Elizabeth Street Part 32

"We've got the line of march. Learn about the floats!" shouted a barker who blocked Giovanna's path.

Maneuvering around him only led her into a gang of kids on the corner holding up crates, yelling, "Get yer own grandstand here, only fifteen cents. Keeps yuh three feet off the sidewalk!"

In between the floats marched bands from every nation, and men, puffed chests adorned by sashes, walked in formation behind their flags. Sometimes the music of one band stepped on the toes of another, and the crowd reacted to the clash of cultures by sticking their fingers in their ears.

Leo checked his pocket watch, slowed, and turned to view the parade. Giovanna reacted by stopping abruptly, and someone pushed into her from behind, unleas.h.i.+ng a string of angry words. The words were foreign, but the meaning clear. Mumbling "Excuse me" in heavily accented English, she pressed into the crowd, watching the parade with one eye and Leo with the other.

Walking more slowly, she became aware of the dampness in her shoes. The pain in her feet was such that she knew the moisture was blood.

A pa.s.sing float elicited cheers and hats were raised in salute. Giovanna recognized the figure that was part of this tableau-he was the white-haired first president of America who was in Mary's schoolbooks. He stood on a building's balcony, and below, on what was made to resemble an old street, people waved flags.

Leo continued down Fifth Avenue, picking up his pace, and Giovanna struggled to keep up. As they neared Forty-second Street, the crowd became so dense it was nearly impossible to get through. Large columns lined the streets, and a ma.s.sive grandstand faced the festivities. Leo bullied his way through the throng toward the grandstand, and Giovanna followed in his wake. When he reached it, he hovered there. Giovanna stopped at a safe distance and immediately heard complaints. She played dumb and smiled, excusing herself in Italian.

"Look! That's probably why she pushed her way to the front. There's an eye-talian float."

Hearing the unmistakable "eye-talian," Giovanna took a second look at the approaching float, which was preceded by an Italian band. A man dressed as Garibaldi stood in front of a small house and a sign that read STATEN ISLAND STATEN ISLAND.

The entire section of the grandstand near where Leo stood erupted into cheers. If the standing ovation they gave the float was not proof enough that these dignitaries were Italian, their red, white, and green sashes confirmed it. Following the float, men from the Italian societies marched with crossed American and Italian flags, and the grandstand cheers grew even more thunderous. An older man with a sash across his chest, graying hair, and a pockmarked face strode past Leo. A split second later she saw the man with the sash holding the envelope that had been left at the bench in Trinity's cemetery. Leo was already moving out of the crowd.

She hustled to catch up but was caught in a surge of Italians leaving the grandstand. Bounced from body to body, Giovanna could feel him escaping. She tried to cut under the grandstand but was stopped by a policeman who held her there until a group of dignitaries pa.s.sed. She nearly tripped free when the policeman lifted his arm, but there were no straight lines of pedestrian traffic anymore; people were crisscrossing the side streets and sidewalks, and after nearly six hours of following him, she could no longer see any part of Leo.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1909.

After wrapping her bleeding and swollen feet in chamomile-soaked rags, Giovanna put on an old pair of Rocco's boots, the only shoes that would fit. Once again, she tucked the gun into her ballooning waistband.

Giovanna bought a paper in front of 111 Broadway, the building that yesterday Leo had entered and then exited out the back. The newsstand didn't have Italian papers, so she bought the one with the most pictures of the parade, thinking she would save it for Angelina. Near the same time as yesterday's exchange, she sat on a bench diagonally across from the one under the oak tree where the man had sat with Leo. A leaf fluttered onto Giovanna's shoulder, and she almost jumped out of her skin. Looking up, she realized that the trees were changing color and that she hadn't noticed-she was spending all her time looking, but not seeing.

Like clockwork, the businessman entered the cemetery with a paper under his arm, and Giovanna snapped back to attention. He strode directly toward the same bench, but it was taken. Without skipping a step, he continued on to the next bench, which was directly opposite Giovanna.

Giovanna jerked the newspaper in front of her face in surprise and embarra.s.sment. It hardly mattered, because within a few moments she could see that, unlike yesterday, he was not on the lookout for anything and that droopy-eyed Leo was not in sight.

Although she didn't exactly blend in, at least there were other women in the park. Giovanna knew that it was unacceptable for unescorted ladies to eat in restaurants, which explained why so many office workers were eating lunch in the cemetery. Cl.u.s.ters of women sat on the gra.s.s, leaning against gravestones and chatting.

