Murder In Chinatown

by Victoria Thompson

  “That, or maybe she thought they’d still marry her off to the old man. Would she have thought that would be worse than what she had to endure at the O’Neals’?”

  “Maybe. Young girls can be really stupid,” he said.

  “Young boys, too,” she reminded him. “Why do you suppose Harry ate too much opium?”

  “He probably didn’t know it was too much,” he said.

  “But why take any at all? Do you suppose he’s a regular user?”

  “His parents didn’t think so,” he reminded her, “and I expect somebody would tell an important man like Lee if his son was a hophead.”

  “So on the day his sister is found dead, he goes to an opium den for the first time and swallows enough opium to kill him,” Sarah mused. “Was he that upset over her death?”

  “I don’t know,” Malloy said, “but I’ll find out.”

  “Maybe he killed her,” Sarah said. “Maybe he couldn’t stand the guilt, so he decided to kill himself.”

  “Sarah,” Malloy said sharply, the warning thick in his voice.

  She couldn’t see his face in the shadowed interior of the cab, but she knew what his expression would be. She’d seen it a hundred times. “I’m not going to get involved,” she insisted. “I promised!”

  “Yeah, and then you show up at the Lees’ flat when their boy is sick after you swore you were going straight home.”

  “I don’t think I said straight home,” she argued. “I was only going to check on Cora and the baby first. There’s no harm in that. I didn’t know the boy was going to take opium!”

  He didn’t reply. He didn’t say a word. She wanted to punch him.

  “It’s a good thing I was there, in any case,” she pointed out. “He might have died.”

  “The Chinaman that Lee brought knew what to do, too,” he reminded her.

  Sarah sighed. She knew he was right. She really shouldn’t be involving herself in murder investigations. She’d put herself in danger more than once in the past. Things had been different when she only had herself to think of, but now she had a child. Catherine needed her. “I’m going home now,” she reminded him. “And I’m not going to do another thing in regard to Angel’s murder. I’m just going to wait for you to show up on my doorstep one morning to tell me that you’ve solved the case. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “Yes,” he sighed. “But I’d also like for you to mean it.”

  SARAH ARRIVED HOME IN TIME TO PUT CATHERINE TO bed. The child clung to her and didn’t seem to want to let go when Sarah kissed her good night. She remembered how upset both Catherine and Maeve had been when they heard about Angel’s death earlier that day.

  “Were you frightened when you heard about the girl who died?” Sarah asked.

  Catherine nodded uncertainly, as if she didn’t want to admit it but wanted Sarah to know, too.

  “I’m sorry you had to hear about her, but you don’t have to be scared. Nothing like that can happen to you and Maeve. You’re safe here.”

  Catherine’s soft brown eyes were wide and solemn. She shook her head and pointed at Sarah, jabbing her finger into Sarah’s chest several times to make her understand her real fear.

  “Me?” Sarah asked in surprise. “You’re afraid something will happen to me?”

  Catherine nodded vigorously at that.

  Tears sprang to Sarah’s eyes, and she hugged the child tightly to her breast. How she wished she could promise that nothing would ever happen to her, that she would be there for Catherine forever. No one could make such a promise, though, as well she knew. She’d seen too many people die tragically and well before their time—Tom and her sister Maggie and poor Angel and all those whose other deaths she’d helped Malloy investigate.

  Still, she could promise one thing. “I’ll be careful, sweetheart,” she whispered into Catherine’s soft hair. “I want to watch you grow up into a beautiful young woman.”

  And if that meant she wouldn’t help Malloy with any more cases, then it was a small price to pay.

  When Sarah finally released her, Catherine reached up with one small finger and wiped a tear from Sarah’s cheek. Sarah smiled reassuringly. “I love you,” she said.

  Catherine wouldn’t let go of Sarah’s hand, so she sat beside her until the child was, at long last, fast asleep. Then she made her way downstairs to find Maeve sitting at the kitchen table waiting for her.

  “That girl,” she asked when Sarah took a seat at the table opposite her. “How did she die?”

