Harcourt didn’t even grunt when the blows landed. He batted Johnny’s arms aside and clipped him with a short punch to the jaw. Many more of those and he’d be out cold again. He was already starting to feel pretty hazy . . .
His fingers brushed against a lump in his trouser pocket. It was the knife he carried, he realized. Acting mostly on instinct, he slid his hand in there and closed his fingers around the weapon. It opened easily with a flick of his wrist as he pulled it out. He thumbed the button that locked the blade into place. Above him, Harcourt lifted his right fist to strike again.
Johnny drove the knife into his throat.
Johnny couldn’t see Harcourt’s face that well, but he imagined the man’s eyes suddenly got as big around as saucers from the pain and shock. As he made a gurgling sound, wet heat flooded down over Johnny’s hand. That was blood, Johnny knew. Instinct—or maybe just fate—had guided his thrust perfectly.
“Don’t knock him out,” Bassingham called from the sidewalk, blithely unaware of what was really going on. “I want him awake to know what I’m doing to him and suffer through every minute of it.”
Harcourt sagged forward. Johnny pulled the knife free, ripping it to the side as he did so to open an even more hideous wound. With a groan of effort, he got his hands on Harcourt’s shoulders and rolled the dying man to the side. Having that weight off him was a huge relief to Johnny.
“Harcourt?” Bassingham said, not sounding nearly as confident and arrogant all of a sudden.
Johnny caught hold of the railing with his left hand and hauled himself up. He didn’t hurt anymore. It was as if the blood pouring down over him had revitalized him, like bathing in a life-giving elixir. In the back of his mind, he knew that he was just caught up in the heat of battle, operating on the emotions running riot inside him, but he didn’t care. There would be time for aches and pains later—after he had dealt with his enemies.
He lunged down the steps toward Ted Bassingham, who shrieked in terror as he turned to run.
It would be difficult to say who would have won a race between the two young men under normal circumstances. These circumstances were far from normal. Johnny caught up with Bassingham before they had gone a block. He grabbed Bassingham from behind and rode him to the ground. The impact with the sidewalk almost jolted them apart, but Johnny managed to hang on. He tangled his fingers in Bassingham’s red hair and jerked the man’s head up.
“No!” Bassingham screamed. “Please, no—”
Johnny slashed his throat, pressing down hard on the blade so it cut deep. He thought he felt the steel scrape on Bassingham’s spine, but he wasn’t sure about that.
Bassingham bucked and heaved underneath him. So much blood came out of the man’s neck that it sounded like a bubbling brook back in Sicily. His struggles lasted only a few seconds before he went limp in death.
Johnny put a hand on the corpse’s back to brace himself as he pushed to his feet. Only then, when he was standing again, swaying slightly, did he think to look around. A dozen people could have been standing on the street, watching him murder Ted Bassingham.
Instead, the sidewalks were empty, and no wagons or carriages moved along the cobblestones. Johnny lifted his head to peer at the buildings surrounding him. The windows were about equally divided between being darkened and showing light from the rooms behind them. He didn’t see anybody watching him from any of those windows, but that didn’t mean it was impossible. Someone could have been peering out, taking in all the details of the grisly killings, and then pulled back out of sight mere seconds before he checked. He had no way of knowing.
The same was true of witnesses on the street. Somebody could have seen what was going on and ducked into a doorway or an alley.
This was Little Italy. Most people were smart enough not to get mixed up in things that were none of their business.
He couldn’t count on all of them to be that discreet. If somebody saw what had happened, they might go to the police. The law was mostly corrupt, just like any other business, but Ted Bassingham was rich and came from a wealthy, powerful family. The police would feel like they had to at least try to solve his murder. And once an investigation started, who knew where it would lead?
Nick Scaramello would protect him. Nick looked after everybody in the neighborhood, didn’t he? And Johnny worked for him. He didn’t have anything to worry about.
