Frank frowned. This was even before Alicia had disappeared. “Do you remember who brought them in?”
“I have a name here,” Joe said with a small smile. “John Smith.”
Well, maybe this wasn’t too bad. The fellow who sold Alicia’s jewelry was obviously in her confidence. Which also meant he was probably the father of her child. If Frank could identify the fellow, he’d be very close to finding her killer. “I might be able to get the victim to raise the reward an extra fifty dollars if you could possibly recall what this John Smith looked like,” Frank said.
Joe pretended to consider. Probably, he knew exactly without making any effort at all. Merchandise like this rarely found its way into his shop, and the seller would have made an indelible impression.
“If I recall correctly, he was a man about your age. Not a swell, you understand, but not someone from the neighborhood either. He had an air of quality about him, which is why I believed him when he said he was selling the jewels for a friend who’d fallen on hard times. I had no reason to doubt him, at least,” he added in his own defense, in case Frank was thinking about prosecuting him for dealing in stolen merchandise.
“What did he look like?”
This time Joe really did consider. “Tall and well built. Looked almost like a football player, he was so fit, but he didn’t look like no college boy, if you know what I mean. Black hair, very curly. Irish, I’m sure, but no accent. Oh, and he had a scar right here.” Joe drew a line along his jaw on the right side.
That should make him easy to identify, Frank thought. Now all he had to do was locate the fellow out of the millions of men living in New York City.
SARAH SMILED AS she laid the carefully wrapped infant in her mother’s arms. New life was always a cause for rejoicing, and this one especially. Dolly Yardley had lost two others before this one, even though she wasn’t yet twenty years old. Her labor had been long and difficult, but both mother and child appeared to be fine now, if a bit weary from their ordeal. Sarah was weary herself, having been up most of the night. She had never been able to figure out why the most difficult births always occurred at night.
“Oh, look, Will, ain’t she beautiful?” the new mother demanded of her young husband, pulling the blanket back from the baby’s face so he could admire her.
Will had spent the night drinking stale beer with his friends in the seedy bar located in the basement of their tenement, so he was hardly in any condition to judge. “Next time we’ll have a boy,” he said.
Sarah glared at him until her disapproval penetrated his alcoholic haze, and she said, “The baby looks just like Dolly, doesn’t she?”
“Oh, yeah,” Will agreed as hastily as he could, given his condition. “The spittin’ image. She’ll be a beauty just like her Ma.”
Dolly smiled at that and nodded her approval.
“Have you decided on a name for her yet?” Sarah asked.
“I think I’ll call her Edith, after my ma,” Dolly said.
“You ain’t naming her after that whore,” Will protested.
Sarah wanted to jump to Dolly’s defense, but Dolly was more than capable of defending herself. “Edith Rose, after both our mothers,” she said, sticking out her chin defiantly.
“Rose ain’t my mother. I told you that.”
“Maybe you should discuss this later, when Dolly’s had some time to rest,” Sarah suggested as tactfully as she could.
Will seemed perfectly willing to wait. The new father stared at his wife and child for a long moment, as if he couldn’t quite bring them into focus, but apparently he was not as drunk as Sarah had thought, because after a moment, he turned to her a little sheepishly and said, “About your fee, Mrs. Brandt. I ain’t had much work lately, and I was wondering, could I owe it to you until things is better?”
Sarah knew exactly what kind of work Will Yardley did, and if there hadn’t been much of it lately, it was because he’d been too lazy to climb into someone’s window and relieve them of their valuables. Or else he’d simply spent all his money treating his friends tonight. She glanced around the comfortably furnished room and wondered how much of the furnishings had been carried down a fire escape in the middle of the night while the rightful owners were sleeping unawares.
“Will, I have a business proposition for you that will take care of whatever you owe me. Let’s step into the other room so Dolly and the baby can rest.”
Will looked a little uncertain as he followed her out of the bedroom. They lived on the first floor in the front, the choicest location. No need to stumble up steep and dirty flights of stairs in the unlighted stairwells to a higher floor, and whatever fresh air was available would make its way into their front windows.
Unfortunately, as in most tenements, only the front room of the apartment had windows, so the rear rooms were dim even on the sunniest days. Will pulled the bedroom door closed behind him, leaving Dolly and the baby in darkness except for the single gaslight on the wall. The kitchen, which was the middle room, was also dark except for the light coming in the other doorway. Sarah went through it into the front room, where she could see that the rain of the last few days had finally stopped and the sun was coming up strong and bright again.
She turned to Will, who looked a little worried. “What kind of business proposition you got for me, Mrs. Brandt? I know people say things about me in the streets, but I want you to know, I’m an honest man. I never done none of the things-”
“I just need some information, Will. I need to locate a person, and you might have the contacts to help me find him.”
“What’s this person done?” Will asked suspiciously.
“Nothing that I know of,” Sarah lied. Actually, he might be perfectly innocent, although an innocent man wasn’t likely to behave as this fellow had. “I’d just like to ask him some questions. About a friend of mine.”
Will nodded wisely, as if he received requests like this all the time. “Who is this bugger you want to find?”
“His name is Hamilton Fisher. He’s a tall fellow. Not very handsome. His hair is blond and his teeth stick out in front. I think he might be a cadet.”
Will frowned. Plainly, he considered such work beneath him. “And you want me to bring him to you?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Sarah assured him hastily. “I just need to know where he is. Then I’ll send someone to talk to him.”
Will nodded, sure he’d figured it out. “I see it now. You’re trying to find some girl he recruited.”
“Something like that,” Sarah agreed. She was getting far too good at lying.
“And when I find him, I let you know, and we’re square?”
“We’re square for this baby, and the next one, too. The boy you want so much,” Sarah added.
Will scratched his chest absently as his gaze drifted toward the back of the flat where his wife and child slept. “Sure would like to get me a boy.”
“Girls are nice, too. You’ll see. And you’ll find this fellow for me?”
“I’ll find him.”
Sarah hoped he could. Finding Hamilton Fisher would bring her one step closer to finding Alicia’s killer.
In fact, it might bring her face to face with him.
5
FRANK COULDN’T BELIEVE HE WAS STILL IN THE same state as Manhattan. The wagon he’d hired at the train station in the picturesque little village of Mamoraneck had carried him down winding country lanes through lush fields rampant with wildflowers and past stately lawns that graced enormous mansions. When he thought of the squalid tenements of the Lower East Side and the dives of the Bowery, Frank wondered that they could exist in the same
On the other hand, he knew that the rich must have a haven outside the city that the poor could never invade. In the city, no matter how wealthy you were, you couldn’t be very far from those who weren’t. Fifth Avenue had become home to the wealthy because it was as far as you could get from either of the island’s waterfronts and the slums and the vice found there. Even still, it was only a few short blocks away from that vice and could go no
