Murder In Chinatown

by Victoria Thompson

  Before the other two could protest, Sarah thanked them again and ushered Minnie out into the hallway. Minnie waited until they had walked down the first flight of stairs before stopping Sarah. “What did they say?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Angel was seeing a young man named Quinn O’Neal.”

  Minnie gasped. “How? When?”

  Sarah briefly explained.

  “I don’t believe it! Angel never…I never knew her to lie!”

  “Young love is a powerful force,” Sarah reminded her.

  “What can we do now?” Minnie asked helplessly.

  “That’s up to you,” Sarah said. “I wish I had more information about this Quinn fellow, but Angel was very discreet, and the girls apparently weren’t interested in learning a lot of details.”

  “You think he sold her, don’t you?” Minnie asked, her face ashen.

  Sarah could feel her anguish. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe he really did elope with her, like the girls said. Either way, finding this Quinn is your best chance of finding Angel.”

  “I need to tell Charlie,” Minnie said. “He’ll want to know the whole story. Will you come with me? I’ll never remember everything.”

  For an instant, Sarah imagined what Malloy would say about this, but only for an instant. “Of course,” she replied.

  4

  CHARLIE LEE WAS AT THE LAUNDRY HE OWNED. MINNIE sent one of the children playing around the front stoop for him, then took Sarah up to her flat to wait, after they’d checked on Cora and brought her up to date. Minnie made them some tea, more to keep busy than to be a good hostess, and Sarah was enjoying the fragrant brew in the kitchen with her when they heard the front door open. Minnie hurried out to meet her husband, and Sarah could hear her explaining the situation to him in the other room. A few moments later, Mr. Lee appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  Sarah wasn’t sure exactly what she had expected. The only Chinese men she’d encountered with any frequency were the ones who operated the chop suey restaurants that had sprung up around the city. Charlie Lee was nothing like them. Although he wasn’t a large man, his presence filled the room. He wore a tailored business suit with a boiled white shirt and neat tie. A gold watch chain stretched across his trim waistline, and a diamond ring winked on his finger. His dark eyes took in Sarah with a glance, seeing everything he needed to know about her in those few seconds.

  “You are Mrs. Brandt?” he asked. His accent was noticeable but not heavy.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m so sorry about your daughter, Mr. Lee.”

  His expression didn’t waver, but she thought she detected the slightest flinch at the mention of the girl.

  “Why do you care what happen to her?” he asked in challenge.

  “I care what happens to every young girl in the city,” she said quite honestly. “I can’t protect all of them, but I do what I can. I’ve been helping at the Prodigal Son Mission for several months. I even hired one of the girls from there to work at my house.”

  “My daughter not like the girls at Mission,” he said, his anger evident.

  “I know, which is why we need to find her as quickly as possible.”

  “Charlie,” Minnie said from where she stood behind him, but he silenced her with a gesture.

  “What do you know about my daughter?”

  Sarah told him, going into much more detail than she had with Minnie. She told him about Quinn O’Neal and how they’d met and what the girls had told her about how Angel had sneaked out to see him. Mr. Lee continued to stand ramrod straight as he listened intently to every word. Only the color rising in his face betrayed his fury.

  “These girls, they lie to me,” he said when she was finished.

  “They’re young and foolish and romantic. They thought they were helping Angel elope.”

  “That is no excuse.”

  He was right, of course. “I told Minnie that I have a friend who’s a detective sergeant on the police force,” Sarah said. “I’m sure he’d—”

  “No police,” Mr. Lee snapped. “I will find Quinn O’Neal myself.”

  Sarah didn’t know what to say to that. She certainly wished him success, but it seemed inappropriate to say so. She rose from where she still sat at the kitchen table. “I guess I should be going. If I can be of any more help, please let me know.”

  Mr. Lee stepped aside to let her pass into the front room, where Minnie still stood, wringing her hands and looking distraught. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Brandt. If you hadn’t come, we might never have found out about this Quinn fellow.”

