1

I drove up from Crown Heights on Atlantic Avenue, took a left toward Cobble Hill, and then parked at the bottom end of Bergen Street, six blocks over from Brooklyn Bridge. The alley where I was headed was a little way further down on the other side. It was as dark as misery and had just begun to rain, and I was stupidly wearing my best midnight-blue suit. I knew from bitter experience that this was no good place to be after dark, and certainly not good to come alone and dressed in your best midnight-blue suit.

I left the Chrysler half on the sidewalk and took shelter under a nearby plane tree. I pulled up my coat collar, lit a cigarette, and tried again to make some sense of things. I still couldn’t figure why Angelica Darnley would hang out in a neighbourhood like this. From the photos I’d seen she looked to be a fancy French food and iced blue cocktails kind of woman, with a shapely figure and legs that you could happily just sit and watch move around. She most definitely didn’t look like the kind of woman who’d spend time in McCarthy’s Bar.

But the locals I’d asked had said they’d seen her here several times over the past few weeks. The guy at the news stand said he’d last seen her here two days ago. She’d come out from the alley across the way and had sought help from a kid in blue bib overalls returning home from the Navy Yard. The kid had gone with her to the top of the street and had pointed the way to the trolley stop.

Old man Darnley, who was a bigshot in the money business and lived over on West 74th Street, had given me fifty up-front for expenses and I’d spent three days’ good shoe leather tracking down his little angel. She’d moved out of the family home just short of a month ago, he told me, and she was burning her allowance like dollars were out of fashion. He didn’t know where she was living, didn’t know who she was hanging round with, and didn’t know how she was spending all his money. The guy was spitting feathers and at the same time worried sick. His eldest daughter had gone off and left the year before, and now her kid sister had all but disappeared too. The cops had said they couldn’t really help. She was twenty-two-years-old and had left of her own accord. Jimmy Ryan, a homicide dick that I knew from Midtown, had suggested he come see me.

***

I looked around to check if I had company, crossed the street, and then went down the alley. There was a strong smell of beer and urine and a guy in a heap that I passed who was probably responsible. The red neon sign above the door to McCarthy’s was humming and spitting, and the s and apostrophe were flickering on and off.

When I got close, the door was opened a little and the smoke-filled light from inside framed a six-foot-six bulldog who’d obviously watched my approach through the spy hole. He had a busted nose and wore a suit that looked to be made for a man with a smaller chest.

“Members only,” he said, and he raised a hand the size of a small ham to block my advance.

I smiled playfully, waved a ten-spot, and asked if I could buy him a beer. He didn’t bite, but he growled a little, so I decided to play it straight. I was in no great rush to get rips in my best midnight-blue suit.

“I was hoping I might have a word with Mr Malone,” I said. “Here’s my card.” And I offered him my card.

He took the card, stared at it a while, like he knew how to read, and he then closed the door, with me still standing in the rain. I heard his every footfall as he tip-toed his bulk down the stairs to see if Malone was receiving visitors. I attempted a drag on my cigarette, discovered it was now dead and wet, and so tossed it and lit another.

A few minutes later, the bulldog returned. When he opened the door he stepped to the side and gestured with his head to indicate I could go in. When I was in, he closed the door again, patted down my back and sides to check I wasn’t carrying, and then descended the stairs behind me.

At the bottom of the stairs he grunted, or maybe said something - it was hard to tell which - and he nodded his head to point out Malone. He then slouched against the newel post and set-to with a match to pick his back teeth.

The air in the bar was warm, and stale, and layered with the blue haze of cigarette smoke. What little illumination there was came from a pair of dust-covered globe chandeliers and from strip lights concealed under the mirror-backed liquor shelves behind the bar. The floor area was just big enough for two couples to smooch and had pedestal tables arranged around it in half-circle booths. There were only three of the six booths that were occupied. Malone was sat in the one furthest from the bar. He was puffing on a cheroot and adding to the local atmosphere. He had a bottle of bourbon and a half empty glass in front of him, and Angelica Darnley sat alongside. Her naturally-waved, platinum blonde hair was loose about her shoulders and she was dressed in a black satin pant suit, with the jacket cut low and buttoned tight to show off her breasts. She wore a two-string pearl necklace and had a bracelet and drop earrings to match. She was every bit as sensuous as she’d appeared in the photos that old man Darnley had shown me, but she also looked nervous and tense.

