“Congratulations to the proud father,” Frank said with more courtesy than sincerity. He didn’t know Bill’s nephew. “Look, Bill, somebody asked me about a case, the one where the girl was wearing red shoes.”

Bill squinted, as if the act of trying to remember caused him pain. Broughan was a portly man, his round face flushed from too many years of “celebrating.” His thinning brown hair was mussed, as if he hadn’t combed it this morning. He probably hadn’t. There was a yellow stain on his lapel. “Oh, yeah, the red shoes,” he recalled after a moment. “German girl. Hadn’t been here long, from what I heard. Damnedest thing. I never heard of nobody wearing red shoes. Not even a German. You ask me, she got ’ em whoring. Who else would have red shoes?”

Frank agreed, but he didn’t want to say so. He’d get more information if he argued with Bill. “A friend of mine knows the family. Says they’re respectable.”

“Maybe they are, but that never stopped a girl from whoring if she needed money.”

Frank couldn’t argue with that, no matter how much he thought it might help him get information. He sighed. “This friend of mine, she wants to know if you’ve got any idea who killed this girl.”

“She?” Broughan asked, his bloodshot eyes brightening with interest.

“She who?” Frank asked, feigning innocence.

“You said your friend who wants to know is a she.” His face squinched up in the effort of thought. “This friend wouldn’t be that blonde who come to the station for you that time, would it? The one the sergeant locked in an interrogation room?”

Frank was never going to live that down, but maybe he could get it to work in his favor this time. Even if this might be even harder to live down. “Yeah, well, you know how women can be when they get started on something.”

“Frank, you devil, you.” Broughan rubbed his hands in glee. “You never said a word. How long has this been going on?”

Frank gave him a disdainful glare. “I’d tell you if I thought it was any of your business.”

Bill frowned. “This must be serious. You thinking about getting hitched again? She know about your kid?”

“Look,” Frank said, growing impatient and more than a little annoyed, “right now I just want to make her happy by telling her you’re going to arrest somebody for killing this girl.” That much was true. If he could make her happy by solving this case, he wouldn’t have to see Sarah Brandt again.

Bill rubbed his temples with both hands, closing his eyes against the pounding that must be going on inside his head. “Wish I could help you, son, but nobody’ll ever find out who killed that girl.”

“Why not?” Frank figured he already knew, but if there was the slightest hope, he wanted to grasp it.

“I told you. She was a whore. Or the next thing to it,” he added when Frank was going to protest. “Out every night dancing with her friends. You know what goes on at them dance halls. Lots of strange men, some stranger than others. She went out to Coney Island, too, from what I hear. Always taking up with a new fellow. Somebody give her a hat, right before she died. And them shoes, too. Maybe not the same fellow. Nobody’s real sure about that. But at least two men give her presents in the last week or so. Which means maybe one of them found out about the other and beat her for cheating on him, or maybe some other fellow found out about one or both of them and beat her for the same reason. Or maybe she just met somebody new and asked him for a present, and he got insulted. Who knows? And more important, who cares?”

“Her family cares.”

Broughan didn’t look impressed. “These people got any money? They offering a reward or anything?”

Frank considered lying. Maybe Mrs. Brandt would offer a reward. Did she care that much? He couldn’t be sure, and if she didn’t, he certainly had no intention of paying a reward himself to find the killer of a girl he’d never even set eyes on just to please Sarah Brandt. “I don’t think so.”

“Then they might as well forget about her. Put her in the ground and wash their hands. Ain’t nobody ever gonna know who killed her, and that’s a fact.”

Broughan reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a cheap metal flask. The hand that pulled the cork from the top trembled slightly, and he needed both hands to guide it to his lips. He took a long pull, emptying it.

Frank managed not to wince. His father had been a drinker, and it had killed him young. To this day, he couldn’t abide hard liquor.

“Was she raped?” Frank asked without knowing why. It just seemed important to have all the facts, and that one might be relevant.

Broughan shrugged one shoulder as he dropped the empty flask back into his pocket. “The doc said she’d been doing it with somebody recent, but he couldn’t say that she was raped. Her clothes was all in place when they found her, and she wasn’t…” He hesitated, searching for the right word. “Damaged” was what he settled for. “No cuts or bruises down there. Had enough of ‘em everyplace else, though. Whoever killed her made a good job of it. I’d guess he wanted a piece, and she said no, though it might’ve been the first time she did. Poor bastard was the only one she wouldn’t spread ’em for, I guess, and look what it got her.”

“Yeah,” Frank said, discouraged. This wasn’t going to help. Sarah Brandt wouldn’t be satisfied, not by a long shot. She’d want to dig, although where else she would dig, he had no idea.

Well, if she was that interested, maybe she could find out something Bill hadn’t. In fact, she could most certainly find out a whole lot of things Bill hadn‘t, since Bill wasn’t particularly interested in solving this case. In fact, unless her family or someone came up with a reward of some kind, Bill was completely finished with it already. Girls turned up dead every day in the city. Some starved, some killed themselves, and some were killed by others. The world didn’t seem to care or even to notice, so why should the police exert themselves? Frank certainly wouldn’t, not under normal circumstances.

But these weren’t normal circumstances. Because he’d gone home from Mrs. Brandt’s house last night and stood beside his sleeping son’s bed and shouted until the neighbors complained. And just like she’d predicted, the boy hadn’t even flinched. Sleeping like an angel, he’d lain there peaceful and quiet and undisturbed while his mother ranted at him, demanding to know had he lost his mind.

“The boy is deaf,” he’d told her, silencing her instantly.

She’d looked at him in stunned surprise that turned quickly to terror as she realized the meaning of his words. Or tried to. In truth, neither of them knew what this really meant. It changed everything. The only question now was how.

SARAH COULDN’T BELIEVE SHE WAS DOING THIS. She’d gone shopping with Lisle Lasher after Gerda’s funeral, and Lisle had convinced her to buy a hat that could only be called ridiculous. She’d done her hair in a fancy pouf, then pinned the outrageous hat with its huge silk roses and oversized brim onto the top of it. She’d even painted her lips, which was as far as she would go, even though Lisle advised some rouge, too.

She wouldn’t look too out of place in a shirtwaist and skirt. Lots of working girls wore them to the dances, Lisle had told her, but she should have some beads to dress it up. Sarah was now the proud owner of a strand of gaudy glass ones. She would make Lisle a gift of them when the evening was over.

Harmony Hall was a large empty room over a saloon on Fourteenth Street. The sound from the band-it couldn’t be called music-was audible down the street. Sarah decided it must be unbearable inside the hall. The girls had met her a few blocks away, and as they strolled down the street toward it, Sarah began to sense their nervousness.