Murder on Astor Place (23 page)

“Now don’t give me more credit than I deserve. Rosie isn’t even really sick,” Sarah demurred, gently extricating her hand. “And now I think I’d better start taking care of my other patient. You need some rest, too, Dolly, but first let me fix you something to eat. Then I want you to sleep until the baby wakes up. That’s an order.”

Within a few minutes, Dolly was fed and tucked into bed with her child, both of them sound asleep. Sarah found Will Yardley, still perched on the front stoop. He was nursing a glass of something that looked suspiciously like beer, and he looked as frazzled and exhausted as Dolly had.

“Is she gonna live?” he asked Sarah.

Sarah knew it wasn’t a silly question. Babies died of seemingly minor ailments every day in the tenements. At least this time she could give him hope. “She’s got the colic. It’s nothing but a stomachache.” Sarah explained it again, trying to use terms Will could understand.

“And she won’t die of it?”

“Not of the colic.” That much she could promise. As for whatever else came along, well, that was in God’s hands. “I’ll be back again tomorrow to see how they’re doing, but right now, they both just need to get some sleep.”

“Could a doctor do anything more?”

“No,” Sarah said quite honestly. There were no magic potions to cure the mysterious maladies that plagued mankind, no matter what the claims of patent medicines might be. At least Rosie’s ailment could be cured by time.

Will nodded, accepting her word. His young face looked haggard, and for the first time she realized how young he was. He couldn’t be more than twenty-five, if that, but his face showed every year of his life, and his eyes gleamed with a wisdom hard-earned. She thought of the boy who had come to fetch her today, and wondered if Will was the kind of man he would grow into, if indeed he lived long enough to grow up. Few did.

Will ran a grubby hand over his weary face. “I don’t know what I’ll do with Dolly if anything happens to that kid. I thought she took it hard when she lost them other ones, but this one... she sets store by this one, Mrs. Brandt.”

From the red rims of Will’s eyes, Sarah suspected he did, too, but she wouldn’t challenge his manhood by asking him to admit it. “I’ll take good care of both of them, Will.”

“I’ll pay you for this time,” Will offered, perhaps afraid she might not give him good service if it was a trade, like before. Or perhaps he was simply afraid of being neglected if she thought he couldn’t afford her fee.

Sarah wasn’t so well-off that she could afford to turn down a fee, but when she recalled the bargain she had made with Will the last time, she wondered if he might not be of use to her again. “You won’t have to pay me anything at all if you can find out some more information about that man I asked you about before.”

“That Fisher swell?”

“That’s the one.”

Will frowned suspiciously. “I heard it won’t be very good for my health if I go messing around with that Mattingly fellow he works for.”

“You won’t have to.”

Will was still suspicious. “Then what do you want to know?”

Sarah thought it over and decided she might as well go for broke. “I’d like to know where to find him.”

Will’s frown deepened. “Why would you wanna know that? You ain’t going after him yourself, are you?”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t think of it,” she said, then wondered if that were true. If she knew where Ham Fisher was—the man who had perhaps admitted Alicia’s killer to the Higgins house—would she be patient enough to wait for Malloy? That was a question she couldn’t answer until she knew. “I just need to know where he is, Will. And when I do, a friend of mine wants to talk to him. A male friend,” she added, in case he was still worried.

Will was still worried. “I owe you, Mrs. Brandt, so I’ll do what I can, but I can’t make no promises. It’s a big city, and there’s a thousand places a fellow like that can hide if he don’t want to be found.”

Sarah smiled at Will Yardley. “I know you’ll do your best, Will.”

I
T WAS THE end of a very long, very hot day when Frank climbed the stairs to his flat. The smell of cooking cabbage hung heavily in the stifling air of the littered stair-well, along with other, even less savory aromas. Too many people living too close together. He could hear the sounds of the McMullins arguing, her screeching and him booming in response. The words were indistinguishable, but Frank knew he wouldn’t understand the fight even if he could understand the words. There’d be some crashing of pots and pans and then silence for a long time afterward. That’s how it always went. Nothing much changed in this building, even when he was gone for days at a time, which he mostly was.

