“Jack,” he said, folding his paper to set it aside. “So here you are.” He looked at Anna. “Who is this young lady you’ve brought to see me?”
Anna felt Jack’s hand touch her lower back very lightly, as if to urge her closer. “Brother Anselm, may I introduce Dr. Anna Savard. Anna, Brother Anselm knows everyone who has anything to do with orphaned or abandoned children in the city.”
“I was once an orphaned boy myself,” Brother Anselm said to Anna, gesturing to a chair. He was of middle size, a little bowed with age but still strong. She wondered what it meant that the detective sergeant called him Brother, if he was something less than or more than a priest.
He was watching her as she watched him, with an open curiosity. “You lost your parents very young, I think.”
Anna paused, alarmed for no good reason.
“No need to worry, Jack hasn’t been telling stories. It was just an intuition. Children who experience that kind of loss at a very young age sometimes develop a brittleness, for want of a better word.”
“I strike you as fragile?”
“Christ save us, no.”
Before Anna could pursue this odd conversation, he turned to Jack and pointed him to the other end of the kitchen. “Tea would be welcome.” And then his attention was back with Anna. Jack went to carry out this command as if it were the most natural thing in the world, a detective sergeant of the New York Police Department making himself busy in the kitchen.
Brother Anselm said, “I was ten when we left France. Typhoid struck six days out of Marseilles and took my mother and father and three brothers. I arrived with nothing, not even English.”
Anna could hear the French in his English now, the rhythm that gave him away.
“And when was that?”
“In the year 1805. When this”—he gestured widely, to take in the whole neighborhood—“was all farmland. I’m here on Sundays to say mass for the sisters. In return for a meal.”
“You are in very good health for a man of eighty-eight years. Were you taken in by the sisters as a boy?”
“Eventually,” he said. “But enough of my history. Tell me about these children you’ve taken on, and the ones you’re looking for.”
She began to tell the story, trying very hard to summarize facts without investing too much of her own opinion or emotions. As though she were telling another doctor a patient’s case history, making sure she had all the information that could possibly be relevant.
Jack put a tea tray on the table with its stout teapot and cups, a small jug of milk, and a chipped sugar bowl. Without instruction he poured for all of them, holding up the milk for Anna’s approval or rejection.
“Well trained, isn’t he?” Brother Anselm said with an indulgent smile. There was clearly a long-standing friendship between these two that could tolerate such teasing. All his comment got from Jack was a lopsided smile.
When Anna had taken a sip of her milky tea, she folded her hands in her lap to continue with the story. Brother Anselm watched her while she talked, his gaze never wavering even when Jack added a comment.
“So the girls are with you and your aunt,” he summarized.
“And my cousins,” Anna finished.
“Tell me again what Sister Mary Augustin said to you about the boys.”
Anna gathered her thoughts. “She said that the paperwork had gone missing. A Sister Perpetua was still searching for it that afternoon without success. She said that paperwork sometimes does go missing with so many children passing through.”
“That’s true,” Brother Anselm said. “It’s hard to imagine the number of children on the street, and yet only a portion of them ever are taken into an orphanage. I worked with them for sixty years and nothing we did ever seemed to make a dent. Paperwork and children both disappear without a trace.”
“That sounds very ominous,” Anna said.
“Sometimes it is ominous,” Brother Anselm said. “There are people who look for every opportunity to take advantage of children. Slave labor, or worse. Surely you know of these cases, as a physician.”
“My cousin Sophie sees more cases of that kind than I do.”
He raised both eyebrows at once. “And who do you treat?”
“I’m a surgeon,” Anna said. “My patients are usually women of childbearing age or older. Do you think that the Russo boys were—” She sought a word that she could say out loud. “Taken? Abducted?”
He shook his head. “There’s no reason to assume the worst. If I had to guess—” But he paused.
“I won’t hold you to it, whatever it is,” Anna said. “Please just tell me what you’re thinking.”
“First I want you to tell me what you fear most. That they are dead? That you may never know what became of them?”
Anna met the detective sergeant’s eyes. She wondered if he would think less of her. “Neither of those things,” she said. “What I fear most is having to tell Rosa that I’ve failed.”
The sounds of an argument in the street spiraled to a fever pitch and fell away while she waited for some comment.
“You worry that she will blame you. But you aren’t at fault. She knows that in her heart, even if she forgets it in her sorrow. And that will temper, over time.”
“Are you saying that I should simply tell her that there’s no possibility of finding them?” Anna didn’t know how she felt about such an idea, whether she should be relieved or resigned or outraged.
“Oh, no,” said Father Anselm. “It’s not time to give up yet. But that time may come. You have to be prepared for that. And so must Rosa.”
When she was calmer Anna said, “Where do we start?” She cleared her throat to hide her embarrassment. “Where do I start?”
“With Jack,” said the older man. “Jack can ask questions where you can’t. As you can, where he cannot.” To Jack he said, “What does Mrs. Webb say?”