  “Someone strangled her,” Sarah said. She wouldn’t have been so blunt with any other girl Maeve’s age, but she knew Maeve wouldn’t want her to sugarcoat the truth. She’d already seen far more of the ugly side of life than Sarah ever would.

  “Do they know who did it?”

  Sarah shook her head. “Not yet. It seems a lot of people were…unhappy with her.”

  “Was it a man? That made her run off, I mean.”

  “Oh, yes, you were right about that. She eloped.”

  “He married her?” Maeve marveled.

  “I know, I was surprised, too,” Sarah admitted. “They were in love. She’d been sneaking out to meet him for months.”

  “He didn’t have to marry her, though,” Maeve said. “Even if she was going to live with him. But he did. That’s really something.”

  Plainly, Maeve still had some romantic notions left, in spite of her hard life.

  “Her mother said she didn’t seem very happy, though,” Sarah said. “Both her parents tried to convince her to come back home with them.”

  “Why would she want to do that if she was married?”

  Like most girls her age, Maeve thought marriage would be the solution to every problem and the guarantee of a happy life. “Her father was rich,” Sarah explained, exaggerating for Maeve’s sake. To her, anyone who lived as the Lee family did would be rich beyond her wildest dreams. “Her new husband wasn’t.”

  “But she was in love,” Maeve argued. “And she was married!”

  “Before you decide to run off and get married,” Sarah warned, “you should be sure that you’ll be better off than you are now.”

  “But—”

  “Just being married won’t make you happy, Maeve. It also won’t guarantee that you’ll be fed and clothed and have a decent place to live. When you choose a husband, make sure he’s got more to recommend him than a handsome face.”

  Maeve thought this over for a moment. Then she said, “Your family was rich, and your husband wasn’t.”

  Oh, dear, how to get out of that one? Sarah thought, but she smiled. “My husband wasn’t as rich as my family, but he wasn’t poor, either. He supported me, and he bought me this house. We never went hungry or had to worry about paying the rent.”

  “The dead girl, she would’ve had to worry about that, I guess.”

  “Her new husband didn’t have a regular job. They were living in a tenement with his family. I think there were six or seven people living there with them. They didn’t even have a room to themselves.”

  “Oh,” Maeve said. Sarah had never asked, but she imagined that Maeve had lived much like that before she’d been put out to make her own way in the world.

  “Angel must have had a hard time adjusting to her new life, but she still wouldn’t leave her husband and go back home with her parents.”

  “She was in love,” Maeve said confidently.

  “Or too proud to admit she’d made a terrible mistake,” Sarah suggested.

  “Did he kill her…her husband, I mean?”

  “I don’t know, but he seemed very sad that she was dead,” Sarah said.

  “I hope he didn’t,” Maeve said fervently. “For him to have killed her, the one she loved and gave up everything for, that would be too awful, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Sarah agreed. “It would, indeed.”

  FRANK MADE AN EARLY VISIT TO THE O’NEALS THE NEXT morning. He wanted to catch the rest of them at home and find out what they had t
o say for themselves. He knew he wouldn’t get far questioning them with their mother there, and he didn’t want them to hear what answers the others gave, so he’d brought along a couple of beat cops and a Black Maria in which to cart the boys away.

  He had to pound on the door several times before somebody finally roused and came to open it. He could hear lots of cursing and complaining in the background, and then the baby started to howl.

  “What do you want?” It was Iris, the surviving daughter-in-law, who peered out blearily. “It’s the middle of the night!”

  Frank didn’t bother to reply. He pushed the door open, forcing her to stumble backward. Her plain face registered surprise in the instant before she backed into the mound of someone sleeping on the floor and fell over him, earning a stream of renewed curses.

  “What’s this now?” Mrs. O’Neal demanded, emerging from a back room in a filthy wrapper, with her hair sticking up six ways from Sunday.

