“Merci beaucoup,” I said and saluted with my liquor bottle. “I see you’re a harbinger.”
“A what now?” the officer asked.
“Oh, you know, a fortune-teller. A soothsayer. You and your crystal ball. You’ve never seen me before in your life.”
“You’re the bird I’ve seen on every wanted poster this side of the Missouri.”
“I already told you I don’t know anything about that business.”
The officers looked at each other. I sat there the whole time, unafraid of arrest or gunshot. My calmness unnerved them.
“You’re coming with us to sort it out any which way,” the second officer said after a moment of hesitation.
“Alright. But you boys are making a mistake,” I said and left willingly with the officers. We went down the stairs and came out onto the plank sidewalk past a pharmacy and a general store. They hadn’t handcuffed me, only walked alongside me with one officer gripping my wrist like I was a lost child. I turned to the bull holding my wrist and whispered, “Hey, bud, I got near on half a grand in my hip pocket here. I’ll give you both the lot of it if you’ll close your eyes for a moment and let me have a gallop back down the street.”
The officer wavered and looked around, as if being watched. His grip on my wrist loosened and I reached down into my pocket as if to fetch the money. But the cash was tucked away in my boot, and I gripped the butt of my revolver. The officer seized my hand again and pulled it out of my pocket by the sleeve. I yanked my arm away and lifted my shooter, aiming right between the policeman’s eyes. The second officer fumbled for his own weapon, and I fired a bullet into his shoulder. He fell to his knees, and I fired a second shot at the other officer whose grip I’d shaken off. The bullet would’ve found the officer’s heart at point-blank range, but he grabbed my other hand and jerked it in front of my gun barrel just as I squeezed the trigger.
The gunshot went straight through my wrist, shattering bone before lodging itself somewhere deep in my palm. I yanked myself away. My hand gushed blood in runnels. There was no time for contrition. I fired a third time, hitting the officer in the side of his face, blowing off a whole hunk of his jaw. The first officer squirmed on the flagstone next to him. When he got up to his knees, I let loose another shot clean in the left side of his belly, just below his heart. He fell onto his stomach and hunkered over his wound.
I hobbled down the sidewalk as a crowd rushed over.
I was halfway down Clark Street when two detectives in three-piece suits wandered out of a café eating fried doughnuts wrapped in paper napkins. I nearly ran straight into them. Cries of murder were hollered out by the shocked bystanders. The detectives saw my bloodied wrist and grabbed me around my bicep to halt my progress.
I pointed back to the crowd that had gathered by the wounded officers. “Somebody tried to rob me and killed two policemen!”
The detectives let go of me and dropped their doughnuts, heading toward the crowd as the cries of “Murder!” and “Stop that man!” grew louder.
I hadn’t gotten ten yards away when the detectives turned back around and caught up to me, knocking my legs out with a solid whack of a baton on the back of my knees. I fell to the sidewalk and scraped my forehead. A huge gleaming gash bled down the side of my face, and I was back on my feet in a fit, sprinting into a nearby alley. My wrist poured blood the whole way. A bullet flew past my head and turned a chunk of brick building side into dust as I came onto the street again.
More bullets skimmed across the avenue and dinged off store signs.
A mob of twenty or more townsfolk had joined the detectives in their pursuit, shouting that they were after a cop killer. I turned and fired three shots without aiming as I sprinted toward the back of a building under construction. Not looking where I was going, I fell headfirst into a trough of plaster, sticky as birdlime. I was covered in the gunk from head to foot. The paste ran down into my eyes and partially blinded me. I was shaking off the mortar and blinking out the sting and wiping my eyes with my hand as I broke into the building, which was nothing more than four floors of skeletal wood and clapboard.
There were no doors or windows hung.
The cover was scarce at best.
I climbed the half-finished stairs to the second level and collapsed behind a pile of sawn lumber. After dropping down, I tore off a piece of my right shirtsleeve and used the ripped cloth like a bandage. I wrapped it around my wounded wrist and tied it off into a makeshift tourniquet. The material soaked through with blood. More pistol shots rang out from the floor below. I crawled over to the makings of a window frame and looked down onto the street. The mob had doubled in size.
