Grace knew that this investigation was going to be bigger than all the others. After all, she was at Sunny Side because the Italian ambassador to the United States had specifically requested her. Baron Edmondo Des Planches had been receiving strange letters from Italians living at the plantation. Concerned, Des Planches himself visited Sunny Side and was given a personal tour by the manager, LeRoy Percy. As they walked the green fields of the plantation, Percy showed the ambassador many profitable Italian farmers, most with large, smiling families. Afterward, Des Planches dined extravagantly at a restaurant called The Mirror—all at Percy’s expense. Des Planches seemed pleased and promised Percy that he would encourage Italians—as many as he could—to come work at Sunny Side.
But when Des Planches returned to Washington, he made an appointment to talk to Assistant Attorney General Russell. He was very much disturbed. “The Italian immigrant at Sunnyside is a human production machine,” Des Planches said. He wanted Mary Grace Quackenbos, whom he had read about in the papers, to investigate immediately. Once Grace was informed of her assignment, she wrote Percy for entrance but received no assurances. Now she was stuck in New Orleans. Grace had few leads, but they all pointed to Greenville. For one, that strange payment for Pettek’s release was wired there. There were also some employment agents who had offices there. In Greenville, up the river, she might get closer to the source of things.
On this trip, Grace was accompanied by Hannah Frank, her legal secretary, and Michele Berardinelli and Charles Pettek, classified as “special employees” of the U.S. government. Pettek, although understandably nervous, didn’t hesitate for a second. They set out for Greenville in July 1907.
Once Grace arrived, she set up her small band at the Cowan Hotel, a tasteful, four-story affair near the center of town. After unpacking her suitcase, Grace began to think of ways she might find leads into the shadowy plantation down the river. As Grace pondered her options, she saw a white envelope with her name on it. Of all the things she expected to read inside, a personal invitation from the man she had been writing to in vain for weeks was certainly not one of them. She looked down in disbelief at an invitation to a dinner that night in her honor hosted by LeRoy Percy and his wife.
Grace knew little of Percy himself other than that he was a man of money and land. She wondered how far back down the roll of American history that distinction went. The property filings she had pulled on Sunny Side showed that the plantation was owned by an O. B. Crittenden, though it was largely run by Percy, along with another partner named Morris Rosenstock, who handled the financial and legal part of the business. Crittenden and Percy were not the original owners of the land, nor the first to use Italians as workers there. The previous owner, Austin Corbin, contracted with Prince Ruspoli, the mayor of Rome, to use Italian workers. But this version of Sunny Side disintegrated when Corbin died in an accident and yellow fever and malaria decimated the workforce. Only the vampiric idea of using immigrants as plantation workers lingered long after the death of that other plantation.
Grace knew that Percy was fiercely dedicated to Sunny Side’s success. He took trips to Italy to recruit workers and to hire labor agents. Percy and his agents had already brought several thousand Italians to the Delta. Percy boasted about his workers in southern agricultural magazines. “The Italians,” he said, “were in every way superior to the Negro.… If the immigration of these people is encouraged, they will gradually take the place of the Negro without their being any such violent change as to paralyze for a generation the prosperity of the country.”
Grace heard shadows in those words that gave her pause. And now this man had invited her to supper, deep in the heart of his southern homeland.
Percy was handsome, certainly, but also had the trait of his fellow southerners. He was a charmer, a ladies’ man, and a man’s man all at once and in the proper amounts. At dinner, Percy behaved as Grace expected: he smiled, bowed, and acquiesced when the moment required it. His hair was parted down the middle and longer on the sides and back than was generally accepted in the North. He wore a three-piece, light-colored suit with rounded collars. He wore his fluffy mustache like it was some kind of battlefield medal. Percy smiled easily, but his eyes were hard to interpret. He was small, though he carried himself with a perfectly straight posture. He looked, Grace thought, in between a state of glad-handing and bragging, like he was always a little tired. Grace wondered if his demeanor was a result of the heat or a general melancholic disposition. Or just a good old southern bluff.
At the same time, Grace couldn’t help liking the man and, admittedly, some of his ideas. She found herself surprised by this. Opening American opportunity to immigrants was, on paper, an interesting solution to several problems. But Grace still needed to see it for herself to know if any wrongdoing was going on at Sunny Side. Luckily, Grace was capable of some charisma herself. The girl who once balked at going into a courtroom was now capable of directing an entire dinner table. She started an instant friendship with Percy’s wife, Camille Bourges, who was French. Grace even said aloud that she hoped that Camille would take her on a private tour of the, according to Percy, beautiful fields of Sunny Side.
The next day, Grace wrote Percy, saying that she was looking forward to her visit. When Percy politely declined, Grace chafed in frustration. Maybe the old costumes would be necessary after all. But Grace was still convinced that this case just required more finesse. She tried to get in touch with Humberto Pierini, a local Italian travel agent who, rumor had it, had his own problems with LeRoy Percy. Grace then tried a few more times with Percy, but to no avail. Remembering something Percy had said about the acting governor, Xenophon O. Pindall, Grace decided to write him. It was an election year, after all. The governor wrote back swiftly, granting Grace full access to Sunny Side.
A few days later, after a two-hour, somewhat shaky boat trip, Grace saw the plantation with her own eyes. She saw the same cotton grass and wooden cabins of all shapes and sizes that her man Pettek had. Helped off the landing, she was met by Percy himself, who was very welcoming despite his coldness through the post. Excusing his rudeness, he seemed determined to show her how well his plantation was doing. He looked even smaller here, and he was perspiring a great amount, but he was also quite imperial while walking on his own ground. Percy explained that Sunny Side was actually four separate plantations, held together by a rail line that ran to a central gin facility. Percy plucked profit numbers out of the warm air like they were fruit and recited them to Grace with great satisfaction.