  “I certainly hope it helps you find Angel,” Sarah said.

  As she left the building, she had an odd feeling of failure. True, she’d uncovered information Angel’s family might not have found without her help, but would it be enough? For once, she understood Malloy’s warnings about getting involved. When she’d helped him solve murders in the past, they had worked together until the killer was found and punished. This time…this time, in spite of her efforts, they might never even know what happened to Angel. How would Minnie bear it?

  SARAH ORDINARILY WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN SURPRISED TO see a young man at her door. Young men were most frequently the ones sent to fetch her to a delivery. This fellow was Chinese, however, right down to his thick-soled slippers, and although he looked vaguely familiar, she knew he wasn’t Cora Lee’s husband. He also seemed more angry than anxious, the way young men usually were when they came to get her.

  “Mrs. Brandt, my mother sent me to ask you…” He glanced past her, to where Maeve and Catherine hovered in the kitchen doorway, and hesitated.

  “Is your mother having a baby?” Sarah asked.

  “No!” he yelped, then caught himself and managed to regain his dignity. “It’s about my sister, Angel.”

  Oh! Now she knew him. He was Harry Lee, Minnie’s son. “Have you found Angel?”

  His face hardened and, with it, his anger. “Yes,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Is she all right?”

  “No,” he said. “She’s dead.”

  “Dead?” Sarah’s heart seemed to contract. “I’m so sorry! What on earth happened?”

  “Somebody choked her,” he said baldly.

  They heard a strangled cry, and Sarah turned to see Maeve covering her mouth. Her eyes glistened with tears. Catherine was staring, wide-eyed, and it was impossible to know how much of this she understood. “Maeve, will you take Catherine back to the kitchen?” Sarah asked gently.

  Maeve could only nod, but she quickly obeyed. Sarah hoped Catherine hadn’t comprehended what Harry had been saying. The child had already seen too much ugliness in her short life. When they were gone, Sarah turned back to Harry.

  “Why did your mother send you to me?”

  “She said…she said you know somebody on the police,” he explained reluctantly. “My father, he won’t want the police, but my mother says they’ll come anyway, because Angel was murdered, so we might as well try to get somebody who can help.”

  “Tell me what happened,” Sarah said.

  He drew a deep breath, as if he had to calm himself a bit before he spoke of his sister. “We found Angel a few days ago. She was alive then, and with that man, O’Neal.” Sarah tried to judge why he was so angry, but everything he said just seemed to make him angrier instead of distracting him, as it should have.

  “The one who had eloped with her,” Sarah clarified.

  “Yeah, they got married.”

  “Oh, my!” Sarah exclaimed in surprise. “I never thought…”

  “Neither did my parents,” he said bitterly. “We couldn’t believe she was really married, but they had a license and went to a priest and everything.”

  That must have been such a relief to Minnie, to know her daughter was safe, at least. And now she was dead! “What happened? When did she die?”

  “Today. I mean, they think it was today. They found her in the alley behind the tenement where she lives…lived with O’Neal. Someb
ody ran to tell my mother right away. When she saw what had happened, she said to get you because you’d know what to do.”

  Sarah knew exactly what to do. “Maeve, I have to go out,” she called. By the time Maeve and Catherine had emerged from the kitchen, she had on her cloak. She kissed a worried-looking Catherine good-bye and reassured her that everything would be fine. Then she gave Maeve instructions for the evening. Mrs. Ellsworth would undoubtedly check on them, too. She nearly always came by after supper.

  When she and Harry were out on the sidewalk, she asked, “Where did your sister live?”

  He gave her an address on the Lower East Side. It was only a few blocks from Chinatown, but it might as well have been in another country for as much as the people in the two neighborhoods would have mixed. The whole city was like that, each neighborhood like a country unto itself. “Let’s start there.”

  “Aren’t you going to get that policeman?” he asked doubtfully.

