The Marshal's Pursuit (4 page)

“Good, good, good. Providence is favoring us today.” Henkel leaned back in his chair. “An hour ago, while Metropolitans, under the watchful eye of Van Wyck Cady’s associates, arrived to search Kelly’s Waldorf-Astoria suite, Miss Vaccarelli and her lawyer walked into the special prosecutor’s office and turned over two hundred and fifty-seven thousand dollars.” He paused. “In counterfeit bills. The sourdough came from a hidden family safe.”

So his girl excelled more in looks than smarts.

Frank waited until he was certain Henkel was finished. “She should have left it for the Metropolitans to confiscate.

Henkel’s gray mustache twitched. “I agree.”

“Why would she tamper with evidence?”

“She’s a sheltered twenty-five-year-old socialite who has no clue. From what I’ve learned so far, she attended Miss Porter’s School before earning a degree in history from Vassar. She’s a volunteer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A mere portion of the interest from her trust fund allows her to support half a dozen artists in the New England area alone.”

Frank shifted in his chair, relaxing his grip on the armrests. Edwin Daly wasn’t interested in Miss Vaccarelli because of their joint love for art. He knew she was Van Kelly’s sister. For someone who wanted to lengthen his tentacles in the mafiosi, a marriage to a mafiosi
kin would do it. Much like Society.

“According to the girl’s lawyer,” continued Henkel, “Miss Vaccarelli believes the police are corrupt.”

“Some are.”

“Her lawyer managed to persuade her to go to Cady.”

The black desk phone rang.

Henkel picked it up. “Yes?” His gaze shifted to the opened window as he listened to whoever was on the other end. “I’ll have someone there in an hour.” In his usual abrupt manner, he hung up the phone without a goodbye. He looked to Frank. “Cady can’t charge Kelly with murder because the witnesses are dead, but he can bring him up on counterfeiting and, now that we know his real name, money laundering, which Cady wants to use to pressure Kelly into turning state’s evidence. Cady isn’t satisfied with one fish. He wants the whole pond.”

And the pond was full of bigger fish than Van “the Shadow” Kelly.

Frank glanced again at the wall clock to the left of Henkel’s desk. He needed to get back to his files. One way or another, he was going to arrest Billy O’Flaherty and the corrupt prosecutor Daly.

“Louden,” Henkel said in that agonizingly slow voice of his, “your record is spotless, schooling exceptional and marksmanship perfect. I can’t find a single person in the courthouse not convinced you’re the best and brightest deputy I have. If you were a female, you’d be the most sought-after debutante at the ball.”

And then there was that
but
coming...

“But,” Henkel drawled out, “you’re not living up to your potential.”

Funny, his father had put it a different way:
Relying on your wit and a charming smile isn’t going to get you appointed chief marshal.

Frank leaned forward in his seat and ensured his face was devoid of all amusement. “What is it you need of me?”

“I need you to get Miss Vaccarelli out of Cady’s offices without anyone noticing her and hide her somewhere safe until she can return to testify at the hearing deposition in three weeks.”

Three weeks?

Frank sat very still, as a gentleman should. No wincing or fidgeting despite his annoyance. He could have Daly and O’Flaherty arrested in that time. Nannying a witness for twenty-one days sounded as enjoyable as grooming his grandmother’s Pomeranian.

“Oh,” Henkel continued, “and find out if she knows anything else.”

“Wouldn’t Norma be better suited for this job? My skills are more suited to arresting criminals than being a witness nanny.”

Henkel’s brows rose, yet the corner of his mouth indented slightly. “A fitting word choice. Nevertheless, because Miss Vaccarelli removed the counterfeit bills from the family safe, without her testimony, the prosecution has nothing to connect her brother to the sourdough. Van Kelly will go free, and I will do anything I can to stop that from happening.” He rested his elbows on the desk, fingers steepled together, his gaze intently focused on Frank. “This is the type of high-profile job that can ensure a deputy his—or her—choice of promotions. Would you rather I offer it to Miss Hogan?”

Although Henkel had no intention of promoting Norma Hogan as the next chief marshal of the Southern District of New York, Frank understood the message. The job was his if he pulled this off. His heart, like that of a boy unwrapping his first cap gun, did a little flip. That was what he’d been working for since he joined the marshal service ten years ago.

“So, Louden, let me ask you again—how is your toe?”

“The only thing I can’t do is run at full speed,” he said all grim.

“Then take Miss Vaccarelli somewhere you won’t have to run.” Henkel offered the folder. “She’s being held at Cady’s office, awaiting your arrival.”

