“Well . . . use whatever name you want. I had a girl from the office take care of it so I’m not connected. The deposit is in her name. A reference from city hall should clear the way, even if it doesn’t come directly from me.”
“January in Cleveland,” Malone muttered.
“It’ll be fun, Malone.”
“No it won’t,” Malone shot back, and Ness chuckled, satisfied.
“Nah. It probably won’t. But it needs doing. That’s what men like you and me are best at. Doing what needs doing.” He shoved his hat back on his head and buttoned his overcoat. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were bright from the booze. “Don’t think too hard. You’ll scare yourself. Isn’t that what you used to tell me?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s good advice.”
2
“I know it feels soon. But we’ve got to take on a boarder,” Daniela Kos said, forcing a conversation she knew her two aging aunts did not want to have.
“We can’t have a stranger in the house right now, Daniela. Not when we’re all still grieving,” Zuzana said.
“But, Tetka, Auntie, we will always grieve,” Daniela replied gently. She was the youngest of the three women by more than fifty years, but even she knew that. Grief did not leave. It just became part of the patina.
Lenka’s chin wobbled, and she pursed her wrinkled lips. She withdrew three of the straight pins from the waistband of the dress she was constructing and stuck them between her teeth to cover her distress.
For a moment, the three women were all quiet, letting their work distract them. Many days they had no work—no dresses to sew or alterations to make—and they were grateful for the holiday uptick in business. Once upon a time, when the Koses had made beautiful gowns and expensive suits, when there was more work than they could keep up with, they had turned commissions away. Now they took all comers. Now they haggled over prices and settled for rates Zuzana said they hadn’t seen since Daniel Kos had opened his shop in the old neighborhood on Croton Street. And now, Daniel, Eliska, Pavel, Aneta, and Vera Kos were gone.
The rows of mansions on Euclid Avenue were gone too, the ballrooms demolished. The wealthy people who once danced in them danced no more. Mark Twain had once called it one of the finest streets in America. But Millionaires’ Row was now like the rest of downtown Cleveland. Penniless and abandoned by those who had built her.
The Koses had never lived on Euclid Avenue, though they had profited from her patrons. Instead, they’d saved and toiled and built a grand house on Broadway Street, not far from East Fifty-Fifth and Our Lady of Lourdes Church, and just across the street from St. Alexis Hospital. It was the community where the wealthiest Czech immigrants banked and lived and worshipped and became Americans. It was the home where they now sat, Daniel’s great-granddaughter and his two remaining children, carrying on a legacy that would most likely die with them.
“It’s a nice, big room . . . We can get a good price for it,” Daniela attempted again. “A higher price will attract a certain sort, maybe a doctor. Dr. Peterka’s never had any trouble renting out the rooms above his clinic. We’re so close to the hospital. We’ll rent it out in no time,” Daniela explained. She omitted the fact that it was already done. She had until January 10 to get her aunts used to the idea.
“We’ll be butchered in our sleep,” Zuzana warned, not even looking up from the seam she was carefully unpicking.
Lenka moaned, the sound rising and falling like a yowling cat. She still had pins sticking out of her mouth and couldn’t do much more than that.
“Teta,” Daniela pled. “Please don’t say things like that.”
“We live right next door to a funeral home. If the Butcher lived here, he could throw his victims on the Rauses’ front steps. Save everyone the trouble,” Zuzana mumbled.
Daniela had known that convincing her two aging aunts would be difficult.
“No. I take that back. He would most likely only leave an arm or two,” Zuzana muttered. “Or maybe a head, wrapped in the victim’s trousers or chopped in half and put in a basket like poor Flo Polillo.”
“You say her name like you knew her.” Daniela sighed.
“I know she was a human being who didn’t like having her head lopped off,” Zuzana sniffed.
“They never found her head,” Lenka said, tsking. “I wonder what in the world he did with it?”
“We need the money, Tety,” Daniela said.