  “Just wanted to have a word with your other sons,” Frank explained cheerfully. He gave the nearest pile of rags a less-than-gentle nudge with his foot, jarring loose another stream of profanity. “Get this one on his feet, boys,” he instructed the men he’d brought with him.

  They obliged, and by the time they’d gotten the first O’Neal up, the two others had come stumbling over to see what the trouble was.

  “Which ones do you want?” one of the officers asked.

  “All of them,” Frank said.

  “What are you doing?” Mrs. O’Neal screeched, slapping ineffectually at the officers, who were starting to march her sons out into the hall. Luckily, they slept in most of their clothes, so the cops wouldn’t need to wait for them to dress. “Where’re you taking them?”

  “Down to Police Headquarters,” Frank explained.

  “Iris, get my coat!” yelled one of them. Iris scrambled to do his bidding, and to gather up other assorted articles of clothing the two other men deemed necessary for a trip to Police Headquarters.

  “You can’t lock them up!” Mrs. O’Neal protested. “They didn’t do nothing!”

  “Then I won’t lock them up,” Frank said agreeably.

  “If all you want is to ask questions, do it here!” she pleaded.

  Frank ignored her. “Where’s your daughter?” he asked instead.

  She sobered instantly. “What do you want with her?”

  “I’ve got some questions for her, too. Is she here?”

  “She’s already gone off to school,” the old woman lied. It was way too early for that.

  “I’ll be back for her, then,” Frank said, earning an evil scowl.

  By now the O’Neal brothers were halfway down the first flight of stairs, being hurried along by the officers and their locust clubs. Frank followed, as Mrs. O’Neal hurled her invectives after him.

  Down at Headquarters, Frank had the brothers put in separate interrogation rooms. The building was relatively quiet at this hour. The drunks brought in the night before were sleeping it off in the holding cells in the basement, along with any real criminals who had been caught. Most of the mischief perpetrated in the city had ended with the rising of the sun, though, and anyone who had escaped the long arm of the law that night was now tucked away for a few hours of rest before beginning the relentless breaking of the law again at sunset.

  Frank took some time to eat a bite of breakfast, purchased from a street vendor outside. This also gave the O’Neal boys time to think about their helpless position and the possibility that Frank might charge one of them with Angel Lee’s murder, even if he wasn’t guilty. It wouldn’t be the first time an innocent man had been charged. Innocent men even got executed sometimes. Mistakes happened, especially when the police didn’t particularly care if the right person got punished. Lucky for the O’Neal boys, Frank did care. He wasn’t going to tell them that, though. A little fear would make them more cooperative.

  “Which one are you?” Frank asked as he sat down at the table opposite the scowling man. The interrogation rooms were small and dirty and very grim. Furnished with a battered table and some rickety chairs and decorated with a few splatters of dried blood on the walls, they were intended to put the suspect in the proper frame of mind to be interrogated.

  “Donald,” the man said belligerently. “Donald O’Neal.” He looked a lot like Quinn, only older and fleshier. He’d spent those extra years of life drinking more than was good for him, Frank guessed. He was still handsome, though, the way worthless men who’d learned to get by on their charm often were. His mother would’ve spoiled him.

  “You the oldest?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is Iris your wife?”

  “What if she is?”

  Frank glanced over at the officer he’d brought along to keep order and gave him a silent signal. He strolled over and gave Donald O’Neal a smack on the head.

  “Hey!”

  “Mind your manners, Donald,” Frank warned him. “If you answer my questions, you’ll be home before you know it.”

  He didn’t look as if he believed Frank, but he said, “Yeah, Iris is my wife.”

  “How long you been married?”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “A year or so, I guess.”

  “What do you do for a living, Donald?”

  Donald took offense at that. “What the hell does that—” he started, but caught himself when the officer took a step forward with his locust club raised. “I get work when I can,” he quickly corrected himself.

  “Doing what?”

  Donald swallowed, glancing at the officer again. “Whatever I can find. I ain’t particular.”

  “What were you doing yesterday?”

  “Yesterday?” He frowned.

