“I know who he is,” he snapped.
“Have you talked to him already?” she asked.
“He wasn’t home when I called,” Malloy said sourly.
“That’s good. You probably needed to know this information before you question him.”
“What information?”
“That Emilia was thinking about showing Ugo how beautiful she looked,” Sarah said, amazed he couldn’t figure that out. “It’s a normal, feminine reaction. She’s feeling confident and irresistible, so she seeks out the man who rejected her.”
“Why? So he’ll take her back and beat her up again?”
He really was in a bad mood. She couldn’t help wondering how much of it was due to Richard Dennis. “I’m sure she wasn’t thinking about him beating her up. She was probably thinking about him falling in love with her and wanting her back. Then she could reject him and have her revenge.”
“Italians get real excited over revenge,” he observed, taking a sip of his coffee.
“I don’t think you’re taking this seriously, Malloy.”
“Okay, let’s think about this seriously,” he suggested. “The girl gets all dressed up, looks in the mirror, and decides she wants her old lover to see her and regret throwing her out. Even though she hasn’t seen him in months, she goes straight down to City Hall Park, where she meets up with him. They have a fight, he pulls out a stiletto and shoves it in her neck. Then he walks away. Is that about how you figured it happened?”
When he said it like that, it didn’t sound very convincing, but Sarah wasn’t going to give in without a fight. “I hadn’t thought about it. Maybe she’d seen him around before that day. Or maybe someone had told her he’d be in the park that morning. She’d probably known about the clothes since Sunday, when I dropped them off. Why did she wait to go out looking for work? Maybe she’d arranged to meet him that morning and only told Mrs. Wells she’d be looking for work so she wouldn’t get suspicious.”
There, that was plausible! She watched him drinking his coffee and trying to figure out what was wrong with her theory. “Okay, then why did he kill her? And why did he kill her like that?”
A very good question. “He… She made him angry,” Sarah improvised.
“Why didn’t he just walk away then? Or hit her and walk away?”
“He didn’t want to cause a scene or draw attention to himself. The park is a busy place.”
“Not that busy. A girl got killed without anybody noticing,” he reminded her.
“Which is why he stabbed her instead of hitting her.”
“Yeah, he killed her so he wouldn’t draw attention to himself by slapping her. That makes sense.” Sarah glared at him but he ignored it. “So why did he stab her there?”
“There? You mean in the park?” she asked in confusion.
“No, in the neck. And by the way, Dr. Haynes, the coroner, agreed with you. The girl was killed by being stabbed the way you thought. But why there? I’ve seen lots of people get stabbed in lots of places, but never in the back of the neck.”
Sarah hadn’t thought about this aspect of the case. “That is strange. Whoever stabbed her must have known it would kill her.”
“How many people would know a thing like that? Would you?”
“I… I knew it when I saw where she’d been stabbed, or at least I knew a wound there could have damaged the brain. But I don’t think I ever would have thought of it as a way to kill someone.”
“Would a doctor know it?”
Sarah shook her head. “He’d know how dangerous it is to injure the brain, but I can’t imagine anyone choosing it as a method of murder. In any case, it couldn’t have been a crime of passion. Whoever did it had planned it.” Then she thought of something else. “Maybe this is a traditional way the Black Hand kills people!”
“They usually like to kill people in very dramatic ways – like blowing up their store or something. They only kill as a last resort. You can’t collect money from a dead man, so they do it to make an example, to scare everybody else into submission.”
“But don’t they assassinate people, too? This could be one of those things they brought over with them from the Old Country.”
He shrugged. Sarah figured he knew she was right but couldn’t bear to agree with her. “What else did you find out from Mrs. Wells that I didn’t?” he asked, without much apparent interest.
“I’m not sure. Did she tell you Emilia had a pimp?”
He frowned. Malloy wouldn’t approve of a lady knowing about pimps. “She claimed she didn’t know his name.”
“Did you ask her parents? Maybe they know.”
“The subject didn’t come up. What color hair do your parents have?” he asked suddenly.
Sarah stared at him in surprise. What did that have to do with anything? “My mother’s is blond, like mine. My father’s is brown.”
“Emilia’s parents both have black hair.”
Sarah needed a moment to recognize the significance of this. “And hers was blond. That’s unusual, but not unheard of, I suspect.”
“I didn’t see any other blond girls in that neighborhood. Everybody is from Southern Italy, like the Donatos. They’re all dark.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not saying anything. I’m just telling you what I saw.”
Sarah considered this information. “Do you think Emilia wasn’t really their daughter?”
“The old woman – her mother – kept saying she didn’t have a daughter.”
“Are you sure you were talking to the right people?”
“Oh, yeah, they were her family. The father acted the way he should have, shocked and sad. The mother was just mad. She hated the girl. Sounded like she’d disowned her. When she first saw me, she thought Emilia was just in trouble with the police, and she didn’t want me to tell her husband because he’d help her.”
“That’s strange,” Sarah mused. “Usually, it’s the mother who tries to protect the child, and the father who gets angry and wants to disown her. Does Emilia have sisters?”
“Just a brother, according to Mrs. Wells. He wasn’t home.”
“Is he older or younger?”
“I don’t know yet. Look,” he said, growing solemn and setting his coffee cup down firmly, “they aren’t going to let me spend much time on this. I can only give it another day or two, not even that long if somebody upstairs realizes nobody cares about this girl.”
“Then you’ll need my help,” Sarah said, certain that’s what he was getting at.
“No,” he said impatiently, “you don’t understand. I’ll question this Ugo and try to find the pimp and her brother. After that, if I haven’t found out what happened, I’ll have to close the case. Nobody will ever find out who killed her.”
“But you can’t – ”
“Yes, I can,” he corrected her firmly. “You are not going down to Mulberry Bend and start asking questions about the Black Hand. This isn’t like the other cases you were involved in. These aren’t respectable killers who made a bad mistake. These people are pure evil. I don’t want to see your body on a slab in the morgue. Do you understand?”
She’d never seen anyone look so angry and so vulnerable at the same time. She swallowed. “Yes, I understand.”
7
SARAH SHIFTED THE BASKET FROM HER LEFT ARM TO her right. She’d been a little overgenerous in filling it, and now she was paying the price. Not only was the basket heavy, but carrying it along crowded sidewalks was difficult. She kept bumping people with it, earning irritated looks and even more irritated curses as she made her way down Mulberry Street.
When Mrs. Wells had described where Emilia’s family lived, Sarah had immediately recognized the area. She’d delivered several babies in these tenements. Few of those babies lived to celebrate their first birthdays, but at least they’d arrived alive and well into the world.