that.”
“So you decided to leave your family alone and unprotected,” Frank said, the criticism thick in his voice.
“I already told you, it wasn’t my idea! Maria is the one who said we should go in the first place.”
Maria? Frank hadn’t even considered her a suspect. She was desperate to keep the baby, though, so it made sense.
“Are you saying it was Maria’s idea for you to go to Mrs. O’Hara’s?”
“Mrs. O’Hara?” he echoed stupidly. “You mean Nainsi’s mother? Why would we go to her place?”
“I can think of at least one reason,” Frank said. “To kill her.”
“Kill her?” he squeaked. “What’re you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how you and Joe went out last night and murdered Mrs. O’Hara so she wouldn’t be able to stir up any more trouble for your family.”
Antonio gaped at him. “We never . . . We didn’t go anywhere near her place last night!”
“Where did you go then?”
“To a . . . a dance house. I know it don’t look good for us to do that, but we did, I swear it!”
“You will, will you?” Frank asked with interest. “Because a cop followed you to the dance house, but when I got there, you were gone.”
“But we were there all night, until midnight!” he claimed frantically. “Lots of people were there. They’ll tell you!”
“I was there, too, Antonio, but I didn’t see you or Joe.
Now tell me where you really went.”
“I told you! We . . . Oh, wait! I remember now,” he said, his shoulders sagging with relief. “We went to the one on Broadway first, but we didn’t stay. Joe saw someone he didn’t like, and he said we should leave. We went down to Broome Street then. Ask them there! They’ll tell you!”
He gave Donatelli a silent order, and he slipped out to send someone to the dance house on Broome Street to see if anyone remembered seeing the Ruocco brothers.
Frank turned back to Antonio. The boy was sweating, and his eyes were still wild with fright.
“Let me get this straight,” Frank began, still keeping his voice neutral. “Maria sent her own husband out to a dance house?”
Antonio licked his lips. He’d lied about that, and now he was trying to figure out how to tell a better lie.
“The truth, Antonio. Don’t make me angry.”
The boy swallowed loudly. “She didn’t say to go to a dance house,” he admitted.
“What did she say?”
“She said I was making her nervous. She . . . she told Joe to take me someplace out of her sight.”
“What were you doing to make her nervous?”
“Nothing! She’s just . . . Mama says she’s worried about the baby. She yells at everybody for every little thing. Even when Mama said Joe and I should stay home, in case something happened, Maria didn’t listen to her. She started screaming at Joe, so we left. I was glad to get away from her.” He looked it, too.
“Why go to a dance house then? You could’ve gone to Ugo’s saloon.”
Antonio winced. “I didn’t want him telling me again how stupid I was for marrying Nainsi. Anyway, Joe said we’d have fun at a dance house.”
“Just like you used to, before you married Nainsi,” Frank suggested.
“Yeah, that’s right. The girls are real friendly, and they think I’m handsome. They don’t care how close you hold them, either.”
“Were you looking for another girl who’d let you under her skirt like Nainsi did?” Frank inquired.
Antonio had the grace to blush. “No girl’s going to trick me like that again!”
“So you’re going to take a vow of celibacy and become a priest, Antonio?”
“No! I’m just . . . I’m going to be careful. I’m going to marry a good girl, like Joe did.”
“I don’t suppose Joe met Maria in a dance house.”
“No! Maria would never go to a place like that.”
“How did Joe meet her?” Frank asked curiously.
“Mama found her. She knows Maria’s family, and she thought Maria would be a good wife for Joe.”
“Is she going to find a wife for you and Lorenzo, too?”
“Yeah! She . . . Well, Lorenzo says he doesn’t want a wife, but when I’m older, she’ll find me one.”
“Does Lorenzo intend to take holy orders?” Frank asked with interest.
“No, he . . . he just doesn’t want to get married, that’s all.”
“Doesn’t want to settle down, I suppose. Is he having too much fun being single?”
“I . . . I guess so,” Antonio admitted, uncomfortable with discussing his brother.
Frank remembered that Lorenzo had taken Antonio to the dance houses in the first place. “How did you meet Nainsi?”
Antonio blinked at the sudden change of subject. “I don’t know. I just saw her and asked her to dance.”
“Did someone introduce you?”
He frowned at Frank’s ignorance. “That’s not what happens in those places. The girls, they just come up and start talking to you. You take your pick of them.”
“Why did you pick Nainsi?”
“I told you, she came up and started talking to me.
When the music started up, we just started dancing.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t remember!”
“What month?” Frank prodded.
“I told you before, it was August, right after Valentina’s birthday.”
“How long was it before she let you under her skirt?”
Antonio hesitated, and a flush crawled up his neck.
“Was it that first night? The first time you met her?”
Frank inquired.
“No! I mean . . .”
“What do you mean?”
He swallowed hard again. “She didn’t let me really do it that time.”
“But she teased you, didn’t she? Let you kiss her and touch her. And she didn’t make you wait very long, did she?”
The flush had turned his face red by now. “No, not long,” he admitted sadly.
“She couldn’t wait long because she already knew about the baby,” Frank said. “She needed a husband real quick, somebody who didn’t know much and wouldn’t ask a lot of questions.”
“She said she loved me,” Antonio lamented. “She said she never let any boy do it before.”
“Of course she did, and you believed her because you’re young and stupid. I guess you were scared when she told you about the baby, too.”
Antonio winced in shame. “I didn’t know what to do, so I went to Joe. He said I should do the right thing and marry her. Maria did, too.”
“Maria knew about Nainsi and the baby?” Frank asked in surprise.
“Maria knows everything that happens in our house,”
Antonio said. “Nobody can keep a secret from her.”
Frank considered this information. Nainsi could’ve tricked Antonio, but Joe and Maria should have been more suspicious. He wondered why they’d encouraged a marriage like that. That was something to ask them, however.
“Where did you and Joe go last night after you left the dance house at midnight?”
“Home. Where else would we go?”
“I suppose everyone was asleep when you got there,”
Frank said.
“Maria was up with the baby. And Lorenzo.”
“Lorenzo was up with the baby?” Frank asked in amazement.