Despite trying to convince himself of that, he couldn’t do it. Just tonight, Scaramello had sicced Pete on him, had him beaten up over a piddling ten-grand gambling debt. If the police came after Johnny for murder, Scaramello would protect himself and toss him aside like a piece of discarded trash.
Knowing that, he forced his aching muscles to work again and bent to grasp Bassingham’s ankles. He dragged the body off the sidewalk and down some steps into a basement entryway, getting a little satisfaction out of the way Bassingham’s head thudded against the steps on the way down, even though the guy couldn’t feel it anymore. Moving the corpse might slow things down a little, even though a huge pool of darkening blood remained on the sidewalk as gruesome testimony that something horrible had happened there.
Johnny knew Harcourt weighed too much for him to move, the shape he was in right now. So he circled the buildings and came up to the one where he lived from the back alley. The rear door was locked for the night, but he opened it easily with the knife. He took off his shirt, used it to wipe blood off the blade, then threw it in the incinerator along with his sodden coat. In trousers and undershirt, he climbed the rear stairs to the third floor and let himself in to his room.
He had to move fast now. The flyspecked mirror told him that his face was bruised and swollen and covered with dried blood. He couldn’t do anything about the bruises and swelling, but he washed the blood off and by the time he was finished, he thought he looked passable. Like somebody who had been in a tussle, sure, but you couldn’t tell by looking at him that already tonight he had been beaten up by a Black Hand enforcer and knifed two guys to death.
Every second that passed gnawed at his guts, but he took care in getting dressed, pulling on some of his best clothes. He had to look like Count Giovanni Malatesta for a while longer tonight. He couldn’t stay in New York, not with those murders looming over his head, but if he just panicked and ran, he would do so with almost no money. He would be broke in no time, and then what would he do?
Once he was satisfied that he looked as good as he could under the circumstances, he left the building through the back door, the way he had come in. Somewhere, several blocks away, a police whistle sounded. Had somebody finally reported Harcourt’s body and the big puddle of blood on the sidewalk?
Johnny didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to hang around to find out.
* * *
“Oh, merciful heavens!” Felicia exclaimed when she saw Johnny’s face. She tightened the belt of the fine silk robe around her waist. “What happened to you, Giovanni?”
The butler hadn’t wanted to show him into the parlor and awaken Felicia, who evidently had turned in early, but Johnny had persuaded him to do so by claiming it was an emergency. That wasn’t a lie, and his battered state must have helped the butler believe him.
“Were you in an accident?” Felicia went on.
“You could say that. I trusted a fellow I shouldn’t have. Is that an accident or just a stupid mistake?”
On the way here, Johnny had spent quite a bit of time figuring out exactly what he was going to say. In his experience, a mixture of truth and fiction usually worked best, especially with a little humble chagrin thrown in for good measure.
For that reason, it sounded genuine—and was—when he went on, “I made a foolish wager a while back, cara mia, and lost a considerable amount of money to a man I believed was a friend. Now he’s pressing me for the money.”
“Can’t you just pay him?”
“Of course I can . . . once some funds I’m expecting arrive from Sicily. Unfortunately, they won’t be here for at
least another week.”
“Surely the man can wait that long.”
Johnny shrugged and said, “I certainly thought so. But when I suggested that, he took exception and . . . well . . .”
He gestured helplessly toward the bruises on his face.
“That’s terrible! You should go to the police.”
“Over an illegal gambling debt?” Johnny smiled ruefully and shook his head. “I do not believe that would be wise, cara mia.”
She stepped closer to him, put a hand on his arm. Her hair was a little tousled, and without cosmetics the lines on her face were more visible than usual, but she was still lovely.
“I can loan you the money, Giovanni, dearest.”
Without hesitating, he responded with an emphatic shake of his head.
“I could never do such a thing,” he said. “It would bring dishonor on me, and upon my whole family.”
