Murder in Little Italy

With love to all my Italian relatives, living in this world and the next.

Thanks for giving me such an interesting and delightful heritage!

Sarah Brandt was just clearing away the luncheon dishes when she heard someone ringing her front doorbell. She felt a small stab of disappointment, and when she looked down at the little girl helping her carry dishes to the sink, she saw that disappointment mirrored in her brown eyes. They’d both been looking forward to a quiet afternoon playing with baby dolls, but now a real baby’s arrival was probably going to ruin those plans.

“Should I get it, Mrs. Brandt?” Maeve asked. Maeve worked as a nursemaid for the child Sarah had begun to think of as her daughter.

“No, I’ll go. You two can finish up here,” she said, taking off her apron. Sarah smiled down at little Aggie, who made a disgusted face. She knew a knock at the door most often meant Sarah had to go off to help deliver someone’s baby.

Aggie didn’t like it, but she also couldn’t stop Sarah from going. Sarah had explained many times that it was how she earned her living and paid for their food and clothes and home.

Sarah dropped a kiss on Aggie’s silken head and then hurried to answer the persistent ringing of the bell. As she’d suspected, a young man stood at the door, looking anxious.

“Mrs. Brandt, can you come? The baby, he’s coming soon.”

“Mr. Ruocco, isn’t it?” Sarah asked, recognizing him as one of the three handsome brothers she remembered. “From Mama’s Restaurant.”

“Yes, that’s right,” he confirmed. Mama’s was one of the most popular restaurants in Little Italy. Sarah had enjoyed many fine meals there. “I’m Joe. Can you come? Right away?”

“Of course. I’ll just need a few minutes to get ready.

Please, have a seat,” she offered, inviting him into the front room that served as her office.

He didn’t sit down, though. They never did. Instead he stood shifting his weight from one foot to the other, rest-lessly, as if his constant motion would hurry her along.

With practiced ease, Sarah checked her medical bag—the one that had belonged to her late husband, Dr. Tom—to make sure all her necessary supplies were packed. Then she went and changed into her working clothes, the dark skirt and jacket that didn’t show the stains. Mr. Ruocco helped her with her cape and offered to carry her bag for her.

When Sarah called out that she was leaving, Aggie came running for a good-bye kiss and to give Sarah another pout, just to let her know how much she’d be missed. Even after she and Mr. Ruocco had made their exit, Aggie ran to the front window and pressed her nose against the glass to give Sarah one last wave.

Sarah waved back, her heart so full of love she thought it might burst. Aggie had brought so much joy into her life since she’d found her several months ago at the Prodigal Son Mission on Mulberry Street. Still, Sarah couldn’t help worrying. The child had only spoken twice since the day she’d turned up on the mission doorstep. The first time was to call out a warning to save Sarah’s life, and the other was when Sarah had overheard her telling young Brian Malloy that her real name was Catherine. Aggie must have thought that was safe to do, since Brian was deaf. Sarah hadn’t yet had the courage to admit she knew Aggie’s secret. She’d been hoping Aggie would choose to speak on her own before she had to do so, but she was beginning to think that wouldn’t happen.

Mr. Ruocco set a brisk pace, and Sarah had to ask him to slow down a bit to accommodate her.

He apologized profusely. “It’s just that Mama said to hurry.”

“Is it your wife having the baby?” Sarah asked. “Isn’t her name Maria?”

“Yes, Maria, but no, she is not the one. It’s Antonio . . .

his wife.”

“Antonio?” she echoed in surprise. She’d thought him just a boy, too young to be married already and now with a baby on the way. “Isn’t he the youngest?”

“No, Valentina is the youngest. ’Tonio is the youngest boy, though.”

“Oh, yes.” She’d forgotten about the girl. Valentina didn’t spend much time in the restaurant. The Italians kept a close watch on their daughters.

They’d come to the corner, so they had no more opportunity for conversation as Mr. Ruocco helped her dodge horses and wagons and piles of manure in the death-defying process of crossing the street to arrive safely at the other side. Each intersection provided the same challenge, and with Mr. Ruocco practically running in between each one, Sarah learned nothing new about the family or their situation.

At last they saw the weathered red awning that shaded the front of Mama’s Restaurant on Hester Street. Because it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, no hungry customers stood in line, waiting for a table. Instead, the other two Ruocco brothers sat forlornly on the stoop, smoking cigarettes and looking as useless as men usually did when a woman was giving birth.

“This must be the proud papa,” Sarah guessed, smiling at the younger man.

They both jumped to their feet, and Sarah saw she’d been right in remembering Antonio as little more than a boy. He couldn’t be twenty yet, and the expression in his eyes was pure terror. “You’re the midwife?” he asked almost desperately.

“That’s right, and I’m sure everything will be fine,” Sarah assured him.

“It’s too soon. The baby is coming too soon,” he informed her.

She glanced at Joe, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned this to her, but he avoided her gaze. “Get out of the way, so she can go inside and get to work,” Joe said gruffly, and the two men parted instantly to make way.

Sarah noted as she passed that the other brother also looked worried, even if he wasn’t as terrified as Antonio.

“Mama!” Joe called as they entered. “Mrs. Brandt is here!”

The dining room was deserted except for two old men in the corner, drinking grappa and arguing. The checked tablecloths had been swept off and straightened from the lunch service and readied for the evening meals that would be served here. In the afternoon sunlight, the room looked like something from the Old World, with its plaster columns where ivy climbed and draped along the ceiling, and the paintings of the beautiful hills of Italy.

Joe turned to Sarah. “Come, I’ll take you upstairs.”

Like many business owners, the Ruocco family lived above their restaurant. As Joe led her toward the back of the dining room, a small woman burst through the kitchen door and came bustling toward them.

“Grazie, Mrs. Brandt,” she said, drying her hands on her apron as she came. “You are good to come so quick.” Patrizia Ruocco was a legend in Little Italy. Fifteen years ago she’d come to America with her three small boys, not speaking a word of English, and against all odds, she’d built a successful business. “You, Giuseppe, go with your brothers,” she said, waving a hand at Joe as if he were a pesky fly. “Give me bag,” she added, taking Sarah’s medical bag from him before he turned to go. He seemed almost grateful to escape.

“Upstairs, please,” Mrs. Ruocco said, leading the way to a door in the corner of the room. Patrizia Ruocco stood less than five feet tall, but hard work had made her strong. She carried Sarah’s medical bag as if it were filled with feathers, and she climbed the stairs without even losing her breath.

Once her hair had been jet black and probably her best feature, but now it was streaked with gray. Her body was rounded and womanly—still firm even in middle age—but oddly, she gave no impression of softness. Perhaps it was her dark eyes, which seemed as if they could cut right into a person’s soul.

The stairs were narrow and twisted around, designed to take up as little space as possible in the house. Two flights up, Mrs. Ruocco opened another door into a hallway. Sarah could see that several bedrooms with neatly made beds and spotlessly scrubbed floors opened onto it. She could also hear moaning.

Mrs. Ruocco stopped and turned back to face Sarah.

“The baby, he come too soon,” she told Sarah gravely. “This Irish trash . . .” She caught herself, and her face tightened as she tried to control a fierce anger. “This Irish girl Antonio bring to us,” she continued deliberately, “she is dropping my grandson too soon.”

“How much too soon?” Sarah asked, remembering her rash promise to Antonio that everything would be fine.

“They are married only . . . not six months,” Mrs. Ruocco said, the admission a vile taste in her mouth. “The baby was started before they marry, but not long before. A month, maybe two.”

Sarah nodded. A month, or even a few weeks, could make such a difference—the difference between life and death for the infant. She’d know when she talked to the mother if they had those weeks or not. “Sometimes babies who are only a couple of weeks early don’t live,” Sarah warned her.

“If this one is two whole months early—”

“I will do anything for the baby to live,” Mrs. Ruocco told her fiercely. “I will pay anything you ask. I want my grandson.”

If force of will could give the baby life, this one would live to be a hundred. “I’ll do the best I can, but God is the one who decides these things, not me,” Sarah reminded her.

“He better decide my grandson lives,” Mrs. Ruocco hissed before turning and leading Sarah down the hall.

As they approached the last door on the right, the moaning grew louder and a female voice cried out. “It’s coming again! Mary, Mother of God, make it stop!” The last word ended in a shriek of agony.

Mrs. Ruocco set Sarah’s bag on a chair just inside the door and hurried over to the bed where a girl even younger than Antonio lay, wailing like a banshee. Before Sarah could guess what she had in mind, Mrs. Ruocco drew back her hand and slapped the girl soundly across the face.

The wail ceased instantly, and the girl gaped at her in shock, holding a hand to her burning cheek.

“Stop screaming,” Mrs. Ruocco ordered her. “You disturb your husband.”

The girl blinked stupidly, but she didn’t utter another sound.

Mrs. Ruocco turned to the other woman in the room, whom Sarah hadn’t yet noticed. She recognized her as Maria Ruocco, Joe’s wife.

“Mrs. Brandt, she here,” Mrs. Ruocco told Maria. “Do what she say. If she need anything, get.”

“Yes, Mama,” Maria replied calmly. If the sight of her mother-in-law slapping her sister-in-law had alarmed her, she gave no indication.

Mrs. Ruocco turned back to Sarah, who still stood trans-fixed in the doorway. “If you must choose, save baby.”

The girl on the bed gasped but quickly covered her mouth when Mrs. Ruocco turned that razor-sharp gaze toward her again. Satisfied the girl was adequately intimidated, she nodded and took her leave, ushering Sarah into the room and closing the door behind her.

Sarah took a deep breath and somehow managed a smile she hoped was reassuring. “I’m Sarah Brandt,” she told the girl. “What’s your name?”

“Nainsi O’Hara,” she replied in a whisper, then quickly shook her head. “I mean Ruocco. Nainsi Ruocco.”

Irish trash, Mrs. Ruocco had called her. She was certainly Irish, with her reddish hair and smattering of freckles. She was probably pretty under better circumstances, and Sarah doubted she was older than fifteen.

“Well, Nainsi, can you answer a few questions for me?

Honestly, because I need to know the truth so I can help you.”

The girl glanced at Maria, who nodded permission. “All right,” she said reluctantly, still rubbing her cheek.

“When did . . . when did your baby get started?”

Again the girl glanced at Maria, and this time a flush rose up her neck and colored the cheek that wasn’t already red from the slap. “I . . . August,” she said. She’d be embarrassed by that, of course, since she hadn’t been married in August.

Sarah’s heart sank, but she didn’t allow Nainsi or Maria to see her dismay. She went to the washstand and washed her hands thoroughly in the warm water someone had re-cently carried up, drying them on a crisply ironed linen towel. Then she opened her medical bag and got out the pocket watch that had belonged to her late husband. She handed it to Maria.

“Would you keep track of how often the pains come? It’s probably been about four or five minutes since the last one.”

Maria took the watch carefully and nodded. “They are still far apart,” she reported. “Maybe ten minutes.”

“Thank you,” Sarah said, relieved to know she’d have a little time. “Nainsi, I’d like to examine you. It’s so long before your baby is due that maybe you aren’t really in labor at all. Lots of women have false labor pains.”

“Her water broke,” Maria reported solemnly.

This time Sarah knew there was no hope. The baby would be born, no matter what. “How long ago?”

“About an hour. That’s when we sent Joe for you.”

“Another one’s coming,” Nainsi announced, holding the bulge of her stomach with both hands. “Make it stop! It hurts so much!” she cried, biting her lip against the scream that threatened.

Sarah laid her own hands over Nainsi’s stomach to feel the strength of the contraction. It was strong enough to qualify as real labor, but certainly not the forceful contractions that would come later. Like most of the young girls Sarah had delivered, Nainsi didn’t tolerate pain very well and lacked the self-discipline to deal with it. They were in for a long evening. The thought had no sooner formed in her mind than Sarah noticed something very interesting about Nainsi’s baby.

As the contraction eased, Nainsi fell back on the bed, pant-ing. “Don’t let me die,” she begged. “Please don’t let me die!”

“Don’t be stupid,” Maria snapped. “You will not die.”

“She said to let me die!” Nainsi whined, obviously referring to Mrs. Ruocco. “She wants me to die!”

“She was just reminding me of the Catholic doctrine to save the child first if a choice must be made,” Sarah said to soothe her fears. “That’s not going to happen to you, though, so you don’t have to be afraid. Try to rest now. You’ll need your strength later.”

Nainsi looked skeptical, and Sarah couldn’t blame her for doubting. She apparently wasn’t a cherished member of the family.

Sarah began preparing the room. Someone had already covered the bed with an oilcloth and a clean sheet. Sarah ordered some hot water and more clean towels to keep Maria busy. When Maria was gone to fetch them, Sarah finished fluffing the pillows to make Nainsi more comfortable and said, “I’d like to check your stomach again, to make sure the baby is in the right position.”

“How can you tell that?” the girl asked, her eyes wide.

“I can feel his head,” Sarah said as she began to knead the mound of Nainsi’s stomach, tracing the outline of the baby’s body. “You can tell a lot of things by just feeling.”

