A Bandit's Tale Read online

  I won’t be ruining the suspense if I tell you now that 45 Crosby Street would one day (in part thanks to my own courage and daring, I might add) become known throughout the city for exactly what it was: a terrible, notorious “child den,” where boys were kept like animals and made to do whatever their masters commanded.

  It would be a long time, though, before anyone would see that, and it would take all I had to bring it off. When I arrived, all that went on here and in places like it was invisible to the outside world. Even when we were out on the streets—and we were on those streets day in and day out—no one really saw us.

  People looked. They simply didn’t see.

  —

  We climbed up to the main floor. The windows were covered with old cloths, making the room nearly as dim as the cellar below. There was a small coal stove, a few cupboards, a bare table, and a wooden platform with a mattress, which I supposed was for the padrone. Against one wall, violins and large harps leaned together like tired travelers.

  The front of the main floor, facing the street, was a public saloon run by a man named Luigi Careli, who’d been here for years and had a reputation in Little Italy of knowing how to get things done. He was a sort of middleman, giving newcomers from the home country a mailing address to use until they got settled. He also helped immigrants find jobs with his contacts who needed dayworkers. I didn’t have any direct dealings with Signor Careli, which was probably just as well. He was a man you wouldn’t want to cross.

  I soon found out from the other boys that Signor Ancarola rented this half of the main floor, as well as the cellar. Other padroni kept more boys upstairs. Each padrone at 45 Crosby Street controlled his own street musicians. These men were like spiders, with webs that stretched all over Little Italy. Once you were caught in their sticky threads, it was hard to get out.

  And I was caught.

  —

  That morning, and every morning after, we each got a small bowl of macaroni to eat with our fingers. There was also a hunk of black bread, about three inches square. I had it halfway to my mouth before I decided to stuff it in my pocket for later.

  The macaroni was mushy and cold, nothing like what Mama made, which she served hot with spicy tomato sauce and fresh, tangy olive oil. Sometimes she made a stew with onions, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, and potatoes, which we ate with warm, crispy bread. My stomach growled just thinking about it.

  Back in Calvello, though we didn’t have much, at least what we ate was fresh. Our clothes smelled like sunshine after Mama hung them to dry. The boys around me now were foul-smelling and covered with grime. I wondered if any of them ever took baths. Not very often, I guessed.

  Now I was one of them, along with Marco and Luigi. I would soon smell as disgusting as the rest, be just as itchy from flea bites and lice. I heard someone cough, a horrible wracking sound. I hoped Mama wouldn’t give up praying to Saint Rocco. I might need his protection to stay alive.

  I took it all in, then made a quick decision. I walked up to Giovanni Ancarola, who had gone over to the instruments, ready to begin passing them out to the boys. I slunk my shoulders, bowed my head, and made my voice low and respectful.

  “These are such beautiful instruments, Padrone. But you were right. I am much too stupid to learn to play a harp or violin. My mama may have said I was a bright boy, but that was just her mother’s heart,” I said, barely lifting my eyes to his face.

  I took a deep breath. “Better I take the triangle so I will not shame you by performing poorly on the street.”

  He grunted. “Just bring home the money. I don’t care what you play.”

  The little triangle was child-sized, and small enough to fit into a pocket if I had to run. And I planned on running away. I didn’t yet know how to do it, or how I could bring honor to Papa and get money for my family.

  But somehow, I would have to figure that out.

  CHAPTER 4

  Containing a grave and shocking event that may disturb some readers

  “New boys! Listen up. You may think you’ve come to a city so big you can disappear. But you can’t run from me,” announced Padrone after breakfast that first day, almost as if he could read my mind. “I have spies everywhere; if you try to leave, I’ll find you.

  “Let me tell you something more. You are better off here than anywhere else,” he went on. This was turning into the longest speech I’d ever heard him utter. “Last year, a boy who ran from me ended up in prison. That’s what happens to boys like you who cannot speak English and have no family. They get sent to prison.”

