World, Chase Me Down

by Andrew Hilleman

  “And yet here you are, turned in of your own accord.”

  “That’s right. Of my own accord. Like I said, I’m not looking for trouble.”

  “And yet trouble’s all you made. I could make more for you if you want. A lot more than you could handle. Or I could make your time here as easy as a milk bath with Lotta Crabtree.”

  “She’s the one with the big moons, right?” I asked.

  “You are a funny man.”

  “I don’t mean to be.”

  Donahue hitched up his trousers without moving from his seat on the bench on the opposite side of the wagon. His shoes gleamed, buffed to an opalescent sheen. The finest cordovan leather. Blue smoke came out of his nostrils. “I predicted, didn’t I? You read the papers. I predicted that one day I’d bring you to justice.”

  I squinted. “That’s not true. If I recollect right, I recollect that you said one day you’d make me uncomfortable.”

  “Well, are you?”

  “Not in the slightest. Hell, I don’t mind county court. I got me a few pals there I’ve been meaning to say hello to anyway.”

  “You’re not going to county, Paddy boy. You’re headed to the federal building. Have you any friends there?”

  The police wagon, built with little more structural integrity than a tin can, rattled onward through the swelling snow. The undercarriage bounced us around worse than a dinghy on a choppy sea. The grumbling engine as loud as a congested giant.

  “One or two,” I said.

  Donahue whirled more smoke. He’d whittled his cigar to a stub. “You’re going to need more than that.”

  III

  I LAY WITH my skin burning on the ticking of my jailhouse cot, the cheers of the crowd at the train station lingering in my ears. I’d been washed like a flea-bitten horse: doused in unslaked lime from an oaken bucket while I stood in the buff cupping my genitals, sprayed off with a cloth hose in a stall with a floor drain, and deloused in disinfectant powder. The jail barber, a Negro totally lacking in tonsorial talent, sheared my beard and hacked off my hair with a pair of buttonhole scissors.

  A day and night passed in solitude. Then a whole week.

  Time drudged at a sluggish pace. They gave me a hunk of gray bread and a jar of water for my first jail supper. It’d been so long since I had anything to eat that the bread tasted like cake. I drank a bit of the water, stale as rain. The rest of my meals consisted of boiled ham and cans of imitation oysters and maggoty puddings on a tin tray with a clay cup of chicory coffee so foul it smelled like it had been brewed with old bath water.

  Some six or seven lawyers had stopped by my cell to offer their services free of charge just for the chance, as one of them called it, to represent the most notorious criminal the good state of Nebraska had ever known.

  So it was when the eighth such attorney came to call that I paid him little heed, my attention focused on the pages of a cardboard Bible bloated from old water damage. The bumbling turnkey procured a chair for the lawyer, drug it into the cell with its legs scraping loudly against the cold floor.

  “Thank you kindly,” the attorney said.

  He wore a startling purple suit pitted with eggs of sweat under the arms, and bifocals as thick as driving goggles. A tincture of silver in his parted hair. After sweeping off the chair bottom, he crossed his legs and dug around in a leather briefcase that was scarred as if it had been used as a shield in a knife fight.

  “You’re wasting your time with the sales pitch, counselor,” I said without taking my eyes off my Bible. I turned the page and lost three more to the ground as they fell out of the book’s damaged spine. Half of Deuteronomy was already scattered at the foot of my cot. “I’m going to defend myself.”

  “You have a lot of experience with the law, do you?”

  “I’ve a lot of experience breaking it.”

  The lawyer scoffed. “You’re in a heap of trouble.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “My name is A. S. Ritchie. That’s Alexander Samuel Ritchie, formerly of the Thomas & Harp firm. Top of my class at West Virginia Law. I was assistant district attorney for—”

  I slammed my Bible shut and sat up against the wall. “Just another big shot come to get his name in lights. I’ve already had six other fellas visit me today. One of them even told me he’d pay me just so he could say he was my lawyer.”

  “My fee is two hundred dollars a week.”

