Sal Caravello shuffled down the stairs and into the kitchen, buttoning his collar. “On schedule for breakfast?” The question implied authority, but his demeanor did not.
“It’s all right, Pop.” Joe squeezed his shoulder, nearly wincing at how thin he’d grown. “Everything will be ready in time.”
Only then did Pop lift his chin. Almost as though he’d been a child expecting punishment and was relieved to escape a scolding.
Joe regretted his part in that. For years, Joe had blamed his father for the mismanagement of money that had led to losing the familyrestaurant. Desperate for funds, Pop had made a risky investment that turned out to be a scam. It wasn’t Pop’s fault. It was the confidence man who’d taken his money and run. Inspector Murphy had been right that Joe had a thing about fakes. But that didn’t mean his new assignment tracking forgeries wasn’t a completely legitimate mission on its own.
Joe checked his watch. “I’ll see to Doreen.” The only one of their nine boarders who wasn’t a college student, fifty-year-old Doreen Boyle was a flower vendor at the Union Square market. She needed to be in place there well before sunrise to receive deliveries from Long Island and New Jersey nurseries.
After passing through the short hallway connecting the kitchen and dining room, he pushed through the swinging door and greeted her. “About ready to go?”
“I’m perfectly capable of walking myself.” Doreen dabbed her napkin to her mouth, then folded it beside her plate. Silver threaded the black braid coiled at the back of her head.
“You certainly are.” Joe made it his business to escort her anyhow. Union Square was only a few blocks away, but it was dark. “I just like the company on my way to work.”
Chuckling, she stood and pulled on her coat. “I doubt your day starts this early, Joe. Connor’s never did.”
“In a city that never sleeps, New York’s finest rarely do, either.” He kept a smile in place for her, even as the mention of her nephew soured the coffee in his stomach. Connor had provided for his aunt right up until he’d been arrested. She would have been completely alone had Joe’s family not taken her in. But it didn’t take a detective to see that room and board did nothing to mend her broken heart.
The walk to Union Square Park held the chill of a season on winter’s doorstep. “Speaking of Connor, did you notice anything unusual in what he said or did in the weeks or months before...?”
Lines grooved her brow. She retied the shawl over her head, a nervous habit he’d noticed before. “He didn’t talk about his work with me. I can’t imagine all the grisly things you police must encounter,and frankly, I don’t want to. He knew that. However, I do remember that he started asking me more questions.”
Joe pressed for examples.
“He asked if I’d ever thought of living anywhere other than New York City. Isn’t that odd? I’ve spent my whole life in Manhattan, and so has he. The only person I know who moved away was a dear friend who dreamed of wide-open spaces. But I’ve lost touch with her.”
It was an odd question, coming from Connor. He’d been a proud New Yorker ever since they’d met as kids. There was something special about the neighborhood in which one grew up. Loyalty to it rivaled the fervor some folks had for the Yankees or the Sox.
It was that loyalty to one’s roots that had kept Pop from pulling up stakes from Union Square and moving north, along with all his best customers. One establishment after another—from private mansions to Tiffany’s jewelry store—had closed its doors and migrated away. But Joe’s parents staunchly refused to go. Both could trace back two generations to this area, God rest them. They’d find a way to stay, Pop had said. But it was Mama who had found that way, by turning their four-story brownstone into a boardinghouse.
Though Joe and Connor were only teens when the Caravellos lost the restaurant, Connor had been the one to clap Joe on the shoulder and tell him things weren’t so bad as long as they remained in the neighborhood.
“Then he said something about me finding something else to do, other than selling flowers,” Doreen continued. “I told him the only other thing I’d enjoy would be growing them myself but selling them suited me fine. To play along, I asked if he’d ever thought of being a cop anywhere else.”
“And?”
Doreen shrugged. “He went real quiet for a minute, and I thought he might actually say yes. But when he finally replied, he said this was our home, and there was no point pretending otherwise.”
Headlamps cut through the dark as delivery trucks motored upto the curb at Union Square, idling while drivers hopped out and unloaded their sweet-smelling cargo. The interview was over.
Doreen bustled about, positioning huge paper-wrapped bouquets in upturned crates, while Joe lined up potted hydrangeas and chrysanthemums on the sidewalk. The air hummed with the predawn hustle, the floral fragrance competing with the exhaust fumes of the trucks.
Straightening, Doreen rubbed the small of her back. “Off with you, then,” she told Joe, a smile contradicting the scold in her voice. “I know Connor told you to watch out for me. I don’t think he meant for you to trade your work for mine.”
Keeping tabs on her might be his duty, but it wasn’t work, and he told her so. He tipped his hat to her, then descended into the subway station for the ride south.
On his way to headquarters, Joe rolled the morning’s conversation around in his mind before mentally filing it with everything else he knew—and didn’t know—about Connor. Friends weren’t supposed to keep secrets from one another. Something had been bothering him enough to consider moving. Whatever it was, why hadn’t he confided in Joe?
CHAPTER
4
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1925
Now, this is a whole new level of fake.” Shivering against a stiff breeze, Lauren stood with her roommates in front of a Fifth Avenue mansion several blocks from where Elsa had grown up. She hadn’t come to this Halloween party because she thought it was a good idea. She’d come to make her cousin and Ivy happy.
And by the looks on their faces, they were enthralled with the spectacle before them. The front lawn was buried in sand and adorned with a canvas pyramid and a sphinx made of what appeared to be papier-mâché. Guests ambled about, some of them abandoning socks and shoes to feel the grains between their toes. Lauren and her father had not gone to the St. John estate today because the staff were setting up for a private event. No doubt it was nothing like this.
