“Counselor Black? It’s Tom Dennison come by.”
“I’m not decent.”
“When have you ever been good?”
“I’m in my skivvies,” Black clarified.
“Forget your pants,” Dennison told him. “This is urgent.”
The door opened fully. Black waved us in and bellied up to his table without pants. His shirttails covered his underwear and his tartan socks were held halfway up his calves with elastic supporters, no shoes. His apartment stank of old water and unwashed feet. Dennison took off his hat and sat down next to Black at his small card table.
Ritchie and I huddled in the kitchenette over a sink full of dress socks soaking in discolored water.
“Do you always eat breakfast without any pants on?” Dennison asked.
“It’s my home,” Black said.
Dennison raised a palm. “Whatever makes you comfortable.”
I pinched a putrid soaking sock out of the mess.
“Laundry in the kitchen?” I asked and dropped the sock back in the suds.
“I’m frugal,” Black said and resumed his breakfast of frankfurters and runny eggs. He worked his knife and fork like gearshift levers.
I watched him eat with a rueful smile. The table was cluttered with heavily fingerprinted jars of jellies and mustards. Spoon handles jutted out of condiment containers. The first creak of daylight shot through the windows. Black doused his eggs and wieners in mustard, his mustaches twitching, and asked, “Which one of you idiots sprung baby doll here?”
“Never you mind that,” Dennison said, holding his hat in his lap. “Nothing’s been done but legal.”
“Some fancy new threads you got there, too, laddie,” Black said to me.
I considered my new pinstripe suit. “One thing the prison system in this country always got right was fashion. An hour ago I was wearing stripes cost me nothing. Now here I am with fifty dollars’ worth of yarn on my shoulders and I’m wearing them still.”
“We haven’t much time, Lou,” Dennison said.
Black slurped a poached egg. “And mine’s paid with nickels?”
“A little bird came tweeting in my ear that you’re dreaming of waking up in the governor’s mansion next January. Place has a lot of pillars. Big old Corinthian columns. Twelve bathrooms. Four fireplaces. And the chandeliers? Very hoity-toity.”
“What do you really want, Tom?”
“Well, I came by to see if it’s really true. I came by to see if you really got a hankering for big boy politics.”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your affair.”
I looked around the apartment. The walls peeled. A humming icebox leaked water into a drip pan on the floor like casket ice. A ramshackle piano in the corner of the main room was in no better condition than cordwood.
“Have you a map somewhere in this dump?” Dennison asked Black.
“A map?”
“Yes. A state map of Nebraska. In one of your desk drawers maybe?”
“I thought you wanted to get serious?”
Dennison snapped open his cigarette case like a clamshell. “I’m serious as can be. Now, I haven’t looked at a map myself in a long while, but last time I did, Omaha was the biggest city in the state by a furlong and an oxgang.”
“What’s your point?”
“Votes are the point,” Dennison said and popped a match. He set fire to a yellow cigarette. “More than a third of the whole state lives in this city. My city. And I’d bet my last tenpenny you wouldn’t mind having that kind of number on your half come November. Well, sir, I can deliver it to you in the bottom of a hat.”
Black shook his head. “Gee whiz, would you really now?”
“Lawyers, even district attorneys, don’t want to stay lawyers forever.”
“It might be maybe that I’ve got certain gubernatorial aspirations.”
Dennison faked a theatrical gasp and wagged his eyebrows madly. “So it is true!”
I giggled like a child who broke wind in a church.
Black folded a triangle of toast in his mouth. “What’s your problem?” he asked me.
Dennison answered before I could. “He’s a little disturbed. Under a lot of undue stress, as you can imagine.”
“As he should be,” Black said. “He’s the most vile criminal this state’s ever known. By the time I’m done with him, he’ll be working in a button factory at Madison prison.”
Dennison grimaced like he’d stubbed a toe. “Oh hell, Lou. You talk like you’re one of the sainted sons of Zebedee. Besides, if there weren’t any crime in the world, what would we do for detective novels?”
“Or lawyers?” I added. Ritchie stuck his tongue out at me.
“Or governors,” Dennison said.
Black wiped his mouth with the napkin tucked into his shirt. “Don’t be a heel. It’s no damn secret. The whole state knows I plan on running for the job.”
“Running for the job? For governor? That’s a hell of a funny thing for you to say,” Dennison said. “Goddamn, Louie. Nobody runs for governor.”
“Well, they sure as hell don’t walk for it,” Black said.
“That’s right. They don’t do anything except pay for it. Same as any other job. Don’t matter if you’re a piano player in a dime-a-dance or a busboy at a lunch counter. If you want a gig, you pay to get it. Then you keep on paying to keep it.”
“I’ve paid my dues,” Black said.
Dennison smarted. “Your dues? Jesus Christ. Your dues? To whom? Do you even know what the fuck you’re talking about? How is it that someone who wants to be governor is so ignorant that he doesn’t even know how a body gets picked for the job?”
“By the good people of the state,” Black said. “By democracy. That’s how.”
“Well, that’s real cute. Cutesy. The good people of this state have about as much to do with this state’s elections as I have with the weather in Russia. Democracy is an ideology. But ideologies don’t win elections. Votes do.”
