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“What are you saying?”
“How long will he let Francesca live?”
“I have to get to her first,” said Archie.
“We have to get to her first. She’ll know a lot about Branco’s crimes and, with any luck, what he plans next.”
“Wait a minute, Isaac. What does Branco care if Francesca exposes him? He’s exposed already.”
“When we catch him, he will stand trial, defended by the best lawyers money can buy. The prosecutor will need every break he can get. He will trade years off Francesca’s prison sentence for her testimony.”
“Prison?”
“Archie, you weren’t the first job she did for him. Just the easiest.”
36
“Where does Francesca live?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? How could you not know where a woman you were seeing lives?”
“She never let me take her home. She was very proper.”
“‘Proper’?” Isaac Bell echoed sharply. As good as this plan was, he was still angry enough to throw Archie Abbott off the speeding train.
“Ladylike. I mean . . . modest . . . Well, you know what I mean.”
“Where would you meet up?”
“The Waldorf-Astoria.”
“How’d you manage that?” Bell asked. Archie was a socially prominent New Yorker, welcome in any Blue Book drawing room, but the Abbotts had lost their money in the Panic of ’93 and he had to live on his detective salary.
“Francesca’s quite well-off, and her husband had business at the hotel, so she has a good arrangement with the management.”
“You said you don’t know where she lives. Now you’re saying she lives at the Waldorf?”
“No, no, no. She just books us a room.”
“When were you supposed to see her next?”
“Tomorrow afternoon, actually.”
“Will she show up?”
“I have no idea.”
“I think she will,” said Bell.
“How do you know?”
“She will be curious about what you’ll tell her next.”
Again, Abbott hung his head. “How long are you going to rub salt in the wound?”
“Until I am absolutely sure that I can override a powerful impulse to knock your block off.”
