Murder in Little Italy gm-8

by Victoria Thompson

We’d stationed some men to watch the place, in case the Irish made another visit, and one of them followed them to a dance house.”

  “They were going dancing when a mob might attack the restaurant at any minute?” she asked incredulously.

  “We thought that was funny, too, and when we went to the dance house, they weren’t there. We never did find them, either.”

  “So they could’ve gone to Mrs. O’Hara’s,” Sarah mused.

  “It would be a logical solution to their problems. If they killed her, she wouldn’t be around to cause any more trouble and keep demanding they give her the baby. No mobs would try to burn their house down, and nobody would want to take the baby away anymore.”

  “Poor Mrs. O’Hara. I wonder if she had any idea she was in danger.”

  “Tammany probably promised to protect her on top of everything else.”

  Frank got up and poured a cup of tea. Then he reached into a cupboard and pulled out the bottle of whisky that he knew she kept for medicinal purposes and splashed a bit into the cup. He set it down in front of her and took his seat again.

  She looked askance at the spiked tea.

  “You need it,” he said. “A little sugar will cut the taste.”

  She obediently put a spoonful of sugar in and stirred. On second thought, she added another. “If only we’d found the killer,” she said.

  “Finding the killer wouldn’t have solved much,” Frank pointed out. “Mrs. O’Hara might still be alive, but she’d still want the baby, and somebody the Ruoccos love would be in jail. Tammany would probably still be trying to get the baby and sending mobs down to Little Italy.”

  “Why would they take a chance by killing Mrs. O’Hara, though? Yes, it might stop the mob attacks, but it wouldn’t stop you from trying to find out who killed Nainsi. That’s the real danger to their family.”

  “And now I’ve got an even bigger reason to find the killer. The penny press will probably be full of stories about the Black Hand cutting people’s throats, stirring up even more trouble.”

  “I didn’t think of that!” Sarah said in dismay. “The Irish might even march down to Little Italy again to get revenge for Mrs. O’Hara!”

  Malloy winced and rubbed his forehead. “I hope to God nobody else thinks of that.”

  Sarah picked up her cup and took a sip. The whisky fumes cleared her nose and burned her throat, but she forced down a swallow. After a moment, she could feel the warmth settling in her stomach. “If two of the Ruocco boys went to kill Mrs. O’Hara last night, then one of them must have killed Nainsi, too.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they might’ve killed Mrs. O’Hara to protect someone else in the family.”

  “Like their mother,” Sarah guessed.

  “Just because Ugo hates her doesn’t mean he isn’t right about her. But first, I’ve got to figure out which two of the boys went out last might.”

  “If they were protecting their mother, I’d pick Joe as one of them. He’s the oldest, so it would be his duty.”

  “Antonio has the biggest stake in this, so he was probably the other one.”

  “But he’s so young. I don’t think I’d trust him, although Lorenzo seems too levelheaded to do something so rash.”

  “Lorenzo is protective of Maria and the baby, though.

  You said he stood up for them to Ugo before Joe did.”

  “Now that you mention it, he’s taken an unusual interest in the baby,” Sarah remembered. “He even sat up with Maria all that first night when the baby was screaming because the milk didn’t agree with him. Even most new fathers wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know I wouldn’t have,” Malloy agreed.

  “And Mrs. Ruocco really wants to keep the baby now, too. She’s determined Maria will have him.”

  “If Mrs. Ruocco wants the baby, then Lorenzo probably decided it belongs with them. Maybe he figured killing Mrs. O’Hara was somehow good for the family. Italians are crazy when it comes to their families. And if he thought his mother had killed Nainsi . . .”

  “I still can’t see him cutting someone’s throat,” Sarah said. “Antonio is the only one who had a real reason to kill Nainsi in the first place, but wasn’t he out getting drunk the night she died?”

  “According to Maria, Nainsi was still alive when he and Joe got home. She said Joe went straight to bed and didn’t get up again. If she’s not lying to protect her husband, then—”

  “That leaves Antonio, but he just doesn’t seem like the type either,” Sarah argued.

