Murder in Little Italy gm-8

by Victoria Thompson

  Frank remembered Sarah had said the same thing about Antonio. “Joe and Lorenzo, too?”

  Mrs. O’Hara made a disgusted face. “They wouldn’t piss without asking Mama’s leave. You want to know who killed my Nainsi, you ask the old woman. If she didn’t do it, she ordered it done.”

  Sarah couldn’t help staring at Mrs. Ruocco holding the baby.

  “He woke up,” she said. She seemed a little defensive, as if she were afraid Sarah might think she’d changed her mind about the child.

  Sarah tried not to let her amazement show. “I didn’t think he’d sleep very long. His tummy hurts, poor little fellow.” She set the tray down on the table with the magazines.

  Mrs. Ruocco looked at the baby. “The water in the bottle is cold,” she said, pointing to where she’d set the hot water bottle on the floor beside the rocker.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Sarah said, going over to get it.

  The baby had been crying, but Mrs. Ruocco had managed to soothe him. She would have had lots of experience, and a woman never forgot how to hold a baby.

  “He’s pretty, isn’t he?” Sarah said as she picked up the bottle. “Look at those curls.”

  Mrs. Ruocco looked down at the baby as if to verify Sarah’s opinion. “My boys, they had curls,” she remembered.

  She didn’t look happy at the memory. Or maybe she didn’t like making a comparison between her sons and this baby.

  Sarah started to walk away, but Mrs. Ruocco caught her by the sleeve. When Sarah looked down at her, she saw fear in her dark eyes.

  “Will he live?” she asked.

  Sarah didn’t want to raise false hopes, and she wasn’t even sure what answer Mrs. Ruocco wanted to hear. “He’s strong and healthy,” she hedged. “If we can find some milk that agrees with him, he could do just fine.”

  “But if you cannot?” she challenged.

  Might as well say it. “If he doesn’t eat, he’ll die. The only other choice would be to try finding a wet nurse. Maybe one of the women in the neighborhood would feed him along with her own baby, to earn some extra money.”

  She’d expected Mrs. Ruocco to protest such an expense, but she just stared back, her dark eyes unfathomable. After a long moment, she said, “Maria is good girl.”

  “Yes, she is,” Sarah agreed, not knowing what she meant.

  “She is like daughter to me. She is better daughter than my own. She is good wife to Giuseppe.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Sarah said uncertainly.

  “She need baby, Mrs. Brandt. Some women, they can accept. Maria cannot. She need baby.”

  Sarah nodded, thinking she understood. “She’ll be very grateful if you let her keep this one.”

  Mrs. Ruocco waved her words away again. “I do not do this for grateful. I do this for Maria. So she has happiness.

  She has no other happiness.”

  “She’ll be a good mother,” Sarah tried.

  “But the baby must live,” Mrs. Ruocco said fiercely. “You will help her?”

  “Yes,” Sarah promised with all her heart. “Yes, I will.”

  They heard someone coming up the outside stairs, and Sarah went to see who it was. Lorenzo came in carrying a paper sack. Sarah held a finger to her lips, warning him to be quiet so he wouldn’t wake Maria, and led him into the parlor. He glanced over to where his mother sat holding the baby and almost dropped his package.

  “You get milk?” she asked sharply. “Goat milk, like Mrs.

  Brandt say?”

  “Yes, Mama,” Lorenzo said uncertainly. He looked at Sarah, as if for an explanation for this amazing thing.

  She simply smiled benignly and said, “Be sure to put the milk in the icebox when you go downstairs.”

  He glanced around. “Where is Maria?”

  “She sleep,” Mrs. Ruocco said. “You, go help your brothers in the kitchen. It is busy time.”

  He turned to Sarah with a worried frown. “Is Maria all right?”

  “She’s fine, just a little tired. I made her lie down.”

  He seemed relieved, but still unhappy. He looked at his mother again, as if to verify that she was indeed holding the baby.

  “Go!” Mrs. Ruocco said impatiently.

  Lorenzo went.

  Sarah went to where Mrs. Ruocco sat. “I’ll rock him while you eat something,” she offered.