“Is it?” Nainsi asked when Sarah was finished. “Is it in the right position? I knew a lady whose baby wasn’t, and they had to cut it out of her. She . . . she died.” The girl shivered with dread.

“It’s in the right position,” Sarah assured her. “And it seems awfully big, too.”

Nainsi’s hands went protectively to her stomach again.

“Does it? Does that mean it’s too big to come out?”

“No, it should come out just fine. I mean it seems big for only seven months.” In fact, it seemed big even for nine months, Sarah thought, but she didn’t say it.

Nainsi was a sturdy girl, and from what Sarah could tell, she was carrying low and all around instead of straight out in front. Depending on how they carried, some women hardly looked pregnant even when they were full term. If Nainsi had lied and the baby wasn’t early, perhaps it would have a chance.

“Nainsi, could your baby have gotten started earlier than August?” Sarah asked.

Nainsi looked up at her, and for the first time Sarah saw a hint that she might be more clever than she’d seemed. “It could’ve, but it didn’t,” she informed Sarah with a hint of satisfaction.

Before Sarah could ask what that meant, Nainsi’s eyes widened as another contraction began, and Maria returned with an armload of towels. After that, the contractions came in earnest. Sarah gave Nainsi a towel to bite on so she wouldn’t scream and draw Mrs. Ruocco’s wrath again. Maria helped Sarah support the girl when the time came to start pushing, and just as the sun was setting, Sarah delivered her of a strapping baby boy.

He wasn’t the biggest baby Sarah had ever delivered, but he was certainly one of the biggest. His body was rounded and padded with the fat that forms during the last month of development. His cheeks were full, his chin double, and his head was covered with coal-black hair. He let out a wail to match the one his mother had given earlier as soon as the cool air of the room touched his wet skin. So much for Sarah’s fear that he wouldn’t be able to breathe. That was the problem that killed so many infants born before their time. But this baby wasn’t early at all.

“It’s a boy,” Maria said happily, showing the first real emotion Sarah had seen. She had towels ready to dry him off, and Sarah handed the baby to her.

As Maria took the baby and cradled him, Sarah couldn’t help thinking she looked almost beautiful as the joy lit her face. Under ordinary circumstances, no one would consider Maria Ruocco beautiful. If anything, she was plain, her face round and nondescript. Her figure was squat and would probably run to fat later in life, just as the dark fuzz above her upper lip would eventually become a mustache. Her hair was thick and dark, but it grew low on her forehead, and she wore it parted in the middle and pulled straight back, a style that only emphasized how plain her face was.

“Is it over?” Nainsi asked weakly. So far she’d shown no interest in the baby, only relief that she was rid of it.

“Almost,” Sarah said. A few minutes later, Sarah had her cleaned up and resting comfortably in a clean nightdress.

“Would you like to hold your baby now?”

Nainsi frowned slightly. “I guess. I don’t know much about babies.”

“You’ll learn,” Sarah assured her.

Maria had washed the baby and wrapped him in a blanket that had obviously been purchased for his arrival. Maria had quieted him down, and he now lay peacefully in her arms, staring up at her face in fascination. As it dried, his hair had begun to curl. Sarah thought of the handsome Ruocco boys and their glistening black curls.

“You should try to nurse the baby right away,” Sarah said. “It will help you recover more quickly.”

Nainsi frowned again, looking askance at the bundle in Maria’s arms. “Do I have to?”

“Of course you have to,” Maria said sharply. “You are his mother.” Even still, she surrendered the child with obvious reluctance. Perhaps she was thinking how eager she would be to nurse her own child. Sarah knew how anxious Maria had been for a baby when she’d first married Joe. That was five years ago, and she still had yet to conceive. She’d consulted with Sarah several times, and Sarah had given her every scientific and old wives’ remedy she knew, but to no avail. Not for the first time, Sarah questioned the ways of the world where women like Maria were barren, and girls like Nainsi had babies they didn’t want.

“I’ll go tell everyone,” Maria said when Nainsi had settled the baby in her arms. “It’s dinner, our busiest time, but they’ll want to know. I should be helping them, too, now that the baby is here.”

“Let Valentina help,” Nainsi said nastily. “She never does anything but sit on her skinny bottom and complain.”

Maria’s lips tightened, but she swallowed whatever reply she might have made. She’d probably gotten good at that with a mother-in-law like Patrizia, Sarah thought. “I will send Mama up to see the baby,” she said instead, knowing that would have more effect on Nainsi than anything else she could have said.

The girl’s face flamed, but Maria was gone before she could respond.

“Let me show you how to feed the baby,” Sarah said to distract her.

Nainsi showed no enthusiasm for the process, but the baby’s instincts prevailed and soon he was latched on and sucking vigorously. Nainsi looked down at him doubtfully.

“I don’t think I have any milk.”

“It hasn’t come in yet. That takes a few days.”

“What if it doesn’t, though? What if I don’t have any at all?”

“You will,” Sarah assured her.

“Some women don’t. I’ve heard the old biddies talking.

Can’t I feed him with a bottle instead?”

“It’s not very good for the baby,” Sarah warned her.

“Sometimes they even get sick.” And die, Sarah thought, but she didn’t say it.

“She wouldn’t like it if it got sick, would she?” Nainsi asked.

Before Sarah could think of an appropriate reply, they heard the stairway door open and the sound of footsteps hurrying down the hall. Mrs. Ruocco appeared in the doorway, and this time she was breathless.

“Maria say he is alive,” she said in wonder.

“Yes, he’s just fine,” Sarah said.

She said something softly in Italian that might have been a prayer and crossed herself, then went the bed where Nainsi was still nursing the baby.

Someone had come along behind Patrizia, more slowly, and now he reached the doorway, too. Antonio looked no less apprehensive than he had when she’d seen him downstairs.

“You’ve got a healthy son,” Sarah told him.

He gave no indication he’d heard her. He was staring at the girl in the bed.

Mrs. Ruocco leaned over and whipped open the blanket covering the child. He was too engrossed in suckling to even notice, but everyone else saw how Patrizia reared back in shock at the sight of the chubby, pink, obviously full-term infant.

She turned accusingly to Sarah. “He is not too early.”

Sarah drew a deep breath, choosing her words carefully.

“He’s healthy and strong. Your grandson will live,” she added, reminding the woman that that had been her wish.

Mrs. Ruocco glared down at Nainsi, who had taken a sudden maternal interest in her son. She tucked the blanket carefully back over his bare legs and actually cooed at him.

Then she lifted her gaze to her mother-in-law with an odd defiance, as if to ask what she intended to do now.

Mrs. Ruocco turned to Antonio, who didn’t seem to have understood the meaning of any of what had happened. She asked him something angrily in Italian, and he answered her defensively.

“What are you saying about me?” Nainsi demanded.

“Talk in English so I can understand!”

If Sarah had thought Mrs. Ruocco’s gaze intimidating before, it was positively murderous now. “I ask when was the first time he go under your skirt,” she said between gritted teeth.

Nainsi’s cheeks burned scarlet, but she looked over at Antonio. “And what did you tell her?”

“August,” he said, still not certain what it meant. “You should be glad the baby isn’t sick,” he told his mother plaintively.

“He not sick because you not make him in August,” the woman said fiercely. “And if you did not, who did?”

“What are you saying?” Antonio asked. “That this isn’t my baby?”

“Yes, that is what I say,” Mrs. Ruocco informed him.

“She’s crazy!” Nainsi insisted. “You’re my husband. This is your baby!”

The baby had lost his grip on Nainsi’s breast, and he started to cry in protest. No one paid any attention, least of all his mother.

“Don’t listen to her!” Nainsi pleaded. “She hates me because I’m Irish. She’d say anything to turn you against me!”

Sarah thought that might well be true, but in this case, she had to agree with the older woman, who was shouting at Antonio in Italian again. He started shouting back, and they both began waving their hands to emphasize their points. Sarah couldn’t understand a word, but she knew exactly what they were talking about. Mrs. Ruocco was jab-bing her finger into his chest, and he was throwing his hands in the air to indicate he was as puzzled about the situation as she was.

Between the shouting and the baby wailing, no one heard Maria coming until she stepped in between the two and pushed them apart. “Stop yelling! You’re making the baby cry!”

For the first time they seemed to notice it was crying.

Maria gave them both a look of disgust and strode over and snatched the baby from Nainsi’s limp grasp. Maria started to bounce him and make soothing sounds, but he continued to scream.

“He’s hungry,” Sarah said. “He won’t stop until he gets something to eat.”

“I’ll get him something from the kitchen,” Antonio offered, earning a scornful look from every woman in the room.

Mrs. Ruocco glared at Nainsi. “Feed the bastard, you whore.”

Maria gasped in shock. “Mama, what are you saying?”

Her nerves fraying from the baby’s cries, Sarah took him from Maria and gave him back to Nainsi, forcing her to offer him her breast again. The baby’s cries ceased instantly, leaving the room in silence except for the happy sounds of suckling.

Maria was still gaping at Mrs. Ruocco. “Mama?”

“I know it,” the woman said angrily. “Antonio, he just a boy. He not know what to do. She must show him.”

Antonio flushed scarlet, revealing the truth of his mother’s theory, and he shot Nainsi a glance that could’ve curdled her milk.

“She is whore,” Mrs. Ruocco continued. “She try get husband and home for her bastard. She trick Antonio. She trick whole family!”

“No, Mama,” Maria insisted. “You can’t know that. Look at the baby. He looks just like Antonio!”

Newborn babies seldom resembled anything more closely than an elderly man who’d lost his hair and his teeth.

This one did, at least, have the black curly hair of the Ruocco family, but beyond that, any resemblance would be entirely in the eye of the beholder.

“Look at baby, Maria,” Mrs. Ruocco said, pointing an accusing finger. “Is he sick, like baby born too soon?”

Maria looked at the baby, her face reflecting her refusal to accept the truth. “We are lucky, Mama. God has blessed us by making him strong enough to live. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” she reminded her.

“I want my grandson to live,” Mrs. Ruocco corrected her.

“This baby, he nothing to me.”

“You can’t be sure,” Maria argued desperately. “Mrs.

Brandt, tell her! She can’t know for sure!”

This was what Sarah had dreaded. If she confirmed the truth she knew, she would condemn Nainsi and her baby to abandonment and perhaps even death. A woman with a newborn would fare poorly on the streets, and few families would welcome a daughter back home after such a scandal, if Nainsi even had a family. But if Sarah lied, she would be doing an injustice to Antonio and his entire family. She thought of King Solomon with the sword, ready to cut the baby in two. If only she had his wisdom, and if only one of her choices were the right one.

“Look at her,” Mrs. Ruocco said, gesturing at Sarah.

“She know truth, but she cannot say. She want protect baby. Look at baby. He too big and too fat. Count to nine, Maria. Nine month was June. Antonio did not know this whore in June.”

Tears stood in Maria’s eyes, and she looked at Sarah, silently pleading for her to deny it. Sarah still couldn’t bring herself to say the words, but she gave Maria the slightest nod.

Maria’s face crumpled, and Nainsi howled in fury. “You can’t believe her!” she cried to Antonio. “Mama is paying her. She’ll say anything to get her money! You know this is your baby. Come and look at him, and you’ll see!”

But Antonio was already shaking his head. He’d obeyed his mother all of his life, and he wasn’t going to defy her now. He turned and fled the room.

“Come back here!” Nainsi shrieked hysterically. Then she turned to Mrs. Ruocco. “This is your grandson. You have to believe me! He promised!”

This time it was Maria who slapped her into silence. The baby, who had drifted off to sleep, startled and then settled down again into sweet oblivion.

“That husband of yours almost knocked me down the stairs,” a new voice said a few moments later, and Sarah looked up to see a buxom Irishwoman in the doorway. Her faded orangey hair and the curve of her face made her an older version of Nainsi. “What’s the fuss about, anyway?”

she asked of no one in particular, seemingly unaware of the tension in the room. Then she saw the infant cradled in Nainsi’s arms. “Ah, and that would be my grandson, would it?” she asked, a smile breaking across her worn face. “What a handsome lad, and look at all that hair.”

Nainsi gaped at her for a long moment and said,

“Mommy.” Then she burst into tears.

2

Sarah would always remember the next few minutes as a blur of angry hands gesturing and lots of incoherent shouting. Nainsi blurted out the accusations the Ruoccos had made against her, and Mrs. O’Hara rose to her daughter’s defense, or at least her voice did. The two older women started screaming invectives at each other in a variety of languages while Nainsi sobbed and Maria wept silently.

Sarah took the sleeping baby from his mother, marveling for the thousandth time how infants could sleep through anything. She laid him gently in the cradle that had been lovingly prepared for him, probably by Mrs. Ruocco herself, and wondered what would become of him. At least Nainsi had a mother. Judging by Mrs. O’Hara’s clean but well-mended clothes and her work-roughened hands, she might have a difficult time taking not only her daughter but the baby back into her care—but at least there was a chance they wouldn’t end up on the street.