“You’re talking about voter fraud?”
Dennison sucked his cigarette like it was his last request. He exhaled smoke through his nostrils as a bull expels steam before charging a matador’s cape. Ritchie and I stood silently by the sink, waiting for an eruption that never came. Both of us had seen Dennison split heads over sillier things. But Tom calmed himself and sucked his cigarette down to the cotton.
Black sweated over his plate of eggs and frankfurters.
“Let me fill you in on a little secret,” Dennison said and poked the district attorney in his gut. “You don’t lose weight by cutting the crusts off your egg salad sandwiches, and you don’t win the governorship because of what happens at the polls in November. You win it as you sit here in your underwear or not at all.”
Black stared at Dennison blankly.
“What? You think we run a neat and tidy little pickup service with all the cab companies and streetcar firms to get a bunch of hicks and nigras from one polling place to another like we did for the mayor? Idiot that he was,” Dennison said. “Then come the next morning you wake up in the capital taking your oath to protect the Constitution and all that jazz? Tell me, Lou, what exactly do you and all your carpetbagger chums down at the Fontenelle actually know about anything?”
Black blushed and spit a mouthful of egg into his napkin. “Well, if you’re going to sit there and belittle me in my own home, the hell with you.”
“Really, Tom, how many people on God’s green earth know anything about the intricacies of electoral politics?” Ritchie asked as he cleared his throat.
“Well, I do, for one. And what am I? Some bagman gambler who made a few dollars from whores and craps tables. So I’d like to think that someone who wants to be that very thing and holds his hands out asking for it would trouble himself with the knowing of how he is supposed
to get it in the first place.”
“I’m not asking for anything,” Black said. “You’re the one came here proselytizing like some goddamn Bible salesman and interrupted me during my breakfast.”
“Looky here, Lou, I didn’t mean to offend your fragile sensibilities. If you want an apology, you have it. What you need, though, is something different.”
After a moment of silence, as if waiting for Dennison to finish his thought, Black finally said, “Well, get on and tell me then.”
Dennison chuckled at Black’s eagerness. He had the man by the tail, dangling him right over the scalding pot. He gestured at me, standing by the sink. “Reason I brought Patrick here with us this morning is so you might get to know him a smidge. See for yourself he’s not such a bad fellow. He doesn’t deserve to be sent to the penitentiary any more than you deserve to be sent to the governor’s mansion. But I’m telling you, if one happens, the other won’t.”
Black shoved his plate to the middle of the table. “You want me to throw the case?”
“I want you to stop trying so hard to win it,” Dennison said.
Ritchie came over to the table. “In particular one detail of vast importance. The boy’s father is due to return to the stand this week after he gets back from Chicago. Well, I’ve heard it told that old Mr. Cudahy and his driver had a confrontation with a pair of men out on the highway that night they supposedly left all that gold out there. I’d make certain neither of them get around to mentioning that fact while they’re on the stand.”
“Well, counselor, I appreciate that recommendation. That’s very clandestine of you.”
“It would make it almost impossible to convict on robbery charges if that little detail was left in omission,” Ritchie said.
I looked at my attorney as if he was as pretty as Venus riding her seashell. He was a goddamn work of art. The entire scene had unfolded before me like it had been rehearsed a hundred times. I shook my head in a little bit of awe. The scam was so well orchestrated for both sides it was impossible not to admire the geminated architecture.
Black nodded. He understood. “Is that all?”
“That and a little less zeal from you in front of that jury box,” Dennison added.
Black pointed his fork at Dennison. “What’s in it for you? Honest, now.”
“Honest? It means a helluva lot of money to me.”
Black chuckled. “Plan on squeezing the stockyards after they all get knocked back on their keisters? Ho, ho. Isn’t there enough graft to be had in this city with the gambling and the hoors? Now you’re cutting in on the meat business, too?”
“I’m a businessman with an eye for expansion, you could say,” Dennison admitted.
“You’re a pariah,” Black said.
“Well, I’m glad to know someone else in this room is aware that I don’t run the world.”
Black was soused by the idea. “This is some favor you’re asking.”
“And what would you call being handed the keys to a certain Georgian Colonial on a shaded avenue in our state capital? Passing the salt shaker?”
“I’d call it a bribe of a state’s attorney.”
“Are you soft, man? Or just stupid? Your wool hasn’t been white for a long time. No lambs among us here. Just us old goats yammering on and on. And a man like you ought to know what you really are.”
“A man like me?” Black asked. “What do you know about what kind of man I am or what kind of man I’m not?”
“Well, I ain’t peeping on you through your bedroom curtains. But let’s just say that some of the—” Dennison paused. “How should I put this delicately? That some of the wild goings-on in your bedchamber could really put a damper on your campaign if word got out.”
