“He ate no more than an hour ago. Then he started screaming. I tried offering him more, but he wouldn’t take it.”
She’d been right, it was probably the milk. “Lorenzo, would you go out and try to find some goat’s milk?”
“Goat’s milk?” he echoed stupidly.
“Yes, some babies don’t do well on cow’s milk, and goat’s milk seems to be easier on their stomachs. You said you’d do anything to help,” she reminded him gently.
“Oh, yes, of course. I will. I will get it,” he said, handing Sarah’s cloak to Maria and heading back down the stairs.
Maria pushed the door shut behind him. Sarah noticed she didn’t lock it.
“Will that help?” Maria asked, her voice taut with exhaustion and fear.
“It might,” was all Sarah could promise. “And if it doesn’t, we’ll try something else.” The baby was starting to fuss again, screwing up his face for a full-fledged scream. “In the meantime, could you fix a hot water bottle? A small one to hold on his tummy?”
While Sarah walked the baby and let him suck on her finger, Maria went and found a small glass bottle, filled it with warm water, and wrapped it in a diaper.
The hot water bottle seemed to relieve some of the baby’s discomfort, and Sarah continued to walk with him. She made Maria sit down, but the poor woman couldn’t relax. She perched on the edge of the chair, ready to jump up the instant the baby might need something. After a while, the child finally fell into a fitful sleep, and Sarah laid him in his cradle, which Maria had put in the bedroom across from the room where Nainsi had died.
Maria gave a shuddering sigh and fought back tears. “He must stop crying. Mama doesn’t want him here, and if he cries all the time . . .” She bit back a sob.
“Don’t worry,” Sarah said, patting her shoulder. “And I want you to get some rest, too. Lorenzo said you were awake all night, and you look it.”
Maria automatically touched a hand to her hair as if to check the validity of Sarah’s assessment. “Lorenzo was with me,” she said, as if that had somehow made a sleepless night less of a sacrifice.
“He’s a good man,” Sarah said. “Not many men would tolerate a screaming infant all night.”
“No,” she agreed, a far away look in her eye. Fatigue was claiming her. “Not many would.”
“You need to take a nap now, while he’s sleeping,” Sarah said.
“I could not,” Maria protested. “Sleeping in the daytime?
Mama would never allow it.”
“She doesn’t have to know. Besides, the baby could be up all night again, and how will you stay awake if you don’t get any sleep at all?”
“What if he wakes up while I’m sleeping?” Maria asked, the edge of desperation back in her voice.
“I’ll sit with him and wait for Lorenzo to get back. Is there another room where you can lie down?”
She frowned, not wanting to cooperate. “Valentina’s room, I suppose,” she said reluctantly.
“Good, then go there. I’ll call you when he wakes up,”
she lied. He might wake up in just a few minutes, but she’d let Maria sleep as long as possible.
After a bit more coaxing, Maria finally went down the hall and retreated into one of the other rooms, closing the door behind her. Sarah checked on the baby and found him sleeping, although he didn’t look content. If his stomach was bothering him as much as she guessed, he’d have suc-cumbed to sheer exhaustion for the moment, but it wouldn’t last long. His little body jerked, as if he’d dreamed he was falling, but the movement set the cradle rocking lazily, and the motion soothed him again. A wonderful invention, cradles, Sarah mused.
Satisfied she could do nothing more for the baby, she took the opportunity to look around the room. The double bed and large dresser were fairly new and of good quality.
The shaving stand gave silent proof that one of the room’s usual occupants was a man, while the brushes and hairpins on the dresser belonged to a woman. This must be the room where Maria and Joe slept. Maria had naturally put the cradle in here.
The door to Nainsi’s room was closed, and Sarah had no desire to open it. The girl would have shared that room with Antonio for the few months they were married. What would that marriage have been like? Had Nainsi really thought no one would discover her secret, and that she could pass off her baby as Antonio’s? Sarah remembered how confident the girl had been the afternoon before she died. Why had she been so sure Mrs. Ruocco would let her and her baby stay here? Could she really have been that naïve?
