Murder on Mulberry Bend (17 page)

Sarah wondered if that could be true. She’d hardly known Emilia. Mrs. Wells had been convinced that Emilia had changed, however, and after her years of experience working at the mission, she wouldn’t be easily fooled. “This time she really meant it,” Sarah argued. “She was going to get a job. In fact, that’s what she was going to do the morning she was killed.”

The eyes that stared back at her were unmoved. He knew his sister better than Sarah, and he didn’t believe anything good about her. Sarah glanced at the child to remind herself that Georgio was a father himself. Maybe she could reach him that way.

“Your daughter is asleep,” she observed, half in wonder at the way children could just drop off any time and any place. She looked like a brightly clad porcelain doll sitting there.

Georgio looked down and struck out with his whole foot, catching her on the hip. Jolted awake, she yelped in pain and outrage as Sarah cried out in protest. He ignored Sarah and gave the girl a sharp command in Italian. She rose sullenly, rubbing her hip.

“Sorriso!” he commanded, and she twisted her face into the parody of a smile. He started to turn the crank and coax music from the box. The girl’s tiny feet began to move, sketching out the steps so lightly they hardly seemed to touch the ground. She twirled, making her colorful skirt float out around her brown legs. People began to stop and watch. Soon a crowd formed. Georgio relentlessly ignored Sarah. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say about his sister. A man who would kick his own child on a public street to get her to dance wouldn’t care about a sister who’d disgraced her family by selling herself. She was wasting her time here.

Another failure she didn’t want to report to Malloy, especially when he’d expressly forbidden her to do any investigation at all in this case.

 

Frank knew better than to go exploring the alleys of Mulberry Bend alone at night. The sun had dropped far enough in the sky to cast these rear tenement buildings into darkness, even though it was still daylight in the rest of the city. He’d gathered up a couple of the beat cops to accompany him now that he had learned where Ugo Ianuzzi made his living.

“You know which one it is?” one of the cops asked as they made their way, stepping over the trash and the tramps lying in the alley.

“No,” Frank said. Ianuzzi’s landlady hadn’t been specific. “Just that it’s in one of these buildings.”

“There must be a dozen dives back here,” the other cop complained.

“Then we’ll look in each one until we find him,” Frank replied irritably. He’d much rather be home, enjoying his mother’s cooking and his son’s company, than searching stale beer dives for a man he didn’t consider good enough to spit on.

The early hour ensured the crowds would be small in these establishments that were very distant cousins to saloons. Located in any available basement or cubbyhole, the dive consisted of a few tables and chairs and a keg of stale beer. The proprietor would have stolen the keg from a sidewalk in front of a legitimate saloon, where the flat beer from the night before was set out each morning for the breweries to pick up the kegs and refill them. The dive keeper would doctor the flat beer with chemicals to put some foam back into it and sell it for pennies to the homeless beggars who worked their trade all day just to afford the privilege. In exchange for their purchases, they would be allowed to stay in the dive all night, sleeping in a chair or on the floor in drunken oblivion. Ugo Ianuzzi had made his fortune by running such a place.

One of the officers kicked open the door of the first dive they came to. The room was the dank cellar of a ramshackle frame tenement house. The walls were covered with years of grime. The dirt floor consisted of a layer of crawling bugs feeding on the filth beneath. An ancient hag clad in garments so dirty, their original color was indistinguishable, was filling a tomato can — which passed for a glass — from the keg that sat in the center of the room on the remains of a broken chair. She and her customer, a pockmarked young man with crossed eyes and no front teeth, looked up in terror at the intrusion. Usually, a raid by the police would mean six months “on the island” for the proprietor and her customers.

“Don’t worry. We ain’t looking for you,” one of the cops said. He turned to Frank. “What’s the name?”

“Ugo Ianuzzi,” Frank said. “Where is he?”

The old woman made a pretense of refusing to cooperate, but the cops only needed to threaten her with their nightsticks to encourage cooperation. She probably wouldn’t have survived an actual blow from the locust wood clubs. She very quickly gave them directions in broken English to a place two buildings down.

“If you’re lying, we’ll be back,” one of the cops warned her.

