“Who’s the suspect?” I asked.
“The guy’s name is Gallo.”
“How did they catch him?”
“Marks on the barrel showed it come from a wholesale produce house. Then a clerk at the produce house remembered a barrel like that had been carried away by an Italian. The guy peddles vegetables. The clerk remembered the name on the wagon said, ‘L. Gallo,’ and the license bureau give us the peddler’s address.”
We looked at the dead girl. She was plainly Italian and seemed in her twenties. She had been stabbed—small holes made by a stiletto. A label had been taken out of her coat and she wore a cheap ring with the letters “A” and “P” entwined in a monogram.
“What name have you got for this girl, O’Malley?” I asked.
“Antoinette Romano.”
“How did you get it?”
“Cops showed this kid’s picture to everybody around where Gallo lives and they all claimed they didn’t know her. Then one cop got the idea he would show it to children, and one little girl said she’d seen that lady and pointed out where she lived. The landlady give ’em her name as Romano.”
“What does Gallo say about it?”
“I ain’t talked with him yet.”
We went and saw Gallo. They had him locked up. He was a small man of about fifty, who scowled at us sourly.
“How would you feel,” O’Malley demanded of him, “when cops made you look at that lady you murdered?”
“I feel okay, mister, because I never murder no lady. I am sell-a my vegetable. Two cops come in a car and say, ‘Come along, you; you keel-a some lady.’ I never keel-a no lady.”
“Well,” O’Malley remarked, “we won’t get no information but I guess we got to go look at it.”
We went to the East Side. The place was a tenement. Gallo had a small room in the rear of the basement which looked out on a court. In the court was a shed where he kept his horse and wagon. We saw the place in the hall where the police had found blood. They’d found none in his room. We examined the shed. There were boxes and crates there; there weren’t any barrels. We talked with the tenants.
A young Italian couple named Carlucci had the basement rooms in front of Gallo’s, and another young couple named Lero the room over theirs, and a youth named Vanutti had the room over Gallo’s. There were other people above. The Leros and Vanutti came out on the stairs to see what was going on, while we questioned Carlucci. Vito Carlucci was plainly a fop; he was flashily dressed in a loud, striped suit. His wife was named Rosa. It was plain that she worshiped him. The Leros were named Tony and Maria. I never had seen a more beautiful girl than Maria Lero.
“Cops showed you that dead lady,” O’Malley said to Carlucci. “You sure you didn’t never see her before?”
“Sure I’m sure, officer.”
“Well, you seen her too,” he said to the Leros.
They shook their heads. “We never saw her before.” Tony Lero informed us.
“She didn’t ever come to see Gallo?”
“We don’t know about that.”
* * * *
We went all through the building and showed the girl’s picture, but nobody knew her.
“A cop’s got a fine chance!” O’Malley said bitterly. “They all know she got murdered and they’d say they didn’t know her if she was their sister. We’ll go see where she lived.”
It was across the street and only a few doors from the tenement. A fat Italian landlady showed us the room. It looked out on the street. There were no woman’s things in it.
“Cops took this kid’s things,” O’Malley remarked to me. “They didn’t find much here—a little traveling bag and some underwear and a couple of dresses. Didn’t that lady have any baggage but what the cops found here?” he inquired of the landlady.
“That’s all, mister.”
“How’d you know her name was Romano?”
“She said so.”
“How long’d she lived here?”
“Two days.”
“Well, O’Malley?” I asked.
“Well—nothing!” he told me. “She got killed in that building, but I don’t know by who and I don’t think we’ll find out. I don’t think it was Gallo.”
“Why?”
“Why, you seen that dead kid and you talked with that Gallo. She didn’t look to me like a girl that would be mixed up with that kind of guy. I don’t think she lived in New York. I think she come here from somewhere else.”
“Why?”
“The kind of coat she was wearing, if she lived in New York, would be bought at some big store. The coat wasn’t new and the label wouldn’t mean anything. Maybe whoever killed her took out the label; she might have did it herself. My idea, she didn’t want people to know who she was. Well, if she come from somewhere else, where is her baggage?”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Turn in a report I don’t know nothing to do.”
When we came out of the building, Vito Carlucci was standing across the street watching us. He turned and went quickly into the tenement.
