“Is about baby?” Mrs. Ruocco asked suspiciously.
“It’s about the trouble you’ve been having,” Sarah said.
“I think we can put an end to it, but Maria should be here before I explain.”
Mrs. Ruocco studied her for a long moment, probably trying to judge her sincerity. Apparently satisfied, she gave Joe a nod, and he went hurrying away up the stairs to find his wife.
“We are busy cooking for customer,” Mrs. Ruocco warned while they waited. “We must earn living.”
“Of course,” Sarah agreed. “I won’t take up very much of your time, but I know you’re anxious to stop these riots.”
No one spoke, and in the silence, they could all hear Joe’s footsteps as he climbed the stairs and then came back down again. A second set of footsteps followed. Joe emerged from the stairway, and he seemed a bit shocked to see everyone still standing exactly as he’d left them all staring at him. He turned and made sure Maria negotiated the final steps. She carried the baby, who was wide awake, taking in everything around him with the watchful somberness of the newly born.
“Mrs. Brandt, what’s wrong?” Maria asked, looking around uncertainly.
“You look much better today, Maria,” Sarah said with a small smile.
“He only woke up once last night,” Maria reported.
“Why are you here? Did something happen?”
“Nothing new,” Sarah assured her. “I just . . . I wanted to speak with you about this situation you’re in. You may not know it, but the politicians from Tammany Hall are the ones organizing the rioters. They are buying them drinks and getting them stirred up until they’re brave enough to come down here and attack the place.”
“Why would the politicians do that?” Joe challenged.
“Why would they care about us?”
“Mr. Malloy explained to me that Tammany Hall wants to show its power over the Italians.”
Joe and Lorenzo made outraged noises.
“Silenzio,” Mrs. Ruocco snapped. “Why they come here?”
“Because Nainsi’s death put your names in the newspapers, and everybody knows you now. Because they’ve told lies about you and made the Irish angry. They’re saying you murdered Nainsi so you could have her baby.”
Maria made an anguished sound and covered her eyes with one hand, holding the baby tightly with her other arm.
Mrs. Ruocco said something in Italian that Frank was glad nobody translated, and Joe and Lorenzo muttered ominously.
“How can we stop them?” Joe demanded.
“Commissioner Roosevelt has suggested that in order to satisfy the Irish and take away their reason for attacking you, you give the baby to Nainsi’s mother,” Sarah said as gently as if she’d been suggesting a walk in the park.
This time Maria was the one who cried out. “No!” she shrieked, startling the baby. “She cannot have him! She can’t buy the milk for him! She can’t keep the bottles clean! She lives like a pig! He will die!”
The baby’s tiny face screwed up, and he began to wail.
Maria started bouncing him absently as she continued her rant. “Mama, you cannot let that woman have him. You cannot let him die!”
To Frank’s surprise, Lorenzo went to her and took the baby out of her arms. “Stop it, Maria,” he said gently, as he awkwardly shifted the crying infant into the crook of his own arm. “We will not let him die.” As if he understood the words, the baby stopped crying and gazed up at Lorenzo in wide-eyed wonder.
“But what can we do?” Joe asked, his voice an annoying whine. “Even Uncle Ugo’s men can’t protect us! Last night they broke in here. Who knows what they will do tonight or tomorrow night?”
“Then I will take the baby away someplace,” Maria said, her voice quivering with anguish. “He will be safe, and they will forget about all of you when he’s gone, and then you’ll be safe,” she added with a touch of contempt to her husband.
“I have a better idea,” Sarah said, startling everyone, especially Frank.
He looked at her with apprehension, trying to read the serene expression on her lovely face. She hadn’t told him about any other ideas, and he certainly hadn’t given her permission to have any.
“Mrs. Brandt, we should go now,” he tried, but she ignored him completely.
“The reason the newspapers got everyone so angry in the first place is because Nainsi was murdered in your house,”
she reminded them. “They’re saying you don’t have a right to her baby because you kidnapped and killed her to get it.”
“That is lie!” Mrs. Ruocco cried.
“Of course it is, but people believe it because they don’t know the truth.”
“What truth?” Lorenzo asked skeptically.
“They don’t know who really killed Nainsi,” she said, making Frank wince. “When her killer is caught and punished, everyone will understand you had nothing to do with it.”
They all stared at her, dumbfounded. Frank felt pretty dumbfounded himself. Her logic was so reasonable—and so wrong! They still didn’t know for sure who had killed Nainsi. If one of the family members had done it, all hell would break loose. Didn’t she realize that? No, she didn’t, he remembered, because she thought one of Ugo’s men had killed Nainsi.
Frank watched their faces as they began to comprehend her argument. Joe and Lorenzo didn’t quite know what to think. Maria’s face seemed to glow with a desperate hope.
But Mrs. Ruocco . . . She understood. She knew someone in her family must have killed the girl, and the truth would destroy them.
“Get out my house!” she said furiously, pointing one gnarled finger at the door. “Get out now!”
“But Mama,” Maria pleaded. Mrs. Ruocco silenced her with a gesture.
Before she could protest, Frank grabbed Sarah’s arm and hauled her to the door. She almost stumbled, but he didn’t loosen his grip or slow his pace. He had to throw back the bolt one-handed, but he got them both outside.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, outraged. “We have to convince them to cooperate, or you’ll never find Nainsi’s killer!”
He just kept walking, dragging her along with him until they’d crossed the street into the next block. Then she finally dug in her heels and forced him to stop.
“What are you doing? Don’t you want to solve this case?” she asked breathlessly, her cheeks scarlet with fury.
“Of course I do, but that’s not the way to do it!”
“You won’t find the killer without their help,” she insisted.
“And they won’t help if the killer is one of them.”
“But one of Ugo Ruocco’s men killed her,” she argued.
“Maybe, but we don’t know anything for sure. Did you see Mrs. Ruocco’s face? She isn’t sure either. She knows as well as I do that it might’ve been one of her children and she’d cut off her arm before she’d help us find out.”
“But if it wasn’t one of her children—”
“She’s not going to take that chance,” Frank said. “She’ll protect them the way Maria is protecting that baby. If she knows who did it . . . if any of them know . . . it’s a secret they’ll take to their graves.”
So much for Roosevelt’s plan to have Sarah reason with them.
“ You should’ve taken me with you,” Gino Donatelli said later, after Frank had escorted a chastened Sarah back home and returned to Headquarters. “I might’ve been able to convince them.”
“First of all, you didn’t see Maria Ruocco with that baby.
She isn’t giving him up, no matter who wants her to,” Frank said. “Second, none of them are going to help us find the killer because they’re all afraid it’s somebody in the family.
Third, that’s true in any language, so you couldn’t have helped.”