Adolfo was carried to Bellevue Hospital suffering from a frightfully cut and burned face and a crushed leg. The surgeons looked at the mangled child and shook their heads. There was a chance of putting that wretched leg into some kind of shape again, and it might be possible to restore that ruined face to human semblance, but the work would take many months. It would cost a good deal of money, in spite of free hospital accommodations and the gratuitous services of the doctors.
The Varottas were shabbily poor. They lived in a rookery on East Thirteenth Street, the father, the mother and five children, of whom the injured boy was, as already noted, the eldest. Varotta’s pay as truck driver was thirty dollars a week. In the history of such a family an accident like that which had overtaken Adolfo means about what a broken leg does to a horse: Death is the greatest mercy. In this case, however, some one with connections got interested either in the boy or in the surgical experiment and appealed to a rich and charitable woman for aid. This lady came down from her apartment on Park Avenue and stood by the bedside of the wrecked Adolfo. She gave instructions that he was to be restored at any cost. She grew interested not only in the boy but his family.
One day the neighbors in East Thirteenth Street were appalled to see the limousine of the Varotta’s benefactress drive up to their tenement. They watched her enter the humble home, pat the children, talk with the burdened mother, and then drive away perilously through the swarms of children screaming and pranking in the street. The “great lady” came again and again. It was understood that she had paid much money to help little Adolfo. Also, she was helping the Varotta family. That Varotta was a lucky dog, for the injury of his son had brought him the patronage of the rich. Surely, he would know how to make something of his good fortune. To certain ranks of men and women, kindness is no more than weakness and must be taken advantage of accordingly. The neighbors of Salvatore Varotta were such men and women.
Pacific & Atlantic Photo.
~~ JOE VAROTTA ~~
Little Adolfo was still in the hospital, being patched and mended, when his father sued the owner of the colliding truck for fifty thousand dollars, alleging carelessness, permanent injury to the child, and so on. The neighbors heard of this, too. By San Rocco, that Salvatore was a lucky dog! Fifty thousand dollars! And he would get it, too. Did he not have a rich and powerful patroness?
Thus, through the intervention of a charitable woman and a lawsuit, Varotta became a dignitary in his block, a person of special and consuming interest. He had or would soon have money. In that case he would be profitable.... But how? Well, he was a simple and guileless fellow. A way would be found.
In April, 1921, when Adolfo was discharged from the hospital with his leg partly restored but with his face still in need of skin grafting and other treatments, Salvatore Varotta decided to buy a cheap, second-hand automobile. He could make money with it and also use it to give his family an airing once in a while. The car, for which only one hundred and fifty dollars had been paid, attracted the attention of the East Thirteenth Street neighbors again. What? Salvatore had bought an automobile? Then there must have been a settlement in the damage suit over little Adolfo’s injuries. Salvatore had money, then. So, so!
One of the neighbor women happened to pass when the rickety car was standing at the curb, and Mrs. Varotta was on the stoop, her youngest child in her arms.