The Marshal's Pursuit (3 page)

With a tight grip on her clutch, she crossed the almost too-fragrant lobby to the elevators. The baroque doors opened, guests exited and she entered.

Richard, the elevator boy, smiled. “Good morning, Miss Vaccarelli.”

“How do you do?” she answered.

“Very well.” He adjusted his grip on the controlling rope. “Was the art show—”

“Ah, Miss Vaccarelli.” Seth Prendergast, assistant to the maître d’hôtel, stepped inside the elevator moments before the doors closed. Shine from the overhead electrical light glinted off his forehead. “I’ve been looking for you.” As the elevator began to climb, Mr. Prendergast nervously cleared his throat. “Two men were here earlier claiming they had appointments to meet with you about an art grant.”

Malia frowned. She had a meeting later in the week with Miss Forrest, a painter from Boston, and tomorrow she’d arranged to meet with Pieter Joossens. Artists never initiated contact with her. “I have no appointments today.”

“That’s what I thought.” He puffed out his chest a fraction. “Usually lounge lizards don’t look so shifty, but those two wanted to know things.”

“Such as?

“What time you left today. Where you go most afternoons. When you’d be back.” He looked at her curiously. “I mean no offense, Miss Vaccarelli, when I say they seemed more like thugs than painters. After I spotted a gun inside one of their coats, I mentioned it to Oscar and he agreed to boot them out.”

An insurance policy that will keep us alive.

Maranzano put a hit out on Kelly.

With the voices of her brother and the police echoing in her mind, Malia felt the beads of sweat on her brow. Thankfully her hat hid them from sight. If Giovanni truly was the gangster Van Kelly, would the mafiosi
come after her too? She had to know what was in the safe.

Malia didn’t have to look down to know her hands were shaking. “Thank you, Mr. Prendergast, for sharing this information with me.” Her tone was astonishingly normal despite the panic she felt. “Please express my gratitude to Oscar for making them leave.” If there was anyone at the hotel who would put her—or any Waldorf-Astoria guest’s or resident’s—best interests first, it was Oscar Tschirky.

The elevator stopped.

Richard opened the door. “Good day, Miss Vaccarelli.”

“Good day to you both.” Malia stepped out of the elevator and onto the hall carpet. She paused. Reporters were as unwelcome as lounge lizards. And once the police had the search warrant— She glanced over her shoulder at Mr. Prendergast. “Please do not let anyone know I am in the building. And, if anyone shows up asking for me, ring immediately.”

If Seth Prendergast was stunned by her imperious tone, he didn’t show it. Nor did Richard.

Mr. Prendergast nodded.

“Thank you,” she said. “And, Mr. Prendergast, before you go, I will need a landau waiting in the carriage entrance. Give me thirty minutes.” That should be enough time to unlock the safe and put the contents in a bag for transport to the family lawyers.

He nodded again.

As the elevator doors closed, Malia hurried down the hall to the suite. She unlocked the door, entered and closed it, relocking and then double-checking that the locks held. “Nettie? Are you here?”

No answer. Nettie must still be out running errands.

After dropping her key and clutch onto the mirrored mahogany sideboard, Malia dashed into the sitting room. There, above the pink velvet settee was the oil painting titled
A King Charles Spaniel in a Landscape
by Jacob Philipp Hackert. Mamma had collected hundreds of paintings, but this one of the black-and-white spaniel hung in the most prominent spot.

Malia rested her left knee on the settee and leaned forward to touch the bottom corner of the gilded frame, drawing it to the side, exposing a black Victor safe. She gasped. Some small part of her had hoped it wouldn’t be here, hoped it wasn’t real. But it was real. Real and staring her in the face, beckoning, taunting, mocking her for not paying attention to the suspicious things she’d seen and heard over the years.

She breathed deep and released it slowly. Again. It did little to silence the pounding in her chest. With gloved fingers, she spun the knob to 29. Her fingers trembled, yet she turned. 5. Now 18. Finally 76. Hand frozen over the handle. Pulse racing.

Please, Jesus, let there be nothing inside.

After another lengthy breath, she opened the door.