They carried numerous objects: bricks, rocks, glass bottles. Gunshots echoed, many of them fired into the air by the police as warning shots. A group of men with biceps as big as bread loaves urged the crowd into storming the building to pull the cop killer out of hiding and string him up. One man wearing a slouch hat and saddled on a quarter horse rode to the front swell of the horde. He carried a braided towrope at least twenty feet in length. Four women in cotton print dresses handed out stones from water pails, and folks were slinging them through the open windows.
The mob surrounded the building on all sides like a moat of wool hats and box caps. As the assault party converged, the police ascended the staircase. Some of them were accidentally struck by the rocks and bricks thrown by the crowd. I stuck my head out the window frame and fired off four more shots just as a lucky chunk of lobbed pavement hit me in the forehead. I took to the stairs again, mopping at the wound with a green neckerchief as I came out onto the tarred roof and lay flat on my stomach to avoid gunfire from the street below.
A group of men stole two construction lamps from the dig site and used the kerosene to soak the first floor of the building. Once the fire was started, it engulfed the wood in a giant burst like a backdraft. Ten minutes passed, and I couldn’t do anything but lie there gushing blood and envisioning my own demise.
Two fire pumpers arrived on the scene, pushing through the crowd until they were surrounded and unable to advance. The firemen managed to attach a pair of canvas hoses to a hydrant, but were cut by the mob as some screamed to let me burn. One wagon was rocked back and forth by ten men until it tipped over. The ladders were stolen and leaned against the front of the building. The most daring members of the raid climbed the rungs to get to the third floor windows. Spindrifts of smoke whirled as the hour approached noon. At least ten men had managed their way onto the second and third floors of the building. To slow their progression, police discharged warning shots down what was to become an elevator shaft.
I gathered my strength and crawled over the edge of the roof. The tar covering had melted down into a jam from the intense heat one story below. I pulled my coat over my head and stumbled my way back down the only staircase not in flames.
Though I was surrounded by the mob on the street, nobody recognized me as the one they were after. I joined their ranks, lobbing rocks at the burning building and shouting for the cop killer to burn. Easily as that, I became one of them. I was in the mob, and not a single policeman or angry citizen noticed my bleeding wrist or the pair of gashes on my head.
Slowly I backed away from the masses and wandered off into an alley with my jacket still smoking and my head faint from blood loss. I tossed my bloodied shirtsleeve into a trash bin and washed my wound in a chilly horse trough. Three blocks away I came upon a livery stable connected to a feed and grain store. There were four geldings in twelve ramshackle stables. The barn was constructed of logs plastered together with straw and pink paste. Creeping into the stable, I selected a chestnut mare from one of the paddocks. I bridled the animal and fastened it with a square-skirted saddle. Without being seen, I rode the horse out of town, heading back in the same direction from which I arrived two days before.
For five miles I thrashed the horse east along the flood b
asin outside of the city until the streets gave way to open prairie. I stopped every ten minutes to scan the terrain ahead. The bullet was still lodged in my wrist, but I’d at least managed to slow the bleeding to a trickle by knotting my belt around my forearm. My horse panted and neighed. It hadn’t carried the weight of a rider for some time, more than likely. By and by, I came upon a creek as pale as shallow seawater, and I followed its elbow bend south until nightfall.
I continued to ride south for nearly a week, stopping only to sleep for an hour at a time and to water and feed my stolen nag. Rode south all the way out of Will County before I turned east. Sopping cornfields tilled lower than a sock line. Cold prairie like flat pale lilac. A long forest of red maple and plane trees running along the bed of the Kankakee River.
A man could get lost forever in those woods.
I followed the watershed through four separate Illinois counties. Given enough luck and a swirling wind, I could come out clean a hundred miles away and be ordering peach cobbler in a café with oilcloths on the tabletops before the week was half over and contemplating how close to the ocean I could get if I kept heading east with six hundred dollars in my boot and the afternoon sun always on my back, the voices of the pursuant echoing across the plains like the chants of ghosts.
