Tell Me, Pretty Maiden (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #7)

“I think you find them on One Hundred Twentieth, but I’d stay away if I was you. Nothing but trouble those Sicilianos.”


I ignored the second warning that day. What harm could come to me walking down a street in daylight, especially an Italian street, with so much life going on. I walked until I came to 120th Street. It seemed quieter here. Two old women dressed head to toe in black were walking together, heads down, carrying shopping baskets. A group of men stood on a stoop in animated conversation, expressing themselves with their hands as much as their mouths. From their raised voices, I expected them to break into a fight at any moment, but then one of them laughed, so I supposed the discussion had been good-natured after all.

I didn’t feel like approaching them with my question—after all, they might have been involved with the Sicilian gang themselves. And the old women obviously didn’t speak English. Then I saw a figure I could approach—a young Catholic priest, his long cassock swishing along the ground as he walked.

I crossed the road to speak to him.

“Sicilians? Yes, it’s mainly Sicilians on this street,” he said, “all the way down to the corner grocery. After that it’s Milanese.”

“I read in the papers that there was a raid on a house around here last night,” I said.

He frowned. “And what interest might you have in that? Just morbid curiosity? Not wise in neighborhoods like this.”

“I have a personal interest,” I said. “I believe this gang kidnapped a friend of mine. I wanted to know whether a young girl was found in the house when the police raided it.”

He looked grave now. “I survive well with these people because I don’t go sticking my nose into their business,” he said. “This is a serious charge you’re making.”

“I’m not making it up. It’s true. They came to my house and took her away. They claimed they were her relatives. I’ve been so worried about her.”

“You should ask the police who conducted the raid what they found,” he said. Clearly he wasn’t going to be of any help.

“Can you at least tell me which house it was?”

“I believe it was number twenty-nine. On the next street,” he said. “There’s nobody there now. The place is empty. They carted off the lot of them. But they’ll be out right away. They’re wily, these Sicilians. And they’d never get anybody to testify against them—nobody who wants to stay alive, that is.”

I thanked him and made my way to the next street. The whole street had an empty air to it after the noise and bustle of Second Avenue. Twenty-nine looked like any other house in the row—newish red brick with white trim around the windows. I stood gazing up at it, wondering what to do next. Then farther down the street I saw a door open and a woman came out to shake out a cloth. I ran over to her.

“That house.” I pointed. “The police come last night?”

She frowned. I couldn’t tell if she didn’t understand me or didn’t want to talk.

Then a male voice from inside yelled something and a big man in undershirt and braces stood beside her in the doorway.

“What you want?” he demanded.

“I’m asking about the house over there. The police came and took the men away.”

“Stupido,” he muttered. “The polizia—they can’t do nothing. What they think they can do, huh? These men are Cosa Nostra. The police—they no touch them.”

“We’ll see,” I said. “Did you see the raid yourselves? There was a young girl. Did the police find a young girl?”

The man directed rapid-fire questions at his wife. She responded and then put her hand to her forehead in an international symbol meaning crazy. I looked at the man, waiting for an explanation.

“She say young girl—they come and take her before. To the crazy house. The crazy wagon come.”

“The crazy house? You mean the insane asylum?” Hope surged through me. She wasn’t dead. She was probably in the safest place in the country right now.

“Si. One, two days before.”

“Thank you.” I shook his hand, then his wife’s.

I knew where at least one asylum was, and that was on Ward’s Island. Now all I had to do was find out exactly where Ward’s Island was and how to get to it. I made my way down to the dock on 125th where I knew that ferries docked.

“Ward’s Island?”

The sailor I asked laughed. “You’re looking at it. If the water wasn’t so cold, you could swim across. There’s a little ferry, down a ways. Keep walking and you’ll see the sign.”