“We’re going to see her when we leave you.”
Anna had to physically stop herself from turning to look at him. He hadn’t told her—hadn’t asked her—about another call, and while she knew she should be irritated at his high-handed assumptions, she could only feel thankful that he had taken the lead.
Brother Anselm was saying, “The younger boy was about three months, you said. I would think that as long as he is healthy he will already have been adopted. What was his condition when you examined him?”
She lifted a shoulder. “An infant of normal size. A little underweight, certainly, but not extremely so. Very alert, with blue eyes like his sisters and brother. A handsome little boy, with a head full of dark hair.”
“A healthy, good-looking, alert three-month-old boy with blue eyes—I doubt he spent more than a few nights under a convent roof. So many children on the street, invisible to everyone, but there is always a demand for healthy infants as long as the adoptive parents can convince themselves that the mother was of good character.”
“But how—” she began.
“They can’t know,” Brother Anselm said. “But if the child is healthy and pretty enough, they convince themselves that it is so.”
He got up from the table and went to a cabinet, where he rumbled in a small box. Then he returned to the table and put paper and pencil in front of Anna, and lowered himself back into his chair.
“May I assume the older boy is healthy, and looks much like his brother?”
“Yes,” Anna said. “He’s average size but very strong, with a mop of dark curly hair and blue eyes. Very shy, but so would any child be in such a situation.”
“Seven years old,” Brother Anselm said. “Strong. He might have wandered away and got lost. Jack, you’re looking into the possibility he was picked up by one of the padroni?”
Anna felt herself startle. She had been very young when the padroni scandal had erupted, but she did remember the details q
uite well. An Italian would go to the small mountain villages in Italy and recruit young boys who showed even the slightest musical talent. He promised their families that they would be back in a couple of years with a substantial nest egg. The travel, clothes, food, lodging, training would be provided. All the boy had to give in return was good behavior and a willingness to make music.
And then the boy would be gone into the maw of the Crosby Street tenements, sleeping on filthy floors, insufficiently clothed and fed, and sent out to play the violin on street corners. Any boy who did not come back with the amount demanded would be beaten. More than one had died that way.
“I thought a law was passed—” Anna began, and stopped herself. Passing a law and enforcing it were entirely different matters, as anyone who lived in Manhattan knew.
“It’s not as bad as it was ten years ago,” Jack said. “But there are still a few of the padroni going about their business. I’ll make some inquiries.”
Father Anselm seemed satisfied with that. “He could also have been taken in by any one of two dozen charitable organizations.”
“And if he wasn’t taken in?” Anna asked.
“We would hope that he ended up as a guttersnipe with one of the Italian street arab gangs. There are enough of them who steer clear of the homes and orphanages, after all. They’d train him in the fine art of picking pockets and minor larceny until he gets big enough to be considered an arab himself.” He had been watching Anna closely, and so she said what she couldn’t hold back.
“If you think that being raised to be a street arab is nothing to hope for, there are worse possibilities to consider.”
“But not to start with,” Father Anselm said. “So I’ll give you the names of people to contact and places to visit, if you’ll write. My hands won’t hold a pen anymore.”
• • •
THE CHURCH BELLS were ringing five o’clock when they left Brother Anselm, the light slanted now in that way particular to spring evenings. They stood for a moment on the doorstep, not talking.
“One more stop,” Jack said. “Would you rather I take you home? I can call on the matron at headquarters alone; I’ve been doing it every day since I heard they were missing.”
She looked up at him with a confused expression.
“There’s a woman who works at headquarters on Mulberry, the matron of the foundlings. Patrol officers bring abandoned or lost infants to her first, and she makes sure they’re fed and clean. And even if she hasn’t seen either of the boys, she might have heard some gossip that will be useful.”
He saw her straighten her shoulders and draw in a deep breath. “Well, then,” she said. “I suppose we better go talk to her.”
• • •
ONCE HE HAD flagged down a cab Jack leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes, trying to gather his thoughts. He could almost feel her gaze on his face, but when he opened his eyes she was looking out the window to a corner where boys played stickball.
He said, “I think that was a useful interview.”
“It was,” she agreed. “Not exactly positive, but not absolutely discouraging, either. Just a great deal of work to be done.”
“You don’t have to do it alone.”
She might take it as an offer or a challenge, or she might sidestep the issue. In polite society she would thank him and insist that he had already done enough, and the conversation would circle back on itself until he gave up or she gave in. But he had the idea that Anna Savard did not put a great deal of value in such rituals, and this time he was right.
“Thank you. I would appreciate your help.”
He had accomplished the two things he set out for himself: Anna had the information she needed to proceed, and he had reason and permission to spend as much time as he could spare with her while she did it.
They set off east along Nineteenth Street. Warehouses, mills, and factories gave way to smaller and then larger businesses and shops until they turned onto Broadway. The cabby circled around Union Square and Jack turned automatically to catch a glimpse of the family shop on the corner of Thirteenth Street before he steered the cab onto the Bowery, a move that always made Jack think of crossing a border from one kind of city to another.
