Murder on Amsterdam Avenue (4 page)

“I got sunburned. All the Rough Riders did. Cuba is . . . Well, it's not like anything I've ever seen before. If hell is any hotter, I'll be surprised.”

“You look good,” Frank said, exaggerating a little. Gino looked thinner and tired. “Your mother told me you came through without a scratch.”

“I was lucky.” The boy's dark eyes clouded. Many of the Rough Riders had not come back from Cuba.

“We all read about your charge up San Juan Hill,” Frank said, hoping to lighten the mood a bit.

“It was really Kettle Hill. Colonel Roosevelt said San Juan Hill sounded better, so that's what the newspapers called it. It was the next hill over, so we figured it didn't matter.”

“Whatever it was, it made Roosevelt a hero. They're talking to him about running for governor.”

“He'll be good at it. I thought he did some stupid things when he was police commissioner, but he was a good soldier. He took care of his men and kept us out of trouble whenever he could.”

“Are you glad you left the police and joined up?”

Gino met Frank's gaze directly for the first time. “I am. When the colonel said he wanted policemen and athletes in his regiment, well, I figured I could qualify. I didn't know who else would be there, though. Mr. Malloy, I served with the sons of millionaires from Fifth Avenue and cowboys from Texas. We even had some Indians. But Colonel Roosevelt, he treated us all the same, and we treated each other all the same, too. All that mattered was if you could fight.”

“I'm sure you did well, Gino. And you beat the Spanish.”

He shook his head. “I don't know that the Cubans even noticed. They didn't even seem grateful that we came. I never saw people so poor. I thought things were bad in Mulberry Bend and places like that, but you've never seen anything like the way those people live. They didn't have anything at all. They'd follow the army around and steal whatever we set down. They took our food and our equipment and our clothes, whatever they could carry away. I'm not sure they even cared who was ruling them.”

Frank didn't know what to say to that. The newspapers hadn't mentioned anything about the Cubans or how they lived. All the stories had been about the bravery of the American forces and how quickly they'd beaten the Spanish army. “But you said you're glad you went.”

Gino nodded. “I learned a lot, but . . . I'd never seen a man die before. That may sound funny, because we've seen lots of dead people, but I never saw someone actually die.”

“You lost a lot of good men.”

Gino looked away, and Frank thought he must be remembering those men. After a moment, though, he forced a grin. “So, what have you been doing while I was gone?”

“Trying to stay out of sight. You wouldn't believe how many people have asked me for money.”

“Are you serious? People ask you for money?”

“All the time. I had to move my mother and Brian here even though the house isn't ready yet, just so they wouldn't be bothered anymore.”

“Where are they?” he asked, glancing around.

“At the deaf school. Ma takes him every day and stays there, helping out.”

“And you just sit here all by yourself?”

“I'm supervising the workmen.” As if to illustrate his point, someone started pounding upstairs somewhere.

“Do you miss the police work at all?”

Frank had been asked to leave the police department when they found out he'd come into a fortune. “I miss the work. I don't miss the rest of it.”

Gino grinned. “Me, too. Especially after the army. If you think the department was bad, the army was ten times worse. They couldn't even get supplies to us, and they only issued us one suit of clothes and one blanket each, so if anything happened . . .” His eyes clouded again. “I'll never forget when
we carried the wounded to the hospital tents or where the hospital was supposed to be, at least. The wounded men had lost their packs, and the doctors cut off their bloody clothes to bandage them up, and then they didn't have so much as a shirt to put on them. The wounded were just laying in a field, right on the ground, buck naked most of them. If it hadn't been for that lady, Clara Barton . . .”

“I read about her in the newspapers.”

“She sent her people out to buy bolts of fabric, and they cut it up to make sheets so the men didn't have to lay on the bare ground. And the nurses she brought with her, well, I don't know how many more men would've died if they hadn't been there.” He stared off again, lost in the dark place Frank couldn't see.

