The Marshal's Pursuit (5 page)

Without the asperity of a retort, Miss Vaccarelli looked to the binder. “I’ve never seen him before.”

Cady turned the page. “Either of them?”

Frank watched her intently. The gangster on the left was Billy O’Flaherty.

“No.” Her eyebrows furrowed then relaxed. Before he could turn the page, Miss Vaccarelli placed her palm flat in the middle of the binder. “Who are these men?”

“Known gangsters,” Cady answered.

“And you think I know them?” Her expression was as incredulous as her tone.

Cady pointed to the bottom of a page. “Some go by their real names. Others, like your brother, use a fake one because they have legitimate business dealings, and families they want to protect. That your brother was involved in counterfeiting means we now have just cause to investigate him for money laundering. He could go to jail for a long time.”

She released a weary breath and turned the page. “No.” Another page. “No.” And another. She frowned, leaned forward. “That’s Mr. Heilbert, Patrick Heilbert. He leases space in one of my brother’s buildings for his grocery. He can’t be a gangster. He is the kindest man and most devoted father you will ever meet.”

“Miss Barn,” he said to the stenographer, “note that Miss Vaccarelli identified Patty Nundel as Patrick Heilbert.”

“Are you serious?” She stared at him, unblinking. “He’d been attending seminary to become a priest when his father died. He gave that up to take over the family business, to care for his mother and sisters.”

Cady turned the page. “Keep looking.”

“This is wrong, all wrong,” Miss Vaccarelli muttered yet resumed her perusal.

Frank took a seat at the table. As casually as he could, he rested his wounded foot upon another chair. Miss Vaccarelli flipped another page. Minutes passed and Irene grew paler and a bit green as her client identified seven additional gangsters, five of whom the authorities hadn’t had real names for, before reaching the last page in the binder.

“Malia,” she whispered, touching her client’s hand and stilling her from closing the binder. “Have you ever seen any of these men together?” The look in her eyes said
please say no.

“Once,” Miss Vaccarelli answered.

Frank felt a bit green himself.

Cady placed a hand on the table and the other on the back of her chair, leaning down. “When was that?”

“Three days ago,” she answered matter-of-factly. “Giovanni had been ill the night before, from eating bad shellfish, so I cut short a meeting with the volunteer coordinator at the Museum of Art. Four of them, and another man I didn’t recognize, were in the living room discussing how to help a needy business associate. Giovanni offered to take care of Mr. Miller, which frustrated me. I walked in and said he had no business caring for another person in his condition and that I would take care of Mr. Miller if he would give me the address. Giovanni was furious with me. The men laughed then each gave my brother their support and—”

Her eyes widened. Her hand covered her mouth, her head shaking.

“Oh my,” she whispered.

An
oh my,
in Frank’s opinion, didn’t describe how deep the mire she was in.

The stenographer looked up from where she sat in the corner. Her pencil fell from her hand. Her jaw sagged. Irene didn’t look as if she was even breathing. The man known for his gifted oratory, Special Prosecutor Cady, stood straight, a hand on his forehead.

No one had to say anything for Frank to know they were all thinking the same as he.

Malia Vaccarelli had unwittingly walked into a mafiosi
meeting and heard her brother vow to kill James “Mad Dog” Miller. She could also identify four other gangsters who knew of the hit and agreed to it—a hit to take out the very man who intended to kill Special Prosecutor Van Wyck Cady. The fifth man could have been Maranzano, who, like Van Kelly, they didn’t have a photograph of. If she wanted to stay alive, Malia DeWitt Vaccarelli needed more than what was probably a list of men her brother was funneling counterfeit bills to.

Frank rested his foot on the floor with more force than he intended, causing the splint to thump against the shoe, sending a jolt of pain shooting up his leg. This day grew exponentially worse for both of them.

He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Miss Vaccarelli.” He waited until her expressive brown eyes met his blue ones. “You need my protection, whether you want it or not.”

Chapter 5

[In] fashionable society an “escort” is unheard of, and in decent society a lady doesn’t go traveling around the country with a gentleman unless she is outside the pale of society.

—Emily Price Post,
Etiquette

3:08 p.m.