“I don’t see how in the world it would! There’s nothing dishonorable about a friend helping out another friend. And actually . . . I believe we’re more than friends.”
He smiled, even though it hurt his face, and reached up to stroke his fingertips over her cheek.
“Oh yes, cara mia, much more than friends.”
She rested her hands on his shoulders and said, “Besides, the rest of your family would never even know about it. You’ll just pay me back as soon as your money comes in.”
“At what rate of interest?” he asked, still smiling.
Felicia laughed. “I don’t need any interest,” she assured him. “Especially since it’ll be for such a short time. However, if you wanted to pay me back a little bit extra . . . I’m sure we could figure out a way for you to do that . . .”
Her voice trailed off, but it didn’t matter because the next instant Johnny kissed her and would have silenced her anyway.
After a long, passionate moment, Felicia broke the kiss and asked, “How much do you need, anyway?”
Johnny started to ask for the whole ten, but then he realized he didn’t actually need that much. If what he intended to do didn’t work out, it wouldn’t matter how much money he had. A corpse floating in the East River couldn’t spend anything.
“Five thousand,” he said. “A mere bagatelle.”
“Well . . . maybe not quite that mere,” Felicia said with a slight frown. “But I can certainly manage to let you have that much. I can write you a bank draft—”
She stopped as Johnny shook his head.
“It would be better in cash, so I can settle things with my former friend tonight,” he said. “I don’t want to have to deal with that scoundrel for one minute longer than absolutely necessary!”
“After what he did to you, I can understand why. Still, I’m not sure I have that much cash in the house. I’ll have to look . . .”
Again, Johnny shook his head, more vehemently this time.
“No, this is a sign,” he said. “I should never have asked you. It was wrong of me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Anyway, I asked you, you didn’t ask me. You didn’t even want to tell me what happened to you, remember?” She leaned forward, pecked his lips again. “Wait right here. I’ll go see what I can rustle up. All right?”
“If you insist, my bella signorina.”
She left him there in the parlor for ten minutes that seemed much longer. When she returned, she handed him a bundle wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string.
“There’s just over four thousand dollars there,” she told him. “I also put in a little bag with some jewelry that’s worth at least another thousand. Do you think your friend . . . former friend . . . will be willing to take them instead of the rest of the cash?”
“I think so,” Johnny said. “But I hate to take your precious jewelry . . .”
“That’s all right. It’s true, the pieces do have some . . . sentimental value. But my late husband gave them to me, and we both know what an ass he was.”
“So you have said, cara mia.”
“It’s the truth,” Felicia said. “I’d rather them go to help you than just sit in a jewelry box gathering dust.” She pressed her hands against his as he held the bundle. “Take them and go deal with this terrible man and then come back to me. Unless you have something else you need to do tonight . . . ?”
“Nothing that could be as important as making you happy.” He tucked the bundle of money and jewels under his arm and slid his other hand behind her neck, cupping her head as he leaned closer to her. “You have saved my life, cara mia. I feel for you something I have never felt before for any woman in my life.”
“And you’ve saved me, too,” she whispered. “Saved me from a life of turning to simpering fools like Ted Bassingham just to relieve my boredom.”
“You need never think of Signor Bassingham again,” he told her honestly, then kissed her again with enough passion to leave her breathless as he smiled and slipped out of the parlor, taking the bundle with him.
* * *
Forty-five nerve-wracking minutes later, with his muscles aching and his chest tight from constantly looking over his shoulder for the police or Nick Scaramello, Johnny Malatesta left New York City on a train bound for Chicago.
By the time Count Giovanni Malatesta left Chicago a couple of months after arriving there, he had acquired not only a more extensive wardrobe but also a servant to go along with it. For a change, Lady Luck had been kind to him at the gambling tables, and he had run his stake up to a considerable amount, enough to live comfortably in a hotel in his pose as an expatriate Sicilian nobleman. He had enough money that he could have sent what he owed back to Nick Scaramello, but why would he do that? Scaramello would never find him.
