“Unfortunately, I really never got to know my mother. Her pregnancy and delivery had been a hard one for a woman of her age, and she never fully recovered. So I was little more than a toddler when we lost her.”
“Oh, what a hard blow for a wee lad,” Maggie said, and touched my arm.
“No, no, that’s all right. As I said, I really don’t remember her, though I used to humor Dad on occasion when he began reminiscing. Actually, I had an embarrassingly happy childhood, doted upon by three bumbling bachelors — Dad, Sherlock, and Mycroft.”
“I still say it’s a bit sad,” Maggie looked into my face to catch my eye. “Don’t you think a boy needs a mother?”
I shrugged my shoulders nonchalantly. “Well, through the years, I was intermittently taken under the wing of various nanny types, but I don’t remember any of them. Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock’s housekeeper, was the closest thing I ever had to a mother figure. She spoiled me a bit, I have to admit.” Maggie’s face brightened at this, and she chuckled softly. I was glad, because the conversation had been taking a much-too-serious turn.
“I must say, my father did a heroic job of raising me, and Sherlock and Mycroft assisted in their own way. If there is anything I care to fault Dad for in my upbringing, it might be that he—understandably—was a bit overprotective.”
“How so?”
“Well, Sherlock would have been happy to tell me all about his latest case, oblivious of the fact that certain of the more violent details might not be appropriate for my tender ears. But I sometimes think Dad went a little too far the other way. They rarely discussed any of their adventures in my presence, and I rather resented it. Sherlock seemed to consider me a bit of a nuisance most of the time.”
Maggie stopped on the sidewalk and crossed her arms. “Now, Thomas, I think you’re being a bit unfair to Mr. Holmes.”
“Oh, it’s quite true. Sherlock told me so himself—later, that is. You see, the Holmes brothers, and my father as well, eventually discovered that annoying little boys tend to grow up—hopefully—into not-so-annoying young men. Once I entered the London School of Journalism, I was invited to be a part of the deliberations over the various cases they were wrestling with. And, unlike my father, I feel that I often caught at least the ragged edge of Mr. Holmes’ reasoning, though I cannot say that I solved any mysteries. Ah, here’s our first stop: the bank.”
I laughed to myself as I thought about how the check from my father’s estate would balloon my miniscule savings account, but I wondered if I would have any difficulty depositing it, since it came from a London bank. Sure enough, the teller directed us to be seated in a waiting area. Maggie graciously offered to wait in the outer lobby, but I asked her to stay with me.
Not many minutes had passed before a distinguished man twice my age approached us. “Ah, yes, Mr. Watson, we’ve been expecting you,” he said, identifying himself as Mr. Phipps, the branch manager. “Please come into my office.” I promised Maggie I would be back as soon as possible and walked into the office wondering what could possibly be the problem.
“Mr. Watson, I want to extend my condolences on the death of your father,” Mr. Phipps said, motioning for me to sit down in a luxurious leather chair. “We will have the check deposited in your account immediately, with the funds exchanged into American dollars.” He opened a polished wood box on his desk. “May I offer you a cigar?”
“Ah, no, thank you, Mr. Phipps.” I sat up a bit higher in the chair. “May I ask how you know about my father?”
The gentleman behind the desk raised his eyebrows for a moment, then said, “Oh, pardon me. I thought you knew—your father’s solicitors in London contacted us. They have arranged for future estate revenues—specifically, the royalties on your father’s writings—to be directly transferred from London and deposited into your account at a favorable rate of exchange. That should prevent this kind of inconvenience in the future.” He shuffled through some papers on his desk and handed me a yellow sheet. “As you can see from their report in this telegram, your father’s books are selling quite well. Congratulations, young man.”
I looked over the brief report with growing interest. While it was obvious that I was not going to become independently wealthy, I would be receiving a healthy supplemental income, which would allow me to rent the lower apartment.
