Murder In Chinatown

by Victoria Thompson

  “Is your husband here?” Sarah asked Minnie.

  She shook her head. “He don’t know yet. He was at the laundry when they came to get me, and I didn’t…I couldn’t hardly believe it myself when I heard. I had to make sure it was true before I sent for him.”

  Sarah glanced around again and easily found Minnie’s son standing off by himself in the yard. His bright yellow shirt made him easily visible. “Harry, could you go fetch your father now, please?” Sarah asked the boy.

  “Ma?” he asked uncertainly.

  “Yes, go get him,” Minnie agreed wearily. “No use putting it off anymore.”

  Harry took off again. Sarah patted Minnie on the shoulder and wondered what else she could do to offer comfort.

  “Can I have a word with you, Mrs. Brandt?” Malloy asked with exaggerated courtesy. She knew how furious he was with her, and she couldn’t really blame him. Hadn’t she promised him she wouldn’t get involved in any more murders?

  “Of course, Mr. Malloy,” she replied just as politely.

  He took her elbow in a grip that wasn’t as gentle as it probably looked to the bystanders and led her over to the end of the porch, where they could speak in private.

  “I guess this is your missing Chinese girl,” he said.

  “Yes, it is, unfortunately,” she said. “I’d told the mother that I knew a police detective who could help her locate her daughter.”

  “So when her mother starts talking about getting her friend Mrs. Brandt to help, the beat cop figures he should send for me.”

  Sarah smiled apologetically. “If I’d known they’d already sent for you, I wouldn’t have come down here,” she told him honestly. “I’m not going to get involved, Malloy. I only wanted to make sure you were assigned to the case.”

  “Good. You can go back home now.”

  “Can’t you at least tell me what happened to poor Angel before I go?”

  He sighed in resignation. “You know as much as I do. The girl ran off with this O’Neal fellow, and they got married. Her father, the Chinaman, he found out where she was living, but she wouldn’t go home with him. Wanted to stay with her husband, which isn’t too surprising. A little while ago, somebody finds her out here in the yard, dead. Looks like she was strangled, but the coroner will tell us for sure.”

  “Where did they find her?” Sarah asked, looking around. “If she was killed out here in broad daylight, someone surely saw something,” she added, looking up at all the windows that faced the yard.

  “I don’t know exactly where they found her because her husband carried her inside, or at least that’s what he claims,” he said, not bothering to hide his frustration. “She was inside the flat where the whole family lives, all covered up with a blanket, when the beat cop got here. They all claim they don’t know anything about it and didn’t hear or see anything at all.”

  Plainly, he didn’t believe this for an instant, but it would take some time and hard work to unravel the mystery. She knew that only too well from her past experiences working with him in murder investigations.

  “I could ask a few questions—”

  “No!” he snapped. “You aren’t going to ask anybody anything. You’re going to leave right now. You’re going to forget you ever heard of these people.”

  Sarah couldn’t possibly forget any of this, but she nodded obediently. “I can’t leave Mrs. Lee alone, though. I’ll just wait until her husband comes to take her home. Then I’ll go.”

  He wasn’t pleased, but he knew better than to insist. She’d just dig her heels in and refuse. “Don’t talk to anybody else, though. I don’t need your help with this case, Sarah, and I don’t want you involved in any more murders.”

  “All right,” she said as meekly as she could manage.

  He blinked in surprise and then leaned in to look at her more closely, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Do you really mean that?”

  “Of course I do!” she said indignantly.

  He didn’t look convinced, but he nodded. “Until the husband gets here, and then you leave,” he reminded her. “I’ve got to talk to these people in the yard before they get bored and disappear, see if they know anything useful.”

  “Go right ahead. Don’t worry about me, Malloy. I’ll be fine.”

  She thought she heard him grumbling something under his breath when he turned away, and she bit back a smile. She really was going to keep her word not to get involved. But of course, if she accidentally learned anything important, she’d certainly let him know.

  FRANK WISHED HE HAD THE AUTHORITY TO ORDER Sarah Brandt away. He didn’t think anybody had that kind of authority, though. She’d do what she always did, which was whatever she wanted, regardless of what anybody else thought or what was in her own best interest or even what was safe.

  With a weary sigh, he went down the porch steps and into the yard where the crowd of neighbors still stood. He figured they were waiting to see the body being carried out. That meant he had a few minutes to ask them some questions. “Did any of you see what happened to the girl?”

