“I think I’ll be safe from a crippled old woman,” she said, amused by his dismay. Could Malloy really be concerned for her safety?
Before he could reply, another visitor knocked on Sarah’s door.
“Who’s that?” Malloy asked, on his feet in an instant.
“I guess I won’t know until I open the door,” Sarah allowed.
“It’s kind of late for visitors.” He was frowning like a disapproving father.
Sarah decided not to point out that he was there, and surely, he also counted as a visitor since he didn’t live there. “I’m a midwife, Malloy. I get visitors at all hours of the day and night. This is actually early compared to some.”
He followed her into the front room, maintaining a discreet distance so he would be out of sight of whoever was at the door but still close enough to hear what was said. Trying to be amused rather than annoyed by his presumption, Sarah asked who was there.
“It’s Will Yardley, Mrs. Brandt.”
Sarah threw the door open. “Is it the baby? Is she sick again?”
Will looked surprised and very young in the shadows. “Oh, no, she’s doing just fine. That tea you told Dolly to make did the trick. It’s that other thing. I got the information you wanted.” He glanced over his shoulder, as if checking to be sure no one was following him, and Sarah decided this was simply a habit.
“Come in and tell me what you learned,” she said, stepping back so he could enter. She closed the door behind him so he would feel safer.
When he judged it was secure and they could not be overheard, he said, “The fellow you was looking for, Fisher?”
“Yes, did you find him?” she asked eagerly.
“Not him exactly, but a friend of mine what knows him, he seen him down in the Bowery.”
“The Bowery?” Sarah echoed in surprise. She would have expected Sylvester Mattingly’s employee to have a better address than the city’s lowest slum.
“Yeah, he’s been living in a flophouse down there. Place they call the Brass Lantern.”
A flophouse? This was the lowest of accommodations, only one step above sleeping on the street. For a nickel, a man could “flop” on the floor, for a few cents more he could have a hammock, and if he really wanted luxury, a dime would buy a cot for the night. Men slept shoulder to shoulder in the most appalling conditions, and only the lowest of the low could be found there. This made no sense at all. What would Ham Fisher, a man who fancied himself a private detective, be doing in a place like that?
“Are you sure it’s him?” Malloy demanded, stepping out of the shadows.
Will started and swore an oath. “What’s a copper doin’ here, Mrs. Brandt? You didn’t tell me about no coppers bein’ mixed up in this.”
He would have bolted, but Sarah grabbed his sleeve and held on tight. “Mr. Malloy is a friend of mine, Will. He’s just visiting.”
“The hell you say. You telling me he ain’t no copper?”
Sarah wondered how he could tell Malloy’s occupation simply by looking at him, but she supposed that was a skill Will would have developed early in life. “He’s trying to solve a murder.”
“This Fisher killed somebody?” Will asked, even more alarmed.
“No, but he might know who did. It was a young girl, Will, only sixteen. Not much younger than Dolly.”
“This ain’t none of my business. I gotta go.”
“Maybe you’d like to answer Mrs. Brandt’s questions down at Police Headquarters,” Malloy said in a voice she’d never heard before. It frightened even her.
The color drained from Will’s face, and she had to hold him with both hands.
“Stop it!” she ordered Malloy. “You’re frightening him!”
“That’s the best way to deal with the likes of him,” Malloy insisted.
“Not in my house,” Sarah insisted right back. “Will, he isn’t taking you anywhere, not after you came here and did me a favor. I want to thank you for that. This Brass Lantern, where is it located?”
“I know where it is,” Malloy said. “You can let him go, if that’s all he knows.”
She glared at Malloy, although it didn’t seem to faze him, then turned to Will with a smile. “Thank you for coming, Will. And tell Dolly I’ll check on her and the baby in a day or two.”
“You didn’t tell me about no coppers,” he repeated plaintively, giving Malloy one last desperate look before bolting for the door.
When he was gone, Sarah turned to Malloy in disgust. “Is that how you treat all your informants? It’s a wonder you ever solve any crimes at all!”