“There’s one thing you can do,” I said. “You can watch Vito Carlucci. He’s plainly a lady’s man. His wife’s much in love with him and no doubt she is jealous. I don’t know what the situation may have been, but it’s easy to imagine one in which a woman might embarrass Carlucci. There was blood in the hall but we found none in the rooms and it could have got in the hall as readily if she had been killed in Carlucci’s room as if it had been Gallo’s.”
“You always got suspects.”
* * * *
He went back to headquarters. I went there in the morning, but nothing was happening; so I went back there next day. I met him just leaving.
“Any progress?” I asked.
“I don’t guess it is progress. We found a new landlady.”
“How did you find her?”
“A guy told a cop on a corner that he had a room next to a girl that called herself Antoinette Romano. He seen the name in the newspaper.”
I went along with him. The place was about half a mile from where Gallo lived. The landlady didn’t want to let us in.
“Listen, lady!” O’Malley said to her. “You want I should send a couple of uniform cops around here three or four times a day to stand on your front steps asking you questions?”
She showed us the room. It faced on the street. There wasn’t any baggage in it.
“Didn’t that lady have a trunk or anything?” O’Malley asked the landlady.
“She had only a traveling bag. She took everything with her.”
“How long did she stay here?”
“Three days.”
There was a small restaurant across the street. We went across to it and O’Malley showed the girl’s picture.
“This lady ever eat here?” he asked the proprietor.
“Not that I know of. The waiter will know.”
He sent for the waiter, who looked at the picture and then shook his head.
“She never was in here.”
We were leaving the place when I had an idea. “Do you know Vito Carlucci?” I asked the proprietor.
“Yes; he eats in here sometimes.”
“There, O’Malley!” I exclaimed.
“You’re good! We’ll go talk with Carlucci, but I was going there anyway.”
We went to the tenement. Carlucci wasn’t at home but his wife Rosa was, and she seemed very nervous.
“Where’s your husband?” O’Malley asked her.
“I don’t know.”
The young man Vanutti had come out on the stairs. “Carlucci didn’t come home last night,” he informed us.
“There’s your case, O’Malley!” I cried. “Flight is one of the strongest proofs of guilt.”
“Say! You get
better and better.”
We took Rosa to the precinct house for questioning. There was no one in the detectives’ room, so we took her in there. O’Malley questioned her a long while, and she wept but she wouldn’t say anything. Then a uniformed cop came in, bringing a suitcase.
“You find that guy you were looking for?” O’Malley asked him.
“Yeah, we found him all right, but we got there too late.”
He put down the suitcase and went out again.
“Well,” O’Malley invited me, “I and you’ll go eat. You stay here,” he told Rosa.
We went to a lunchroom. We were drinking our coffee when a police car with two plain-clothes cops in it pulled up outside. O’Malley went out and talked with them, and then motioned to me. We all got in the police car and drove to the tenement. We were getting out of the car when we noticed a taxicab that had just pulled away; so we jumped back in the car and followed it. It went pretty fast but we paid no attention to lights. When we’d almost caught up with it, a man jumped out of it while it was still moving and ran in between two buildings and we piled out and followed him. We searched a long while before we found Tony Lero hiding in one of the basements.
“Was it Lero who killed her, O’Malley?” I asked.
“Right—but I ain’t got the whole of it yet.”
We took Tony to the precinct house and O’Malley and one of the cops took him into the captain’s office and I went into the detectives’ room to wait for the end of it. Rosa Carlucci was still there and a couple of plain-clothes cops were with her, and Vito Carlucci was there too. They were just coming out of the room as I went into it. Then O’Malley came to me.
“I don’t get this,” I told him.
“That dead kid was Tony Lero’s wife but his name isn’t Lero. Panetta his right name is, and hers was Antoinette Panetta.”
“A. P.,” I declared; “on the ring.”
“You said it! Tony and Antoinette and that pretty kid Maria that Tony was living with all come from Buffalo. Maria Biondo the kid’s right name is, and she is married to a guy in Buffalo, about three times as old as her, who is called John Biondo. Maria and Tony got in love, and she left her husband and he left his wife, and they come to New York and called themselves Lero so nobody would find ’em.”
“I see.”
“Sure. Well, some Italian from Buffalo was in New York, and he seen Tony and Maria in that restaurant I and you went to. When he got home, he told Antoinette where he’d seen her husband. Well, the business stood this way: Antoinette hadn’t got out of love with her husband because he’d run off with Maria; she wanted him back. First she made that Italian promise he wouldn’t tell nobody else; then she sold all her things so she would have money; then she come to New York and got that room across from the restaurant where she could watch the restaurant.”