The manager offered to phone the property agent to vouch for my financial stability. Whatever he said in the phone call, it did the trick, because when Maggie and I arrived at the offices of the property manager, we were treated like royalty. Within moments I left there with a one-year lease and an option to buy. The smoothness of the transaction astounded me. Just a month previously, I had a hard time getting a check cashed at the teller’s window.
Regretfully, after paying the first month’s rent, the initial nest egg from my father’s estate was substantially smaller—and I was still unemployed. My father’s solicitors had warned me not to expect further royalty payments for another six months, so it was clear I had to find a job soon, or I would be in desperate straits. Despite it all, now that the lease was signed, I felt pretty good about the deal and wondered at my initial reluctance. Available apartments were in short supply, so we were actually fortunate to get the place.
“Well, I suppose the next step is to move my things to the new apartment,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Thomas,” Maggie replied. “I’d like to help, but I have to get to the mission.”
“Oh, no, I wasn’t hinting at anything, just thinking out loud.” An awkward silence stood between us. My normal ineptitude with the opposite sex reasserted itself. “I, uh, I didn’t realize you worked at the mission during the day. What do you do there?”
“Oh, not that much. I make lunch for the men most days. And occasionally, a woman will come to us for help, so Dad calls on me to work with them. But mostly just men become slaves to the bottle.”
Maggie must have seen the look on my face, and she laughed. “I guess I’ve picked up some of me dad’s phrases. The language may be a bit strong, but it’s no exaggeration to say that the cravin’ for alcohol is like slavery. Just ask some of the men at the mission.”
“Oh, I can imagine. My father liked to play the horses, and I don’t think it’s too much to say that he was a slave to gambling.”
“Why, then, did you make a bet with the other reporter about Ragan’s murder?”
Maggie suddenly put her hand to her mouth, and her cheeks turned a bright crimson. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Forgive me, I’m much too outspoken.”
I dismissed her comment with a wave of my hand. “Don’t apologize. I’ve been asking myself that same question.”
We walked on in silence for a while, then I said, “Perhaps I should go with you to the mission and speak to your father about Ragan. Maybe he’ll remember something else that will help in the investigation. And as long as I’m there, I could help you serve lunch. I’m not much of a cook, but I think I’ve proven myself to be a pretty fair assistant in the kitchen.”
Maggie laughed. “Yes, perhaps—”
“Tommy boy!” I looked up with dread. No, it couldn’t be—but it was. Why did Rose have to show up, just as I was getting on so well with Maggie?
Rose took my arm protectively. “Hello, dear. Who’s this?” She frowned at Maggie, who looked quite confused. Her cheeks were turning crimson again—and I suspect mine were, too.
“Rose, let go of me!” I said a little too loudly, as I hastily disentangled her arm from mine. “How many times have I told you not to do that?”
“Thomas, aren’t you going introduce me to your friend?” Maggie had a slightly unnatural cheeriness to her voice, and her smile seemed a bit forced as she tried to bring some normalcy to the situation.
“Maggie, this is Rose, an acquaintance of mine.” It was rude of me to place so much emphasis on the word “acquaintance,” but I thought she deserved it. “I d
on’t even know her last name. Rose, this is Maggie McBride, the daughter of Captain Bill at the mission.”
“Nice to meet you,” Maggie said as she held out her hand, which the other girl shook with little enthusiasm. “Thomas is my downstairs neighbor, as of just this morning. I suppose that makes me just an acquaintance of him as well, but I’m hopeful that soon we can all become good friends.”
“Cap’n Bill’s daughter?” Rose stared at her with a curious look. “Seems to me I’ve seen you somewhere else. And by the way, me last name’s Flanagan.” Flanagan—another Irish girl. That made sense.
“Rose, we were just on our way to the mission to make lunch for the men,” Maggie said. “If you have the time, we could always use an extra hand. And of course, you’d get a meal out of it yourself. What do you say?”
“Well, I don’t know.” I almost chuckled to see Rose shy and uncomfortable, after all the times she had embarrassed me. I saw her eyes light up, however, at the word meal—what I suspected might be the first decent food she would have all week. “What does Tommy think of this?”
