We had gone about a block when Behan said, “Oh, one thing. I lied.”
“How so?”
“You won’t like what Sullivan has to say.”
13
Had this meeting occurred a decade ago, I might not have been allowed in Keens Steakhouse. The establishment had opened in 1885, catering to men’s appetites for meat, tobacco, and their own company. Women were not permitted. But the steakhouse was near the theater district and had become popular with the actors (and even less reputably, journalists). In 1905, the celebrated beauty and former mistress of Edward VII, Lillie Langtry, had been feeling carnivorous, but the restaurant refused to serve her. She sued—and won—and Keens wisely capitalized on the loss by serving a special dinner in her honor. Langtry arrived in full splendor, sporting a feather boa.
As we went through the oak doors of Keens that night, I was uncomfortably aware that I was neither famous nor a beauty nor owned a boa. Thankfully we were seated upstairs where the clientele was noticeably shabbier than those who might be seated in the Lincoln Room—which was said to hold the program the president had in his hand the night he was shot. The gas lighting was dim enough against the dark paneled walls that we didn’t attract notice. As we were taken to an obscure table near the bar, Behan whispered, “Remember the limitations of the Behan family fortune.”
At the table, a genial man with blue eyes and just enough dark hair on his head to save him from baldness sat nursing a drink and stroking his high, stiff collar. Though he was out of uniform, I knew instinctively he was a policeman. There was something peremptory about the way he clicked his fingers at the waiter for another drink; he had a habit—even a taste—for authority. Some might call it bullying.
The two men shook hands, the policeman grasping Behan’s hand and arm as he looked me over. His expression made me question the suitability of my dress; I felt suddenly … overt as Behan held out the chair for me and I sat. Then he sat down next to me. He was broad shouldered and long legged and the curved-back wooden chair seemed too fragile for him.
Mr. Sullivan sat as well. “Now, who’s this then?”
“We’ll get to that,” said Behan. “You’ve ordered dinner?”
The officer had not, and the next stretch of time was taken up with finding a waiter, obtaining more alcohol, and debating the merits of various cuts of meat, then deliberating upon the necessity of oysters. While this went on, Michael Behan ignored me, but I sensed that was a ploy to keep Mr. Sullivan’s attention on his own appetites, and I made myself as ignorable as possible.
They were just about done with the waiter when Mr. Sullivan said, “But we’re forgetting the young lady. What will you have, my dear?”
“I’m not hungry,” I lied.
“Bring the lady a mutton chop,” Mr. Sullivan instructed the waiter, pretending not to see Behan swallow sharply. At that moment, I understood Sullivan’s gesture was not for my benefit, but a means of asserting power over the reporter. This was not a man to be trusted with secrets; I wasn’t one, but he could make one out of me if he wanted to.
“No, thank you, truly,” I told the waiter, feeling some embarrassment at showing myself a woman who spoke to waiters.
But Sullivan said firmly, “And a mutton chop for the lady.”
I felt Behan sigh in the chair next to me. Then perhaps getting his own back, he inquired as to the health of Mrs. Sullivan. The policeman who kept a girl in Woodside replied that she was just fine.
Then he said, “And Maeve?” He smiled at me. “Or perhaps I shouldn’t ask.”
“Just fine,” said Behan evenly.
“Still the most beautiful woman at St. John’s?”
“Well, I think so.”
There was a long silence, interrupted when the whiskeys arrived for the gentlemen. Then Officer Sullivan casually observed, “I’m not so fond of talking unless I know who’s listening.”
I decided to take the burden of explanation off Michael Behan. “I’m a friend of Sofia Bernardi’s.”
Sullivan looked at Behan, who said, “Yeah, same woman.” I stared at him, but he refused my look.
Sullivan squinted at me through the gloom. “You don’t look Italian.”
“I wasn’t aware that was a requirement.”
“In her circle, it was.”
The chops arrived. Attacking his chop with a knife and fork, Sullivan raised an eyebrow at Behan’s empty plate. “Something wrong with your gut?”
