Sofia's Tune (24 page)

This kid knew nothing. He looked an awfully lot like the dishwasher at Giovanni’s. What a shame he stooped to such ill-advised behavior. He heard Lu barking as he climbed back up toward his apartment. He would put on his MacIntosh and go ask questions over at St. Anthony’s.

After donning his raincoat and gathering up his dog, who at least served as a watchdog should someone try to surprise him again, Antonio paused with his hand on the doorknob. Nicco might seem like a crazy old coot, but he’d been right about someone looking for him. He glanced back toward the bed. “What do you think, Lu? Since the thugs know I’m here, should I bring it along? For safekeeping?”

The dog gave an approving bark.

Antonio hurried to the bed, leaned over, and retrieved the accordion case. “Might be foolish, but it’s the only thing my father hung on to. Might be made of money or something.”

Nicco wasn’t at St. Anthony’s and neither was the regular attendant.

“Mario’s got the night off,” a man with a walrus mustache said.

“Do you know who the janitor was last night?”

“Davy.” He nodded to a Chinaman who was picking up discarded newspapers and stuffing them into a barrel. “He’s the only janitor I know of.”

“His name’s not Davy.”

The man picked up his damp copy of the
Times
. “Is to me.”

Antonio called out to the janitor. “You there.”

The man looked up, surprised. “You here last night? You see another fellow pushing a mop around the lobby here?”

The mustached man chuckled. “That won’t do you no good. Davy doesn’t speak English.”

The janitor shrugged and went back to his work.

Frustrated, Antonio put a hand on the newspaper to pull it down from the man’s face. “Well, how do you talk to him?”

The man grimaced at the wet handprint Antonio made across the front page. “Good thing I already read that part. Blasted weather we’re having.”

Antonio clicked his tongue and Lu followed him to the door.

The attendant called out to him. “I just point and he does what I need. I’m telling you, there’s no other janitor.”

A spy then. Antonio had been gullible. He wanted to go back to the Italian bank and have a word with the
padrone
there, get him to fill in the holes in what Nicco had been saying, but what would that do other than get him a bloody nose? He would not fall for a trap, having surely escaped one at Ward’s Island without knowing it.

His father had no money. Someone was after him for no reason, or for misguided reasons, and he was helpless to stop them without more information.

His father’s mysterious death.

A handful of nonsensical clues from his often drunk uncle.

A few puzzling anonymous notes.

A worthless accordion that seemed to be the most important but most ridiculous clue.

A beautiful young woman who had her own mysterious connection to the Italian
padroni
.

A nun who was so distracted all the time that if she did know something Antonio would have a devil of a time getting it out of her.

“Come on, Lu. We’re going to see the sister again in her nice warm kitchen.” He patted Lu’s damp head. At least he had a smart, obedient dog. Lu let out an approving yip and they went back out into the rain, the accordion case thumping against Antonio’s thigh, making him feel like a fool on a fool’s errand.

That nun knows more than she is saying
.

Chapter 28

Mrs. Hawkins hung up her apron on a kitchen wall peg. “I will go next door right now and telephone. I’m so pleased that Annie and Stephen are close by. That nosey neighbor on the other side, whose telephone I used to borrow, was turning into a busybody. Even if she is an excellent baker, I prefer the company of those young people.”

Aileen collected the teacups. “You should get your own telephone, Mrs. Hawkins. They really are quite handy contraptions.”

“So your cousin Annie likes to remind me, love. But, she has one so why go to the trouble?”

After she left, Sofia helped Aileen wash up from tea. “My priest says there are doctors on Long Island that are very good with…uh, that can help people like Mamma. Perhaps Mrs. Hawkins or her doctor know of them.”

Aileen flipped a ticking-striped towel over her shoulder and headed to the dish cabinet. “It always amazes me how many people The Hawk knows. She’s quite a wonder. Sofia, do you mean to say your mother is suffering from what people in America call poor mental hygiene?”

“I suppose so. Such odd phrases Americans have for things.”

Aileen chuckled. “Indeed they do.”

“Whatever you call it, Mamma’s condition was caused by something that happened long ago. Usually, for most of the year, she is fine.”

“Some kind of trauma, so.”

“
Sì
. We have to help her get over it and then she will be well. We will be
una famiglia
again.”

“The people in Ireland? A great many have poor mental hygiene. We liked to call it Irish crazies. And some, like my da, handle it by finding the bottom of a whiskey glass. I hope the new doctors can do something. I truly do.”

“
Grazie
. Thank you.”

***

It was approaching the dinner hour. Antonio had little time to see the Sister. He needed to be at the music hall over on 23rd Street by eight. He didn’t want to be late for the new job Mac found for him if he could help it. Mac had given Antonio some music and that was what he’d been practicing before his worries about Nicco drove him to make the journey uptown.He hummed the notes to himself, hoping he had learned the piece well enough. He’d be playing for something called ragtime opera. It sounded ludicrous, but he actually enjoyed the music composed by a man of color from St. Louis. The song titled
Swipsey
was quite pleasant.

His mind wandered between keeping his job and protecting Nicco and himself from some Italian gang thugs. At times it all seemed too much. This was what it meant to be a man, he supposed. He needed to get this settled on his own terms and not because of the kid who visited his apartment or because of some handwritten messages. If he missed his set and lost pay, well…he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Antonio was determined, however, not to be sent to slaughter like his father had been. He would do what he had to do.

The rain settled into a steady rhythm, no longer sending a pelting assault against Antonio’s back. The Most Precious Blood Church’s outside walls were gray with dampness, but the structure had been built well. He imagined it would long stand proud and invincible. He adjusted the accordion strap over his shoulder and knocked on the kitchen door.

