It Had to Be You

by Delynn Royer

  He dismissed this idea immediately. Hell, no. She was a good-looking dame, and he was a man with perfectly normal needs. It only followed that he might slip up every so often. Lots of guys did. Especially if that guy was working too much.

  Yeah.

  And the girl was one hot tomato.

  He closed his eyes. Ah, geez.

  By the time Danny emerged from the bathroom, Sean knew what he had to do. He had to apologize to Trixie, explain that he’d made a mistake, and pretend like it never happened.

  “So, what kinda cop are you, anyhow?”

  Danny’s mouth was set in a determined line. His tousled hair was wet from his bath and—aside from his clothes, which still retained a respectable layer of dirt—he now emitted a delicate aroma of rosewater and soap. Poor kid.

  “I’m a detective.”

  “What’s a tective?”

  “We solve murders.”

  Danny cocked his head. “So...if a fella gets hisself plugged, you find the fellas that did it?”

  “Exactly.”

  His brow furrowed. “But don’t you ever get scared you’ll get plugged too?”

  There was no point in lying. This kid could smell one a mile off. “Sometimes.”

  Danny was measuring Sean, deciding whether to trust him. That was okay. Sean had already decided before meeting Danny that he liked him. They had a lot in common. They’d grown up on the same streets and both had never known their fathers, although for different reasons. Danny’s father had been incarcerated and Sean’s father had been killed on the job.

  There was another difference too. Sean had his mother and uncle to look after him. Danny had neither. It was a hell of a big difference, and it led Sean to decide that he wouldn’t push the boy. He’d wait for as long as it took, and if Danny didn’t want to talk, Sean would find another way to make his case.

  Sean sat on Trixie’s bed and waited.

  Danny climbed up to sit beside him. For a while they listened to the muffled sounds from neighboring apartments, footsteps, the indistinct chatter of a radio, a gush of water rushing through some pipes overhead.

  “What did you see that night, Danny?”

  “Do I have to say?”

  “No.”

  Danny peered up at him doubtfully. “No?”

  “I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, but I think you saw something terrible that night, and I think you’ll feel better if you tell me about it.”

  Danny blinked several times and frowned.

  “It’ll also be a big help to me,” Sean added. “It’s up to you.”

  Danny looked back down at his hands. For a long time, he said nothing, then, “I was sitting near the park when I seen this fella cross the street...”

  Sean listened without interrupting as Danny described the incidents that followed. The two men who had overpowered Johnny and left him for dead, the moment when Danny saw both the assailants’ faces in the glow of a street lamp, Johnny’s last, seemingly nonsensical words. Key. Egan. Nell. Feeuhraw.

  The last word didn’t sound like English. Sean knew a little Gaelic—probably about as much as Johnny. He took a stab at it. “Fíorghrá?”

  Danny nodded. “What’s it mean?”

  “True love.”

  “That don’t make sense.”

  Sean agreed. While it was possible that a selfish crumb like Johnny might profess his love for his estranged wife with his last breath, why mix that with some cryptic message about his brother Egan and a key? Had Johnny still been lucid, or had he lost so much blood that his last words were no more than the rantings of a dying brain?

  “Tell me what the two men looked like,” Sean prompted. “Did you see the color of their hair?”

  “They had hats.”

  Sean ran down a list of questions to prod Danny’s memory. How tall were they? Were they bigger or smaller than the victim? Heavy? Thin? Light-skinned? Dark? Did he hear their voices? Soon, Sean had elicited a rough child’s description. One was taller than John Murphy, the other about the same height. The tall one was big around the shoulders and darker than his fair-skinned companion. Both were clean shaven.

  The descriptions were too vague to be sure of anything, but Sean was reminded of Little Arnie Cavanaugh, who was a big guy with dark hair. Arnie wasn’t very smart, but he was no stranger to violence.

  “Would you recognize them if you saw them again?” he asked.

  “Sure. I already did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Saw one outside the newspaper building.”

  Sean searched the boy’s face for any signs of dissembling. Even this tough little boy might feel a need to embellish to impress an adult. Yet Danny had mentioned this man to Trixie. Was he one of Johnny’s killers? That made no sense. Why would Johnny’s killers be hanging around the McClintock Building?

  Sean focused on Danny intently. “When?”

  “I dunno. The other morning.”

  “Which man did you see?”

  “The big one.”

  “Are you sure it was him?”

  Danny appeared for the first time uncertain. He shifted his position. “It looked like him.”

  Sean laid a hand on Danny’s arm to let him know it was all right. He didn’t want the boy holding back, especially with his next question. “Did you take anything that night at the park before you ran away?”

  The boy swallowed hard. “Like what?”

  “Danny, you and I both know that stealing is wrong, but this time you won’t get into trouble. I need the truth.”

  Danny’s gaze didn’t flinch but two spots of pink bloomed on his cheeks. “It ain’t like he needed it. What’s a stiff gonna need with all that scratch?”

  “You took some money?”

  “It was just sitting there.”

  “You still have it?”

  “Mmmm, yeah.”

  “Where?”