When he reached the door to his flat on the second floor, he tried the knob before hunting for his key. As he’d suspected, it turned under his hand. How many times had he told his mother to keep the door locked? Maybe she
wanted
somebody to break in and murder her.

She’d probably reason that at least he’d have to pay attention to her then, if for no other reason than to investigate the crime.

She was in the front room in front of the open window to catch what breeze there was when he walked in, rocking and sewing by the light of the gas jet. She looked up from her mending when the door opened. Her expression was all phony surprise.

“Well, now, sir, and what might you be wanting? If you’re selling something, I’m just a poor old woman with no money to spend on fripperies, mind you, so you might as well be on your way.”

“Ma,” he said in warning, but it didn’t faze her.

“And if you’ve come here for no good, let me warn you, I’ve got a son who’s a police detective, and he’ll hunt you down like a dog. I hear he’s pretty good at his job, although I wouldn’t know for myself, since I hardly ever get to see him.”

“Enough, Ma.” Frank stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Frances?”
she cried in feigned surprise. “Is it you? I swear, it’s been so long, I’ve forgot what you look like.”

He could have argued that he’d been here just last Thursday, but of course, that was five days ago now, and she’d hardly consider that a recent visit. Technically, he lived here, but he spent far more time in the police dormitory and elsewhere. His mother was part of the reason why, if only part.

“Do you have anything to eat?” he asked, hanging his hat on a peg by the door and shrugging out of his suit coat. At least he didn’t have to stand on formality here. It was one of the few advantages of coming home.

“Of course I have something to eat. My son, the big fancy police detective, he brings me money every week. I go to Mass every morning to thank the Blessed Virgin that I have such a generous son.”

Briefly, Frank considered performing that murder he had been thinking about earlier himself. Unfortunately, he needed the old woman too much. “Would it be too much trouble for you to fix me something?” he asked instead, managing to keep his voice even, mainly because he was too tired for an argument. “I haven’t eaten since morning.”

As he’d suspected, her motherly instincts overcame her need to make him feel guilty. Something about a hungry child, no matter what his age, was a temptation no woman could resist. She laid her mending aside and rose instantly. “You get washed up. It’ll only take a minute. I’ve got a stew I just made today, your favorite. I put carrots in it, just the way you like.”

Frank washed up at the kitchen sink and dried his hands and face on an immaculate towel. Everything in the apartment was immaculate, in fact. The floors were spotless, the furniture polished and shining, even the windows shone. Frank almost felt like he was contaminating the place by his presence. Another reason to stay away.

As if he needed one.

Sitting down at the scrubbed table, Frank remembered the meal he’d eaten with Sarah Brandt. Although her cooking wasn’t up to his mother’s standards, she’d been a lot better company. Or maybe that was just because they’d only been talking about his work. Frank always felt comfortable when he was talking about his work. His mother, of course, never wanted to hear about what he did. What he did frightened her, and besides, she had her own world. And her own concerns. Frank was sometimes one of them.

She worked in silence, heating the stew. The rich aroma made his stomach clench painfully, and he tried to remember why he hadn’t stopped for lunch today. A stool pigeon had kept him busy most of the afternoon, a little weasel of a man who claimed to know who had robbed that big warehouse on the docks. If Frank could solve that case, he’d be able to add a reward of several hundred dollars to his savings. A promotion to Captain cost $14,000, or at least it used to, before Roosevelt and his reformers took over. But the reformers wouldn’t last. Someday soon things would be just the way they used to be, and Frank would need that $14,000. He still had a long way to go.

His mother set the plate down in front of him, and he looked at her—really looked at her—for the first time since he’d come in. She was tired. And when had her hair gotten so gray? She was a small woman, shorter than average, and over the years her once-trim figure had broadened in the beam, but she was still a long way from fat. Frank could remember her working long days over a washtub to bring in extra money when he and his sisters had been young. He wondered vaguely how a woman so small had managed such hard physical labor, something he’d never even considered before. She hadn’t seemed small then, since he’d been a child himself, and he hadn’t thought of those days in years, not since he’d gotten work and been able to ease her load somewhat.

