the baby’s cries obviously distressed him.
Breathing a silent prayer, Sarah accepted the baby from Mrs. Ruocco and sat down to feed him the goat’s milk. The baby took the nipple and suckled greedily. Milk leaked out the sides of his mouth, and he choked a little until he got the rhythm. His mouth working mechanically, he finally settled down, his little fists clenched tightly against his cheeks, his eyes squeezed shut in bliss.
“He seems to like it,” Lorenzo observed hopefully, but he was wringing his hands.
“He like milk,” Mrs. Ruocco said dismissively. “He know nothing.”
“We’ll have to wait to see if it agrees with him,” Sarah concurred.
Lorenzo sighed and kept wringing his hands.
“Mrs. Brandt, you must eat,” Mrs. Ruocco said, pulling an apron down from a hook on the wall and tying it on. “I will cook.” Sarah knew better than to protest. Besides, she really was hungry.
The baby fell into a contented sleep when the bottle was almost empty, and by then Mrs. Ruocco had prepared a plate of spaghetti for Sarah. Mrs. Ruocco took the baby up to his cradle while Sarah ate the delicious meal. Lorenzo had followed his mother out of the kitchen, leaving Sarah alone, so when she was finished, she went back upstairs.
She wasn’t sure how much longer she could stay without wearing out her welcome. If the goat’s milk agreed with the baby, they wouldn’t need her anymore, so this might be her last chance to learn anything of interest. The third floor was quiet. She found the baby sleeping peacefully in Joe and Maria’s bedroom, and no one was in the parlor. Perhaps Mrs. Ruocco had gone down to the second floor where her bedroom must be. The family probably had another sitting room down there as well. Counting up the members of the family, Sarah realized Lorenzo’s bedroom must also be on the second floor. Of course, any of them could have slipped into Nainsi’s room and smothered her in the night. It was a silent crime. Or anyone could have come up the back stairs from the street below and no one would have heard, either.
Sarah was standing in the hallway, considering all the possibilities when a door opened behind her. She turned to see Maria emerge from Valentina’s bedroom. Her hair was mussed and her face puffy from sleep.
“Mrs. Brandt,” she said in alarm. “Is something wrong?
Is the baby all right?”
“He’s fine. He woke up, and we fed him some goat’s milk, and now he’s sleeping peacefully again.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” she asked in dismay. “I would have helped you.”
“Mrs. Ruocco helped me,” Sarah reported with a smile.
“Mama?” Maria didn’t believe her.
“She even rocked him for a while,” Sarah told her. “I think she may be starting to like him.”
Maria stared at her for a long moment, uncomprehending.
Then her eyes filled with tears, and she started to cry. Sarah slipped an arm around her shoulders and led her into the parlor. By then she was fairly sobbing, and Sarah seated them both on the sofa, patting her back and murmuring words of comfort. She’d seen many new mothers reduced to tears after a sleepless night or two. Maria may not have given birth to this baby, but she’d experienced everything else—the doubts and the fears and the numbing exhaustion and the despair of not being able to soothe the little one’s anguish and pain.
She’d also experienced her sister-in-law’s murder and a near riot at her doorstep. Maria had earned the right to weep.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she sobbed. “I did not dream it would be like this.”
“Of course not, but you’re doing very well at being a mother, Maria.”
“I want a baby of my own,” she said, scrubbing the tears from her cheeks. “I always want one, as long as I live, but it does not come. Then Nainsi marries Antonio. She is a foolish girl, but I am happy for her. I am happy to have a baby in the house. I think I will help her take care of her baby and play with it. He will love his Zia Maria more than anyone.
But I did not want her to die!”
She started sobbing again, and Sarah murmured words of comfort. “Of course you didn’t, but it was very generous of you to take him. Not many women would, under the circumstances.”
“What else can I do?” she asked between sobs. “I cannot let that woman have him, and . . . and he is my only chance to have a baby of my own.”
“Oh, Maria, you shouldn’t give up hope yet,” Sarah said kindly. “You’re still young, and—”
“No, it will not happen for me,” she insisted. When she looked up at Sarah, the tears had stopped and her eyes were dark with anger. “Joe, he . . . he does not come to me anymore. I will never have a child . . . except for this one.”
Sarah’s heart ached for Maria’s humiliating secret pain, and for the circumstances that had caused her to reveal it to a stranger.
“If he’s going to be your son, you should find a name for him,” Sarah said in an effort to distract her from her unpleasant thoughts.
It worked. The anger drained from her face. “A name,”
she echoed in wonder. “I didn’t think of that.”
“You can’t call him ‘baby’ forever,” Sarah said with a smile. “Is there someone you’d like to name him after?”
She considered for a moment. “Maybe,” she said with a touch of irony, “we should name him for his father.”
Gino Donatelli was much too cheerful for Frank’s taste. Frank couldn’t even remember being that young and excited about working on his first big case. Maybe he never had been. Gino, however, was taking great pleasure in having been selected to assist Frank with the mysteries of Little Italy.
They’d met at a coffee shop a safe distance from Little Italy, where they wouldn’t encounter any of Ugo Ruocco’s crew.
“As soon as Commissioner Roosevelt assigned me to this case, I started asking around about the Ruocco boys,” Gino was saying.
“And you found out they’re good Catholic boys who never got into any trouble and who respect their mother,” Frank guessed.
“How did you know?” Gino asked in surprised.
Frank sighed. “Did you find out anything useful?”
“Well, everybody knows that Mrs. Ruocco and her brother-in-law don’t get along too well. They even say . . .”
He glanced around to make sure nobody was listening, then leaned in closer and lowered his voice to a whisper. “They say he makes her pay protection money just like everybody else.”
Frank swore in surprise. “I guess that would explain why she doesn’t like him.”
“He gets along good with the rest of the family, though,”
Gino added. “Ugo never had any kids of his own, so he dotes on his niece and nephews. He spoils Valentina rotten, and he’s always getting the boys out of trouble, starting with ten years ago when Joe and Lorenzo knocked over a pushcart. A bunch of Jews chased them through the streets until they ran into Ugo’s saloon. So now whenever they have a problem, they go to Zio Ugo, and he takes care of it.”
“And we know Joe and Antonio went straight to Ugo the night Nainsi’s baby was born.” Frank rubbed the bridge of his nose. He’d thought he had trouble when it looked like one of the Ruocco family members had killed the girl. If Ugo had sent one of his henchmen, they’d never solve the case.
“We’re going to have to visit the Ruoccos and find out exactly what happened the night the girl was killed.”
“Right now?” Donatelli asked hopefully.
“No. We’ll wait until they’re too busy to object.”
7
Maria had washed her face and regained her com-posure. She’d seemed a bit embarrassed about her earlier outburst, but she quickly recovered and began to ply Sarah with questions about caring for the baby. While they talked, Maria picked up a half-finished baby shirt and absently started stitching on it.
