The satisfied expression turned into a smirk. “There aren’t many people who survive a fall from that height unless they have wings,” he said. “Of course he’s dead. Smashed as flat as a pancake.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, because it was expected of me. Actually I wasn’t sorry at all.
“So the only question in my mind,” the officer said, still not taking his eyes from my face, “is whether he fell by accident or whether he was pushed.”
Sixteen
I stood there in the dark hallway, trying not to let my face register any emotion. I recognized the policeman now. He was the officer who had accompanied Daniel at the Elizabeth Street station.
“When did this happen?” I asked.
“Sometime during the night, I suppose. The old guy is wearing his nightshirt and I gather he’d been sleeping on the roof.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I was told that he liked to sleep on the roof during hot weather.”
“That will certainly make it easier for us,” he said. “He walked in his sleep and tripped over the low parapet.”
“And if he didn’t?” I asked.
He eyed me critically. “Then somebody pushed him, and if I don’t find out conclusively who that person was, then the rumor will go around that it was a member of Hip Sing. In case you don’t know about such things, it’s—”
“The rival tong,” I said. “I do know.”
His eyes narrowed. “You seem to be remarkably well versed in Chinatown politics,” he said. “What exactly are you—one of the Irish wives from around here?”
Again I should have kept my mouth shut and just claimed to be a friend. But I don’t always stop to think through consequences. “Not at all,” I said. “I’m a private investigator. That’s why Mr. Lee hired me.”
“Really?” He was looking at me with interest tinged with amusement now. “A female dick. That’s a novel one.”
He glanced down at my letter he was still holding. “Murphy, is that the name? Molly Murphy? I’ve heard of you before somewhere.”
I wasn’t going to say that my name had probably been mentioned as Daniel’s future wife. “I have worked on cases in this part of the city,” I said.
“Have you, by george? What kind of cases?”
I tried to think of harmless things I might have done in the Lower East Side—certainly not dealing with Monk Eastman and his gang. “Another missing person case once. A girl who had come over from Ireland. Her family wanted to trace her.”
I hoped he’d be satisfied with that, but he was still frowning. “And why exactly did old Lee hire you particularly to find this bride?”
“I suppose he thought that a young woman like myself could move among other young women in the world outside of Chinatown, without arousing suspicion.”
“I see.” He paused. “And what made him think that his bride had run away and not been kidnapped by Hip Sing, for example?”
“I asked him the same question,” I said. “He indicated that his spies had looked into that aspect thoroughly before he thought of hiring me.” I hesitated, then went on. “From what I understand of the Chinese, I don’t think Mr. Lee would have resorted to hiring an outsider and a female unless he’d done everything he could himself to recover the young woman.”
“That’s true enough,” he agreed, then he stood looking at me, head cocked to one side, like a bird’s. “You know what I find interesting? That Mr. Lee smuggles in a new bride from China—which I might point out to you is breaking the law to start with, Chinese women not being allowed to enter the United States. Then this bride does a flit, he hires you to find her, and immediately afterward he plunges to his death. Odd chain of events, don’t you think? And in my twenty years of experience in the New York Police Department, I’ve always found that when strange things happen, one after the other, there’s always a connection.”
He was staring at me, long and hard, as if he expected me to crack and confess all. “Now look here,” I said, my hackles rising. “I don’t know if you’re hinting that I might have had anything to do with his death. If so, I’ve no idea why you’d think that. For one thing, he hasn’t yet paid me my fee—and now he’s not going to, so I’m left out of pocket. Besides, I’d never met the man before and I have no interest in Chinatown or its inhabitants.”
As I said this, unwanted thoughts were racing through my brain. I could think of several people who might want Lee Sing Tai dead, and first on the list was his runaway bride. The officer’s mind must have been working along the same lines because he said, “So you haven’t located this runaway bride yet?”
Now what do I say? Lying to the police was a serious matter, but I also realized that she’d make a perfect scapegoat for them, so that the case could be solved neatly and a new tong war would not erupt. “I did start to look for her. I went around the local missions. But as you can see from the letter, I decided to withdraw from the case,” I said. “I realized that I didn’t wish to be any part of this sordid business. I don’t approve.”
Suddenly his expression changed. He was no longer looking at me as if I was his prime suspect. I could see an idea had just come to him. “Look, Miss Murphy, I’m Captain Kear of the Sixth Precinct,” he said. “Can I ask you to do something for me? Nobody has officially verified the identification of the body for us yet. The old woman in there couldn’t make it down the stairs on those feet, even if we could get her to shut up.”
“What about the servants?” I asked.
“They must have run off when they heard the police were on their way,” he said. “There was nobody in the house when we got here and the door was wide open. Probably thought we were going to blame them. And the Chinamen in the crowd suddenly can’t understand any English or claim to be complete strangers.”
“Is Mr. Lee’s son nowhere around?” I asked.
“He has a son?”
“Bobby Lee,” I said.
“Oh, Bobby Lee, that’s right. Old Lee’s paper son, isn’t he? I haven’t seen him for a while. I heard old Lee shipped him out to the cigar factory in Brooklyn after the last dustup with Hip Sing.”
“He was around here yesterday,” I said.
“Was he? I’ll send someone to look for him. But in the meantime I wondered if you’d take a look at the body yourself. If you’re not too squeamish, that is? I need him officially identified before we move him. These Chinese would lie to their grandmother if it suited them. They all claim they’ve never seen him before.”
“All right.” I swallowed hard. Frankly I was not at all keen to view a body described as flatter than a pancake, but I had my image as a cool-headed detective to uphold, and I was rather flattered that Captain Kear was treating me as an equal and not as a helpless woman who might swoon at any second.
He ushered me down the stairs ahead of him. The street was still deserted and the church was now silent. I thought that probably any sensible Chinese had shut himself in his rooms, just in case he found himself grabbed as a suspect or new tong violence erupted. There was still a crowd around the body. Hardly any of them were Chinese, but there were curious Italians, Jews, and Irish, being held back by constables. I heard one of them saying, “Here’s the captain now,” as Captain Kear elbowed his way ungraciously through the crowd.
“Is the morgue wagon on its way?” he asked one of the constables holding back the crowd.
“Yes, sir. Should be here any moment.”
“And the doctor?”
“Been summoned, sir,” the same constable replied. “Might have a problem locating him. It’s a holiday.” His tone implied that it should have been a holiday for him too, if he hadn’t been summoned to this scene.
“And has somebody been to HQ on Mulberry to request a photographer? I want a photograph of him before he’s moved.”