  Mrs. Ruocco was staring at the baby’s face. “In one minute.”

  Frank found the sweatshop where Nainsi had worked. As he’d hoped, the girls were just taking their lunch break. Most of them would skip lunch, he knew, trying to stretch their meager wages so they’d have a nickel or a dime extra for admission to a dance in the evening. Frank found the boss, a man in his forties with thick dark hair plastered down with pomade and a perpetual scowl. For all of that, he was good looking, in a fancy-Dan kind of way.

  He probably got a lot of attention from the girls who worked for him. Frank had no doubt he took advantage of his position, too.

  He introduced himself and learned the fellow’s name was Richard Keith. Keith wasn’t happy to see a cop. “You won’t find nothing illegal here,” he claimed, a little too defensively.

  Frank was sure he could, if he tried, but he wasn’t interested in that. “I’m here about one of your girls.”

  “Which one? We don’t keep girls that get in trouble with the law.”

  “This one’s dead,” Frank said.

  “Then it’s not one of my girls. They’re all here today,” he said confidently.

  “This one doesn’t work here anymore. She quit a while back to get married. Maybe you remember her—Nainsi O’Hara.”

  Frank saw the surprise register on his smooth features, surprise and something else. Guilt? “Nainsi, you say? But she . . . I mean, that’s terrible.”

  “You remember her then,” Frank said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Well, yeah,” he said, a little flustered. “She was . . . a good worker.” A red flush crawled up his neck.

  “Maybe she was good at other things, too,” Frank said mildly. “The girls here, they must be anxious to keep you happy so they can keep their jobs. Was Nainsi one of the girls who kept you happy?”

  “I don’t run that kind of shop,” he said, his face scarlet now. His expression was definitely guilty.

  “You know why Nainsi got married?” Frank asked.

  He blinked stupidly. “I . . . I guess she found a fellow wanted to marry her.”

  “And she was going to have a baby,” Frank said.

  Keith gave a little shrug, feigning indifference. “Most of them are when they get married. That’s how they get the fellow to come around.”

  “Except the fellow she married wasn’t the father,” Frank said.

  Beads of sweat were forming on Keith’s forehead. “Why are you telling me this? And why are you here at all?”

  “Did you know she had her baby?” Frank asked mildly.

  “And that she died?”

  “I . . . I didn’t,” he claimed. “Well, maybe I heard something . . .”

  “Who told you she had her baby?”

  “I . . . I don’t remember,” he claimed. “One of the girls told everybody in the shop. I overheard. Nobody said she died, though.”

  “She didn’t just die,” Frank said. “She was murdered.”

  Keith’s eyes widened and the blood drained from his face. “Who killed her?”

  “I was thinking it might be the man who fathered her baby.”

  Keith wasn’t a stupid man. “It wasn’t me!” he cried. “I never . . . My girls don’t get pregnant, because I don’t . . .

  None of them do. If she said it was me, she was lying!”

  How very interesting, Frank thought. “She didn’t say anything, Mr. Keith. I’m only trying to figure out who it might’ve been. I guess I’ll add you to my list.”

  The color flooded back to his face. “It wasn’t me. I got a wife and family. I don’t need a lot of little bastards wanting money from m
e, too. I might have some fun with the girls, but none of them got a baby from it. I’d swear to it.”

  Frank could find out easily enough what his reputation was. That wouldn’t prove he wasn’t the father of Nainsi’s baby, but at least it would give him an idea of the likelihood of it. “Thanks for clearing that up for me,” Frank said with just the slightest trace of sarcasm. “Now I’d like to talk to Brigit Murphy.”

  “Why?” he challenged, assuming some of his bravado again.

  “To find out more about Nainsi O’Hara,” Frank said. “If you’d like to point her out, I’d be grateful. If you don’t, I’ll have to start trying to find something illegal in your shop,” he added with a grin.

  Keith looked like he wanted to punch Frank, but he pointed to a group of girls gathered in the back of the room.

  “She’s the tall one with the curls.”

  Frank didn’t thank him. He strolled down the length of the room to where the girls stood talking. One of them noticed his approach and motioned for the others to be quiet.