  I wondered how true that was. Luigi certainly believed it, though. He shuddered a little, like he was swallowing a sob. I saw a tear trickle down his cheek.

  “Baby,” I hissed, loud enough for everyone to hear. Luigi flushed and swayed, looking about to topple over. He was probably still weak from being seasick. Across the way, the would-be thief from last night—I was sure it was him—nodded at me with a sly smile.

  I didn’t really mean to make Luigi cry harder. The truth is, I felt pretty much the same way. But this was no place to show weakness. By speaking out, I would make my own mark with the other boys.

  Besides, I thought Padrone would be pleased if I seemed to be cooperative. I needed to do more to get on his good side. I was sure Signor Ferri warned him that I was a troublemaker and a thief, a boy not to be trusted. And if Padrone watched me like a hawk all the time, my chances of escape would be slim.

  I tell you this so you can see just how little I knew.

  Because what happened next was this: Before I could move, Padrone grabbed me and threw me to the floor. “Marco and Luigi, sit on his legs. Now!”

  At first, the cousins stood still, mouths open in surprise. They inched forward uncertainly. The padrone had made it easy for them, pushing me to the floor. I thrashed and kicked like a pig about to be slaughtered while Luigi and Marco tried to hold me down.

  Padrone called for more help. “Giuseppe, these boys are useless. Sit on his legs.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the would-be thief from last night come close.

  “Stop! Let me go!” I howled.

  Padrone gripped my jaw with one large hand, turning my left eye and cheek to the floor. I saw a quick flash of silver—a knife.

  Now, here is perhaps more truth than you care to hear: When I saw that sharp, gleaming blade come close to my face, I almost wet my pants. I felt sure he was about to cut my throat or poke out my eye.

  I tried to push his arm away, but I was pinned. My heart thumped; the breath flew out of me. His elbow was pressing against my throat. My scream came out a weak, silly screech.

  He leaned in closer, pressing hard on my chest. His face was matter-of-fact. He wasn’t smiling; he wasn’t frowning. The man might have been cutting a piece of bread, not the flesh of a boy. Padrone’s sour, stale breath hit me full in the face. Suddenly an image of Old Biter came into my head. I opened my mouth to bite him, which threw him off slightly.

  I felt a stabbing, sharp pain. The next instant, I was free. I rolled away, grabbing the right side of my upper lip. I tasted red, salty blood, which began running down my hand in little rivulets. What just happened?

  “Next,” Padrone instructed, his voice flat. Padrone jerked his head at me. “Rocco, bring Luigi here.”

  I couldn’t move. Luigi squealed and pleaded. Giuseppe grabbed him. Luigi lay still and whimpering. Marco was next. They both wet their pants. It was all over in ten minutes.

  Then Padrone said, almost pleasantly, as he wiped his blade on his shirt, “There, all done. You are part of us now.”

  That’s when I finally looked more closely at the faces around me. Each of Padrone’s boys—every single one—had a scar on the right side of his upper lip.

  —

  While Padrone busied himself with a last-minute repair to a violin, we waited. The boy called Giuseppe sidled up next to me as if we were old friends.

  “Don’t worry. All the padroni do it,”
he whispered with a shrug. “Right side, left side, middle—each padrone who keeps street musicians has his own spot.”

  “But…but why?” I said, pressing the back of my hand to my lip.

  “To keep track of us. We don’t speak English. If one of us tried to run away, of course we’d go to someone from home, someone in Little Italy,” he explained. “Everyone in this neighborhood knows the padroni keep street musicians. The mark warns other Italians not to help. It also shows who each boy belongs to, and where he should be returned if he is foolish enough to escape.”

  I took in this information. “So, no one has ever tried?”

  Giuseppe was about to answer when Signor Ancarola hollered, “Silence. I do not need you chattering like birds.”

  I pressed the end of my shirt to my aching lip, making a dark stain on the cloth. Getting away would be much, much harder than I’d imagined.

  —

  Padrone handed out instruments, then passed out thin coats from a pile in the corner. He gave me a triangle with a little stick attached. Luigi and Marco got a harp so tall it towered over them.