“I lack your charm, Mrs. Brandt. I have to use the tools I’ve got.”
“Well, remind me never to commit a murder in New York. I would hate to see your ‘tools’ firsthand.”
Sarah brushed past him and returned to the kitchen where she refilled her cup. When she saw he had followed her back, she filled his, too. He took that as an invitation to sit again, which he did. Sarah wanted to be angry with him, but she had to admit, she wasn’t. Not really. He was only doing his job, or what would have been his job if someone hadn’t taken him off the case. Since she was trying to do the same thing, she shouldn’t fault him for using different methods than she would have chosen.
“Now, tell me where this Brass Lantern is so I can find Ham Fisher,” she said, taking the seat opposite him.
He smiled again, that odd little grin that looked as if he seldom used it. Obviously, she had startled it out of him. “You’re not going to the Brass Lantern.”
“Then who will?”
“I’ll go. Nobody will question what I’m doing there,” he added when she would have protested. “I can always say I’m working on another case. I find a lot of suspects at places like the Brass Lantern.”
“I can imagine.”
He sipped his coffee, watching her over the rim of his cup with what looked like admiration, but perhaps she was mistaken. Maybe he was just laughing at her again.
“Then I’ll find Mrs. Petrovka and see if she’ll tell me who took her to see Alicia that night, and you’ll go to the Brass Lantern to talk to Fisher. One of us is bound to find out who the killer is, and then what will we do?”
Malloy took another sip of his coffee. “Then we go see Roosevelt.”
SARAH HAD NO trouble finding Emma Petrovka’s address. The woman advertised openly in the newspapers, even though her profession was patently illegal. No one ever prosecuted abortionists. There was too much real crime in the city for the police to have time to bother with such trifles, especially when no one was likely to pay a reward for apprehending them. Unless Petrovka killed too many patients, and even then no one would care unless one of them was someone of importance.
Sarah was going over a speech in her head when she left her house that morning, trying to figure out what to say that would sound like a plausible reason for having sought out an abortionist. Mrs. Elsworth’s cheery greeting interrupted her thoughts. The woman was sweeping her immaculate porch. If she came out to sweep every time someone she wanted to talk to walked down the street—and Sarah was fairly certain she did—it must get swept a dozen times a day.
“Looks like it’s going to be another warm one, today, Mrs. Brandt. Off to deliver a baby this morning, are you?” she asked.
“No, I’ve got an appointment,” Sarah said. It wasn’t quite a lie. She had an appointment even if Mrs. Petrovka didn’t.
“Be careful then. I baked some bread this morning, and the top of the loaf split. I’ve been worried sick ever since. You know what that means, don’t you? There’s going to be a funeral soon.”
“It won’t be mine,” Sarah assured her, wondering with amusement if anything ever happened to Mrs. Elsworth that didn’t have some sinister interpretation. “But I’ll be careful.”
“See that you are. And watch out for those infernal bicyclists. Did you see the story in the Times this morning? Some fellow ran his cycle into a wagon and very nearly killed himself and everyone else
involved!”
Sarah promised again to be careful and managed to escape without hearing about any other superstitions.
By the time she reached Gramercy Park, she had settled on an excuse for her visit to Mrs. Petrovka. She would say she was consulting her because one of her patients had requested the services of someone like Petrovka, but Sarah wasn’t certain the procedure could still be performed so late in the pregnancy. This, she thought, would be a natural opening for mentioning Alicia’s case. Not that she expected Petrovka to bring it up, but Sarah certainly intended to.
Petrovka’s house was small but meticulously kept. The steps were swept clean, and the windows sparkled. Behind them, Sarah could see lace curtains, and the door fittings were solid brass. Emma Petrovka had made a very comfortable life for herself out of the misfortunes of others.