  I curled my lips and tucked the curls of my eyeglasses behind my ears. “Well, you’re a crack-up in a purple suit, ain’t you? I just told you six other blokes offered me representation free of charge, and I sent them all packing.”

  “There’s five or six more still waiting, too,” Ritchie said and took out a tortoiseshell snuffbox from a velvet pouch. He pinched a tobacco clot and inhaled it through his left nostril, sniffling three times as he snapped the box shut. I watched his deliberate movements. A very deliberate man. Ritchie crossed his left leg over his right knee, revealing three inches of lavender sock as he flicked loose tobacco off his thumb and wiped his nose with a frilly handkerchief. He wore white canvas sneakers as scuffed up as old gym shoes.

  “I brought you a little something. A gift,” he said, sniffled twice more, and searched his briefcase. He pulled out a bottle of Albanian brandy with a hand-painted label. “Aged twelve years in oak with a hint of peach. Sure to burn your blood on a cold night.”

  I straightened up at the sight of the bottle.

  “I hear you fancy the purple.”

  “You might’ve heard right.”

  Ritchie cradled the bottle like a tuxedoed waiter presenting wine tableside. “All I’m asking for is ten minutes of your undivided attention, and this is yours. If you don’t like what I have to say, I’ll be on my way and you’ll be analgesic in under an hour.”

  “I’m agreeable,” I replied and uncorked the brandy with my teeth. I pressed the bottleneck to my nose and inhaled deeply. Oak and peach. It couldn’t have smelled better if it was perfume. “Goddamn,” I said and put my lips to the bottle.

  “Hold your horses. You need a glass for something that good. As a practitioner of the law, there are a lot of crimes I can abide in this world or I’d be out of business. But drinking a ninety-dollar brandy out of the bottle isn’t one of them,” Ritchie said and handed me a crystal tumbler he unwrapped from protective paper.

  This lawyer was a very curious fellow.

  Very odd indeed.

  “What else have you got in that valise?” I asked.

  Ritchie smiled and produced another item: a folded newspaper. He tossed a week-old copy of the Omaha Evening Bee on my cot.

  The headline read in bold stamp: BEEF TRUST TRIAL TO THE SUPREME COURT.

  I considered the paper and poured a whisker of brandy into the gifted glass and swallowed the first grateful swig after rinsing it around in my mouth. It burned smooth fire down my throat. I poured another helping and swirled it in the glass.

  “Well, counselor,” I said. “Let’s have the spiel.”

  “All in good time. First I want to know, did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Steal that Cudahy boy for ransom.”

  I shook my head. “Most defense attorneys don’t care if their clients are guilty or not.”

  “I’m not a defense attorney, Mr. Crowe, I’m a county prosecutor.”

  “Well, thanks for the brandy anyway, fella.”

  Ritchie sat back and recrossed his legs. “I’m to represent you in court, if you’ll have me. But you don’t need a defense. This case? You need to be on the offensive. Now, let me guess, every other attorney that’s come calling has promised you a nice plea bargain. Maybe some soft time in Lincoln. Plead guilty, avoid court, sentenced to a couple, three years, out in eighteen months, something like that?”

  “Something like that.”

&n
bsp; “Fairy dust and tall tales and promises of El Dorado are the favorite fictions of every criminal lawyer who sets their own fee. And you? You’re a shining penny. They see a lot of billable hours when they look at you, and they won’t even have to set foot in a courtroom beyond the five minutes it’ll take to enter your plea and collect their check.”

  “Haven’t you been listening or are you just deef? They all told me they’d work for free. Every single one of them.”

  Ritchie laughed. “Have you ever been lied to before or was that your first time?”

  I took down more of the brandy.

  “Make a deal, Pat Crowe. That’s all you’ll hear from every two-bit attorney that walks in here. Take the easy road. But I aim to get you into court, not sidestep it. This case needs to be heard. You won’t be on trial for stealing some rich man’s son. The rich man’ll be on trial for stealing money from every person who ever took a bite of his steak or paid three times more than they had to for a pound of his meat. You see that paper there?”

