The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

by Ashley, Mike;

  “I got important information. I got to talk to Chicago.”

  Lowenstein looked dubious. “What information?”

  “The woman’s been killed.”

  Hughs went at once to the candlestick telephone, cranked the ringer box, lifted the earpiece.

  “Good afternoon,” an operator said. “Number, please?”

  “Please let me speak to Chicago operator PA 12.” Hughs handed Pinky the telephone.

  “One moment, please,” the operator said.

  Within seconds a man’s voice came on the line. “Name and number.”

  “Pinky. Number 79.”

  “One minute, please.”

  *

  Never in a million years had Pinky thought he would become a detective. He and Lorraine was happy playing three-a-day at Mick Sullivan’s vaudeville house in Cincinnati, where they was billed as Pinky Pincus and the Pink Lady.

  The two of them had started with Sam Smith, who had a magic act: The Great Smithsini. Sam taught both of them how to shoot, for a sketch he called “The Girl with the Vanishing Volumities,” which was Sam’s name for tits.

  Pinky and Lorraine were both expert shootists. The big woman and the small man figured out almost at once that they were made for each other on and off stage. In their act, Pinky shot the Lady’s clothes off until she was naked, or appeared to be naked – depending on the town they were in or the house they were playing.

  Their encore presented the lady chasing Pinky off, stage right. The velvet curtain billowed. Then the two of them would appear stage left, as the Pink Lady proceeded to shoot off Pinky’s clothes, only to reappear – BIG-FINISH-ACCOMPANIED-BY-DRUM-ROLLS – naked, except for the large pink flower covering his private parts.

  Everything changed on the night Mister William Pinkerton caught their act and invited them to work for the Agency.

  “You on the line, Pinky?”

  Pinky began to sweat. “Good to hear your voice, Mister Pinkerton.”

  *

  Little Jack almost fell over backwards. He’d managed to hoist himself on to a window box, saw a broken pane and put his ear to the crack. Once more he said, but under his breath, “Goddam!” Pinky was actually talking to the William Pinkerton. Wait till Big Jack heard this.

  *

  Little Jack wasn’t the only one to react. Another exclamation of surprise came from a man positioned more than a hundred feet away.

  Davey Collins couldn’t be seen by most people passing by. As a matter of fact, Davey, known as Davey Bear, was standing on spikes halfway up a pole that the telephone company had put up, off to the side of the street. The pole was masked by a tall tree with snow-laden branches.

  The Boss had a lot of people around the city letting him know what was going on. When he used the information fast enough and in the best possible way, the bucks came rolling in and people like Davey Bear got walking-around money. He’d heard enough to make the Boss happy. Now, he had to disconnect from the brownstone’s telephone so he could tap into another wire. “Boss, it’s Davey.”

  *

  Little Jack didn’t know if what he had learned about Pinky was worth anything. But Big Jack would. And Little Jack was betting it was plenty. He turned west on Fifth Street and heard someone above him, talking. Goddam. Up the pole. Little Jack came to a dead stop.

  *

  “That little Jew, Pincus?” Davey told the Boss.

  “What about him?”

  “You sitting down?”

  “Tell me right fucking now or I’ll break your head.”

  “Pinky Pinkus is a Pinkerton Man. For sure; also, those two foreign bird gawkers. And the woman in the blue coat from the bank robberies? She’s one of them, too.”

  15

  All the doors of the houses on Gramercy Park house wore evergreen wreaths, studded with red holly berries and pine cones. Some of the wreaths had big red silk bows. In the park itself a plump spruce sparkled with tiny electric bulbs. A definite feeling of festivity hung in the air.

  The winter sun cast frugal light, which Esther knew was ideal for the proper exposure she would need. The weather had turned mild. Esther unlocked the gate to the private park and held it open for Wong to pull in the wagon carrying her wooden tripod and her box of glass plates and her Scovill camera.

  She motioned for the man and woman – who had come calling and commissioned a photograph – to enter, closing and locking the gate behind them.

