Page 17 of The Six Murders of Daphne St Clair

Chapter Twelve

DAPHNE: The story will really pick up now that I’ve gone to New York. Have you been there?

RUTH: Yeah, a few times.

DAPHNE: Don’t you love it? Wouldn’t you just kill to be a New Yorker?

RUTH: I don’t know. It just seems so expensive there. And cold. Honestly, I think some people use living in New York as a substitute for a personality.

DAPHNE (annoyed): Well, what would you know? You’re from Florida .

RUTH: And you’re from Canada .

DAPHNE: Oh, I see, Miss Liberal PC thinks I should go back to my own country! I’m from New York. If you live in the city for more than ten years you can call yourself a New Yorker. Well, I lived there for fifty years. If that was a marriage, we’d have celebrated our golden wedding anniversary.

RUTH: So, a lot longer than your real marriages. . .

DAPHNE: That’s because New York never disappointed me.

It never got boring. I always knew I’d end up there.

When I was growing up, people used it to mean the opposite of Lucan.

They would criticize the new music playing at a dance or a teacher’s fashion sense by complaining that this wasn’t New York City.

They were saying New York had no morals but all I heard was that it was nothing like Lucan.

Then I got to Winnipeg and discovered that cities, like men, aren’t equally good.

I wanted somewhere bigger, better, a place that really mattered .

I wanted somewhere I could become myself.

RUTH: God, you could write the tourism ads for New York.

DAPHNE: They couldn’t afford me.

RUTH: So, what did you do when you got to the city?

DAPHNE: I found work in a factory and a place to live. Both were terrible but I was relieved to be able to take care of myself. I wasn’t planning on finding another Ted ever again. . .

[Daphne chuckles, a dry laugh like a smoker’s cough.]

RUTH: What’s funny?

DAPHNE: Well, I did find another Ted, in a way.

My first apartment in New York was a shithole in Brooklyn, the kind of place even rats would consider rock bottom.

There was a family that lived next door, the Flanagans, although the walls were so thin, we might as well have been shacking up.

Every dinner conversation, every ad on their radio, I could hear it all.

And well, what I heard sounded awful familiar. . .

RUTH: The Flanagans, huh, so tell me more about them. It was an abusive home?

DAPHNE: The dad, Frankie Flanagan, was a real piece of shit.

He had three kids, all under eight, and he hit everyone he could get his hands on: the wife, the kids, and if he could have punched through a wall I’m sure he would have got me too.

From the moment he came home from work, all you would hear was the screaming, the crying, and the hittin’.

He was meaner than a rattlesnake, as awful sober as he was drunk.

RUTH: That must have been disturbing.

DAPHNE: Well, it certainly made sleep hard.

I’d lie in bed at night and just grind my teeth, having to listen to all that misery.

I’d come to New York to escape my problems and now I was getting a daily reminder from a two-bit thug who couldn’t keep his shit together long enough to listen to Gunsmoke .

RUTH: Did you ever talk to the wife?

DAPHNE: No, I don’t know what I would have said anyways.

Sylvia Flanagan was just this scrawny little thing.

Always scurrying around, scared half to death.

And the kids were miserable. I never saw one of them smile.

But I knew she wasn’t going to leave him.

He was always yelling at her: ‘If you try to leave, I’ll kill the kids and then I’ll kill you.

’ And Frankie Flanagan was crazier than a shithouse rat so I believed him.

RUTH: How did it end? Do you know?

DAPHNE: How do you think? There’s a reason I’m tellin’ you this story, and it’s not for my health!

RUTH: You killed him? You killed Frankie Flanagan?

DAPHNE: You know, Bible-thumpers say that everyone has to atone for their sins on Judgment Day so I decided to get Mr. Flanagan in front of God a little faster, before he killed one of those kids.

RUTH: You have a thing about bad fathers, don’t you? You always seem to mention if you think a man was a bad husband or a bad father. But is that enough to justify killing them? People are complicated; most people do some good things and some bad things.

DAPHNE: I’m sorry, are we talking about Frankie Flanagan still? Because from what I saw, he didn’t do a lick of good for anyone.

RUTH: I just meant more generally. Is that something that motivates you? Do you see yourself as some kind of avenger?