Sarah glanced down the hall. Four doors opened onto it.
She knew one was Valentina’s bedroom, where Maria had gone. The fourth door stood open. If Malloy were here, he’d investigate to see who else slept on the same floor where Nainsi had died, so Sarah walked down to take a look. This room was furnished as a parlor. The furniture here was older and looked comfortable and well used. A pile of mending lay in a basket near one of the overstuffed chairs and a stack of ladies’ magazines sat on a table. Over the fireplace hung a picture of a beautiful sunlit landscape. Sarah imagined it was a picture of Italy. If so, she could understand why the Italians spoke so lovingly of their homeland. On the opposite wall, where the sunlight wouldn’t hit it directly, hung an elaborately framed photograph of a man. His unsmiling face looked familiar, and when Sarah looked more closely, she realized he bore a family resemblance to Ugo Ruocco.
He was much younger, of course, but the photograph was obviously old. This must be Patrizia’s husband, Ugo’s brother.
Everyone knew the story of how Patrizia and her children had come to America and she had started the restaurant.
What had become of her husband? Had he died in Italy and Ugo brought the family over here to take care of them? Or had he died during the crossing? Many immigrants did, she knew.
Sarah picked up one of the magazines and sat down in the chair closest to the window to wait for the baby to wake up. She’d read most of a second magazine when she heard someone coming up the inside stairs. Thinking it might be Lorenzo, she went out to meet him so he wouldn’t accidentally wake Maria or the baby. Instead she encountered Patrizia Ruocco. She looked almost as weary as Maria had.
The older woman started in surprise. “Mrs. Brandt,” she said, not pleased to see her. “Why are you here?”
“Lorenzo came for me. Maria thought the baby was sick.”
Patrizia’s expression hardened, and she glanced around.
“Where are they?”
“I sent Lorenzo for some goat’s milk. I think it might agree with the baby more than cow’s milk.”
Her lips flattened into a thin line. “Maria?”
“I . . . I made her lie down for a while. She was exhausted,” Sarah added quickly, remembering Maria’s fear that Mrs. Ruocco wouldn’t approve.
“She want to be a mother. This is what happen,” she said sourly. “The baby?”
“He’s asleep.”
The woman reached up and rubbed her forehead as if it ached.
“You should probably get some rest, too, Mrs. Ruocco,”
Sarah ventured. “I know what happened here last night, the Irish boys and the fighting in the street. You’ve been having a difficult time.”
“Rest will not help,” she said bitterly. “That girl, I know she is trouble. I tell Antonio he is fool, but he is married already. What can I do?”
Sarah wasn’t sure how welcome her sympathy would be, but good manners demanded she respond. “You did the right thing, Mrs. Ruocco.”
“The right thing,” she scoffed, but her venom was gone.
She rubbed her forehead again and this time she swayed slightly.
Sarah instinctively caught her. “Come in here and sit down,” she commanded, taking the older woman firmly by the arm and leading her into the parlor.
“I cannot leave boys alone in kitchen. I only come up for a minute,” she protested, but she didn’t resist when Sarah put her in a chair and brought a footstool
for her feet.
“I’m sure the boys will be fine, and you won’t be any help at all if you faint and fall down the stairs.”
“I not faint,” she insisted, but without much spirit.
“When did you eat last?” Sarah asked, checking her for fever.
She waved the question away as if it were a pesky fly.
“I guess that means you don’t remember,” Sarah said.
She took her pulse. No fever and her pulse was only a little fast.
“My stomach . . . I am not hungry,” she said dismissively.
“Your stomach may not be hungry, but the rest of you needs some food. Stay here, and I’ll get you something from the kitchen.”
“I go myself,” she tried, starting to get up, but Sarah shook her head.
“You almost fainted just now. I’m not going to let you back down there until you’ve eaten something.”
With that she left, hoping Mrs. Ruocco would have the sense to stay put and rest, at least for a few minutes.