  Danny reached deep into the pocket of his knickers and produced a brown leather billfold.

  Sean accepted the billfold and flipped it open. Inside he found eighty-five dollars, Johnny’s driver’s license, a photograph of Nell that looked ten years old and...a key.

  Sean shook the key out from where it was tucked between two crisp twenty dollar bills. A set of four keys had been found on Johnny’s body the night he’d died, keys that had later been matched to his apartment at the Plaza, Nell’s place and one of his nightclubs. This key, though, was too small to be a door key. Why had Johnny tucked this one into his wallet and none of the others?

  Sean looked up to see Danny staring hard at the billfold, angry tears welling in his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  Danny shook his head, either refusing or unable to speak.

  Then Sean knew. It was the cash.

  To a boy living on the streets, eighty-five dollars was food in his belly for months. Sean had no intention of allowing this child to return to his old life, but Danny didn’t know that. He pulled the bills from the wallet and offered them. “Take it.”

  Danny blinked, clearly surprised. So surprised in fact that his natural suspicion of unsolicited kindness didn’t kick in. Before it could, Sean pressed. “Take it. You told the truth. You know what a finder’s fee is?”

  Danny swiped at his eyes with his shirtsleeve. “What?”

  “It’s like a reward. Take it.”

  Danny took the bills and shoved them in his pocket.

  Hearing a sound, Sean looked to see Trixie standing in the open archway. How much had she heard?

  Enough. He saw that much in her eyes. He replaced the key in the billfold and slipped the billfold into his coat pocket. “Danny, I want you to do something for me.”

  “What?”

 
“Stay here with Miss Frank for a while. Don’t leave. Don’t even go outside. Do you think you can do that?”

  “For how long?”

  “A day, maybe two.”

  “That’s too long.”

  Sean couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, I know, pal, but it would help me out a lot.”

  It took some cajoling to convince him, but Sean finally extracted a solemn promise, sealed with a manly handshake, to stay put.

  Sean signaled to Trixie that he wanted to talk to her alone. “Danny, why don’t you go see what’s on the radio?”

  The boy looked curious but went with no protest into the next room. Trixie approached. “So what now?”

  Sean was undecided. The boy was an eyewitness. He couldn’t keep that to himself for long, but Nell’s words, uttered over the table at Bickford’s with regard to her own safety, rang ominously true to him now. It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s everyone else, the boys in your department, people you’d never suspect. You don’t know any more than I do who’s in bed with who.

  No doubt Danny had been traumatized by what he’d witnessed. He could have easily seen someone later who resembled one of Johnny’s assailants and imagined it was the same man.

  But...what if not?

  Sean couldn’t dismiss the possibility. Trixie worked in the McClintock Building and the fact that her card had been found at the scene had not been released to the press. Only those with access to the police reports would know it. Was there really a leak? Agent Stuckey had suspected that it was leaked information that had led to Johnny’s murder in the first place.

  “I think we need to sit tight for now,” Sean said. “Keep an eye on him.” What he really thought was that he needed to keep an eye on her as well as the boy.

  “Do you think he saw one of the killers around my office?” She looked almost as troubled as he was at the thought.

  “It’s not likely, but it might be a good idea for you to lay low too.”

  Her eyes widened. “What? But I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She seemed taken aback by the question. “Well—well, I’m in the middle of a big story.”

  He didn’t bother to disguise his annoyance. “And you think if you’re not dogging my heels every second that I’ll cut you out of your scoop?”

  “But I’m scheduled to cover the wake tonight.”

  “Can’t someone else do that?”

  “Of course someone else could do it! Do you know how many more experienced reporters Julius could put on this? If I pull out now—”

  “Who’s going to look after the boy?” Sean cut in, envisioning her exposing herself to God-only-knew how many suspects at the Murphy wake.

  Trixie’s brow furrowed as she thought about it. He hoped her feminine maternal instincts would trump her unfeminine journalistic ambitions, but no such luck. She brightened. “Mrs. Liebowitz.”

  “She’s got to be at least seventy.” It was the first objection that came to his mind. He knew it was weak.

  “So what? She’s capable of taking care of a child for a few hours. After that, we can think of something better. Maybe I can get a wire to my father. He’s out of town now, but the house on the island is staffed. Danny would be taken care of, and no one would think of looking for him there.”

  Of course she would have at her disposal all of the resources that her daddy’s money could buy. It was a sharp, surprisingly unpleasant reminder of who she was. “I don’t know,” he said, searching for a good reason to nix it.

  “Unless you have any better ideas?” She’d neatly turned his own question back on him.

  Sean weighed his options. He could take Danny with him to headquarters, have him put into protective custody, but until he knew for sure who to trust, he was reluctant to do that.

  Yet neither could he keep this news from Carter. To hide the fact that there was now an eyewitness was too big. It could make the difference between indicting an innocent man or a guilty one. But if he told Carter about Danny, would Carter agree to keep Danny under wraps? Sean thought so if he made a good enough case for it.

  “All right,” he said finally.

  “Yeah? Really?”