  Many heads shook, and a few voices muttered denials.

  “I was the one found her,” a voice said. Frank looked down at a middle-aged woman with a lined face and hollow eyes. She clutched a moth-eaten shawl around her emaciated body. Her unnaturally pale face and bluish lips indicated that her frailty was caused by disease, not by starvation.

  “Can you show me exactly where she was and what you saw?” he asked as gently as he could. He judged that she’d respond better to kindness than to bullying, and he was right. She didn’t look happy about it, but she walked over to where the alley ended at the yard.

  “She was right there,” she said, pointing to a spot on the ground right beside the building.

  “How was she laying?”

  The woman considered for a moment. “On her side. Her hands up like this.” She pulled her arms into her chest so her hands were beneath her chin. “Her head was toward the alley, and her feet toward the yard.”

  “Were her clothes disturbed at all?”

  “You mean did somebody try to interfere with her?” the woman asked scornfully. “Didn’t look like it. Her skirt was down, and everything fastened up tight, like it should be. Nothing seemed wrong with her at all until I saw her eyes was staring at nothing. Then I let out a howl to wake the dead.”

  “What happened then?”

  “People started looking out the windows, and then they come running to see what was wrong.”

  “Who moved her?”

  “The O’Neal boy. Somebody said she was his wife, though she didn’t look old enough to me. Looked like a child, she did.”

  “She was a child,” Frank said. “How did he act when he saw her?”

  “Like his heart was gonna break. He starts to crying and carrying on. Then he picks her up—she wasn’t any bigger than a flea—and takes her into the building.”

  “Mary, what’re you doing?” a man’s voice called angrily.

  They looked up to see an unshaven lout in his longjohn top and threadbare trousers, his suspenders hanging around his hips. He was striding toward them, his bloodshot eyes furious.

  “I’m telling him what I saw,” the woman replied tartly.

  “You know better than to get mixed up with the police. He’ll have you in the Tombs for killing the girl yourself!”

  Frank gave him a look that stopped him in his tracks. His face turned scarlet, but he didn’t back off. Frank turned back to the woman. “Did you hear anything earlier? Or see anybody around?”

  “I didn’t hear nothing. I live upstairs. I just come down to empty the slop jar and saw her foot where it was sticking out past the end of the porch. I thought maybe she fell or took a fit or something, so I went over to see was she all right.”

  “Thank you for your help,” he said, more politely than he ordinarily would have because her husband was watching. He wanted to shame the man for falsely accusing him.

  The woman shrugge
d. “Can I go now?”

  Frank got her name and the number of her flat and wrote it in his notebook before letting her go. Then he looked around carefully, trying to judge which windows might have afforded a view of the girl’s last moments. The spot was oddly sheltered. The porch roof extended far enough to shield the area where she’d lain from most of the vantage points in the yard. Only a few windows in one building would have had a clear view. What were the chances someone had been looking out one of those windows at the right time? And if they had, what were the chances they’d be willing to talk to the police?

  AFTER HER CONVERSATION WITH MALLOY, SARAH WENT back to where Minnie was sitting. The poor woman looked shattered, although she had yet to shed a tear. That would come later, when she was alone, without distractions, and with nothing to think about except her awful loss.

  “Did you have a chance to see Angel after your husband found her?” she asked Minnie.

  Minnie nodded. “Charlie was that mad at her when she wouldn’t come home with him. He was ready to wash his hands of her, he said, so I decided I’d see if I could change her mind. I didn’t really think I could, but even if she’d just say she was sorry for scaring us like that…Charlie didn’t want to see her again, he said. The Chinese can be real stubborn, or at least Charlie can. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not when he said he didn’t want anything to do with her, but the only hope was for Angel to apologize to him.”

  “So you went to see her?” Sarah prodded when she fell silent.

  “I didn’t know what to expect. About her husband, I mean. What kind of a man steals a girl away from her family like that? He did marry her legal and all, but I just didn’t know.”

  “Angel loved him,” Sarah reminded her. “He must have some good qualities.”

  Minnie made a disgusted face. “He’s handsome. That’s all the Irish boys have to recommend them. Besides that, they’re just lazy drunkards. Why do you think I married a Chinaman?”

  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.

  5

  FRANK HAD SEEN THE CHINAMAN 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.