The crowd in the dining room had thinned, and almost everyone seemed to have been served, which was probably why Mrs. Ruocco had felt she could safely come upstairs to check on Maria. The scene in the kitchen was still chaotic, but everyone seemed to know just what they were doing.
Valentina was dishing up food, and Antonio and Joe were serving. All three of them looked up in surprise when Sarah came in.
“Where’s Mama?” Joe asked.
“She’s resting. I came to get her something to eat.”
They stared at her as if she were insane.
“It’s lunchtime,” Valentina said, gesturing toward the busy dining room. “We need her help!”
“Mama never rests,” Antonio added.
“She’s been under a lot of strain,” Sarah reminded them.
“Could you give me some soup and maybe some tea or coffee to take up for her?”
Everything else stopped while the three of them began to argue over what Mama might like. After a minute or two of this, Sarah started lifting pot lids herself, and that spurred them to action. Almost instantly, they arranged a tray of food for their mother, including bread and soup and a plate of spaghetti and a pot of brewing tea. As Sarah hoisted the tray, Joe poured a glass of wine and added it to the tray.
“For her blood,” he said. Then he held the doors for her and waited until she’d disappeared beyond the first turn in the staircase.
Sarah moved slowly and carefully so she wouldn’t spill anything. Relieved that she arrived at the third floor with most of her load intact, she made her way quietly down the hall to the parlor. When she stepped into the room and looked around, she almost dropped the tray.
Mrs. Ruocco had moved. She now sat in a rocking chair on the far side of the room, and in her arms she held the baby.
6
When Frank Malloy left Sarah’s, he went to see Nainsi Ruocco’s grieving mother. He would put off visiting the Ruoccos as long as he could.
He was furious at Mrs. O’Hara for going to the newspapers with her story, but he had to admit, from her point of view, it was a wise move. As he’d told Sarah yesterday, no one would be interested in finding out who’d killed Nainsi if Mrs. O’Hara hadn’t made the girl’s death a public scandal.
Seeing her side of it didn’t help Frank’s temper, though. He was still stuck with the thankless and probably impossible task of finding Nainsi’s killer.
Mrs. O’Hara lived in a rear tenement a few blocks from Mama’s Restaurant. The rear tenements got little sunlight and less air, so they were cheap. Those few blocks were also a world away. The Irish and the Italians didn’t mix much.
Frank found Mrs. O’Hara in her fourth-floor flat.
“I suppose you’re here to tell me you ain’t found out who killed my Nainsi,” she grumbled when she opened the door, and she immediately went back inside, letting Frank find his own way in. She’d been sewing men’s ties by the feeble light from a window that faced a narrow alley. A bundle of fabric lay at one end of her kitchen table and a pile of finished ties lay at the other. He closed the door behind him.
She picked up her needle and began to sew again, letting him know she wasn’t happy to be interrupted. He knew she’d earn only about fifty-cents a dozen for sewing the ties, and a dozen was a good day’s work. She wouldn’t want to waste any time in social pleasantries with him.
“I’m working on figuring out who killed your daughter, Mrs. O’Hara, but I need to know more about her first.” He pulled up the only other chair and sat down across the table from her. She spared him a skeptical glance.
“All you need to figure out is which of them dagos killed her,” she said, stitching the fabric with practiced ease. “It had to be one of them.”
He glanced around the flat. Through the doorway he could see a large stack of bedding in the other room. “You have lodgers, Mrs. O’Hara?”
“Of course I got lodgers,” she said. “You think I can keep myself by making ties?”
Many people in the tenements rented floor space for a few cents a night to those even less fortunate than themselves.
Frank pictured the flat as it would be when they were here, the floor filled with men and Nainsi sleeping only a short distance away. “Must’ve been hard, keeping the lodgers away from your daughter,” he remarked, remembering they hadn’t yet solved the mystery of who had fathered her baby.
He still entertained a small hope that the father might be involved in her death.
“Wasn’t hard at all,” Mrs. O’Hara snapped. “My Nainsi, she didn’t want nothing to do with them bums. She was smart, that one. Knew better than to waste herself on a man couldn’t give her nothing. Wanted to better herself, she did.”