“Ate earlier,” said Behan. But he looked mournfully at my plate.
“What do you mean, same woman?” I asked.
Tucking his napkin into his collar, Sullivan said, “He means you might have known her as Sofia Bernardi, but most knew her as Rosalba Salvio.” He scratched at his cheek. “Going to be a mess clearing that up with the morgue.”
Startled, I said, “Then you know she’s dead.”
He nodded. “Got a call from the Oyster Bay constabulary this morning. Said they were having trouble locating a Sofia Bernardi in the records. I said, Not surprising, there’s no such person.”
“And who was Rosalba Salvio?”
“Let’s put it this way, I’m surprised she lived as long as she did.”
He then made it clear that he wished to focus on his chop, so we ate in silence. I cut into mine—it was excellent—and tried not to notice Behan averting his gaze. His expression was martyred and I had the distinct impression he was praying. Over his objections, Sullivan called for a second whiskey for him, and a third for himself. Then he announced that a trip to the necessaries was in order.
When he was gone, I handed a fork to Behan and said, “Eat.”
“I’m not taking food off your plate.”
“Then take it off yours.” I shoved the plate in front of him. There was a second’s hesitation before the reporter cut, chewed, and swallowed five pieces of mutton in a manner I can only describe as bestial. Seeing Sullivan emerge, he slid the plate neatly back to my place. Then he smiled. Clearly the blood of the lamb had been restorative.
When Mr. Sullivan was at the point of paring the bone, I said, “Who was Rosalba Salvio?”
Sullivan flicked a look at Behan. “Doesn’t she read your newspaper, Michael?”
“She’s a woman of taste, Joe.”
The officer agreed to laugh at a joke at Behan’s expense and said to me, “You’re familiar with the Forti kidnapping.”
“I am.”
“Then you’ll remember that the police had a tip on where they were keeping the boy.”
“Yes.”
“A Samaritan who chose to go unheralded for his bravery—excuse me, I should say, her bravery.”
“Rosalba?”
Sullivan pointed a fork at me in acknowledgment of the correct answer.
“Tell her how she knew where the kid was,” said Behan quietly.
The lieutenant puffed out his cheeks. “Well, that’s not a pretty story.”
“I’m not interested in pretty stories, Lieutenant.”
He did not like being deprived of his moment of chivalry and let me know it by taking his time. At last, he said, “You know the Morettis were responsible for the kidnapping, although we could only grab the simp son, Dante. Well, Rosalba Salvio was an associate of Dante’s. She kept the kid hidden in the cellar of her father’s grocery and looked after him for the Morettis.
“Now, you’d think a young man would appreciate a woman like that. But Mr. Moretti was a thoughtless fellow, careless with his playthings—he had quite a few, you see.” He smiled thinly and I understood I was to be insulted. “And while poor Miss Salvio was stuck keeping an eye on the Forti boy, he was in clubs, often in the company of one Cecillia Repoli. When Miss Salvio discovered that she was only one of a harem, she decided to pay Moretti back by blowing the whistle on the kidnapping scheme.”
I looked at Behan. From the way he sipped his drink, I could see he believed the story.
“Did Miss Repoli explain all this to you? Or was it Dante Moretti?”<
br />
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, do you have any proof that Rosalba and Mr. Moretti were romantically involved? Her family may not have been given a choice about hiding the boy. The woman I knew was very fond of children. She wasn’t the type to stand by while they were mistreated.”
“She stood by quiet enough for a month,” he returned.
“It might have taken her that long to get up the nerve to report it.”
“Or she might have heard about Dante doing the foxtrot with Cecillia Repoli the night before she called.”
“But you don’t deny she told the police where the boy was being hidden.”
“No, I don’t.”
The lieutenant calmly ate his chop for what seemed like ages. My fingers curled around my table knife. Then Behan nudged my hand with his finger; he was right, it was better to appear unaffected.