“Understood.” Frank stood and took the folder. “She’ll be safe at my grandparents’ estate in Tuxedo Park. It’s gated. Police roam the grounds. My family’s still on holiday in France. I’ll leave a contact number with Norma.”

“Good plan.”

Frank stepped to the office door.

“Louden?”

Anxiety fluttering about his stomach, he looked to his boss. “Yes?”

Henkel’s eyes narrowed. “Mess this up and you’ll be processing evidence for the rest of your career.”

Frank nodded. The warning was clear.

He started to leave then stopped. Something nagged at him. Something didn’t make sense. “Sir, Van Kelly hasn’t survived in the shadows on his own. He needs minions to do his dirty work, connections to protect his identity.”

“Go on.”

“Why not send one of his lawyers, a minion or a copper he buys off to collect the sourdough? Why would he send his sister to do something that put her directly in danger?”

Henkel leaned back in his chair, tapping his steepled fingers together. “Good question. That’s something you need to figure out.”

Chapter 4

If you have, through friends in common, long heard of a certain lady, or gentleman, and you know that she, or he, also has heard much of you, you may say when you are introduced to her: “I am very glad to meet you,” or “I am delighted to meet you at last!”

—Emily Price Post,
Etiquette

Twenty-Third Street and Fifth Avenue
2:08 p.m.

“M
iss Vaccarelli, you understand now that you’ve done this, your life as you know it is over?”

With her hands clenched together in her lap, Malia didn’t flinch under the hazel-eyed gaze of Special Prosecutor Van Wyck Cady. She was too emotionally and physically exhausted to feel much of anything. The gaunt six-footer standing with his back to a wall of law books was—as the papers described him—ramrod straight, not only because of his bearing but also because of his personality. Still, the least he could do was show a mite of compassion and gratitude, as a true gentleman would.

Moments after entering the law offices of Everts, Cady, Powell and Perkins, she’d been hidden in a back room with her lawyer and a stenographer who refused to look at them. Special Prosecutor Cady had questioned her on what she knew, why she brought the bills to him, what she wanted in exchange for her testimony. The latter had rankled. Her foremost desire was to help her brother. At the most, he’d serve eighteen months for possession of counterfeit bills, as explained by her lawyer—and closest friend—Miss Irene Gibbons, the first female barred associate at Lord, Day & Lord.

Malia hoped turning in the counterfeit bills—sourdough, as Irene called them—would motivate her brother to change his ways. She wanted Giovanni to live a God-honoring life. Her fear of losing him forever had made her desperate. Her love for him made her brave. Yet for the past hour—maybe longer—she and Irene had sat on a tan linen sofa in the law office library with nothing but the sounds and view of the construction on the triangular-shaped building across the street.

Did
she understand, now that she’d done this, her life as she knew it was over? “Sir, I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Then let me explain,” Cady bit off. “No more volunteering at the Museum of Art. No more apartment suites at the Waldorf-Astoria. No more shopping on the Ladies’ Mile. No more balls, operas, book clubs and charity events. No more evenings of drinking tea and playing dominoes with your brother. Everything you know is at an end.”

He was being a bit dramatic.

She looked to her lawyer. “It’s not going to be like he says. Why would it all have to end?”

Irene, in a chiffon-and-velvet day dress as black as Malia’s lace gown was white, wrapped her hands around Malia’s. “How about we take this one day at a time? I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

Malia nodded then looked to Mr. Cady, who clenched a leather binder and looked at her as if she was the village idiot. “Sir, my life as I knew it was over the moment I saw what was in the safe.” That everything would change as he claimed, she wasn’t convinced. “I haven’t changed my mind about testifying at the deposition hearing, but I want protection on Giovanni increased. His death doesn’t benefit either of us.”

He didn’t respond.

“Mr. Cady,” Irene said, “that Maranzano put a hit out on Van Kelly makes me suspect Mr. Vaccarelli knows more than what his fellow gangsters want shared. The most you can get him on is possession of illegal currency, and that is only with my client’s testimony. It’s in your best interest to keep him alive and convince him to talk.”

Mr. Cady tapped the binder against his thigh, his lips in a thin line. Malia couldn’t tell if he didn’t like being told something he knew, or didn’t like being told it by a female who was as smart as any male lawyer
and
pretty as a Gibson Girl.

A knock resounded on the library door, which then opened. A secretary stepped inside the room. “Sir, the deputy marshal is here.”

Mr. Cady nodded. “Send him in.”

