“Maybe not,” Sarah said. “Piecework doesn’t pay very much, so the only way to earn more is to make more. People sometimes work all night.”
“In the dark?” Malloy asked.
“Was there a lamp on the table?”
“Yes, but it was empty.”
“Then she might have been burning it, and it went dry after she died.”
“Or it might have been empty, and she died when it was still daylight,” Malloy argued back.
“Either way, there’s still no reason Lorenzo couldn’t have done it,” Gino pointed out. “Even if Valentina didn’t see him leave the house all day, he could have. He wouldn’t have been gone long.”
“Then let’s go bring him in,” Malloy said wearily. He laid money on the table for the coffee and rose from his seat.
Sarah gathered her things and preceded the men out into the street.
“Thank you for all your help, Mrs. Brandt,” Malloy said formally, because Gino was there.
“I don’t think I helped much,” she demurred.
“Yes, you did,” Gino assured her. “We wouldn’t have dared talk to Valentina without you.”
“And when Mrs. Ruocco finds out I helped you waylay her daughter, I’ll probably never deliver another baby in Little Italy again,” she predicted with a rueful smile.
“I don’t think it’ll be that serious,” Malloy said. “Can I convince you to go home now?”
“Yes, you can. I’ll be happy to spend the rest of the day with Catherine.”
“Who?” Malloy said in surprise.
Sarah couldn’t help smiling. “I asked if I could start calling her Catherine, and she said I could.”
Malloy grinned back, the sort of sentimental smile she seldom saw, which made Gino ask, “Who’s Catherine?”
Malloy sobered instantly. “I’ll tell you later. Find Mrs.
Brandt a cab so she can be on her way.”
“Will you send me word about what happens with Lorenzo?” she asked.
“I’ll be sure you find out,” Gino promised, earning a frown from Malloy.
All too quickly, they put her in a cab and left her to imagine what would happen next. Whatever it was would only bring more heartache to the Ruocco family.
This time Frank and Gino decided to try a different approach to convincing Lorenzo to come to Headquarters for questioning. A deciding factor was that Ugo Ruocco had increased the number of men he had guarding the street outside since they’d taken Antonio in for questioning, and Frank didn’t think they’d just stand by while he and Gino marched Lorenzo out the front door. He pulled in a couple of officers from another precinct and instructed them carefully in what their part would be.
Saturday had brought more customers to the restaurant for lunch. Perhaps they thought that with Mrs. O’Hara dead, there would be no more trouble. Frank and Gino waited until the crowd had thinned down, and then sent two officers in, dressed as ordinary working men. Frank and Gino waited out of sight around the corner with the police wagon. A beat cop was idly strolling down the street in front of Mama’s Restaurant, and within minutes the front door flew open, and Joe started hustling one of the disguised policemen out, convinced he was nothing more than an unruly customer.
They were both shouting, and the cop was throwing punches that Joe managed to duck. Seconds later, the other officer emerged, grappling with Lorenzo. Instantly, the uniformed beat cop started pounding his locust club and shouting for help.
That was the cue for the wagon driver to slap his team into motion. The Black Maria went hurtling around the corner just as other uniformed cops emerged from their hiding places to assist in calming the melee.
Ugo’s men had immediately moved in to help the Ruocco boys, but the police quickly discouraged them by grabbing every man they saw and throwing him into the paddy wagon. Joe and Lorenzo were the first inside, in spite of their vocal and violent protests that they’d just been protecting their property. The two unruly customers followed, mostly to make sure the Ruoccos didn’t escape, and by then most everyone else had fled. The wagon rumbled away, and Frank and Gino met it at Headquarters when it pulled up to disgorge its passengers.
By then Joe and Lorenzo were furious and ready to take on the entire police force, until they emerged and saw Frank’s smiling face.
“Good afternoon, fellows,” he greeted them. “So glad you could make it.”
Lorenzo gave him a murderous glare. “You! After what you did to Valentina, I should cut your throat!”
“Like you did to Mrs. O’Hara?” Frank inquired mildly.
Lorenzo had no answer for that.
“Bring them inside, boys,” Frank said, and the officers escorted them none too gently up the front stairs.
Joe noticed the two “customers” walking away. “What about them?” he asked in outrage. “They started a fight in our place!”
“They’re cops,” Gino informed them. “We needed a way to get the two of you down here without having to wade through Ugo’s men.”
Frank and Gino were roundly cursed in two languages, so Frank let the boys cool their heels for over an hour down in separate interrogation rooms. He could have let Joe go, of course, but he didn’t, reasoning that he might need to verify something Lorenzo said . . . or didn’t say. Besides, he felt ornery.
When Frank and Gino finally joined Lorenzo downstairs, he had regained control of his temper. In fact, he looked entirely too cool for Frank’s taste. Sitting in the dingy room hadn’t panicked him like it had Antonio. He simply looked disgusted.
Frank took a seat opposite him while Gino manned the door. “We know why Nainsi died, Lorenzo. We know everything.”
“Then why am I here?” he asked. “Why is my brother here? Why haven’t you arrested the killer?”
“Tell me, Lorenzo, why did you defend Maria against Ugo when she wanted to keep the baby?”
The question puzzled him. “Because she wanted him.”
“Because she wanted him?” Frank asked. “Or because you did?”
“Why would I want him?”
Frank nodded sagely. “That’s a good question. Why would a man even care what happens to a little bastard some whore delivered on his doorstep?”
Lorenzo shifted uneasily in his seat. He didn’t like Frank’s choice of words, but he didn’t protest.
“That’s what Nainsi was, wasn’t she? A whore?”
The word pained him, and Lorenzo didn’t want to agree.
“She was foolish. Young and foolish.”
“Young, but not too foolish. She got herself a husband, didn’t she? A man to take care of her and her baby when the real father wouldn’t.”
Lorenzo refused to respond. Frank could see the muscles in his jaw working.
“Why do you think the real father wouldn’t marry her, Lorenzo?”
“I don’t know,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Let’s think about it then. Maybe the real father was the kind of man who likes to take advantage of foolish young girls. He likes to use them for his pleasure and then move on to another one. Maybe he’s the kind of man who wouldn’t care that he has a son somewhere whose name he doesn’t even know.”
Anger flickered across Lorenzo’s face. “Maybe he is.”
“What would you think of a man like that, Lorenzo? A man who’d turn his back on a girl after he put a baby in her belly? A man who’d turn his back on his own child?”
“He is not a man,” Lorenzo decreed.
“But you didn’t want Antonio to marry Nainsi, did you?
Even when everybody thought the baby was his, you didn’t approve. Why is that?”
“That girl, anyone can see she’s a liar. Antonio would never . . . He’s too young to know what to do. She would have to show him, and how would she know what to do if she hadn’t been with another man already?”
“So you didn’t think the baby was his right from the beginning?” Frank guessed.