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Murder at the New York Library / Murder in Harlem / Murder in Central Park – Part 01

Leaving Little Italy behind, they headed north, gazing up at the Empire State Building towering against the winter sky. They parked the bicycle near Central Park and made their way to the majestic building resembling an ancient Greek temple.

The New York Public Library.

Victorique and Kazuya hurried up the wide stone steps, reminiscent of a stage set. Ancient Greek mythological statues above the main entrance looked down at them in various poses. The size of the building made their figures appear tiny as peas.

The sky darkened, and clouds began to gather. Migratory birds circled slowly overhead.

Inside was a floor as spacious as a gymnasium.

The ceiling depicted a blue sky, surrounded on all sides by large bookshelves. Wooden desks were occupied by diligent students and adults conducting research. Despite the crowd, the only sound was the flipping of pages. The silence was overwhelming.

However, unlike the Saint Marguerite Grand Library, where Victorique used to frequent, a secret sanctuary of European knowledge, this place—the sanctuary of knowledge of the New World—lacked the mustiness and eeriness. Instead, it was filled with fresh, positive air.

“Three weeks ago on Sunday, around noon,” Kazuya whispered while taking out his notebook.

Victorique nodded, holding her pipe in one hand.

“Nitti came to the library,” Kazuya began. “Apparently, he spent a lot of his weekends reading. As he passed through this corridor, boom! A bomb in his left pocket exploded, killing him instantly. According to the crime scene photo published in the newspaper, it was right here, Victorique. Whoa!”

“Oh? There’s still a little bloodstain remaining.”

“Yeah… So, Nitti was standing here when the bomb in his pocket exploded. His left hip was blown off, and his right side barely hung on as he fell backward. That matches the photo.”

“Hmm.”

Victorique was about to light her pipe, when a woman with short blonde hair emerged from behind a statue and snatched the pipe away. She seemed to be a librarian.

“No smoking allowed here! I’m confiscating this. You’ll get it back when you leave. Goodbye!” She turned away and briskly walked off.

Victorique shot Kazuya a glance—a silent instruction. Kazuya nodded and stopped the librarian.

“Excuse me. I’d like to ask about the gangster explosion incident.”

The librarian turned around, wagging her finger. “No interviews or gossip allowed either! My boss said not to talk about anything, even if I witnessed the incident.” She scurried away.

“You there!” Victorique called. She sounded irritated, likely because of her pipe.

“Hmm?”

“Take a look at my right hand.”

The librarian raised an inquisitive eyebrow and whirled around.

Victorique presented her with a private detective license issued by New York City. It displayed her name, Victorique de Blois, her date of birth, December 25, 1909, her office as Gray Wolf Detective Agency, and her address on the third floor corner of the Carousel at the edge of East Village. It also bore the signature of the mayor of New York City.

The librarian hesitated. “So what if you’re a detective? I said no interviews. I’m not telling you anything.”

“Now look at my left hand.”

“What?”

Victorique opened her chubby little left hand, revealing a bullet. An unfired bullet engraved with a banana. A bullet from a banana machine gun.

The librarian turned pale. Horrified, she took an instinctive step back. Her face clouded.

Victorique took another step forward, her silver hair gleaming and billowing out like an evil creature born from the darkness.

“Do you understand now? Oh, why so quiet? Allow me to kindly explain. I’m an unlucky private detective who was threatened by the Italian Mafia to investigate this case. In other words…”

“I-In other words?”

“If you don’t cooperate, I will tell on you to the Mafia.”

Though her tone suddenly turned childish, the librarian trembled. She hastily returned the pipe.

“I guess that would be worse than getting scolded by my boss.”

“Good girl.” Victorique nodded childishly.

The painting of the blue sky on the ceiling glimmered. The countless massive bookshelves seemed to quiver as if a wind blew past.

“Nitti—the gangster who exploded—used to come here every Sunday to read books or study,” the librarian began. She was hiding behind a bookshelf in the corner, squatting down to make herself small.

Victorique and Kazuya listened, hiding themselves too. Kazuya took notes and had his tie-pin camera ready.

The librarian lowered her voice. “Gangsters don’t belong in a library, so everyone kept their distance. So on that day, there weren’t many people who witnessed the explosion up close. I only saw it from a distance myself.”

“What kind of guy was he?”

“Kind of shy, I guess. Oh yeah, and he always had something in his pocket, making jingling sounds whenever he walked. Coins, keys, weapons, and cigarettes.”

“Ahuh, ahuh.”

“He liked a rare brand of cigarettes called African Style. They’re supposed to be expensive. He even wanted to smoke here, so I had to gather up the courage to tell him that smoking was not allowed.”

Nodding, Kazuya turned to Victorique. “So, Nitti used to put various things in his left pocket. And on that day, something in his pocket exploded and killed him, right?”

“Yes.”

“But what could have exploded? Was it planted by someone before he came to the library and then exploded here?”

“Ah!”

Suddenly, a boy’s scream sounded in Kazuya’s ear. Victorique turned sharply. Adults at the tables all turned to look, putting a finger to their lips and shushing angrily.

“What’s going on?” Victorique asked.

“It speaks!”

Another shush.

Standing in front of them was a refined young man. He wore a fine sweater and had a healthy complexion. Judging by the textbooks and notebooks tucked under his arm, he seemed to be a college student.