Chapter 3

It is almost impossible for any of us to judge accurately of things which we have throughout a lifetime been accustomed to. A chair that was grandmother’s, a painting father bought...are all so part of ourselves that we are sentiment-blind to their defects.

—Emily Price Post,
Etiquette

I
nside were a dozen butcher paper-wrapped packages, each the thickness of two books stacked one upon the other. Malia peeled back a corner. Five-dollar bills? She tore back the wrapping on two other packages—tens and fifties. A wrinkle deepened between her brows. This made no sense. Giovanni kept bills, coins and gems in a safe in his closet. As did she. No reason to have a third safe. This much money should be in a bank. Why wasn’t it? She was missing something. What was she missing? Think.

She sank onto the settee, resting her head against the wall behind her as much as her hat would allow.
Click, click
ticked the mantel clock. Ignore what she didn’t know. Focus on what she did.

Fact 1: Giovanni feared the coppers finding what was in the safe, enough so that he told her about it in the one language they used strictly for passing secrets to one another. By his name and accent, Sergeant Peterson was Irish. Doubtful he could understand Dutch, but perhaps he could have known some Italian. Yet with Mr. Sirica yelling at him—

“No one could have heard or understood Giovanni’s words,” she said in the static loneliness of the room.

Fact 2: There was no logical reason to fear the police confiscating the money. Malia focused on the Delaroche painting on the opposite wall. What made a piece of art different enough that she would fear someone discovering? A forgery being sold as an original. She looked over her shoulder to the safe in the wall. Counterfeit? She gave her head a little shake. No. That was ridiculous. Her brother wasn’t a murderer, and that money wasn’t counterfeit.

Fact 3: The safe was Papà’s, not Giovanni’s. The suite had been their parents’ after they moved out of Nonno and Nonna’s brownstone seven years ago when Malia left home to attend Vassar.

Fact 4: She was supposed to take the packages to Papà and Nonno’s lawyers. Her gaze settled on her hands. Giovanni had warned her to keep her gloves on. That would make sense only if one didn’t want to leave any fingerprints, any evidence. She’d read Mark Twain’s book
Life on the Mississippi,
in which a murderer was revealed by the use of fingerprint identification. The only people who would fear leaving prints were murderers, thieves, criminals. And gangsters. Like Mad Dog Miller, for whose death her brother was now being held for questioning, and possible indictment.

Malia stood and began to pace from one end of the living area to the other. Nonno had said the mafiosi
were the reason he came to America. What if he hadn’t been fleeing them? What if...he
was
them?

Van Kelly. Vaccarelli.

The facts kept pointing to guilt, to crime, to deceit by her family.

Tears spilled from her eyes. Mamma and Nonna could have known of their mafiosi
involvement, or could have been as ignorant, trusting and naive as she had been. After the funeral, Grandfather DeWitt had yelled at Giovanni, saying they both knew the yacht their parents and nonni had been on hadn’t sunk on accident. What if it had been a hit on them like the one now out on Giovanni? Completely possible. Plausible. And also ridiculous. Her brother did not murder Mad Dog Miller. Wrong place, wrong time, he’d said.

But she could not ignore Fact 5: Patrolmen caught him at the scene of the murder, and now the Metropolitans were banking on a search warrant to find some evidence of criminal activity. If he was innocent, he should have nothing to fear.

But if the packages of money were counterfeit...

Malia stopped pacing and looked at the printed matchbox on the edge of the settee.
Blossom Restaurant 103 Bowery Street.
Giovanni insisted he’d been down in that seedy part of town because he’d been looking at real estate development. What if he’d been delivering—or collecting—counterfeit bills? Her gaze shifted to the empty hearth. She could burn it. That meant she’d be destroying evidence, and that would make her a criminal too. How could Nonno, Papà and Giovanni sit in church every Sunday knowing what crimes they committed? Were any of their business dealings legitimate?

Her heart felt as if it were going to beat right out of her chest.

She glanced about the room, at the paintings, Italian figurines, sixteenth-century French furniture and Persian rug at her feet. Luxury built on the cornerstone of crime.
Ad vitam beneficio adficientem
—toward a life of doing good things. Not an accurate family motto.

People lied. Facts didn’t.