Steeling herself for a confrontation with a woman she despised, Sarah lifted the knocker and let it fall. She waited a reasonable time before knocking again, louder and more insistently this time. Apparently, no one was home. Disappointed, Sarah had decided she would have to come back later, but as she was turning away she noticed something about the front curtain she hadn’t seen before. One edge was pulled away from the window, as if someone was peering out, except when she looked more closely, no one was there. The curtain seemed to be caught at an odd angle on a piece of furniture. Curious now, Sarah leaned over the porch railing for a better view, and what she saw made her gasp.
Galvanized now, she tried the door, something she would never have dreamed of doing before, and to her surprise, it opened under her hand. Later she would realize she should have been afraid, but at the moment, all she could think of was trying to help.
The door opened into a center hallway. Stairs went up to the second floor and the parlor opened off to the right. The pocket doors stood open, and now Sarah could see clearly what she had only glimpsed through the window. Emma Petrovka lay sprawled on the parlor floor, and for all her intentions of coming to the woman’s aid, Sarah saw instantly that her help was no longer needed.
FRANK COULDN’T BELIEVE this. He gazed down at the mound of Emma Petrovka’s body and frowned. The bruises on her throat were just like those on Alicia VanDamm’s. Which only meant that they’d both been strangled in the same way, not necessarily that they’d been strangled by the same person.
Frank could imagine that the woman hadn’t had a friend in the world, but he also couldn’t imagine anyone hating her enough to kill her in such a personal way. Except, of course, Alicia’s killer. If Petrovka really had known who the killer was, it was only natural he’d want her dead, and he could want her dead so badly, he might have surrendered to the impulse to murder a second time. What Frank couldn’t figure out was why he’d waited until now to get rid of her. Obviously, it wasn’t because he knew Sarah and Frank knew about her, because no one had known that but the two of them.
He found Sarah Brandt sitting in the dining room. She was alone at the large mahogany table, her hands folded primly, her expression grim.
He was a little annoyed at her for asking for him by name. Actually, she’d insisted that the officers send for him, making such a fuss that the whole department would probably be talking about it. They would want to know why she’d insisted that he come instead of another detective, but he supposed he could explain it away. Nobody but them needed to know Petrovka’s death was connected to the VanDamm killing, so they could just say she asked for him because she knew him from the other case. Or maybe Frank could make them believe she was sweet on him. At least it would give them something else to talk about.
“You still think it’s safe to go looking for a killer in the daylight?” he asked her softly so none of the other officers would overhear.
She gave him a mutinous look. “You don’t know she was killed in the daytime,” she whispered back.
“Seems likely. Unless abortionists are used to getting cases in the middle of the night, too. It looks like she opened the door to whoever it was willingly, so most likely it wasn’t the middle of the night. And if she opened the door to him, she must not have thought she had any reason to be afraid.”
“So she wasn’t afraid of Alicia’s killer, which makes it likely she didn’t even know Alicia had been murdered.” She frowned. “If only I’d come yesterday. Maybe ...”
“Maybe you’d be dead, too. And you didn’t know about her yesterday.”
“How long has she been dead? Do you have any proof she died this morning?”
“In this heat, the body would’ve spoiled if she’d been dead longer than a few hours. And she’s still stiff. After death, the body—”
“I know about rigor mortis,” she said impatiently. “It sets in after an hour or two and lasts for seven to ten hours and then the body grows limber again.”
“Do you feel up to going through her things?” he asked. “Maybe we can find something.”
She looked up in surprise. “What would we be looking for?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the curette they had found in Alicia’s room. “To see if she’s missing this.”
Her eyes lighted with instant comprehension. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?”
She was on her feet instantly. “Her examining room is in the back. That’s the most logical place to start.”
The killer hadn’t disturbed anything in the house, probably because he knew there would be no evidence here linking him to Petrovka, or even to Alicia’s murder so long as Petrovka was dead and couldn’t identify him. The examining room was spotlessly clean and in perfect order. Mrs. Brandt began a systematic search, going through each drawer and cabinet as thoroughly as he would have himself. Frank couldn’t help but think how she’d changed since the day he’d forced her to look through Alicia’s things. She’d been so hesitant then, but now ... He’d make a detective of her yet.
