Murder In Chinatown (9 page)

Sarah had no answer for that. “What did she say when you saw her?”

“That she would never leave her husband.
Her husband!
” she scoffed. “She wasn’t nothing but a baby. What did she know about being married?”

“She was a new bride,” she reminded Minnie sympathetically. “She was still in that first blush of happiness.”

“She didn’t look all that happy, though,” Minnie recalled with a troubled frown. “And how could she be? They was sleeping on the floor in his family’s flat with seven other people! Didn’t have no privacy at all. Wasn’t much of a honeymoon, that’s for certain. I don’t even know if he treated her good. She wouldn’t say a word against him, but I could see she was miserable. I know when my girl’s happy and when she’s not.”

“Did she say anything about the rest of the family? About how they felt about having her there?” Sarah asked.

Minnie twisted her hands in her lap as she remembered. “They didn’t like her being Chinese. She didn’t say so, but I could tell. The way they looked at her. The way they looked at
me
for being married to one. I’ve seen it often enough, believe me. Didn’t matter that she was beautiful and smarter than all of them put together. They hated her and thought she was trash,” she added, her voice thick with suppressed anger.

Sarah wished she had some comfort to offer or at least that she could assure Minnie that she’d been mistaken. Unfortunately, she felt sure Minnie was correct in her assumptions about Angel’s in-laws. She didn’t have the heart to ask Minnie any more questions, so she stood silently beside her as they waited.

She watched Malloy dealing with one of the lazy, drunken Irishmen that Minnie held is such low esteem. Then the men from the coroner’s office made their way down the alley and found Malloy.

“Who’s that?” Minnie asked, straightening in alarm.

“They’ve come to take Angel,” Sarah said.

Minnie jumped to her feet. “What will happen to her?”

Sarah heard the edge of hysteria in her voice. She didn’t think it would be wise to explain the autopsy process to a grieving mother. “The coroner will examine her to determine how she died,” she hedged. “When he’s finished, you’ll be able to have a funeral and bury her.”

Minnie watched intently as the men entered the building, carrying a stretcher. “You’re sure they’ll give her back to us?” Minnie asked as they waited.

“Oh, yes,” Sarah said, and then she thought of something else. “Unless…”

“Unless what?” Minnie pressed her.

“Nothing,” Sarah hastily assured her. “I mean, I don’t imagine the O’Neals could afford the cost of a funeral. They’ll probably be glad to let you handle everything.”

“I don’t care if they are or not. They’ll never get their hands on her again,” Minnie vowed fiercely. She began to pace while the coroner’s men took care of their business.

After what seemed an age, they came out again. They’d wrapped Angel’s body in a sheet so no part of her was visible, but still Minnie gasped in horror when the stretcher emerged. The tears at last appeared, pooling in her eyes and spilling down her cheeks as she stared transfixed at her daughter’s body being carried away.

A tall young man emerged from the building, following closely behind the sad little procession. His face was a mask of desolation, and Sarah felt certain he must be Quinn O’Neal, Angel’s husband. He stopped to wait as the coroner’s men maneuvered down the porch steps, being careful not to drop their tragic burden. Then a disturbance in the yard caught his attention and everyone looked over to see Charlie Lee and his son Harry enter the yard from the alley.

O’Neal’s expression changed instantly from grief to rage, and like a madman, he shoved the coroner’s men aside, nearly causing them to drop Angel’s body as he bolted down the porch stairs.

“Murderer!” he cried as he launched himself at Charlie Lee.

F
RANK HAD SEEN THE
C
HINAMAN COMING DOWN THE
alley and figured it was the girl’s father. In his experience, the Chinese usually weren’t much trouble. They respected—or feared—the police and tended to stay on the right side of the law whenever possible. Even when you raided their gambling houses, they were orderly and polite. He kept an eye on him anyway, though, which is why he didn’t see the attack coming.

O’Neal bolted down the porch steps and barreled straight into the Chinaman, bellowing “Murderer!” at the top of his lungs. The two slammed to the ground before Frank could even react. Muttering a curse, he hurried over to where O’Neal was trying to pummel his smaller opponent. The Chinaman had thrown his arms over his head and was successfully warding off the blows when Frank arrived.

Frank took hold of O’Neal’s collar and heaved, jerking the young man up and back and sending him sprawling on the packed earth of the yard. Before he could catch his breath, Frank planted a foot squarely in the middle of his chest to hold him down. “That’s enough of that,” he informed O’Neal, who was sputtering in outrage.

“But he killed Angel!” the boy protested.

“You saw him do it, I guess,” Frank said mildly.

O’Neal’s eyes grew wide as his feeble brain processed the question and recognized an opportunity. “Yeah, I did!” he claimed triumphantly. “I saw him kill her!”

A woman nearby gasped, probably Mrs. Lee, but Frank took no notice. “You did, did you?” he asked in feigned amazement. “Let me get this straight. You saw him choke your wife to death, and you just stood by and let him, and then you watched him walk away and went back inside to wait for somebody else to find her body.”