XV
COURT RESUMED ON a Monday morning filthy with snow clouds. The forecast called for a high of two degrees, and spectators filled the courtroom shivering like mice in a huddle with their coats reeking of lamp smoke and coal. They stomped the slush off their gum boots and galoshes as they took their seats. Tom Dennison and Billy Nesselhous arrived early for the day to ensure seats three rows behind the prosecution table. They spoke with each other cheek by jowl in hushed tones, their arms crossed. Dennison had come to see just how seriously Louie Black had taken their early morning conversation two days ago.
I sat for long periods of time with my eyes closed. Though I may have looked to be asleep, I was alert and listening closely to every word as Louie Black recalled Edward Cudahy Senior to the stand. He’d been away in Chicago as a defendant in the Beef Trust trial, and the wear on his person was evident in his walk and his face. His complexion was as pale as pastry, and it was not a stretch to guess he was drained of all heart from his legal battles. His eyes bulged as if he’d forgone two nights’ sleep. He labored into the witness chair.
“Mr. Cudahy,” Black began. “As weary as you are, I thank you again for your return to the stand in order that we may bring some things to light that we did not get a chance to visit upon during your testimony last week. Mr. Cudahy, you are a Catholic, are you not?”
“I am,” Cudahy said.
“And are you a practicing Catholic in good standing with the church?”
“Yes, sir. My family and I take in the Sunday service at Saint Stephen’s every week come rain or shine. It’s an important part of our lives.”
“Who is the pastor at that parish?”
“Father Dan Murphy.”
“And how long have you known Father Murphy?”
“Well, for as long as he’s been at Saint Stephen’s. Maybe eight or nine years now.”
“Is Pat Crowe also a communicant of that same church?”
“I’m not able to say.”
“But would you be able to say that Pat Crowe has been in communication with Father Murphy at some point in the last calendar year?”
Cudahy squeezed both of his armrests. “Yes. I would say so with assuredness.”
Black smiled and paused. He stepped away from his lectern and looked out into the courtroom where Tom Dennison was sitting next to Billy Nesselhous. He paused to wipe his spectacles with a handkerchief. Without replacing them on his face, he wagged them about as he posed a new question to his witness:
“And how do you know that Pat Crowe was in contact with Father Murphy?”
Cudahy produced an envelope from his suit coat. “Well, by documentation. I have here a confession letter to the crime written and signed by Pat Crowe himself that he gave to Father Murphy just this past spring.”
Black took the letter and said, “Your Honor, the state proposes to enter this letter into evidence as Exhibit Four-B.”
Ritchie jumped from his chair. We’d been waiting, fearing, the arrival of this letter to the court. We thought Dennison’s meeting with Louie Black that past weekend might have been enough motivation for the district attorney to keep the letter out of evidence.
But there was simply no way of avoiding its existence.
There was quite a fight ahead of us now.
Ritchie said, “Objection. Your Honor, if such a communication is even indeed legitimate and not a forgery, then said communication is sacred to the confessional. As stated, this supposed letter sprung upon the court is a communication between priest and parishioner no different than the sacrament of confession itself. It’s clearly in the class of privileged communications as though still in the hands of the priest to whom it was originally confided.”
“I should say not, sir, and say not with overwhelming vigor,” Black said and approached Judge Sutton’s bench. He spoke loudly enough that the entire court could still hear his argument. “Your Honor, the state contends that this letter now in possession of Mr. Cudahy was not given in the nature of a confession as a sacrament of the Catholic Church. Its purpose was not the seeking of spiritual comfort or intercession with omnipotence. It was sent to the recipient Father Daniel Murphy to get him to act as an intermediary with Mr. Cudahy so that he might consent to a dismissal of the prosecution. That much will be abundantly clear if Your Honor would allow the contents of the letter to be read to the court.”