When the din had died down to a manageable level, Sarah said, “Excuse me,” startling everyone into silence.

When she had their full attention, she continued. “This is an unfortunate situation, I know, but Nainsi and the baby need some peace and quiet and some rest.”

Mrs. Ruocco looked at the girl in disgust. “We will not bother her anymore. I want her out of my house, her and her bastard!”

“You dago cow!” Mrs. O’Hara cried. “You’d put her out five minutes after she birthed your grandchild?”

“That bastard is no my grandchild!” Mrs. Ruocco replied indignantly.

“Mrs. Ruocco,” Sarah said as calmly and reasonably as she could. “Nainsi and the baby shouldn’t be moved tonight. I know you’re angry right now, but if anything happened to either of them, especially that innocent baby who has done nothing to deserve it, you’d regret it for the rest of your life.”

Sarah wasn’t sure if this were true or not, but she hoped Mrs. Ruocco would be willing to assume the finer feelings Sarah had assigned to her.

For a moment, she feared she’d misjudged her, but then Maria said, “Please, Mama. What will people think if we put her out tonight? I’ll look after them until . . . until they’re strong enough to go.” Her voice broke on a sob, and she looked longingly down at the baby, sleeping angelically in his cradle.

Mrs. Ruocco muttered something in Italian and threw up her hands in disgust. “Do what you want, Maria, but I do not want to see this one’s face again. When Mrs. Brandt say, they must go. Both of them.”

Maria’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Grazie, Mama.”

“Yeah, thanks for being so generous,” Mrs. O’Hara echoed acidly. “You’ll regret this, you’ll see. My girl ain’t no liar, and your boy don’t get out of his responsibility so easy. They was married in the church, for life.”

Mrs. Ruocco ignored her. “Mrs. Brandt, I am sorry you see this. It is not right. Come downstairs. You will eat before you go. I will fix you special meal.”

“Oh, that really isn’t necessary,” Sarah said politely, longing for the peace and quiet of her own home with her own tiny family. But then her stomach growled audibly.

“You will eat,” Mrs. Ruocco decreed, and left the room.

No one spoke until they heard the stairway door close behind her. Then Mrs. O’Hara turned back to Nainsi.

“You stupid cow!” she snapped. “I told you them dagos is nothing but trouble! I guess you think you can come back home with me and I’ll take care of you and your baby.”

Now that her mother-in-law was gone, Nainsi’s confidence returned. She drew herself up and smoothed the covers across her lap. “Don’t worry about that. I won’t be needing any help from you.”

“You got some other plans I don’t know about?” Mrs.

O’Hara scoffed.

“No, I’m staying right here,” Nainsi said.

“How you figure that?” her mother asked in amazement.

“She won’t throw me out. You’ll see,” Nainsi replied smugly.

“Stupid, stupid cow,” Mrs. O’Hara lamented. “Didn’t you hear a word she said?”

“I heard every word, but she didn’t hear any from me.

She will, though, and then you’ll see. Now I’m tired. You can go along home, Mommy, so I can get some rest.”

“Who’s gonna look out for you if I leave?” Mrs. O’Hara asked in disgust. “Nobody here’s got any love for you.”

“Maria will look after me, won’t you, Maria.” Nainsi seemed to take great delight in the prospect of having her sister-in-law waiting on her, although Sarah couldn’t imagine Maria would treat her very kindly.

“Yes,” Maria confirmed mildly. “I will take good care of her and the baby. Tomorrow, you come back when she is feeling better and the baby is awake.”

“And be sure and tell Brigit I had my baby and that he’s a boy,” Nainsi said. “Go to her flat and leave her a note so she’ll see it as soon as she gets home. I want her to tell all my friends. Don’t forget!”

Mrs. O’Hara nodded absently. She didn’t look happy, but she didn’t argue about leaving. Sarah was sure she found the prospect of spending any more time in the Ruocco house thoroughly distasteful. She walked over to get a last look at the baby. “Sure looks like a little dago, don’t he?” she remarked.

No one replied.

Mrs. O’Hara sighed. “I’ll be back to see you tomorrow, girl. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your mouth shut, and not make things any worse. I wouldn’t put it past this bunch to slit your throat for you.”

Nainsi just smiled serenely as she watched her mother walk away.

Sarah slept poorly that night. She kept thinking about the innocent little baby and wondering what would become of him. Obviously, Nainsi couldn’t hope for help from the baby’s real father, or she would never have seduced Antonio into marrying her in the first place. She wasn’t the first girl to have done such a thing, and she might even have gotten away with it if her baby had been small or sickly. Or even if she’d married a man with no mother to catch her out and expose her lie. But she hadn’t, and now she was going to have to suffer for failing to plan more carefully.

Finally giving up on sleep, she got out of bed before dawn and made herself some breakfast. Maeve and Aggie were still sleeping soundly. Sarah decided she’d make her usual follow-up visit to the new mother first thing and then be back in time to enjoy the whole morning with the girls.

Hunched against the morning chill, Sarah made her way over to Little Italy. In earlier times, she would have taken a Hansom cab, but now she had to economize to provide for her new family. Even at this early hour, the streets and sidewalks were alive with traffic as people went to work or to shop. Housewives bartered with pushcart vendors over the price of their wares while draymen shouted at their horses as they fought their way through the crowded streets to deliver their loads.

Mama’s Restaurant wasn’t open yet, but the family would already be up and about, shopping for fresh vegetables at the market and making the noodles and sauce they would serve later. Sarah hoped Nainsi and the baby had rested better than she had, and she wondered how long she could de-lay Nainsi’s departure from the Ruoccos’ home.

The front door of the restaurant was locked, so Sarah knocked. She could hear movement inside, and soon Lorenzo, the middle brother, opened the door. He held a broom in one hand, and for a moment he didn’t recognize her.

“I’m here to see Nainsi and the baby,” Sarah said, knowing he wouldn’t be happy at the reminder of the family crisis.

“Oh, yes, please come in,” he said, stepping aside. He wasn’t quite as appealing as his brothers, she noticed. Joe had the winning smile and charming manner. Antonio was boyish and sweet. This brother was too mature to be boyish and too serious to be charming. Or maybe he simply wasn’t very happy that she was here.

He’d just closed the door behind her when they heard a scream. It was the first in a series that continued, scream after scream after scream, as he raced to the stairway door, Sarah at his heels. Someone else was behind her, but she didn’t stop to see who. Fighting her skirts on the narrow staircase, she nearly fell more than once. Gratefully, she flung herself through the open door on the third floor through which Lorenzo had disappeared.

Just as she’d feared, the screams were coming from Nainsi’s room. Lorenzo reached the doorway first, but he stopped dead. Sarah tried to see what was going on, and when he wouldn’t move, she shoved him aside and pushed her way in.

The screams were coming from a slender young girl who stood just inside the door, paralyzed by what she saw on the bed. She just kept screaming and screaming with each new breath until Sarah took her by the shoulders and turned her around, shoving her into Lorenzo Ruocco’s arms.

“Valentina!” he cried, wrapping his arms around her.

“What is it?”

She made a strangled sound and began to sob.

Meanwhile, Sarah had seen the reason for her terror. Nainsi lay still on the bed, her eyes open wide and unseeing, her face a ghastly gray. Sarah knew before she even touched her that she was cold and a long time dead. Still, she checked her pulse just to make sure. The body was already beginning to stiffen.

“Is she . . . dead?” Maria asked, peering wide-eyed around her brother-in-law’s shoulder.

“I’m afraid so,” Sarah said.

Valentina smothered another anguished cry against her brother’s chest, and Maria stared in horror, crossing herself.

Then she also pushed her way past them into the room.

“She died from having the baby?” she asked Sarah, staring mesmerized at Nainsi’s body, which looked like a doll that had been tossed carelessly aside. Her arms lay outstretched, as if she’d just flung herself down on the bed. Her legs were under the bedclothes, but the covers were slightly rumpled, as if she’d been tossing in her sleep.

Before Sarah could answer, Maria suddenly realized her responsibilities. “Lorenzo, get Valentina out of here, and go find Mama. She already left for the market, but she’ll be back soon.”

“Come along, Valentina,” Lorenzo said gently.

“The baby was crying,” the girl whimpered. “He was crying so long, I went to see what was the matter.”

Both Sarah and Maria looked down at the cradle at the same time. The baby lay still, sobbing almost soundlessly, his little face scarlet and his dark hair damp and bedraggled.

As Valentina had said, he’d been crying for a very long time, and now he lay exhausted, barely able to make a sound.

Maria scooped him up into her arms.

“He’s soaking wet,” Maria said in dismay. “Poor bambino.”

“It’s all right,” Lorenzo was assuring Valentina. “Let’s go downstairs.”

“But why did she die?” Valentina asked plaintively as she let her brother lead her away.

“The baby is hungry,” Maria said with an edge of desperation in her voice as she tried to soothe him. “What can we do?”

“We’ll have to get some bottles and milk,” Sarah said.

“Can we send someone for them?”

“Yes, Lorenzo will go, if you tell him what we need.”

“I’ll make the baby a sugar teat in the meantime, and we’ll give him a little water. He’s probably dehydrated.”

Maria’s eyes widened again. “Does that mean he will die?”

“Oh, no, it just means he needs some liquid.” She grabbed up a handful of diapers and a clean blanket from the dressing table and started to usher Maria out of the room. Then she stopped, remembering the girl lying dead. Quickly, she went back and pulled the covers over Nainsi’s ashen face.

Maria stood in the doorway, cradling the baby and watching with glistening eyes. Sarah gently guided her out into the hallway, closing the door behind them. No one would disturb Nainsi’s body, Sarah was sure. No one in this house had wanted to be near her even when she was alive.

Downstairs they found Valentina sitting at the kitchen table, her eyes red and her face white. Lorenzo was trying to get her to sip some brandy. The large room where meals for a hundred could easily be prepared was redolent of garlic and onions and a dozen magnificent spices that made Sarah’s mouth water even though she’d eaten only an hour earlier.

Maria told Lorenzo to go out and get the things Sarah wrote down that they would need for the baby. Then she changed the boy while Sarah made a sugar teat by wrapping a spoonful of sugar in a clean cloth and tying it off with string to make a ghost-shaped object. Then she wet the ghost’s head and gave it to the baby to suck. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it was wet and tasted good, so he kept after it. The apprehension in Maria’s eyes began to fade.

“He will be all right?” she asked.

Sarah didn’t want to make any rash promises. “He won’t die from this, if that’s what you mean, and he seems to be very healthy and strong. Feeding a baby with bottles is dangerous, though. Sometimes they do fine, and other times . . .

Other times, they don’t.”

He wouldn’t be Maria’s problem anyway, Sarah couldn’t help thinking, but she didn’t bother to say it. She was too grateful that someone here cared about him.

“He’d be better off dead,” Valentina said with an air of authority.

Maria and Sarah gaped at her.

“Well, he would,” she insisted righteously, the color returning to her cheeks. “His mother’s dead, and he doesn’t have anybody to take care of him.”

“You are a wicked girl,” Maria told her angrily.

“I don’t care what you think,” Valentina said with a haughty toss of her long, dark braids. “I don’t care what anybody thinks. I never wanted that nasty little baby around here anyway, or his mother either. Nainsi O’Hara thought she was better than us, just because we’re Italian, but she was only dirty Shanty Irish. She never had a new dress in her life, and she had to work in a factory before she married Antonio. She should’ve been grateful when he brought her here, but she wasn’t. She was mean to him and to all of us.”

“Valentina, have a little respect for the dead,” Maria said wearily.

“Why? She never had any respect for me.”

“You don’t deserve any,” Maria snapped. “Go away and leave us alone.”

With a sniff, Valentina rose and left the room.

Maria sighed. “I’m sorry. She is just a child, and she is very spoiled. Because she’s the baby and the only girl.”

“Of course,” Sarah said politely and started some water to boil in preparation for the supplies Lorenzo would bring.

When Lorenzo returned, Sarah warmed some of the milk and prepared a bottle. Maria offered it, and the baby took to it right away. He gulped down almost all of the milk before falling into an exhausted sleep in Maria’s arms.

“He is so beautiful,” Maria marveled, gazing down at him lovingly, like an adoring Madonna.

Sarah took the bottle so Maria would have both hands free to cradle him, and once again she considered how unfair life was. If only Maria had given birth to this boy, he would have been welcomed and adored.

“I should put him to bed so he can rest,” Maria said after a few moments.

“We’ll need his cradle,” Sarah said and watched Maria’s face fall as they both remembered where his cradle was and what had happened in that room.

Maria looked over to the corner where Lorenzo had with-drawn after returning from the store with the baby bottles.

He sat, forearms resting on his knees, watching Maria and the baby intently.

A silent communication passed between him and Maria, an understanding that surpassed words. “I will go,” he said, as if responding to a spoken request. Still, he rose reluctantly, unable to conceal his aversion to returning to the room where Nainsi’s body lay.

