"Welcome back, m'dear!"
Medda Larkin looked like a queen, whether she wore a bright, frilly costume or her jade dressing gown, as she was when Katherine arrived at her theater. With a sunny smile and a keen eye, she shooed away her manager and sashayed down the aisle of the house floor, eager to welcome her subject. "Thought you would cash in quicker on your free show."
"Sorry to disappoint, Medda, but I'm here on business." Katherine glanced at the carpenters onstage, who were in the process of building what looked like two towers of a castle. "I got a case from one of your employees. Is Jack Kelly here?"
"Jack." She frowned deeply, her brow wrinkling in concern. "I told him to take some time, but he shows up every day."
Medda glanced behind her towards the viewing boxes, heaving a deep sigh through her nose. "Well, he doesn't do much in the way of work. Just shows up and skulks around with his sketchpad. And I don't have the heart to tell him otherwise."
She turned back to Katherine, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. "If you figure out what'll bring him back to life, do us all a favor and don't keep it to yourself."
Katherine thanked her and started up. It was the morning after her visit to the Sunset, but she had not been idle. Most of her night was spent camping the library's archives, combing the history of New York in search of Spot Conlon. She found a Sean and Tiffany Conlon who had come through Ellis Island, but nothing she had found nothing in any newspaper or public record for the name Spot Conlon. That was not so unusual in her line of work; men as powerful as Conlon, whose names were only whispered because they dripped fear, liked to stay int he shadows. If a man this powerful was Charlie's captor, what was the victim's intended fate?
The first thing Katherine noticed in the viewing box were the countless torn-out pages strewn about the floor and seats. Jack was curled up in one of the seats, his boots pressed to the banister and his sketchbook in his lap. His hand flowed and skipped deftly across the page with the grace of a ballerina, light and swift. The pencil-stroke pirouettes formed the same face as was on all the pages scattered around: an angular chin, a pair of kind eyes, and hair that stuck up in all directions.
Before Katherine could stop herself, she asked, "Is that your brother?"
Jack jumped to his feet and whirled around, clutching his sketchbook to his chest. "Detective! I didn't hear ya come up."
"My apologies. I didn't mean to startle you."
"It's fine, just give a guy a warnin' next time," he huffed as he swept a stack of sketches off the seat beside him and into his arms. "My heart can't take much more shockin'."
Katherine's mouth pressed into a thin line. Just wait till you hear.
They sat. Jack put the sketches down. "I won't be long," said Katherine. "I'm here to update you, and then I'll be heading off to investigate my lead."
"Ya already got a lead?" His whole body went taut. "Damn, Plumber. No wonder Medda recommended ya."
Her mouth pulled into a smirk. "You're very kind, Jack."
"Nah, I'm just grateful." His hands were back in his lap, wringing themselves within an inch of their life. "Don't keep me in suspense."
She cleared her throat. Down to business. "I went to the Sunset last night, and I found a witness to your brother's abduction. Does the name Spot Conlon mean anything to you?
The color drained from Jack's face, along with the hope. "Spot Conlon? Is you sure?"
So Jack knows him. "I'm afraid so. He works out in Brooklyn, so at least we can narrow down the possibilities of your brother's location to a borough."
"He's got all o' Brooklyn under his thumb." Jack stood again and began to pace, his whole body radiating with nervous shock. "Why would he take Crutchie? It don't make no sense."
Katherine stood with him but remained calm. Jack needed a port in this storm. "Could your brother have been involved in something unsavory in Brooklyn? Maybe he worked for this Conlon character."
"Never," he growled, waving off her suggestion with a vicious swipe of his arm. "He ain't stupid."
A truth denier. People put on blinders where their loved ones were concerned, even in the face of conclusive evidence. It was her duty to take them off. "Then he has to have some other connection to him, because my witness is certain it was Conlon. Mister Kelly—"
"I told ya, call me Jack—"
"Mister Kelly, you have to be honest with me and with yourself. If your brother was abducted, it's because he was involved with someone he shouldn't have been involved with." If this were a ransom, the kidnappers would have left a note or made a demand by now. And, frankly speaking, Jack wasn't in the kind of money that balanced out the risk of a kidnapping. This was punishment.
Jack was silent for a long, long moment. His fists clenched and unclenched and his eyes darted around to all the sketches he'd done of his brother, as if the drawn lips would part and relay him the answer. "Spot Conlon, ya said? I'll see 'bout Spot Conlon."
He turned on his heel and stormed out of the box with the rage of a bull. Katherine charged after him but by the time she made it down the winding staircase, Jack was already marching up the house aisle and past Medda without so much as a look at her. Katherine tried to run past her, but she caught her by the arm and stalled her progress.
"What did you say to him?" she scolded. "What is going on?"
"I don't know." Katherine pulled her arm from Medda's grip. "But he's about to go do something stupid, and I'm about to stop him."