  By the time he reached them, they were all staring at him in wide-eyed terror. They’d recognized him as a cop. People always did, even though he wore a suit just like any busi-nessman in the city. Maybe it was the way cops carried themselves. He’d never been able to figure it out, but people always knew.

  “Hello, ladies,” he said as kindly as he could. “I’m Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy. I’m investigating Nainsi Ruocco’s murder.”

  One of them made a little squeak, but the rest of them just stared.

  “Miss Murphy,” he said, addressing the tall girl. Her hair was light brown and not so much curly as wild and frizzy.

  She’d made an effort to pin it up neatly, but it was defiantly springing loose every which way. She’d be a handsome girl if she didn’t look like somebody was holding a knife to her throat at the moment. “Nainsi’s mother said you were good friends with her.”

  Brigit nodded uncertainly.

  “Did the rest of you know her, too?”

  The other girls nodded reluctantly.

  “You don’t have to be afraid. I’m trying to learn more about her so I can figure out who killed her.”

  “Wasn’t it one of the Ruoccos?” the shortest girl asked.

  Frank dearly hoped not, but he said, “I don’t know who it was yet. That’s why I’m trying to learn more about her—

  and her friends.”

  “Didn’t none of us kill her,” Brigit cried in alarm. “Why would we?”

  “I didn’t think you did. I’m more interested in finding out about her . . . gentlemen friends.”

  One of the girls snickered, then slapped a hand over her mouth.

  Brigit glared at her, but the girl said, “Wasn’t none of them gentlemen.”

  “But she did meet men at the dance houses,” Frank said.

  “Well, sure, that’s why we go there,” Brigit said before any of the others could speak. “We all meet men there. That’s who we dance with.”

  Frank knew the men would also treat them to drinks and cigarettes and even buy them gifts, in exchange for favors promised or actually delivered. “Did she have any special men that she met outside the dance house?”

  “Antonio Ruocco,” the short girl said, making the rest of them giggle.

  “This would’ve been several months before she met Antonio,” Frank pressed. “Last spring or summer.”

  The girls exchanged puzzled looks. “That’s when she met Antonio,” Brigit said. “I don’t know when exactly, but it was early spring. The weather was just getting warm.”

  “That’s right,” another girl agreed. “She’d just started wearing that straw hat. We told her it caught his eye.”

  Brigit nodded. “She told us all about him, and he was her only special fellow all summer long. Some of the places, they don’t let the Italian boys in, so she’d go out with us, then slip away and meet him someplace.”

  According to what Sarah had told him, that didn’t make any sense. He’d have to question Antonio and find out the truth. “When she found out about the baby,” Frank said,

  “she must’ve talked to you about it.”

  The girls looked a little embarrassed to be discussing such a delicate subject.

  “She was real scared, and she cried all the time, even at work,” the short girl offered.

  “Who wouldn’t be scared?” Brigit snapped. “She was scared at first, but we all told her not to be a goose. Tell him and make him marry her, we said. When she finally told him about the baby, he did, too, even though his mother didn’t like it.”

  “Her mother didn’t like it either,” one of the other girls said.

  “Who cares?” Brigit asked angrily. “They was in love.

  That’s what matters.”

  That wasn’t the picture Frank had of the union, but he didn’t want to distract the girls. “Could I speak with Miss Murphy alone for a minute?” he asked the others.

  They couldn’t dare deny him, but they moved away with obvious reluctance and only far enough to give the illusion that they weren’t trying to listen in.

  “Miss Murphy,” Frank said, still trying not to frighten her. It was a wasted effort, though. His mere presence was terrifying. “Mrs. O’Hara said she told you about Nainsi’s baby being born that night when you were coming home from work.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” she confirmed, puzzled by the question.

  “Who did you tell?”

  “Who . . . ? What do you mean?” she hedged.

  “I mean, who did you tell that Nainsi’s baby was born?”

  he said impatiently.

  “I . . . The girls,” she said, gesturing to the group hover-ing nearby.

  “Anybody else?”

  Now Brigit looked truly frightened. She glanced toward the front of the room where Keith still stood, watching and glowering.