She stepped to the side. A blond man, as tall yet bulkier than the special prosecutor, entered. He wore a silver star on his left lapel and a scowl on the very face Malia had seen that morning at the Park Avenue Hotel. She held her breath. It was him—the handsome stranger. Only now his formerly clean-shaven face bristled with whiskers, and two guns hung on the belt at his waist.

Good gracious, he had better not be here for her.

“Frank!” Irene stood, smiling, and met the marshal next to the round mahogany table in the middle of the library where both Irene’s and Malia’s hats rested. “I’m glad Henkel sent you.” If he was uncomfortable with Irene’s exuberant handshake, he didn’t show it.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“Same goes here. After I insisted on protection for my client—” Irene glanced at Malia. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about my request earlier.” She turned back to the marshal. “I expected Henkel to send Winslow.” Malia noted the wistfulness in her friend’s tone.

“Winslow’s tracking a lead,” he answered matter-of-factly.

Irene introduced him. “Van Wyck Cady, Frank Grahame Louden.”

The men shook hands and exchanged “How do you do?” and “Nice to meet you.”

Irene then said, “Frank, this is my client, Miss Malia Vaccarelli, the one you are here to protect.”

The marshal looked Malia’s way. His intense blue eyes studied her for longer than made her comfortable, enough that Malia stood at the same moment he said, “You’re Van Kelly’s sister.” He voiced it as one would say
turncoat.

Maybe Irene was right that not all coppers were corrupt, but how was Malia to know a good one from a bad one? She looked about the room for another means of escape. Across the library was a second door, but she had no idea where it led. And if the marshal’s build was true to form, she doubted she’d make it to the door before he caught her. Or maybe she could, considering how he favored his left leg.

He followed up with a smile and a cordial, “I am very glad to meet you.”

She was supposed to be polite and say,
I’m delighted to meet you too,
but she wasn’t delighted or glad or pleased or relieved. She wanted him gone. Or her gone without him.

“Irene?” she said with a serenity that belied her nerves. No matter how fearful she felt, she would maintain good form as a lady should.

“Yes?”

Malia curved her lips a bit, just enough to imply sweetness. “I am not going anywhere. With him.”

* * *

He wasn’t keen on going anywhere with
her.

Since he couldn’t admit that and still be a gentleman, Frank rested a palm on the hilt of a gun. He tried to think of something—anything—to say to the beauty standing no more than four strides from him. What he’d give for her to be dowdy, or at least have an oversized Roman nose, not
this.
Her lashes were as dark and sooty as her hair, a compelling contrast to the paleness of her golden skin. Of course, the paleness likely resulted from her being anxious, which he could tell by the way her elegant fingers nervously picked at her lacy skirt. She probably had no idea she was doing it.

He cleared his throat. Twenty-one days guarding
that.
At breakfast, he’d even thanked God for no female in his life to distract him from his work. If he were a cynical man, he’d swear he heard heavenly laughter.

“Why won’t you go with Frank?” Irene asked, reminding him there were others in the room besides themselves.

“That’s something I’d like to know too,” Cady put in.

Miss Vaccarelli snatched her fancy clutch off the linen sofa. “Coppers are corrupt.”

Cady shrugged as if it was something he’d heard before.

“I’m not a copper,” Frank clarified. “I’m a deputy marshal of the federal court of New York. I can be trusted.”

Irene nodded.

Miss Vaccarelli looked down her perfectly pert nose at him, as if to say lawmen were all the same to her. That is—unprincipled. Crooked. Evil.

With his middle finger, Frank tapped the side of his gun. The woman was as stubborn as she was naive and snooty. Not to say he wasn’t pleased to discover her flaws. By the time they made it to Tuxedo Park, he expected to have a page-long list of inadequacies to make her more unappealing to him. He didn’t want to imagine what she looked like happy and laughing. She looked ravishing enough being angry and afraid.

“Frank is here to help,” Irene offered. “You can trust him as you trust me. As you trust Special Prosecutor Cady.”

Cady concurred.

Miss Vaccarelli’s lips pursed tighter than the button-tufted back of the sofa, drawing Frank’s attention to the mole—no, beauty mark—just above her rose-colored lips, details he certainly should
not
be noticing. But now that he had, he couldn’t quite find the wisdom to look away.

“I can’t.” She shook her head and took another step closer to the library’s side door. “Irene, I don’t need a marshal to guard me. Giovanni promised that Papà’s lawyers will ensure my safety.”

Frank’s inner warning bell sounded. He and Cady exchanged glances. Cady then nodded, giving Frank leave to ask what he knew they were both wondering.

