It Had to Be You

by Delynn Royer

  A grubby hand darted up to snatch the coin, but she moved it out of his reach. “Not so fast, bucko. The first one’s free, but the others have to be earned.”

  She tucked her purse under her arm and wrote her name on the Morning Examiner business card. She was still so new to the paper, she didn’t have her own cards. Up till now, it hadn’t mattered.

  She handed him the card. “Can you read?”

  He scrutinized it but didn’t answer.

  “Never mind. You can show that to anyone along Broadway. First thing tomorrow, you come see me at the Morning Examiner. That’s a newspaper office.” She pointed north. “Seventeen hundred block, twelfth floor. You want another fifty cents, you ask for me, Trixie Frank. Got it?”

  “Sure.” But his eyes narrowed. “What’s the catch, sister?”

  “No catch, smarty-pants. All you have to do is talk. I’m a reporter. I talk to people and write about it. That’s my job. After that? Who knows? I bet you’d make a swell newsboy.” She offered him the coin.

  He hesitated.

  Trixie bent down to match him eye to eye. “Believe you me, kid. I’m the best thing that’s gonna happen to you today.”

  Bingo. He grinned and snatched the coin. She watched after him as he bounded like a sprite up Broadway.

  There were orphanages for children like Danny, weren’t there? Why then was he left to wander the streets? And how many more were there just like him?

  Trixie had seen the spark in Danny’s eyes. The bribe had worked. She would get her answers and she would write this child’s story. Would her editor go for it?

  She smiled. “Stick with me, kid. Tomorrow’s our lucky day.”

  * * *

  Day people. Night people. Danny O’Roarke was just a kid, but he was smart. He knew the difference.

  The day people, the ones who swarmed into the city each morning on ferries and in trains and motorcars, the ones who streamed from their apartment houses on foot, on bicycles, and by trolley, they rarely saw each other. Too busy. Places to go, things to do, time to keep.

  The night people, though, the ones who came out when the others were gone. They were different. They saw each other.

  Always.

  The holiday was done and the people that had flocked to the city for the parade had left the confetti-littered streets behind. On this night, Central Park, which had earlier teemed with city dwellers and visitors, seemed eerie and deserted.

  From where Danny sat on a bench near Scholars’ Gate, he watched as a sluggish stream of motorcar traffic flowed south. He’d stayed uptown too long. It had been a mistake to fall asleep in the park. Now, he’d stopped to snack on some peanuts, and his legs protested at the idea of taking one more step.

  A man in a wool coat crossed the deserted Grand Army Plaza and approached at a brisk pace. He didn’t give Danny so much as a glance as he swept by. In spite of the late hour, he was a day person. Soon, he would disappear into one of the countless tall buildings in this part of the city and he wouldn’t come out again until the sun peeked up over the East River.

  Far away, across the wide, paved swath of Central Park South, a fancy-dressed swell and his dame emerged from a big hotel, him in a slick black jacket and top hat and she in a fluffy white fur coat. They laughed as they hailed a cab and then climbed in when it pulled up to the curb. Danny smiled dreamily as they were whisked away.

  Someday he would buy himself a fancy hat just like that one. Maybe a keen black jacket too. Then another man caught his eye, this one wearing a hat with a slouched brim and a long brown overcoat. He emerged from the shining gold and glass revolving door and Danny’s smile faded.

  Night person.

  Danny sat straighter when the man crossed the wide street in a bold diagonal line, headed in Danny’s direction. He was ready to scram if the man came too close.

  But he didn’t.

  The man veered right and stopped to wait by the statue on the plaza. He lit a cigarette and then vanished as he strolled around the giant pedestal. By the time he emerged on the other side, Danny had relaxed, assuming the man was too preoccupied to notice him.

  Not so.

  The man stopped and smirked. “Hey, kid! You wanna nickel?”

  The hairs on the back of Danny’s neck rose. He was smart that way too. He knew when to disappear.

  Danny jumped off the bench and bounded down into the park where the night’s shadows would swallow him from sight. He kept his ears sharp though. If the man followed, Danny would run like the wind, tired legs or no.