DAPHNE: This is a little left-field. I’ve never thought about it like that.

RUTH: Well it’s a simple question: do you see yourself as using murder as a way to achieve some kind of justice?

DAPHNE: Maybe I’m just a fan of the underdog. And sometimes that underdog is a battered wife and kids. And sometimes it’s me.

RUTH: Okay, so you heard a man abusing his wife and kids daily, even threatening to kill them. Why didn’t you just call the police? No one would even have to know it was you.

DAPHNE: Yeah right. Like the cops gave two shits what a man got up to in his own home in the Fifties.

I don’t know that it’s much different now.

Did you see that article in the paper this morning about the guy who murdered his ex-wife?

She did everything right: wrote down license plates, logged phone calls, got a restraining order, and yet when she called the cops to tell them he was hanging around the neighborhood, did they go out right away?

Nope. And by the time they did, he’d already stabbed her to death in front of her son.

RUTH: Welcome to Florida. The cops cause more murders than they solve.

DAPHNE: You sure don’t like the boys in blue! What’s the story? You get busted for something? Jaywalking or streetwalking?

RUTH: No, I have a problem with a police force with a history of racism, police brutality, and corruption. Unlike you, I don’t make everything about my own experiences.

DAPHNE: All right, all right, I was just joking. Jesus, I didn’t know you could find a snowflake in Florida!

RUTH: Look, let’s just move on. I wanted to ask you about the podcast title.

I was thinking I could change the title to reflect the number of murders the podcast features.

So, we’d be on The Two Murders of Daphne St Clair now and I’d just keep revising it as we go.

Unless you’d be willing to give me the full number of people you killed now?

Maybe a little preview of their names and locations?

DAPHNE: Now where’s the fun in that? Don’t rush the story. But I like your idea for the title. Go with that.

RUTH (sighs): So, what happened to Frankie Flanagan?

One day, I was up at 6 a.m. to go to work.

I was working in a textile factory in the Garment District then, a hot, noisy place that gave me a sore back and buzzing ears.

I was walking down the steps of my local subway station when I saw him, just ahead of me.

Frankie Flanagan, probably off to unload deliveries at the bar where he worked.

He had thinning blond hair the same color as his grayish skin and the muscular body of a brawler.

His oldest son was with him and even though he was around eight, I was certain his dad would be forcing him to haul heavy kegs for a little cash in hand, child safety be damned.

I’d never met Frankie. I’d only ever seen him from afar, but I already hated him. Night after night, hearing the violence he meted out set my heart racing and had me smoking cigarette after cigarette to soothe my nerves.

I walked behind them as they entered the station and continued down to the same platform I used.

He wasn’t even talking to his son. The only time he acknowledged his existence was when the boy wasn’t walking fast enough, and he grabbed him by the collar of his coat and shoved him forward.

The boy barely reacted, as if this was a normal way to treat someone.

The platform was busy with the usual morning crush and the air was murky with cigarette smoke.

Frankie pushed his way to the front of the crowd, throwing elbows and forcing himself past old women and young families.

He was pushing his son in front of him while I followed behind, moving through the spaces his large body left.

I was mesmerized by his hands, so thick and meaty, with red-raw knuckles.

Being hit by one of those must have felt like being hit by a train.

Frankie and his son ended up at the very front, although I noticed his son drift a few feet away from his dad, just out of reach of those balled-up fists.

I stood behind Frankie, staring hard at the back of his thick neck.

It was so crowded that my face was just inches from him.

A train was coming, one that didn’t stop here.

I could hear that unmistakable rumbling and screeching from inside the tunnel like a great beast stirring in its den.

Frankie saw me looking at him, turned to face me, and curled his lip in disgust. “What the fuck—” But it was too late.

My hand shot out and pushed him, so quickly that no one even noticed.

His eyes widened as he fell backwards, still staring at my face as the train hit him, pulverizing him.

The train tried to brake. The people around us screamed and shouted, so I did as well.

Then I looked over at the boy. He was standing with his mouth gaping and his eyes pinned on me. I could see a bruise above his left eyebrow that had faded to a yellow-green. He looked small and alone as the station platform erupted in noise and chaos.

And then I smiled at him.