As to not frighten her more, Frank gently asked, “How could he promise that?”

She looked to Cady, her gaze direct and unshrinking. “Sir, I’ve answered all your questions. May I leave?”

“I, too, need to know why your brother promised that.”

“Is there something you haven’t told us?” Irene put in.

Miss Vaccarelli’s confused gaze shifted to each person in the room. Either she was a splendid actress or the most guileless woman Frank knew. His gut told him the latter. He knew too many unscrupulous women—coquettes who knew how to use their wiles for their benefit—to know she was an innocent, a socialite who didn’t have a clue. Protect her, he could. Ensuring she didn’t do something stupid on her own—now that would be the tricky part.

She nipped her bottom lip and stayed silent for some moments. “My brother made a list and gave it to the family lawyers. He said it was an insurance policy to keep us both alive in the event he was arrested.”

“Why am I just hearing about a list now?” Special Prosecutor Cady demanded.

She stared at him, her eyes still devoid of any deception, her expression slack. “It didn’t cross my mind. I explained after I arrived that Giovanni asked me to take the counterfeit bills to the family lawyers, and that they would protect me until he was released from police custody. I never intended on withholding pertinent information.”

“But you did,” groused Cady.

Her shoulders straightened, eyes narrowed as she took her leisure meeting each of their gazes. “Considering the character I demonstrated in turning over the sourdough,” she said, bringing a pretty color to her cheeks, “I see no cause for any of you to decry a minor omission on my part.”

Frank raised a brow. She was a feisty one.

Irene sighed. “I’m your lawyer, and my job is to protect you. You should have first told me about the list.”

“Why?” Miss Vaccarelli’s voice rose. Her eyes filled with tears, which only brightened the amber color. “I have no idea what’s on it. Until I spoke with Giovanni this morning, I had no idea he was mafiosi, which I am still struggling to believe.” Her gaze settled on Frank. “Being sheltered from my family’s apparent mafiosi
involvement does not make me obtuse.”

“We don’t think that,” Irene put in.

Cady said nothing.

Nor did Frank.

Her hands tightened around her beaded clutch. “What could possibly be on this list that would stop someone from wanting to kill my brother? Or me?”

An idea came to his mind, but it wasn’t his place to say. Instead of answering, the two lawyers approached each other and held a whispered conversation. Miss Vaccarelli breathed deep then dabbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers, a womanly action he’d often seen his grandmother do. On the edge of his tongue were the words to tell her that all would be well. Given time. She needed to trust the court, Irene and him to protect her.

“Well?” prompted Miss Vaccarelli.

With a deep furrowed brow, Cady motioned to the table with his binder. “I need you to look at this—”

“No, Mr. Cady.” Her gaze bore into the special prosecutor’s, unflinching. “I will not look at anything until someone tells me what you all know and I don’t.”

Cady looked at her askance, in the same manner as Frank had seen him in the courtroom with an uncooperative witness. “Miss Vaccarelli, I have the authority to place you in jail for—”

“Accomplices,” Frank filled in, cutting off the prosecutor’s threat.

Irene added, “Gangsters he fed the sourdough to.”

Cady grabbed Miss Vaccarelli’s arm, and she gasped as he dragged her to the table.

“There’s no need for that,” Frank ground out. “She’s a lady.”

“She also knows more than she’s telling.” Cady shoved her onto a seat and slapped the binder down in front of her. He opened to the first page. “Have you seen this man before?” He pointed to a picture.

Although it was upside down, Frank could tell it was of Albert “Fingers” Bolz. He’d arrested the gangster twice, and twice watched the courts set him free because of lack of evidence. Edwin Daly had been the prosecutor both times.

Miss Vaccarelli rested her clutch on the table. Her eyes darted from the binder to Irene then to Frank. The square-tipped edge of her chin rose. She didn’t have to speak for him to hear
I will not answer as long as he is present.

Cady drew in a long, angry breath through his nose. “Miss Gibbons,” he warned.

Irene rushed to sit in the chair next to Miss Vaccarelli. “Malia, please. It is in your best interest to cooperate.”

Miss Vaccarelli, though, kept eyeing Frank, her gaze defiant, yet the hand holding her clutch had a slight tremble. Out of fear? Or anger?

He opened his mouth to offer to leave the room then thought better of it. They had to spend the next three weeks in each other’s presence. The girl could start getting used to him—start getting over her misgivings about him—now. He crossed his arms over his chest.

“Malia,” Irene gently prodded. “I shouldn’t think you would enjoy jail.”