied the entire block between Thirteenth and Fourteenth Streets, so Sarah had a lot of ground to cover as she circled the building. She was just starting to feel silly for having thought she could locate Georgio so easily when she found him on the comer of Sixth and Thirteenth. Actually, she’d noticed the little girl first, not even registering who was making the music to which she danced.
The child was adorable. She was probably about four or five years old and as dainty as a fairy in her bright red dress. Her dark hair hung in curls that fell to her shoulders and bounced delightfully as her tiny bare feet formed intricate patterns on the pavement. Her enormous brown eyes glittered with happiness at the attention she had attracted. Sarah wasn’t the only passerby who had stopped to watch, entranced. Then the song ended, and the gathered crowd applauded. The girl bobbed a curtsey and looked around expectantly. In a moment, coins appeared, fished from pockets and purses and offered in tribute. The coins disappeared again as if by magic, spirited away by little fingers as nimble as the little feet had been and deposited into the pocket of her dress.
While the crowd disbursed, the girl turned and hurried back to the man who had produced the music. That was when Sarah recalled her purpose in being here. The child was emptying her pocket and giving the coins to a handsome youth who sat on a small stool with his back against the building. He held the organ between his knees, resting on a small stand. He wore a dark shirt and trousers and had a red bandanna tied rakishly at his throat. He looked so perfect that Sarah almost didn’t notice the wooden crutches tucked discreetly between his stool and the wall. Finally, she saw the pant leg pinned up at the ankle.
She’d never expected Georgio to have a child, which was why she’d been so slow to realize she’d found him. Taking advantage of this lull, she stepped over to where the man and the girl were conversing in Italian. There seemed to be some question about whether she’d given him all the coins she’d collected.
“Georgio?” Sarah tried.
He looked up from beneath the bill of his small cap. His eyes were dark and liquid, his smile big and bright and charming. “Si, Signorina, do you want to see the little one dance?” His English was very good, probably honed from conversing with his customers.
“No, although she dances very well,” Sarah added, giving the child an approving smile, in case she didn’t understand the compliment. “I wanted to ask you about your sister Emilia.”
His charming smile vanished, and the dark eyes grew wary. “She is dead,” he said very carefully.
“I know. I’m very sorry.”
“Who are you and what do you want?” he asked suspiciously. When he frowned, Sarah realized how much he looked like his mother.
“My name is Sarah Brandt, and I met Emilia at the Prodigal Son Mission.” His expression hardened from wariness into anger. Plainly, none of the Donato family had any love for the mission. “She was such a lovely girl, and she was trying very hard to become a respectable young woman,” Sarah hurried on, wishing she had some idea how Georgio felt about his sister.
Seeing that the grown-ups were going to talk a bit, the little girl sank down onto the pavement with a weary sigh and leaned back against the wall. Sarah wondered vaguely how many times she had to perform in a day. She probably had a right to be tired.
“Emilia is whore,” he said baldly. “Now she dead. Why you care? Why anybody care?”
“She was learning to sew,” Sarah tried. “She wanted to earn an honest living. She wanted to change.”
“She go to mission before, then she go back with Ugo,” Georgio said. “She never change. Just pretend. She want clothes and food and place to live. Easy life for a while. Then she go back.”
Sarah wondered if that could be true. She’d hardly known Emilia. Mrs. Wells had been convinced that Emilia had changed, however, and after her years of experience working at the mission, she wouldn’t be easily fooled. “This time she really meant it,” Sarah argued. “She was going to get a job. In fact, that’s what she was going to do the morning she was killed.”
The eyes that stared back at her were unmoved. He knew his sister better than Sarah, and he didn’t believe anything good about her. Sarah glanced at the child to remind herself that Georgio was a father himself. Maybe she could reach him that way.
“Your daughter is asleep,” she observed, half in wonder at the way children could just drop off any time and any place. She looked like a brightly clad porcelain doll sitting there.
Georgio looked down and struck out with his whole foot, catching her on the hip. Jolted awake, she yelped in pain and outrage as Sarah cried out in protest. He ignored Sarah and gave the girl a sharp command in Italian. She rose sullenly, rubbing her hip.