  “Wait here, please,” Esther told them. She moved down the path, evaluating the light and the shadows, until she found a suitable space, then beckoned to them.

  If Wong was surprised that morning to see on the doorstep of No. 5 Gramercy Park the men called Robbie Allen and Harry Kidder, who’d brought Miss Esther home after the bank robbery, and with them the tall and attractive young woman named Henrietta de Grout, he gave no indication. He was pleased, however, to see that Robbie Allen only stayed long enough to make flirting eyes at Miss Esther before he went on about his business.

  Henrietta de Grout wore a long, green velvet coat with a high collar, white lace ruffle, fur cuffs, and flowing skirt. Pinned to her lapel was an elegant gold watch. Her thick dark hair was rolled, framing her oval face, ending in a topknot surmounting her head. She had removed her hat for the photograph. Standing close beside her, Harry Kidder looked handsome and serious in his broad-shouldered, black, single-breasted suit, high collar and narrow grey silk cravat, held in place by a diamond stickpin.

  Because the photograph was to be in honour of the couple’s engagement, Esther had put aside her Kodak and rolled film for her more reliable Scovill and the glass plates and fine lenses.

  “Please stand perfectly still.” After Esther focused the lens, she inserted a glass plate into a holder and placed it in the back of the camera. “Ready?” she said. “Do not move, please.” The light was perfect, the weather benign.

  “Ready.” Miss de Grout’s husky voice was steady, sure. She had a casual grace, standing there close beside her man.

  Esther made the picture.

  It felt right. But she removed the plate, inserted another and made one more picture.

  *

  Robbie Allen strolled down towards Union Square. On Fifteenth Street, he looked in the window of Tiffany’s, where Harry had bought Henrietta a gold lapel watch and, for himself, a diamond stickpin. Bought, no less. Damn it all, they’d lost their voodoo.

  Harry had anyway. He was all wrapped up in Henrietta and being a father, and now he was talking about ranching. In New York.

  Goddam, in the old days they would have just held up Tiffany’s and cleaned it out.

  He had the itch, same as he’d felt as a boy in Utah. Still, there was time. He couldn’t push Harry too hard just now. Another couple of weeks wouldn’t hurt, while they saw a few vaudeville shows and enjoyed some of the night life. They’d taken rooms again at Missus Taylor’s boarding house on West Twelfth Street, so they could celebrate the New Year and shoot the moon. Next week he’d get himself to the steamship lines on the East River and buy those tickets to South America.

  He passed the Union Square Bank, which was open again; no sign that a robbery had ever happened. Those two had done another bank and gone to ground. Where were the bastards? He’d like to get his hands on them, all right.

  All this thinking made his throat dry. He headed to Joe’s Bar, a tavern on Union Square they’d been frequenting since they arrived in the city.

  The streets were crowded with shoppers, workmen, servants carrying packages. Robbie was deep in thought. He failed to notice the two men on the opposite side of the street, who had stopped to talk.

  These two men were studying the scene of the first crime at the Union Square Bank, when one said, “Look there, Dutch. If we didn’t know they travelled together, I’d say that fellow there fits the description of Butch Cassidy.”

  “Yeah, Coz. Him and everyone else in city clothes and a derby. Cassidy has a moustache.”

  “Easy enough to shave of
f,” Bo said.

  “Forget it. You’re clutching at straws. The shooters got away. The Pinkerton girl had a bagful of bank bills. She was with them, or not with them. They got cover from the kids in the tenement. And we have egg on our face.”

  16

  January, 1902: Bo Clancy and Dutch Tonneman had once again been summoned to the Police Commissioner’s office. There was a new commissioner, all the more reason for the two inspectors to be summoned.

  Neither Dutch nor Bo wore top coats. Though milder than usual, it was still winter, but the new commissioner, Colonel John Partridge, preferred unlit hearths. “Good for the brain,” he was known to say – and often. Too much heat wore him down, made him irritable. Therefore, to suit his taste, the interior of 300 Mulberry Street was like a block of ice.

  On the staircase Bo took several pulls from the small flask he kept in his inside pocket. He knew Dutch well enough not to offer him a nip while they were on the job.

