Mia sighed, turning the page of the newspaper. She would finish her coffee, biscotti, and paper, then return to Aunt Connie’s. Hopefully Paolo would be there and not still looking for her. It wasn’t as though she could get very far on foot, anyway.
She was just dunking her second piece of biscotti into her coffee and reading a story about factory workers’ conditions when the bell over the door jangled. She glanced up, expecting to see Paolo and his disapproving frown.
But it was a different man entirely.
He was tall, with pale skin and freckles that gave his weathered face a youthful appearance. Strawberry-blond hair poked from beneath a fedora before he swept the hat off his head. He walked straight toward her.
Mia straightened in her seat, never taking her eyes off him.
There was no preamble when he took the seat across from her. “You’re Mia Scalisi.”
“That depends on who wants to know,” she replied.
“I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” he said. He had looked quite young at a first glance, but now that he was closer, she noted the deep lines etched on either side of his mouth and the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. There were tiny red marks on the sides of his neck where he’d nicked himself shaving. She also noted his accent. He was from Chicago.
“Have you.” She leaned back in her seat and folded her arms.
At that moment, Signor Bagnoli came out, a cheerful smile of welcome on his face. It faltered when he spotted the man.
“Ah,” he began, his brow knitting.
“Coffee for the gentleman, please, Signor Bagnoli.” Mia kept her stare on her newfound and unwelcome guest. “My friend…?”
He reached into his coat pocket, and she stiffened, waiting to see the snub nose of a revolver pointed at her. But instead of a pistol, he withdrew a leather wallet. When he flipped it open, she saw it was a badge announcing him as a detective.
“Detective Abner Wallace,” he replied. “Of the Chicago police department.”
Signor Bagnoli was back in practically no time with a cup and saucer and a pot of coffee. His hand shook slightly as he poured a cup for Detective Wallace and refilled Mia’s. He gave her a fleeting, questioning look, then disappeared into the back again.
“Well, Detective Wallace,” Mia said, sipping her coffee in a relaxed manner she was far from truly feeling. “You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?”
“I could say the same of you.” He stirred his coffee with the little silver spoon that rested on the saucer.
She allowed herself a small, polite stretching of the lips. “Chicago is not my home.”
“No? But I had it on good authority you lived at the Lexington Hotel for the past few years.”
“Then your authority is mistaken.” She set her cup down. “I haven’t lived in Chicago for nearly a year and a half now.”
“No, I s’pose not.” He pulled a notebook from his pocket and made a show of reading what she assumed were notes. “No, I s’pose it does say here the last time you was in Chicago was for the trial of one Salvatore Bellomo.”
“What of it?”
“Well, you see,” he said, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the table, “after that trial—and I do mean immediately after—Sal Bellomo was found dead. Shot to death.”
“Yes. I heard about that.”
He picked up his cup around the rim for a sip. “You seem real broken up about it, considering he was your boss and all. Family-like, let you Eye-talians tell it.”
“I’ve had time to make peace with it,” Mia said, unable to keep an icy note out of her voice. “He ran with a rough crowd. I suppose that sort of thing catches up with a man after a while.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that one.” Detective Wallace nodded. “’Cept, it sure was odd the way you up and disappeared shortly after his death. We’ve been wanting to talk to you for quite some time. But it sounds like you left the country altogether for quite a long while.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know I needed anyone’s permission to travel.”
“Just odd, is all,” he said. “See, if you were suspected of something, we’d call that fleeing.”
“Am I suspected of something?”
“Not officially,” he replied smoothly. “I just wanted to ask you about some interesting coincidences.”
“Then ask,” she said, her voice carrying an edge. “I got somewhere to be.”
“Oh, sure.” He consulted his notebook again. Mia was willing to bet if she snatched it away, she’d find his attempts at circles and stars. “So, I have it on good authority your brother was a capo in Chicago before he died.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
He peered at her through narrowed eyes. “Oh, I’m sure you do. See, I know you was well-known in the city when you were there. One of the premier showgirls in Chicago, certainly on the South Side. The Saturday Night Special, ain’t that what you was called?”
She did not reply.
“Yeah. So anyways, we know all kinds of gangster types was in and out that joint all the time. Johnny Torrio, Al Capone and his boneheaded brothers—until the one got killed. The Genna brothers, those apes.” He flipped his notebook closed with a sharp snap. “And Dean O’Banion.”
“If you’re asking if I know those men, the answer is yes. As you said, they were regulars, and Sal was a welcoming host.”
“You never noticed nothing strange? No booze being passed around? No beef between the two camps?”
“I thought you were a detective, not a prohi,” she said. “And beef? I don’t know what you mean.”
He smiled. “I know you want everybody to think you’re just some dumb chorine, Miss Scalisi, but you and I both know that ain’t true. Everybody in Chicago knows about the beef between the North and South Sides.”
She shrugged one shoulder in as nonchalant a way as possible.
“See, I might be inclined to believe you if you didn’t have the brother you had,” Detective Wallace went on. “We been set up on Nick Scalisi for a long, long time. Watching his every move.”