“
Avanti
!” The woman he’d met before, Sofia’s aunt, hauled him through the doorway. “And the little dog, too. No beast should be out in this rain.” She apologized for the muddy floors and water stained cabinets. “We were flooded. We only now make things nice again.”

“I do not mean to intrude.” Workmen pulled off ruined boards and hammered on wainscoting and cabinet doors. The place was anything but the quiet kitchen he’d hoped for.

“No intrude,
signore
. There is always welcome in our Father’s house.”

He pulled off his coat. “I should help.” He grabbed a mop and ordered Luigi to wait by the table.

After an hour of sponging up floodwater and picking up scraps of leftover wood wainscoting, he was finally able to tell the sister why he’d come. Lu sat licking a soup bone by the door as the sister poured two small cups of deeply dark coffee. Espresso. A treat.

“Sister, I would like to know about this
padrone
, the one you say has caused trouble for families.”

“For yours?”

“Why, yes, mine it seems, but also for yours, as you told me earlier.”

“You go to the bank?”

“No. Well, yes, but he was not there. I was going to go back, however, I felt compelled not to. Not until I know more.”

A worker returned, bounding down the stairs toward the kitchen, muttering in Italian. Antonio thought he’d said he was returning for a forgotten tool but his Italian was less than proficient.

“
Avanti
, Joseph,” the sister called out. “Come meet my friend.”

She whispered over her coffee cup. “Sofia’s brother. Always looking for work. I send him to the priest. Joseph does very good construction work.”

Antonio turned toward the stairs as the man descended, at first only his feet and legs visible. When his lean form passed below the overhang, he and Antonio gazed at each other. It was the thug who had accosted him just hours earlier. “You move around neighborhoods very quickly, Joseph,” Antonio said, breaking the stunned silence.

The sister reached for Antonio’s arm. “You know each other?”

The man backed up the stairs and hurried off. Antonio ran after him, Luigi barking at his heels. Without his Macintosh, Antonio was soaked in minutes. The kid called Joseph slipped and fell in front of a line of waste barrels, allowing Antonio to catch up. He grabbed the rascal and hauled him upright. “What is this about? You better tell me right now. I am tired of the shenanigans. Decent people have more to do with their lives than go around threatening strangers. You’re the dishwasher, aren’t you?”

“Only a hired hand.”

“Well, you better look for more respectable work, fella.”

Someone pulled Antonio off the thug, and shoved a fist into his jaw. He went down to the pavement hard and a pain shot through his arm. Then another blow to his stomach. He looked up and in the gray light he thought he saw two, maybe three men. A strike to his ribs. Another to his thigh and then blackness.

He woke up back in the sister’s kitchen, lying on a cot next to the coal stove wearing just his shirt and trousers. His wet suit coat had been hung over a chair next to him and his Macintosh dripped from a wooden hanger on the wall. He clicked his tongue. His jaw hurt.

“Where’s my dog?”

Movement from the far corner made him try to look that way, but his head pounded and shards of pain rose up his leg from knee to hip.

He heard the sister’s voice. “Joseph helped get you inside. I am very sorry for this trouble,
Signor
Baggio.”

“Joseph needs another line of work. My dog, Sister?”

“I call for him, but he not come. Those foolish boys. Will they ever learn that a stranger to the neighborhood is good and welcome? Not to be feared.” She moved into his line of vision, shouting in Italian so rapidly that he could only snatch the meaning from a portion of what she said. She was miffed but only as much as she’d be if young boys had tracked mud onto the kitchen floor tiles.

“My dog, he’s not here?”

“I believe he has run off,
signore
. He will come back,
sì
? He knows his master’s voice, not mine. So he did not return to me. You rest, and then you go look for him. He will come back. You will see.”

Antonio moved slowly to a sitting position. “Your nephew, Joseph?”

“He was not the one who hit you.”

“No, he was not. He ran from me, though. I saw him earlier, at my home. He came to warn me.” Antonio did not want to speak badly about this woman’s family. He needed information from her.

“The other ones, they cause trouble. Those boys need something to do so they are not loitering around. I tell Father Lucci, but there is only so much he can do. They should get work, like Joey tries to do, just not from the
padrone
.”

A cough came from a shadowed corner.

The nun held out her hand. “Luisa, come here, child.” She turned to Antonio. “A neighborhood girl, so helpful. She shook out your coat.”

The girl slowly emerged. Her large dark eyes showed fear.

“
Grazie
,” Antonio said, nodding.

The girl, a teenager he estimated, did not reply. She tiptoed up the stairs and out the door.

Antonio turned to Sister Stefania. “The
Padrone
. Yes, that is why I came.” He noticed the woman staring at something near the ceiling. He looked up too. A Victrola sat on top of the icebox, not where one would expect to find a music machine.

“To save it from the rains,” she said.

He glanced around for the accordion and spotted it next to the table where he’d been drinking coffee. If someone wanted what his father had—this instrument, as though it was a Stradivarius or something of true value—Joseph could have forced his way into Antonio’s apartment. Just now he could have barged in and stolen it from the nuns’ kitchen. The men following Nicco could have taken it from him long ago. They wanted money, they’d said. If this instrument held the secret to what they wanted, they obviously didn’t know.

“Sister, if you know why someone is after me, if you know anything about my father, I beg you to tell me.”

“All I know comes from following my Master’s voice.”

“Excuse me?”

“I cannot help you,
signor
.”

She cannot help
.

Antonio had to find Luigi. As he prepared to leave, he stared at the case, thought about the way the instrument was a moveable box of sorts. He wondered.