The Unknown Beloved(35)

Steve laughed, incredulous, but he shook his head. “I don’t know . . . but I need my boots. I can’t wear those to work.” He pointed at the spectators Malone wore on his feet.

“Where do you work?”

“Hart Manufacturing, near Twentieth and Central. My dad and Leonard work there too. I’m learning to be a toolmaker. It’s a good job. I’m lucky to have it.”

But Malone was only half listening. Hart Manufacturing. Where had he heard that before?

“You know what, kid? Your coat isn’t going to fit me. You keep it. You keep both of them. I’ll take the hat. It might save me from getting jumped.” He tossed the coat to Jeziorski, who caught it with the same ease with which he’d swiped the dime from the air.

“Ma’s gonna think I lifted these,” Steve Jeziorski said, his smile fading.

“Nah. You always tell the truth, remember? Tell her you helped a curious tourist.”

“A tourist? In Cleveland?”

“Ya got me there, kid,” Malone shot back, but he began to walk. Briskly. He didn’t have a coat anymore, and he’d just remembered where he’d heard of Hart Manufacturing.



Malone came in the front door of the shop at a quarter of four, shivering from the cold and wearing a cap that made him look like a delivery boy. Dani was changing the display and poked her head out from behind a dress form to greet him.

“I need an overcoat. And a new hat,” he said, clamping his hands beneath his armpits.

“Yes. I can see that you do. What happened to the ones you had?”

“I made a trade.”

“Willingly?” Dani teased, and he gave her a glimmer of a smile. One of these days he would grin at her.

“Yeah. Well. The kid needed them more than I did.”

He didn’t explain who “the kid” was, or why he was now in possession of a checkered cap, but she walked to a display and tugged down a lined and fur-collared overcoat and a matching fedora.

“This one will keep you warm, and it will look good with that hat,” she said, holding them out to him. He shook his head.

“Too flashy. I want to be warm and . . . nondescript.”

She hung them back up. “All right. I think we have a dark gray one in the back. It goes with everything. It’s a good neutral. It picks up the warmth when you’re wearing brown and doesn’t look too yellow when you go with the cooler tones. And this hat is a good shape for your face.” She plucked a charcoal-gray felt hat from a peg.

“Oh yeah? What shape is that?”

“Angular. The homburg is a nice compromise between the fedora and the bowler.”

“You sound like you’ve done this before.”

“Yes. Well . . . clothes are my thing.”

He handed Dani the checkered cap he wore and set the new one on his head.

It looked good on him, just as she’d thought it would, but she was immediately distracted by the dirty cap in her hands.

“I’ll take it,” Malone said. “And the coat in the back, if you say it’ll work. I also might want to dig through your pile of castoffs from the morgue. I’ll compensate you. I need some clothes I can work in . . . ones that I won’t have to worry about ruining.”

She heard him, and she nodded, but she wasn’t listening. The cap in her hands was too loud. She rubbed her fingertips against the inside band, the place where the brim joined the crown, the spot that absorbed both perspiration and contemplation.

“Dani?”

“This cap isn’t his,” she murmured.

“Whose?”

“The boy. He found it the day the bodies were found, but higher up on the hill. He hasn’t told anyone. Not even Leonard. He doesn’t know why. When he wears it . . . it’s like he has a secret. But it’s too late to tell anyone now.”

She dropped the hat like it was hot and pushed her glasses up with the back of her hand. For some reason, she felt soiled, and she wanted to wash.

Malone stooped to pick it up.

“I’ll go get that coat,” she said.

“Who, Dani? Who are you talking about?” He kept his face blank, but she thought he knew. She thought he knew a lot more than she did.

“I don’t know. He didn’t think about his name when he was wearing it. He thought about . . . the man who it might belong to. Where did you get that hat?” she asked, striving for the same placid tone he was so adept at.

“I got that hat from a boy named Steve. He mentioned a brother. Leonard.”

She nodded slowly.

“But you said it didn’t belong to Steve. Who does it belong to?” Malone handed her the hat once more, and she accepted it with all the enthusiasm of a child receiving a ruler across her palms. But Malone had asked her, and she was pleased by that, even if she didn’t like the way the hat felt.

She breathed out and listened again. “His scent is faded.”

“His scent?” Malone asked.

“The man who owned it before the boy.”

Malone waited as she dug deeper.

“He drove a car. Not his own. He was a driver.”

“A chauffeur?”

“Yes.”

“He probably wore this hat hundreds of times. Maybe more. And his presence”—she was always frustrated by the words she had to use to describe it—“is layered beneath the boy.”