New York - The Novel

she questioned Salvatore about his brother’s movements. Salvatore lied as Paolo had told him to, but he could see that his mother didn’t believe him.
    “He is working for some
camorrista,”
she said. By that she meant any sort of bad person. “Or maybe worse. Maybe the
Mano Nero.”
The Black Hand. It wasn’t really an organization. Any gang wanting to extort money—usually from the richer Italians in their own community—would seek to increase their victim’s fear by using the dreaded symbol of the Black Hand.
    “No,” said Salvatore.
    “It’s the fault of the police,” said his mother. “Why do they do nothing?”
    Of the thirty thousand policemen in the city, many of them Irish fellow Catholics, hardly any could speak Italian. True, the NYPD hadstarted an Italian squad. But its chief had been killed on a visit to Sicily by a gangster named Don Vito, and the squad had become insignificant after that. So long as Italian crime remained within the Italian quarter, the New York police didn’t interfere too much.
    That evening, she accosted Paolo and accused him of being a criminal. But he denied it all, and became very angry; and in the end their father said the matter was not to be spoken of again.

    The young man appeared in March 1911. Salvatore, Angelo and Anna had called in at the restaurant where Uncle Luigi worked one evening. They’d been made to wait a few moments, during which time Salvatore had noticed a good-looking young man watching them with interest. But he’d soon forgotten about it. The next day, however, as he was walking up the street, he’d met Uncle Luigi, who was eager to speak.
    It seemed that the young man had already noticed Anna several times. His name was Pasquale, and he was very respectable, with a good job as a clerk. He wanted to meet her, but he was a little shy.
    “If you already
knew
him,” Uncle Luigi suggested with a wink, “then it would be natural for him to meet Anna one day.”
    “And if I don’t like him, then Anna doesn’t get to meet him?” Salvatore asked, pointedly.
    “Si, si
, of course.”
    Salvatore agreed, and the next day he came by the restaurant where Pasquale was having coffee and a
dolce
. To Uncle Luigi’s great pleasure, Salvatore liked the young man. He was serious, clearly a good worker. His family were not rich, but they had more money than the Carusos. By the end of the conversation it was agreed that he would come by the restaurant as usual, after Anna finished work the following Saturday. If he saw Pasquale there, he would introduce him to Anna, and Uncle Luigi would give them all a
dolce
.
    Salvatore was rather pleased with his new role. He looked forward to Saturday with some anticipation. He wondered how much to tell Anna.

    On Saturday, March 25, 1911, Anna went to work as usual. It was a fine day. Saturday was the shortest working day at the Triangle Factory. Workbegan at nine in the morning and finished at 4:45 p.m., with a forty-five-minute break for lunch. By the time she arrived, there was a crowd outside waiting to go in.
    Although it was the Jewish Sabbath, and both the owners and most of the workers were Jewish, only a handful of the people at the Triangle Factory observed the Shabbat, and there would be nearly five hundred people working there today.
    There were two entrances to the building, one on Washington Place, the other round the corner on Greene Street. She went in at the Washington Place entrance and took the stairs. The elevator was for the management and visitors.
    The Triangle Factory occupied the three top floors of the building, the eighth, ninth and tenth. On the stairs, she met Yetta, a Jewish girl who worked on the eighth floor, and she went onto that floor to finish their conversation. As well as the lines of work tables and sewing machines, the eighth floor contained the cutting tables, under which there were big boxes that would soon fill with discarded scraps of cotton as the cutters toiled. Beside one of the tables, Yetta showed Anna the steps of a new dance called the turkey trot. They both liked to dance, but a stern look from one of the foremen soon put a stop to that, and Anna made her way up to the ninth floor, where she worked.
    The morning passed uneventfully. Not long ago the ninth floor had been refurbished with better washrooms and a nice wooden floor that caught the sunlight. At lunchtime, she went outside and walked about in Washington Square Park. She thought of the dance steps