They passed several more of the dives on their way, and Frank realized the reformers were right: the only way to clean out The Bend was to tear it down. So long as this rabbit warren of decay existed, evil would breed here like cockroaches.

When they reached the place the old woman had described, one of the cops opened the door with the heel of his boot. It slammed back against the wall, startling the early arrivals. This room was bigger than most of the dives. Ugo had commandeered a space almost twenty feet square and furnished it with a mismatched assortment of chairs and makeshift tables made of odd pieces of lumber laid over broken barrels. The requisite keg rested in its place of honor at the center of the room. Several dozen empty tin cans sat on the floor in front of it, awaiting customers.

“Ianuzzi?” Frank shouted, looking around.

A burly man with a cigar clenched in his teeth came forward. He appeared to be in his thirties, and he was far more respectable looking than the hag who ran the first dive they’d checked. In his shirtsleeves, he wore a vest with a watch chain stretched across it. His lush mustache was neatly trimmed, and his dark hair lavishly pomaded. He shouted something in Italian to his customers, who rose as one and made for the door. Some hunched their shoulders and ducked their heads in anticipation of blows from the coppers’ locusts, but no one paid them any mind.

“I want to ask you some questions, Ugo,” Frank said in a tone that brooked no argument.

“No ’stand,” Ugo tried with an elaborate shrug.

“Maybe you’ll understand this,” Frank said. “I want to talk to you about Emilia Donato.”

Ugo’s expression hardened. “Emilia is whore,” he declared. “I no see her, long time.”

“Then you won’t mind answering a few questions about her.”

“I know nothing. I no see her. She run away, long time.”

‘I know all about why she ran away from you, Ugo,” Frank said pleasantly. “And just so you know, I don’t think much of men who beat women, especially when they’re expecting a child.”

“She lie, all a time, lie. No believe her,” Ugo advised, gesturing with his hands. “She run away, go to pimp. I no see, long time.”

“It’s a real shame about your memory being so bad,” Frank said. “I’ll bet it gets a whole lot better after a couple hours at Police Headquarters.”

Ugo protested vigorously, but a few well-placed blows from the locusts changed his mind. Eventually, he agreed to accompany them up the street to Headquarters.

“They steal all my beer,” he complained when they dragged him out of his dive, leaving his keg unattended.

“Then you’ll just have to steal some more to replace it,” Frank pointed out. He hadn’t ever really considered how profitable such a dive could be. The stolen beer was free, and Ugo certainly didn’t pay any rent for his basement space. Except for a few cents’ worth of chemicals to give “life” to the flat beer, he had no expenses at all. Each night he’d take in the entire day’s earnings of dozens of beggars, and it would be pure profit.

Frank gave Ugo an hour in the airless cellar cells at Headquarters to consider his predicament before moving him into a basement interrogation room. When Frank joined him, he looked a little less arrogant but a lot more annoyed.

“Nice business you’ve got there, Ugo,” he remarked as he sat down across the scarred table from his prisoner. The table and a few chairs were the only furnishings in the room. A single window high on one wall provided a little light during the day and none at night. A gas jet on the wall cast eerie shadows. “Is that where you met Emilia?”

Ugo was still being tough. He just glared at Frank, refusing to answer.

“How long since you’ve seen her, Ugo?” Frank waited. No answer.

“I think you saw her yesterday, Ugo,” Frank said, still pleasant. “I think you met her at City Hall Park. She wanted to show you her new dress.”

Ugo was getting uneasy, but he still wasn’t going to say anything.

“I think you met her in the park, and she wanted you to marry her. You refused, and she got mad. You had a fight, and then you killed her.”

Ugo’s swagger evaporated. “No kill nobody!” he insisted, terror widening his eyes and draining the color from his face.

“I can’t blame you,” Frank said reasonably. “You must have been tired of her asking you to marry her.”

“I no can marry her,” Ugo said. “Have wife already, and children.”

This was a surprise, although Frank didn’t let on. “Where are they?”

“In Italy. Three children,” he said, holding up three fingers. “No marry Emilia. Have wife already.”

“That didn’t stop you from seducing her, though,” Frank pointed out.

Ugo frowned. “See-deuce?” he repeated uncertainly.