T
wenty-seven minutes. That’s how long she’d been waiting. Not that anyone seemed to mind but her.

Malia paced the library’s carpeted floor, circling the mahogany center table in a room that still smelled like the lemon-and-garlic remains of the lunch Irene had ordered from Delmonico’s. She listened to the wall clock; waited for her lawyer, the marshal, and Special Prosecutor Cady to return; and tried to stifle her growing panic. Every door was locked. As were the windows. She’d tried them all. Someone—everyone—didn’t want her to flee.

She looked past the shelves of law books to the row of windows, the sky blue and clear and sunny. Because they were on the seventh floor, the tips of several buildings were visible nearby and in the distance. When Giovanni looked through the window in the police department, did he see what she saw? She was no freer than he was.

The clock continued to tick.

She continued to pace and pray, but mostly pace.

Twenty-nine minutes.

Thirty.

Thirty-one.

Thirty—

The door opened. “I’m so sorry it took so long,” Irene said, rushing inside, her breathing harried. Miss Barn, the shy stenographer, followed close behind.

Malia stopped pacing. “You said you would be gone only a few minutes.”

Miss Barn closed the library door.

“I know, I know.” Irene looked as flustered as she sounded. “But Cady didn’t agree with Frank on what to do with you. Once we came to an agreement, there were arrangements to be made, phone calls.” She took the tan leather trench coat and straw hat from Miss Barn then walked to Malia. “Frank and Cady walked around the building’s perimeter and didn’t see anyone suspicious, but we can’t take any risks. You need to put these on.”

“I have a hat.” Malia reached for her white feathered one in the middle of the table, but Irene grabbed it first.

“Sorry, you can’t keep it. It fits the description of what you were wearing at the art exhibit.” She gave it to Miss Barn, who kept her gaze on the ground. “Hat for a hat.”

Miss Barn whispered thanks.

“If my dress would have fit you,” Irene went on, “I’d have happily exchanged because black is far less conspicuous than white. Seeing that the good Lord blessed you with more of...well, everything than He did me, I had to find someone more suitably matched. Miss Barn became the lucky volunteer.” She handed Malia the coat. “Frank said a coat would do.”

Malia’s lips came together to ask Miss Barn if she felt lucky or volunteerish (for she looked neither), but before she could utter the first syllable, Irene demanded she put on the coat.

“Hurry, Malia,” she added as she opened Malia’s pochette.

Malia drew the trench coat on over her dress. Considering the minimalism of Miss Barn’s white blouse and gray skirt and her lack of jewels, the coat was likely the most expensive item the stenographer owned. Malia didn’t want to calculate how many months of putting money aside that the girl had to do. Inside
her
closet in her Waldorf-Astoria apartment were at least a dozen coats, capes and stoles, including a supple lambskin coat from Italy that Giovanni had bought her the same day he bought his petromobile, and a pair of slink gloves that she’d never been able to move past her revulsion to wear.

The way Miss Barn held Malia’s hat—

The poor dear clung to the brim in desperation not to give it up, yet her brow furrowed as if she were trying to convince herself that this was a joke and any minute Irene would laugh and, like a bad Santa, take back the hat.

Irene, being Irene, did nothing of the sort. She withdrew the apartment key. “I’ll hold this for you until you return, and I will make arrangements with Pieter Joossens like I promised.” She handed Malia the clutch, which Malia took and held to her chest.

Malia shifted her weight uncomfortably. “What am I supposed to do for three weeks with only one set of clothing?”

“Frank has that taken care of.”

“What do I do if I need to contact you?”

“Frank will help you.”

“But what if he
is
my problem?”

Irene clearly saw Malia’s distress, and didn’t look the least bit concerned. “Frank is the best there is. I’d be in love with him myself if it weren’t for— Well, that’s neither here nor there.”

Malia didn’t say a word. There was no point. Once Irene set her mind upon something, nothing—neither hell, nor high water, nor a handsome man—could change it. Malia admired that about her. Until now. Sometimes she suspected Giovanni’s courtship of Irene in the six months following the funeral was so Malia and Irene could become friends. Malia and Irene had attended the opera together more than Giovanni and Irene had.