Frank shoveled in a spoonful of stew and chewed gratefully. “This is good, Ma,” he said, startling her. But his mother wasn’t one for compliments, and neither was he. She was instantly suspicious, and went on the attack.

“He’s asleep, and thank you for asking,” she said tartly, taking a seat opposite him so she could glare.

Frank allowed himself another bite of stew. “I figured. It’s late.”

“Is that why you waited until now to come? So he’d be asleep, and you wouldn’t have to see him?”

“I waited until late because that’s when I was finished with my work,” Frank said. He tried not to sound defensive, but the stew suddenly tasted like sawdust in his mouth. He broke off a piece of bread, dipped it in the gravy, and stuffed it in his mouth defiantly. “You know I work long hours. You know I can’t get home very often.”

“You got home easy enough when Kathleen was alive,” she reminded him.

“I was a patrolman then. I worked my shift and went home.” The shifts had been twenty-four hours long, too, so he really hadn’t been home a lot, even in those days. But his mother wasn’t going to be bothered by facts when she had a point to make.

“He asks for you. I don’t know what to tell him.”

He really wanted to kill her then, for telling such an awful, hurtful lie. “He doesn’t talk, Ma. He
can’t
talk.”

“He talks. He don’t talk plain, like you and me, but I understand what he wants. I show him your picture, the one of you and Kathleen when you got married, and I tell him, ‘That’s your Da.’ And he asks for you. He knows who you are, even though he don’t see you more than once in a blue moon.”

“I’ve got my job to do, don’t I?” he asked, hating the guilt he felt clawing inside of him. Hating her and himself and everybody in the world.

“You’ve got more than one job, Frances Xavier Malloy.”

“Only one that puts food on the table and a roof over your head. Over his head. Or would you rather live on the streets?”

His feeble attempt to make her feel guilty in return failed miserably. She was the master at it. “Finish your supper,” she told him, as if he was a boy again. “Then you can go in and see him.”

What a rare treat, he thought bitterly. By now the delicious meal was a leaden lump in his stomach, and whatever appetite he’d had vanished. “I’ll see him now,” he said resignedly, throwing down his spoon and pushing his chair back with a scrape.

“Now, Frances, finish your supper,” she tried, but he was gone to do his penance, opening the door to the bedroom.

The room was dark and silent except for the rasp of breathing. His mother’s bed took up one corner and the crib the other. The light from the gas jet in the kitchen spilled in, enough for him to see when his eyes had made the adjustment. Every instinct told him to flee. Every instinct rebelled against putting himself through this. It never got any easier. If anything, after three years, it was harder than ever to look upon the face of disaster, but still he forced his footsteps across the few feet of floor to the side of the crib.

The crib was large, larger than a regular baby’s crib. A carpenter had built it for him special. A necessary expense that had come out of his captain’s fund. Not that he begrudged the money, but still, every dollar that came out would mean he’d need that much longer to gather enough money. Time he didn’t have to waste.

Frank wrapped his fingers around the side railing of the bed and looked down. The face lay in shadows, but Frank could see it well enough. He knew it by heart, after all. The beautiful face. Kathleen’s face shrunk down to child size. Kathleen’s beautiful blue eyes, closed now in sleep, thank God, so he didn’t have to see them and feel the pain he still felt every time he looked into them and saw only emptiness.

His son and heir. The blanket covered his twisted legs, the legs that would never walk, and the night had closed the empty eyes so Frank wouldn’t have to see that no matter what his mother said, his own child didn’t recognize him and probably never would and would most certainly never call him by name.

They’d told him the grief for Kathleen would dim with the passing of time, but he still felt it fiercely each time he saw his son, the legacy of her awful, needless death. The pain in his heart was like a gaping hole, a bottomless pit he could never fill, no matter how hard he tried. He’d been holding on for three years, now, and if he ever let go, he might fall into that pit and lose himself forever.