Frank made a gesture with his hands that overcame the language barrier. Ugo’s face lit with understanding.

“I no see-deuce. She do it. She think I marry her then.”

Frank thought it unlikely that a girl like Emilia would have traded her virginity for anything less than a promise of marriage, but he let Ugo’s lie pass for now.

“And when you refused, she left you?” Frank guessed.

“She go to pimp,” Ugo said, aggrieved. “I tell you, she whore.”

“Is that why you killed her? Because she became a whore?”

“I no kill nobody!”

“I think you got mad at Emilia. You didn’t want her bothering you anymore. You didn’t want her begging you to marry her. But she kept coming back, so you decided to stick a knife into her and be done with it.”

“No! I no see Emilia, long time. I no kill!”

“Is that how the Black Hand kills someone, Ugo? The way you killed Emilia?”

Ugo was looking around wildly, as if searching for a means of escape. “I no kill Emilia!” he insisted. Frank was discouraged. He was acting far too much like an innocent man. Frank wanted Ugo to be guilty so he could close the case, but it looked as if he wasn’t.

“Somebody killed her, Ugo,” Frank said. “And here you are. If you confess, I don’t have to look for anybody else.”

Ugo obviously knew that the police routinely beat confessions out of innocent men in order to close dif ficult cases. Or even easy ones, if they didn’t feel like working too hard.

“I no kill Emilia!” he cried frantically.

“Then start answering my questions, Ugo,” Frank advised him.

“I answer! I answer!”

“Good.” Frank folded his hands expectantly on the table. “Now tell me about the Black Hand.”

S
ARAH WAS BONE WEARY AS SHE MADE HER WAY down Bank Street late Saturday morning. She wasn’t sure how much of her fatigue had been caused by the middle-of-the-night call to deliver a baby and how much by her depression over not being able to help find out who’d killed Emilia Donato. At least the earlier rain had stopped, but the gray sky matched her mood perfectly.

As usual, her next-door neighbor was out sweeping her front steps, or pretending to, even though the porch would have been washed clean by the morning rain. In reality, she was waiting to welcome Sarah home and find out how her delivery had gone.

“Good morning, Mrs. Ellsworth,” Sarah called when she was within hailing distance.

“Good morning, Mrs. Brandt. Were you on a delivery?”

“Yes, a little boy. He’s doing fine, and so is his mother.”

“That’s a blessing.”

Sarah thought of all the unwanted children in the world, children like Emilia Donato. Were they blessings ? Sarah didn’t think she wanted to know right now. “Mrs. Ellsworth, would you come in for some tea? I’d like to ask your advice about something.”

Since Sarah had never asked Mrs. Ellsworth for anything at all, the older woman looked startled for a second. In the next second, however, she looked extremely pleased. “I’d be happy to help in any way I can, my dear. Just give me a moment to take off my apron!”

Sarah went into her house, and after removing her cape and opening her umbrella and setting it on the floor so it could dry thoroughly, she went to the kitchen to start a fire in the stove. It was burning well by the time she heard Mrs. Ellsworth’s knock.

Mrs. Ellsworth must have been even more impressed by her request than Sarah had thought for her to be using the front door, as if this were a formal visit. She usually came to the kitchen door.

When Sarah admitted her, she saw the rain had started up again, and Mrs. Ellsworth was half-hidden beneath an enormous black umbrella. The old woman closed it and shook it out on the front stoop, then came inside.

“We can set it here by mine to dry,” Sarah offered, reaching for the umbrella. Mrs. Ellsworth made a strangled sound of alarm, pointing in wordless horror.

Sarah looked where she was pointing, expecting to see that a poisonous snake had somehow crawled into her foyer. Instead all she saw was her own umbrella dripping quietly onto the floor.

“You can’t open an umbrella in the house!” Mrs. Ellsworth informed her, appalled. She hastily dropped her own onto the floor and snatched up Sarah’s to close it. “What were you thinking?”

She’d been thinking it would dry more quickly if it were opened, but of course she didn’t say that to Mrs. Ellsworth. “I suppose that’s bad luck,” she guessed. Mrs. Ellsworth’s superstitions were legion.