Irene gripped the sides of Malia’s arms. “As your lawyer, I advise you to trust Frank.”

Malia felt her upper lip curl.

“As your friend...” Irene leaned forward. Placing her cheek against Malia’s, she whispered, “Look away when he smiles. Trust me.” Then she was off like a rabbit to the door. “Hurry. Frank likes to stay on schedule.”

Frank. Frank. Frank, Frank, Frank. Frank.

She hadn’t even begun her three weeks with him and she was sick of his name.

Malia pinned the straw hat atop her head. She collected her gloves from the table and walked to Irene, Miss Barn silently following.

Irene opened the door a smidgeon, peeked and then opened it the rest of the way.

“Wait.” Malia turned around, and Miss Barn stopped in front of her. “Thank you.” She laid her gloves across her pochette and offered them to Miss Barn, whose pale blue eyes immediately widened.

“Oh, I cannot accept—”

“Please,” Malia cut in, “allow me. Gloves and clutch for a coat? It seems only fair. We can always trade back.”

Miss Barn hesitated. With her translucent skin, flaxen hair and quiet demeanor, she had blended into the room, unnoticed as the pale brows on her face.

Then she looked up and smiled.

Malia did too.

Grand Central Depot
Forty-Second Street and Fourth Avenue
3:42 p.m.

Nearly nine hours after she first saw him in the Park Avenue Hotel courtyard, he led her into a wall of smoke.

Eyes burning, Malia blinked as she blindly walked next to the marshal. If he weren’t clenching her hand in his—and it was quite embarrassing that he was—she would have lost him in the darkness. An engineer led them through the workers’ passage in the shadowy and noisy Park Avenue tunnel, filled with smoke from the hundreds of steam locomotives arriving daily. A rate of one every forty-five seconds, or so the
Times
recently reported. She’d never concerned herself with trains or the political views of boosting public safety by removing the locomotives from Manhattan’s surface and putting them underground. As if digging for the subway wasn’t enough. Street construction was a way of life in the city.

The last time she had been at Grand Central was when the train brought her home following her graduation from Vassar. Other than an occasional visit to the outer boroughs, she’d simply had no need—or inclination—to leave the island since. She still had no inclination.

Need, though...well, that was debatable.

Not that the marshal listened to her any more then Irene or Mr. Cady had. They’d seized control of her life and decisions as if she were a child, sending her into the unknown, with no one but a questionable stranger as her escort. For all she knew, he could be taking her to Maranzano, the gangster who’d put the hit out on her brother.

Her chest tightened, and breath fled from her lungs. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t leave Giovanni. They had only each other. She had to get out of the tunnel, get away from the marshal. Home, she had to get home. She’d be safe there in the Waldorf.

“Here’s your train,” the engineer called out.

No time. She had to run.

The marshal drew her close, his palm warm against hers. Malia pulled to no avail. His blue eyes narrowed ever so slightly in annoyance upon guessing her intention. Had she a wild look in her eyes? Ashen complexion? Or had her frantic pulse given her away? Yet he uttered no condemnation or chastisement as, like a doting suitor, he gallantly helped her onto the platform and over the threshold of the private coach.

“My wife,” the engineer was saying, “wanted to elope.”

“Why didn’t you?” the marshal asked.

Malia left him to continue the charade he’d created to explain their need to sneak onto the train instead of going through the depot’s main entrance, where people could be looking for them. Amazing what a few crisp hundred-dollar bills would get a man. She moved past a sofa and a set of chairs, turning on the electric lamps. She paused at the dining table in the center of the coach.

They were to wait thirty minutes before the train had to move to the platform for passengers to begin filling the Shore Line Express. The plan was cleverly laid, or so Irene had stated. They would go to Boston, slip immediately onto the night express back to New York, and then take a train to somewhere on Long Island where they were to hide out for the next three weeks. He’d even left the name of another marshal to contact in case of an emergency. Irene would provide a cover for Malia’s disappearance: she went to visit her aunt and cousins in England. All Malia had to do was what the marshal had asked before they sneaked out the back entrance of the special prosecutor’s office building—trust him to keep her safe.