“I…” O’Neal began but stopped when he realized he couldn’t admit to such a preposterous claim. “Well, no, I didn’t actually
see
it, but he killed her all right. Who else could’ve done it?”

Frank glanced over at the Chinaman. He was on his feet again, and his son was brushing the dirt off his well-made suit. The beat cops who had been hanging around the yard had rushed over right behind Frank. They would’ve helped a white man to his feet, but they stood back from this fellow, merely waiting to see if they would be called upon to act.

Mrs. Lee had reached her husband by now and was asking him if he was all right. He replied by pushing her away impatiently. “Is my daughter dead?” he asked Frank.

“I’m afraid so,” he replied.

If Lee felt any grief, he did not betray it. “Then he the one who kill her,” he said, pointing at O’Neal.

The boy would’ve jumped up and had at him again, but Frank put his weight on his leg and held him pinned down as he struggled like a bug on its back. “Calm down or I’ll have to lock you up,” Frank warned.

“I didn’t hurt Angel,” O’Neal insisted. “I never would! Ask anybody!”

The coroner’s men had been waiting for things to settle down, still holding Angel’s body on the stretcher between them. They must have decided Frank had matters under control, because they started moving again, carrying their burden toward the alley that led to the street.

“Where they take her?” Lee demanded, pointing.

“They’re taking her to the coroner,” Mrs. Lee explained. “He has to decide how she died.”

For the first time, Frank saw a flicker of emotion on Lee’s face. He would be too proud to let these strangers see his pain, but he couldn’t mask it entirely. He might have been mad at the girl for running off, but he still loved her. That was good to know.

Everyone fell silent as the men carried the stretcher away. When they were gone, Frank said to the Lees, “You folks might as well go on home now. There’s nothing you can do here.”

“But you’re gonna find out who killed my girl, aren’t you?” Mrs. Lee asked anxiously. “You’re not gonna let her killer get away!” Her voice held that hysterical edge that he’d heard so many times before from bereaved family members eager for justice. Or maybe just revenge.

Before Frank could promise to do what he could, which really was all he could say, Sarah said, “Of course he won’t,” with far more certainty than she had any right to feel.

Frank gave her a murderous look, which she ignored. “Mrs. Brandt,” he said through gritted teeth, “why don’t you see that the family gets home?”

He saw the understanding reluctantly reflected in her eyes, which meant he didn’t have to remind her of her promise to stay out of this investigation in front of all these people.

“There’s nothing more you can do here,” she said to Mrs. Lee. “I’m sure Mr. Malloy will let you know if he needs anything from you.”

To Frank’s surprise, this earned him a black look from the Chinaman. He probably wouldn’t get anything from Lee no matter how much he needed it. Without waiting for another invitation, Lee turned and walked away with as much dignity as a man who’d just been lying flat on his back in the dirt could muster. His son followed, but Mrs. Lee hesitated. She turned back to Frank one more time.

“Please find out who killed my girl, Mr. Malloy. She didn’t do nothing to deserve this, and whoever killed her should pay.”

Frank didn’t know how to answer without making a promise he might not be able to keep. This time when Sarah rescued him, he almost didn’t mind. “Come on, Minnie, and give Mr. Malloy a chance to do his job.”

Reluctantly, Mrs. Lee let Sarah lead her away. When they were gone, Frank turned to where the crowd of neighbors still stood, watching with avid interest. “All right, everybody, clear out now. There’s nothing more to see.” He gestured to the beat cops, who took the hint and began to encourage people to be on their way with some gentle nudges from their locust clubs.

“Can I get up now?”

Frank looked down to where O’Neal still lay beneath the weight of his foot. “If you promise to behave yourself,” he said and released the young man.

O’Neal scrambled to his feet and began to dust himself off. “You should’ve let me finish what I started,” he told Frank. “I would’ve got him to confess to what he done.”

Frank had learned long ago never to waste time arguing with stupidity. “Let’s go back inside. I need to ask you some questions.”

His young face twisted in dismay. “I really don’t know who killed her.”

“Then I’ll ask you something else,” Frank promised. “Let’s go.”

Malloy pushed the boy ahead of him back to the porch and up the steps and into the dim interior of the tenement. The family lived several floors up. The rents declined with each flight of stairs, and the O’Neals lived pretty cheaply.

The whole building smelled of cooked cabbage and garbage, and refuse lined the hallways and the stairwells. The O’Neal flat was pretty much what Frank had expected. He’d seen hundreds just like it. The furniture was old and worn, scarred from use. No pictures hung on the walls, no carpets covered the floors. Each family member would own no more than two sets of clothes and few items of comfort. They’d live from day to day, never sure if they’d have enough from that day’s earnings to ensure that no one in the family went to bed hungry. Morning would bring a brand-new struggle with the same goal, a cycle repeated endlessly and not always successfully.

The rest of the O’Neal family had apparently remained downstairs. Frank pointed to one of the rickety, mismatched chairs gathered around the kitchen table. “Sit,” he told O’Neal. He did.

