Her father would have liked to have known this. For years her parents had held out hope that a miracle might happen. They used to look into the faces of children playing in the parks. They lit candles in churches. The mystery of William’s disappearance left them forever wondering what had happened to their son.
Now at least Gwen knew. The cowards dared not come forward with his body, and he had probably been buried in a pauper’s grave.
“There’s not much else new in the book,” Frederick said. “Malone claims he didn’t report what he saw in the boiler room because he feared the Italians and if he squealed, they’d know it was him. They framed him, but even after he was arrested, Mick kept quiet for fear the Italians would go after his wife in revenge. So he kept his silence and put his faith in God during his trial.”
The mental image of her brother, wheezing, pale, and dying in a grubby boiler room, gave Gwen a new mission. She didn’t merely want this memoir stopped, she intended to solve the mystery of what had happened to her brother.
And she was going to use Patrick O’Neill to make that happen.
7
Like every Saturday, Patrick served lunch at the Salvation Army soup kitchen, then cleaned up afterward. He was scouring the bottom of a stew kettle when a thick-necked man approached.
“Mrs. Kellerman would like to see you,” he growled.
Patrick looked up, surprised to see one of Gwen Kellerman’s bodyguards. He didn’t appreciate being summoned like a servant. The Salvation Army had a tiny crew of overworked employees, and he would finish his duties before darting off to see what Mrs. Kellerman wanted. She had effectively torn his conscience to shreds last week by showing him her college’s ambitious plans to cure the world’s diseases. She’d been kind, gentle, and lethally effective in the way she did it. Unlike the rest of her family, she was a thoroughly decent person. She was womanly and earthy and kind.
And alluring. She sparked a raw, primitive desire to haul her behind one of those fancy college buildings and kiss her breathless.
Patrick scowled and went back to washing the pot. “Tell her I’ll come when I’m done cleaning up.”
The thick-necked bruiser retreated, and Patrick went back to scrubbing. He shouldn’t feel guilty for noticing that Mrs. Kellerman was a looker. Any man with a pulse would notice. She was Eve bearing the apple; Delilah tempting Samson. She was surely here to tempt him with something else to scuttle Mick’s book, and he steeled himself against it.
He half expected her to be gone by the time he emerged an hour later onto the sweltering city street, but she sat alongside her two bodyguards at a sidewalk table outside the Italian deli across the street.
She didn’t belong in this neighborhood. It was gritty and loud, and the smells . . . well, the fishmonger’s shop two doors down couldn’t be expected to smell like a garden. The tannery smelled even worse, and moldering trash littered the alleys. Her gown was a soft, filmy shade of white and her hair a glorious cascade spilling down her back. She looked like a long-stemmed rose among shabby weeds.
“Back again, Mrs. Kellerman?” he teased. “I’m beginning to think you’ve got a thing for dirt-poor lawyers.” Flirting was second nature to him, and he was glad she didn’t seem offended. He yanked out a chair and helped himself to a seat. “I hope you’re not here asking for help to stop Mick’s book. I’m all set to go before a judge next Friday, and your family doesn’t have a prayer of winning an injunction.”
It was almost impossible to block a book before publication. He’d been preparing for weeks, and the law was on his side.
“The injunction is my uncle’s idea, not mine,” she replied. “None of us want Mick Malone to benefit from his crime, but what I care about more than anything is learning what happened to my brother. Did you know my father once offered a $100,000 reward to whoever could solve the mystery of William’s disappearance?”
Her voice was nonchalant, but she watched him intently. She was about to fire her first salvo.
“I did,” he admitted. “Half the people in the Five Points searched every nook and cranny for him. They quit after the police arrested Mick.”
“The reward is still available. Are you interested?”
He folded his arms across his chest as the pieces started to fit together. “What are you suggesting?”
“You have access to Mr. Malone. He trusts you, and in the process of preparing that memoir, perhaps you discovered something about how he pulled off the kidnapping. The law of double jeopardy means he can’t be prosecuted again for murder, and the statute of limitations on his other crimes expired long ago. Mick Malone could shout his guilt in the public square and the law couldn’t touch him, but I still want to know what happened to my brother. You can help. It won’t be double-crossing a client. It will be solving a mystery and bringing peace of mind to a family who still mourns.”
“And winning $100,000 dollars in the process.”
She nodded. “Precisely.”
Against his will, his heart started thudding. It was a figure so big he could scarcely get his mind around it. He and his ma could buy a proper house with four walls and a roof instead of sharing a tiny apartment. He could pay Father Doyle back for all those years of schooling he’d stiffed him on by not becoming a priest.
But he’d have to betray a client first.
Temptation was nothing new to Patrick. Girls had tempted him since he developed a healthy appreciation for anything in skirts when he was thirteen years old. He’d been tempted by a law firm in Boston that paid an actual salary instead of barter. He was tempted by rousing songs at the pub, freely flowing whiskey, and freshly baked blueberry scones. At the moment he was tempted by the alluring glint in Mrs. Kellerman’s eyes and the long, slender curve of her neck as she challenged him. Life was full of temptation, and he was used to battling it.
“No thank you, ma’am,” he said simply.
Then she hit him where it hurt.
“What if I gave the reward to your soup kitchen? I saw dozens of people get turned away. Most were mothers with hungry children. The reward money will keep this soup kitchen funded for years, and there’d be no more turning away hungry people who had the misfortune to be at the end of the line.”
What she said was true. The ladies who ran the soup kitchen liked him because he had the muscle to keep order during the occasional rumpus that happened when they ran out of food.
“Whatever you tell me will be confidential,” Mrs. Kellerman said. “All I want from you is the truth about Malone’s role in kidnapping my brother, and I think you know how he did it.”
He looked at the soup kitchen, where every Saturday he scraped the bottom of the kettle to eke out a final meal, then had to disappoint everyone else in the line. Every Saturday. He leaned forward to brace his forearms on the tops of his knees, twisting his hands and thinking.
He knew exactly how Mick had kidnapped that boy, because he’d personally scrubbed all the details out of the original manuscript, but Mick’s drunken confession still seared in Patrick’s mind. The Blackstones suffered the anguish of unanswered questions, and Mrs. Kellerman deserved to know the truth, but he couldn’t betray a client.