Safe? From whom?

Perhaps people wanted to harm her—Mr. Maranzano sprang to mind—but she’d yet to feel any danger, except that coming from the marshal. She was a socialite, an heiress, an art patron whose life was so dull and ordinary that reading in the
Times
about a traffic block near the Brooklyn Bridge was the most excitement she experienced during any given week. She wasn’t worth killing. She just wasn’t worth it.

Her eyes blurred.

Something between a cough and a chuckle—yet completely hysterical—burst from between her pressed lips, breaking the stalwart composure she’d held for hours in the name of good behavior. While the marshal and engineer continued to speak outside, she ran to the back of the coach. The door handle rattled. Locked. Pinching her eyes closed, she clenched her lips until the need to scream passed.

Malia slowly drew in a breath, crossing her arms, rubbing her sleeves. She couldn’t escape. Not from the coach. Not from her family. Not from him. Even if she did get free, the marshal would find her. He’d pursue her to the last place on earth she tried to hide. Because he knew what he was doing. Because she was naive. But mostly—she sighed—mostly because she was weak and powerless and afraid. Her arms fell limp to her side, the sour taste of defeat growing in her mouth.

Malia flicked on the lights in the extravagant Pullman car. Brass and crystal lamps. Rosewood-paneled walls. Gold velvet chairs with fringed trim that matched the heavy drapes.

She removed the ankle-length traveling coat and straw hat of her “disguise.” Soot dusted the tan leather, which meant she had soot on her. She certainly couldn’t lay the coat on one of the chair seats. She found a closet. Inside were numerous wooden hangers. Malia then stepped to the lavatory. After hanging up the coat, she opened cabinets, found a cloth and dampened it. She then washed her face and neck before pulling the pins from her chignon and shaking the soot from her hair.

She sought her exhausted reflection in the mirror. Tears welling again, she drew her waist-length hair back from her face, twisted it to form a rope then coiled it into an Apollo knot atop her head. She pinned the knot in place. Her enlarged pupils made her eyes look like a spooked owl’s; her skin was the color of a corpse. Following a slow exhale, she turned to the coat and began to brush the soot off the surface.

She had to focus on something—anything—and give her hands something to do to keep her mind from replaying the day’s events. The monotonous repetition of cleaning brought comfort, silence amid the solitude, soothing her erratic pulse.

She had both sleeves cleaned when the marshal’s imposing presence appeared in the doorway, two feet from her, soot-dusted and looking uncharacteristically amused. Of course, his amusement could be native and the scowls she’d received uncharacteristic, but until she knew him better—and she never intended to—an oddity his amusement would be. He didn’t say anything right away. Instead his gaze shifted from the coat to the damp and soiled cloth in her left hand. Her soot-tinged fingers flinched. Her heart gave a tight, panicky squeeze.

Tossed by a wave of embarrassment, she fought the urge to hide her hands behind her back. She had no reason to feel ashamed, but that look in his eyes when he’d walked into the law library—

As if her soul was tainted. Dishonorable. Unforgivable.

Unclean.

That’s not me,
she wanted to scream.
You have me pegged all wrong.

“May I be of service?” he said in a helpful tone, which she didn’t buy for a second.

A woman could tell when a man had ill feelings toward her, not that she would be so rude as to tell him she knew. Her feelings for him grew in the same field. Nevertheless, they were stuck together by request of her lawyer and the insistence of the special prosecutor. She ought to be cordial. Good form dictated it.

Malia inclined her head to the soot ring around the marble sink. “Are you certain you wish to help?”

“I insist.”

“Yes, you would,” she murmured.

He chuckled at that.

She couldn’t imagine how anyone enjoyed his company; he was an odd sort. His moods shifted like the winds from the Atlantic. Serious then jovial. Noble then inconsiderate. Yet there was one consistent thing about him—

“You always like to have your way, don’t you?” she asked, gripping one of the coat’s wooden buttons.

“Yes.” He leaned a little closer, enough that she caught a whiff of his cedar-and-spice cologne. Although he didn’t grin, he clearly looked as though he wanted to. “I suspect you do, too.”