Petrosino grunted. “Don’t worry, I saw him on my way here. I’ll be sure to recognize him again.” Rifling through Velloca’s pockets, he extracted a handkerchief and used it to make a tourniquet around the prisoner’s injured thigh, using a club from his hip pocket to tighten it. He glanced up at me, raising an eyebrow. “An inch farther over, and he’d probably be dead by now,” he said, apparently knowing his femoral artery from his elbow.
I hugged myself as the full implications of my actions sank in. I had shot a man, with no physical provocation, in full view of a policeman. Petrosino might not be a criminal coddler, but from what I’d seen, he wasn’t the sort who would let a felony go unpunished either. I had acted on impulse, but of course, that was no excuse—especially because I knew that I would do it again in a heartbeat. “Are you going to have to arrest me?”
He sat back on his haunches. “Arrest you? To the contrary, I congratulate you on a successful citizen’s arrest.”
“A citizen’s arrest?” I repeated.
“The laws of our state provide that a private citizen may not only arrest a wanted felon,” he cheerfully advised me, “but may use all necessary means to effect said arrest—even killing him—if he resists or flees and cannot otherwise be taken.” He looked down at the injured man. “Carulo is just lucky you didn’t fire a second time.”
Arresting Velloca, I thought to myself, had been the last thing on my mind when I’d pulled the trigger. But I wasn’t about to argue.
I would have liked to ask the detective how he’d learned of Velloca’s true identity, and about the disguise he’d been wearing in the café, but those questions were going to have to wait. “What are you going to do about my housekeeper?”
“I’ve already sent men to check the stable and the poultry plant,” he told me, rising from his crouch, “just in case Gallo was foolish enough to take her there. I’ll have someone speak with the officer on watch at your house as well, to see if he witnessed anything.”
I feared that wouldn’t be enough. “Do you think you can get Velloca to talk?” I asked, staring down at the unconscious man on the sidewalk.
“I’ll do my best. But now that he’s being sent back to Italy, he has little reason to cooperate.”
I heard someone shout my name and turned to see Simon running up the avenue.
“I got here as soon as I heard,” he said, pulling up panting in front of me. From the sound of it, I guessed he’d run the whole way.
“Who are you?” asked Petrosino.
“He’s a friend,” I said. “He’s been helping Detective Cassidi and me look for Teresa.”
Petrosino handed me back my gun. “You two keep an eye on him,” he said, nodding toward Velloca. “I’m going to call for a wagon.” He set off for the nearest call box.
“What happened?” Simon asked me.
“I’ll tell you later. I couldn’t find out where they’re keeping her, Simon. All I know is that she’s with Gallo. We’ve got to find her!”
He nodded, his face taut. “All right then, we will. When did you see her last?”
“We had breakfast together, and then she went out to do the shopping. Gallo must have snatched her right off the street.”
He thought for a moment. “If he was waiting for her to leave the house, he probably parked around the corner on Madison so the watchman at your stoop wouldn’t notice him loitering.”
“You think he grabbed her somewhere along the avenue? It is very quiet there on Saturdays. I suppose if he timed it right, he could have taken her without being noticed by a passing vehicle.”
“On the other hand,” Simon mused, “there would have been policemen directing traffic at every other intersection. With traffic so sparse, they might have noticed a van pulling up to the curb on a residential block and pulling a woman in.”
“Where then?” I asked.
“My guess is he’d wait to grab her until she started crosstown, on Eighty-Sixth Street.”
“But it’s so busy there, with all the shops and street vendors…”
“Exactly. With so many express wagons and delivery vans regularly servicing the shops, no one would think twice about another van pulling up to the curb.”
I nodded. “Or take note of an altercation, most likely, with all the noise and bustle on the street.”
“Do you know the shops she frequents in Yorkville?”
“I think so; most of them are either on or just off of Eighty-Sixth Street, between Third and First Avenues.”
“Then I’d suggest we start there. Someone may have seen something that could prove useful.” He turned to Frankie. “I understand you drove Dr. Summerford up here in the motorcar.”
“And then knocked Velloca on his backside with a jelly roll,” I added, “just as he was about to make off with me.”
Simon nodded in approval. “We’ll need a lad with sand to be our driver. Go get the car, will you, Frankie?”
“Yes sir!” Frankie said and took off like a shot.
Detective Petrosino had returned by the time the motorcar rolled smoothly up to the curb a few minutes later. We told him what we were planning to do, and he promised to let us know if he learned anything. As I stepped into the passenger seat, I tried not to think what would happen if our combined attempts to find Katie’s trail proved futile. For I suspected that if we didn’t find her soon, we wouldn’t find her at all.
“Eighty-Sixth Street, Frankie,” Simon said, climbing into the back. “And pull out all the stops.”
A smile of pure joy spread across the boy’s face. “You got it!” he said, and threw the car into gear.
• • •
We started at Liebhoff’s Bakery, where Mrs. Liebhoff confirmed that Katie had been in to buy her usual bag of rolls and buns that morning. “So you were right that she made it down to Eighty-Sixth Street,” I said to Simon. “How do we find out where he accosted her?”