“Sorriso!” he commanded, and she twisted her face into the parody of a smile. He started to turn the crank and coax music from the box. The girl’s tiny feet began to move, sketching out the steps so lightly they hardly seemed to touch the ground. She twirled, making her colorful skirt float out around her brown legs. People began to stop and watch. Soon a crowd formed. Georgio relentlessly ignored Sarah. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say about his sister. A man who would kick his own child on a public street to get her to dance wouldn’t care about a sister who’d disgraced her family by selling herself. She was wasting her time here.
Another failure she didn’t want to report to Malloy, especially when he’d expressly forbidden her to do any investigation at all in this case.
Frank knew better than to go exploring the alleys of Mulberry Bend alone at night. The sun had dropped far enough in the sky to cast these rear tenement buildings into darkness, even though it was still daylight in the rest of the city. He’d gathered up a couple of the beat cops to accompany him now that he had learned where Ugo Ianuzzi made his living.
“You know which one it is?” one of the cops asked as they made their way, stepping over the trash and the tramps lying in the alley.
“No,” Frank said. Ianuzzi’s landlady hadn’t been specific. “Just that it’s in one of these buildings.”
“There must be a dozen dives back here,” the other cop complained.
“Then we’ll look in each one until we find him,” Frank replied irritably. He’d much rather be home, enjoying his mother’s cooking and his son’s company, than searching stale beer dives for a man he didn’t consider good enough to spit on.
The early hour ensured the crowds would be small in these establishments that were very distant cousins to saloons. Located in any available basement or cubbyhole, the dive consisted of a few tables and chairs and a keg of stale beer. The proprietor would have stolen the keg from a sidewalk in front of a legitimate saloon, where the flat beer from the night before was set out each morning for the breweries to pick up the kegs and refill them. The dive keeper would doctor the flat beer with chemicals to put some foam back into it and sell it for pennies to the homeless beggars who worked their trade all day just to afford the privilege. In exchange for their purchases, they would be allowed to stay in the dive all night, sleeping in a chair or on the floor in drunken oblivion. Ugo Ianuzzi had made his fortune by running such a place.
One of the officers kicked open the door of the first dive they came to. The room was the dank cellar of a ramshackle frame tenement house. The walls were covered with years of grime. The dirt floor consisted of a layer of crawling bugs feeding on the filth beneath. An ancient hag clad in garments so dirty, their original color was indistinguishable, was filling a tomato can – which passed for a glass – from the keg that sat in the center of the room on the remains of a broken chair. She and her customer, a pockmarked young man with crossed eyes and no front teeth, looked up in terror at the intrusion. Usually, a raid by the police would mean six months “on the island” for the proprietor and her customers.
“Don’t worry. We ain’t looking for you,” one of the cops said. He turned to Frank. “What’s the name?”
“Ugo Ianuzzi,” Frank said. “Where is he?”
The old woman made a pretense of refusing to cooperate, but the cops only needed to threaten her with their nightsticks to encourage cooperation. She probably wouldn’t have survived an actual blow from the locust wood clubs. She very quickly gave them directions in broken English to a place two buildings down.
“If you’re lying, we’ll be back,” one of the cops warned her.
They passed several more of the dives on their way, and Frank realized the reformers were right: the only way to clean out The Bend was to tear it down. So long as this rabbit warren of decay existed, evil would breed here like cockroaches.
When they reached the place the old woman had described, one of the cops opened the door with the heel of his boot. It slammed back against the wall, startling the early arrivals. This room was bigger than most of the dives. Ugo had commandeered a space almost twenty feet square and furnished it with a mismatched assortment of chairs and makeshift tables made of odd pieces of lumber laid over broken barrels. The requisite keg rested in its place of honor at the center of the room. Several dozen empty tin cans sat on the floor in front of it, awaiting customers.
“Ianuzzi?” Frank shouted, looking around.
A burly man with a cigar clenched in his teeth came forward. He appeared to be in his thirties, and he was far more respectable looking than the hag who ran the first dive they’d checked. In his shirtsleeves, he wore a vest with a watch chain stretched across it. His lush mustache was neatly trimmed, and his dark hair lavishly pomaded. He shouted something in Italian to his customers, who rose as one and made for the door. Some hunched their shoulders and ducked their heads in anticipation of blows from the coppers’ locusts, but no one paid them any mind.
“I want to ask you some questions, Ugo,” Frank said in a tone that brooked no argument.
“No ’stand,” Ugo tried with an elaborate shrug.
“Maybe you’ll understand this,” Frank said. “I want to talk to you about Emilia Donato.”
