Anger rippled through her. After she’d saved his mother’s life, his loyalty to her only enemy in the world was infuriating.
“This is how you pay us back for what we’ve done for you?” she snapped. Patrick flinched and looked away, but she wasn’t in the mood to be kind. “Why couldn’t you have looked the other way while I pried the truth out of him? We all know he’s guilty.” She turned to confront Mick. “You did it, didn’t you?” she accused, stepping closer to him, her palms itching to slap him. “Look me in the face and tell me you had nothing to do with my brother being snatched from his own backyard.”
Mick gathered himself up, chest out, jaw thrust forward. “I didn’t have anything to do with it,” he sneered. “It was the Italians who took that boy, and I paid the price for it. Now you waltz in with your fancy Blackstone manners and act like you own the place. You don’t belong here, missy. This is the Five Points. Go back to your fancy mansions and—”
“That’s enough,” Patrick said. “You’re not the victim here, Mick.”
The old drunkard wheeled toward Patrick, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What’s she doing here, anyway? Are you working for the enemy, boy-o?”
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Patrick answered. “I’ve had to hold my nose while working for you, and you ought to be grateful—”
“Shhh!” Hiram said. “Mrs. O’Neill needs her rest.”
It was as though a bucket of ice water was thrown over them. Patrick cast a worried glance at his mother’s closed bedroom door, but Gwen wanted to scream in frustration as her chance to get information out of Malone dwindled away.
The front door flung open. “Fried catfish and biscuits!” Lorenzo announced as he entered the apartment. The way he held the greasy paper sacks aloft made him look like a conquering hero returning from the wilds. The elation on his face faded as he scanned the grim crowd. “Is Mrs. O’Neill okay?”
“She’s all right, but I’d like to throw this one out the window,” Gwen said with a glare at Mick Malone.
“And I’d like to rub that snotty look off your face,” Mick taunted.
Once again, Patrick stepped between them. “Mick, I’m canceling our meeting today, and it would be best for you to leave now.” He grabbed the sack of fried catfish. “Mrs. Kellerman, I’m sorry this happened. You didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of that, but you’re welcome to join us for dinner.”
Patrick wouldn’t have been able to swallow even a bite of the greasy catfish, so he retreated to his mother’s bedroom while the others ate. Anything to escape the accusation on Gwen’s face. She deserved more than what he’d been able to do for her.
In hindsight, he wished he hadn’t interrupted when he overheard Mick boasting. If Gwen learned the truth about her brother’s kidnapping from Mick, it would save Patrick from the moral dilemma of betraying a client’s confidence.
After helping his mother drink some warmed milk, he headed out to the front room, where Gwen and the others sat at the table, the remainders of dinner scattered before them. They had the relaxed look of the well-fed, all except Gwen, whose face was as cold as sculpted marble.
“Can I speak with you?” he asked with caution.
To his relief, she gave a stiff nod and stood. The fire escape was the only place they could have privacy, and Gwen navigated through the window with more grace this time, hiking her skirt, lowering her head, and moving through the opening easily. He followed using the same ducking posture.
“You’re getting better at this,” he said, closing the window with a lighthearted smile.
She didn’t return it. He couldn’t expect her to, really.
“Gwen, I’m sorry,” he said. “To the bottom of my soul, I’m sorry.”
“He was just getting ready to spill something important when you came out.”
The pain on her face made him look away. “Mick Malone is a world-class liar,” he said. “I once saw him keep an entire pub fascinated by his tale of smuggling a piece of the true cross out of the Vatican while the Swiss guards chased him across Christendom for a solid year. You can’t believe anything he says.”
“Then why didn’t you let him talk?”
It was a fair question, and Patrick struggled with how to respond. When did his obligation to the client end and his duty to be a decent man begin?
“I can usually tell when Mick is lying,” he said. “He brags and struts and waves his arms, commanding attention like an actor on the stage, but once he blabbed a story to me when he was sloppy drunk. We were alone in his boardinghouse. He sat slumped in the corner with his head lowered in shame.”
God help him, he was going to tell her. She deserved to know. The law could never punish Mick, and Gwen deserved peace of mind for the foul crime Mick had perpetrated against her family.
It was the night after they submitted the manuscript of Mick’s book to the publisher. Mick had insisted on buying a bottle of cognac to share with Ruby, but when they arrived at his home, Ruby had gone to visit her mother in Brooklyn. Mick wanted to share a dram, and Patrick saw no harm in it, even though Mick’s room was a hovel with only a single kerosene lamp to illuminate the grubby interior. The stink of dirty laundry was strong, and Patrick took only a few sips of the cognac, but Mick bolted it down, one dram after another, until half the bottle was gone.
And that was when the true story came out. Patrick remembered every detail as though it were yesterday.
“He was a cute little kid,” Mick had said, the light of the kerosene lamp carving deep hollows into his sorrowful face. “I’d been watching him play in the backyard of that mansion for weeks, learning his schedule and biding my time. Every day he took his dog outside to run around on the lawn and do its business. His nanny usually came out with him, but sometimes she stayed inside because it was cold that winter.”
The cognac soured in Patrick’s belly, but he dared not interrupt, and Mick kept talking.
