This part of the Bend was inhabited primarily by Italian immigrants, most of them recent arrivals. The people were dressed in bright colors, and everyone spoke in Italian. Except for the buildings surrounding it, the street might have been in any village in Italy. Peddlers’ carts lined both curbs, and even at this hour, transactions were taking place with much shouting and gesturing as housewives negotiated for the ingredients of their evening meals. Even the doorways of the buildings had been commandeered for commerce. Boards were stretched across the openings and merchandise displayed upon them. Each merchant stood inside the tiny lobby of the building, as if it were his shop, and conducted his business on this makeshift counter. Tenants of the buildings had broken holes in the back walls of the lobbies, and they used those improvised entrances so as not to disturb the transactions taking place in the official doorways.
Everyone on the streets looked suspiciously at an Irish policeman. Conversation died as Frank approached each group and picked up again noisily as soon as he was past. Their fear and distrust were like a miasma through which he walked until he reached the alley that led to the Donatos’ tenement.
Most of the windows in the surrounding buildings were open, even though the day was cool and getting colder, and the residents who weren’t outside were hanging out of the windows, conversing with those below. The Italians liked the outdoors, even if that meant city streets without a tree or a blade of grass for miles. They’d appreciate the park, when it was finally built… if they managed to find cheap lodging nearby after these buildings were torn down.
Frank passed an old hag selling stale bread from a sack made of filthy bed ticking and found his way into one of the many twisting alleys in the neighborhood to the rear tenement where Mrs. Wells had said the Donato family lived.
A woman had just begun climbing the stairs in the pitch-dark hallway when Frank entered. A red bandanna covered her hair, and the darkness shadowed her face, but her weary step and hunched shoulders told of years of suffering. She carried a market basket over one arm.
“Donato?” Frank called, hoping for some direction to the proper flat.
She looked up in surprise.
“Do you know where the Donatos live?” he asked, hoping she spoke some English.
“What you want?” she asked suspiciously.
“I want to see them. Which flat is theirs?”
“We no do nothing wrong,” the woman said, the fear thick in her voice.
“Are you Mrs. Donato?” he asked, coming closer.
She cringed away. “We no do nothing wrong,” she insisted.
“I need to talk to you, about your daughter Emilia.”
She certainly didn’t have a daughter any longer, but Frank didn’t want to break the news to her in the hallway, no matter how angry she might be with the girl.
“Is your husband at home?” Frank asked.
Now that his eyes were used to the darkness, he could make out her features more clearly. She wasn’t as old as her plodding gait had suggested, but the years hadn’t been kind to her. “He no here,” she claimed almost desperately. “Come back later.”
“Maybe I’ll just wait here for him,” Frank suggested. “Or go get the landlord to help me find him.”
This put the fear of God into her. Landlords didn’t like tenants who brought the police snooping around. “What you want?”
“I told you, I want to talk to you about your daughter Emilia,” he said patiently. His experience had been that most of the Italians avoided trouble whenever possible and were terrified of dealing with the police. Apparently, law enforcement in their native country was even more corrupt than it was in New York City. “I won’t keep you very long, but it’s not something I want to talk about here,” he added meaningfully.
She hated him. He could see it in her eyes, along with the fear. But she said, “Come,” and started up the stairs again. She was a short woman, but not small. Her breasts and hips were full and round. They were sagging now, but she’d probably had an appealing figure as a young girl, before the years and childbirth had taken their toll.
Fortunately, the Donato flat was only on the third floor in this five-floor walk-up. Frank found it difficult to question someone when he was completely winded.
The Donato flat was exactly like a million others in the city. A few pieces of furniture might have been carried from the old country, but the rest had been purchased here, as cheaply as possible, or scrounged from the trash heaps. Brightly colored curtains hung from the front window, and scarves were draped here and there to brighten up the place, but nothing could help the back rooms where sunlight never reached.
The door opened into the kitchen of the flat, and Mrs. Donato set her basket on the table, which was no more than planks laid over some wooden crates. Frank saw that tonight’s dinner would be some dried-up potatoes and turnips. What appeared to be dead weeds would probably become a salad. Beneath the recently purchased food, he could see a few paper flowers, and the kitchen table held the makings for more. Probably the woman made and sold them for extra money, as many wives in the tenements did.
“Tell me quick, before Antonio come home,” she advised him. “He want to help if she in trouble, so I no tell. We no help her. I have no daughter.”
Frank was beginning to wonder if that could be true. He could see now that her hair beneath the scarf was black, only slightly tinged with gray, and her complexion was the dark olive he would have expected. He wondered if Mr. Donato was blond. Sarah had said that Emilia must be from Northern Italy because of her blond hair, but her mother certainly wasn’t. “Your daughter was found dead this morning,” he said baldly, since she’d already informed him she didn’t care about the girl.
“Dead?” she repeated as if she wasn’t sure what the word meant.
“Yeah,
“Emilia?” Was she trying to deny it, as most mothers would, or was she just trying to make sure?
“She had yellow hair,” Frank said. “She’d been living at the mission. She had a lover named Ugo.”
“I’m sorry,” Frank said, interpreting the gesture as grief.
But when she looked up, her dark eyes were blazing with fury. “She trouble, all a time, trouble. Is good she dead. No more trouble.”
Frank had seen reactions like this before, but usually it was because the deceased was a son who’d gone bad. Rarely did a mother react this way to the death of a daughter. Of course, he’d never had to inform a prostitute’s mother that she was dead. With women like that, nobody even knew who their mothers were.
Frank heard the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs. It could have been anyone, but Mrs. Donato must have recognized them. She jumped to her feet. “You go now,” she said urgently. “I have no daughter. You go.”
But Frank hadn’t quite finished his business here. He wanted to get a look at Emilia’s father, just to satisfy his curiosity. He stepped out onto the landing and waited. Mrs. Donato hovered anxiously in the doorway. Frank figured her husband might not be as glad as she was that the girl was dead. He wondered why.
The man who emerged from the gloom of the stairway was a little shorter than average height, his body stocky and muscular from heavy labor. His swarthy face had been darkened even further by the sun, and beneath his workman’s cap, his hair was as black as his wife’s. He stopped in alarm when he saw Frank standing there and glanced at his wife with a silent question.
Frank wasn’t certain exactly what she’d said but recognized enough words to know she’d warned him Frank was from the police and Emilia was dead. The man showed the shock his wife had not.
“Emilia?” He didn’t want to believe it, and he looked to Frank for confirmation.
“Someone stabbed her to death this morning in City Hall Park,” he said.
“I’m afraid it is. Someone who knows her already identified the body.”
“Who?” he challenged.
Sarah’s name would mean nothing to them. “A lady who met her at the mission.”
