When Grace, the woman in black, finally told Antoinette, she screamed with happiness, promising that she would devote her time in jail to getting home to her little family.
As Grace left the jail, she felt enormous satisfaction. Somehow, it had all worked out—not exactly as she wished, but better than she had feared. This whole experience had been one surprise after another. At times, the law had almost totally failed her; it was only by applying creative hard work to a small window of luck that Grace had managed to save Antoinette’s life. This was astonishing to Grace. Facts were important—the discovery of the gun had saved Antoinette’s life—but it was quick thinking and imagination that had brought about the happy resolution. Grace took note of that. As she passed the courtyard on her way out, she saw the wooden gallows, high and empty, towering in the night sky.
4
The Heatherbloom Girl
February 1917
The New York City detectives sat Maria Cocchi down right away. The little boy, released from the clutches of his woolen coat, sat quietly next to her, his eyes staring at the men. Mrs. Cocchi spoke quickly, in Italian. Her hair was all different places at once. Once she calmed down, she told the detectives about her husband’s actions in the hours before his disappearance.
“He came in about 12:20,” Maria said. “He wanted his lunch as soon as possible. He seemed nervous and irritable, but I thought little of it.” The Cocchis lived not in the motorcycle shop but in a small apartment nearby, at 75 Manhattan.
“He has been working hard of late and is very nervous, anyway,” Maria said. The little boy stared as the detectives took notes. The other bundle in Maria’s arms moved; it was a newborn girl. Maria slipped her baby back under the folds of her coat and continued.
“He ate without saying anything,” she continued rapidly, “and then got up and played with the baby awhile. Then he asked me for $10, saying he wanted to pay the electric light bill. I gave it to him, and he said ‘goodbye’ and left. He did not pay the light bill sometimes,” his wife admitted. But he was “an expert mechanic who always made money.” And “business was good.”
“I thought he would go right to the shop, but about half an hour later a man called up and said the shop was locked and he wanted his motorcycle. I called up all the hospitals in the neighborhood and all of our friends trying to find Alfred, but no one had seen him.” The detectives were writing everything down.
“I can take care of my babies,” Maria kept saying, “I will take care of my babies. I can take care for myself.”
The detectives told Maria Cocchi how they had questioned her husband and searched his shop just before noon on Thursday.
“That’s funny,” Mrs. Cocchi said. “My husband had made no mention of this.”
After she finished speaking, the detectives went down to the motorcycle shop again. It was padlocked, so they took a pair of pincers and twisted the steel until it bent into ribbons. People gathered outside and watched as Lagarenne and McGee walked in slowly. They went over everything for a second time. There was very little that anyone from the street could see, other than the big black machines through the glass. It was all the same grimy New York building, for the most part. The detectives left after a short time. They took a few papers they found, but that was all.
The detectives started knocking on doors in the neighborhood again. The newspapermen who had started to show up began to do the same. From neighbors, customers, and friends, the papers began to cobble together a profile of Alfredo Cocchi, the man already cleared by the police but now queerly missing. They started filling him out with numbers: he was thirty-five years old, about five foot seven in height, and weighed 135 pounds. Cocchi did not wear a beard, and he had pale skin, which was unusual for an Italian. When he disappeared, he was wearing a green cap, a dark brown sweater, and a gray silk shirt. He wore black shoes and socks. He was now classified, like Ruth, as a missing person.
On the sly, neighborhood friends of Cocchi also told the detectives what everyone was thinking. Cocchi was terrified when the police came to his door on Wednesday. Not because he was guilty of anything having to do with some Harlem girl, but because of his Italian heritage. It seemed like everyone blamed the hot-blooded Italians for everything these days, especially the police. Especially after Petrosino. Cocchi’s disappearance was nothing sinister, his friends and neighbors said. He was just scared. He had probably gone home to his family in Italy. They had been urging him to join the army anyway. The detectives had found a letter to this effect among Cocchi’s things. Everything else they saw in the store confirmed Mrs. Cocchi’s claim that her husband had left quickly. His shop overalls were in the middle of the floor. A small bench was overturned. A back door was unlocked.
When a reporter asked Lagarenne about Mrs. Cocchi, he swiftly dismissed the thought of her involvement. “She knows very little of his business,” he said. He explained that she was probably just jealous and mad that her husband had left home. They had been hearing rumors that she kept him on a short leash.
The detectives checked out two other motorcycle shops that Cocchi had once owned, just in case, one in the Bronx and one in New Jersey. Meanwhile, Fourth Branch detectives visited Harlem pawnshops looking for Ruth’s gold wristwatch and her high school graduation ring. According to Henry Cruger, the ring had her initials inlaid in blue enamel on a smooth silver band.
That Sunday, as the police cooled their heels and the broad strokes of New York City ran in slower lines, churches all over the city said prayers for poor Ruth Cruger, either on wooden altars or in the quiet space of individual thoughts. She became a communal wish in the gray, white air. The new Washington Heights Baptist Church on 145th and Convent raised this prayer particularly loudly. Made of Hurricane Island granite and white Georgia marble, the church was the cornerstone of the neighborhood and rose from the sidewalk like the very mind of God Himself cut and hammered down into architecture. The Crugers attended every Sunday.