“Have you talked to the chief?” Frank asked, trying to draw him back. “I'm sure he'll give you your old job back if you want it.”

“That's just it. I'm not sure I do want it.”

Frank didn't want to point out that job opportunities for the son of Italian immigrants weren't too plentiful in the city. “You don't have to decide today, you know. You can take some time to get used to being home again. I'm sure things will look different to you in a few weeks.”

“Things look different to me now, Mr. Malloy. I saw men die, men even younger than I am. They never got a chance to do anything with their lives. I feel like I owe them something because I lived and they didn't.”

“What do you think you owe them?”

“I . . . I don't know exactly, but I remember when I first joined the police, I thought I'd help make the city a better place.”

“You thought you'd get rid of the criminals,” Frank guessed. “Lock them up and throw away the key.”

“Yeah. It sounds stupid now, doesn't it?”

“No, it doesn't,” Frank said gently. “We both know it isn't going to happen, but that doesn't mean we should quit trying.”

“Are you still trying?”

Frank sighed, suddenly realizing that he was. “As a matter of fact, I just took a new case yesterday.”

For the first time since he'd walked in the door, Gino's eyes lit with interest. “A case? You're not back on the force, are you?”

“No, of course not. One of Mr. Decker's friends asked me to investigate his son's death, though. We think he was poisoned.”

“You're a private detective, then,” Gino said. “Just like when we found those missing girls.”

“I guess I am, at least right now.”

“And you think he was poisoned?” Gino leaned forward, his eyes alive now in a way they hadn't been just a minute ago. “Who do you think did it?”

Frank leaned back in his own chair and studied the young man for a few seconds. “I'm not sure I should discuss the case with you.”

Gino stiffened, obviously offended. “Why not?”

“Because if you're with the police—”

“I'm not with the police!”

Frank rubbed his chin, pretending to consider the matter. “On the other hand, if you worked for me, I could tell you.”

“What do you mean, if I worked for you?”

“Well, I'm probably going to need some help with this case, and you're not doing anything right now . . .”

Now he was really offended. “Wait, I didn't come here looking for a handout or anything.”

“I haven't offered you a handout. I'll pay you if you want to help me work on the case. This friend of Mr. Decker's is going to pay me, after all. What do you think?”

Plainly, Gino didn't know what to think. “I . . . Are you sure?”

“Am I sure of what? That you're a good investigator? I know that you used to be, and unless something happened to you down in Cuba that made you forget everything you used to know, then I'm sure you'll be able to help with this.”

“I haven't forgotten anything,” he insisted. “I wasn't gone
that
long.”

Frank grinned. “Well, then, you need to go home and change into some regular clothes and meet me at the coroner's office to find out if this fellow was poisoned or not.”

“And if he wasn't?”

Frank shrugged. “Then we'll find another case to keep us busy.”

•   •   •

G
ino was waiting for him outside Titus Wesley's storefront office. He wore a brown suit, neatly pressed but a little tight in the shoulders, Frank noticed. Gino's time in the army had put some muscle on him. His shirt collar was new and his tie neat. He even wore his bowler hat down low on his forehead instead of perched on the back of his head, as so many young men did. He was taking the private detective business seriously.

“Why didn't you use Doc Haynes for the autopsy?” Gino asked by way of greeting.

“He's too busy. Besides, when I started, I only had a dead cat. Doc wasn't too happy about wasting his time on a cat.”

“Why didn't the family just go to the police in the first place?”

Gino had clearly been thinking about the case while he'd been off changing his clothes. “The father, Mr. Oakes, didn't want to alarm the women. There's a wife and a mother and
maybe a grandmother, too. No sense getting them all upset for no reason, at least until he's sure.”

Frank pushed open the door to Wesley's shop, setting the bell to jangling. The sickening smell of death enveloped them. Frank hadn't noticed it before, since he'd just carried a dead cat halfway across town the first time he'd been here. He'd blamed the smell on that.