  “For now.” He was irritated to be boxed into a corner, but he had to make the best of it. Unlike the day when Carter’s man had broken into Trixie’s empty apartment, this was the weekend. The neighborhood was busy and the rooming house was full of tenants. Danny was as safe here as he would be anywhere—but it still wouldn’t hurt to have someone keep an eye on the place. Someone not a cop.

  Sean kept this last thought to himself and turned his mind to more practical matters. “Danny will need some clothes.”

  “And if we can’t go out, we’ll need food,” Trixie said. “I don’t keep much around and I hate to impose again on Mrs. L.”

  “Okay.” He glanced at his watch then moved for the door. “Anything else?”

  Trixie followed him out to the living room where Danny sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the radio cabinet. “Well, uh, yes.”

  Hearing guilt, Sean paused. “Yeah?”

  Her expression was pained. “I should have mentioned this before.”

  “What is it?”

  “I told Detective Carter that I gave my business card to...” She indicated Danny with a slight tip of her head.

  Sean looked at Danny, who was bright enough to have caught the change in Trixie’s tone. He peered at them now, alert.

  Sean reached for his fedora. It was inevitable that she would have to tell Carter sooner or later. “It’s okay.”

  “Good.” She looked as if she was waiting for him to say something else. Without meaning to, Sean noticed again how beautiful she looked.

  “So, I guess you’ve got to go,” she said.

  Her statement cut off his latest train of thought and that was a good thing. He needed to put the matter of their kiss to rest. “Listen,” he said, “about that.” He cast a glance at Danny to see the boy still watching. “The thing,” he finished lamely.

  Trixie stared at him, blank. “Thing?”

  “The thing.” Sean pointed in the general direction where their indiscretion had taken place. He could still imagine the taste of her lips and the vulnerable softness of her breasts pressing against him.

  It took a few seconds for his meaning to dawn on her, but when it did, her eyes widened. “Oh! The thing.”

  “Yeah. Listen, I shouldn’t have—I mean, it shouldn’t have happened. I was out of line. You’re part of a case, and—”

  “Oh, golly.” Trixie flapped a dismissive hand. “Heck, Detective, I forgot all about it. Happens all the time.”

  “It does?”

  “Sure.”

  “Really?” Sean eyed her skeptically.

  “Surrre. I’m no prude. The newspaper racket is crawling with men. This is 1924. A girl can pretty much take her pick.” She gave him a bright smile.

  “Geez. It’s a wonder you get any work done.”

  “Yes, well...” She brushed a loose strand of hair from her face and looked away. “You get used to it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You betcha.”

  “You have a fella?” Sean blurted the question before he had a chance to think better of it. He was certain she was lying about jumping all over her male colleagues like they lived on one big happy puppy farm, but it was entirely possible she had a boyfriend. More than possible. She was a beautiful girl and loaded too.

  Trixie’s smile froze on her lips. “A fella? Well...suurrrre.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “His name? Finn.”

  “Finn?”

  “Finnian MacDougle.”

  Sean was used to being lied to. People lied to him all the time. In fact
, he operated on the assumption that everyone lied. Everyone. But then, occasionally, he ran across a nervous truth-teller. They were rare, but they never failed to foul up his bullshit detector.

  Trixie was fouling up his bullshit detector.

  “MacDougle, huh?”

  The name didn’t sound like blueblood. Then again, who could tell for sure? New money? Sean pictured an older version of William Harris—the witness he’d questioned the night of Johnny’s murder. Yale Boy. The kind of guy who sailed through life thinking he could buy anything he wanted. Even people.

  “Okay,” he said stiffly. “I gotta go.” He yanked the door open harder than he meant to.

  “When will you be back?”

  Sean stepped out into the hall. “Later.”

  “Before the wake?”

  He stopped, sighed and looked back at her. “Yeah, yeah, right. Until then, keep the shades drawn, keep him inside, and yourself too.”

  “Okay.” She gave him a tentative smile.

  “And don’t forget. This is off the record.”

  Her smile faded. “What?”

  “Danny. All of this. Off the record. You can’t tell anyone but Mrs. Liebowitz, and as far as she’s concerned, he’s your nephew. You follow?”

  Her expression hardened. “Yeah, sure. Eggs in the coffee, Detective.”

  He didn’t give her a chance to say anything more. He left and didn’t look back.

  * * *

  Sean waited in the squad room outside Carter’s office twenty minutes before the door opened and Grottano stepped out, giving him a smirk that said Sean’s hind quarters were good and thoroughly cooked.

  Carter appeared in the doorway, looking sore and tired. Brown-nosing the higher ups and running an investigation the size of the Murphy case at the same time was apparently taxing.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Carter slammed the door after Sean stepped inside. He was steamed, all right. His Dorchester accent was as thick as soup—not an “r” in sight.

  Sean kept his tone calm. “Didn’t you get my message?”

  “Yeah. Following a lead, but I ain’t seen nothing yet. Where’s Nell Murphy?”

  “She’s safe. I’m taking her to the wake tonight. After that, she’ll come in for questioning but she wants protection.”