  “Yeah, yesterday. You can’t have forgotten already, Donald,” Frank chided. “What ‘not particular’ work did you do yesterday?”

  “I…uh…I didn’t get any work yesterday,” he admitted reluctantly.

  “What did you do all day then?”

  Donald licked his lips, as if he were thinking how good a beer might taste just now. “I…uh, I spent most of the day at a bar.”

  “What bar was that?”

  “Well, not a bar exactly. It…it’s in the basement of the building next to ours.”

  “A stale beer dive?” Frank inquired, naming the lowest type of drinking establishment in the city.

  “No, nothing like that!” Donald exclaimed. He wasn’t much, but he had a little pride. He didn’t want to be identified as someone destitute enough to drink the stale beer thrown out by the reputable bars, doctored with chemicals to induce an artificial head, and sold for pennies in the filthy cellar rooms of abandoned buildings. “This fellow, he runs a place in his flat.”

  “I guess you can play some games of chance there, too,” Frank said.

  “Just a friendly game,” Donald assured him hastily. “I can’t afford high stakes.”

  “Were you there all day?”

  “I got there around noon. I did look for work that morning,” he defended himself. “Didn’t find any, though, so I went there.”

  “How long did you stay?”

  He tried to remember. “I don’t know. Late. Past supper anyway. When I got home, Ma told me about Angel. Hell of a thing.”

  “What did you think of her?”

  The question surprised him. “Angel? I didn’t think nothing of her.”

  “Come on, Donald,” Frank coaxed. “She was a pretty little thing. You must’ve thought about her a little.”

  “She was a damn Chinaman,” he reminded Frank with disgust.

  Frank raised his eyebrows. “I guess you weren’t too happy your brother married her, then.”

  “You’re right about that. I could see why he’d want her, I guess. She was pretty, like you said, but he never had to marry her to get what he wanted! That was a damn fool thing to do, and I told him, too. She wasn’t even knocked up!”

  “Is that why you married Iris?” Frank asked mildly.

>   Donald gave him a look that would’ve curdled milk, and his face reddened dangerously, but he didn’t reply. Always the gentleman, Frank thought with some disgust of his own.

  “What did the rest of the family think about Angel?”

  “Same as me. Nobody could figure why he married her. Then he brings her home, and she won’t work. Doesn’t even know how to. All she does is sit and cry all day and all night. Especially at night.”

  “Why was she crying?”

  “Damned if I know! Homesick, maybe. She was scared of everything, too. Got all hysterical when she saw a rat in the alley, like she’d never seen one before! Thought she was better’n us, too. She didn’t say much, but you could tell the way she’d stick her nose up in the air about everything.”

  “Who do you think killed her?”

  He obviously hadn’t expected to be asked that question, and he gave it a few moments’ thought. “If I had to guess, I’d say her family. They was real mad that she run off with Quinn. Tried to get her to go back home, but she wouldn’t. Her ma, she just cried, but her old man…” Donald shook his head.

  “What about her father?”

  “Them Chinamen, you can’t never tell what they’re thinking, but with him…Well, you could see he was mad enough to do murder when she wouldn’t go with him. If it was me, I would’ve told him to take her, but Quinn, he’s got more pride than brains. He told the Chinaman that if he wanted to take her, he’d have to fight all three of us. He never asked me and Rooney if we was willing to fight, but I guess the Chinaman didn’t want to take a chance.”

  Frank studied Donald O’Neal for a few seconds. Then he asked, “Do you have friends at that bar where you say you were yesterday?”

  “Yeah, of course I do!” he replied, affronted.

  “They’ll confirm that you were there, I suppose?”

  He wasn’t quite so sure of that. “I can’t promise what they’ll say, but I was there, I swear to God. They should remember.”

  One day was like another to a drunk, as Frank had learned in his years on the force. “We’ll find out if they do.”

  Frank got up and started for the door.

  “Can I go home now?” Donald asked hopefully.

  Frank pretended to consider the request. “I think we’ll wait until we’ve had a chance to talk to your friends at the bar.”