  But no footsteps followed.

  Far from the foot path and safe in the shadows, Danny stopped and peered back toward the distant glow of Central Park South. Should he continue deeper into the park to find another exit or wait and hope the man would be on his way?

  One glance at the spooky expanse behind him decided that question. It was more from a case of the willies than the cold that he plunged both hands into coat pockets chock-full of plunder from a day of scavenging and filching. A man’s pocket watch, a yo-yo, a mitten, peanuts, a gold earring, a stick of Wrigley’s gum, pennies, nickels, dimes and the half-dollar the newspaper lady had given him.

  When he thought about the newspaper lady, an unfamiliar warmth swelled in his chest. She was just about the most beautiful dame he’d ever seen outside the glossy photographs in drugstore movie magazines.

  He pulled her card from his pocket. The moonlight wasn’t bright enough to make out the letters and Danny couldn’t read anyhow, but he liked the feel of it. TRIXIE FRANK. MORNING EXAMINER. That’s what it said.

  Earlier, Danny had shown her card to a man along Broadway, who had directed him to the newspaper building. He’d stared up at the grand new skyscraper and imagined how keen it must be inside...

  Voices.

  Danny lifted his head. Men’s voices. They were muffled and low. And too close.

  Danny moved to the edge of a stand of trees then paused when he saw the man in the slouched hat. The man now stood inside the park, off to one side of the path and out of the glow of the park lamps. And he wasn’t alone. Two others had joined him.

  The three were intent on their business and hadn’t noticed Danny. Still, he dropped to his haunches and inched his way back behind a willow.

  What happened next flew by too fast for Danny to react. The first man raised his hands, but it was already too late. The other two were on him, the biggest one sweeping a beefy arm around his neck from behind. The two men in control dragged their thrashing victim behind some bushes.

  Danny waited, frozen as a rabbit, his stomach clenching at the sound of each muffled grunt and thump. He’d seen grown men fight before—noisy, drunken, brutal brawls on the waterfront—but he’d never witnessed anything like this. So swift and quiet. Somehow worse.

  The two attackers emerged. The big one shrugged off his coat and draped it over his arm. Danny was glad that he had mastered the art of invisibility and wished he could master the art of forgetfulness too. But his eyesight was perfect. Their faces burned into his memory as they stepped into the glow of a park lamp and were gone.

  Danny rose shakily to his feet. All was quiet except for the rumble of motorcars above him on the street. He peered toward the bushes where the third man had yet to emerge. Gee willikers. They must have beat him pretty bad if it was taking him so long to come out. Unless the fella was too scared...

  He’s not too scared, a voice whispered. Run!

  It was a voice Danny knew. His ma’s voice. He rarely ignored it, but he ignored it now.

  He’d seen fights and he’d seen other things too. At night along the waterfront. He’d seen drunks passed out, drunks who’d been rolled with their pockets picked clean and their shoes gone. He’d seen a fella jumped once, knocked on the head by some big kids, too dazed to do a thing about it
as his watch had been yanked off and his pockets turned out.

  And those pockets had turned out plenty.

  Shame swept over him at the thought, but still, he didn’t move. His belly had been kept full today. That wasn’t true every day.

  Danny waited. He waited an eternity. He waited until he could bear it no longer. Then he approached a few steps, stopped.

  Run!

  “Mister?”

  There was a rustle of leaves, a gasp, and then...nothing.

  A clammy sweat broke out over Danny’s body. His heart pounded so hard he could hear it in his ears. He forced his feet to move anyhow. When he peered behind the bushes, relief swept through him.

  The man hadn’t passed out. He was lying on his side, trying to push himself up. Still, Danny’s mouth had gone so dry, he could barely work up enough spit to talk. “M-m-mister? You need help?”

  The man dragged himself a short distance before he collapsed. “Lisssen.” His voice was weak.

  Danny leaned down closer and his attention caught on something black lying in the grass. A billfold. Instinctively, he grabbed for it, only to feel his heart nearly explode when the man snatched his wrist.

