and Sarah winced.
“Mrs. Brandt?” the officer asked, peering at her in the shadows. “Is that you?” Practically all the policemen at Headquarters knew her from her association with Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy.
“Yes,” she said, reluctantly stepping forward and trying to look more confident than she felt.
“Do you know what’s going on?”
“I delivered a baby here yesterday, to Mrs. O’Hara’s daughter,” she added, gesturing to the older woman. “She was married to Mrs. Ruocco’s son, Antonio. This morning, she was dead. I’m not sure why she died—”
“They killed her, that’s why!” Mrs. O’Hara screeched, and all the Ruoccos began yelling in protest.
The officer had to shout and push the Ruoccos back when they tried to attack Mrs. O’Hara. “Quiet, the lot of you!” he hollered several times before order was restored. “I got to find out what happened here. If I don’t . . .” He glanced meaningfully over his shoulder at the curious crowd gathered outside.
Virtually all the faces were Italian, so Sarah didn’t think they’d riot over the death of an Irish girl, but who knew what could happen? Riots had started over much less.
Sarah turned to Mrs. Ruocco. “I have a friend who is a police detective. He’ll be fair, and he’ll find out what really happened to Nainsi.”
Mrs. Ruocco frowned suspiciously. “He is Italian?”
“Well, no,” Sarah had to admit. Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt had opened the ranks of the New York City Police Department to people of all ethnic groups, but she didn’t think they had any Italian detectives yet. “He . . .
he’s Irish, but I promise you he’ll be fair,” she hastily added.
Mrs. Ruocco made a rude noise. “Do what you want,” she told the policeman. “Lorenzo, go find . . .” She hesitated, her face twisting with distaste before she finished. “Go find Uncle Ugo. Tell him come right away.”
Sarah winced, and the policeman visibly paled. Ugo Ruocco was a prominent member of the community, too.
But not in a good way. Rumor said he was the leader of the notorious gang of thugs known as the Black Hand.
Sarah turned to the policeman. “You’d better get Detective Sergeant Malloy, now.”
3
Frank Malloy hoped he could refrain from strangling Sarah Brandt when he saw her. How many times had he told her not to get involved in crimes? She seemed to attract trouble like a magnet, though. Too bad Little Italy was only a few blocks from Police Headquarters. A longer walk might’ve helped him calm down a little. Pushing his way through the crowd that had gathered in the street didn’t im-prove his mood either. He strode into Mama’s Restaurant in full fury.
What he found knocked the fury right out of him and made him want to turn tail and run flat out to the nearest gang of criminals armed with brickbats and rocks. At least he knew how to handle them. He absolutely hated hysterical females, and this room was full of them.
“Malloy,” a familiar voice said over the din. “Thank heaven you’re here.”
His anger flickered to life again as he turned to see Sarah Brandt coming toward him. “Don’t blame heaven,” he told her grimly. “It’s your fault I’m here.”
She didn’t look the least bit repentant. “You’re the only one I could trust to handle this.”
He winced at the caterwauling of the other women. “I’ll have to introduce you to some other detectives real soon, then.”
She ignored his sarcasm. “Malloy, a young woman died here mysteriously last night. Well, she was just a girl, actually. I delivered her baby yesterday, and this morning when I got here, she was dead.”
Frank felt the old familiar wave of pain threatening to wash over him. His wife Kathleen had died in childbirth.
No wonder these women were grief-stricken. But what had Sarah said about how the girl died?
“What do you mean, she died mysteriously?” he asked.
“I’m not really sure, but . . .” She lowered her voice and leaned in closer so no one would overhear. “She didn’t die from the normal complications women die of in childbirth, and I saw some things that made me suspicious.”
“What things?” he asked, taking her by the arm and leading her farther away from the family.
“I’ll have to show you, but . . . I’m afraid that she may have been murdered,” she whispered.
“Here, in this house?” Malloy asked. He knew the Ruocco family. Everyone in the neighborhood did, and he’d eaten here a hundred times.
She nodded.
“That’s impossible. Why would anybody kill a woman who just gave birth?” For Italians, a new baby was the hap-piest event in their lives.
“They were very angry with her. When it was born, they realized the baby didn’t belong to her husband.”
Frank had seen newborn babies. They all looked the same, like tiny, squalling old men, and you couldn’t tell anything about them, certainly not who their fathers were. “How would they know that?”
“It’s a long story, but the mother was an Irish girl who’d married Antonio Ruocco because she was in a family way and—”
“Irish, you say?” Frank could hear the warning bells ringing in his head.
“Yes, she was Irish, and they knew the baby wasn’t Antonio’s because—”
“Wait,” Frank said, stopping her with a raised hand.
He looked around the room again and realized they were all staring at his Irish face with naked hostility, even the Irish woman sitting alone in the far corner of the room.
And the women had stopped crying. The silence was eerie.
An Irish girl in an Italian household who’d made someone angry enough to kill her.
He went back to the front door, opened it, and gave an order to the cop who was standing guard to make sure nobody in the crowd got too rowdy. The fellow took off at a run.
When he closed the door and turned back, Sarah Brandt was one step in front of him.
“Where’s he going?” she demanded.
“For help,” he replied.
“Help?” she echoed in amazement, but he didn’t bother to enlighten her. He needed as much information as he could get as quickly as possible.
“Now tell me exactly what happened,” he said.
“They killed my girl is what happened,” the Irish woman cried.
That set off the Ruoccos again, and they all started yelling at once in two languages, with the Irish woman yelling right back. Luckily, Frank had lots of experience dealing with unruly crowds, and this one wasn’t even armed. It took a few minutes, but he finally got them settled down again and cowed enough to stay that way, for a little while anyway. He knew he couldn’t question Sarah in front of them, though.
“Is there someplace where we can talk in private?” he asked her.
“The kitchen,” she said, pointing.
He followed her, and as he passed Mrs. Ruocco, he said,
“I sent for another policeman. Let me know when he gets here.”
She gave him a withering glare, letting him know exactly what she thought of him and the rest of the Irish policemen.
Frank sighed with relief as the kitchen door swung shut behind him. “Now tell me what happened, from the beginning.”
“I came here yesterday to deliver a baby. I didn’t even know that Antonio had gotten married—”
“The girl married Antonio?” he asked. “He’s just a kid!”
“So was she,” Sarah said grimly. “They’d only been married a few months, a little over five, I think. That’s why they were frightened when they called me. They thought the baby was coming too early.”
“You said they got married because she was in a family way?”
“That’s right, but she was supposed to only be about seven months along. That’s how long she’d known