“I suppose we’ll just have to try to follow in her footsteps and see where the trail ends. Where would she normally go after the bakery?”
I led him half a block down Third Avenue to Schlutzki’s Quality Meats, where Mr. Schlutzki reported that Katie had been there as well. “How could I forget?” he groused when I asked if he was certain. “That one is always looking for a bargain. I had to practically give her my chops at cost.” Knowing Katie’s penchant for bargaining, I trusted that he was remembering correctly.
“Where next?” Simon asked when we were back on the sidewalk.
“We talked about putting in an ice order,” I told him, nodding toward Hoffman’s Ice and Coal across the street. We cut through the traffic and descended the steps to the cellar, where we found Summerford, 7 E. 92nd scrawled near the bottom of the order pad. “So she got this far,” I said as we climbed back up to the sidewalk. “What do you think Gallo was waiting for?”
“Maybe he still felt too exposed here. He’d want a place where there were plenty of delivery vehicles clogging the curb so no one could see what he was up to.” He looked up and down the street, scratching his head.
“The dry goods store!” I said, remembering the chamois cloth Katie had added to her list that morning. “They’re always unloading boxes in the street and sending out clothing and linens for express delivery.”
Simon whistled to Frankie in the motorcar, signaling him to follow us back up to the corner. Once there, we turned right onto Eighty-Sixth Street and hurried down the half block to Muller & Sons. Vans and wagons in various stages of loading and unloading were parked all along the curb out front, two or three deep in places. I followed Simon past them into the shop.
I didn’t recognize the woman working behind the counter, but when I described Katie, she gestured toward her own corpulent figure and asked in a thick German accent, “A big lady? In a dark dress and felt hat?”
“Yes,” I said, “and probabl
y carrying several parcels by the time she got here.”
She nodded. “I saw a lady like that arguing with a man in the street this morning while I was waiting on a customer. I called to my son to see what was the matter, but they drove off in a carriage before he could speak to her.”
“They drove off?” I clutched Simon’s arm, feeling a fresh jolt of despair at this confirmation that Katie really had been abducted, which a part of my mind had apparently been refusing to accept.
“Which way did the carriage go?” Simon asked.
“Helmut!” she called to a young man in the back of the store.
The man looked up from the dish towels he was stacking.
“Those people arguing in the street this morning: Which way did the carriage go when it left here?”
“That way,” he said, pointing east.
“Did it turn onto Second Avenue?” Simon asked.
He put down the towels and walked toward us, looking curiously from Simon to me. “I don’t know; I didn’t watch for long. I had work to do.”
“But it was a carriage, not a van?” I asked him.
“That’s right.”
“Did it have any unusual carving or trim work?” Simon asked.
He shrugged. “It was parked on the other side of a delivery wagon. I didn’t even see it until it drove away. I don’t remember anything unusual.”
“What about the man she was arguing with?” I asked. “What did he look like?”
He stuck out his lower lip out, considering. “About thirty years old, with dark hair. On the smaller side but wiry.”
I glanced at Simon. That was Gallo, to a T.
“He was holding her by the arm,” the young man went on, “waving a handkerchief near her face like he was trying to wipe something off her mouth. She kept swatting at his hand and cussing at him.”
I nodded sickly, remembering my own struggle to avoid the noxious chloroform vapor.
“Then he pulled her around the back of the delivery wagon,” he went on, “and I lost sight of them. I was about to follow when a customer stopped me at the door. By the time I came around the wagon, they were driving off in the carriage. That’s when I saw the second man.”
“There was another man?” I asked.
“He was the one driving.”
Whatever small hope I’d entertained that Katie might have escaped was crushed by this revelation. By bringing another man to drive, Gallo would have been able to ensure that she remained insensible in the back of the carriage until they arrived at their destination.
Simon questioned the young man and his mother for several more minutes, but they were unable to remember anything else of value. I followed him out of the store and listened with bated breath as he made inquiries at the neighboring shops, but no one there had noticed the altercation.
“What do we do now?” I asked, stumbling over my feet as we returned to the motorcar, nearly blinded by anxiety.
He grasped my arm to steady me, his own eyes clouded with worry. “Let’s get back to your house,” he said, helping me into the vehicle. “Petrosino’s man should be there by now. Hopefully he’ll have learned something useful.”
• • •
The stoop and sidewalk were empty and the front door was unlocked when we arrived at my home. I led Simon and Frankie inside, cocking my head to listen. The main floor was silent. Continuing to the top of the basement stairs, I heard Detective Cassidi’s voice waft faintly up from below.
“Down here!” I called to the others, starting down the stairs.
I followed the voice to the open kitchen door. There I stopped, so abruptly that Simon and Frankie piled into me from behind.
Katie and Maurice were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea with Detective Cassidi and the officer from the stoop. A body lay on the floor by Maurice’s feet, wrapped in a gingham sheet and tied from head to foot with butcher’s twine.
“There she is!” Katie said on sight of me, pushing up from the table. “And Simon too, and one of your lads, looks like. Come on in then, and have some tea. I was just telling the officers here how Maurice saved me from that brute’s clutches.” She thrust her chin toward the bound and gagged form on the floor.