Sarah didn’t want to return either, but she needed to see the body again. She was anxious to discover the cause of Nainsi’s death. It was too soon for childbed fever to have developed, and the girl hadn’t been ill at all last night when Sarah left. A hemorrhage was a possibility, but she hadn’t had a chance to check for that. Sarah was mystified, and she needed to know she hadn’t missed anything that could have caused Nainsi’s death. If Sarah had been responsible . . .

“I’ll go with you,” Sarah said.

Surprise registered on Lorenzo’s face, but she also saw relief. “There’s no need,” he said perfunctorily.

“No, not at all,” Maria confirmed, her own distaste evident.

“Yes, there is,” Sarah replied, and started out of the room before either of them could protest again.

Lorenzo followed her up the stairs this time, and both of them walked more slowly than they had earlier. No one was screaming, and they felt no urgency. Sarah didn’t wait for Lorenzo. She opened the door and went on in, steeling herself against the horror of such a tragic death. Not letting herself look at Nainsi’s body, she quickly gathered the rest of the baby things she saw stacked neatly on the dresser and placed them in the cradle.

She heard Lorenzo’s footsteps stop just outside the doorway. When Sarah looked up, he was watching her, also carefully avoiding looking at the bed.

“Go ahead and take it downstairs,” Sarah said, indicating the cradle.

Still without so much as a glance at the dead girl, he quickly came in, picked up the cradle, and made his way out again. Sarah had expected him to bolt, but he hesitated when he realized Sarah wasn’t going with him.

“Are you coming?” he asked.

“In a minute. I just have to . . . I have to check something,” she said, managing a reassuring smile. She was getting very good at that.

“I’ll stay then,” he said, even though she could see he hated the thought.

“No, Maria needs the cradle. Go ahead. I’ll be fine. I’m a nurse,” she reminded him with another smile. “I’m used to death.”

It was a lie, of course. She’d never get used to it, but he believed her. Or at least he pretended to and left.

Sarah began her examination, gingerly drawing back the covers to reveal the entire body. She found no pool of blood to indicate the girl had hemorrhaged. An infection wouldn’t have had time to work yet, and she’d seen no signs to indicate any kind of distress at all yesterday. Sometimes people just died, Sarah knew, but this death was simply too convenient. No one in this house had liked Nainsi even before they’d discovered how she’d tricked Antonio. Mrs. O’Hara had reminded them last night that Catholic marriages could not be easily dissolved. Antonio could have thrown Nainsi and the baby out, but divorce wasn’t an option, even if the baby wasn’t his, so he’d never be able to remarry without being banned from the church.

Sarah started to examine the body more closely, looking for any signs of violence. She noticed that one of Nainsi’s fingernails was torn, the jagged end not completely ripped off.

Gooseflesh rose on Sarah’s arms. Fingernails didn’t easily tear like that. She looked at Nainsi’s vacant eyes, still staring at nothing, and this time she saw something she had missed before. Red dots, like pinpricks in the whites of her eyes and on her face, too. Sarah wasn’t sure what that meant, but she’d never seen dots like that on a woman who’d died in childbirth. Carefully, Sarah closed the girl’s eyes.

She was so engrossed in her work, she hadn’t noticed the sounds of someone coming down the hall until she heard a howl of anguish that made her jump. Mrs. O’Hara stood in the doorway, paralyzed with horror as Lorenzo had been this morning.

“No, no, no,” she kept saying, over and over, as she stared at the body. “Not my Nainsi, it can’t be my Nainsi,” she insisted as the tears pooled in her eyes. “She’s all I’ve got, the only one left. Not my Nainsi!”

Sarah hurried to comfort her, helping her to one of the chairs Sarah and Maria had brought in for themselves yesterday while they’d been waiting for the baby to arrive. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. O’Hara,” she murmured, hating the meaningless phrase but having nothing else to offer.

Still in shock, Mrs. O’Hara continued to stare. “That bitch told me she was dead, but I thought she was lying. They’re devils, those dagos. They’ll say anything.” She drew a ragged breath. “I told Nainsi not to get mixed up with them, but she wouldn’t listen. She never listens.” Her voice broke on a sob, but she fought the tears, clinging to her anger. “What happened to her?” she demanded of Sarah. “She was fine last night!”

“I don’t know,” Sarah admitted.

“Was it the baby? My sister died in childbirth,” Mrs.

O’Hara remembered. “She wouldn’t stop bleeding.”

“That wasn’t it. She didn’t bleed any more than normal.

She didn’t seem to be sick, either.”

“So it wasn’t childbed fever?”

Sarah hesitated. She knew nothing for certain except that she couldn’t explain Nainsi’s death and she’d seen several things to make her suspicious. “Mrs. O’Hara, I don’t see anything that would have caused her death.”

The older woman’s face darkened with fury. “I knew it.

They killed her, didn’t they? How did they do it? And which one was it?”

“I told you, I don’t know how she died,” Sarah repeated.

They both looked up at the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Mrs. O’Hara rose to her feet as Patrizia Ruocco appeared in the doorway. Maria was right behind her. Like everyone else, Mrs. Ruocco stopped in the doorway to stare at the body.

“She is dead,” she said without a trace of emotion.

“And you killed her,” Mrs. O’Hara said.

Mrs. Ruocco looked at her as if she were a maniac. “I did not even know she was dead.”

“You and your brood! She was fine last night, and now she’s dead. Somebody here killed her.”

“Siete pazzeschi! She die from the baby. Women die from babies every day.”

“She says Nainsi didn’t die from the baby!” Mrs. O’Hara insisted, gesturing toward Sarah.

Mrs. Ruocco fixed her razor-sharp gaze on Sarah, silently daring her to repeat such a vile accusation to her face.

“I just said I don’t know why she died,” Sarah hastily explained. “It could have been from childbirth, but I’ve never had a patient die like this before.”

“This is crazy. You are all crazy!” Maria insisted, pushing her way past her mother-in-law into the room. “And why is she lying here like this? No respect!” She grabbed the edge of the covers Sarah had drawn back and jerked them over the dead girl, covering her face.

The violent action knocked several pillows to the floor, and Sarah mechanically bent to pick them up. As she did, she saw something that stopped her breath—a reddish smear on one of the pillowcases. Blood? It could have come from the birth, but Sarah was certain she’d changed all the linen on the bed last night.

As casually as she could, she turned the pillow over before placing it back on the bed, so the smear didn’t show.

She didn’t know what it meant, but if it was connected with Nainsi’s death and someone here had killed her, it might disappear.

“Mrs. Brandt,” Mrs. Ruocco said angrily, “this girl die from baby. What else could she die from?”

“It could be murder!” Mrs. O’Hara cried. “She was murdered, and one of you dagos killed her!”

“You are just upset,” Maria said in an attempt to soothe her. “Did you look at her? She has no marks on her, no bruises or blood. How could she have been murdered?”

This stopped Mrs. O’Hara for a moment, and she looked at Sarah helplessly. But Sarah had no answers, not yet anyway. She also didn’t want to incur Patrizia Ruocco’s wrath, because if she felt her family was in danger, she’d stop at nothing to protect them. Nainsi’s body might just disappear along with any chance of learning the truth.

“I’m sorry. I know this is upsetting to everyone, but if she died from something to do with the birth, something I’ve never seen before or a mistake I made, I need to know. A doctor could tell for sure how she died,” she said. “Just to ease Mrs. O’Hara’s mind and my conscience.”

“A doctor?” Mrs. Ruocco scoffed. “And who will pay for a doctor? Will you pay for him, you Irish pig?” she asked Mrs.

O’Hara.

“Yes, I will, you dago cow!” she replied. “And I’ll see all of you hanged for what you did to my girl!”

Mrs. Ruocco muttered something in Italian. “Get a doctor then. Just get this . . .” She gestured wildly toward the bed. “. . . this thing out of my house!”

Mrs. O’Hara made an outraged sound and started screaming profanity at Mrs. Ruocco, who haughtily turned her back and walked away. Mrs. O’Hara followed her, threatening to bring down every punishment under heaven upon her daughter’s killer.

When their voices died away as they descended the stairs, Sarah turned back to Maria, who looked absolutely terrified. “What will happen?” she asked in a whisper.

Sarah went to her, taking her icy hands. “Nothing, if Nainsi died in childbirth,” Sarah said, not wanting to upset Maria any more than necessary.

“I mean the baby,” Maria said, apparently not believing for a moment that Nainsi might have been murdered. “What will happen to the baby?”

Sarah had no answer for her.

“You must help me keep the baby,” Maria said desperately.

Sarah would have liked nothing more than to give Maria the child she’d longed for, but . . . “I’m not sure there’s anything I can do to help.”

“What will happen to him if I don’t keep him?” Maria asked. “I cannot give him to that woman!”

She had a legitimate concern. Mrs. O’Hara probably didn’t have the means to care for a child herself. Bottle-feeding required time and patience and diligence in addition to rigid cleanliness. “Maria, I’m not the one you need to convince. Have you even talked to your husband about this?”

Something flickered deep in her eyes, and her expression hardened. “He will do what I ask.”

“And what about Mrs. Ruocco?” Sarah asked, knowing full well she would have the final word.

Before Maria could reply, they both heard a commotion out in the street. They hurried over to the window and saw that in the street below, a small crowd was gathering around a screaming woman. The woman was Mrs. O’Hara. Maria jerked up the sash so they could hear what she was saying.

“Murder! Police!” she was screaming. “They murdered my daughter! Police! Get the police!”

Maria gave an outraged cry, turned, and ran from the room. Sarah took the time to close the window and give Nainsi’s covered body one last glance. On impulse, she took the bloodstained pillow and slipped it under the bed. Then she followed Maria, carefully closing the bedroom door behind her.

Down in the dining room, she found all the Ruoccos assembled. Antonio and Joe had finally made their appearance, and from the looks of them, they’d awakened to ex-cruciating hangovers. Only a drunken stupor would have allowed them to sleep through the morning’s excitement.

Lorenzo stood silently, his face expressionless as he observed the chaotic scene. Valentina was crying loudly, and Maria was pleading with her mother-in-law in rapid Italian, but Mrs. Ruocco ignored all of them. She was staring at the police officer banging on the front door, demanding admission.

For a long moment, no one moved, and then Lorenzo walked over to the door, unlocked and opened it. The policeman entered, followed by Mrs. O’Hara. Lorenzo managed to get the door closed before anyone else could force their way in, but the crowd outside pressed against the glass door and the front windows, peering inside.

“There they are,” Mrs. O’Hara said, pointing wildly.

“That’s all of them. They killed my girl.”

“This lady says a girl was murdered in here, Mrs. Ruocco,”

the officer said respectfully, because Patrizia Ruocco was a prominent figure in the community. Sarah recognized him, although she couldn’t remember his name. But he hadn’t seen her yet.

Mrs. Ruocco stepped forward, fairly radiating indigna-tion. “This woman is crazy. Her daughter marry my son, but she die in childbirth.”

“No, she didn’t,” Mrs. O’Hara exclaimed. “Ask the midwife. She’s right there!” She pointed directly this time, and Sarah winced.

“Mrs. Brandt?” the officer asked, peering at her in the shadows. “Is that you?” Practically all the policemen at Headquarters knew her from her association with Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy.

“Yes,” she said, reluctantly stepping forward and trying to look more confident than she felt.

“Do you know what’s going on?”

“I delivered a baby here yesterday, to Mrs. O’Hara’s daughter,” she added, gesturing to the older woman. “She was married to Mrs. Ruocco’s son, Antonio. This morning, she was dead. I’m not sure why she died—”

“They killed her, that’s why!” Mrs. O’Hara screeched, and all the Ruoccos began yelling in protest.

The officer had to shout and push the Ruoccos back when they tried to attack Mrs. O’Hara. “Quiet, the lot of you!” he hollered several times before order was restored. “I got to find out what happened here. If I don’t . . .” He glanced meaningfully over his shoulder at the curious crowd gathered outside.

Virtually all the faces were Italian, so Sarah didn’t think they’d riot over the death of an Irish girl, but who knew what could happen? Riots had started over much less.

Sarah turned to Mrs. Ruocco. “I have a friend who is a police detective. He’ll be fair, and he’ll find out what really happened to Nainsi.”

Mrs. Ruocco frowned suspiciously. “He is Italian?”

“Well, no,” Sarah had to admit. Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt had opened the ranks of the New York City Police Department to people of all ethnic groups, but she didn’t think they had any Italian detectives yet. “He . . .

he’s Irish, but I promise you he’ll be fair,” she hastily added.

Mrs. Ruocco made a rude noise. “Do what you want,” she told the policeman. “Lorenzo, go find . . .” She hesitated, her face twisting with distaste before she finished. “Go find Uncle Ugo. Tell him come right away.”

Sarah winced, and the policeman visibly paled. Ugo Ruocco was a prominent member of the community, too.

But not in a good way. Rumor said he was the leader of the notorious gang of thugs known as the Black Hand.

Sarah turned to the policeman. “You’d better get Detective Sergeant Malloy, now.”