  “Let’s worry about that when we get there, shall we?” she suggested and hurried off, leaving him to keep up as best he could. Sarah knew she was unlikely to catch Malloy at Police Headquarters. Her best bet was to have the officers who had been called to Angel’s murder send for Malloy directly. Even if another detective had already been assigned to the case, she could appeal to him to send for Malloy, too.

  As they hurried down Bank Street, Sarah mentally went over the various routes they might take to the Lower East Side. She quickly determined that the Sixth Avenue Elevated Train would be the best choice. The trains that ran on rails two stories above the hopeless traffic of the city streets would carry them swiftly down to that portion of Manhattan Island. They’d have to walk across town from there, but the train would probably cut an hour from their trip.

  Harry Lee preceded Sarah up the stairs on Sixth Avenue that led up to the waiting area. She couldn’t help but notice the way people stared at him as they passed. He did look very different, with his dome-shaped hat, his brightly colored silk shirt, and the long pigtail hanging down his back.

  Fortunately, they didn’t have to wait long for a train, and Sarah paid the fare for both of them. The train lurched into motion before they were seated, and Sarah half fell into a seat. With apparent reluctance, Harry sat down beside her. This elicited some disapproving looks from the other passengers, but Sarah ignored them.

  Grateful for a chance to ask him a few questions, she said, “How long ago did you find out where your sister was?”

  She saw the muscles in his jaw working in the moments that passed before he replied. “Three days, I think. About that.”

  “Did you see her?”

  His gaze cut sharply to Sarah for an instant before he looked away again. Sarah noticed that his eyes were light brown, almost honey-colored, not dark like his sister’s. “No, I didn’t see her.”

  “Who finally found her then?”

  “My father. He…he’d been looking for her. He found the man she’d been meeting, and she was with him.”

  “You said they were married.”

  “That’s what they told him. Angel…She always was a bad girl.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Sarah asked in surprise. Minnie had insisted she was always sweet and obedient.

  His jaws worked again, and the color rose in his neck. “She has no respect, no honor.”

  “Because she was sneaking out to meet this man, you mean?”

  “Because she has no respect!” he repeated more vehemently. “She doesn’t respect her family. She has shamed us all!”

  “Because she ran away?”

  “Because she refused to obey my father,” he snapped, as if Sarah were simpleminded not to understand.

  “When he wanted her to marry his friend,” Sarah guessed.

  “Yes. She embarrassed us, and then she ran away with a stinking Irishman.”

  Sarah could have reminded him that his mother was Irish, but she didn’t. She found his contempt interesting. The Irishman in question would likely have called Harry a stinking Chinaman in turn. Prejudice was an interesting phenomenon.

  They rode in silence for a while, and Sarah watched the buildings that seemed to be moving along beside the train. She could see into the windows, catching a glimpse of the lives being lived in full view of everyone who rode this train.

  “Do you really know a police detective?” Harry asked suddenly.

  She heard the challenge in his voice. Why would a respectable lady know a police detective? Most people considered the police little better than the criminals they arrested, and truthfully, few of them were. Frank Malloy was a rare exception, although she knew he did make compromises that he wouldn’t want her to know about. “Yes, I do.”

  “My father won’t pay the police,” he informed her. Another challenge.

  Few crimes in New York were solved unless a “reward” was paid. “That won’t matter. Detective Sergeant Malloy will still investigate your sister’s murder.”

  He frowned, and Sarah understood his skepticism. Still, she had confidence in Malloy. She only hoped she could get him assigned to the case.

  After what seemed an eternity, they finally descended the stairs from the station into the teeming streets again. After walking a few blocks east, they were in the heart of the Lower East Side, where immigrants of all types mixed and mingled. The people they passed spoke a variety of languages and wore a strange mix of clothing, some reflecting ethnic origins and others simply reflecting extreme poverty. The aroma of foods from the street vendors mingled with odors from the manure on the cobblestones, garbage piled on the corners, and un-washed bodies clogging the sidewalks.

