Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano [127]
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.
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 brass band lined up along the bulkhead. Everyone was facing the water and waving American flags. She passed the El to get a closer view. People were looking up, and there was an air of anticipation 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 and CURTISS, 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, God 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 pronounced.
“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