3

Frank Malloy hoped he could refrain from strangling Sarah Brandt when he saw her. How many times had he told her not to get involved in crimes? She seemed to attract trouble like a magnet, though. Too bad Little Italy was only a few blocks from Police Headquarters. A longer walk might’ve helped him calm down a little. Pushing his way through the crowd that had gathered in the street didn’t im-prove his mood either. He strode into Mama’s Restaurant in full fury.

What he found knocked the fury right out of him and made him want to turn tail and run flat out to the nearest gang of criminals armed with brickbats and rocks. At least he knew how to handle them. He absolutely hated hysterical females, and this room was full of them.

“Malloy,” a familiar voice said over the din. “Thank heaven you’re here.”

His anger flickered to life again as he turned to see Sarah Brandt coming toward him. “Don’t blame heaven,” he told her grimly. “It’s your fault I’m here.”

She didn’t look the least bit repentant. “You’re the only one I could trust to handle this.”

He winced at the caterwauling of the other women. “I’ll have to introduce you to some other detectives real soon, then.”

She ignored his sarcasm. “Malloy, a young woman died here mysteriously last night. Well, she was just a girl, actually. I delivered her baby yesterday, and this morning when I got here, she was dead.”

Frank felt the old familiar wave of pain threatening to wash over him. His wife Kathleen had died in childbirth.

No wonder these women were grief-stricken. But what had Sarah said about how the girl died?

“What do you mean, she died mysteriously?” he asked.

“I’m not really sure, but . . .” She lowered her voice and leaned in closer so no one would overhear. “She didn’t die from the normal complications women die of in childbirth, and I saw some things that made me suspicious.”

“What things?” he asked, taking her by the arm and leading her farther away from the family.

“I’ll have to show you, but . . . I’m afraid that she may have been murdered,” she whispered.

“Here, in this house?” Malloy asked. He knew the Ruocco family. Everyone in the neighborhood did, and he’d eaten here a hundred times.

She nodded.

“That’s impossible. Why would anybody kill a woman who just gave birth?” For Italians, a new baby was the hap-piest event in their lives.

“They were very angry with her. When it was born, they realized the baby didn’t belong to her husband.”

Frank had seen newborn babies. They all looked the same, like tiny, squalling old men, and you couldn’t tell anything about them, certainly not who their fathers were. “How would they know that?”

“It’s a long story, but the mother was an Irish girl who’d married Antonio Ruocco because she was in a family way and—”

“Irish, you say?” Frank could hear the warning bells ringing in his head.

“Yes, she was Irish, and they knew the baby wasn’t Antonio’s because—”

“Wait,” Frank said, stopping her with a raised hand.

He looked around the room again and realized they were all staring at his Irish face with naked hostility, even the Irish woman sitting alone in the far corner of the room.

And the women had stopped crying. The silence was eerie.

An Irish girl in an Italian household who’d made someone angry enough to kill her.

He went back to the front door, opened it, and gave an order to the cop who was standing guard to make sure nobody in the crowd got too rowdy. The fellow took off at a run.

When he closed the door and turned back, Sarah Brandt was one step in front of him.

“Where’s he going?” she demanded.

“For help,” he replied.

“Help?” she echoed in amazement, but he didn’t bother to enlighten her. He needed as much information as he could get as quickly as possible.

“Now tell me exactly what happened,” he said.

“They killed my girl is what happened,” the Irish woman cried.

That set off the Ruoccos again, and they all started yelling at once in two languages, with the Irish woman yelling right back. Luckily, Frank had lots of experience dealing with unruly crowds, and this one wasn’t even armed. It took a few minutes, but he finally got them settled down again and cowed enough to stay that way, for a little while anyway. He knew he couldn’t question Sarah in front of them, though.

“Is there someplace where we can talk in private?” he asked her.

“The kitchen,” she said, pointing.

He followed her, and as he passed Mrs. Ruocco, he said,

“I sent for another policeman. Let me know when he gets here.”

She gave him a withering glare, letting him know exactly what she thought of him and the rest of the Irish policemen.

Frank sighed with relief as the kitchen door swung shut behind him. “Now tell me what happened, from the beginning.”

“I came here yesterday to deliver a baby. I didn’t even know that Antonio had gotten married—”

“The girl married Antonio?” he asked. “He’s just a kid!”

“So was she,” Sarah said grimly. “They’d only been married a few months, a little over five, I think. That’s why they were frightened when they called me. They thought the baby was coming too early.”

“You said they got married because she was in a family way?”

“That’s right, but she was supposed to only be about seven months along. That’s how long she’d known Antonio.”

Frank raised his eyebrows. If he’d been talking to a man, he would’ve observed that young Antonio hadn’t wasted any time playing dip the wick with the girl, but he refrained.

“Let me guess, the baby wasn’t early.”

“No.” She walked toward the stove and for a second he couldn’t figure out where she was going, but then he saw the cradle sitting beside it. “See for yourself.”

She gently drew back the blanket, and he could see a baby sleeping peacefully. He didn’t know much about infants, but this one was big and fat. Nothing sickly about him. Even Frank could see he’d been born on time, maybe even a little past time.

“I guess young Antonio was a little surprised,” he said.

“He probably wouldn’t have known the difference, but of course his mother did. She’d known the baby was conceived before they were married, but no one guessed the girl was much further along than she claimed. Not until the baby was born, that is.”

“I can imagine Mrs. Ruocco was pretty mad.”

“Everyone was. Nainsi’s mother—the lady outside who is claiming they’d killed her daughter—tried to defend her, but Nainsi didn’t even try to deny the truth. I guess she was depending on the Catholic Church to prevent Antonio from divorcing her or something. She didn’t even seem concerned.”

“When did she turn up dead?”

“I got here early this morning to check on her and the baby, and when I arrived, someone started screaming upstairs. Valentina—she’s the youngest in the family—had gone in to see why the baby kept crying, and she found Nainsi dead. Her body was cold and starting to stiffen, so she’d been dead a couple hours by then, at least.”

“And what makes you think somebody killed her?”

“I said I wasn’t sure, but she has a broken fingernail, like she’d been struggling with someone, and then I found a pillowcase with a smear of blood on it.”

“There’s a lot of blood when a baby is born,” Frank remembered all too vividly.

“I’d changed the bedclothes.”

“But you might’ve missed some.”

“Malloy, I don’t want her to have been murdered,” she said in exasperation. “If I could think of another explanation, I’d have given it to Nainsi’s mother and the Ruoccos and gone home. She didn’t die from any of the usual things that women die of in childbirth. I know the signs of all of them.”

“And you’re an expert in murder, too, I guess.”

She glared at him, but it was a pale imitation of Mrs.

Ruocco’s withering stare. She couldn’t begin to compete.

The baby made a whimpering sound and distracted her.

“He’s waking up. I’d better get Maria. She’s looking after the baby,” she explained. “Then you can go upstairs and look at the girl’s body yourself, since you are an expert in murder,” she added tartly.

He sighed again as he followed her out of the kitchen, this time in exasperation.

As soon as he reentered the dining room, Joe Ruocco approached him. He looked like he’d been on a three-day bender. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, his complexion a trifle green. He hadn’t shaved or bathed yet this morning. Frank could still smell the liquor and the sweat on him.

“Mr. Malloy, this is all a mistake,” he said. “Nobody killed nobody here. The girl, she had a baby. Women die from that. This is what happened to her. There is no need for the police.”

From the corner of his eye, Frank saw Sarah speak to one of the women, who then hurried off to the kitchen. “If that’s what happened, you’ve got nothing to worry about, Joe,”

Frank assured him. “What do you know about this girl?

From before she met Antonio, I mean.”

Joe glanced uneasily at his mother, who was watching the exchange through narrowed eyes. “She’s a wild girl. She tricked Antonio. She already had a baby in her, and she tells him it was his. He’s a stupid boy, so he marries her.” Joe tried to give his brother a meaningful glance, but the boy was slumped over one of the tables, head on his arms, probably passed out. “They go to her priest, an Irish priest, in secret, so Mama doesn’t know until it’s done. We are surprised, and Mama is angry, but we took the girl in. What else could we do?”

“Antonio must’ve been pretty mad when he found out he’d been tricked,” Frank observed, watching to see if the boy stirred. He didn’t move.

Joe knew immediately what he was implying. “Oh, no, he was only sad. He feels like a fool, to be tricked by a stupid girl. I took him out last night, and we got drunk so he wouldn’t have to think about what he will do with her and the baby.”

Frank couldn’t help noting that Joe had conveniently given his baby brother an alibi for the night, just in case his wife really had been murdered.

The front door opened, and to Frank’s relief he saw Gino Donatelli come through it. Everyone in the room looked up in surprise, but Donatelli looked straight at Frank. “Detective Sergeant,” he said respectfully, removing his hat and nervously smoothing the jacket of his crisply pressed police uniform.

Frank hadn’t been too happy when Teddy Roosevelt opened the ranks of the New York City Police Department to Italians, and even Jews, but today he was ready to see the wisdom of it. “Officer Donatelli,” he replied, going to him and shaking his hand.

Donatelli was naturally surprised, but Frank had done it to elevate Donatelli in the Ruocco’s estimation. Italians would never trust an Irishman. They’d only trust another Italian, and then not completely unless he was a blood rela-tion. Frank’s only hope for this case was to use Donatelli to convince the Ruoccos they were being treated fairly.

He turned to Mrs. Ruocco. “Officer Donatelli is going to help me investigate your daughter-in-law’s death.”

“Murder, you mean!” Mrs. O’Hara insisted.

Donatelli looked at her in alarm, but Patrizia Ruocco distracted him. “You are Italian,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Donatelli had coal-black hair and an olive complexion, along with a classic Roman nose. He stood taller than any of the Ruocco men, and he was even more handsome.

“Yes, Mrs. Ruocco. My father is Angelo Donatelli, who owns the shoe repair shop on Spring Street.”

“He has five sons, yes?”

“Six. I’m the third one.”

He’d adequately established his pedigree. Mrs. Ruocco nodded in silent approval.

“We’re going up to see the body now,” Frank said.

“That’s not decent,” Mrs. O’Hara cried. “The poor girl just lying there like that with two strange men looking at her!”

“I’ll go with them, Mrs. O’Hara,” Sarah Brandt offered.

Frank couldn’t help the prickle of annoyance he felt, even though he’d intended to take her with them anyway. She was the one who thought it was a murder, after all.

Joe stood up from the table where he’d been sitting with his brothers. “Should one of us go, too?”

Frank didn’t think Joe would even make it up the stairs in his current condition, and he certainly didn’t want any of the Ruoccos to hear what Sarah thought. “No, just stay here until we’ve had a chance to look things over.”

Frank gestured for Sarah to precede them, and they trooped up the narrow stairs in silence. As soon as they reached the upstairs hallway, Frank closed the stairway door behind them.

Donatelli cleared his throat. “Detective Sergeant, what’s going on here?” Plainly, he meant more than just the facts of the crime. He must have been wondering why Frank had sent for him in the first place.

“Antonio Ruocco married himself an Irish girl who already had a bun in the oven by another man,” he said, figuring he didn’t need to spare Sarah’s sensibilities. He was pretty sure she didn’t have any where babies and their cre-ation were concerned. “He didn’t know that, of course, and yesterday, the baby was born. That’s when everybody figured it out that the baby couldn’t be Antonio’s. This morning the girl was found dead.” He glanced at Sarah. “Mrs.

Brandt here was the midwife. She thinks the girl might’ve been killed.”

Donatelli nodded politely. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs.

Brandt.”

“I’m happy to meet you, too, Officer Donatelli,” she replied, but Frank could see the same question in her eyes.

“I sent for Donatelli because if it turns out the girl really was murdered, Mrs. Ruocco would never trust an Irish cop.” He turned back to Donatelli. “You know who Patrizia Ruocco’s brother-in-law is?”

“Ugo Ruocco,” he replied grimly. “Everybody knows that.”

“I’m guessing he’s already on his way.”

“Oh, yes,” Sarah confirmed pleasantly. “Mrs. Ruocco sent for him as soon as I sent for you.”

“Then we better get this settled before he gets here,”

Frank said. “Mrs. Brandt, show us what makes you think the girl was killed.”

She led them to a closed door in the hallway and opened it. They followed her inside. The figure on the bed had been covered by the blankets.

“Is this how you found her?”

“No, she was lying there with the covers up to her waist, like she’d been sleeping, except her eyes were open and her arms were outstretched like this.” She demonstrated.

Without waiting to be asked, Sarah drew the blanket away from the body. The girl had been a healthy little piece, all breasts and hips, and her hair was a pretty shade of red.

Frank could see why Antonio had been attracted. She wore a simple nightdress, and her naked feet and ankles were ghostly white.

Donatelli hung back in the doorway, his young face expressing embarrassment at this breach of decorum.

“Come closer, Donatelli,” Frank said, “so you can see.”

Reluctantly, he did, shifting his hat from under one arm to the other, and hesitantly looking down at the girl on the bed.

Sarah tried to lift the girl’s hand, but the body was too stiff.

