Murder in Little Italy gm-8

by Victoria Thompson

  Joe looked like he wanted to punch somebody, but he said, “I’ll tell him to take you upstairs. I’ll get him.”

  The people in the restaurant were starting to notice Frank and Gino, and the noise level in the room lessened considerably as people stopped conversing and started whispering and staring. Frank gave them his best effort at intimidation, and soon most of them were at least pretending to mind their own business.

  “Here he comes,” Gino said softly, and Frank looked over. Antonio had come out of the kitchen, pulling off a sauce-stained apron. He glanced around the room nervously and found to his horror that everyone was staring at him.

  Then he spotted Frank and Gino near the front door, and paled noticeably. He motioned for them to join him at the stairway door. By the time they got there, he’d opened the door and started up the stairs. They followed, closing the door decisively behind them.

  Antonio stopped at the first landing on the second floor, and led them down a short hallway into a family parlor.

  “What do you want with me?” Antonio asked before they were even in the room. “I don’t know anything.”

  “I’m sure you know a lot of things, Antonio,” Frank said, taking stock of the room. The furniture was comfortably shabby. A shawl hung over the back of a chair and a pair of slippers had been left in front of the sofa. A pillow rested at one end of the sofa, and a blanket had been folded up and laid on top of it, as if someone had been sleeping there. “Tell me how you met Nainsi, Antonio,” Frank said.

  Antonio frowned. “Why does that matter now?”

  “Everything matters now,” Frank snapped. “Answer my question.”

  “I . . . At a dance. I used to go to the dance houses with my brother, and I met her there.”

  “When was this?”

  He frowned, as if trying to remember exactly. “August.

  I remember because it was right after Valentina’s birthday.”

  “That’s a lie, Antonio,” Frank moving toward him. “I don’t like people who lie to me.”

  “It’s the truth, I swear,” Antonio cried, his voice shrill and his eyes wide with fright. He flinched and tried to cover his face when Frank raised his hand, but he only used it to push the boy down onto a chair.

  “Then why did Nainsi tell her friends she met you in the spring?”

  “I don’t know,” he claimed, looking up at Frank in desperation. “She couldn’t have told them that. I didn’t even know who she was back then.”

  “It’s true,” a voice said from the doorway behind them.

  They all turned to see Maria Ruocco standing there. Frank had thought Patrizia was the matriarch of this family, the formidable one they’d have to outsmart, but seeing Maria right now, he reconsidered. For such a small, plain woman, she radiated an amazing amount of authority.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Ruocco,” Frank said politely, in deference to the power he sensed in her. “But how would you know such a thing?”

  “Because Antonio never went to the dance houses before that. Mama wouldn’t allow it until . . . until Joe said it was time he started acting like a man.”

  “When was Valentina’s birthday?” Frank asked her.

  “August fifteenth.”

  This didn’t make sense. Nainsi’s friends knew about Antonio months before that. “Maybe he was sneaking out so his mama didn’t know,” Frank suggested, giving Antonio another glare.

  “No, I swear! Maria, tell them. I never went out at night before that.”

  “He would not have dared disobey Mama,” Maria confirmed. “What does it matter now, anyway?”

  “Because,” Frank said, still respectful to her, “if Antonio wasn’t the baby’s father, he had a good reason for killing Nainsi.”

  “I wasn’t even here when she died,” Antonio reminded him. “Joe took me to see Uncle Ugo and then . . . We were with him all night!”

  “Why did you go see Ugo?” Frank asked. “Did you want him to get rid of your wife for you?”

  “No! I mean . . . I don’t know why we went. It was Joe’s idea. He said Ugo would know what to do.”

  “Antonio,” Maria snapped.

  “Thank you for your help, Mrs. Ruocco,” Frank said, moving toward her in a slightly menacing manner that forced her to step back until she was out in the hallway.

  “We’ll send for you if we need you again.” He closed the door in her surprised face. Then he motioned for Gino to come over to guard the door and turned his attention back to Antonio.