  “When you’re drunk and angry, bad things happen,”

  Frank said grimly.

  Sadly, she knew that was true. “But why would Antonio even think of killing her? His mother was going to throw her out.”

  “Why would any of them? It still doesn’t make sense.

  I’m missing something.”

  Sarah sighed, wishing she could help. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to get Antonio and take him to the station for questioning.”

  Sarah winced. She knew the techniques the police sometimes used to get a confession. “He’s just a boy. If he was drunk, he might not even remember he did it.”

  “That’s a myth. If you’re too drunk to remember, you’re too drunk to do it.”

  “What if he really didn’t do it?”

  “Then at least he’ll tell me which of them went out last night to kill Mrs. O’Hara. Once I know that, maybe everything else will start to make sense.”

  “And you’ll have someone to lock up,” Sarah noted.

  “That should make Theodore happy.”

  Malloy just grunted. “Finish your tea. I’ll go next door and tell the girls they can come home again.”

  He went out the back door. Sarah took a few more sips of the tea. She could feel the warmth seeping into her bones now. The horror of Mrs. O’Hara’s death receded a bit, and Sarah began to understand the benefits of a strong drink.

  Soon she heard Aggie’s footsteps clamoring up the back porch steps and then she pushed the door open and raced into the room. Her face alight with joy, she charged straight for Sarah, but when she reached the table, her step faltered, and her smile vanished. She stopped dead in her tracks and gazed around wildly, her eyes wide with sudden fear.

  “Aggie, what’s wrong?” Sarah asked in alarm.

  Aggie looked straight at the tea cup, sitting half full on the table, and sniffed the air. Sarah realized she must smell the whisky, although she wouldn’t have thought the odor that strong. Then Aggie looked around again, and this time saw the whisky bottle still sitting where Malloy had left it.

  She pointed at it and screamed.

  “Aggie, what’s wrong?” Sarah cried, jumping to her feet and snatching the child up into her arms.

  Aggie started to cling to her, but then she pulled back abruptly and started screaming again. Sarah realized she must smell the whisky on her breath. Maeve came running in.

  “What’s happening?” the girl cried, seeing Aggie struggling in Sarah’s arms.

  “She saw the whisky and started screaming,” Sarah said, setting Aggie down before she dropped her. The child ran to Maeve, buried her face in her skirts and started to sob.

  By then Malloy was through the door, demanding to know what was going on.

  “Something about the whisky frightened her. She smelled it on me and went crazy.” Sarah explained. “It’s all right, Aggie. Nothing is going to hurt you.”

  Sarah quickly took the bottle and put it out of sight.

  She’d get rid of it as soon as possible. Instinct demanded that she try to comfort the girl, but she knew going closer to her would only make things worse.

  “Maeve, take her upstairs and try to calm her down.”

  Maeve picked her up and carried her out of the room.

  “She just started screaming when she saw the bottle?” Malloy asked.

  “She smelled it first, in the teacup,
I guess,” Sarah said.

  “It literally stopped her in her tracks. Then she saw the bottle and screamed. I picked her up, and she must’ve smelled it on me, too, and she started fighting to get away.”

  “Did anything ever scare her like that before?”

  “Never. Oh, Malloy, do you think . . . ? Whatever frightened her enough to make her mute, it must have had something to do with whisky.”

  “When you’re drunk, bad things happen,” he reminded her grimly.

  “But if she can’t tell us what it was, how can we ever make it right?” Sarah asked in desperation.

  Malloy had no answer for that.

  By the time Malloy rounded up Donatelli and a few other officers to accompany him, it was well into the supper hour. Mama’s Restaurant wasn’t as crowded as he’d expected, though. The regular patrons still hadn’t returned after the trouble the other night.

  Frank and Gino went in the front door. All eyes turned toward them, and conversation ceased. Joe was serving a couple of old men, and when he saw who’d come in, he shouted something in Italian about polizia.