The man with the sideburns concentrated on his reading, turning the pages slowly. A steady stream of people walked through the cemetery heading to a grave that was covered in flowers. Leaning to one side, she tried to get a look at the name on the grave, squinting to make out the letters. Someone moved and she saw the inscription, ROBERT FULTON ROBERT FULTON. It was impossible to escape this Fulton. If only Angelina was so easy to find.

Precisely twenty-five minutes later, the man stood up to leave. Giovanna put her paper in the netted shopping bag she'd brought along and followed him. While the man might not have noticed her, many of the office workers out for a lunchtime stroll on Broadway raised an eyebrow at her appearance. Rocco's worn boots didn't help. She did her best not to make eye contact with anyone as she walked in the man's path north on Broadway to Chambers Street. He turned left, away from City Hall, and entered a storefront painted red, white, and blue. Giovanna crossed the street and took the pencil and book that Domenico had given her from her bag and recorded the words on the sign: ELECT GAYNOR MAYOR AND TAMMANY HEADQUARTERS ELECT GAYNOR MAYOR AND TAMMANY HEADQUARTERS.

Although those words meant nothing, the gaiety of the signs, the colors, and the lack of merchandise communicated to Giovanna that it had something to do with voting. She had been in the country long enough to know that Americans treated elections like a holiday, or a party, and even "the eye-talians" were welcome. At similar storefronts in the Italian district, they were always being invited inside. Giovanna fixed the stray hair that was cascading out of her pins and tugged at her skirt, pulling it lower to cover Rocco's boots, before crossing the street and entering the storefront.

"Can I help you?" asked a young man in suspenders behind a counter.

The man from the church cemetery sat at a desk in one of the offices beyond the counter. A handmade sign with his name was tacked to the door.

"Voto," mumbled Giovanna. Looking past the young man, she tried to memorize the name on the sign.

"You're a woman. You can't vote. You want your husband to vote?"

Giovanna shrugged.

"Does anybody in here speak eye-talian?" shouted the young man over his shoulder.

"No, send her to the precinct on Mulberry Street."

"Lady, here," said the young man, taking a flyer depicting a proud portrait of William Gaynor. "Go here. They'll help you." He wrote a Mulberry Street address.

Once outside, Giovanna took the little black book and wrote down "Edwin Reese," the name outside the man's door.

Heading to the Battery, she saw throngs of people and a bra.s.s band lined up along the bulkhead. Everyone was facing the water and waving American flags. She pa.s.sed the El to get a closer view. People were looking up, and there was an air of antic.i.p.ation among the crowd. She followed the pointing fingers and shouts until she saw a speck in the sky grow larger; when the wings became visible, she heard it as well. A flying machine headed toward the Scylla in the harbor. Uproarious cheers greeted the aeroplane, and the crowd thrust signs with portraits of two men, labeled WRIGHT WRIGHT and and CURTISS, CURTISS, into the air. into the air.

The aeroplane circled Lady Liberty, looking like a fly the statue would soon swat with her upraised arm if it got any closer to her face. Many in the crowd stood with their jaws agape at the spectacle; little children jumped up and down, and a number of people couldn't contain their tears of excitement. The crowd, swept up in the moment, began to sing with the band, "America, America, G.o.d shed his grace on thee, and..."

Giovanna also started to cry. "You, the American Madonna! Men build machines to fly around your head! Find her! Please, I beg of you, find her..."

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1909.

"Pietro, you said this woman was going to behave. This crazy lady is following me. I had to move yesterday!"

"Leo, I said she wouldn't go to the police." Pietro Inzerillo played with the brim of his hat. He hated coming out to Brooklyn. He hated Leo. And he hated that he had to be involved in this when there was more pressing and potentially more lucrative business going on upstate.

"Tell Lupo we should kill the kid and forget it," Leo p.r.o.nounced.

"Lupo said if we keep getting money to keep her alive."

"Since when does Lupo care about a couple hundred bucks?"

"Sometimes it takes money to make money," answered Inzerillo cryptically.

"What are you talking about?" Leo was agitated.

"Nothing, Leo. Calm down."

"That strega strega needs to just come up with the money." needs to just come up with the money."

"Maybe she doesn't have it," commented Inzerillo, who was beginning to believe Giovanna.

"Are you kidding? Lupo said she sent a grand to Italy. And besides, everyone knows how cheap and stubborn her husband is. Those other guys had to blow up his store. They have it."