“You couldn’t watch his every move,” Mia said snottily. She couldn’t help it.
“We saw more than you think. No, we never caught him murdering nobody. He was a little too smart for that. But that night of Sal’s birthday party? The night them three prohis turned up dead? Guess what? The Bureau knows they went there. They were only playing at being dirty.”
Mia stared at him. “What?”
“They had orders to make it seem like they wanted to buy booze and hookers and the like,” Detective Wallace said. “To buy from your brother and boss. One of ’em called after they got there, said they’d had a meet with Sal already. The Bureau and the department knew where they was. And they never came back.” He leaned across the table, fixing her with a hard stare. “Turned up in a river couple days later. Funny coinkydink, huh?”
Mia thought back to that night of Sal’s party. Those three prohis had shown up at her door—as directed by Sal—and tried to rape her. Nick had shown up just in time and beaten one of them to death. The other two had been shot to death, and all three had been dropped in the river. Nick had leaked that story to the press to deflect the crimes away from Stems, away from Sal—at first. It hadn’t been breaking news when the bodies had been discovered.
He’s trying to trip you up.
He was trying to bait her into admitting more than she should know by tossing random facts at her—facts that might not be true. Nick had friends in the department and in the Bureau, and not one of them had said anything about some undercover mission the three in question had been on.
“That is a funny coinkydink, indeed,” she said calmly. “But I recall learning about those three dead prohis in the papers. And then the next thing I knew, Sal was being arrested for murder. It was a dreadful time.”
The detective’s face fell. “Tell me about the day you testified.”
Mia folded h
er hands demurely on the table. “Why?”
“I’m curious, is all.”
“I’m afraid that’s not a good enough reason.”
“You’re not in any trouble,” he said.
She smiled thinly. “Yet.”
“Have you done something to get into trouble, Miss Scalisi?”
Murder, bribing an officer, bootlegging. Where should she start? “Not at all.”
He shrugged. “Then you shouldn’t mind talking to me. So. The day you testified, you were spotted leaving the courtroom out the back way. Sal Bellomo told everyone he was going outside for a smoke and didn’t want to be bothered. A few minutes later, he was found dead of three gunshot wounds by the back door. His cigarette was still burning.”
It was a cigar. The words burbled to her lips, but then she hesitated. That was another detail the good detective should know. An oversight, or was he trying to trip her up again? She pressed her lips together.
“And you was nowhere to be found,” he went on.
“We said our goodbyes,” she said. “I left. What did I need to hang around the courtroom for?”
“And you saw no one? No one at all? No one suspicious?”
“No,” she said flatly, then rose from the table. “I got somewhere to be, Detective Wallace. Good day to you.”
It was rude to leave without saying goodbye to Signor Bagnoli, but she wouldn’t stay in the café with that detective for one more moment.
She walked outside without a backward look, then turned left to cut through an alley. It led to Elizabeth Street, where she could quickly make her way to the grocery on Mulberry.
A hand dropped over her mouth, cutting off the scream that instantly bubbled up her throat.
Her brain went dizzy as the brick wall of the alley slammed into her back. Her head knocked against the hard wall, and for a moment she saw stars before she blinked them away.
Detective Wallace leered into her face. “You’re good, aren’t you?” he hissed. “You think you’re very, very good. But here’s the problem. You’re jamming up a lot of business, being all high and mighty like you are. The fellas I work for don’t appreciate it. And I got orders to make sure you end up just like your brother—six feet under. Almost had you the other night, but you was too smart to get close to me, weren’t you?”
So it had been him who’d tried to shoot her outside her shop. “You bastard,” she gasped.
He gripped her face in one hand and flicked a switchblade open with the other. He placed the tip of the blade right beside her eye. “My boss says he’ll sell dope wherever he wants. Oh, and Chicago sends its regards.”
She fought against him. The tip of the knife scratched her face. She shoved against his hand hard, knocking him off-balance a tiny bit, but it was enough for her to get her knee up where it would do the most damage between his legs. He doubled over, grunting in agony.
Mia fumbled her blackjack out of her pocket, slipped her finger through the leather loop at one end of the tether, then swung her arm up. The small, heavy, leather-wrapped ball connected with the underside of the detective’s chin. His head snapped back and he stumbled backward several feet, then dropped to a knee.
“You’re dead, bitch!”
Mia had no doubt he would make good on that threat if she lingered. She turned and sprinted down the alley as fast as her legs would carry her.
Chapter Seventeen
“You’re not leaving until we nail their asses to the wall,” Charlie said furiously later that afternoon, back in her hotel room. His fists clenched tightly at his sides.
“I can’t stay here. I got a job,” she pointed out.
Her family hadn’t seemed to know how to deal with her after her impassioned speech at the church, so they’d almost seemed relieved when she told them she had a terrible stomachache and wouldn’t be able to attend the family dinner. Poor Raquel had offered to keep her company, but Mia had insisted she spend the time with Joe and Connie, getting to know them as they were eager to get to know her.
