Murder in Little Italy gm-8

by Victoria Thompson

  “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.