After raising a ruckus for a few more minutes, Mr. Cocchi came up the outside steps from the coal bin, snatched the paper from the boy’s hands, and ran back into the cellar. In an instant, Cocchi was up again and ordered the boy to buy two more newspapers. When Herbert returned, Mr. Cocchi grabbed them again and hurried back into the cellar.
“What do you suppose he wanted with three newspapers?” Grace asked.
“Oh, I think he was building the morning fire,” Herbert said.
Grace thought that it was beginning to look more and more like Cocchi was the man she wanted to talk to the most. She headed back to her office to look over the evidence again to see what they had missed. Grace remembered her training from Dean Ashley at NYU: look at the facts of the case and then work in the spaces between them.
When Grace arrived at her office, it was mobbed by newspaper reporters. She thought they might be looking for another statement from her on the Cruger case. They were, but not for the reason she thought.
There was news.
*
The reporter wiped his brow under the hot Italian sun. The afternoons were even quieter up here, in Bologna. As the reporter walked up the path to the low building, he started to wonder if this wasn’t just another wild-goose chase. Milt Snyder was a reporter, so he thought in terms of stories and their worth, but he also knew when they just plain fizzled out. At the same time, as the longtime globe-trotting correspondent for the Sun, Milt had done some of the work on the Petrosino story, so he knew never to discount the impossible. So once Milt’s editor caught word of the news, Milt was rapidly dispatched from Rome to verify its truth. The Sun’s motto was “If you see it in the Sun, it’s so.”
As he got closer, Milt shielded his eyes from the sun and saw a man sitting in the June sun amid the colorful bones of a broken bicycle. Milt pushed back his hat.
Are you Alfredo Cocchi? Milt said in perfect Italian.
Yes, the man said, surprised. Milt’s eyes focused. There, indeed, was Alfredo Cocchi, on his knees, tinkering with a drive chain.
When Milt Snyder said his name, Cocchi seemed surprised. Not by the fact that someone had found him or that the person had an American accent, but by the fact that someone was looking for him in the first place. Cocchi told Milt that he had been in Bologna this whole time, living with his father and his brother Arturo at 7 Via Poleso, working in the family bicycle-repair shop. When Cocchi spoke, Snyder looked at the man. It was strange to see the dark face that had been inked all over the papers now grinning and come to life.
“I am well known here,” Cocchi told Snyder, wiping off his hands and offering his hand. In Bologna, he had not made the slightest attempt to hide his identity.
Cocchi swore that he knew nothing about Ruth Cruger’s disappearance. He had actually heard that she had been kidnapped and was living somewhere in Europe. Cocchi’s claim called to mind quaint, crooked streets and rambles around dark, silent cathedrals. Whom was she with? And why? Cocchi waved his hands as if the question were a noonday fly. He was astonished that he was even being asked these things. He had no knowledge of them. He seemed genuinely hurt.
But Milt was a true reporter. He mentioned to Cocchi that, because of the many unanswered questions about the case, the United States might try to extradite him back to New York for trial. Cocchi seemed to be offended by this. He explained to the reporter that he had abandoned a good business and returned to Italy after ten years because his wife was crazy, not for any other reason. Cocchi didn’t understand why this was so hard to understand. The timing with the missing girl was merely coincidental. His wife had become unbearable, Cocchi said. She was excessively jealous and nosy. He referred to her only as Maria Magrini, her maiden name.
Snyder turned the conversation back to Ruth Cruger. Cocchi explained again, as he had all those months ago to the police, that he had met the girl only once in his life, when she had come to get her skates sharpened.
“She was a pleasant faced girl,” Cocchi admitted. “But there was nothing extraordinary about her.”
10
The Pale Man
With the news of Cocchi’s appearance in Italy in early June, a significant amount of legal and political machinery began turning its gears to get Cocchi extradited back to the United States so that he could be questioned about Ruth. But since this was Italy—in the shadow of the First World War and the Petrosino murder—officials on both sides were not cooperating. Given the tense political atmosphere, insiders knew that there was little chance of an extradition. Even though Cocchi had been found, the Italian government refused to even arrest him.
“I have heard from him once,” Maria Cocchi admitted, back in New York. “He told me he was living with his father and brother in Bologna. He said nothing about that girl. I shall be glad if they bring him back. It is like him to run away and leave me.
“He did it before, while we were betrothed, and left me in Italy,” Maria explained. “Then he sent for me to follow him and we were married. I hear also from my sister who is visited by Alfredo every week. He tells my sister many lies. He told her he sold his machine shop for much money and left me $5000. He did not sell the shop.” This seemed believable. There were rumors going around that Maria Cocchi was already trying to sell the motorcycle store.
The news of Cocchi’s appearance affected Mrs. Cruger quite differently. “I am overjoyed to learn that this man has been found,” she said. “And now I hope, since the police permitted him to slip through their fingers, they will see that he is brought back here. I have always maintained that Cocchi knows what became of poor little Ruth. The police may congratulate themselves on the finding of Cocchi, but it seems to me they were very lax.” Stifling back tears, she urged reporters to talk to Mrs. Humiston.
“Circumstances had come to light,” Grace said, “which made it appear extremely likely that Cocchi knew all about the girl’s disappearance.” Grace revealed that her investigations into the records at the American consul in Italy showed that when Cocchi arrived, he had good clothes and plenty of money. This was “striking, because it has been established pretty well that he had only $15 and was dressed in his working clothes when he dropped out of sight.” Grace said that “if he could be induced to tell where he had obtained money after he went into hiding, the mystery would be near a solution.” Her reasoning was sound. Grace was working the case, not getting caught up in the personalities involved.