Oh Danny Boy (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #5)

The next day was Sunday. I woke to the sound of church bells and lay listening to the evocative sound, which reminded me so sharply of home. It had been a long time since I’d attended church. Would it be wicked of me to go now and pray for a miracle? If anyone needed prayers at the moment it was myself, and Daniel, of course. I dressed and headed to Saint Joseph’s on Sixth Avenue, a stone’s throw away. I’d passed it many times but I regret to say that I’d never set foot inside. Now I entered into the cool, incense-laden darkness and found a mass in progress. The murmur of the priest’s voice seemed to blend with the smoke from the incense, giving the interior a hazy, unreal quality. Fractured light from stained-glass windows fell in colored stripes on the floor. I knelt in an empty back pew and tried to pray. It had been so long. The familiar childhood prayers came back to me. I muttered an Our Father and a Hail Mary, but they didn’t seem enough somehow. Did I really believe in any of this?—that was the question.

“If you’re up there, God, and you can really hear me, I need your help right now,” I muttered.

The priest had stepped to the lectern. “The wages of sin is death,” he proclaimed.

I stood up, as if he had struck me. Why hadn’t I realized this before? I had sinned. I was being punished. Simple as that. I fled from the church without looking back.

Coney Island was my destination for the day. I would concentrate on my assignment and keep more disturbing thoughts at bay. I boarded a crowded tram across the Brooklyn Bridge and it was only when I was standing on the platform of the Brooklyn, Flatbush, and Coney Island Railroad that I realized what I might be in for. I had been out to the seashore once or twice before, but never on a weekend. It seemed that most of the population of Manhattan had the same idea. The platform was a seething mass of humanity. When the train finally arrived, I was swept aboard with everyone else. I wasn’t lucky enough to get a seat and was packed like a sardine between a bony child sucking a lollypop and a large Italian lady who smelled strongly of un-washed body and garlic. I closed my eyes, tried to shut off my sense of smell, and pictured myself running along the cliffs at home with the fresh tang of seaweed in my nostrils.

It was only by grim determination that I made it as far as the terminal stop at Brighton Beach. I caught a glimpse of the ocean as I stood at the top of the ironwork steps. People poured from the station in a great tide. I stood to one side as they swept past me and I tried to get my bearings. They were obviously headed for the beach and the amusement parks. Now I heard shrieks competing with hurdy-gurdy music, confirming in which direction the beach and amusement parks lay. Within minutes the crowd had disappeared, leaving a young, sad-faced rail employee to sweep up their litter before the next invasion.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said—although he was younger than I and didn’t deserve the title—“in which direction is the racetrack?”

He gave me a quick once-over glance. “There’s no racing today, lady,” he said. “Too hot for the horses.”

“But where would the racetrack be if I wanted to take a look at it?”

He sniffed, went to wipe his nose on the back of his sleeve, and thought better of it. “There’s three of ’em,” he said. “Sheepshead’s over dat way, Gravesend’s in the other direction, and Brighton’s just across de Gut on de other side of the railway.”

Brighton—I thought that was the name Daniel had mentioned.

“So the Brighton track is close by?”

“Yeah, like I said. Under the railroad. Across the Gut.”

Daniel had warned me against the Gut, and it definitely sounded unsavory, but it was broad daylight, after all. I thanked the young man, who touched his cap to me and looked expectantly at my purse, as if he thought he might be paid for giving such vital information. Instead he got a smile as I hurried under the iron supports of the elevated track.