“Why?”
“She figured if Tony and Maria had ate there one time, they might eat there again. After she’d been watching for a few days, she seen Tony and Maria go into the restaurant; so she waited till they come out, and she followed and found where they lived and she took that room we first went to, so she could watch the place. The afternoon she got killed, she seen Maria and Rosa Carlucci come out and go away somewhere; she’d been waiting for that. So then she went across to see Tony and carry out the plan she’d been figuring on.”
“What was her plan?”
“Why, John Biondo, that Maria is married to, is one of them Italian boss guys that keeps everybody afraid of him. Quite a few times he’s been suspected of murder, but they never could prove it. When Tony run away with his wife, Biondo give out to everybody that when he found out where Tony was, he was going to knock him off. So Antoinette give her husband his choice in the matter: Either he would leave Maria and go away somewhere with her, or she’d follow him and Maria wherever they went, and she’d send word to Biondo, and Biondo’d push Tony across.”
“A clever woman!” I stated.
“What do you mean—‘clever’? She got herself murdered. Tony’s afraid of Biondo and in love with Maria; he couldn’t see no way out of his trouble but to knock his wife off. Vito Carlucci heard ’em quarreling and come upstairs to see what the trouble was, and he opened Tony’s door just in time to see the murder. So Tony told Carlucci, if he give out any information, he’d kill him. Tony’s no soft guy, and Carlucci was afraid of him. Then Maria and Rosa Carlucci come back, and the dead girl was still there. So Tony told the Carluccis all about it.”
“Didn’t Gallo have anything to do with it?”
“His horse and wagon had to do with it; he didn’t. That Gallo spends his evenings in wineshops; when he goes to sleep, he sleeps like a dead guy. They waited till everybody in the house had went to bed and Gallo was asleep. Then Tony and Vito took the girl to the shed and put her in a barrel they found there and used Gallo’s horse and wagon to take her to the East River. They never thought of us tracing the barrel. Tony had took the label out of her coat because it showed she come from Buffalo, and the things in the room that had got blood on ’em they took along with ’em and left round in trash cans.”
“Some case!” I ejaculated.
“Why, if we’d knew Antoinette was Tony’s wife, there’d have been nothing to it. We couldn’t find out about these people because they had no police records. Antoinette called herself Romano when she come to New York, so Biondo wouldn’t learn where she’d went and follow her to Tony. Everybody around there believed Tony and Maria was married; they’d met all them people since they came to New York. We ain’t yet found Antoinette’s trunk; we’ll find the trunk later. I figure, not knowing what she was going to do, she left the trunk with some express company; but just now, while we was questioning Tony, cops searched his place and found the stiletto.”
“How did you learn all this, O’Malley?”
“Well, the girl got killed in that building. If Gallo didn’t do it, then somebody else there did. You yourself seen Carlucci acted frightened and suspicious, and you thought that meant he done the murder. I thought it might only mean he knew who done it. We questioned him and his wife plenty, and they wouldn’t talk; and in this kind of case, if people stand up like that under questioning, it’s usually because they’re afraid they’ll get killed. I couldn’t see no way to make Carlucci talk, but I thought we might make Rosa.”
“That’s a part of it.” I declared, “which I don’t understand.”
“Yeah? Because you ain’t the kind of guy that would look in some other guy’s baggage.”
* * * *
The suitcase was still there. I went over and opened it. Vito Carlucci’s striped suit was in it, and there were cuts in the coat and it was covered with blood.
“What does this mean?” I asked, a little bewildered.
“Are you that dumb? First we picked Carlucci up and held him as a witness without anybody knowing it. Then we pretended to be looking for him. I and you brought Rosa in here and questioned her as to where her husband was. While we was doing that, a cop went to their place and got Carlucci’s suitcase. We had give Carlucci another suit to wear ‘so he wouldn’t get his good clothes dirty,’ and we cut holes in his coat and put some calf’s blood on it. Then a cop brought in the suitcase. Then we left Rosa Carlucci alone with it. We knew she’d recognize the suitcase and be sure to look in it. While I and you was getting something to eat, cops took Rosa into the captain’s office. She thought Tony had knocked her husband off to keep him from talking, and she handed ’em the whole story.”
“The case could hardly have been solved in any other way,” I decided. “O’Malley, you deserve commendation.”
“Say! It’s a pity you ain’t the one that gives out those commends. The guys that do it would go blind if they tried to see me.”
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