Frank pulled up a chair opposite him. “So tell me, how’d you come to marry a Chinese girl?”

O’Neal bristled instantly. “She ain’t Chinese!”

“That was her father down in the yard, wasn’t it?” Frank challenged.

“She was born in America,” he said stubbornly. “She’s American.”

He noticed O’Neal spoke of her as if she were still alive. “All right, how did you come to marry her then?”

He ran a hand through his hair. It was the color of dry leaves, and Frank noticed his eyes had filled with tears. “We just did.”

Frank considered giving the boy a smack to induce him to improve his responses, but he decided to try kindness first. If he could get the boy to break down, he’d blubber everything he knew. “She’s pretty young,” Frank said. “How did you meet her?”

“She…at the market. Gansevoort. She used to go there with her friends.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I get work there when I can,” he said sadly. “I help unload wagons for anybody who’ll pay me.”

“Did you pick her because she was Chinese?”

“I didn’t know she was when I met her!” he exclaimed indignantly. “I just thought she was pretty, that’s all. I couldn’t tell…I never saw a half-Chinese girl before. She and her friends, they just looked…different.”

“All right, you saw her at the market. Then what happened?”

“I talked to them a little, being friendly. She was pretty, like I said. She…she told me later that they looked for me the next time they went. So I talked to her some more when I saw her again. After that, she’d tell me when they were coming back, and I’d make sure I was there.”

“You started meeting her other places, I guess.”

“Yeah, after the weather got cold. I…Sometimes I work at the pawn shop down the street, cleaning up, things like that. The owner, he thought it was funny I liked a Chinese girl. He let me take her in the back.”

Frank doubted the man did so out of the goodness of his heart, but he let that go for now. “So you’d take her in the back and have your way with her.”

“No!” he almost shouted. “It wasn’t like that! She was a nice girl. I just…We didn’t do nothing like that.”

“So she wasn’t in a family way when you got married?”

“No! I told you, she was a nice girl. She let me kiss her and…and other things, but we never did nothing wrong.”

The coroner would tell him if there was a baby or not. “If she wasn’t in a family way, why did you run off and get married?”

“She…Her father wanted her to marry some old Chinese man,” he explained, leaning forward in his chair. “She was scared to death. She didn’t want that, and neither did I. I told her to refuse, but she said her father would make her do it anyway. He didn’t care if they lived in America. He still did things like they did in China, she said.”

“So you decided to be a hero and rescue her,” Frank guessed.

“You should’ve seen her! She was crying and carrying on like she was gonna die. I couldn’t let them do that to her. I told her we could get married, and then she’d never have to worry about it no more.”

“Who married you?”

“My priest. She’s Catholic, too, so he didn’t fuss too much. We had to say she was…that there was a baby, but it was a lie, like I said. I didn’t like to lie to a priest, but he wouldn’t’ve done it without her parents’ approval otherwise.”

Frank figured that was probably true. “How’d you plan to keep a wife with what you earn cleaning out stores and unloading wagons?”

He had the grace to flush. “I didn’t think about that. I just figured we’d manage like everybody else does.”

Frank knew how everybody else “managed.” It was no way to live, especially for a girl who’d been raised in comfort and never wanted for anything. “So then you brought her here. What did your family think of her?”

“They all liked her,” he said quickly. He was a poor liar.

“I guess they weren’t too happy that you brought home a Chinese girl,” Frank said.

“I told you—”

“I know, she’s
not
Chinese. Your family thought she was, though, didn’t they? They probably didn’t want her here, eating their food and taking up space, especially because she wasn’t earning any money. Did they want you to turn her out to earn a few dollars on the street?”

O’Neal’s face flushed scarlet. “You can’t talk about her like that!”

“I wasn’t talking about her,” Frank pointed out. “I was talking about your family. A pretty girl like Angel could earn a lot on her back. Is that what they told you?”

“I’d never do that to her!”

Frank noticed he didn’t deny that his family had suggested it, though. He glanced appraisingly around the modest flat. “Who lives here with you?”

“My mother,” he said defensively. “My two brothers and my sister, and my brother Donald’s wife and their baby.”

Frank glanced around again, this time in disapproval. “Not much room for so many people.”

“That’s none of your business!”

Frank shrugged. “It is if it made somebody mad enough to kill Angel,” he pointed out.

“Nobody was mad. I told you, they all liked her. Her and Keely was thick as thieves, always going off together someplace and talking.”

“Who’s Keely?”

“My sister. I’m telling you, they all treated her like she was one of us.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Tell me, where was everybody today?”

O’Neal sat up straight in his chair. Obviously, he recognized this as an important question. “I don’t know. I don’t keep track of them.”

“Then how do you know one of them didn’t kill Angel?”

“Because I do!”

“Well, I don’t, so tell me where they all were today.”

He ran a hand over his face. “Ma was here. She was watching the baby while Iris went to deliver the vests they made.”