I was surprised to receive an elbow in the ribs from Maggie. I turned my head to see her pointed look. “Yes, what do you think of this, Tommy?” She cocked her head and flashed a mischievous grin.
“Why, of course, Rose. We’d love to have you join us,” I said in a deadpan tone.
Maggie led us around to the back door of the mission, which opened into a large kitchen. “We make a simple lunch for the men most days,” she said. “Just soup and sandwiches. Thomas, perhaps you can set up the plates, silverware, and napkins at the buffet table, while Rose and I begin making the soup and sandwiches.”
After setting things up at the table, I suddenly remembered: it was Friday, and if I didn’t get to the Herald offices before mid-afternoon, I might not be able to pick up my final pay, which could really come in handy right now.
I mumbled an apology to Maggie and waved goodbye to Rose, who was industriously making sandwiches in front of a growing pile on a tray. I grabbed a sandwich off the tray and headed for the door. As I took my seat on the downtown trolley, I bit into my meager lunch. Ugh—liverwurst.
CHAPTER 13
I stepped off the trolley and walked to the Herald offices, pondering the speakeasy explosion. It had me stumped. If Ragan was dead from asphyxiation before the room blew, why blow it up at all? To cover the evidence? Evidence of what? And how much of Basil’s story was I supposed to believe? I had spoken confidently to Feeney of how his story rang true because of its bizarre elements, but now I wasn’t so sure. That detail of Harry Ragan’s face—frozen in a look of rage—what was so strange about that? From what I’d heard, he was an ornery old buzzard, anyway.
Still a couple of blocks from the Herald and lost in thought, I hardly noticed the squeal of tires beside me. Then two pairs of burly arms grabbed me and forced me into a black sedan. A dark fabric was pulled over my face, and the car sped off.
We rode in silence until I found my voice. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” I said, with all the nonchalance I could muster. “I’m not sure of the proper etiquette in this situation, but may I ask whom I have the pleasure of addressing?”
“Shaddap.”
After a few more minutes, I tried to recall some of my father’s adventures with Mr. Holmes and how he might have handled a similar situation. Could I estimate where we were headed by the sounds outside the car? Not a chance—the sedan was too well-built for me to hear any noise other than its roaring engine.
After a fair amount of time, I felt the sedan slow, stop abruptly, and then the engine died. I could tell from the sound of gravel on the tires that the driver had pulled off the street. As they hustled me out of the car, I thought I could hear the faint lapping of waves. Were we somewhere near the docks in South Philly?
As they led me forward, I heard a door open in front of me, then close behind me. The change in temperature and sound told me we were in a cavernous building. I was seated roughly in a chair, and the hood over my face was unceremoniously torn off. I was still getting my bearings when a bare bulb was switched on over my head. The harsh light forced me to close my eyes.
After blinking a few times, I discovered I was face to face with a pudgy wall of a man, his sleeves rolled up, his arms crossed, and a silly leer on his face. The other gorilla that had abducted me stood two steps behind him. I was sitting in the middle of an empty warehouse. They hadn’t tied me to the chair, but a threatening glint in their eyes told me I had best stay put.
A noise directed my attention to the right, and as I looked over my shoulder I almost jumped. A small, misshapen man, not quite four feet tall, stood just inches away. He shuffled around to face me.
“So dis is him?” he asked my two captors, in a squeaky voice, at once both humorous and sinister. As he walked in front of me, I suddenly recognized him.
“Aren’t you Hughie McLoon, the mascot for the Athletics baseball team?”
The little man smiled at my remark and lost some of his creepiness, but then he quickly frowned and the sense of foreboding returned. “Dat was a while ago,” he piped in a high-pitched attempt to sound threatening. “I’m workin’ a different racket now. And it’s Mister McLoon to you!”
A door opened from somewhere in the gloomy recesses of the building, and a small-framed, balding man appeared in the dim light, dressed in shirtsleeves and a bow tie.
“So how ya doin’, sport? I hope my boys weren’t too rough on ya!”