Ritchie hustled to the judge’s bench. “Your Honor, ecclesiastical law is to become of some importance in this case, and in the matter of this letter, we cannot separate or ignore such law from this chamber.”
Black retorted, “The letter itself also directs it should be turned over to another priest, and the state contends that this in itself shows it was not a confession to remain forever locked within the chamber of one person.”
Judge Sutton, shrunken in his great swaying robe and already exhausted by this early argument, opened his mouth to address the matter, but Ritchie was quicker with his tongue.
“Yes,” Ritchie said, “even if that is true, that very fact seems to establish its own sacredness as a confession, confirming it to spiritual advisers and that it was not to be made public no matter if it did find its way into the hands of a third party as Mr. Cudahy sits there clutching it now and grinning like a cat that just swallowed the family canary.”
Judge Sutton raised a flat hand. “You’re both feeling very talkative today. I might be for an evening session to let you both continue to groan on and on about the importance of canon law and religious mandate until you’re each blue in the face, but I simply don’t think our jurors could stand it, nor could I. As to the letter, I side with the state. We will hear the content of the letter in its entirety. If it comes to pass that its contents deem it to be under the protection of privileged communications, we will address that matter then, but not before.”
“At what price, Your Honor?” Ritchie demanded. “The damage will already be done by then to prejudice this jury.”
“No, sir, it will not. The jury is fully aware of their responsibilities and the charges at hand. Your objection is noted but overruled.”
As Ritchie returned to his seat, Black stationed himself in front of the witness box and urged Cudahy to read the letter to the court slowly and clearly. “Unless you feel unable, sir, in which case I would be glad to recite it for the court.”
“No,” Cudahy said. “I can manage.”
“Please,” Black replied. “Is there a date or heading on the letter? An address, perhaps?”
Cudahy examined the letter. “No, sir. It simply begins, ‘Dear Father—’”
“Loud and clear,
now,” Black instructed him.
“‘Dear Father Dan, I wrote you a letter from Chicago a few months ago and your answer was very encouraging to me as I have for several years thought of reforming and starting life anew. In your letter you said that you did not believe half of what was written about me and the assaults on my character. Well, that is the truth. I have been accused of hundreds of crimes which I never committed.
“‘For the past four years my suffering has been intense. My daughter doesn’t know me any better than a stranger and my estranged wife, whom I have tried to reconcile with numerous times in the past, has made a new life with a new man. I am an outcast, a disgrace to the mother that gave me birth. And to add to my suffering I have wronged a man that has been a friend to me. I am guilty of the Cudahy affair. I am to blame for the whole crime. After it was over I regretted my act and offered to return eleven thousand dollars to Mr. Cudahy, but he refused to take it. I was hunted from every corner of the country and so I went to Japan and then on to South Africa where I joined the Boer rebel army and was badly wounded, being shot in the shoulder.
“‘I returned to America and repeatedly tried to make peace with the man I wronged. Now I am going to give myself up and take whatever comes. If Mr. Cudahy would show me mercy I would come out all right and start life anew. Cudahy is a remarkably good man. I have known him many years and must say he is generous and forgiving. It would be hard to find a better man. But he feels he owes it as his duty to the public to prosecute me. Now I could stand trial and beat the case, but that would not relieve me of the burden that is crushing out the last ray of happiness in my waste of a life.
“‘Now I wish that you would write to Mr. and Mrs. Cudahy and pray for mercy, for as they do so will those who come after them. Tell them of my character and my desire to repent. I feel sure that Mr. Cudahy knows it is an old and well-established fact having long since been proven so by scientific research that if the parents are honest, their offspring, though it may wander away into sin, will eventually abandon evil and return to the good. Remember this and Mr. Cudahy knows as does hundreds of others in this city that I showed mercy to his son when he was in my power. If I cared to surround myself with stolen gold I could have ten million inside of thirty days. But I have found no happiness in evil and am going to return to the teaching of my childhood. If I must suffer, I will not repine.
World, Chase Me Down Page 30