  “Tonight I will give you lessons. I have no time now,” said Padrone. He began to bark out orders. “Spread out. Don’t stand on the same street corners. Do not spend the pennies you get. Remember, you must bring a dollar back to me here at Forty-Five Crosby Street. Understood?”

  Marco and Luigi sniffled. Tears still ran down their faces. Not me. Giovanni Ancarola wouldn’t make me cry. Then a thought popped into my head.

  Forgetting Mama’s advice to think before speaking, I blurted it out. “How will we know?”

  My lip was already swollen and puffy. I felt as if I was talking through thick syrup.

  “What do you mean, how will you know?” Padrone snapped.

  At first, back in Calvello, I’d thought Signor Ancarola handsome, with his oily black hair and fancy clothes. Now I saw he had no laugh lines around his eyes. He didn’t smile enough for that. Perhaps his life was hard too. I suppose it can’t have been easy trying to make a living from a bunch of wayward boys. And here I was, buzzing in his ears like a noisy, annoying fly.

  I’m not saying I forgive Padrone for that scar on my lip, a scar I have to this day. But, well, you have to see it from his point of view. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to get us. He was doing what everyone else here did—hustling the best he knew how.

  “How will we know how much a dollar is?” I persisted. “Unless you teach us about American coins, we won’t know when we’ve got a dollar.”

  Padrone was done with me; he was ready to be rid of all of us. “Get your new friend Giuseppe to show you.

  “Remember, find your own corner if you have a violin or triangle. The harps need two people to push.” Padrone clapped his hands, as if shooing a flock of birds from a field of grain. “Now go! I didn’t pay your passage to America so you could sit around and get fat.”

  I pushed past Marco and Luigi, leaving them to struggle with the large, bulky harp. What they were going to play on it, I couldn’t imagine. At least, it was on wheels. By the time I reached the street, I saw that most of the boys had already turned the corner.

  I called to Giuseppe, who was trotting away with a violin tucked under his arm. “Hey, what about helping us with the American money?”

  “Ah, don’t worry. You’ll figure it out soon enough,” he said with a wave of his hand.

  Luigi and Marco were behind me, still struggling to push their battered old harp along the bumpy cobblestones. I thought of the painting in our church in Calvello with two cherubs carrying a harp. It was Mama’s favorite. Marco and Luigi were nothing at all like those winged angels—they were pitiful little boys. Somehow, though, looking at them made me pull the piece of bread out of my pocket. I tore it in two, then walked back a few steps and thrust it at them.

  “Stop blubbering,” I ordered. “It won’t help.”

  “Rocco, wait!” Marco yelled after me as I walked away. “We don’t know where to go.”

  “I don’t like it here. I want to go home,” Luigi whined.

  “Just make sure you memorize this street corner so you can recognize it again,” I told them.

  That was all the help I gave. I didn’t stop. I had other things on my mind. I needed to get away from that rancid, rat-infested den. I had to think. I couldn’t worry about anyone else.

  My first task, I decided, was to figure out where I was and what New York City was like. Then I could make a plan. I turned a corner and my new world rushed in to meet me.

  CHAPTER 5

  I encounter meddlers and am tormented by a sausage

  Like a tiny fish swept from a quiet stream into a gushing river, I now found myself on a broad avenue. I remembered this big street from last night. It had been busy then, but nothing like this. Before I could catch my breath, I was carried along by a great wave, a moving, jostling, noisy crowd.

  Everyone (except me, of course) seemed to know exactly where to go. Some people were silent, eyes fixed ahead. Others jabbered incessantly. I caught phrases of Italian, as well as other languages I couldn’t understand.

  I let myself be carried along for a while, the way the ocean currents had carried our ship. It was like nothing I had ever experienced—it was clamor and colors, smells good and bad, movement, energy, a racket of sensations. Then, for the first time since leaving home, I felt something break loose inside, as though I’d been holding my breath for weeks.

  I was in America.