  I looked at the print.

  Ritchie snorted more snuff off his thumb. “You ever heard of the Beef Trust?”

  I shook my head.

  “Did you ever wonder why your old pal Ed Cudahy was so adamant about shutting down your little shop? If you didn’t think that was odd, then you haven’t been thinking at all.”

  “Tom Dennison had more to do with it than Cudahy ever did.”

  Ritchie laughed boldly. “Tom Dennison? You must be joking. The man’s a political pawn. He’s an intimidating sort, no doubt. But he doesn’t break eggs unless he’s given the say-so.”

  “You must not know him as well as I do.”

  Ritchie was still cackling. “It’s you who don’t know him. Tom Dennison. What a hoot. I’ve sent six of his men to the federal penitentiary in my time. The man’s done everything to go after me short of poisoning my soup and shooting up my house. Oh, I know him, alright. But he’s got about as much to do with what happened to your butcher shop as a flea does giving a dog a bad day.”

  “He’s the one who bankrolled me.”

  “Think, Pat. With whose money? It wasn’t his, I guarantee it.”

  “He kidnapped me once.”

  “And he left daggers on my desk as threats whenever one of his bozos got pinched for offing a whore or rigging election boxes. That’s his shtick. He’s an errand boy who employs a few toughs to get done what the men with real power want him to get done.”

  “Still doesn’t change the fact.”

  “Well, if you’re so sure of that, why didn’t you abduct one of his kids?”

  “Because he hasn’t got any.”

  “He’s got two, in fact. A boy and a girl. Christopher’s six and Annabelle’s two. But not many know that. Not many know what I know, and I’m trying to pull back the curtain for you.”

  “Is that right? What else do you know?” I asked accusingly.

  “I know your piddly little butcher shop wasn’t open more than six months before Cudahy ran you and your friend out of there even though you were selling less than a fifth of a single percent in a whole week than the Cudahy company sold in half a day. So let me illuminate something for you that you might’ve guessed at before but never could put a finger on. The Cudahy Packing Company isn’t just the Cudahy Packing Company. Not by itself. It’s also the Armour and Swift Company, Wilson, Morris, six of such giant meatpackers all total. The Big Six, they call them. For years they’ve engaged in a conspiracy to fix prices and divide the livestock market so they can triple and quadruple the cost of meat across the board. They blacklist competitors, even little nowhere outfits like yours. They take rebates from railroads, set the price of ice.”

  “It’s a monopoly. I know that. Everyone knows that.”

  “Technically speaking, it’s not a monopoly. It’s six separate companies acting as one without sharing anything but secret handshakes in backrooms. But President Roosevelt? He doesn’t care what’s technical and what isn’t. He’s got a big stick and he’s smashing windows and knocking heads. So is the attorney general. Him and me? We were roommates at West Virginia. Philander Knox is his name. He’s a tornado in a hundred-dollar suit getting set to level some big buildings.”

  I gulped another brandy. “What does any of this have to do with me?”

  “That case is going to the Supreme Court next month.”

  “And I’m going on trial for kidnapping a kid.”

  “No you’re not. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Edward Cudahy is going on two trials. While his empire gets battered around in Chicago, he’s also going to be getting what-fer here in Omaha. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. I don’t know why you decided to come out from whatever hole you were hiding in after five years, but I’m sure glad you did. This goes all the way up to the top, Pat. When you kidnapped Cudahy’s son and got away with some of his money, you did something that every poor sonofabitch in the country wished they’d done themselves but didn’t have the gall. Think about that reception you got at the train station. You’re a goddamn hero and you don’t even know it.”

  “I know what I am,” I said dourly.

  “Don’t play it small, and stop talking stupid. Let me help you.”

  “Help you do what? Get a new tax levied on him or something? No, thank you. I could see the noose if this goes wrong. I’m nobody’s lamb.”

  “You won’t see a day in prison if I have a say in it.”