Malone beckoned for me to go and join them. I acknowledged him with a nod, turned down my collar, got a Scotch and ice, and made my way over.

“What can I do for you?” Malone asked with a frown. But his sidelong glance at Angelica made clear he’d already guessed why I was there.

“Walter Darnley’s hired me to find and report on his daughter,” I replied. And I leaned over to the ashtray and flicked my cigarette. “When I asked around, I was told she’d been seen down this way a few times, so I figured she might have come in here and you might know.”

Angelica’s lips quivered a touch but she didn’t follow through and speak. Malone reached over, gave her hand a squeeze, took a sip of his bourbon, and smiled. It was quite the smuggest smile I’d seen in a while and I could cheerfully have slapped it off his face.

”Well, you were right,” he said, swirling the last bit of liquor round in his glass. “As you can see, Angel’s sat right here with me now. And she’s perfectly fine. So, you can go back to her old man and put his worried mind to rest.”

He reached over to hand me back my calling card but I didn’t reach to take it.

“I’m pretty sure Mr. Darnley would like to speak to his daughter in person,” I said. “Especially because he’d like to know where she’s living now and how it is she’s spending all his money.”

He started to tell me how Miss Darnley wanted nothing more to do with her father, but I cut him short. “I think I’d like to hear that straight from Miss Darnley,” I said.

After a little hesitation and a sideways look from Malone, Angelica spoke up. “I don’t want to see or speak to my father ever again,” she said.

“You’re sure about that?” I asked, and she nodded and quietly said “Yes”.

I fancied I saw fear in her eyes, but I couldn’t tell whether it was fear of me, or Malone, or the both of us.

“You heard the lady,” Malone said sharply.

“Dixie,” he called, “Miss van Buren is all done here now. Come take her out.”

The bulldog left the rest of his teeth for picking later and promptly came over. As he crossed the dance floor he pulled a Colt automatic from his waistband and waved it my general direction.

“You heard the man, lady,” he said, and he grabbed and pulled on my left arm, showing no respect for my best midnight-blue suit. I shrugged him off with enough force to cause him to turn toward me, slapped his gun hand away, brought my knee up hard into his soft parts, and then slammed the ashtray down on his head as he buckled. He fell to the floor and didn’t get back up.

When I switched my attention to Malone again his hand was resting at the table edge and he had a Smith and Wesson pointed at my stomach. “You need to back off, lady,” he said. “You got this all wrong. Go back to the old man and tell him Angel’s happy here with me. And tell him not to send any more mugs to get her.”

He waved the Smith and Wesson to indicate I take the stairs. I stepped over the sleeping bulldog and did so.

***

I stayed parked up in the Chrysler for a while just to see how things might develop. I waited maybe five minutes. There was no one came down the street and no one came out the alley, so I gunned the motor to life, turned it around, and headed back to my place.

When I got there, I kicked off my shoes, fixed myself a Scotch on ice, phoned Darnley, and told him I’d found his daughter. I told him where she was and I told him who she was with. He gave me thanks for my trouble and said I could now leave things with him. He said to let him know what he owed and he’d get his PA to drop a cheque round in the morning.

 2

A week and a half later I was resting-up after spending three long nights working a divorce job. I was perched on a rock on a stretch of silver sand and I had Jean Harlow there for company. She’d just let her white silk beach wrap fall from her shoulders and she was walking towards me wearing nothing but an inviting smile. Then the telephone rang and I woke with a jolt. It was a Lieutenant Garfield calling from Midtown.

“They just fished one out the East river,” he said, “Over by John Street Park. The kid who found the body says it could be the Darnley girl and Ryan figured you might want to meet me there to see.”