Katherine frantically crammed quarters into the slot of the pay phone and jabbed at the numbers, holding the phone to her ear as she then scrambled for her notebook. Please be in, please be in…
"David Jacobs of the Sun speaking," said a familiar voice on the other end. "Can I help you?"
"Davey!" Katherine let out a sigh of relief, leaning against the wooden wall of the booth. "Thank the lord. It's an emergency."
"Are you hurt, Kitty?" David was a historic worrier, though she had to admit her opening with It's an emergency wasn't the easiest on the heart.
"I'm not hurt, but I think someone's about to be. I need your help."
"You got it."
"You're the best." Katherine knew how lucky she was to have a childhood friend find a job as a crime reporter for the New York Sun, but she knew she was even luckier that he still looked out for her, despite his worry for her lopping off years of his life. "I need whatever you have on the name Spot Conlon."
"Spot Conlon?" She heard papers shuffling around and the telltale clunks of David picking up his phone to search his records. "You working a case on him?"
"Yeah, and my client's an idiot. I gotta stop him before this whole thing goes sideways."
David paused, and then he asked, "How sideways are we talking?"
"I can take care of myself." She rolled her eyes. "And don't tell me to come back. It's not gonna happen."
"Would you be frantically calling me to save someone's life if you were back here?" he retorted. "They miss you. I can convince them to bring you on again, and you wouldn't be picking up after reckless people!"
"I'd see Rabbi Appelbaum if I wanted a lecture. I'm on a time crunch here."
David heaved a sigh. "All right, all right. I got Conlon's file." The line went silent as David skimmed through the file. Katherine waited with bated breath, knowing she teetered on the edge of her next phase. What was taking so long? Jack could be anywhere by now!
The long silence was broken by David's quiet voice. "Kitty, what are you involved in?"
Her stomach dropped. "Whatcha got?"
More clunking signaled David setting the phone back on the desk. She could picture him in his office, leaning over the open file on his desk and grimacing as he read.
"He's done time for petty stuff, mostly robbing groceries and drug stores. He was arrested for assault and battery in '32 but the charge got dropped."
"It was dropped?" If there was enough proof to make an arrest on a battery charge, why would the victim drop it and lose out on a good case in court? "Who did he attack?"
"Some guy named Wiesel, but that's not the worst. He's also suspected of grand theft auto and aiding the escape of fugitives, but there's no arrest warrant because the evidence is circumstantial. What the hell are you doing chasing this guy?"
So he wasn't just his reputation. He had the record to back up Darcy Reid's fear of blabbing, along with that chokehold on Brooklyn Jack had mentioned. Katherine certainly wouldn't want someone like him knowing her secrets.
"Do you have an address? A location?"
"He's got a pub, but wait one damn minute," said David, his voice lowering. "Katherine, this guy is worse than anyone you've asked me to find. Whatever you're wrapped up in, you have to get out."
"David, I don't have time for this. Give me the damn address because someone's life is depending on me getting there!"
"That doesn't mean you go in without protecting yours!"
"I won't!" Really, he was going to lecture her now? When Jack was on his own suicide mission, and she was the only rational thought that would get to him?
She took a deep breath to compose herself. She'd get nowhere if she shouted him down the line. "I'm not stupid enough to go in without my piece. And for whatever it's worth, I don't think he's our man." She had always been a smooth liar.
David heaved a sigh over his phone. "He has a pub in Brooklyn called the Galleon. But stay on and take notes: there's a little more here you should know."
The Galleon was a seedy little pub with filthy windows and a dark, foreboding front doorway. The air smelled like the ocean, but the coast was hidden behind other dingy shops. The grimy surroundings gave the pub a sort of glamor, like the hideout of a king of thieves.
Katherine stood before it, doing her best to cobble together a plan. She would need one if she wanted a fighting chance with this Conlon, who was clearly comfortable with violence and had no respect for authority. So what was her plan?
She'd think of something on the way in.
She opened the door and marched into a lively pub. A fiddler in the corner played savagely, kicking up a harsh, though not altogether unmelodious, tune. The patrons didn't bother hiding their crass stares at her. Even though she'd come in her work clothes, a plain bottle green dress, she was clearly a step above the place's usual clientele of exhausted workmen and ladies of the night. The men played cards and the women played men in the heart of Spot Conlon's empire.
"A very good evenin' ta you, miss." A busboy sidled up to Katherine, his hair as oily as his smile. "Can I help ya?"
"I need to speak to Mister Conlon." Any other day she would have played the honey trap, sweet and giggly and that much easier to humor when she asked for information, but tonight was a race against time. It was a race against Jack and whatever Conlon would do when Jack got here.