  I laughed. “You said you worked for the district attorney’s office?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Another government man with his own agenda.”

  “My office doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “Going rogue then, are you?”

  “I wouldn’t use that word myself. There are much bigger things at play here. This baby’s federal. You remember how I said I used to be roommates with the attorney general? Who do you think put me up to this? I didn’t come down here on a Saturday when it’s three miserable degrees outside to tempt you with a good bottle of brandy because I’m hurting for case work.”

  I considered the angles. Another wobble of brandy down the chute and a mighty belch to follow it. This attorney was too crooked to be anything else but true. Still, I felt like I was being played fiddle easy while being in on the fix all at the same time.

  I said, “Even so, best case scenario, you might make a small dent. What happens to me in the process is an afterthought. I know how this works.”

  “If all we wanted to do was make a dent, then sure, that’s all we would do. And if I wanted to see you in a noose, I’d get a good seat in the balcony and watch you knot the rope yourself. But neither of those things would do us any good. We’re going after all of it. But to take down a giant, you don’t stand toe to toe with him and swing at his head. You go after the ankles. The rest will come tumbling down. But to do that I have to know, did you do it?”

  “Would you like it in writing?”

  “It’s not like that. You’ve already had four nice swallows from that bottle, and anything you tell me now would be inadmissible anyway. But you and me? We have to trust each other and I have to know.”

  I stood from my cot and stretched, bottle still in hand. “Truth to tell, we did it just like they say we did. We snatched that kid in front of his own house and got a load of gold for it.”

  “Speaking of we, what about your old partner, Billy Cavanaugh? Where’s he about? How’s he still running around while you’re sitting in here?”

  “I thought you knew everything?”

  Ritchie reared back in his chair. “Now’s not the time to be coy.”

  I paced my cell, three steps between the bars to the back wall. “I haven’t seen Billy in near on four years.”

  “So you don’t know where he is?”

  “Sure I know where he is. He’s in Arizona
. A little shithole called Nogales.”

  “How can you be sure of that if you haven’t seen him in four years?”

  My face seized up. I sat back down on my cot and hung my head. The brandy roasted my belly. Split my memory wide open. Billy wasn’t in Nogales. The river had taken him elsewhere.

  I closed my eyes and saw again where it all had ended.

  The bullet holes in the orange walls of the crumbling cantina.

  The waspy rattle of a howitzer.

  The giant sicario in the dirty white hat, his eyes glowing like a deer’s in the pitch black.

  Even after all that time, my heart flounced at the image. A moment passed, and I opened my eyes. I considered the curious attorney in his purple suit and scuffed white shoes and was about to tell him what I’d never said out loud before but then realized I didn’t need to. Ritchie already knew just by the look of me.

  IV

  TOWARD AUGUST IN the summer of nineteen-aught-one, some eight months passed since our kidnapping of the Cudahy boy, Billy and I made residence in the deep bottom of Arizona five miles from the Mexican border. A little hamlet called Nogales. Twenty or so mud homes, a few of adobe and tin, sitting in a passageway of black walnut trees, a village more populated by roosters than men.

  That far south everything was upside down. Rats lived in the trees like squirrels. Desert bats burrowed in mesquite like rabbits. The painted mujeres taller than the mustachioed hombres. Milk stools taller than most of the men. The nearby Santa Cruz River, a bright chemical orange from a flooded iron mine, flowed north against the compass.

  Together we had evaded tracking parties of Pinkerton detectives as far west as Pueblo and as far north as the bald mountains of Utah. A posse of five hired mercenaries led by a Winnebago chief who could track a beetle over a rock while blindfolded nearly gunned us down in the soak lands around Salt Lake, where a man couldn’t make a footprint without creating fossil. A three-story hotel not three months erected burned in our wake when the posse tried to smoke us out by lighting the lobby curtains on fire. The new lumber burned faster than matchboard, sent up green flames. A manhunt of proportions the country had never seen. The New York Post famously dubbed the chase “The Thrill of the Nation.”