  “Key.” The man coughed, moved his head just enough to focus on Danny. “Egan.”

  Horrified, Danny stared at the hand that ensnared him. It was wet and warm and sticky, and, though it was too dark to see what glistened there, he knew.

  Danny stammered. “Hail Ma-ma-mary full of grace our Lo-lord is—”

  And then his gaze moved to the man’s face. He stared into dying eyes and saw that it wasn’t just the man’s hand that glistened darkly in the diffused light of the moon, so did his forehead and his cheeks.

  And his coat.

  And the grass.

  And Danny’s shoes. Holy Mary...

  “Nell.” The man’s grip tightened. He dragged in a last breath. “Feeuhraw!”

  The man moved his mouth but no more words issued. His grip on Danny’s wrist loosened, and Danny yanked free so violently, he tossed himself back into the bushes.

  He didn’t feel the scratch of the thorns until after he scrambled to his feet. By then, he was streaking toward Scholars’ Gate. He kept running when he bumped into the lady in the fur coat and he refused to look back. Even when she let out her first scream.

  Chapter Two

  It was 12:40 a.m. when the call came in to the Central Park Precinct that a body had been found. If the call had come in only twenty minutes later, recently demoted Detective Second Grade Sean Costigan would have been off duty. He wouldn’t have caught the case.

  As luck would have it, though, it was a busy night and Sean was the only precinct detective with homicide experience not already out on a call. That was how he happened to be the first detective to arrive at the scene of a crime that would be splashed across the front pages of every city newspaper the following day. He knew it the instant he turned the body over to see the face of the man sprawled on the bloody patch of grass at his feet.

  “I’ll be double damned,” he whispered.

  “You know him?”

  Sean knew him, all right—had known him when they were kids. They’d grown up in the same West Side neighborhood. Old memories rose in his mind.

  Caruso on the Victrola and women gossiping on the stoops. Kids shooting marbles on the sidewalks and playing stickball in the streets. Three lads and one girl chasing up Tenth Avenue after the New York Central on its circuit north, whooping and laughing and daring each other to jump on one of the freight cars...

  “Detective?”

  Sean looked up at a rawboned rookie patrolman named Pete Burgen, one of three beat cops already at the scene. Pete held the flashlight that illuminated the victim’s face.

  “John Murphy,” Sean said, annoyed with himself for losing focus. Those days in the neighborhood were long gone, and he and Johnny hadn’t exactly been pals. Not in the end anyhow.

  “Johnny Blue Eyes?” Pete asked. “Ya sure?”

  A medical examiner had yet to arrive, but it didn’t take an expert to determine the cause of death—multiple stab wounds to the chest. Quiet and lethal but sloppy.

  As a kid, Johnny had been wiry and fast enough to make up for what he lacked in muscle. Even now, Sean had no doubt Johnny had put up a good fight that had caused his killer to miss his heart. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to drag himself as far as his bloody trail suggested. Sean returned the body to its original position. “I’m sure.”

  “Hot dog!” Pete’s tone was one of awe. This was his first brush with the big time.

  As for Sean, he’d had his fill of big cases, cases where politics and publicity counted for more than seeing justice done. Neither did he like the thought of calling on Johnny’s widow, Nell, to deliver the news that the inevitable had come to pass. Johnny had finally made the wrong deal or ticked off the wrong people.

  Sean knew a little bit about ticking off the wrong people.

  “So, what were you doing out here all alone, Johnny?” he asked the cooling corpse. In his mind’s eye, he could see Johnny as he’d looked at ten, hanging off the side of a New York Central freight car and grinning back at their gang after he’d managed to leap aboard and they hadn’t. “So long, suckers! Eat yer heart out, Costigan.”

  Johnny could offer no answers to Sean now about what had brought him out tonight, but Sean had his own hunches about that.