  “What did Joe want Uncle Ugo to do?” he asked when he was standing over the boy again.

  “He didn’t want him to do anything,” he claimed. “Joe just told him that Nainsi had the baby and I wasn’t the father.”

  “What did Ugo say?”

  Antonio winced at the memory. “He said I was stupid to trust a whore, and I got what I deserved. He said a lot of things like that. I don’t remember all of it. He gave me some whiskey to drink, and we sat there for a long time, drinking. He and Joe were talking, but I was just drinking.

  I don’t remember much after that. Next thing I know, I wake up right there.” He pointed at the sofa.

  “That’s convenient,” Frank observed. “You don’t remember what you did for the rest of the night?”

  “No, I don’t!”

  “Then for all you know, you came home, went up to your bedroom, and put a pillow over Nainsi’s face and smothered her.”

  “I didn’t! Why would I?” he cried.

  “A lot of reasons. Because you didn’t like being made a fool of by a cheap little mickey bitch. Because you didn’t like being stuck raising somebody else’s bastard. Because you didn’t want a wife who’d lift her skirts for any man who gave her a smile or bought her a drink.”

  The boy lunged to his feet with a roar of outrage, but Frank grabbed his shoulders and slammed him back down into the chair.

  “Isn’t that what happened?” Frank challenged. “Did she do it for just a smile, or did she make you buy her a drink first?”

  Antonio’s eyes glowed with loathing, and his handsome face twisted with rage. “It wasn’t like that!”

  “Wasn’t it?” Frank demanded. “Did she even tell you her name first?”

  “I knew her name!”

  “Did you know she was carrying somebody else’s baby?”

  That stopped him cold. Frank watched the rage drain out of him, and he was a boy again. “She said . . . she said it was her first time.”

  “Of course she did.”

  “She said she liked me,” he remembered sadly.

  “Maybe she did,” Frank allowed. “She was looking for a husband, so she would have wanted somebody she could live with.”

  Antonio grimaced. “She didn’t like me after we got married though. She didn’t even want me in her bed. She said she was sick from the baby, and didn’t want me to touch her. She was mean to everybody else, too. Mama hated her.

  Lorenzo said I never should’ve married her.”

  “No one would blame you for killing a woman like that, Antonio,” Frank said reasonably. “They’d probably throw you a parade.”

  The boy’s eyes filled with tears. “I wish I had killed her.

  Nobody would laugh at me then. They wouldn’t say I was stupid and weak for getting tricked like that.”

  His shoulders started to shake and the tears ran down his cheeks. Frank had to look away. At least he could be pretty sure Antonio hadn’t killed Nainsi. He was too young and still too innocent to hide such a grievous sin.

  He might’ve been too drunk to remember, but if he’d been that drunk, he wouldn’t have been able to overpower the girl.

  “Go back downstairs and tell your brother Joe to come up to see me,” Frank said in disgust.

  Antonio looked at him in surprise, scrubbing the tears from his face with his palms. “Joe? Why do you want to see Joe?”

  “Because I do. Now go get him before I decide to take the easy way out and lock you up.”

 
Antonio sprang to his feet and rushed out, practically shoving Gino aside as he jerked open the door and ducked through it. Maria Ruocco still stood in the hallway outside.

  She watched Antonio race away, then turned back and came to the doorway again.

  “He didn’t kill the girl,” she said urgently. “He doesn’t have it in him.”

  “Then he doesn’t have anything to worry about,” Frank said. “Mrs. Ruocco, would you answer a few questions for me?”

  She stiffened in silent resistance, but she lifted her chin and said, “I don’t know what I can tell you.”

  “You and your husband sleep upstairs in the room across from where Nainsi died, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” She folded her hands tightly at her waist, offering nothing more.

  “Did you sleep there the night Nainsi died?”

  “Of course. I always sleep there.”

  “When was the last time you saw Nainsi?”