  The welcome they received was sour, and weighed down by glares and reproaches, and no invitation to sit. Dutch wondered: did the Commissioner think they were tainted by the corruption surrounding the old Tammany regime? If so, he should know better. He and Bo were Roosevelt men. Rough Riders to the core.

  “Report.” The Commissioner had set down his cigar when they came into his office. It smouldered in the large ashtray on the Partridge’s neat desk.

  Bo had the rank; it was his place to answer. “No bank robberies in the past three weeks.”

  “And,” the Commissioner replied, “no cases of sunstroke in Manhattan.”

  Dutch swallowed most of a chuckle.

  Bo showed him his fist.

  The Commissioner had his back to them. Dutch arched his eyebrows. “It was funny,” he mouthed. To the Commissioner he said, “Their faces are splashed across the front page of every newspaper in the city.”

  The Commissioner lifted the cigar to his mouth and puffed pungent rings into the air. “Thanks to Miss Breslau and Sergeant Lowry. Damn it, men, where are Butch and Sundance? They can’t have disappeared without a clue. Capturing them here in New York will get the press off our backs, put a twist in their long underwear. New York newspapers will have the best story since Tammany was squelched.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bo said.

  The Commissioner harrumphed. “Talk to me about the Pinkerton woman.”

  “She was going by the name of Etta Place,” Bo said. “Her real name was Jenny McCracken. The Pinkertons claimed the body.”

  “And she had some of the bank money. Was she a thief? Or was she collecting evidence?”

  “No way of knowing, sir,” Dutch said. “The Pinkertons won’t talk to us.”

  The Commissioner glared at Dutch. “Then what the hell good are you? I’d be better off with two trained monkeys, wiggling their pink arses.” There was a noticeable silence. “Damn Pinkertons!”

  So, Dutch thought, the Pinkertons weren’t talking to him either.

  Bo cleared his throat. “At least we recovered some of the bank money.”

  “I called the Pinkerton office in Chicago. Bill Pinkerton is never in. Damn it to hell and horse-shit! You do your job and show them up, you hear. They claim they never sleep. Well, we can do the same.” The Commissioner concentrated on Dutch. “You’re a descendant of Old Peter Tonneman who worked with Jacob Hays?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Commissioner shook his head. “You’d think he would have passed something down to you.”

  Dutch’s face reddened. “Sir.”

  “Don’t ‘sir’ me. Get the hell out of here. Find the rest of the money. Find Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I want to be able to call Bill Pinkerton and tell him we caught Butch Cassidy and that we solved the murder of his operative and that, in the future, it would be more mannerly – and prudent – if he let us know when any of his operatives were working New York City.”

  The Commissioner’s cigar filled the air with bitter smoke. He threw the stogy into the cold fireplace and lit a new one.

  “Next time I see you two, I want results.”

  17

  “I’m freezing my arse off here,” Little Jack Meyers said, jigging from one foot to the other outside the shack, across the street from 300 Mulberry – where the reporters who covered police headquarters gathered, hoping for hot news. Little Jack had decided to stake out the Tonneman house on Grand before daylight to see what Bo and Dutch were up to this morning, and he’d followed them to the House.

  Little Jack didn’t get much sympathy but he did get a welcome taste from reporter Lem Borden’s pint bottle.

  All the scribblers watched the comings and goings of the coppers and police wagons. Some energetic souls crossed the street to ask their questions, then returned to the shack, no smarter than they’d been before.

  Others followed after the goings, sniffing for a way to get behind the story. But the big story was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbing banks and shooting up people in the city.

  “You think they have something on Butch and Sundance?” Lem squinted at Little Jack. Little Jack was a wily one. He wasn’t as sharp as his boss, Jack West, but he was smart enough.

  Little Jack shook his head. “Don’t know. Don’t think so. Best guess is Bo and Dutch’re getting a whipping. I’d like to get my ear to that door.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. It’d get stuck to that block of ice. Then, all you’d have is an ear full of door.”

  Little Jack guffawed. “That’s funny.”