But I failed, saying, “Did the Morettis know who reported the boy’s whereabouts?”
“Good chance.”
“Then it sounds to me as if she was killed in revenge. They found out where she was and killed her.”
I had caught him in the act of chewing. He took an inordinate time swallowing. “Maybe.”
“Sounds not bad to me,” said Behan.
Spotting the waiter, Sullivan raised his glass to indicate he’d like a refill. My hand found the knife again.
The officer took his time with his drink. Behan said, “You’ll be wanting to get home soon, Joe. Or do you have business in Woodside tonight?”
It was a verbal shove, and the policeman’s eyebrows raised sharply. Taking up his knife and fork, he said, “Michael, you said something about a window being left open.”
I stared at Behan; how could he give that kind of information to a man who obviously liked to misuse his authority? He knew he was in the wrong, too. I could see by the flush of red above his collar.
“Window’s left open,” murmured Sullivan. “You have to ask how it got that way.”
“You’re not saying Rosalba still worked for the Black Hand.”
“He’s not a bad-looking fellow, Dante. You step out on a girl, sometimes it makes her all the more eager when you come back.”
“But she put him in jail.”
“And as her reward, she became employed by the man who sent him there. Taking care of his infant son. Quite the opportunity.”
Seeing the outrage on my face, he tried a gentler tone. “To be fair, Miss, they may not have given her much of a choice. Tyler thinks he’s slick, but it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out he was hiding her. Once they knew where she was, they had her back in their power. She’s got a father, after all. Maybe she cooperated to keep him safe. Then after she’d gotten them inside the house, they decided they didn’t need her anymore and paid back an old debt. That’s often the way with these gangs. Slaughterhouses, too. Keep the animals calm before you cut their throat. They go easier that way.”
“So this … animal, you won’t be looking very hard for the man who killed her.”
He pulled himself up, stretching his belly, and sighed. “Well, we know who killed her, Miss Prescott. They’ve killed lots of folks, but we can only get them on so many. Good news is we’ve got one of them behind bars already. We’re hoping he gives us a few other names. Maybe one of them will be Rosalba’s killer. But the likelihood is, we’ll never know. And frankly, I’m not so sure it’s such a loss.”
I couldn’t restrain myself. “It’s your job, isn’t it, to protect people?”
“It’s my job to protect citizens. Voters. These Italians, all they want to do is make money here and go back to their village. They don’t naturalize, they don’t vote, they don’t become American. So you tell me: why should Americans do a damn thing for them?”
He drained his glass and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. “That’s all for me, Michael.” Getting up, he patted Behan’s shoulder. “Be a good man and take care of it, will you?”
Behan gave a grim smile. “See you in church, Joe.”
* * *
“Disgusting. Contemptible. Arrogant. Bullying.”
We were nearing Fortieth Street. Upon leaving Keens, Behan had announced, “Say it now.” Three blocks later, I hadn’t run out of invective.
“Gluttonous. Mercenary…”
“Now he’s got his friends at Tammany to answer to and it’s no easy task, keeping two women.”
“Adulterous. And … and … liar.” I stopped and faced Behan. “You must see that. He’s lying.”
Behan dug his hands into his coat pockets. “I can’t see that I do.”
“About Sofia being involved in the kidnapping?”
“She was involved in the kidnapping. The Forti one anyway. How else does a girl like that get noticed by Charles Tyler? Why keep her out on Long Island unless he felt her life was in danger?”
“Yes—her life was in danger, for very honorable reasons.”
“Then why would she come back to the city to meet with a man who works for Moretti, unless she knew damn well it wasn’t? Because she was back working for them and giving them exactly what they wanted.”
He had it all worked out in his head while I was still struggling to reconcile the girl who had sung to a baby on the lawn with an accomplice of the Black Hand. Miserable, I remembered the last words she had said to me: “Yes, now you are here, but you don’t … belong. You are in between. Not here, not there. Nobody.”