  I might be no more than a prisoner, and a marked one at that. Yet, for a few bright moments, none of that mattered. I, Rocco Zaccaro, a peasant boy from a faraway hillside, had journeyed across the sea to stride the streets of a great city.

  Then something cold and wet brushed my nose like a feather. It happened again. It had begun to snow.

  —

  The snowflakes were fluffy, soft things. They were wet and incredibly large. It wasn’t long before I could scoop some up and pat them together. I held the cold ball to my stinging lip. It felt good.

  I kept walking. Sometimes I left the wide, busy avenue to wander on narrow side streets. Then, before long, I’d find it again. I began to recognize the letters for this street: B-R-O-A-D-W-A-Y. Soon I’d come to know the streets of Lower Manhattan almost as well as the mule paths and twisting alleyways of tiny Calvello. On that first day, all I could do was meander, openmouthed, in a muddled haze.

  I crammed my triangle into the pocket of the thin coat Padrone had given me. I knew if I returned empty-handed, he would beat me. I pushed the thought aside the way you kick a pebble out of your path. Later. I would think about that later.

  For now, it was still morning and there was so much to take in. Each street corner brought something new. Sharp, delicious smells of baking bread, frying meat and onions, and roasting chestnuts beckoned me around corners and down alleyways. I’d never seen so much food.

  The snow didn’t let up. I began to shiver. Sometime in the afternoon, I slipped into the covered doorway of a little Italian grocery to shake flakes off my arms and hair. I glanced at my feet. Some of the other boys in the den had been barefoot. When my one pair of shoes wore out or got too small, I might have to go without too.

  Suddenly I heard angry shouts in the street. I stuck my head out into the falling flakes to look. The noise was coming from up the way, where some sort of vehicle packed with people—a sort of horse-drawn bus—had stopped.

  A man came out of the shop holding a large, juicy sausage wrapped in paper. The smell of it—spicy and hot—made my mouth water. For a second, I thought he might offer me some. Then he opened his mouth and took a gigantic bite.

  “Mmm,” he murmured in appreciation. I sighed.

  I gestured toward the ruckus and asked in Italian, “Can you tell what those people are yelling about?”

  “Sì, my English is pretty good. Been here ten years; I even went to the Italian school.” He stuck his head out to look, then listened for a moment. He chuckled.

/>   “See that man with the top hat, the one flinging his arms in the air? That’s Henry Bergh, and he’s making the driver take the horses out of harness. Henry Bergh is called the Great Meddler. Everyone knows him.” He took another bite of his sausage and chewed, wiping a thin line of juice from his mouth.

  I could hardly stand to watch him eat. I couldn’t bear to leave the sausage either. “Why do they know him?”

  “Bergh is the animal-rights man.” He went back to chewing. “I’ve seen him out here, rain and shine, making trouble for drivers or investigating ruts in the street and all sorts of foolishness.”

  “So, what’s he doing now with those horses and that…” I fumbled for a word, but I’d never seen anything quite like it before. “What kind of vehicle is that, anyway?”

  He eyed me closely as he adjusted the paper around the rest of the sausage. Was he suspicious because he could see the fresh blood drying on my lip? “I can see you’re a greenhorn. Fresh off the boat, are you?”

  I nodded, trying to look as pathetic as I could. Maybe he’d feel sorry enough to give me the rest of his sausage. Or a bite. One bite! I suppose, though, it’s easier to feel pity for a boy like me than to actually sacrifice a mouthful of delicious sausage.

  “That’s a horse-drawn omnibus. It gets people from one part of the city to another,” he said finally, without making a move to hand over his sausage. He nibbled some more. It was disappearing fast. “It’s like a streetcar.”

  Noticing my frown, he explained. “Streetcars are pulled by horses too, only they run along a special steel rail in the middle of the road, which makes for a smoother ride. We have both here.”

  “Why is the man stopping it?”

  “Well, if you ask me, Bergh likes to bother folks who’re just trying to make a living. Right now he’s yelling about how there are too many passengers for the horses to pull in this storm on account of it being too slippery. He’s making all the people get off and wants the driver to take the horses back to the stable.”