The busboy's smile faltered at her terse tone. "Right this way, miss." He led her behind the bar, where he ditched his tub of dishes before taking her through to the kitchens. The stations were crowded and she struggled to follow his effortless bobbing and weaving, prompting him to say, "I get the feeling ya don't find yaself in many kitchens."
Katherine smiled wryly. "You're very observant."
He shrugged. "Ya start recognizin' patterns when ya're 'round 'nuff folks fo' 'nuff time." He jerked his thumb toward himself. "Nothin' gets past ol' Racetrack Higgins."
"Nice to meet you, Racetrack Higgins." And it really was. Maybe under better circumstances, he could teach her what he knew.
His greasy smile was back. "Fo' you, miss, Race is jus' fine."
In the time they had talked, he'd led her down a dark hallway and to one final door. Race knocked on it three times, then opened it and said, "A young woman's here ta see ya, Mistah Conlon, sir."
The office beyond the door was sparsely decorated and furnished: two card tables stood in the center with maps of New York neighborhoods spread over them, the corners held down by empty tankards. They bore pencil marks of routes traced through the streets from one circled city block to another. More scrawled-on maps of whole boroughs hung from the walls. An overstuffed armchair and table with a telephone sat in one corner; in another were boxes overflowing with clothes and food. In the corner closest to the door was a cluttered desk, on which she could see a list of names with a date, time, and two locations next to them.
At the tables in the center of the room was a young man poring over a map of Brooklyn. He must have been a year or two younger than Katherine and a good handful of inches shorter than her, though his corded arms and stocky build more than made up for the height difference. He'd looked up when Race announced her, his forehead creasing and his eyes hardening.
"Who's this?"
"Yer appointment, sir." Katherine held herself back from widening her eyes. This was Spot Conlon? This young man couldn't be responsible for kidnapping. This was not what a king of thieves looked like.
The man who was apparently Spot Conlon frowned more deeply. "Who said somethin' about an appointment?"
"She said ya knew she was comin'."
Before Conlon could say anything, Katherine charged towards him, stopping at the other side of his table. "I'll make this quick, Mister Conlon. I know you've abducted Charlie Morris, and you're going to tell me where he is."
His jaw jutted forward. "'Scuse me, miss, but you is gonna have to fill me in on who the hell ya think ya are."
"I'm a private investigator. Finding people is what I do." She rose up to her full height. "I'm not here to tear down your regime, but I will not hesitate to do so to ensure Charlie makes it home."
Conlon scoffed. His youthful appearance hid iron nerves and a healthy cockiness, both of which seemed to help him take her threat in stride. "And how do you plan on doin' that?"
"With just a little research." Katherine pulled out her trusty notebook again, thankful for David's incredible instinct for giving her the right puzzle pieces. "A month ago, Warden Snyder wakes to find half the beds in the juvenile jail called the Refuge empty. This jail is right by the shore, near a great, big culvert."
She flipped the page. "The month before that was a small-time raid on a local department store. And then a week after that, a couple fellas who match the description of your bartender and your busboy were spotted running out of a grocery store that's a thirty-minute walk from here."
Silence fell over the room. The creak of the floorboards behind her betrayed Race's fidgeting, but Conlon was stone-still, his fists balled at his side and his face radiating anger. She had him on the ropes, and now she had to follow up with the second half of her one-two punch. "Now, a lot of folks would assume those aren't connected, but all it would take is for me to give your name to the police. And suddenly it all goes up."
Conlon's jaw clenched and his eyes hardened, his mouth twisting in disdain. "I won't let ya tear down everythin' we built."
"Release Charlie and I won't." Katherine stared him down. He was pretty damn fidgety under this intense scrutiny, his head tilting and his weight shifting from foot to foot.
She realized a second too late that he wasn't fidgeting out of nerves—he was sending a signal. She only figured it out when she heard a click and felt the cool barrel of the gun pressed against the back of her head. "Sorry, miss."
Katherine swallowed. Her stomach dropped. She had sailed in on a bluster of self-righteousness, but that wasn't enough to save her from being dealt with on the spot. She had built her own trap.
"Thank ya, Race." Conlon relaxed, his deep frown morphing into a menacing smirk. "Ya good at ya job, Detective, I'll give ya that. But ya think ya can just march into my own home, threaten me, an' expect not t' suffer the consequences?"
"People know I'm looking for Charlie," she replied coolly. "People know I'm here. If I disappear, they'll know where to look."
"Yeah?" He sauntered around the table, his jaw jutting forward again. "The thing 'bout guns is that they can be reloaded. I know how t' clean up messes."
Suddenly the door behind them slammed open. Anticipating gunfire, Katherine ducked out of the way and scrambled toward the wall for safety, thanking her lucky stars as she yanked out her own weapon. She cocked it at Race, but he had swiveled toward the door and aimed his piece at—
Katherine's jaw dropped. "Jack?"
