Under oath, Doheny testified that he had indeed sent his son to deliver the cash in a “little black satchel” to Fall, and remarked that he saw nothing wrong in lending money for personal profit.
The investigation resulted in criminal trials. Fall was sentenced to a year in prison for accepting a bribe from Doheny, but Doheny was found not guilty of paying any bribes. Sinclair, too, was acquitted, but years later was jailed on one count of contempt of the Senate and one count of contempt of court for hiring a detective from the Burns Agency, a rival of Pinkerton, to follow the jury panel around in one of his trials.
Although Sinclair was found to have made massive contributions to the Harding campaign, the president himself was never subpoenaed; he died in 1923—in California—of reported apoplexy, and was succeeded in office by his vice president, Calvin Coolidge, in a providential move that may have been chiefly responsible for a Republican victory that November. Rumors still persist that Harding was poisoned, either by officials in his administration hoping to defuse Teapot Dome or by his wife, Florence, out of jealousy over her husband’s longtime affair with Nan Britton, who claimed to have borne his illegitimate daughter. (Although there is no evidence to confirm it, the last theory sheds a sinister light on Florence’s comment when told Harding had secured the Republic nomination in 1920: “I can see but one word written above his head if they make him president: ‘Tragedy.’”)
Whatever the circumstances of his death, Warren Gamaliel Harding remains the standard against which every succeeding president is measured. He is considered our worst and most ineffectual chief executive, and Teapot Dome our worst national scandal, although there have been several runners-up.
Joseph P. Kennedy, of course, lived—barely—to see his second son, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, become the first Roman Catholic president of the United States. (His first choice, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., was killed while serving with the armed forces during World War II.) Before that, the only serious Catholic contender, former Governor Al Smith of New York, was defeated in 1928 by Herbert Hoover, who lost his reelection bid to Franklin D. Roosevelt, under whom Joseph Kennedy served as ambassador to the Court of St. James. Although nothing but this work of fiction suggests the elder Kennedy tried to quell an oil scandal in which he had no part, his activities in the bootlegging trade during Prohibition are legendary, and it may be significant that after John was elected, Rose, Joseph’s wife, was quoted as saying that she saw nothing wrong with the family having bought her son’s election.
This is a work of fiction. Apart from partnering two men who probably never met, I’ve taken certain liberties with the order of events in 1921, moving up the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, the first rumblings of Teapot Dome, and Hammett’s move to San Francisco prior to his June marriage by a matter of months. However, the particulars of the lives of the two principal characters were as reported: While Charles A. Siringo and Dashiell Hammett were political opposites, both men left the Pinkerton National Detective Agency because they became disenchanted with its bullying tactics. Throughout his adventurous and literary life, Siringo, who had witnessed the bloody Haymarket riot in Chicago firsthand in 1886, despised radicals of any kind. Hammett, who deplored his time as a strikebreaker for the Agency, invoked the Fifth Amendment more than eighty times during questioning by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951, refusing to divulge details about his connection with the Communist Party, and served six months in federal prison for contempt of Congress. Wherever one stands on these matters, both men were remarkable for the courage of their convictions.
I ask the reader to forgive my use of literary license and to accept the truth of the historical personalities herein—particularly Becky London, who was so very kind to me in her final years.
Glen Ellen, best known to readers as the Valley of the Moon, is still home to Beauty Ranch, Jack London’s last home and final resting place at the end of his colorful life, social activism, and influential literary career. It’s maintained for tourists by the California state parks system and the Jack London Foundation, founded by the late Russ Kingman, Jack’s biographer, proprietor of the Jack London Bookstore, and landlord pro bono to Becky London in her energetic old age, and Kingman’s late wife, Winnie.
Wyatt Earp, whose name is synonymous with the gunfighting West, denied any intention of a career in law enforcement. He went from boomtown to boomtown hoping to get rich in the tradition of robber barons Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller, and pinned on a star in order to carry a firearm to protect his interests. He died, deep in debt, in a rented bungalow in Los Angeles in 1929. His widow, Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp, spent the next fifteen years polishing his reputation.
Samuel Dashiell Hammett, the man who gave us such icons as Sam Spade, the Continental Op, and Nick and Nora Charles, served in the U.S. military in both world wars, beat tuberculosis, and lived to revolutionize the detective story. He died January 10, 1961, in New York City at the age of sixty-six.
Charles Angelo Siringo, the “cowboy detective,” who befriended and hunted Billy the Kid, infiltrated Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, wrote and published seven books based on his experiences as a working cowboy and private investigator, and in his last years helped adapt his memoirs for the silent screen, died October 19, 1928, in Hollywood, California. He was seventy-two years old.
He never did fix his roof.
BOOKS BY LOREN D. ESTLEMAN
Kill Zone
Roses Are Dead
Any Man’s Death
Motor City Blue
Angel Eyes
The Midnight Man
The Glass Highway
Sugartown
Every Brilliant Eye
Lady Yesterday
Downriver
Silent Thunder
Sweet Women Lie
Never Street
The Witchfinder
The Hours of the Virgin
A Smile on the Face of the Tiger
City of Widows*
The High Rocks*
Billy Gashade*
Stamping Ground*
Aces & Eights*
Journey of the Dead*
Jitterbug*
Thunder City*
The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association*
The Master Executioner*
Black Powder, White Smoke*
White Desert*
Sinister Heights
Something Borrowed, Something Black*
Port Hazard*
Poison Blonde*
Retro*
Little Black Dress*
Nicotine Kiss*
The Undertaker’s Wife*
The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion*
American Detective*
Gas City*
Frames*
The Branch and the Scaffold*
Alone*
The Book of Murdock*
Roy & Lillie: A Love Story*
The Left-Handed Dollar*
Infernal Angels*
Burning Midnight*
Alive!*
The Confessions of Al Capone*
Don’t Look for Me*
Ragtime Cowboys*
*A Forge Book
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Loren D. Estleman has won Shamus Awards for detective fiction, Spur Awards for Western fiction, and Western Heritage Awards. The Western Writers of America recently conferred upon Estleman the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Contribution to Western Literature. He lives with his wife, author Deborah Morgan, in Michigan.
Learn more at www.lorenestleman.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
RAGTIME COWBOYS
Copyright © 2014 by Loren D. Estleman
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Michael Koelsch
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-3454-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-46681338-0 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466813380
First Edition: May 2014
Ragtime Cowboys Page 22