I collapsed onto a chair as Simon and Frankie took the seats on either side of me. Katie brought over three more cups and poured us tea, then passed a plate of cookies that Simon and I declined but Frankie quickly depleted, stuffing several into his pockets for some future date.
“Go on, dear,” Katie said to Maurice, settling back in her chair. “Tell them how you did it.”
Maurice put down his cup and commenced his tale. Before he’d taken the carriage horses out for their exercise that morning, he explained, he’d arranged to pick Katie up at Eighty-Sixth Street when she was done shopping. Knowing that she was picking up extra supplies, however, and fearing they might be too heavy for her to carry, he’d decided to cut his drive short and meet her earlier. He had just caught sight of her on the sidewalk in front of the dry goods store, and was pulling up behind a van already parked at the curb, when Gallo grabbed her by the arm, shoving what looked like a wet cloth in her face, and started pulling her toward the back of the van.
“You should have seen him,” Katie said, clapping her hand to her chest. “He drove right up alongside and snapped his whip, catching that fiend’s wrist in the lash. Reeled him in like a fish, he did. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Not that you needed the help,” Maurice said with a chuckle. “You already had him licked, giving him what-for with that cauliflower.” He winked at me. “I’d try to stay on this one’s good side if I were you. She’s a devil when her hackles are up.”
“But how did you subdue him?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I did a bit of boxing and wrestling in my day. It’s surprising how much you remember.”
“First, he stunned him with a haymaker,” Katie elaborated, eyes shining as she swung her fist sideways through the air. “Then we gave him a taste of his own medicine.”
“A whiff, more like,” Maurice said with a grin.
“Oh, you,” Katie said, giving his arm a playful shove.
The heap on the floor wriggled and jerked, emitting muffled sounds of protest from behind his gag. But apparently, Maurice’s skills included hog-tying as well, for Gallo’s feet were bent up behind him and tied by a triple length of twine to his neck, making any movement, let alone escape, impossible.
“More tea, officers?” Katie asked, lifting the teapot. She refilled their dainty cups, taking no notice of Gallo as he grunted and squirmed on the floor near her feet.
“Genna, dear?” she asked, lifting the pot toward me.
I sank slowly back in my seat, shaking my head, and started to laugh.
• • •
Detective Petrosino arrived with the paddy wagon a few minutes later. He informed us that Velloca/Carulo would be held in custody while the immigration authorities and the Italian Consulate General arranged his return to Italy where, Petrosino’s sources had assured him, he was certain to be convicted and sent to prison for a very long time.
“How did you find out he was wanted for murder in Italy?” I finally had a chance to ask.
Petrosino looked at Detective Cassidi. “Detective? Perhaps you should explain, while I tend to our prisoner.” He started around the table toward Gallo.
Cassidi turned to me. “I had the feeling I’d seen Velloca before when I questioned him at his home, but I couldn’t put my finger on where. Only later, as I was retrieving the photograph you’d given me of Antonio Fabroni from the mail pile, did I realize that Velloca was one of the men in the picture. Younger and leaner and wearing a mustache, but most certainly Velloca.”
“I looked at that picture very closely,” I marveled, “and I had no idea that it was him.”
“You
must understand, Doctor,” he said gravely, “that we detectives are trained to pay attention to the slightest of details, which makes such identifications possible even after a considerable lapse of time.”
I heard a stifled snort and glanced to my right to see Simon rolling his eyes. On the other side of the table, Petrosino and the uniformed man were untying the string from Gallo’s neck, while Frankie “assisted” by tickling the captive’s nose with a feather duster. “Simon,” I suggested, “why don’t you help bring the prisoner out to the wagon?”
“Gladly,” he said with a grimace, pushing back his chair.
“In any event,” Cassidi continued, “when I told Lieutenant Petrosino what I had discovered, he immediately arranged to have the photograph hand-delivered to our man in Sing Sing.”
“Your ‘man’ in Sing Sing?” I repeated.
He smiled smugly. “You see, while it is true that Italian criminals would rather die than talk to the police, it is also true that they love to brag among themselves. For this reason, the lieutenant rotates one of our men into Sing Sing every few months, to listen in on their chatter. You’d be amazed how much information we have gathered in this way. Our man showed the picture to some inmates there, pretending it was of his niece’s confirmation. One of them recognized Velloca, calling him Vittorio Carulo and referring to him as a member of the Neapolitan Camorra. As soon as I heard, I telegraphed the authorities in Italy, who informed me that Vittorio Carulo spent a year in prison for horse theft before fleeing to America to avoid a murder charge.”
Petrosino called to Cassidi for a pair of handcuffs, and then he, Simon, and the other officers pulled Gallo to his feet and walked him out to the patrol wagon. I followed them out, for there was one more thing I needed to know. I waited until Detective Petrosino had slammed the back door shut and then pulled him aside. “That was you I saw in Harlem last week, wasn’t it, Detective? Giving that boy a satchel for Patrick Branagan? You were wearing the same false beard and hat that you wore in the café today.”
A Promise of Ruin Page 31