  A few seconds later, the kitchen door flew open, and Patrizia Ruocco came storming out, her face twisted in fury.

  Behind her were Antonio and Lorenzo. Valentina stopped in the doorway, not wanting to miss anything but not wanting to enter the fray, either.

  “Get out my house!” Mrs. Ruocco cried furiously. “You have no right!”

  “We aren’t planning to stay,” Frank informed her.

  Valentina made a squeal of surprise when the two other officers shoved her aside as they came into the room from the kitchen. They went straight for Antonio, and each grabbed an arm.

  “What you do?” Mrs. Ruocco screamed. “Let him go!”

  “We want to ask him a few questions,” Frank said.

  “Nobody’s going to hurt him, Mrs. Ruocco,” Gino assured her. “If he tells us the truth, he’ll be home by bedtime.”

  Antonio’s face had gone pale, and although his first reaction had been to resist, he quickly realized that would be foolish. “Joe,” he pleaded helplessly. “Do something!”

  “You can’t just take him to jail,” Lorenzo argued. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  “Then he doesn’t have anything to worry about, and he isn’t going to jail. Like I said, we just want to ask him a few questions.” Frank nodded to the officers, who began hustling Antonio toward the front door.

  “Giuseppe!” Mrs. Ruocco cried desperately.

  “I’ll go with him,” Joe said at last. “I can answer your questions better than he can anyway!”

  “You stay here and serve your customers,” Frank advised.

  “If we want you later, we’ll come and get you.”

  With that, he and Gino followed Antonio and the two officers out into the street. Mrs. Ruocco was screaming at her other two sons in Italian as Gino closed the door behind them.

  “She wants them to follow us, make sure we don’t hurt Antonio,” Gino translated.

  “Pretty soon she’ll think of sending for Ugo, too,” Frank said. “Let’s get the boy to Headquarters before that happens.”

  12

  Frank left Antonio alone in one of the interrogation rooms for a good half hour to soften him up while he and Gino ate some sausage sandwiches they got from a street vendor. As Frank had known, the time spent sitting in the dismal room, imagining God knew what, had made the boy desperately afraid.

  He gazed at Frank and Gino with terrified eyes as they came into the room and closed the door behind them. Gino stood with his back against the door, his arms crossed for-biddingly, just as Frank had instructed. With any luck, he’d keep his mouth shut, too.

  “I guess you know why we brought you in tonight,”

  Frank said mildly, pulling up a chair across the table from where Antonio sat.

  “Something about Nainsi,” he said, his voice thin with fear. “But I already told you everything I know.”

  “Where did you go last night?”

  “Last night?” he echoed in confusion.

  “Yeah, you remember last night, don’t you? Where did you go?”

  “I . . . we went out.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Me and . . . Joe,” he said, certain he shouldn’t implicate Joe but too afraid to lie.

  “Where did you go?” Frank asked, his voice still only mildly interested.

  “We . . . It wasn’t my idea,” he defended himself.

  “It was Joe’s idea, then?”

  “Well, no, not . . . not exactly.”

  “Your mama’s?” Frank tried.

  “Oh, no, she didn’t like it at all! She said we should stay, in case another mob showed up. She said I shouldn’t go out anymore after what happened with Nainsi, either, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “But we didn’t think the Irish would come again so soon, and if they did . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “The police are guarding the place,” he said plaintively.

  “Joe said they’d run off the Irish if they came, just like they did before. They don’t need us there to do that.”

  “So you decided to leave your family alone and unprotected,” Frank said, the criticism thick in his voice.

  “I already told you, it wasn’t my idea! Maria is the one who said we should go in the first place.”

  Maria? Frank hadn’t even considered her a suspect. She was desperate to keep the baby, though, so it made sense.

  “Are you saying it was Maria’s idea for you to go to Mrs. O’Hara’s?”

  “Mrs. O’Hara?” he echoed stupidly. “You mean Nainsi’s mother? Why would we go to her place?”

  “I can think of at least one reason,” Frank said. “To kill her.”