And Fact 6 was that Giovanni told her to take what was in the safe to the family lawyers. They would know how to protect her until he was released. If the lounge lizards Seth Prendergast and Oscar had kicked out of the building were mafiosi
henchmen, then what she needed most was protection. Giovanni needed some too.

Malia looked back at the printed matchbox then walked to the phone on the end table. She picked the crystal handset off the cradle. “Operator, patch me through to the law offices of Lord, Day & Lord.”

Tweed Courthouse
52 Chambers Street
That same hour

“Could you use an extra hand?” Deputy Marshal Norma Hogan fell into step with Frank.

He paused momentarily at the entrance to the room full of desks, marshals and noise, allowing Norma to enter the room first. Three years after earning her badge, she found evidence to link two unsolved cases to a convicted moonshiner. While some marshals, lawyers and judges in the courthouse didn’t like having a female marshal—and openly let her know—Frank admired grit and optimism. Norma knew how to smile in the face of adversity. Wearing a skirt didn’t make her any less intimidating, when she wanted to be.

Frank stopped at his desk and nodded toward the coffee press in the back corner. “Black, with cream and two sugar cubes. I could also use lunch.”

Her arched brows rose.

He pointed to his injured foot. “I’m an invalid.”

She looked at him without an ounce of pity.

He laughed. “It was worth a try.” He dropped the box of files and binders on the edge of his desk. “You’re a woman.”

“I thought you hadn’t noticed.”

Oh, he had noticed all right. Dimples that appeared at the barest hint of a smile. Green eyes with a slight upward tilt to the outer edges. Six feet of womanly curves she didn’t hide. He’d noticed every appealing detail about Norma the first day Marshal Henkel had introduced her to his deputies, and then he filed the information away as irrelevant. His honor code meant one of them would have to quit the marshal service before he would ask her out on a date, and Frank knew full well she was as married to her job as he was. The way he saw it, Norma Hogan made a better investigator and friend than she would make a wife.

“I could use your eyes and womanly intuition.” He wasn’t too stubborn to admit he couldn’t do this alone.

Her “Aah” had a somber edge. She pulled the chair from her desk over to his and sat. “Enough with the flattery. What plagues you?”

“Malia Vaccarelli.”

“Who is she?”

Frank gave a quick rundown on the events of the morning, minus the fact he’d been unable to get Miss Vaccarelli from his mind since he made eye contact with her in the garden. He smacked the box of files. “I pulled every case that mentions Van Kelly. I need to find a connection from him to her.”

She stared at him, unblinking. “You’re serious.”

“It’s this, or put an announcement in the
Times
—Frank Grahame Louden is seeking a woman.” He sat on the edge of his desk. “I do that and, next thing I know, my parents are ordering wedding invitations and I’m looking at china patterns in Gimbels.”

“There may not be a connection.” Norma took a file from the box. “It may have been a mere coincidence Daly showed up at the police department when she was leaving.”

Frank looked longingly at the coffeepot on the other side of the room, but his aching foot demanded a rest. “Maybe, but my gut is telling me she’s important. Or I think she’s pretty and this is the easiest way to get her number. I need concentration juice.” Leaving Norma to begin the search, he limped toward the coffee press.

“Bring me mine straight black,” Norma called out over the drum of the typewriters. “Cream and sugar are for babies and love-struck marshals.”

Frank stopped and looked over his shoulder. The back of Norma’s head already had several ebony corkscrew strands falling from the poof she called a pompadour. “Do you think I’m going to bring you coffee like I’m your secretary?”

Norma nodded and a few more strands loosened.

“You wound me, Norma.”

She chuckled. “You will bring me coffee, Louden, because no matter what else is said about you—and it’s not all positive, believe me—you are a chivalrous man.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t have flaws.”

Laughter came from too many desks around the room.

“Boys,” Norma called out, “shall we let him in on them?”

Adjectives flew from their mouths quicker than machine gun fire.
Jokester. Lackadaisical. Guarded. Set in his ways. Nosy. Reticent. Unable to be serious.

“Give a different synonym to the meaning and my ‘flaws’ become honorable traits,” proclaimed Frank.

More laughter.

“It’s true,” he said, resuming his pace to the coffee press. “
Lackadaisical
is to a pessimist what
easygoing
is to an optimist, and I am an optimist.”