Then the finer shops began to give way to cobblers and hardware merchants to secondhand clothiers, restaurants to beer gardens, banks to pawnshops, theaters to saloons. Soon they were surrounded on all sides by music halls, flophouses, stale beer joints, and bordellos. The businesses were closed up tight on a Sunday, but the dives and disorderly houses never closed despite the law. None of it seemed to take Anna Savard by surprise.
• • •
POLICE HEADQUARTERS WAS as busy as Anna would have guessed it to be, had she ever given it any thought. As they passed through the reception area to a steep flight of stairs, she took note of an older couple leaning against each other, half-asleep; a mother with a young boy on her lap; and a group of heavily made-up women who seemed distinctly unconcerned about their fate. One of them looked at her with dull eyes empty of all emotion, then let her gaze drop.
She followed the detective sergeant down one hall and another, and finally up a short flight of stairs. He opened the door and the purpose of the room announced itself by means of a wailing infant and the ammonia smell of wet winding clothes.
It was a long, narrow room lined with cots. There was a desk at one end and a treatment table at the other where a short, sturdy woman wrapped in an apron that covered her from neck to toe was leaning over an infant. The child was flailing unhappily about being lowered into the bathwater.
“Wheest,” she murmured to the baby. “Wheest. There’s a good girl. We’ll get you cleaned up proper first, and then you can fill your belly.”
A rocking chair creaked and Anna saw that there was another woman sitting in a shadowy corner. She seemed to be sleeping while an infant fretted at her breast. So small and so ferocious in its hunger, struggling for more and more as though he knew with certainty that he would never be fed again.
The three infants in the cots were asleep, swaddled securely, eyelids as pale as moonstone etched with a tracery of blue veins. Newborns should be rounded and padded and pink, but all of these babies were angular, like bundles of sticks wrapped in paper.
“Mrs. Webb?”
The woman bathing the baby looked over her shoulder.
“Detective Sergeant Mezzanotte. Good evening. What have you brought me today?”
“No babies today,” he said, and she turned back to her work. The infant had stopped wailing and was staring up at her with utter fascination.
“You see,” she said. “Not so bad, is it? Lovely warm water.”
To Jack she said, “Then what can I do to help? Still looking for the little Italian boy?”
“I’m afraid so. Can we have a look at your register?”
She gestured with her chin to a large book that lay open on the desk.
He crossed the room directly, but Anna hesitated and then went to watch Mrs. Webb, who had clearly bathed more than a few babies in her time. She rinsed the newborn quickly and carefully and, as Anna watched, wound her into a towel and rubbed her dry. The child was severely underweight, so that her head seemed far too large for her spindly neck and body; more troublesome still was the umbilical cord, which was ragged and tied with a dirty string.
“A young mother did that,” said Mrs. Webb. She had followed the line of Anna’s gaze. “In a hurry to be done with the business and away. She left this little one wrapped in rags in a doorway, not more than a few hours old when a patrolman found her and brought her in to me early today. Poor thing.”
Generally people believed that an abandoned child was illegitimate and that the mother had put it away from her to hide an inexcusable moral lapse. Anna herself had never challenged this traditional wisdom until she went to medical school and was obliged to lo
ok more closely. Abandoned children were a miserable lot, born in poverty and most of them sickly, but their mothers were often married, and desperate in their own way.
Mrs. Webb was saying, “Tomorrow all of this lot will go down to the Public Charities Office and a doctor will examine her. Maybe he can do something about the cord.”
Anna said, “Does she have a name?”
Mrs. Webb began to swaddle the child with quick, efficient motions. “Sometimes the mother leaves a note with a name, but not for this little one. Tomorrow she’ll get a name and a number too, and depending on the luck of the draw they’ll baptize her Catholic or Protestant. And off she’ll go to the Infant Hospital or the Foundling or wherever else they find a cot for her.”
Anna hoped it wouldn’t be the Infant Hospital on Randall’s Island, infamous in medical circles. Overwhelmed by an endless stream of abandoned infants, never enough wet nurses, and very little skilled care meant that three-quarters of the infants admitted to the hospital would be dead within three months, and most of the rest within a year. But it was one thing to hear the figures spoken in a lecture hall or read a report, and another to know that the children in this room would likely be dead before the summer had finished.
Jack Mezzanotte looked up from the register he had opened on the desk and gestured her over. He had put a finger on a line to keep his space.
“Here’s the day the Russo children came over from Hoboken. Forty-two children were logged in over the next seven days. This is the only one that comes even partially close.”
Anna followed the closely written entry:
Male infant, ca. three months, no distinguishing marks, no outward injuries. Warmly dressed. Alert. Found sleeping on the grass under a tree in Stuyvesant Square at 5 o’clock by a clerk walking past on her way home from work. Officer A. Riordan.
“Hard to know,” Anna said. “Without more of a description.”