“That sounds threatening,” Black said. “But seeing as how you think you know something about me, let me say this about you. Say I do wrangle the big gig. Say I end up governor. You and I will be at each other’s throats the whole way down the flowered lane. How friendly will you be when I push for counties deciding their own stances on prohibition? You want to stall unionization. I want it on the fast tracks. You also got some of the same railroad boys in your pocket that I’d like to hang up on a clothesline and—”
Dennison interrupted. “Who gives a damn about politics? Not politicians, I guarantee you. You know something, Lou? You’re boring the ever-living hell outta me.”
“And you’re stressing me to bloat.”
“I’m glad to see that hasn’t dulled your appetite at least,” Dennison said.
Black raised an eyebrow.
Dennison pointed at Black’s shirtfront. “You got catsup on your good shirt.”
“Damn frankfurter,” Black said after glancing at the stain.
“Frankfurters for breakfast,” Dennison murmured and shook his head. “Listen here, Lou, there’s something you need to get educated about if you’re ever going to be a state man.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Some folks are good, some folks are bad, and laws won’t ever change that. Not if there was only one of them left in the whole Constitution. Saints will always follow it and bad’ns, they’ll always break it. Besides, laws that people don’t believe in can’t be enforced if whole armies tried it. Hell, anymore these days, there are so many laws that people are either lawbreakers or hypocrites,” Dennison said and stood from his chair.
Ritchie and I followed him to the door.
Before leaving, Dennison added a cryptic farewell for Louie to chew over with the remainder of his breakfast. He said, “Lou? For my part? I hate a damn hypocrite.”
XIV
I RODE THROUGH five states and countless towns after my escape over the Missouri River, continuing to wander without a plan or destination in mind. I was near broke already, having spent most of the money on food and whiskey. Then I was arrested for drunkenness in Columbia, Missouri, and spent the night sleeping it off in a polly cage. When I sobered up the next morning and was released by the county deputy, my pockets were a thousand dollars lighter than they had been when I entered the jailhouse.
“That there’s a finder’s fee,” the deputy had told me when he turned me loose. “State of Nebraska’s got a re-ward out for you for five hundred dollars, Pat Crowe. Colorado and New Mexico, too. Oh yes, I’ve seen your likeness on just about every telegraph pole in this city and others. So I figure five hundred to turn you in, plus another five hundred for not turning you in. Trick is you’re a free man and I double what those Nebraska marshals would’ve paid for your hide. That seem alright by you?”
I searched my pockets. “Awful steep price for overindulging in this town.”
“Well, if it don’t suit you none, I can just give it all back and lock you up again,” the deputy drawled and twirled his ring of long keys. “Tell you what, we got us a coin box in the telegraph office next door that makes long-distance phone calls. Maybe I drop a line or two to a couple friends of mine in Omaha, and we just wait and see who might show up to collect.”
“No,” I said with some lingering dizziness as I struggled to get my arms through my coat sleeves. “You go on and keep that swag. You earned it.”
The deputy swung his boots back up onto his desk, his big spurs jangling against the wood. He spit a clot of tobacco into a brass cuspidor that sounded like a nail hitting the bottom of a tin can. “A famous man like you is always welcome back now, you hear?”
All that was left to my name was six hundred dollars and my weixel wood pipe, which I kept in its own velvet-lined case. I decided Chicago might be as good a place as any to build up my bankroll again. I bought an old Colt six-shooter and a bottle of corn whiskey and hired a room on the third floor of a flophouse on the corner of Wabash.
The room had a good view of the street below. I could see every building all the way to the end of the block.
I took several drinks from the
bottle as I continually spied out the window. The hour was drawing near nine. Down the hall, a woman started in with shrill screaming. I jumped from my chair, grabbed my revolver off the table. Standing with my ear to the door, I listened for approaching footsteps. Three minutes passed before I sat down again and pulled the string on the dangling light bulb, darkening the room save for the light crawling in around the edges of the closed curtain.
For the fifth time in two minutes I looked down at the street. An hour passed, and I finished off half of the bottle. Warmed by the liquor, I finally relaxed enough to lie down and close my eyes, hoping to sleep off the rest of the day.
A booming series of knocks woke me from my slumber. I jolted out of bed and threw on my crumpled suit. The Chicago police called out from the hallway as they continued to pound on the door, announcing their presence. I stashed my money in my left boot and stamped them both on my feet and hid my revolver in my pant pocket.
The officers knocked again. “Chicago Police. Open up.”
“Use the knob,” I said groggily. “It works.”
The door opened slowly and standing in the hallway were two Chicago policemen. Both were thin and clean-shaven and no older than me.
“Howdy, officers,” I said.
“Is this the man?” one of the officers asked the other.
“Yeah, this is the feller,” the other replied.
“Who do you think I am?” I asked. I was sitting on the edge of my iron bed with my head in my hands.
The two officers stepped into the room. “You’re Pat Crowe. The man who kidnapped the Cudahy boy. The whole country is in a fit looking for you.”
I shrugged. “You sure you got the right fella? My name’s Jonathan Loveless. I don’t know anything about any Cudahy boy.”
The first patrolman aimed his pistol at my chest. “Come on down to the police box with us and we’ll see what’s what.”
“Be cool, fella. If your finger slips, that Betsey might go off and put a slug in me.”
“And no happiness lost at that. You’re a goddamn child abductor.”
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