“That’s another word for
denial,
” Norma quipped.

“I can be serious.”

Silence.

Then someone sputtered and the laughter became contagious.

Frank rolled his eyes. He scooped coffee into the press and added hot water. He could take their ribbing. Because, before the day was over, the easygoing Frank Louden was seriously going to find what—and whom—he was looking for.

1:16 p.m.

“Louden, how’s your toe?” Marshal Henkel of the Southern District of New York asked in that monotonously deep voice of his.

Frank glanced at the wall clock before sitting in one of the two chairs before his boss’s desk. He’d worked through lunch again. “It is almost healed, sir.”

“It’s been a week. Are you going to tell me how you broke it?”

The overhead bamboo fan made a woodpecker-like clicking noise as it twirled.

“No, sir.” Frank shifted in the wooden chair that no one in his right mind would find comfortable. He suspected that was Marshal Henkel’s reason for choosing these chairs. “Is there a reason why you called me in? I’m pursuing a new lead.” He and Norma had yet to find the name
Vaccarelli
in any of their files, but he wasn’t losing hope.

Henkel scribbled something inside a folder on his desk, giving Frank a prime view of his gray head. “What do you know about Van Wyck Cady?”

“In his first act after taking office in January,” he answered, “Governor Odell appointed Cady special prosecutor to go after members of organized crime.” Frank’s favorite
Times
illustrator deemed him Clean ’er Up Cady. “He is a highly respected lawyer for his rigid sense of justice. Incorruptible. Perfect man for the job.”

“Ever met him?”

“Once. At a political fund-raiser my parents were hosting last year for Roosevelt.”

Still looking at the folder, Henkel nodded. “Cady’s first target was midlevel boss James ‘Mad Dog’ Miller. Miller didn’t like the heat on him, so he put out a hit on the special prosecutor.”

Frank found that hard to believe. “Sir, a mafiosi
tenet forbids killing authorities for fear it will bring massive government retaliation.”

“You expect criminals to always follow a code of ethics?”

He had a point there. “I rather hope they would,” he said in a solemn tone. “It’d make our jobs easier.”

Henkel glanced up. “You seem awfully serious today.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Henkel’s lips twitched with amusement. He turned the page in the folder, occasionally underlining and writing.

Frank absently picked at a piece of lint on the black trousers of his three-piece suit as he waited for his boss to speak. Henkel’s diligence and caution were well respected, especially by Frank, who prided himself on his own diligence and caution. But Frank would also be the first to admit he always struggled with impatience when waiting for Henkel to reach the point as to why he’d called a meeting.

Frank shifted as much as possible in the unyielding chair. He flexed his left ankle. The oxford he wore on that foot was a size bigger to compensate for the space his splinted toe needed, and at his desk was a padded step stool for elevating his foot. If it were possible to make the wood-planked floor in the chief marshal’s office harder than that in the rest of the courthouse, he was sure Henkel had it done. The man didn’t want anyone comfortable in his presence. He’d make a passable Queen Victoria.

Henkel stopped writing and abruptly met Frank’s gaze. There in his eyes was an excited glint that Frank hadn’t seen since the man announced he was in search of a replacement.

“Yesterday afternoon,” Henkel said gleefully, “Mad Dog Miller was killed in a club on Bowery Street. In a stroke of luck, patrolmen happened to be in the area. They hauled in everyone at the scene, including a serving girl who identified the man she saw talking with Miller moments before the shooting. Another witness identified that man as Van ‘the Shadow’ Kelly.” Henkel closed the file and rested his pen atop it. “This morning both witnesses were found dead.”

Not surprising. “So Kelly was released?”

“He would have been, were it not for Malia Vaccarelli.”

Frank gripped the armrests to keep from jumping to his feet. “What?”

“She is the Shadow’s younger sister.”

“Sister,” Frank muttered. “I would have never guessed that.”

“What...don’t...I...know?”

Frank opened his mouth to offer a quip back, but his good sense took over. Be serious. In less time than he took to tell Norma, he updated his boss on the morning’s events and finished with, “Miss Vaccarelli is the new lead I’m pursuing.” He couldn’t think of a time he’d wanted to find a woman more.