  “Please, mister, I’ll lose my job. I gotta get back to work.”

  The bell hadn’t rung yet, but Frank didn’t point that out. Plainly, she knew something she didn’t want to say in front of Keith.

  “Go, then,” he said, and she scurried away, back to her seat.

  He’d have to find Brigit someplace else and get the answer to his question, although he already knew it. For some reason, she’d told Richard Keith directly about the baby’s birth. But if Keith couldn’t possibly be the baby’s father, as he claimed, why would he have been interested?

  *

  *

  *

  When the baby started fussing again, Mrs. Ruocco took him downstairs while Sarah fixed a bottle in the kitchen, so his crying wouldn’t disturb Maria. By the time the bottle was ready, he was screaming lustily. Luckily, the luncheon diners were all gone, except for a few elderly men still gossiping over their grappa. The screaming had driven Joe, Antonio, and Valentina away. For some reason, however, Lorenzo stayed, even though the baby’s cries obviously distressed him.

  Breathing a silent prayer, Sarah accepted the baby from Mrs. Ruocco and sat down to feed him the goat’s milk. The baby took the nipple and suckled greedily. Milk leaked out the sides of his mouth, and he choked a little until he got the rhythm. His mouth working mechanically, he finally settled down, his little fists clenched tightly against his cheeks, his eyes squeezed shut in bliss.

  “He seems to like it,” Lorenzo observed hopefully, but he was wringing his hands.

  “He like milk,” Mrs. Ruocco said dismissively. “He know nothing.”

  “We’ll have to wait to see if it agrees with him,” Sarah concurred.

  Lorenzo sighed and kept wringing his hands.

  “Mrs. Brandt, you must eat,” Mrs. Ruocco said, pulling an apron down from a hook on the wall and tying it on. “I will cook.” Sarah knew better than to protest. Besides, she really was hungry.

  The baby fell into a contented sleep when the bottle was almost empty, and by then Mrs. Ruocco had prepared a plate of spaghetti for Sarah. Mrs. Ruocco took the baby up to his cradle
while Sarah ate the delicious meal. Lorenzo had followed his mother out of the kitchen, leaving Sarah alone, so when she was finished, she went back upstairs.

  She wasn’t sure how much longer she could stay without wearing out her welcome. If the goat’s milk agreed with the baby, they wouldn’t need her anymore, so this might be her last chance to learn anything of interest. The third floor was quiet. She found the baby sleeping peacefully in Joe and Maria’s bedroom, and no one was in the parlor. Perhaps Mrs. Ruocco had gone down to the second floor where her bedroom must be. The family probably had another sitting room down there as well. Counting up the members of the family, Sarah realized Lorenzo’s bedroom must also be on the second floor. Of course, any of them could have slipped into Nainsi’s room and smothered her in the night. It was a silent crime. Or anyone could have come up the back stairs from the street below and no one would have heard, either.

  Sarah was standing in the hallway, considering all the possibilities when a door opened behind her. She turned to see Maria emerge from Valentina’s bedroom. Her hair was mussed and her face puffy from sleep.

  “Mrs. Brandt,” she said in alarm. “Is something wrong?

  Is the baby all right?”

  “He’s fine. He woke up, and we fed him some goat’s milk, and now he’s sleeping peacefully again.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” she asked in dismay. “I would have helped you.”

  “Mrs. Ruocco helped me,” Sarah reported with a smile.

  “Mama?” Maria didn’t believe her.

  “She even rocked him for a while,” Sarah told her. “I think she may be starting to like him.”

  Maria stared at her for a long moment, uncomprehending.

  Then her eyes filled with tears, and she started to cry. Sarah slipped an arm around her shoulders and led her into the parlor. By then she was fairly sobbing, and Sarah seated them both on the sofa, patting her back and murmuring words of comfort. She’d seen many new mothers reduced to tears after a sleepless night or two. Maria may not have given birth to this baby, but she’d experienced everything else—the doubts and the fears and the numbing exhaustion and the despair of not being able to soothe the little one’s anguish and pain.

  She’d also experienced her sister-in-law’s murder and a near riot at her doorstep. Maria had earned the right to weep.