  “It’s down here,” Harry said when they’d made their way cautiously across yet another busy street. He pointed to an alley running between two tenement buildings. Sarah followed him down, past piles of refuse and battered ashcans, and they came out into the area behind the rows of tenements that faced opposite streets. Above them hung a mass of crisscrossing clotheslines suspended between the buildings. Porches and fire escapes ran up the backs of the tenements, and all were littered with piles of belongings from the residents—extra furniture and bedding that would be brought in at night, when the floor would provide sleeping space for the people who crowded the small rooms beyond capacity.

  A crowd had gathered in the yard behind the building closest to them. They were intently watching the group of people standing on the back porch of that building. Sarah saw that one of the individuals on the porch wore a police uniform. If it was someone she knew, she’d have less trouble getting him to send for Malloy. Luckily, many officers knew her, even though she didn’t always know them. She had become something of a celebrity among the police for her involvement in solving several high-profile murders.

  “Ma!” Harry called, waving to someone on the porch.

  A woman turned, and Sarah could see it was Minnie. She waved back when she saw Sarah was with him and came forward to meet her. Sarah was almost to the porch steps when one of the men in the group stepped in front of Minnie and stopped at the head of the steps to look down at Sarah. He didn’t look at all happy to see her, either.

  “Malloy!” she said in surprise.

  “Mrs. Brandt,” he replied grimly. “What brings you out on a fine day like this?”

  She heard the sarcasm in his voice, but she doubted anyone else would notice. “Mrs. Lee sent for me,” she replied with a rebellious smile. “What brings you out?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Brandt,” Minnie cried, brushing Malloy aside to take his place at the top of the steps. “We found Angel, and somebody’s killed her!”

  Sarah instantly turned her attention to Minnie. “I’m so sorry! I could hardly believe it when Harry told me,” Sarah said, hurrying up the steps and past Malloy to comfort her.

  Minnie had the blank look of someone in shock. Plainly, she hadn’t really registered the full horror of her loss yet. “I sent Harry for you so you could get your friend here, but the officer knew who we wanted, soon a
s we said your name. He sent for Mr. Malloy right off.”

  Sarah hazarded a glance at Malloy. His eyes had narrowed dangerously, so she decided to stop looking at him. “I’m so glad,” she said sincerely. “What happened to poor Angel?”

  Minnie shuddered slightly at the mention of her daughter’s name, and her eyes grew round with the blank stare of one who has been thoroughly beaten. “She was married, Mrs. Brandt. She married that boy she’d been sneaking out with.” Minnie laid a hand over her heart, as if to still it. “I was that relieved, I was. I was thinking such horrible things that could’ve happened to her, and here she was, really eloped.”

  “Harry told me that your husband found her.”

  “Oh, yes, just the other day. Took him a while, but once we knew the boy’s name, it was only a matter of time. Charlie found him, and there she was with him. They lived in this building,” she said, gesturing vaguely at the tenement behind her. “With his people.”

  “You must have been so happy to find her safe,” Sarah said.

  Minnie nodded, but her eyes filled with tears. “She wasn’t safe at all, though, was she? Somebody up and killed her!”

  Sarah could see the reality of it finally sinking in as her blank stare dissolved into naked pain. “Maybe you should have Harry take you home,” Sarah suggested gently.

  “I ain’t leaving my girl!” Minnie protested tearfully. “They don’t care nothing about her here. How do I know what they’ll do with her if I leave?”

  Sarah glanced at Malloy again, this time with a silent question.

  “The coroner will be here soon, Mrs. Lee,” he said gruffly. “He’ll take the body away.”

  Minnie made an agonized sound, and Sarah instinctively clutched at her arm. “Can someone get her a chair?”

  Numerous chairs were stacked on the porch, and Malloy grabbed the nearest one and brought it to her. Sarah eased Minnie down into it. Then she looked around at the others gathered on the porch. She saw no familiar faces and noted that they were all hanging back, as if they wanted no part of Minnie’s grief. Minnie had no friends in this bunch.