Standing before me was Max “Boo-Boo” Hoff, publicly known as a boxing promoter and secretly known as the largest distributor of illegal alcohol in the city—“king of the bootleggers.” Chicago had its “Scarface” Al Capone, and we in Philadelphia had Boo-Boo Hoff.
But Hoff was far different than Capone; rather than cultivating a tough-guy image, Boo-Boo, it seemed, had taken the opposite tack. He portrayed himself as a harmless, dapper man-about-town with his signature bow tie and an easygoing air. Today he wore a smart fedora, but I had seen newspaper pictures of him in a straw boater hat, looking like a tenor in a barbershop quartet. I wondered how many men were now at the bottom of the Delaware River because they had been fooled by that boyish face.
Suddenly the warehouse felt cold, and I shivered involuntarily. I swallowed hard and tried to keep the tremor out of my voice. “Not at all, Mr. Hoff. But you needn’t have gone to all this trouble.”
“Yeah, I did. I wanted to talk to you, and I couldn’t just ask you to meet me for cocktails.” The other three men responded with an easy, practiced chuckle, the kind reserved for the boss’s jokes.
“Quite the contrary, Mr. Hoff,” I replied. “You could have simply called the paper and asked me to meet you at the old Wagner Furniture Factory—that is where we are, isn’t it?”
The leer was replaced by an icy mask, and Hoff sauntered over to one of the two goons (I now guessed by the body shape that they were probably prizefighters), reached up, and slapped him on the back of the head. The monster crumbled as if a two-by-four had been used.
“Stupid! I told ya to hood him!”
“I did, boss, I did,” the man replied in a whining tone.
“It’s not his fault, Mr. Hoff,” I said. “I once wrote a feature article about this building—it never got published, but that’s another story—and I recognized the place immediately from its distinctive windows. Notice how they’re rounded at the top? The Wagner Brothers were sticklers for detail, and designed their factory to reflect the artistry that went into their work—”
“Shaddap!”
I was beginning to blather—an annoying habit when I’m nervous.
Hoff took his hat off and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “Listen, Watson. I’ve got a favor to ask you, but now you’ve made it rough for me. We were having a nice, friendly conversation, and now I have to spoil it all by giving you a warning: you say anything about
this location and they’ll be fittin’ you for a pine box. You understand me?”
McLoon leaned over to stare at me until our noses almost touched. “You better listen to the boss.” His breath smelled like garlic and onions, and his face up close had the color and texture of putty. I jerked my neck instinctively, and my head struck a wooden post behind me.
“Certainly, Mr. Hoff, I won’t say a word,” I replied, rubbing the back of my head and ignoring the little man as best I could. “But I don’t see your problem. It’s common knowledge that you took over this building after the Wagners went out of business.”
Hoff turned and stared menacingly at my two abductors, as if accusing them of letting the word out. They both stood still as statues, staring at their toes and folding their hands, trying to look innocent.
“So what else about my personal business is ‘common knowledge’? Nah, don’t answer that. I don’t wanna know.” Hoff put his hat back on and began to pace back and forth. “Now, where was I? Oh, yeah—the favor. Listen, Watson. I know a few things about you, too. You worked at the Herald, and you’ve been lookin’ into that explosion at Harry Ragan’s place. I got my sources. I also know you got fired, but I might be able to help with that. Anyhow . . .”
Hoff stood before me, slumped his shoulders and spread his hands wide, palms toward me, in an apparent gesture of appeal. “I’m askin’ you to stick with this story. Keep nosin’ around. Ragan was a friend of mine and a good customer. I want you to find out who did it, and let me know. You do that for me, buddy, and we’re pals for life.”
Up till then, I had been able to handle everything—the abduction, the hood over my head, the rough treatment, the threats—but this pretense of familiarity somehow made my skin crawl. I’d just as soon befriend a leech.
“Mr. Hoff, I am trying to find out who did it, but I’m running up against a brick wall. From the beginning, I’ve assumed that a single person planned and committed the crime, but now I’m not so sure. One of the other reporters says it was a mob hit, and I’m beginning to think maybe he’s right.”
The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy Page 10