Then one day, while sitting in an expensive restaurant and enjoying a brandy and a cigar after a fine dinner, he had chanced to be glancing through a newspaper when a familiar name leaped out of a story at him.
The story was about the famous rancher and gunfighter Smoke Jensen, detailing some contretemps or other that had involved a great deal of violence and bloodletting, and evidently Jensen’s own daughter had been mixed up in it.
“Denise,” Malatesta breathed as he looked at the newspaper. Evidently, she had returned home to her family’s ranch, this time to stay. A smile spread slowly across his face. “Cara mia.”
The one who had gotten away from him. But not again, Malatesta vowed. Not this time.
CHAPTER 29
New York City
The butler opened the door of the late Cyrus Brighton’s study and announced, “Mr. Crabtree is here, madam.”
“Show him in, Dawes,” Felicia Brighton said from behind the desk that had once been her husband’s. The smooth, polished top was empty except for a folder containing bank drafts and a pen and inkwell.
She was dressed soberly and conservatively in a dark blue dress. Her hair was pulled back tightly behind her head. The severe appearance was a far cry from how she had looked during the days and nights she had spent gadding about the finest restaurants, clubs, and theaters in New York, always with a handsome young man on her arm.
There had been no handsome young men since Johnny Malatesta. And the way she looked now accurately reflected the bitterness and hate that threatened to consume her.
Dawes opened the door again and ushered a man in a brown tweed suit into the study. The newcomer was tall and broad-shouldered, a little thick through the chest and midsection, but from the way he carried himself, it was obvious his bulk was muscle, not fat. His face was long and rather horsey. He held a brown derby in his left hand, revealing that he had graying sandy hair. He nodded to Felicia and said, “Ma’am.”
“Mr. Crabtree,” she said as she rose to her feet behind the desk. “I take it you have news? I hope you do.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve received a wire from one of my associates in Chicago. Count Giovanni Malatesta was there less than two weeks ago.”
“He’s still using the same name?” Felicia couldn’t quite keep the surprise out of
her voice.
“Apparently. My man found several hotel employees who said he stayed in the place where they work, and the description they gave fits your man to a T.”
“He’s hardly my man, Mr. Crabtree.” She almost added Not anymore, but she controlled the impulse. One only revealed so much of oneself in the presence of the hired help.
“Well, the man you’re looking for, anyway,” Angus Crabtree said clumsily.
“Indeed he is.” Felicia shook her head and laughed quietly. “And to tell the truth, I’m not really surprised that he’s still using the same name. He was always the sort who believed he could get by on his charm and good looks. He never actually had to think all that much.”
“No, ma’am,” Crabtree responded, with the air of a man who didn’t know what else to say.
Felicia thought about what he had told her and then went on, “You said Giovanni was there two weeks ago. He’s no longer in Chicago?”
“Not at the same hotel. He checked out. He might be staying at some other hotel under a different name. Or he may have left Chicago entirely. I have my operative working on it.”
“That’s not good enough, Mr. Crabtree.”
He gestured with the derby he held and said, “I don’t know what else I can—”
“I want you to go to Chicago yourself. Now that you’ve picked up Giovanni’s trail, I don’t want you to lose it. You are regarded as one of the best private detectives in the country, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Twenty years’ experience with the Pinkertons before I started my own agency, and I always got the job done.”
“Yes, but the way you got the job done is why you eventually had to leave the Pinkerton agency and go out on your own, isn’t it?”
Crabtree frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mrs. Brighton.”
With a determined air, she leaned forward and rested her hands on the desk.
“I’m talking about how your methods were too extreme even for the Pinkertons, an organization notorious for the brutality of some of its operatives.” Felicia straightened and smiled. “Honestly, Mr. Crabtree, what does it take to be too much for goons who make their living breaking strikes . . . and heads . . . to stomach?”
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