“How did she plan to do that?” Frank asked mildly.
Mrs. O’Hara glared at him, her faded eyes narrow with hatred. “Not what you’re thinking!”
“I’m not thinking anything,” Frank insisted. “I’m trying to figure out how she ended up in Little Italy with Antonio Ruocco.”
“I don’t know. To this day, I don’t know. It started when she got herself a job at a sweatshop, sewing men’s shirts.
They didn’t pay her hardly anything, but it was more than she ever made helping me do this.” She gestured at the stack of ties.
Frank knew what happened when a girl like Nainsi suddenly got a taste of freedom and a little money in her pocket. “She made new friends at the shop, I guess.”
Mrs. O’Hara snorted. “Silly little biddies, every one of them.”
“Did she have a special friend? Somebody she’d want to know about the baby?” Frank asked. He already knew the answer, but he wanted to see what Mrs. O’Hara would say.
“Funny you should ask,” Mrs. O’Hara said in surprise.
“She did want me to tell Brigit Murphy right away.”
“This Brigit is somebody she worked with?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you tell her about the baby, like Nainsi wanted?”
“Well, I wasn’t gonna go out of my way, but I saw her right when I was coming home—she lives downstairs—so I did. She was coming home from work, and I told her.”
Frank wanted to know more about Brigit, but he’d get that information from the girl herself. “I guess Brigit and Nainsi went out in the evenings.”
“Nainsi was a good girl,” Mrs. O’Hara insisted angrily.
“She never walked the streets or anything like that!”
“I didn’t think she did. I’ll bet she liked to go out and have a good time, though. Maybe she went to dance houses with her friends.”
She sewed a few stitches, paying more attention than necessary to the tie she was working on.
“Lots of girls do that, Mrs. O’Hara. You can’t blame them for wanting to have fun. Maybe that’s where she met Antonio.”
She shrugged one shoulder, still not looking up. “Maybe.
Like I said, she didn’t tell me. All I know, she comes home one day to get her stuff and t
ells me she’s married. Says she’ll never be poor again. This boy’s family, they got a business, she says. A restaurant. At least I know she’ll eat regular. But then I see Antonio, and I know them dagos don’t take to outsiders. I know she’s in for misery.”
She reached up quickly to dash a tear from her eye, but she never missed a stitch.
“Antonio wasn’t the only man she knew,” Frank reminded her. “He wasn’t the father of her baby.”
“That’s what them dagos say, but my Nainsi was a good girl,” she repeated.
Frank didn’t bother to point out that good girls didn’t get pregnant before they got married. “Did she ever mention any other man to you? Someone she liked before she met Antonio?”
“She never said nothing to me. Why’re you wasting your time here? I didn’t kill Nainsi, and I don’t know who did.
You should be talking to them Ruoccos.”
“All right, which one of them do you think did it?” he asked.
“How should I know? I wasn’t there.”
“How did she get along with them? Was there one she fought with a lot?”
“The girl, Valentina. She and Nainsi fought like cats and dogs. The girl was jealous of everything Nainsi got. I guess she’s spoiled, being the youngest and the only girl, but she’s just plain mean. No call to be like that.”
“What about the others?”
“She didn’t like any of them, you ask me. Never had a kind word to say about them anyhow. Maria, she was nice enough, I guess. Always acted polite when I was there, and she treated Nainsi all right. But the mother . . . she’s a bitch, that one.”
“How did Nainsi get along with Antonio? Did he ever hit her?”
Now he had her full attention. “You think he did it?
Makes sense, don’t it? He thought she lied to him, and a man don’t like to be tricked that way.”
“Did he ever hit her?” he asked again.
She considered the question. “I don’t think so. She never said if he did, and I guess she would’ve. She complained about everything else he did and didn’t do. She didn’t have much patience with him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean them Italian boys, they’re handsome all right, but their mamas spoil ’em something awful. Big babies, the lot of them.”
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