Ugo’s expression hardened. “Emilia is whore,” he declared. “I no see her, long time.”
“Then you won’t mind answering a few questions about her.”
“I know nothing. I no see her. She run away, long time.”
‘I know all about why she ran away from you, Ugo,” Frank said pleasantly. “And just so you know, I don’t think much of men who beat women, especially when they’re expecting a child.”
“She lie, all a time, lie. No believe her,” Ugo advised, gesturing with his hands. “She run away, go to pimp. I no see, long time.”
“It’s a real shame about your memory being so bad,” Frank said. “I’ll bet it gets a whole lot better after a couple hours at Police Headquarters.”
Ugo protested vigorously, but a few well-placed blows from the locusts changed his mind. Eventually, he agreed to accompany them up the street to Headquarters.
“They steal all my beer,” he complained when they dragged him out of his dive, leaving his keg unattended.
“Then you’ll just have to steal some more to replace it,” Frank pointed out. He hadn’t ever really considered how profitable such a dive could be. The stolen beer was free, and Ugo certainly didn’t pay any rent for his basement space. Except for a few cents’ worth of chemicals to give “life” to the flat beer, he had no expenses at all. Each night he’d take in the entire day’s earnings of dozens of beggars, and it would be pure profit.
Frank gave Ugo an hour in the airless cellar cells at Headquarters to consider his predicament before moving him into a basement interrogation room. When Frank joined him, he looked a little less arrogant but a lot more annoyed.
“Nice business you’ve got there, Ugo,” he remarked as he sat down across the scarred table from his prisoner. The table and a few chairs were the only furnishings in the room. A single window high on one wall provided a little light during the day and none at night. A gas jet on the wall cast eerie shadows. “Is that where you met Emilia?”
Ugo was still being tough. He just glared at Frank, refusing to answer.
“How long since you’ve seen her, Ugo?” Frank waited. No answer.
“I think you saw her yesterday, Ugo,” Frank said, still pleasant. “I think you met her at City Hall Park. She wanted to show you her new dress.”
Ugo was getting uneasy, but he still wasn’t going to say anything.
“I think you met her in the park, and she wanted you to marry her. You refused, and she got mad. You had a fight, and then you killed her.”
Ugo’s swagger evaporated. “No kill nobody!” he insisted, terror widening his eyes and draining the color from his face.
“I can’t blame you,” Frank said reasonably. “You must have been tired of her asking you to marry her.”
“I no can marry her,” Ugo said. “Have wife already, and children.”
This was a surprise, although Frank didn’t let on. “Where are they?”
“In Italy. Three children,” he said, holding up three fingers. “No marry Emilia. Have wife already.”
“That didn’t stop you from seducing her, though,” Frank pointed out.
Ugo frowned. “See-deuce?” he repeated uncertainly.
Frank made a gesture with his hands that overcame the language barrier. Ugo’s face lit with understanding.
“I no see-deuce. She do it. She think I marry her then.”
Frank thought it unlikely that a girl like Emilia would have traded her virginity for anything less than a promise of marriage, but he let Ugo’s lie pass for now.
“And when you refused, she left you?” Frank guessed.
“She go to pimp,” Ugo said, aggrieved. “I tell you, she whore.”
“Is that why you killed her? Because she became a whore?”
“I no kill nobody!”
“I think you got mad at Emilia. You didn’t want her bothering you anymore. You didn’t want her begging you to marry her. But she kept coming back, so you decided to stick a knife into her and be done with it.”
“No! I no see Emilia, long time. I no kill!”
“Is that how the Black Hand kills someone, Ugo? The way you killed Emilia?”
Ugo was looking around wildly, as if searching for a means of escape. “I no kill Emilia!” he insisted. Frank was discouraged. He was acting far too much like an innocent man. Frank wanted Ugo to be guilty so he could close the case, but it looked as if he wasn’t.
“Somebody killed her, Ugo,” Frank said. “And here you are. If you confess, I don’t have to look for anybody else.”
Ugo obviously knew that the police routinely beat confessions out of innocent men in order to close dif ficult cases. Or even easy ones, if they didn’t feel like working too hard.
“I no kill Emilia!” he cried frantically.
“Then start answering my questions, Ugo,” Frank advised him.
“I answer! I answer!”
“Good.” Frank folded his hands expectantly on the table. “Now tell me about the Black Hand.”