“One that looked like an Italian and had a gift for accents?”
“Yeah. They had a plan that I would slowly infiltrate Capone’s inner circle. I pretended to be a mobster from Philly named Michael Lepito who was lying low at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago until my lawyers could work out a deal so I could go back home.”
“Where did you get the suits?” she asked. Of course Dani would want to know that.
“They were provided to me. I had to look the part, and bosses don’t wear cheap suits. Cops wear cheap suits. Capone had to be absolutely convinced.”
“And was he?”
“I guess so. Though when he found out I wasn’t a wop—that was his word, not mine—he couldn’t believe it.”
“He found out?”
“Not until it was too late. I was undercover for a year and a half. He found out about me at his trial. He saw me coming out of the elevator with the prosecutor.” For eighteen months he’d kept his cover. He listened, he played his part, and he never broke. Then something as simple as a courthouse conversation had blown it.
“You must have been scared.”
“I got out of town after that, yeah. But Capone’s at Alcatraz now. His organization was rattled to its roots. And so far . . . nobody’s caught up to Michael Lepito.”
“Or Michael Malone?”
“Just you, Dani. Just you.”
“That was a very good story,” she said slowly, her attention trained beyond him, mulling it all over.
“A very long story.” He glanced at the clock on the wall.
Dani lifted up the skirt of the bed and peered beneath it once more. Charlie strolled out like he’d been waiting for his cue. Then he sat, directly in the center of the floor, and began washing himself.
Dani swooped him up, triumphant, and Malone just shook his head.
“What a pain in the rump he is,” he growled, rising.
“If he weren’t, I wouldn’t love him so much.”
“I would like him a great deal more, however.”
She snickered but kept a firm hold on Charlie as she left the room.
“Good night, Michael,” she called.
He sighed, feeling like he’d just been subjected to a pat down and a cavity search.
“Good night, Dani.”
11
By late March, the temperature had risen enough that when Dani and Malone walked to the morgue on a Thursday morning, Dani pulling the wagon behind her, there was a decided feeling of spring in the air.
Michael had remarked on it, tipping his face to the sky and unbuttoning his coat. They’d developed a rapport and a comfort level that she enjoyed. His humor was decidedly dry and his demeanor consistently guarded, but he was gentle and attentive too. Kind even, though she suspected he thought himself quite the villain.
He seemed very mindful of keeping his distance, never displaying any sort of physical affection or attraction, yet he seemed genuinely intrigued by her. She did her best to keep her hands to herself as well, her Midas touch in check, but she looked forward to the two mornings a week when she had him all to herself, even if she had to share him with the dead. And the dead provided plenty of distraction.
Their only “customer” that morning was a woman wrapped in a colorful patchwork quilt and nothing else. The tag on her toe told the address where she’d been discovered, and if her death had been ruled a homicide, she would not have been turned over to the indigent facility. She was relatively young and slim, and her hair, though unkempt, was bobbed at her shoulders, indicative of some level of attention.
Dani found something for her to wear and ran a brush through the matted strands before they unwound the quilt from around her gray limbs.
“What happened to her?” he grunted. The woman had no clothes to provide clues, and no apparent injuries.
“I don’t know, Michael. I am not a coroner,” she reminded.
“What does the cloth say?” he asked, no hesitation. He’d become used to her ways.
The quilt was tattered but not dirty, and Dani clasped the folds, allowing her mind to empty and her eyes to see.
“If this is hers . . . her name is Nettie. And she’s had this quilt since she was a girl.” She was quiet, watching the flickering images. Tears, shouting, hiding, holding, loving. Distance. The woman had taken the quilt from one day, one decade, to the next, and before that, the squares had belonged to a hundred different stories carefully stitched together by a freckled hand.
“There is care in the stitching. It is well made.” Dani’s eyes told her that much. She didn’t even need to touch the cloth. “When the world is dark, look at the colors, Nettie,” she whispered, hearing the echo of the words pressed upon the girl.
Malone cleared his throat, and Dani let go of the blanket. She hoped whoever had made a quilt of many colors for Nettie had welcomed her home.
She took up her log and made careful notes, engulfed by the sadness that often accompanied such glimpses.
“She’s naked. Is that what she did for a living?” Malone asked quietly.
“I think so. Yes.” She swallowed back the emotion in her throat. If she had been alone, she might have shed a tear, but Michael had seen her cry over too many, and it distressed him, though he usually scolded her to cover his discomfort.
“Is that what killed her?” he asked, grim.
“I don’t know. She didn’t know.”
“She didn’t know she was dying?”
“It doesn’t feel that way. No. She was . . . floating.”
He sighed. “Well that’s good.”
“We will dress her, but let’s fold the quilt and put it in her arms. She should have it.”
They finished in silence, and Dani made her obituary, tucking it into the folds of the quilt Malone had placed on the woman’s chest. It was not until they were walking back toward home that they spoke again.
“My father called my mother Nettie sometimes,” Dani said.
“Aneta,” Michael supplied. “Nettie makes sense.”
“Yes. Aneta Kos Flanagan. Aneta and George. What a pair.”
He said nothing, but he was listening, and she found herself falling into his attention. He always had the same effect on her.