  She frowned, her heavy brows knitting as she considered the question. “I’m not sure. I . . . helped her with the baby for a while . . . after Mrs. Brandt left. Mama said Nainsi could stay until she was recovered.”

  “I guess Nainsi must have been upset about having to leave with her baby,” Frank suggested.

  She took a moment before answering this question, too.

  “No, she wasn’t. She . . . she thought Mama would let her stay. She was married to Antonio, and she thought we would have to let her stay.”

  “Even after your mother-in-law told her she’d have to leave?”

  Maria shrugged. “She was a foolish girl, and young. She did not know anything.”

  “About what time did you leave her?”

  “I went down to help Mama with dinner. That is our busy time.”

  “Who else helped?”

  “Everyone. We always do.”

  “You’re sure? Everyone was there?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Antonio said he and Joe went to see their uncle.”

  Maria nodded. “They did. After dinner was over and we closed.”

  “What did everyone else do?”

  “We . . . we cleaned up. Mama was angry because Joe and Antonio didn’t stay to help. After that, we came up here, like always.”

  “To this room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did anybody go to check on Nainsi?”

  “Valentina took some supper up to her earlier.”

  “Do you know when that was?”

  “I’m not sure. Probably near seven o’clock. The crowd was thinning out, and that’s usually when it happens.”

  “What about after everyone came up here? Did you or anybody else go up to see how she was?”

  Maria looked down at her clasped hands. “I . . . I wanted to, but Mama . . . She said we should do nothing for her.”

  “But when you went up to bed, you couldn’t resist checking on the baby, could you?” Frank guessed.

  Maria’s head snapped up. For a moment, he thought she would deny it, but then she sighed. “I looked in. I just opened the door a little. I could see the baby was asleep in his cradle. Nainsi was . . . She was asleep, too.”

  “Did you actually see her?”

  Some emotion flickered across her face and then was gone. “The room was dark, and I thought she was . . .

  asleep. I didn’t want to disturb her.”

  “So she might’ve been dead by then?”

  For a second she looked frightened, and Frank knew she was wondering who she might have implicated. Then she remembered something, and her shoulders sagged in relief.

  “No, she was alive. I remember now. When Joe came in later, he tripped on something and almost fell. He was . . .

  drunk,” she explained in embarrassment. “He made a loud noise, and Nainsi called out to him to be quiet.”

  “When was this?”

  “I don’t know. I was asleep, and the noise woke me, too.

  I helped him get into bed, and then we both went to sleep.”

  “Did you hear anything else that night?”

  “No, nothing that woke me up. And Joe, he was with me all night. I would know if he got up,” she added in anticipation of Frank’s impending question.

  She turned at the sound of footsteps in the hall. Joe appeared in the doorway. “Maria? Why are you talking to this man?” he demanded.

  “I was just asking her some questions about what happened the night Nainsi died,” Frank explained.

  “She knows nothing about that. None of us do. How many times do we have to tell you?”

  “Mr. Ruocco,” Frank said with a trace of sarcasm. “A woman was murdered in this house. That woman was married to your brother. Somebody in this house knows something about it.”

  The color rose in his face, but he knew better than to argue with the police. If one of them accidentally broke your jaw, none of the authorities would care. Uncle Ugo might exact revenge for it, but your jaw would still be broken.

  “Maria, go upstairs and take care of the baby,” he said.

  Maria took the opportunity he offered and left. She didn’t look back.

  “Antonio said you wanted to talk to me,” Joe said bel-ligerently.

  “Tell me what you did that night after Nainsi’s baby was born.”

  He looked puzzled, but he made an effort to remember.

  “I . . . We all served dinner, like we do every night. All the time I was trying to think of some way to . . . to help Antonio.”

  “So you decided to kill Nainsi?”

  “No! I could think of nothing, so I went to see my uncle.”

  “Ugo,” Frank supplied. “Did you go alone?”

  “No, Antonio went with me.”

  “What time was this?”