  Because of his bold style, Johnny “Blue Eyes” Murphy was known for more than just his underworld activities. He was a frequent topic in the gossip columns and a public thorn in the side of the NYPD. He was a charismatic but cold-hearted man. Opportunistic and greedy. And never stupid. Especially about protecting his own hide. These days he’d rarely gone out anywhere without at least one strong-arm, usually his driver “Little” Arnie Cavanaugh. If Johnny had been out alone, it was for more than just a stroll.

  Sean addressed a second beat cop, Patrolman Harry Miller. “Anyone check his pockets?”

  “Left that for you.” Harry spoke in a clipped tone that could have passed for mock respect or the real thing. He was in his early thirties, close to Sean’s age. His attitude toward Sean was like most of the experienced officers in his new precinct. Cool. If an officer had any aspirations for promotion, it wasn’t prudent to get too chummy with a Costigan.

  Sean did a quick search, finding first a Colt automatic revolver holstered under one arm. Whoever had attacked Johnny had been quick, strong and experienced enough to take his street-smart victim off guard, or maybe he’d had some help. One bird to hold him and another to finish him off?

  A search of Johnny’s pockets turned up a gold lighter, a pack of Lucky Strikes and a keychain with four keys. More significant was what Sean didn’t find. A wallet. Could it be that one of the biggest crooks in New York had been killed in a random park robbery?

  Sean considered this for about two seconds. In his experience, there wasn’t that much poetic justice in the world. He reached over the body to retrieve a crumpled business card from the ground. The card read NEW YORK MORNING EXAMINER with an address on Broadway and a name penciled in neat Palmer script. The name sounded familiar. Was Johnny meeting some tabloid reporter?

  “Trixie Frank.” Sean replaced the card and addressed Harry. “Where’ve I heard that name before?”

  Harry’s brow furrowed. “Actress?”

  “Nah.”

  “Stripper?”

  “Nah...how about a reporter?”

  “Oh. I dunno. It rings a bell, though, don’t it?”

  “It does,” Sean agreed.

  Harry shrugged.

  Sean let it go for now and stood with a sigh. He was feeling something heavy in his gut, something that felt oddly like loss—not so much for the man John Murphy had become but more for some es
sential part of himself that had been left behind and could never be gotten back. “When the photographer gets here, make sure he gets a close up of that card.”

  “There’s more stuff over here,” Pete said, sweeping the beam of his flashlight over to a cluster of evergreen bushes.

  Sean examined the items. A child’s yo-yo, a stick of gum and some coins scattered on the ground around one of the larger shrubs. The bush itself had several broken branches, causing Sean to wonder if one of Johnny’s assailants had fallen during their struggle. As for the items on the ground, except for the coins, they looked more like park refuse than evidence.

  “Make sure the photographer gets that too,” Sean said.

  He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and walked the scene. There was nothing more to find. No footprints. It hadn’t rained in a week. The ground was hard, the grass stiff with glistening white frost.

  Sean switched his flashlight off. The time he had left in control here was dwindling. Already, a photographer had arrived and was unpacking his equipment and the medical examiner was en route. Once the identity of the victim was called in to Centre Street, the ADA on homicide duty would be alerted and more patrol cars would arrive. Sean’s brief reign would end.

  He turned his attention to the two witnesses that had found the body. Pulling his notepad from his pocket, he approached the young couple that waited on a bench by the pond. Between the shock of their discovery and the time that had passed since, the prodigious quantities of bathtub gin they’d consumed had begun to wear off. They now looked exactly like the bedraggled, hung-over pampered pups that they were.

  The third patrolman on the scene, Ed Garrett, met Sean halfway. “What have we got?” Sean asked.

  Garrett was nearly as new to the job as Pete Burgen, but he sported a tougher attitude. “The guy in the monkey suit is William Harris, a Yale boy. His pop’s one of them Wall Street hombres sits on his can all day counting heaps of dough.”

  Sean jotted down the name. “Address?”

  Garrett rattled off an address on Central Park West. “The skirt’s Edith Evanston, lives on Park Avenue. Looks like the baby high hats was having themselves a gay old time, hitting the uptown gin mills till they came across the stiff. The skirt saw it first.”