“This hand,” she said. “See how the nail is broken? Something violent happened to break it like that, and it must’ve happened as she was dying. You’d never leave a broken nail hanging like that.”

She was right, and Frank felt an odd mixture of pride in her for having figured that out and resentment that she was in a position where she needed to. “Anything else?”

“Those red dots on her face,” she said. “There are some in her eyes, too. I never saw anything like that before.”

Frank leaned over the corpse to take a closer look at her face. Then he reached down and pulled one of the eyelids up. Donatelli sucked in his breath, but Frank and Sarah pretended not to notice. “See these red dots, Donatelli?” he asked. “That happens when somebody suffocates.”

This time Sarah caught her breath.

“Which pillow has the blood on it?” he asked, looking at the collection piled beside the body.

She bent down and pulled one out from under the bed. “I put it there so no one else would see the stain and figure out what it was,” she explained. Once again Frank felt a twinge of pride, but he ignored it.

He took it from her and examined the smear. It looked like blood, all right. Then he positioned the pillow above the girl’s face, as if he were going to push it down and smother her. The stain lined up with where her mouth could have been if the pillow had covered her face.

“Where did the blood come from?” Donatelli asked.

Frank peered into the girl’s mouth. “There’s dried blood on her front teeth. Her upper lip is cut on the inside, like somebody pushed something against it really hard.”

“So somebody did kill her then,” Sarah said sadly.

“Why would they do something like that to her?” Donatelli asked in disgust. “She’s just a girl.”

“Maybe because the Catholic Church doesn’t allow divorce,” Frank observed. “Or maybe they just didn’t appreciate a Mick dropping her little bastard in their house.”

Donatelli flushed and cleared his throat, reminding Frank that a lady was present.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Brandt,” Frank said perfunctorily.

“I most certainly will not,” she said, making Donatelli’s jaw drop and forcing Frank to bite back a grin. “What are you going to do now?”

“We’ll need an autopsy to prove she was smothered,”

Frank said.

“If Ugo Ruocco thinks you’re going to blame somebody in this house for killing her, he’ll never let you take the body,” Donatelli warned him.

“Then we better remove the body before he shows up,”

Franks said, even though he knew he should wait for the coroner.

“Mrs. Ruocco said she wanted Nainsi out of here as soon as possible,” Sarah offered helpfully.

“Then we’ll try to oblige her. Donatelli, find out if they’ve got a phone here, and if they don’t, go to a call box and get an ambulance right away to take the body to the morgue.”

“Yes, sir,” the young man said, and hurried out.

Frank turned back to Sarah. She looked tired and discouraged. Even her eyes had lost their sparkle. “You should go home,” he said.

“I hoped I was wrong, you know,” she said, ignoring his suggestion as usual. “It doesn’t give me any pleasure to find out she was murdered.”

He ran a hand over his face. “I know,” he admitted.

“How do you get yourself into these situations?”

She seemed to consider for a moment. Finally, she said,

“I’ve been wondering that myself, and I want to remind you that I’d never known anyone who was murdered until I met you, Malloy.”

“Are you blaming me?” he asked in surprise.

“The evidence speaks for itself,” she answered wryly. “Now help me wrap up the body. We’ll have to put the pillow in with it. I doubt Mrs. Ruocco will let us walk off with any of her belongings, especially if she realizes it will help prove Nainsi was murdered.”

Frank concentrated on the corpse so he wouldn’t think about how intimate it was working alone in a bedroom with Sarah Brandt. In a mercifully short time, they had the body tied up in a sheet with the bloody pillow tucked inside, ready for transport.

When they got back down to the dining room, they found everyone still pretty much where they had been before. Donatelli was speaking quietly and very respectfully with Mrs. Ruocco in Italian.

“What’s he saying to her?” Mrs. O’Hara demanded of Frank. “They’re cooking up some lie, ain’t they? Trying to say my girl wasn’t murdered.”

“I was saying I sent for an ambulance to take her away,”

Donatelli said loudly, so everyone in the room could hear.

“Where’re you taking her?” Mrs. O’Hara cried, jumping to her feet. “Not to some dago undertaker who’ll make her disappear!”

“She’s not going to disappear,” Frank assured her, hoping this was true. If Ugo Ruocco arrived before the ambulance, he couldn’t be sure. “She’s going to the morgue.”

“What will happen at this morgue?” Mrs. Ruocco asked.

“They’ll find out how she died,” Donatelli explained.

“Mother of God,” Mrs. O’Hara murmured, crossing herself. “They’ll cut her up, won’t they?”

“And if they find out she died of natural causes,” Frank hurriedly added, “nobody has to worry.”

“How do we know they tell the truth at this morgue?”

Mrs. Ruocco challenged. “They could lie to ruin us!”

Donatelli glanced at Frank, asking a silent question. Frank had no right to grant permission, but he nodded anyway.

“I’ll go with her and watch everything they do,” Donatelli offered. “I’ll make sure they do it right.”

Patrizia Ruocco looked him up and down, taking in his uniform. He might be Italian, but he was also from the police. “Giuseppe,” she said to her eldest son. “You go with him.

You watch them cut her up and make sure they do not lie.”

Joe gaped at her in horror for a long moment, the color draining from his face. Then he slapped a hand over his mouth, lunged to his feet, and ran from the room. They could hear him retching in the kitchen and a woman’s voice chiding him shrilly. Maria, Joe’s wife. In another moment she emerged, holding the baby, her expression outraged.

“What is going on?”

No one answered her.

“I’ll go, Mama,” Lorenzo said. He rose to his feet with the enthusiasm of one going to meet his doom.

Mrs. Ruocco nodded her approval.

“Go where?” Maria asked. “Where are you going?”

Outside the crowd was dispersing to make way for the black ambulance wagon. Whatever Donatelli had told them at Headquarters had worked. The attendants jumped down and fairly ran inside, carrying a stretcher.

“You got a body here?” one of them asked.

“Upstairs,” Frank said. “I’ll show you.”

“Go with them, Lorenzo,” Mrs. Ruocco said. “And watch. Make sure they do not take anything.”

The attendants glared at her, but she just glared right back at them, and Frank had to admit she was probably justified to take precautions. He led them upstairs, and they immediately started grumbling about having to take the body down the twisting steps.

Behind them, Lorenzo said, “There’s an outside stairway that’s straight. You can use that.”

It was the work of a moment to load Nainsi’s body onto the stretcher. Lorenzo showed them the door to the outside stairway at the opposite end of the hall, and they started down.

“I’ll tell the ambulance to go around to the alley and meet you,” Frank said, thinking it was probably better than carrying the girl’s body out the front door and into the street for the crowd to gape at.

With any luck at all, they’d be out and away before Ugo Ruocco showed up.

“ You,” Patrizia Ruocco said to Sarah. “You bring all this trouble.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sarah said honestly. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I’ve got to be very careful in my profession. If one of my patients dies, I have to find out why, or else I could be in trouble, too.”

“So you make trouble for us instead,” she said bitterly, sitting down at one of the tables. She propped her head in both of her hands.

“You make trouble for yourself,” Mrs. O’Hara said, her voice raw with her pain. “You make up lies about my girl, and then you kill her!”

“Mrs. O’Hara,” Sarah said, going to her. “I know you’re grieving, but we should wait until we know the truth about Nainsi’s death before making accusations.”

Someone groaned, and everyone looked over to where Antonio sat. He’d straightened up and was rubbing his face, muttering in Italian. Then he realized everyone was staring at him. “What?” he asked defensively.

“This is all your fault,” his mother told him in disgust.

“You bring that whore into my house.”

“My Nainsi wasn’t no whore!” Mrs. O’Hara objected furiously. The Ruoccos ignored her.

“I didn’t know, Mama,” Antonio whined. “How could I know? You wanted the baby when you thought it was mine!”

As if he knew he was being discussed, the baby made a fussy sound. Instinctively, Maria bounced him gently, trying to soothe him, but Mrs. Ruocco glared at the bundle in her arms.

“I do not want him now,” she declared. “Let her take him!”

she added, gesturing at Mrs. O’Hara.

“No!” Maria fairly shouted, startling everyone. “No,” she repeated more reasonably but with equal finality. “I will keep him.”

“You will not!” Mrs. O’Hara declared, rising to her feet.

“I’ll not have my grandson raised by a bunch of ignorant foreigners!”

“Who are you calling ignorant?” Joe wanted to know.

“Stop shouting,” Antonio begged them, holding his head with both hands.

“I do not want that whore’s bastard in my house,” Mrs.

Ruocco insisted.

“He’s just a baby,” Maria argued. “He cannot help who his mother was. Or his father either,” she added with emphasis. “I will keep him.”

“Like hell you will!” Mrs. O’Hara screeched, making Antonio moan and hold his head again. “Give me that baby!

He’s mine!”

Before anyone realized what she intended, she hurtled herself across the room. She would have snatched the baby from Maria’s arms except Frank Malloy intercepted her as he emerged from the stairway.

“Whoa,” he said, forcibly restraining the nearly hysterical woman. “What’s this now?” He looked to Sarah for an explanation, but she didn’t get a chance to give it.

“They’re going to steal my grandson from me!” Mrs.

O’Hara wailed. “They killed my girl, and now they want her baby, too.”

“She cannot take care of a baby,” Maria argued. Frank really looked at her for the first time. She was a plain woman, no one he’d even glance at twice in the street, but fury had brought color to her cheeks and a sparkle to her eyes. She looked like a wild creature defending her young. “If she takes him, he will die!”

“I’d rather have him dead than with the likes of you!”

Mrs. O’Hara unwisely cried.

Even Mrs. Ruocco looked shocked.

“You see?” Maria said triumphantly. “You cannot just let him die.” She turned to her mother-in-law, her will like a flame that would scorch any who denied her. “Your son cannot give me a child, but you can. I want this baby, and you will give him to me.”

Sarah could see Mrs. Ruocco’s silent struggle. As much as she hated Nainsi, she also loved her family. Everyone knew how desperately Maria wanted a child of her own. Sarah had seen that desperation before, a longing that bordered on madness, and Maria looked as if she were very close to that edge.

Mrs. Ruocco laid a hand on her heart, as if it pained her.

She could not bear to refuse Maria any more than she could bear to consent. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, she said, “Giuseppe, he . . . he must agree.” She looked at her oldest son. Everyone looked at him. Mrs. Ruocco must have been certain he would refuse.

“Yes,” Maria confirmed in an oddly mocking tone.

“Giuseppe must agree.”

His face was white, and this time Sarah didn’t think it was from his hangover. She almost expected him to bolt again rather than face such a momentous decision, but he swallowed down hard and said, “Whatever Maria wants.”

Sarah gasped in surprise, and so did several others, but she didn’t have time to notice who. Mrs. O’Hara started screaming and fighting Frank, who still held her back from attacking Maria.

“You can’t let them take the boy!” she was telling him.

“He don’t belong to none of them! He’s mine!”

“The law says the baby belongs to the woman’s husband,” Frank informed her as he wrestled her flailing arms.

“But they said he don’t!” she argued. “They said Antonio ain’t its father. That’s why they killed my girl!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sarah explained, going to Frank’s aid.

“Please, Mrs. O’Hara, listen to me. The law assumes a woman’s husband is the father of her children, even if everyone knows he isn’t. If she dies or if he divorces her, he still has custody of them. They’re his property.”

“But he ain’t the one that wants the boy,” Mrs. O’Hara argued, pointing at her son-in-law. “Don’t Antonio have no say at all?”

Everyone looked at Antonio again. He still held his head as if it would fly apart if he didn’t, and now his face was almost green. Paralyzed with indecision, he looked from his mother to his brother to Maria and back to his mother again. Mrs. Ruocco seemed to be daring him to stand up and be a man. Maria defied him to deny her, and Joe just stared back, helplessly.

Maria whispered, “Joe,” and that broke the spell.

As if she’d struck him with a whip, he jerked up to his full height. “You will keep the baby,” he informed his brother. “Tell her.” He pointed at Mrs. O’Hara.

“I will . . .” Antonio had to swallow. “I will keep the baby,” he said obediently, and this time he bolted, heading for the kitchen to be sick.

Mrs. O’Hara gave a primal howl of anguish.

Sarah saw Malloy’s desperate plea for help, silent though it was. “Mrs. O’Hara, there’s nothing you can do right now.

Let me take you home,” she said gently, moving to take the woman by the arm.

Defeated, she sagged in Malloy’s grasp, and he released her to Sarah. The older woman let Sarah lead her toward the front door.

“It ain’t right,” she was muttering as she wept loudly and sloppily. “It just ain’t right for them to have my girl’s baby.”

Malloy hurried to precede them and opened the door, holding it for them as he shouted something to the ambulance driver. Sarah murmured comforting phrases as she led Mrs. O’Hara out into the street.

“Where do you live?” she asked.

“Howard Street,” Mrs. O’Hara murmured brokenly. “Just past Broadway.”

Sarah turned her in that direction, and they started walking. She was starting to believe she would get the older woman away without further incident when Mrs. O’Hara stopped dead in her tracks and breathed a curse.

