such relish. But Sara’s adventurous spirit had never been much tempered by prudence. Furthermore, she had experience with the area: right after Sara’s graduation from college, her family had gotten the idea that her education might be fully balanced by some firsthand experience of life in places other than Rhinebeck (where the Howards’ country estate was located) and Gramercy Park. So she put on a starched white blouse, a dreary black skirt, and a rather ridiculous boater and spent the summer assisting a visiting nurse in the Tenth Ward. During those months she saw a great deal—most, indeed, of what the Lower East Side could throw at a person. None of it, however, was any worse than what we were bound for that day.
The Santorellis lived in a rear tenement a few blocks below Canal Street. Rear tenements had been outlawed in 1894, but there had been a grandfather clause in the bill, so that those that already existed were allowed to remain standing with minimal improvement. Suffice it to say that if a tenement building that fronted the street was dark, disease-ridden, and threatening, the smaller buildings that often stood behind them—in place of a yard that might have brought at least a bit more air and light to the block—were exponentially more so. By the look of the particular front tenement we pulled up before that day, we were in for a typical experience: huge barrels of ash and waste stood by the urine-soaked stoop of the structure, on which was gathered a group of filthy, rag-clad men, each indistinguishable from the next. They were drinking and laughing among themselves, but they stopped abruptly at the sight of the calash and Cyrus. Sara and I stepped out and onto the curb.
“Don’t wander too far, Cyrus,” I said, trying not to betray my jitters.
“No, sir,” he answered, gripping the pommel of his horse-whip tightly. With his other hand he reached into the pocket of his greatcoat. “Perhaps you should take these, Mr. Moore.” He produced a set of brass knuckles.
“Hmm,” I noised, studying the weapon. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” Then I dropped the sham. “Besides, I wouldn’t know how to use them.”
“Hurry, John,” Sara said, and then we mounted the stoop.
“Here!” One of the loitering men grabbed my arm. “D’you know there’s a coon driving your rig?”
“Is there?” I answered, guiding Sara through the almost visible stench that hovered around the men.
“Black as the ace of spades!” another of the men asserted, seemingly astonished.
“Remarkable,” I replied, as Sara got inside. Before I could follow, the first man grabbed me again.
“You’re not another cop, are you?” he asked menacingly.
“Absolutely not,” I answered. “I despise cops.”
The man nodded once but said nothing, from which I divined that I was allowed to pass.
To get to the rear building it was necessary to navigate the pitch-black hallway of the front structure: always an unsettling experience. With Sara in the lead we felt our way along the filthy walls, trying but failing to adjust to the lack of light. I started when Sara stumbled on something; and I started even more violently when that something began to wail.
“Good lord, John,” Sara said after a moment. “It’s a baby.”
I still couldn’t see a thing, but as I got closer the smell gave it away—a baby, all right, and the poor creature must have been covered in its own excrement.
“We’ve got to get it help,” Sara said, and I thought of the men on the stoop. When I looked back toward the front door, however, I saw them silhouetted against the snowfall outside, swinging sticks as they watched us, and occasionally laughing in a very unpleasant way. There would be no help from that quarter, so I began to try doors inside the hall. Finally finding one that would open, I pulled Sara toward and through it.
Inside were an old man and woman, ragpickers, who would only accept the baby after I offered them a half- dollar. They told us that the infant belonged to a couple across the hall who were out, as they were every day and night, jabbing morphine and drinking in a dive around the corner. The old man assured us that they would get the baby something to eat and clean it up, at which Sara gave them another dollar. Neither of us was under any illusions as to how much good a cleaning and feeding would do the child in the long run (I suppose you could argue that we were simply easing our own consciences), but it was one of those all-too-common moments in New York when one is faced with a damnable set of options.
