Lucca howled with pain, but he said something to the girl in Italian, his voice high and strained.
She started to protest, but he cut her off sharply. Even though she wasn’t dressed for the street, she snatched up a jacket and hurried out. Her footsteps echoed lightly down the stairs and faded away.
“What you want?” Lucca asked. His voice was a little muffled because his face was still smashed against the wall.
“I want to know why you killed Emilia Donato,” Frank said.
“Who?” he asked.
Frank didn’t like people who tried to be coy with him. He gave Lucca’s arm another twist. When he’d stopped screaming, Frank said, “Emilia Donato,” very deliberately.
“Who is this girl?” he asked quickly, before Frank could encourage him again. “I do not know her!”
Was it possible Frank had found the wrong man? “Yellow hair. Emilia. She got sick, and you threw her out,” he tried.
“Oh, si, yes, I know her now!” he assured Frank hastily. “She not here long. I forget!”
Frank wanted to smash his head right through the wall. Couldn’t he at least have the decency to remember their names? “Tell me about her, Lucca,” he suggested instead, his voice dangerously low.
“She lazy girl. No work.”
“You mean she wouldn’t walk the streets?”
“She cry. Say she sick. No go out.”
“So you slapped her around like you did that girl just now?” Frank asked.
“Lazy girl,” he defended himself. “No work. Must work, get money.”
“So you made her go out to make money for you,” Frank offered.
“She go but no make money. Stay out all night. Afraid come home. Afraid I mad. Stay out all night in rain. Get sick.” He shrugged. “What I do? She no can work. I send her away.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Long time. Can’t tell. Long, long time!” he insisted. “She nothing to me. Why you come here?”
“Because somebody killed her two days ago.”
Now the seriousness of his situation was finally sinking in. “Why I kill her?” he cried. “She nothing to me!”
“Because she met you on Thursday morning. She wanted you to see her new dress. She wanted you to see how pretty she was and make you sorry you threw her out. She made you angry, so you stabbed her to death.”
“No!” he cried frantically. “I no see her, long time! She nothing to me. She go to mission. I no see no more. I think she die. I no kill. Why I kill? She nothing to me!”
Either he was a better liar than he had a right to be or he was telling the truth. Frank was afraid he was telling the truth. Coming here had been a long shot in any case, but he’d run out of suspects. No one, it seemed, had any reason to want Emilia Donato dead.
Maybe if he had some more time, he could figure it out, but they’d told him yesterday at Headquarters to close the case. Emilia’s parents weren’t going to offer a reward or pressure the police to do anything. Even they didn’t care that she was dead. No one cared.
No one except Sarah Brandt.
Frank didn’t ask himself why he was walking down Bank Street. If he didn’t ask himself, he wouldn’t have to make up a lie to satisfy his pride. The truth was, he only needed the slightest excuse to come here, and this time his excuse was pretty substantial.
Darkness had fallen on the city, even though the hour wasn’t particularly late. The days were growing shorter as October wound to a close. As soon as he’d turned the comer, he’d seen a light on in Sarah’s front room. There was always a chance she’d be out on a call, but his luck seemed to be holding. The darkness would keep Mrs. Ellsworth inside, too, since even the busiest of busybodies couldn’t sweep her front steps in the pitch dark. He didn’t feel much like answering her questions tonight, no matter how well intentioned they were.
Sarah Brandt opened the door at his knock. She said, “Malloy,” but she didn’t smile the way she usually did. She looked worried, maybe even a little nervous. “Is something wrong?”
So that was it. She was worried about Brian. “No, nothing’s wrong, except that I haven’t found your murderer.”
That seemed to reassure her. “Come in. Would you like some coffee? Have you eaten?”
“Just some coffee,” he said, hanging his hat in her hallway the way he always did. He followed her into the kitchen, admiring the shape of her body in the worn housedress. Apparently, she hadn’t given all of her old clothes to the mission.
For an instant he remembered the way she had felt in his arms in that emotional moment he’d forgotten himself at finding her alive and well. The memory brought the heat to his face and to other parts of him, too, so he quickly banished it. Still, he wondered if she thought about it and how she felt when she did. She’d certainly never mentioned it, thank God. If she was willing to pretend it hadn’t happened, so was he.
“Sit down,” she said, pointing to the kitchen table, and began making the coffee.
He watched her work, enjoying these few stolen minutes of false intimacy when he could pretend he belonged here, with her. Too soon she was finished, and she sat down across from him at the table. Her eyes were guarded, as if she was afraid to hope too much.
“What did you find out?” she asked when he didn’t speak.
“That nobody had any reason to kill Emilia.”
“Did you find her lover?”
“Yeah, and her pimp, too. She wasn’t a very good prostitute. Even when this fellow Lucca beat her, she wouldn’t earn any money for him.”
“Wouldn’t that give him a reason to kill her?”
“Not months after he’d thrown her out, and he’d found a new girl. He didn’t even remember her name.”
“How awful!”
“Pimps aren’t usually known for their social graces,” Frank reminded her.
“What about that Ugo, the man who seduced her in the first place?”
“He was finished with her, too. I took him down to Headquarters and let him sit in a cell for a while. He was pretty scared, so I’m fairly certain he didn’t kill her either. Neither of them had seen her recently, not since she went to the mission, at least.”
“What about our theory that she wanted one of them to take her back?”
“If she met a man in the park that morning, it wasn’t either one of them.”
She frowned. She didn’t like this one bit. “It must have been the Black Hand, then. They’re the ones who use stilettos,” she decided.
“I did some research into the Black Hand. Her family is too poor to attract their attention. Besides, every Italian man in New York owns a stiletto.”
She wasn’t going to let it rest. “What about her family then? Did you talk to her father and her brother?”
“I didn’t see her brother, but why would her family want her dead?”
“They’re Catholics,” she reminded him. “Emilia had left her faith.”
Frank didn’t know whether to laugh or take offense. “I know you Protestants think Catholics eat babies for communion, but we don’t kill people just for leaving the church.”
He was gratified to see her instant contrition. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to sound so… so bigoted,” she said. “I just… I thought maybe… Her mother, at least, didn’t seem to care about Emilia at all.”
“If they didn’t like her, all the more reason why they wouldn’t have killed her for leaving the church,” Frank said before the real import of her words struck him. “Wait a minute, when did you meet Emilia’s mother?” he asked suspiciously.
She would have been a terrible failure as a criminal. Her guilt was as obvious as a scarlet brand on her forehead. “I… That is… one of my patients told me. I deliver a lot of babies in that neighborhood and – ”
“You went to the Donatos’ flat even after I told you how dangerous it was to get involved in this!” he accused her furiously.