“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.”