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Absolutely nothing.
This was a waste of time. I needed to return to police headquarters and press them to investigate. Perhaps if I told them of Mr. Baxter’s denial, they would reconsider. I shoved the gun back in my pocket and turned for the door. “Thank you for your time, sir. I’m truly sorry to have bothered you.”
“Wait.”
The single word was laced with command and I immediately stopped. Bax came to stand in front of me, the lines of his face sharper. More determined. “Do you honestly believe you can stroll in here, hold a gun on me in front of a crowd, then turn around and walk out?”
My throat nearly closed in terror, but I tried to brave it out. “I already apologized.”
“We have a different way of settling things around here.”
“And what is your way of settling things?”
He rubbed a hand along his jaw as he stared down at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “What’re you planning to do about your father?”
“I haven’t any idea.” Hopelessness, hollow and painful, twisted in my belly. “Hire Pinkertons, I suppose. I know he’s alive. If they wanted him dead, they would’ve killed him in his study. Why bother to take him from his home?”
“Pinkertons are a waste of time and money.”
“I haven’t any other choice. The police won’t help.”
“I’ll help you.”
I blinked at him, certain I’d heard incorrectly. “You would help me?”
“I might be convinced to do so, yeah.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I won’t involve myself out of the kindness of my heart.”
This I believed. It was rumored he had no kindness. “I can’t pay you, not right away. But my father—”
“It’s not money I’m after, widow.”
The words bounced off the walls. I froze as the room narrowed down to only the two of us. His expression turned positively predatory, and I prayed my instincts were wrong, that he didn’t want the one thing girls were warned about. “What are you after, sir?”
“That’s the wrong question to ask.”
“Then what is the right question?”
“What’re you willing to do for me, Miss Kelly? How far are you willing to go to find out what happened to your father?”
CHAPTER2
Baxter
Well, well. The night was certainly looking up.
I returned to my chair and let her absorb the words. Once there I busied myself with a cigarette, but it was damn hard to employ patience.
Did she remember me? While it had been a long time ago, I hadn’t forgotten her face. How could I, when she was the most beautiful thing a sixteen-year-old boy had ever clapped eyes on in his miserable life?
When we were still rising in the ranks, the boys and I used to go to the Seventh Avenue Mission for the occasional meal. We’d take the food outside, where we could eat in peace.
One night a man was there, giving a speech about the scourge of gangs and violence. He was Daniel Kelly, New York City’s new comptroller, and he promised to help crack down on crime in the city. It pissed me and the boys off, especially when he pointed and called us “vermin.”
“We ain’t fucking vermin,” Timmy said on my right. “He’s the fucking vermin.”