“Maybe she was involved with the Forti kidnapping in some way. But not Frederick Tyler’s…”
“She left the window open, Miss Prescott. Either she was unbelievably careless or she was in on it. My bet is your childhood sweetheart cut her throat himself.”
“Sandro was shocked when he heard she was dead, he couldn’t have killed her.”
“You don’t know that he was shocked to hear she was dead. He might have been shocked you knew she was dead—and that you’d tracked him down. Or maybe he was worried he’d been caught messing with the boss’s girlfriend.”
“She wasn’t Moretti’s girlfriend, that’s a lie.”
“Oh, I see. Sullivan’s a liar when he says things you don’t want to hear, but he’s telling the truth when it makes your girl out to be a heroine.”
“Charles Tyler would never have hired a woman like that.”
“What was it you said to me about Charles Tyler? Doesn’t believe bad of the people who work for him? Strangely innocent, those were your words, Miss Prescott. Going to be quite a story, Black Hand Infiltrates Home of New York’s Hero Cop.”
“You can’t write that.”
He strode ahead of me, saying, “Miss Prescott, you have always shown a shattering disregard for my need to make a living.”
“I think I show enormous regard for your professional reputation.” That got a bark of laughter. “What will people say if you print lies about a woman who was murdered because she saved a child?”
He swung around. “They’re not lies, Miss Prescott. They’re not fairy tales or stories about boogeymen or slurs upon the innocent. It is true, there are many fine, honorable people among the Italians. It is also true that a group of them make their living preying on those fine, honorable people, threatening them, terrifying them, extorting their hard-earned money, and butchering them when they don’t get their way. And you don’t help the first group by insisting the second one doesn’t exist.” His voice rose to a shout on this last point.
I was silent, blocked as much by his argument as by the ferocity of his emotion. Behan also looked at a loss. Finally, he said, “Are you going to the Benchleys’?”
I nodded.
“I’ll walk you.”
We made our way through Times Square, which in the previous century had been known as Longacre Square. At that time, its bustle and hustle had come in the form of transport; the carriage makers Brewster and Studebaker had their factories here, while the Vanderbilts’ American Horse Exchange nurtured the businesses of blacksmiths, stables, and leather goo
ds. Also, manure. So fertilized, the ground gave rise to vaudeville, music halls, and the theater.
Oscar Hammerstein had been the first to stake his claim, with the Olympia Music Hall. Others had followed. We walked under marquees that announced John Barrymore in The Affairs of Anatol and an exciting newcomer named Laurette Taylor in The Bird of Paradise. It was not until Mr. Adolph Ochs decided that if the Herald could have a square, so could the Times that the name changed. Mr. Ochs had celebrated the paper’s arrival to its new home in 1905 with an enormous party in the square on New Year’s Eve. Not as disreputable as its neighbor, the Tenderloin, Times Square still had its share of brothels, opium dens, drunkards, and thieves, and despite our argument, Mr. Behan stayed close and we chose our streets carefully.
This took us past a row of restaurants that served theatergoers before and after. It was between services, and the waiters were eating their own dinners or smoking outside. As we passed one café, I heard the scratch of a phonograph, then the voice of Enrico Caruso floating through the air. I didn’t know enough Italian to understand it, but it was more satisfying not to be distracted by the literal meaning of the words. Caruso’s voice flowed like a torrent, carrying the listener with it, spinning and dizzy and transported.
I heard Behan say, “Now, there’s a funny story about Signor Caruso.”
Wary, I said, “What?”
“This was about six years ago. A Mrs. Hannah Graham decides to take her little boy to Central Park to visit the Monkey House. They’re watching the chimps, baboons, and suchlike and she happens to notice standing next to her a little man with an impressive mustache. He’s also very interested in the monkeys. Suddenly—Mrs. Graham feels a hand where she shouldn’t, and it’s not her tyke asking to go to the toilet. She turns to the man and says, ‘See here, what are you up to you?’ And he says, ‘Wasn’t me, it was the monkey!’”
Death of a New American--A Novel Page 14