Finally, we reached the back door. The alleyway between the front and rear buildings was overflowing with more barrels and buckets full of garbage and sewage, and the smell was indescribable. Sara placed a handkerchief over her nose and mouth and told me to do the same. Then we ran across to the ground-floor hallway of the rear building. There were four apartments with what seemed like a thousand people living in them on the first floor. I tried to identify all the languages being spoken, but lost count at about eight. A smelly collection of Germans with growlers of beer were camped on the staircase, and they parted grudgingly as we went up. It was evident, even in the half-light, that the stairs were coated with almost an inch of something extremely sticky that I didn’t want to investigate. It didn’t seem to bother the Germans.
The Santorelli flat was on the second floor in the back: the darkest spot in the whole building. When we knocked, a small, horribly thin woman with sunken eyes answered the door, speaking the Sicilian dialect. I knew only enough Italian for the opera, but Sara was better off—again because of her nursing days—and communicated quite easily. Mrs. Santorelli was not at all alarmed to see Sara (in fact she seemed to have been expecting her); but she expressed much concern over my presence, fearfully demanding to know if I was either a policeman or a journalist. Sara had to think fast, and said I was her assistant. Mrs. Santorelli looked puzzled at that, but finally let us in.
“Sara,” I said as we entered, “do you know this woman?”
“No,” she answered, “but she seems to know me. Strange.”
The flat was composed of two rooms without any real windows, just small slits that had recently been cut in the walls to comply with new tenement regulations concerning ventilation. The Santorellis had rented one of the rooms to another family of Sicilians, which meant that six of them—the parents and Giorgio’s four brothers and sisters—lived in a space about nine feet by sixteen. There was nothing hanging on the bare, soot-encrusted walls, and two big buckets in the corners took care of sanitation. The family also had a kerosene stove, of the inexpensive type that so often used to put an end to such buildings.
Lying on an old, stained mattress in one corner and wrapped in what blankets they had was the cause of Mrs. Santorelli’s great agitation: her husband. His face was cut, bruised, and swollen, and his forehead was drenched in sweat. There was a bloody rag lying next to him, and, incongruously, a bound wad of money, which must have amounted to several hundred dollars. Mrs. Santorelli took up the wad, shoved it at Sara, and then urged her at the husband, tears starting to stream down her face.
We soon discovered that Mrs. Santorelli believed Sara to be a nurse. She had dispatched her four children to find one only an hour earlier. Again thinking quickly, Sara sat and began to examine Santorelli, quickly discovering that one of his arms was fractured. In addition, most of his torso was covered in bruises.
“John,” Sara said firmly, “send Cyrus for bandages, disinfectant, and some morphine. Tell him we’ll want a good clean piece of wood to use as a splint, as well.”
In what seemed one movement I was out the door, through the Germans and the alleyway, and down the stoop to the curb. I shouted the order to Cyrus, who sped off in the calash, and as I went back through the men on the stoop one of them held a hand to my chest.
“Just a minute,” he said. “What’s all that for?”
“Mr. Santorelli,” I answered. “He’s badly hurt.”
The man spat hard at the street. “Damned cops. I hate those damned guineas, but I’ll tell you, I hate cops more!”
This recurring theme seemed once again to be the signal for me to proceed. Back upstairs, Sara had gotten hold of some hot water and was washing Santorelli’s wounds. The wife was still chattering, waving her hands and occasionally bursting into tears.
“There were six men, John,” Sara said to me, after listening for a few minutes.
“Six?” I echoed. “I thought you said two.”
Sara indicated the bed with a jerk of her head. “Come over here and help me—she’ll be suspicious, otherwise.” Sitting down, I found that it was difficult to say which smelled worse, the mattress or Santorelli. But none of it seemed to bother Sara. “Connor and Casey were definitely here,” she said. “Along with two other men and two priests.”
“Priests?” I said, taking up a hot compress. “What in hell—”
“One Catholic, apparently, and one not. She can’t be more specific about the second. The priests had the money. They told the Santorellis to use some of it to pay for a decent burial for Giorgio. The rest was a—