"Well then, Leo, I'm sure you'll get it," commented Inzerillo, getting up.

"Make sure that crazy strega knows that if she follows me again, I'll kill her and the kid."

SAt.u.r.dAY, OCTOBER 2, 1909.

The festivities of the Hudson-Fulton celebration had made it to the Lower East Side.

"Zia, I need another pin here," instructed Mary.

"Mary, let me finish with Frances first," said Giovanna, wrapping the skirt around her stepdaughter's waist. "There."

Frances swung around, swirling the skirt. "Is this really what Italian girls wear?"

"I would wear skirts and blouses like this, but only for special holidays."

"Zia, I need a pin!"

"Mary, patience!"

"The teacher said we had to meet in front of the school on Mott Street at noon."

"That's nearly an hour away. Patience."

Giovanna had spent the entire morning making the girls costumes and replaying her conversation with Inzerillo in her head. By reprimanding her for following Leo, Inzerillo had confirmed that Leo was one of the culprits.

"If Clement was still in school, he could have played the slide trombone," moaned Mary.

"Is Papa coming?" asked Frances.

"You heard your father say he'd be there."

"I know it's early, Zia, but can we go?"

Nodding her head, Giovanna watched the girls descend the stairs, trying to conceal their excitement. How strange this was, seeing her stepdaughters off to a parade. All of New York, including her own family, was celebrating as if nothing was wrong, as if Angelina wasn't being held captive by criminals in this festooned city.

At one o'clock Giovanna headed for Mulberry Bend Park. Already the streets were jammed, and she could hear instruments being tuned in the distance. In the center of the park was a small stage decorated with flags surrounded by empty, roped-off benches.

Regiment after regiment of schoolchildren arrived until the park and benches were packed. Each child carried a little furled flag. A bugle sounded. The children fell silent. At the second blast from the bugle, all the children whipped American flags over their heads, converting the park into a waving sea of patriotism that was greeted by thunderous cheers. At a third signal, the youngsters recited the "Pledge of Allegiance" and then, accompanied by the school bands, they sang "The Star-Spangled Banner."

With this homage to their adopted homeland complete, the performances began. The first featured a Jewish girl dressed as an Indian doing a dance to attract the attention of an Indian buck, played by an Italian boy. Giovanna was certain he was Italian by his appearance, and she knew the girl was Jewish when she stopped midperformance to shake her fist at the bandmaster and scold him in Yiddish.

After the Indians came the Dutch. As each school finished, a file of policemen escorted the children, giddy with pride, home.

Last on the program, Italian girls dressed in costumes from southern Italy mounted the platform. The crowd had thinned, and Giovanna was able to maneuver to a bench with a perfect view of Frances and Mary. The boys on trombone struck up a tune, and the dance started.

Giovanna was clapping when a woman handed her an envelope. "Signora, your husband said to give this to you. He had to leave."

Giovanna recognized the paper at once. But Rocco would never give this letter to someone else to deliver.

"Where was my husband?" Giovanna quizzed the woman.

"Over there," she said, pointing. "I don't see him now."

"What did he look like?"

"Signora, you don't know what your own husband looks like?" chided the woman.

"It wasn't my..." Giovanna stopped. "Yes, of course," she said, jumping up and quickly surveying the crowd.

Every face looked familiar, but none familiar enough.

"Have you lost something, signora?" asked a man whom she had seen seated with the dignitaries.

Until that moment Giovanna didn't realize how frantic she appeared.

"Oh, I'm trying to find my daughter."

"Was she in the program?"

"S."

"Signora, you have no need to worry. She was escorted back to her school."

"Giovanna, is something wrong?" Rocco appeared by her side.

She slipped the envelope into her skirt pocket.

"No, no, this kind gentleman was telling me that the children were walked back to school."

Giovanna read Rocco the letter in the bedroom.

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Rocco left to see what Lorenzo could contribute. He returned with $40 and with what they had earned over the last two weeks; it only totaled $159. Knowing this wouldn't be enough to satisfy the kidnappers, Giovanna grabbed her shawl and left the apartment.

Circling the block, she looked at her neighborhood in a new way-as a thief. She tried to figure out how to reach into cash boxes or pockets but could think of nothing that wouldn't get her seen or arrested. Desperation mounting, she was about to go to Lucrezia when she remembered Pretty Boy's pledge to help her family whenever she needed him. It took two hours to find Nunzio's former co-worker, but when she did, Mariano handed over $130 without question.