Sarah looked up and saw only an average-looking, middle-aged Italian man walking toward them, followed by a group of younger men who seemed to be ready for anything. Before Sarah could even comprehend what she was seeing, Mrs.

O’Hara said, “Ugo,” and turned and ran in the other direction, leaving Sarah standing alone on the sidewalk directly in the path of Ugo Ruocco and his minions.

4

The ambulance driver moved just as quickly as Frank would have wanted, whipping his horse into motion to pull the vehicle around to the alley to pick up Nainsi Ruocco’s body. Frank waited just an instant, to make perfectly sure the wagon was well on its way, before turning back to make sure Sarah and Mrs. O’Hara were well on their way, too. He saw Mrs. O’Hara scurrying past him in the opposite direction and without Sarah.

Instantly, he sensed the change in the crowd. Something had happened, and instinctively, he sought out Sarah to assure her safety. He found her at once, standing with her back to him in the middle of the sidewalk, all alone because the crowd had drawn away, stepping into the street to make way for . . .

Frank almost groaned aloud. Ugo Ruocco and about half a dozen of his young toughs were heading straight for Sarah.

He opened his mouth to call out to her, but someone else beat him to it.

“Mrs. Brandt! Mrs. Brandt!”

Sarah turned toward the young Ruocco girl who had come charging out of the restaurant to summon her.

“Mrs. Brandt, come quick! The baby is sick!”

“Sarah, don’t,” he tried, but she only gave him a puzzled glance before hurrying by him and back into the restaurant with the girl. He checked to make sure Ugo and the boys were still coming, then he followed her inside. The last person he wanted to see this morning was Ugo Ruocco, but he wasn’t going to leave Sarah to Ugo’s mercy, unprotected.

He winced when he stepped through the door. The baby was screaming, and even Frank could tell he was in pain.

“He just started crying,” Maria said in terror.

“Make him stop!” Antonio begged, hands over his ears.

He’d returned from the kitchen, but he looked like he might need to go back.

Sarah took the baby from Maria’s arms. He kept screaming, but she didn’t seem the least bit concerned. “He’s probably just hungry,” she said, heading for the kitchen door.

“But I already fed him this morning,” Maria protested, following after her.

“He’s hungry again,” Sarah explained as the door closed behind them, muting the sound of his wailing a bit.

Frank glanced around at who was left. Officer Donatelli waited patiently for his orders. Joe and Antonio were perk-ing up a bit, but they were still a little green. The girl—

what was her name again?—stood in the middle of the floor, wringing her hands in distress. Mrs. Ruocco sat at a table, head in hands, looking as if she wanted to be as far away from the rest of this bunch as possible.

Frank went straight to Donatelli and told him in a hurried whisper that Ugo Ruocco was coming and to go out through the kitchen to meet the ambulance in the alley to make sure they got the body away safely.

No sooner had Donatelli disappeared into the kitchen than the restaurant door opened again, and Ugo Ruocco came in. The younger men with him made a little show of jostling each other to be the first to follow, but eventually they were all inside, too.

Ugo wasn’t a large man, but his presence seemed to fill the room. He wore a custom-made suit with a snow white shirt, the kind the men on Wall Street wore. No one would mistake him for a financier, though. His broad, olive-skinned face betrayed his heritage. Pock-marked and coarse featured, he obviously came from peasant stock. Only ambi-tion, relentless effort, and a cruel disregard for the welfare of others had elevated him to his current position.

“Zio!” the girl cried and ran to him. He caught her in an embrace.

“What is it, ragazza piccola?” he asked tenderly, stroking her hair. “What has made you so unhappy?”

“Nainsi is dead, and the police are here!” she informed him indignantly, looking up at her uncle with a theatrical pout.

“What is this about the police?” he asked, looking at Frank with a trace of amusement. He had no fear of the police.

“Uncle, thank you for coming,” Joe said, hurrying toward him for a quick embrace. Antonio followed.

When he’d finished with the children, Ugo looked over to where Mrs. Ruocco stood. She’d risen from her chair but made no move to greet him.

“Patrizia,” he said in a tone of mock amazement. “You sent for me.”

“Ugo,” she said by way of greeting, although she said it with a grimace through gritted teeth. If her children were happy to see their uncle, she wasn’t.

“Sit down, Uncle,” Joe urged, pulling out a chair for him.

“Is that your baby crying so loud, Antonio?” Ugo asked mildly as he took the offered seat.

Antonio’s lip curled in disgust. “You know it is not my baby, Uncle.”

Ruocco nodded, and Frank noted that he had already been told about the baby’s birth and questionable lineage. When had that happened?

“But it is your wife’s baby,” Ruocco said. It wasn’t a question. “Did Valentina say she died?” he added with appropriate, if false, regret. “That is too bad for you, Antonio, to be a widower so young.” He gave the boy a sympathetic glance while he smoothed his lush mustache with one finger. Antonio looked away in embarrassment. “But why does this sad event bring the police to us?”

Everyone in the room looked at Frank. Ruocco’s boys had stationed themselves around the room, ready to block any attempt at escape and ready to take any action Ruocco might command of them. Frank hated being in such a vul-nerable position, but he knew better than to show fear.

Ruocco would smell it like the wolf he was.

“It looks like somebody helped Nainsi Ruocco along into the next world by holding a pillow over her face,” Frank said. He pretended not to notice the small gasps of surprise and the wave of animosity that roiled from the rest of the people in the room.

Ruocco didn’t bat an eye. “I am sure this is all a terrible mistake. In fact, I will be happy to pay you a reward for your efforts if you will straighten out this misunderstanding.”

The offer was a reasonable one, and Ruocco would have every reason to expect Frank to accept it. Everyone knew the police did what they were paid to do, and they certainly weren’t paid very much to uphold the law of the land.

Who would care if one more poor Irish girl died, after all?

And what good would come of bringing her killer to justice? A respectable family would suffer a lot of misery, and the girl would still be dead.

Frank had once believed he had no choice but to follow this logic and live by these unwritten rules. He knew better now, and he wanted to tell Ruocco what he could do with his offer of a bribe. He couldn’t though, at least not yet.

Sarah was still in the building, and Frank would be no good to her or to anyone else if Ruocco told his henchmen to slit his throat for showing disrespect.

“They already took the girl’s body to the morgue,” Frank said. “It’s out of my hands now.”

Irritation flickered across Ruocco’s broad face. He turned back to Mrs. Ruocco and demanded something in Italian.

She straightened defiantly and replied, mentioning Lorenzo.

“Lorenzo?” he scoffed, dismissing his nephew with a wave of his hand.

“We didn’t have any choice, Uncle,” Joe hastily explained.

“Nainsi’s mother ran out into the street screaming for the police when she found out the girl was dead.”

Before Ruocco could react, the kitchen door swung open, and Sarah came into the dining room, apparently unaware of what was going on. She glanced at the newcomers and then dismissed them as unimportant, going straight to Mrs.

Ruocco.

“Maria is going to need some help learning how to prepare the baby’s bottles and take care of him,” she said, as if nothing else was more important. “I’d be happy to help her, but if you’d prefer, I can suggest someone else to—”

“Who is this?” Ruocco demanded.

Sarah looked at him in surprise, and Frank noticed she managed to let Ruocco know his behavior was rude.

“She is the midwife, Uncle,” Joe hastily explained.

“And she was just leaving,” Frank said. “Mrs. Brandt, get your things.”

“Brandt,” Ruocco echoed thoughtfully, looking her up and down. “You are not German,” he added, referring to her name.

“No, I’m not,” she replied, offering nothing else. And making no move to leave, either, Frank noted impatiently.

Ruocco stared hard at her, annoyed that he could not classify her. An ordinary midwife he could deal with, but he could see Sarah Brandt wasn’t ordinary. Even though she moved among the working classes, she would always carry with her the evidence that she had been born to wealth and privilege, the daughter of one of the oldest families in the city. Ugo didn’t know all that, but a man as perceptive as he was, who depended on his ability to judge others in order to retain his power, would sense it.

“Who are you?” Ruocco asked, meaning much more than her name.

“I am the midwife,” Sarah said stubbornly. To her, that was the only correct or necessary answer.

Sensing she was somehow getting the upper hand, he changed tactics. “Do you think my nephew’s wife was murdered?”

Frank caught his breath, silently begging her not to answer that question.

“I don’t know why she died,” she said without even looking at Frank for guidance. “I never saw anything like it before.”

Ruocco’s eyes widened innocently. “Why do you want to ruin this family, Mrs. Brandt?” he asked, his voice suddenly silky with charm as he rose to his feet. “The girl lied to my nephew to give her bastard a name. She deserved to die.”

“I think God should make those decisions,” Sarah informed him. “I just want to know for certain how she died so I’ll know if it was my fault or if I could have done something to prevent it.”

“What if it was your fault? What if you killed her yourself?” he challenged, obviously enjoying the verbal duel.

“Then I will take the blame for it and try to learn from my mistake,” Sarah replied. “I always want to do my job better. Lives depend on it. I’m sure you can appreciate that, Mr. Ruocco.”

Frank wanted to shake her. Didn’t she know who she was talking to? This was no upper-class gentleman who would treat her with respect. Ugo Ruocco killed people who dis-pleased him.

But Ruocco seemed more amused than angered by her defiance. “Lives depend on it,” he echoed with a small smile.

“Patrizia, I do not know why you send for me,” he told his sister-in-law.

“To make the police go away and leave us alone,” Mrs.

Ruocco snapped, glaring at Frank.

This also seemed to amuse Ruocco. “Will you go away?”

he politely asked Frank, stroking his mustache again.

“I’m finished here,” Frank said, not wanting anyone to think he was leaving because Ruocco wanted him to. “I was waiting to escort Mrs. Brandt.”

“Are you finished, too, Mrs. Brandt?” Ruocco asked with exaggerated civility.

“Yes, she is,” Frank informed her. “Get your things, Mrs.

Brandt, and I’ll see that you get home.”

He saw the flicker of rebellion on her face, but she must have realized he was only concerned for her safety. She turned to Mrs. Ruocco again. “Please send for me if Maria has any problems with the baby. I’ll be happy to help in any way I can. I’m very sorry about Nainsi . . . about everything.”

Mrs. Ruocco betrayed only anger, although it didn’t seem to be directed at Sarah in particular. She nodded her head once in acknowledgment of Sarah’s words of condo-lence. “Giuseppe, get Mrs. Brandt’s coat.”

Joe looked around helplessly as Sarah went and fetched it herself from the chair where she had laid it. He went to help her with it before Frank could move.

As Sarah buttoned her cape, Ruocco asked of no one in particular, “Why does Maria take care of the baby?”

“Maria is going to keep the baby,” Joe hastily explained.

Ugo’s dark eyes narrowed, and he fixed his gaze on Joe.

“You are going to keep the whore’s baby?”

Joe blanched. “Maria is barren. She . . . she wants a baby,”

he stammered.

“The mother was a lying whore,” Ugo repeated.

“Will you tell Maria she cannot have a baby?” Mrs.

Ruocco challenged Ugo with a glare of her own.

“The baby can’t help who his parents are,” Sarah added, making Frank want to shake her again.

This time Ugo didn’t look amused. “You will go home now, Mrs. Brandt.”

Frank saw the flicker of rebellion again, but he hurried over and took her by the arm before she could offend Ruocco any more.

“Come on,” he said, picking up her medical bag.

For once she did as she was told. No one spoke as they left the restaurant. The crowd outside had retreated a respectful distance, in deference to Ugo Ruocco, but they still lingered in small groups. If something interesting happened, no one wanted to miss it. Still holding Sarah’s arm, Frank hustled her along the sidewalk until she finally shook loose of his grip and forced him to stop.

“Slow down. We don’t have to run away,” she snapped.

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea, though,” he replied. “Do you know who Ugo Ruocco is?”

“I know he has something to do with the Black Hand.”

Frank glanced back to see if any of Ruocco’s boys had followed. “Keep walking,” he told her, steering her toward Mulberry Street.

This time she came along without protest.

“Ruocco runs the Black Hand,” Frank said just loud enough for her to hear. “He collects protection money from all the Italians, and if somebody refuses to pay, they get beat up or killed or their store gets bombed, or maybe even all three.”

“I know all that,” she reminded him.

“Then you should also know he wouldn’t hesitate to kill a lowly midwife who annoyed him.”

He was glad to see she looked a little bit chastened, but only a little. “What if we’re right, and Nainsi was murdered? What will happen?”

“Probably nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

He should’ve known she’d be outraged. “I mean if Ruocco pays off the right people, no one will care if she was murdered or not.”

That silenced her, but not for long.

“I don’t suppose he’d want his family accused of murder,”

she said.

“To Italians, family is everything,” he explained. “They don’t trust anybody who isn’t a blood relative, and they stick by family to the death.”

“Patrizia Ruocco doesn’t seem to like Ugo much,” she observed.

“Maybe she doesn’t, but she still sent for him when she thought her family was in trouble.”