  “Kill her?” he squeaked. “What’re you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about how you and Joe went out last night and murdered Mrs. O’Hara so she wouldn’t be able to stir up any more trouble for your family.”

  Antonio gaped at him. “We never . . . We didn’t go anywhere near her place last night!”

  “Where did you go then?”

  “To a . . . a dance house. I know it don’t look good for us to do that, but we did, I swear it!”

  “You will, will you?” Frank asked with interest. “Because a cop followed you to the dance house, but when I got there, you were gone.”

  “But we were there all night, until midnight!” he claimed frantically. “Lots of people were there. They’ll tell you!”

  “I was there, too, Antonio, but I didn’t see you or Joe.

  Now tell me where you really went.”

  “I told you! We . . . Oh, wait! I remember now,” he said, his shoulders sagging with relief. “We went to the one on Broadway first, but we didn’t stay. Joe saw someone he didn’t like, and he said we should leave. We went down to Broome Street then. Ask them there! They’ll tell you!”

  He gave Donatelli a silent order, and he slipped out to send someone to the dance house on Broome Street to see if anyone remembered seeing the Ruocco brothers.

  Frank turned back to Antonio. The boy was sweating, and his eyes were still wild with fright.

  “Let me get this straight,” Frank began, still keeping his voice neutral. “Maria sent her own husband out to a dance house?”

  Antonio licked his lips. He’d lied about that, and now he was trying to figure out how to tell a better lie.

  “The truth, Antonio. Don’t make me angry.”

  The boy swallowed loudly. “She didn’t say to go to a dance house,” he admitted.

  “What did she say?”

  “She said I was making her nervous. She . . . she told Joe to take me someplace out of her sight.”

  “What were you doing to make her nervous?”

  “Nothing! She’s just . . . Mama says she’s worried about the baby. She yells at everybody for every little thing. Even when Mama said Joe and I should stay home, in case something happen
ed, Maria didn’t listen to her. She started screaming at Joe, so we left. I was glad to get away from her.” He looked it, too.

  “Why go to a dance house then? You could’ve gone to Ugo’s saloon.”

  Antonio winced. “I didn’t want him telling me again how stupid I was for marrying Nainsi. Anyway, Joe said we’d have fun at a dance house.”

  “Just like you used to, before you married Nainsi,” Frank suggested.

  “Yeah, that’s right. The girls are real friendly, and they think I’m handsome. They don’t care how close you hold them, either.”

  “Were you looking for another girl who’d let you under her skirt like Nainsi did?” Frank inquired.

  Antonio had the grace to blush. “No girl’s going to trick me like that again!”

  “So you’re going to take a vow of celibacy and become a priest, Antonio?”

  “No! I’m just . . . I’m going to be careful. I’m going to marry a good girl, like Joe did.”

  “I don’t suppose Joe met Maria in a dance house.”

  “No! Maria would never go to a place like that.”

  “How did Joe meet her?” Frank asked curiously.

  “Mama found her. She knows Maria’s family, and she thought Maria would be a good wife for Joe.”

  “Is she going to find a wife for you and Lorenzo, too?”

  “Yeah! She . . . Well, Lorenzo says he doesn’t want a wife, but when I’m older, she’ll find me one.”

  “Does Lorenzo intend to take holy orders?” Frank asked with interest.

  “No, he . . . he just doesn’t want to get married, that’s all.”

  “Doesn’t want to settle down, I suppose. Is he having too much fun being single?”

  “I . . . I guess so,” Antonio admitted, uncomfortable with discussing his brother.

  Frank remembered that Lorenzo had taken Antonio to the dance houses in the first place. “How did you meet Nainsi?”

  Antonio blinked at the sudden change of subject. “I don’t know. I just saw her and asked her to dance.”

  “Did someone introduce you?”

  He frowned at Frank’s ignorance. “That’s not what happens in those places. The girls, they just come up and start talking to you. You take your pick of them.”

  “Why did you pick Nainsi?”

  “I told you, she came up and started talking to me.