Oh Danny Boy (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #5)

“Well, your first job is to help me get Daniel out of jail. Take a seat and let’s think this through.”


He sat, his big frame too large for the chair, which creaked as he lowered himself onto it. I meanwhile took a dishcloth from Daniel’s kitchen and started mopping up the spilled water. Sometimes physical work helps with thinking, I’ve found.

“Now you and Daniel were planning this fight. How far along in the planning were you?”

“He was getting some guys to put up money and find us a place the police wouldn’t raid.”

“The list in the envelope was of potential backers for the fight,” I said. “So which gang was organizing it?”

He scratched his head, looking like an overgrown monkey at the zoo. “I don’t think he ever told me the name of the gang. He just said some guys he knew were going to get it set up.”

“He never mentioned the Eastmans, for example?”

“He may have done. The name don’t mean nothing to me. I’m not from New York.”

“And had you fixed where the fight was going to take place?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I think they got the place fixed. Out on some island.”

“Some island?” That certainly narrowed it down—anywhere along the Atlantic Coast.

“An island close to New York City?”

“Oh yeah. Just outside the city, Daniel said.”

The only islands I knew about were Blackwell’s in the East River, home of a female prison institution; Ellis, home of the immigration depot; and the small rock on which the Statue of Liberty stood. Hardly suitable sites for an illegal boxing match. “Staten Island?” I asked, remembering another name I had heard.

He shook his head. “It wasn’t that one.”

“Try to think, Jack. You want to get Daniel out of jail, don’t you?”

He screwed up his eyes. “Some animal,” he said at last. Then a beaming smile transformed his ugly face, making me see that he had once been rather handsome. “Coney Island, that was it.”

“Coney Island, of course,” I said. As I said the words, I remembered going there once with Daniel, during those blissful days before I found out the truth about Arabella. I wrenched my mind back from a clear image of riding the roller coaster with Daniel’s arm holding me tightly around my shoulders. “Now we’re getting somewhere. So the fight was going to be on Coney Island. Do you know when?”

He shook his head. “They had to wait until they got enough backers to come up with the money.”

Obviously that had been what Daniel had been working on. I got to my feet and went through to the kitchen again to wring out the rag in the sink. “I wonder whether any of the New York gangs have influence as far away as Coney Island?” I said, thinking out loud rather than talking to Jack. He obviously knew no more than I did. “It might have been a member of an entirely different gang that Daniel was meeting that day. We’ll have to ask him before we do anything.”

“I did meet one guy,” Jack said, as I came back into the room. “Daniel took me to meet him. Funny-looking little thing, he was. Comical, you’d say. Crazy about birds. Had a stupid live pigeon sitting on his shoulder.”

“Monk Eastman!” I said, feeling a chill of fear shoot through me. “He’s not as comical as he looks. He’s the head of the Eastman gang. So you met with Monk. That must mean that the Eastmans are at least involved. Do you remember where this meeting took place?”

Jack frowned with concentration again then shook his head. “I don’t know my way around the city that well. When I came to fight last time, I stayed at the Astoria. I had money then. I was world champ.”

It was like pulling teeth. I was getting more and more tired and frustrated. Suddenly it occurred to me that I hadn’t had lunch yet, and it must be well past lunchtime.

I got up. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving,” I said. “Does Daniel have any food in the house?”

“He had some but I’ve eaten most of it,” Jack said. He followed me into the kitchen. The pantry shelves were indeed bare. There was a small wedge of cheese under a glass dome, some shriveled onions and carrots, and half a loaf of bread. “It will have to be bread and cheese then,” I said.

It was edible, barely, but it stopped the sick feeling of hunger.

“I’ll tell Mrs. O’Shea, the landlady, that you’re staying here,” I said. “Maybe we can ask her to bring in more supplies when she does her own shopping.”

“I’d be much obliged, miss. I need to keep my strength up right now if I’m going to fight. I usually have a dozen eggs at a time and steaks the size of a dinner plate.”