I said I’d meet him.

I took a thirty second cold shower, straightened my hair, and did my lips a little, put on yesterday’s clothes, a hat and a raincoat, and drove over.

When I got there the body was laid under a tarp on the waterfront walkway. Garfield was stood over with two patrolmen and a kid in blue bib overalls. I pulled up my coat collar, fought the wind to light a cigarette, and walked to join them.

“Okay to take a look?” I asked.

“Sure,” Garfield said, “but you might want to take a breath before you peek. Body’s been in the water a while and she was messed up pretty bad before they threw her in.”

I squatted down, tossed my cigarette aside, folded the tarp back, and looked.

He wasn’t wrong about the breath. It was Darnley’s daughter all right, but her eyes and face were as grey as cold ash and her lush blonde hair was matted and tangled with dried blood and weeds. She was naked, her throat had been cut right across, and her arms and chest were badly gashed too.

“Darnley’s daughter?” Garfield asked, and I nodded that it was.

 3

I left them by the waterside waiting on the meat-wagon. I drove back to my place to pick up some nine-millimetre insurance and then headed west again over to McCarthy’s. The place was all but empty when I arrived and the bulldog was holding the fort. When I tickled his chin with the snout of my Luger he told me Malone had just left. Said he had a meet with a guy over on the Upper West Side. I figured the meet was with old man Darnley.

***

I parked the Chrysler up on West End Avenue and walked back and round into West 74th Street. Darnley’s black sedan was parked in the alley that sloped down to the back of two-fifty-one, and Malone’s blue Plymouth was out on the street further up.

I edged my way along the alley with my back angled to the wall, keeping half an eye to my rear. There was a trade entrance into Darnley’s that was round the back of the building, with red tiled steps leading to a door at the top that was standing open. I went in Luger first and found myself in a well-lit, white-walled corridor. There were voices coming from somewhere up ahead of me, the louder of the two belonging to Malone.

At the end of the corridor, I mounted some more steps that took me up to the front ground floor level, up to a hallway that had two doors leading off. One led to a small kitchen area, and the other to a lounge with a picture window that looked onto a garden terrace at the rear.

When I got to outside the lounge door, Malone was still in full flow.

“… and they just lifted her out the East River,” he said as he finished. And Darnley didn’t reply.

Malone was by the door that I was tucked behind and he had his right arm extended with his Smith and Wesson fixed on Darnley. Darnley was over on the far side of the room, standing just to one side of a second door, between a roll top bureau and a leather recliner. There was an oil painting mounted on the wall behind him that showed him in profile. In the painting he wasn’t holding a pistol.

I decided it was high time I joined the meeting. I stepped from behind the door and backed into the near corner so that I could see Darnley and Malone both in front of me.

“Sorry, I’m late to the party, gentlemen,” I said, “I missed the early part of your discussion, so maybe you could humour me and run it again.”

I was looking over Malone’s way and had my Luger pointing in his direction when Darnley hit the floor facedown. Angelica Darnley was stood in the doorway behind him.

Malone lowered his gun, came over, and passed me the foolscap package he had in his other hand. “Take a look,” he said softly, “and then you’ll see why.”

I took the package, opened the ties, and pulled out an album. It had a black faux leather cover, with heavy cream vellum pages, and the initials WJD embossed on the front and spine. It was the kind of album that might hold wedding pictures or pictures of family holidays, birthdays, and other happy celebrations. But this one was a whole lot different. It just had skin prints. Page after page of skin prints. They showed two naked little girls, two older naked girls, two naked young women. It was the same two individuals all the way through. Two platinum blondes who were good-looking sisters. One of them I’d just seen lying dead on the East River waterfront, and the other was now standing and shaking, and holding a pearl-handled pistol over the man she’d just shot and killed. A man who was sick in the head and should never have been blessed with daughters.

(Winner of the Rory Gallagher Crime Fiction competition, 2021. First published in The Ronin Express, Volume 10; available on Amazon.)