  “As a corpse,” the reporter said. “Hell would freeze in there, thanks to Partridge.”

  “Uh,” Little Jack said. “Here they come.”

  “And I’d say you were right.” Lem crossed the street with Little Jack and a half dozen other reporters on his heels. “Got a whipping.”

  “Jesus,” Bo said. “The vultures coming to pick over the carcasses.”

  Dutch stepped out in the street and hailed a hack. As they drove off, Bo thumbed his nose at the reporters.

  “PINKYS on Delancey,” Dutch told the hackney man.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Bo said, yawning.

  “If Jenny McCracken went to PINKYS after the Bowery robbery and Pinky knew where to find her, that would make him another of Bill Pinkerton’s operatives.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better.”

  But when they climbed down from the hack, all they saw was an old sot sprawled out on the icy sidewalk, blocking the door. Wound round his neck like a scarf was Lorraine’s red turban, without its white feather.

  The door to PINKYS was boarded up.

  Bo grabbed the scarf, yanked the drunk to his feet and shook him. Putrid breath came forth with each snore. Dried blood covered the drunkard’s forehead. His crusty eyelids fluttered.

  “Where’s Pinky?” Bo roared.

  “Gone, gone, all gone.” The sot screwed up his face and sobbed.

  “When?”

  “How’s about a nickle for old Harvey? A piddlin’ five cents, four-three-two? One?”

  Bo dropped old Harvey to the sidewalk, dug a nickel from his pocket, and flashed it at old Harvey, who made a grab for it.

  Groping the side of the building, Harvey lifted himself. On his feet, he belched, farted; spittle dribbled into his beard. “Middle of night, Pinky came with a wad of dough. Thought I was sleeping but I saw him show it to Lorraine. Gobswiped me with his club and threw me out on the street like garbage.” Harvey tried to spit but only slobbered himself.

  Bo let the nickel drop to the ground. Harvey scrambled for it.

  Dutch pulled his whistle, which he kept on a chain next to his St Christopher’s medal, and blew.

  A patrolman rounded the corner of Essex. Old Harvey would sleep it off at the precinct – where at least he wouldn’t freeze to death on the cold, cold ground.

  18

  Little Jack arrived at PINKYS in time to see that the two inspectors had failed again. Pinky was gone. What about the two Pinkertons that Pinky had
reported to, the ones in the brownstone on Second Avenue? He saw the patrolman come to collect the drunk and used the distraction to skitter down Essex over to Second.

  *

  “You catch that?” Dutch said.

  “What?”

  “Sure looked like Jack West’s boy. He’s been tailing us since we left the House. He seems to know where he’s going.”

  On Second Avenue and Second Street, they saw Little Jack stop in front of a shabby brownstone. A hackney with two passengers was pulling away; the driver coaxed his horse across Second Avenue and veered uptown. Bo and Dutch came to stand on either side of Little Jack as they all watched the hackney fade from sight.

  Bo, amiable as a saint, crowded Little Jack. “You have something you want to tell us?”

  “Shit.”

  “Besides that,” Dutch said, crowding Little Jack on the other side.

  Little Jack scowled. “I don’t know nothing.”

  “You’d best tell us,” Bo said, pressing in.

  Little Jack rubbed his nose. He might as well share his information. “They was professors. Anyways, that’s what they called each other; but sure as hell they’re Pinkertons. I followed Pinky here after the woman got killed. They telephoned Chicago to report.”

  “They must have found Butch and Sundance,” Dutch said.

  “Doubt it,” Bo said. “They would be shouting it from the rooftops by now, and Billy Pinkerton, he’d be bragging it all over the newspapers. Looks like those two professors made a mess of it and were told to get their arses back to Chicago.”

  Dutch climbed the steps to the brownstone and rang the bell. No response. Tried the door. It was open. He motioned to Bo.

  “Beat it, kid,” Bo told Little Jack.

  “Yes, sir.” Little Jack found a spot around the corner, and when the coast was clear, he hoisted himself up on the window box near the cracked window pane.

  *