“Mother of God!”
The girl, naked except for a blue hat with a sunflower, lay on her back, arms at her side, her long black hair tangled in the garbage. Her eyes were open, glassy. The hat, which made the forsaken soul look comical, was askew, magnifying the bathos.
Mulroony reckoned the rags on the bloody ground about and under her were what remained of a blue dress and a white shift. The white was what had caught his eye. Poor lass, exposed for all the world to see.
She’d been murdered horribly. Stabbed in the belly and then ripped up to the breast bone. The blood was dried black and the maggots were having their feast. Mulroony reached down, plucked the largest patch of blue cloth, and covered the girl’s parts. Before he put his whistle to his lips, he straightened her hat too, so she wouldn’t go to Jesus looking the clown.
The organ grinder lived in a room on the top floor of a tenement on Prince Street, around the corner from St. Patrick’s.
Not the big fancy church they built for the rich on Fifth Avenue, but Old St. Patrick’s on the corner of Prince and Mott.
St. Patrick was an Irish saint, and this was an Irish church. They hated Italians here, making them go to the basement for a separate Mass. Church was for old ladies in black, not for Tony Cerasani. He hadn’t been to confession since he was twelve. He was thirty now. A man can collect a great many sins on his soul in eighteen years.
His room was small, which was good. He could see everything he owned: the hand organ against the wall, his nice suit hanging under his coat on the back of the door. At this moment, his hat shared the table with his shaving gear.
Tony opened the straight razor. It was the only thing left to him by his father. The face he saw in the small standing mirror was his father’s. He trimmed around his magnificent mustache without benefit of lather. Tony had no use for King Gillette’s safety razor or fancy soaps. When he was finished, he honed the razor on the stone and strap till it regained its perfect edge.
Madonna, he had no use for anything in this terrible country. Once he saved enough money he’d go home a wealthy man and do nothing but drink and eat, have plenty of women, and bask in Ciminna’s nurturing sun.
After filling his cup with Chianti, he plucked a straw from the bottle’s woven covering and picked his teeth. Immediately came a sharp twinge of pain. He opened his mouth wide and held up the mirror. Christo, he’d lost one of his gold teeth. The one in the back on the left. How could this have happened?
He would retrace his steps to try to find it, or if by calamity someone had already found it, get it back.
For now, he needed something stronger than wine to ease the pain and warm his bones. Winter, summer, what did it matter here? He was always cold in this country.
Grappa was comfort to Tony’s belly; it calmed his pain, restrained his anger. He sat in a dark corner of Giuseppe’s saloon for hours chewing his cigar. Drinking, thinking.
It was very late when he started home. In front of St.
Patrick’s, he paused. The rectory door opened. A Sister of Mercy spied Tony, crossed herself, and retreated inside. Tony spat at the door and the Irish bitch behind it. How long he stood there, he didn’t know. He finally decided to go into the church.
In the rear, to the left of the last row of benches, were the two confessionals. No parishioners waited on the benches.
He ran his fingers over the lattice-work screen of the nearest priest door, his nails making a clicking noise.
He was startled when someone, clearly a mick, obviously awakened from sleep, said, “Yes? Do you wish to make your confession?”
“No.” The organ grinder did not even try to keep the sneer from his voice. “Go back to your dreams of plump little boys.”
On his walk home he saw himself as a boy at confession, a wrathful crucifix poised above him. The organ grinder shook his head and the memory disappeared. He had stopped drinking too soon. Instead of going home he returned to Giuseppe’s.
The church was a jail. Worse, a rope around his neck.
Damn the church. There was money to be made. Religion was for the rich. Or the old and the helpless. He was none of these.
“A few cents so I may sup, kind sir?” The hoary man’s voice was frail as the old codger himself.
Dutch Tonneman, a detective with the Metropolitan Police, dropped several pennies into the unkempt fellow’s outstretched hat. He walked into the saloon at 20th and Sixth and sat at the last table in the back. Noisy ceiling fans moved the hot air around, but the heat didn’t budge. Flies hovered over the free eats: the hard boileds and the onions on the bar.
He had met Joe Petrosino once before. Stubby, dark, marked with pox, the Italian cop would be easy to recognize. But he almost never looked so, for his reputation was as a master of many disguises.
Detective Petrosino had a good reputation. The Black Hand’s chief adversary in New York, in all of America, worked out of the Elizabeth Street station in one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods, Mulberry Bend. For years he’d been trying to destroy the notorious Italian crime organization.
“Sir.” The old man, dilapidated hat now plunked on his head, had followed Dutch into the saloon.
Dutch sighed. “Twice in five minutes is greedy, Grandpa.”
“I agree.”
The vitality in the voice made Dutch look again. On closer inspection, Dutch realized that the old man wasn’t so old and that the rags he wore covered a rugged physique.
Dutch grinned. “All right, Petrosino, I’m impressed. But why the playacting? You don’t need a disguise to talk to me.”
Petrosino looked around. “You never know. The Black Hand is everywhere. Little Italy. Up in the woods past 100th Street, on the East Side. Why not right on the Ladies Mile with the rich Episcopalians?”
“What?” the squat man behind the bar called to them.
“Two beers,” Dutch replied.
“Grappa,” Petrosino said.
“One beer, one grappa,” Dutch said.
“No grappa, this ain’t no wop house. What I got is a jug of dago red.”
Petrosino nodded, Dutch said, “Okay.”
“I’m not showing off with this getup,” Petrosino said.
“I just came from the Hudson River docks on 23rd Street watching them unload a ship. The Black Hand is stealing some of those shipping companies blind, but I haven’t been able to catch them at it. What can I tell you?”
Dutch drank his beer. “Do you hear about unusual knifings?”
Petrosino didn’t react. “When I pose a question like that to a suspect, it usually means I’m more interested than I want to let on.”
“If you’re that transparent,” Tonneman said, “I would suggest you don’t pose your questions like that.”
“All right. You have your secrets, I have mine.” He rotated the tumbler of wine on the table. “The Black Hand has those who take care of any who cross them. I hear one wields a fine stiletto.”
“I must say, you Italians talk real pretty at times.”
The two smiled goodnaturedly at each other.
“We must have more of these talks in the future,”
Petrosino said. “Who knows what one might know that could facilitate the other?”
The Sicilian sun was warm and good. The young girl had smooth olive skin and big tits. With moist fingers she peeled the grapes and fed them to him. He savored the tart flesh.
Suddenly the grapes were stones. The pain drove him awake.
Marie was always with him, singing a sweet sad love song, promising her tender kiss.
Tony seized the bottle of grappa on the floor next to his bed and filled his mouth with the coarse brandy, then clutched his jaw in agony. He swallowed, took another drink, guiding it away from the left side of his mouth.
He poured tepid water from pitcher to basin and tried to shave. The only place he could stand the feel of the blade was under his chin. He would let his beard grow.