As she’d suspected, Paolo had been at the store, pacing like a caged animal as Uncle Joe tried to reason with him. His face had lit up with both relief and utter rage at the sight of her, and for the first time, she was grateful he couldn’t speak, because she’d never hear the end of it. The rage on his face had quickly faded to concern when she’d confessed to feeling ill, and he’d escorted her home. As soon as they were alone, she’d told him everything that had happened with Detective Wallace.
Now, she sat huddled on the couch in the living room of her suite, clutching a glass of bourbon. As soon as they’d made it back to her room, she’d telephoned Charlie to come at once. He’d arrived with Moritz and Will, and Joey and Bobby arrived soon after.
“That’s it, then,” Bobby said decisively. “Me and Joey, we don’t leave your side. Not after this.”
“Good idea,” Charlie said.
“But my family needs protection now more than ever,” Mia argued. “I have Paolo.”
“No offense to Mr. Scarpa, but I doubt that’ll be enough,” Moritz said from where he sat across from her in the easy chair. “Make no bones about it, Mia. You’ve got a target on your back now. We all do.”
“To hell with Hyman and that club,” Charlie added. “That detective prick can easily find you there. And you perform on a raised stage—you can’t get an easier shot.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” she said. “You haven’t got Hyman Goldberg breathing down your neck.”
“I think he might understand this time,” Will drawled. He sprawled in the other easy chair as though he owned it. “At the very least, he’ll understand you’re no good to him dead. Can’t make him no money if he ain’t got no singer.”
Mia drained her bourbon and shot to her feet. Sitting down made her feel restless, though her knees still shook as she paced. She was rattled, and it angered her.
My boss will sell dope wherever he wants, the detective had said. Chicago sends its regards.
She repeated the words aloud.
“His boss. Morelli,” Charlie spat. “Who else could he mean?”
“You think he’s workin’ for Weiss and the North Side?” Will asked.
“Unless he explicitly stated a name, we don’t know that for certain,” Moritz said. “Have we called Chicago yet? The Capones. Surely they’d be able to find something out about this detective.”
Mia hadn’t called the Capones, but she had placed a call to Chicago shortly before the men arrived to her old pal Maurine Watkins of the Chicago Tribune. She’d covered a number of gangland stories in Chicago over the past couple of years, and had been there the day Sal had been acquitted of murder and then murdered himself. Maurine had sounded both shocked and pleased to hear from her.
“Calling to have that interview with me finally, Miss Scalisi?” she’d asked in her cheeky manner.
“Not this time, Miss Watkins,” Mia had said, and the urgency in her voice seemed to have caught Maurine’s attention.
“Something…I can do for you?”
Mia had asked her to tell her everything she knew about one Detective Abner Wallace and hadn’t given any reasons why. The reporter hadn’t asked. Maurine was excellent at her job—nosy, pushy, experienced, and smart as a whip. She’d do a better job uncovering facts than the Capones would.
“When was Al planning to go ahead and take care of that pesky Weiss problem, anyway?” Will said, resting one ankle over the other knee. “What the hell’s he waitin’ on, an engraved telegram?”
“Hymie Weiss is sneaky.” Moritz rubbed his bottom lip with a finger. “He’s not an easy man to get to. The Capones know that. Besides, they’ve got to watch their backs, too. They’re in an active war with the North Side.”
And now that war had been brought all the way to New York to her door.
Mia wrapped her arms around herself. A glance at the clock on the wall told her she was in danger of being late to rehearsal, and subsequently one of Hyman’s lengthy lect
ures on the importance of promptness.
“I gotta go to rehearsal,” she said dully.
“Is that really wise?” Moritz asked. “That detective could be watching the hotel, waiting. He might not be working alone either.”
“Then whoever’s with him can die, too,” Charlie said
A silence fell over the room. The men exchanged glances.
“I thought you wanted to avoid a war,” Moritz said. “This is not how you go about that.”
Charlie glared at him. “So she should allow two attempts on her life to go unanswered? Is that what you would do? You just said so yourself—we’re all at risk here.”
“I’m saying, be smart about this,” Moritz insisted. “We don’t know how much support he has. You were a soldier, Charlie. I’m sure they taught you all about the lessons learned from Pickett’s Charge, no?”
“Killing those bastards is the first priority,” Charlie snarled. “Morelli. The detective. Weiss. Maybe when you stop acting like a coward, you’ll realize that.”
Mia sucked in a breath.
Moritz’s face went pale with anger, and he rose slowly from the easy chair to step toward him. “It’s not cowardice, Charles. It’s strategy.”
Both men were close friends. Both men had been her brother’s most trusted allies, after her. That they were now practically at each other’s throats made her heart burn. No matter how at odds with Moritz she’d been, or how complicated things between her and Charlie were, she could not let their bond fray. Nick would never have allowed that, and it would have broken his heart had he seen it.
“Hey.” Mia stepped between them, placing a hand on each of their chests and pushing gently. “I think we’re all smart enough here to figure Morelli’s got that detective on his payroll, but maybe we should wait until that’s confirmed. I’m with Morrie on this one. I don’t want unnecessary bloodshed.”
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