  “I don’t know. After all the customers left. Maybe eight o’clock. Maybe later. I don’t know.”

  “So you went to see Ugo. Where did you go?”

  “He owns a place on Mott Street. That’s where you go to find him.”

  Frank knew it well, a saloon where men could talk and not worry about outsiders hearing them. “What did you tell him?”

  Joe sighed. “I told him about the baby, and how Mama wanted to throw them both out into the street.”

  “And Ugo suggested it would be much neater if you just killed the girl.”

  “No! Nobody said anything about killing her. Why would they?”

  “Because she was married to Antonio. You know how hard it is for a Catholic to get a divorce.”

  “He . . . he didn’t want to divorce her,” Joe claimed.

  “Why not? Don’t tell me he was going to forgive her and raise the baby as his own?” Frank scoffed.

  “He . . . We were talking,” he said, his hands moving nervously. “Trying to decide . . . what was the right thing to do.”

  “Your mother already decided. She was going to throw Nainsi and the baby out of the house,” Frank reminded him.

  “But . . . Nainsi was Antonio’s wife,” he said, gesturing helplessly.

  “A wife who’d tricked him into marrying her so her bastard would have a name,” Frank reminded him.

  “But . . .” He glanced around as if trying to find the correct reply written someplace in the room. “Maria,” he finally decided and nodded in approval at his choice. “Yes, Maria, she didn’t want Nainsi to leave. She didn’t think it was right. The girl is so young, she said. And the baby . . . Who would take care of them?”

  “Maria wanted them to stay?” Frank asked in amazement.

  “Yes, that’s right. She wanted them to stay, but she couldn’t say this to Mama. So I went to my uncle. I thought he would know what to do.”

  “And did he know what to do?” Frank asked, managing not to betray his skepticism of this unlikely tale.

  “No,” Joe said, heaving another sigh. “No, he did not.”

  Frank opened his mouth to ask another question, but a shout and the explosion of shattering glass stopped him.

  “What
the . . . ?” he cried, running to the window.

  “What is it?” Gino and Joe both demanded, close behind him. They jostled each other for a better view of the street below over Frank’s shoulders. The glow of torches illumi-nated the mob that was swarming down Hester Street.

  Frank knew it was too early in the evening for them to be drunk enough for this to be a spontaneous act. Someone had organized them, whipping the Irish lads into a frenzy and probably arming them with sticks and stones and enough liquor to make it seem like a good idea to march down to Little Italy and teach the dagos a lesson.

  “Gino, go down the back stairs and get everybody you can find at Headquarters,” Frank said.

  “What are you going to do?” Gino asked.

  “Try to stop this.”

  8

  By the time Frank got down to the dining room, the fighting had already started. Ugo Ruocco’s guards had done their job and gotten reinforcements to meet the mob in the street outside. The remaining dinner customers were screaming in terror as Antonio and Lorenzo frantically tried to herd them into the kitchen so they could escape out the back into the alley. Joe had followed Frank down the stairs, and he hurried off to help.

  “Turn out the lights!” Mrs. Ruocco was yelling to no one in particular as she reached up to turn off the nearest gas lamp.

  Realizing he’d be wasting his time and endangering his life for no reason if he tried to intervene in the melee outside, Frank started turning off the gas jets in the front of the room.

  “The door!” Mrs. Ruocco cried as someone slammed against the front window. “Lock it!”

  Frank hurried over and shoved home the bolt. “I’ll pull the shades, too,” he said. He didn’t add that it was a safety precaution. If they smashed in the windows, the shades would keep the glass from flying too far and injuring someone inside.

  “What’s happening?” a woman cried from the shadow of the stairway. Frank looked over to see Maria Ruocco holding the bundled baby. Her eyes were wide with terror.

  “They’ve come to kill us,” Valentina informed her hysterically as she emerged from the kitchen. “All because of that damn baby!”

  “Valentina!” Mrs. Ruocco chastened shrilly.