FRANK WALKED OVER the one block from the Sixth Avenue elevated train station to Fifth. The trains, which ran on elevated tracks along various avenues in the city, were a godsend for getting from one end of the congested city to the other in a reasonable time. Traffic in the unregulated streets clogged to impassability at major intersections during busy times of the day, so a trip uptown could take hours by cab or trolley. Of course the noise the trains caused and the dirt and cinders they dropped on hapless pedestrians below were a scourge of major proportions, too, inspiring talk of building a railroad underground instead. Frank agreed with those who claimed the only people who would ride such a thing were those who didn’t want to be seen riding a train.
As he studied the enormous mansions that graced Fifth Avenue at its northern end, he could hardly believe they existed in the same city as the Lower East Side with its crowded, filthy tenements. Up here in the fifties, the rich lived in houses that sometimes filled entire city blocks and which probably contained enough treasure to support the whole population of the ghettos for years. Another block farther up stood the elegant Plaza Hotel, named for the plaza on which it was built, and across the street from it was one of the Vanderbilt mansions. Frank thought the place looked like a museum, but people rarely asked his opinion about such things.
Frank could remember when this whole area was open ground. When he was a boy, the only people living at this end of Manhattan Island were vagrants and bums who had constructed a shantytown on the outskirts of the park some city fathers with foresight had begun up here. But when the park was finished, they ran off the bums and sold the lots to millionaires who wanted to live away from the noise and smells and heat of the city itself. Now the city had spread upward to meet them, so if they really wanted to get away, they had to escape the city altogether, to mansions in the country. The poor, of course, had Coney Island.
But Frank had given up railing against the inequities of the world. Now he concentrated on getting as much of those treasures for himself as he could. Other people were depending on him.
The VanDamm house was only slightly less pretentious than some of the others, a stately town house on the block of Fifth Avenue between Fifty-Seventh and Fifty-Eighth streets called “Marble Row.” It had marble steps, of course, and a shiny brass door knocker. A butler in a uniform that probably cost as much as Frank earned in a month opened the door for him. It was clear he thought Frank should have used the service entrance.
“Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy,” he told the butler before the man could order him around to the back. “I’d like to see Mr. and Mrs. VanDamm. It’s about their daughter.”
There, if that didn’t get him in to see the girl’s parents, he’d need dynamite.
Frank figured the butler was trained not to show any emotion, but he’d also probably never had a policeman come to the door, either. He seemed to blanche a little at the mention of the girl.
“Please wait in the front parlor,” the butler instructed stiffly as he grudgingly allowed Frank to enter. “I’ll see if Mr. VanDamm is at home.”
Nice trick the rich had, Frank mused. If they didn’t want to see somebody, they’d just tell the servant to report that they weren’t at home. Frank had a feeling the VanDamms would be home to him, though, at least for today.
Frank’s opinion of the rich dropped a notch or two as he looked around the front parlor (which meant they probably had a back parlor, too; what in God’s name did they need two parlors for?). Frank decided he’d been in classier whorehouses. This place was a disaster of ostentation, with red velvet everywhere, draped in enormous folds over the windows and covering all the plush furniture. The walls were covered with dark paper in a hideous design. A palm tree in the corner and potted plants on every flat surface. Tables adorned with lace doilies and cluttered with figurines of every description. And they were all ugly.
He found himself wondering what Kathleen would have said. Too much stuff to dust, probably. Kathleen had always been practical.
When the parlor doors opened twenty minutes later, Frank was examining the covers someone had put on the piano’s legs. He’d heard about people who were so modest that they never uttered the word “leg” and even clothed the legs of their furniture. He’d never expected to actually see such a thing, however.
The man who entered the room was obviously the master of the house. He was dressed for the street, in an impeccably tailored suit of the finest wool and a shirt so white it could blind a man. Frank noticed his tie was slightly askew, however, telling him VanDamm had made himself presentable in a hell of a hurry.
“Detective, I’m Cornelius VanDamm,” he said, in case there could be any doubt. Frank noticed he didn’t offer his hand. Probably he didn’t shake hands with messenger boys, either. “I understand you have something to tell me about my daughter.”
VanDamm was a man trained never to show a trace of weakness. Men who moved in the circles he did, where millions were made or lost on a man’s word, couldn’t afford to reveal any vulnerability without risking attack. VanDamm would be very good at hiding his true feelings, but Frank figured he was about to put him to the ultimate test.
“Is your wife available?” he asked. “I told your man I had to see you both.” He wanted to tell them together-so he would be sure of seeing their initial reactions, which would reveal a lot about a lot of things. How they felt about their daughter and about each other and about her death. And whether they knew more than they intended to tell him, information he might have to get from other sources.
“I’m afraid my wife is indisposed at the moment,” VanDamm said without the slightest trace of apology. “What is it you’ve come to tell us? I know it can’t be good news, Detective, so out with it.”
Frank hadn’t yet decided whether to obey or not when the doors opened again and a woman appeared. She was a fragile, birdlike creature dressed in a filmy gown with flowers printed all over it that swirled around her and made her seem almost ethereal. She must have been a beauty in her day, but that beauty had faded with the years, along with her once-golden hair which was now almost entirely gray. Her pale cheeks were sunken, her eyes hollow, and her skin had turned crepey, even though she probably wasn’t even as old as her husband, who was still a fine figure of a man.
“Cornelius, what’s going on? Bridgett said the police were here, something about Alicia.” Her eyes seemed slightly unfocused, and at first Frank wasn’t sure she even noticed he was in the room. Then he realized she was simply not acknowledging him. She looked at her husband, waiting for him to explain.
“Alicia? Don’t be ridiculous, Francisca, go back to your room. I’ll take care of this,” he told her sternly, as if speaking to a recalcitrant child.
“I think this is something you should both hear,” Frank contradicted him, watching as Mrs. VanDamm finally looked directly at him. Even her eyes were faded, to a washed-out blue, and they watered slightly as she blinked at him curiously. Maybe she was just short-sighted, he couldn’t help thinking.
She turned back to her husband. “What could he have to tell us about Alicia? She’s at Greentree. If anything had happened, Mrs. Hightower would have sent word.”
Her husband spared her only a bored glance. “Of course she would. This isn’t about Alicia at all, and don’t say I didn’t warn you, Francisca. All right,” he said to Frank. “What have you come to tell us?”
Now Frank was the one who was confused. Obviously, VanDamm was expecting bad news, but not about Alicia. If she’d been away at this Greentree place, maybe he didn’t even know she was missing, although that seemed difficult to believe. And if he was expecting bad news about his other daughter, he didn’t seem too upset about it. Ordinarily, a parent in this situation would be bracing himself for something horrible, but VanDamm didn’t seem to require bracing.
The woman knew nothing, of that Frank was certain.
“Maybe you better sit down, Mrs. VanDamm.”
The vagueness in her eyes turned to confusion. “I do feel a little strange,” she admitted. “It’s that weakness I was telling you about, Cornelius. It comes on me at the oddest times, I never know when. And then sometimes I can’t get my breath-”
“Well, if you think it’s best,” she murmured as she moved like a wraith to the nearest of the several ornately carved sofas in the room and perched on it, back ramrod straight the way a proper lady was taught to sit. Her hands fluttered restlessly in her lap, though, as if she thought she should be doing something but couldn’t remember exactly what.
VanDamm simply stood where he was, arms down to his sides, hands relaxed, showing Frank no more than common courtesy. The way he would if Frank had come to sell him tickets to the policeman’s ball. Or the way he