“What’s so funny, Malloy?” she wanted to know when she looked up and caught him staring.
“Nothing’s funny,” he said sobering instantly. “A woman has been murdered.”
She wasn’t fooled. “Am I doing this wrong?”
Perversely, he wanted to tell her she was, but he couldn’t lie. “Not at all. Couldn’t do it better myself.”
“Then why don’t you help?” she snapped. “Start on that side of the room.”
“What am I looking for?”
“The instruments will probably be rolled up in a soft cloth and tied.”
Malloy was the one who found them. They were just as she had said, in a drawer. The cloth was black, and when he untied the string holding it, it rolled out to reveal a set of instruments similar to the one he’d found in Alicia VanDamm’s room the morning after her death. The sizes were graduated, and each instrument was in its own individual pocket. One of the pockets was empty.
“Did you find it?” she asked, hurrying over to see.
He handed her the curette from his pocket. “Is this the one missing?”
She examined the curettes in the set, pulling them out and holding them to the light, then comparing them with the one they’d found. “Yes,” she decided. “It matches the others, and it’s the size that’s missing. This proves Emma Petrovka must have been the one in Alicia’s room that night.”
“For all the good that does us,” he said.
She sighed, a sad sound. Frank had forgotten how forlorn a woman’s sigh could be. “I don’t suppose you’ve found Mr. Fisher yet, have you?”
“He wasn’t in when I called this morning,” he said, “but that’s not unusual. Nobody stays around a flophouse during the day. I’ll check back late tonight.”
“He’s the last one alive who knows who went to Alicia’s room that night. What happens if you don’t find him?”
He could see from the look in her eyes that she already knew the answer, but he said it anyway. “Then we might never find out who killed Alicia VanDamm.”
11
FRANK FOUND THE BRASS LANTERN A LOT NOISIER thi
s evening than it had been earlier in the day. Nightfall had brought the lodgers back to claim their beds or their share of the floor space that was offered, to anyone who could pay, for a few pennies. The “beds” were lengths of dirty, sagging canvas strung between rows of rough-hewn boards. Less than a foot of space separated each hammock, and a man could reach up and touch the bunk above him. Privacy was in short supply in a place like this. No wonder Will Yardley’s friend had no trouble spotting Hamilton Fisher.
The proprietor stood at the door, collecting nickels and pennies and cuffing those who thought to sneak in without paying back out into the street. He frowned when he saw Frank and grew instantly defensive.
“I keep an orderly house here, I do,” he insisted belligerently. “There’s no call to come barging in here. I pay my protection money.”
“I’m not here to bother you. I’m looking for somebody,” Frank said, tossing him a silver dollar. “Tall fellow with buck teeth. Might be calling himself Hamilton Fisher.”
“I don’t care what anybody calls hisself,” the man replied. He smelled of garlic and sweat. “Do you think I keep a register? This ain’t the Plaza Hotel, now is it?”
“I said he’s got buck teeth. Seen anybody like that?” Frank said, not even tempted to give the fellow any more money. Frank liked his informants to be more cooperative than this, so he wasn’t going to encourage bad behavior by reaching into his pocket again, and if this fellow didn’t get more friendly, Frank was going to have to get rough.
The man waited, jutting out his greasy beard and hooking his thumbs in his suspenders. But Frank could wait, too, and he did, glaring his policeman’s glare, which had been perfected after years of practice. As he had anticipated, he won the staring match.
“Might be somebody by that description inside,” the man allowed.
Frank acknowledged the cooperation with a nod and stepped into the building. Most of the bunks were occupied. The men laid down fully clothed because any article of clothing left unattended would be claimed by someone else before the night was over. A group of men were playing cards for matches in a comer, and someone on a top bunk was snoring like a foghorn blasting its way down the Hudson River.
Murder on Astor Place Page 20