She thought this over for a minute or two. “Poor Nainsi,”

she mused. “And her mother . . . I can’t imagine how awful it would be to lose a child like that, and then to lose your grandchild, too.”

“I couldn’t believe Mama Ruocco let her daughter-in-law keep the boy,” Frank said in wonder.

“I couldn’t either. Everybody knows how much Maria wanted a child of her own, though, and the Ruoccos can probably give him a better home than Mrs. O’Hara.”

“Mrs. O’Hara won’t see it that way,” he reminded her.

“I know.” She sighed. “But the law is against her. Even if she had the means to fight them, she’d still lose.”

They’d reached the Prodigal Son Mission, where Sarah volunteered, and she stopped. “Malloy, I’m going into the mission while I’m here to see if they need anything. Will you let me know what the coroner finds out about how Nainsi died?”

He nodded reluctantly. “For all the good it will do. And don’t start thinking about justice for this girl,” he warned.

“She shouldn’t have gotten mixed up with the Italians in the first place, and nobody but her mother is going to care what happened to her.”

She frowned, hating what he said but knowing he was right. “Thank you for coming anyway.”

He just shook his head. “Be careful. And stay away from the Ruoccos.”

She smiled a little, and Frank felt a familiar catch in his chest. “I’ll try,” she said and started up the front steps to the mission.

When she was safely inside, he headed for police headquarters in the next block to make his report.

Sarah hadn’t intended to stay so long at the mission, but they were having a problem with one of the girls and needed her help. Now she’d have to hurry if she wanted to get home before the streets became completely jammed with people returning from the day’s work. She’d missed another afternoon with Aggie, too. Thank heaven she had Maeve and didn’t have to worry about whether Aggie was safe.

She was skirting the south edge of Washington Square when she heard the first newsboy calling out the headlines.

“Irish girl murdered in Little Italy!” he cried, waving a penny newspaper to attract the attention of the pedestri-ans.

Sarah started at the coincidence. She knew he couldn’t be talking about Nainsi’s death. The penny papers only cared about sensational stories, and Nainsi’s wouldn’t qualify. As Malloy had said, only her mother would care if she’d been murdered or not.

She reached the corner and turned up the west side of the Square. On the next corner stood another newsboy selling a different paper.

“Dagos slit Irish girl’s throat and steal her baby!” he was crying, waving the papers. People were passing him coins and snatching the papers from him as quickly as they could press within reach.

This was too much of a coincidence. Sarah waded into the crowd and emerged with a slightly wrinkled copy of the scandal sheet. Stepping into the square where she could read without blocking anyone’s way, she quickly scanned the story. They’d given Nainsi’s name the American spelling of Nancy, and they said her throat had been cut, but otherwise, it was her story, all right. According to the paper, Nainsi had been practically kidnapped by the Ruoccos and kept a prisoner until she gave birth. Then she’d been murdered so they could have her baby. The paper had included a drawing of a voluptuous young girl sprawled on a bed in a skimpy nightdress. With one arm she clutched an infant and with the other she tried to ward off a large, dark man wielding a knife.

When Sarah looked up, she realized many others had stopped to read the story, just as she had, and they were murmuring in outrage. Sarah and Mrs. O’Hara were no longer the only ones in the city who cared if Nainsi had been murdered.

Frank had spent most of the day investigating a suspicious warehouse fire. He stank of smoke and only wanted to get home and have a hot bath, but when he stopped by headquarters to make his report, he found Gino Donatelli waiting for him.

“Pew,” the young officer said as Frank approached.

“Warehouse fire,” Frank explained. “Was she smothered?”

Donatelli nodded.

“Come with me.” Frank led him back to the detectives’

area and sat down at a battered desk. Donatelli pulled up a rickety chair beside it.

“Did you stay for the whole autopsy?” Frank inquired knowingly.

Donatelli smiled a little sheepishly. “Didn’t have to. Doc Haynes didn’t have time for it today anyway. Lorenzo wasn’t going to leave without an answer, though, so he started looking the body over to see what he could find.”

“He noticed the red dots on her face?”

“Yeah, and he explained to Lorenzo what they meant. He looked at the pillow and the girl’s cut lip and the blood on her teeth, and showed Lorenzo how she was smothered, just like you did back in her room.”

“Did that convince him?”

Donatelli shook his head. “He was still arguing, so Doc pried the girl’s mouth open and started looking down her throat.”

“Down her throat?” Frank repeated. “For what?”

“He gets these long pincher things and sticks them in her mouth and pulls out this feather.”

“How’d she get a feather in her throat?”

“It was a feather pillow,” Donatelli said grimly. “Doc says she must’ve sucked it right through the pillowcase when she was fighting real hard to breathe.”

In the normal course of things Frank knew, feathers fre-quently worked free of the loose pillowcase ticking. His mother collected them carefully, probably intending to have enough someday to make a new pillow or at least to stuff back into the old one. He’d never inhaled one, though. Now he felt a tickle in his throat and had an unreasonable urge to cough. His discomfort must have shown on his face.

“Yeah, that’s how Lorenzo acted, too,” Donatelli said with a grin. “He even started gagging. Doc said he could watch while he cut open her chest, just to make sure, and that’s when Lorenzo bolted.”

“So he’ll report back to Mama and Uncle Ugo that she was smothered.”

“Doc isn’t really going to do the autopsy until tomorrow, but he was pretty sure what he’d find,” Donatelli said.

“I’ll check with him later and get his report. Thanks, Donatelli,” he said generously. “You did a good job.”

The young man looked pleased, but he didn’t smile.

“There’s one more thing.”

Frank didn’t want to hear one more thing about this case.

“What is it?”

Donatelli reached into his uniform pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. When he unfolded it, Frank saw it was one of the penny newspapers. Then he saw the drawing.

“What the hell . . . ?” he muttered, snatching the paper from Donatelli. “Her throat wasn’t cut,” he protested as he read. “Where’d they get this?” he demanded of no one in particular.

“Mama’s is only a few blocks away from here,” Donatelli reminded him. “Somebody could just go over to the press shacks and tell them whatever they wanted to hear.”

The rooms in the two houses directly across the street from Police Headquarters were rented by hordes of reporters who spent their days watching the Black Marias arrive and disgorge their prisoners, hoping one of them would provide a good story. Donatelli was right, somebody with knowledge of a story like Nainsi’s would only have to stand outside on the sidewalk and wave to get all the attention he wanted. Or she wanted.

“Nainsi’s mother,” Frank guessed.

“Who else would care?” Donatelli asked. “I don’t think the Ruoccos wanted this story in the newspapers.”

“She’ll be sorry,” Frank predicted. “Ugo will make sure of it.”

Frank heard somebody calling his name. He swore.

“Maybe it’s about something else,” Donatelli offered.

“Malloy!” It was one of the Goo-Goos, a brand-new officer, breathless from running through the building in search of him. He sighed in relief when he saw Malloy sitting at his desk. “Commissioner Roosevelt wants to see you right away.”

“Yeah,” Frank said to Donatelli, rising reluctantly. “He probably wants my advice on running the department or something.”

Donatelli rose also and followed Frank down the hall toward the stairs to the second floor where Roosevelt kept his office. “If you need somebody who speaks Italian, you know where to find me,” he said in parting.

Frank just grunted and started up the stairs.

Miss Kelly, the girl secretary Roosevelt had hired in a break with decades of tradition of an exclusively male staff, greeted him and told him to go on in. The commissioner was waiting for him.

Frank wished he’d had a chance to clean up first, but Roosevelt would have to take him as he was.

“Been cleaning chimneys, Detective Sergeant?” Roosevelt asked with his toothy grin.

“Warehouse fire, sir,” he replied. “I just got back.”

“You were down at that Italian restaurant this morning, though.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, sir. I suspected the girl had been murdered, so I sent her body to the morgue for an autopsy.”

“Throat cut, eh?”

“Oh, no, she was smothered.”

“Then the scandal sheets are wrong.”

“They’re wrong about a lot of things, Commissioner,”

Frank explained wearily. “She wasn’t kidnapped. She was married to one of the Ruocco boys. He thought he’d gotten her in a family way. When the baby came way too early, he knew it wasn’t his. The whole family was pretty mad. The next morning she was dead.”

“What about the baby?”

“It’s fine, and the Ruocco family wants to keep it. Seems one of the other boys’ wives can’t have any of her own.”

“The girl was murdered, though. No doubt about that?”

“No, sir, no doubt at all, according to the coroner.”

“Who did it?”

“We don’t have any idea. And it’s Ugo Ruocco’s family.”

Roosevelt grimaced in distaste. “The girl married his son?”

“His nephew. He’ll try to protect them though. He’ll bribe and threaten whoever he has to.”

“A girl was murdered. We can’t let a criminal stop us from investigating,” Roosevelt insisted.

“He can make sure we don’t find the killer, though,”

Frank said. “If it was somebody in the family—and it probably was—they’ll never turn on each other. All they have to do is keep quiet.”

Even though he understood, Roosevelt didn’t like it.

Frank wished he wasn’t the one delivering the bad news, but it couldn’t be helped.

They could both hear the sound of a paddy wagon pulling up in the street below with its load of boisterous drunks. It was early for that, Frank noted. They didn’t start picking up that kind of crowd until long after sundown. Even then, they usually didn’t make this much noise.

Roosevelt must have had the same thought. He went to the window overlooking the street, and Frank followed. The men spilling from the wagon didn’t look drunk. They were much too feisty and coordinated as they dodged the officers’

locust clubs and managed to get in a few licks of their own.

One even successfully broke free and raced away down the street to freedom. The officers were too busy to even notice his escape.

“What’s this?” Roosevelt muttered. “It looks like a riot!”

Frank thought so, too.

Someone knocked loudly on the office door, and before Roosevelt could answer, it opened.

Minnie Kelly stuck her head in, her eyes wide. “An Officer Donatelli says he has to see you, Commissioner.”

“He was with me at the restaurant this morning,” Frank said to Roosevelt.

“Send him in,” Roosevelt said.

Donatelli didn’t wait for Miss Kelly. He was right behind her, and he stepped around her into the room.

“Mr. Roosevelt, sir, there was a riot down at the Ruoccos’

restaurant. I knew Mr. Malloy was with you, and you’d both want to know right away.”

“What kind of a riot?” Roosevelt demanded. “Who was involved?”

“A group of Irish boys, it seems, sir,” Donatelli said.

“That’s how it started. They got to reading the penny press about the girl who got killed, and they were drinking some, I guess. They worked themselves up into a fever and marched down to Mama’s, started yelling and then throwing rocks. A window got broke, and then all hell—I’m sorry, sir, then things started getting really rough. Some of the neighborhood toughs came out with sticks, and a lot of noses got bloodied. Our boys gathered up as many as they could from both sides and sent the others packing.”

“So that’s who they’re bringing in now,” Roosevelt said.

“Yes, sir, at least the ones that didn’t run away.”

Roosevelt removed his wire-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I’d better telephone the mayor before he hears this from someone else. Malloy,” he added as he put his glasses back on, “you’re in charge of this investigation. I want the killer found.”

Frank wanted to remind him how he’d just explained that the task was impossible, but he resisted the self-destructive urge. “An Irish cop won’t get far with those people,” he said instead. “They only trust their own.”

“I don’t have any Italian detectives to send,” Roosevelt reminded him.

“I’ll help in any way I can,” Donatelli offered. “I grew up in that neighborhood.”

“Dee-lightful,” Roosevelt said, his good humor restored.

“Take this young man, Malloy. Donatelli, is it? Good work, Officer Donatelli. And just tell Conlin if you need anyone else,” he added, mentioning the chief of detectives. “I want this matter settled before this little altercation turns into a full-scale war between the Irish and Italians.”

“Yes, sir,” Frank said, although he had no hope at all that he’d be able to obey this order. One thing might help, though, if he could convince Roosevelt to do it. “Maybe we could start by getting the newspapers to publish the facts instead of all this business about the girl being kidnapped and her throat being cut.”

“Yes, yes, good idea, Malloy. Good idea,” Roosevelt said, rubbing his hands in anticipation of getting to work. “I’ll call a press conference. I’ll need a full report with all the details so I can answer questions. I’ll get Haynes there to talk about the autopsy, too.”

“He, uh, he hasn’t actually done the autopsy yet,” Frank admitted.

“Then he’ll do it tonight. I want the news in the morning papers. I’ll need that report right away, Detective Sergeant Malloy.”

Frank took the hint and made his escape, Donatelli on his heels.

“I never saw him up close before,” Donatelli whispered as they made their way downstairs. “He’s something, isn’t he?”

Frank didn’t answer. He was too busy trying to figure out how he was going to do the impossible and solve Nainsi Ruocco’s murder.

5

Sarah took Aggie for a walk the next morning to pick up several of the more reputable newspapers. Aggie almost had to run to keep up with her as she hurried back home to see what they had to say about Nainsi’s death.

When she arrived, she found Mrs. Ellsworth and Maeve in the kitchen with all the ingredients for an English pudding.