“Wesley, you here?”

Gino, he noticed, was looking a little green.

Wesley came out from the back room, once again wiping his hands on a filthy rag, and greeted them. Frank introduced Gino, and the young man didn't offer to shake hands. Frank couldn't blame him.

“Donatelli here is going to be assisting me,” Frank explained. “Did you find out anything?”

“Oh yes. The undertaker wasn't too happy with me, I can tell you that, but I got the dead man's organs. They hadn't even removed them, thank God. They were able to sew him back up, as good as new, so no one will ever suspect that not all of him went into the ground. They complained bitterly about the extra work, though.”

“And was he poisoned?”

Wesley frowned. “You have to understand that coroners don't automatically look for traces of poison. Unless it's something obvious, like the mouth and throat are burned from something caustic, we never assume someone's been poisoned.”

“How do you find out, then?” Frank asked.

“Most of the time we don't. I suspect that there are hundreds of people poisoned every year, and the killer is never even suspected because no one looked for it at autopsy or no autopsy was even performed.”

“Or the coroner was paid not to notice it,” Frank guessed.

Wesley gave him a small nod of acknowledgment. “In this case, however, someone did suspect, so I looked for it especially.”

“And what did you find?”

“I didn't have much to work with, you understand. I could see the stomach and throat were irritated, but from what you described of his last hours, that's what I would've expected. I didn't see any ulcers or other damage, so if I was looking for a poison, I suspected arsenic. It's very easy to obtain and doesn't leave much trace unless the person has been poisoned over a long period of time. From what you told me, it sounds like this Oakes fellow was only sick for a few days, so I didn't expect to see any traces of long-term exposure.”

“How long would it have to be going on before you'd find that?” Gino asked.

Frank looked at him in surprise, but Wesley was already responding. “A few weeks at least. Then I'd find it in the liver and kidneys. If it was longer, say a month or more, then I could find it in the fingernails and hair.”

“In the fingernails?”

“Yeah, there would be lines. The hair is the same, except there's no lines.”

Gino frowned. “How could somebody be taking arsenic for weeks or months and not die?”

“Small amounts of arsenic will just make you sick. It builds up in the body over time, though, and eventually the organs begin to fail.”

“Why would somebody give a person a dose too small to kill them, though?”

Wesley grinned, obviously enjoying the conversation. “You'd have to ask that ‘somebody,' but maybe they aren't sure how much would be a fatal dose, so they don't give the victim enough at first. Or maybe the person has a tolerance
for it. Some people do, and the amount that would kill me in an hour might only make you a little sick.”

“Or,” Frank said, glad to see his new assistant was curious but wanting to move the interview along, “the killer might want it to look like the victim had some mysterious illness the doctors couldn't cure and eventually died of it.”

“Oh, so no one would suspect poison,” Gino said.

“That's right. So was it arsenic?” Frank asked.

“Oh yes. I did the Marsh test where you put the material on a zinc plate covered with sulfuric acid—”

“This Marsh test,” Frank interrupted him, not interested in the details. “Is it something that's scientifically official?”

“You mean, would it be accepted in court?”

“I guess that's what I mean.”

“Yes. It's been around since the thirties, and the test is good on even the smallest amount of arsenic. I was also able to test the contents of the cat's stomach, and I found arsenic there, too.”

Frank knew he shouldn't be pleased to hear that Charles Oakes had been poisoned. This meant a lot more heartache for the Oakes family. On the other hand, it also meant he didn't have to spend all his days sitting in his new house, listening to the workmen pounding away.

“If someone was getting poisoned, though, wouldn't they notice the taste?” Gino asked.

“With some poisons, yes, but arsenic doesn't have a taste.”

“So it might've been put into anything he drank,” Frank said.

“Yes or anything he ate. It can take some time to work, too. Some poisons cause an immediate reaction, but with arsenic, depending on how big the dose is, the victim can go anywhere from half an hour to a whole day before they start showing a reaction.”