He stared at Victorique. “S-Sorry. I thought you were a ghost.”

“What did you say? You thought… I was… a ghost?” Victorique’s temper flared even higher.

To avoid being shushed again, the college student dropped his voice to a whisper. “This library has always had a lot of ghost stories. The famous one is about a lady ghost. I mistook you for that. Um, I’m sorry,” he apologized again, then walked away.

“What kind of ghost stories are there?” Victorique asked suspiciously.

“There are lots of them,” the librarian said, “but we librarians know they’re all just misinformation. Students like those kinds of things. That boy just now was from New York University. They’re here a lot during winter break… Oh, there’s another student.”

The librarian spotted another student, who was dressed similarly, approaching from the opposite direction and called out to him. The second student gave a start.

“What is it?”

“You were here the day the gangster exploded, so you must have witnessed the incident. Please cooperate with this detective.”

“D-Detective? Uh, okay…” Though he was visibly annoyed, he reluctantly agreed.

The second student was even more well-dressed than the boy earlier. He didn’t carry textbooks, only a thin notebook. Faint scars from healed cuts marked his chin and neck.

He scrutinized Kazuya’s modest attire from head to toe. Deeming him not an equal, the college student suddenly adopted a condescending tone.

“So? What do you wanna know?”

“The detective is this lady here,” Kazuya pointed out.

The college student glanced briefly at Victorique, his eyes widening in surprise at her beauty. Then, with apparent annoyance, he reluctantly pointed to the floor where the incident occurred and explained that there was a loud noise, and when he looked up, he saw a gangster lying around there.

“Did you see Nitti before the explosion?” Victorique asked.

“Oh… yeah, come to think of it, I did. He was squatting around that area.”

“Now that you mention it, I saw him too,” the librarian recalled. “He bent down once. I don’t know why, though.”

“He was tying his shoelaces. I was closer than you.”

“Oh, that’s all?”

“As to why I remember, I’ve had this weird habit since I was a kid. Whenever I see someone squatting, I have this strong urge to kick them from behind. It’s a pretty intense impulse. You get it, right?”

“No, I don’t.” The librarian shook her head. Kazuya looked perplexed.

“Whatever,” the student scoffed. “It has nothing to do with the case. Anyway, so I went along, and then boom! I didn’t see anything else. That’s enough, right?” With an air of annoyance, he strolled away.

As Kazuya puzzled over his notes, Victorique poked the librarian’s back with her pipe.

“Do you know the name of that college student?”

“Um, he’s Benny Sander, a sophomore at New York University. I remember because I’ve seen the borrowing slip. He’s from a wealthy family uptown. Always dressed in expensive clothes and drives a nice car.”

“Kujou, write down his name. Benny Sander.”

“Okay… But why?” Kazuya asked.

“Because he’s the culprit, obviously,” Victorique stated matter-of-factly.

Kazuya lifted his gaze up from his notebook. “H-How do you know? He’s just a witness, isn’t he?”

Victorique took out a crime scene photo from the files and pointed to Nitti’s foot.

“Take a good look, penguin boy.”

“Penguin boy? Me? Uh… well, whatever. What about his foot?”

“It was not a coincidence that Benny Sander was near Nitti when he exploded. He claimed Nitti bent down to tie his shoelaces. Even after the explosion, the head and feet of the corpse remained intact.”

“Oh!” Kazuya exclaimed, once again earning shushes from the surroundings. He quickly apologized and returned to the crime scene photo.

Victorique pointed to Nitti’s foot. He was wearing expensive loafers, shoes without shoelaces.

“Wh-What does this mean? So that guy was lying? Nitti didn’t bend down to tie his shoelaces, because he had no shoelaces to tie. But why would he lie?”

“Here’s my conjecture,” Victorique said, narrowing her green eyes. Her stunning silver hair shimmered as it sprawled on the floor, creating a vortex of otherworldly light. She sounded displeased. “Nitti bent down to pick something up. Now Kujou, in a public place, under what circumstances can you be absolutely sure that something on the floor belongs to you?”

“Hmm…”

“It has to be distinctive.”

“Ah, yeah!”

“For instance, if you found a typical necktie pin lying around, you’d simply assume it belonged to someone else. But if it was something like yours—a necktie pin with a built-in camera—then you would mistakenly pick it up, thinking it was yours.”

Kazuya nodded in agreement. “You’re right. Um, but in Nitti’s case, what would it be? It couldn’t have been a necktie pin.”

“Ugh, how are you so slow?”

Kazuya’s spirit sank. Victorique’s burgundy ruffles swelled as she grew even more overbearing.

“Nitti had a habit of putting everything in his pants pocket, didn’t he? Money, keys, weapons, and… cigarettes!”

“Oh!”

“He smoked a rare brand of cigarettes, yes?”

The librarian nodded.

“Imagine this. If a box of your favorite rare brand of cigarettes was lying there, wouldn’t you think, ‘Oh, maybe it’s mine’? You’d approach, bend down, and pick it up. Since cigarettes don’t bear the owner’s name, you’d assume it was yours and put it in your pocket. Then you’d start walking… and… boom! The bomb concealed in the cigarette box explodes.”

Kazuya looked towards where the college student had walked off. He stood up and turned to Victorique.

“Wait here. I’ll go take a picture of his face.”

He quickly adjusted his necktie pin and hurried off.