Always a Cold Deck (A Harry Reese Mystery Book 1)

by Robert Bruce Stewart

  “Well, Harry, I’m reluctant to say it, but I think you’ve been outmaneuvered.”

  “Yes, it does look that way, but I’m not sure what her real motive is. By the way, did you recognize Whitner?”

  “I, well, yes, I think I did. But I’m not sure why. What was his name?”

  “Jack Whitner. I just met him this evening.”

  “Maybe I’ve come across his photograph. Is he from New York?”

  “Yes, he is. I suppose it’s unlikely you met him socially?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  He said good night and then went up to his room. If Keegan recognized a man from a photograph, it was fair to assume the gentleman had some flaws in his character. Keegan made it a point to know his opponents—the grafters and bunco men who made a habit of defrauding insurance companies. And if Whitner actually recognized Keegan, he was something more than the usual defrauder of insurance companies. I went over to the desk and asked for Jack Whitner’s room, just to see if he was really registered. He was, Room 512. Whitner didn’t seem the type to turn in for the night at ten minutes past ten, so I decided to see if he might go out again. I went out to the street and found a place where I could watch the two main entrances to the hotel. It had begun to rain, but luckily I didn’t need to wait long. Whitner came out and went up Main Street and then into the Tifft House, Sadie’s abode.

  He didn’t stop at the desk, but went right over to the elevator. I went up the stairs, charging up the last flight, and waited behind a corner on the third floor. Whitner came out of the elevator and went right to Sadie’s door. He didn’t need to look at the room numbers to find his way, and was admitted without introduction.

  I started downstairs, but before I was halfway down, Whitner passed me in a big hurry. He must not have recognized me from behind. He ran out the front door and I followed at a discreet trot. When I got to the street he was already on the other side.

  “Why, hello there.” Charlie Elwell was just beside me. “Are you staying at the Tifft?”

  “No, just checking on a friend.”

  “Yes? Me too.”

  “Say, it’s nice seeing you, but I really need to get going. I’ll be stopping by your office in the morning.”

  “Oh, right. Well, good night.”

  Charlie went into the Tifft House and I scanned the street for a sign of Whitner. I spotted him a block ahead, going back down Main Street. He was walking now, so I was able to follow him easily. After a few blocks we turned west, then south again. Whitner was still about a block ahead, but I realized there was someone between us making the same turns. When we turned east and then north, I realized we had gone in a circle. Whitner had spotted one or both of us. He returned to the Iroquois and I decided to follow the other man. He led me over to Washington Street and then down several blocks. Just opposite Carroll Street, he rapped on a glass door and waited. It had stopped raining and he took off his hat to shake water from it. His blond head looked strikingly like Whitey Schuler’s. Someone let him in and I walked by to find out where he was visiting. It was the rear entrance of the Courier Building. Then I remembered Donahy saying Fingy Conners owned a newspaper.

  I felt as if I had spent the last half hour in one of Emmie’s dime novels. A drink seemed to be in order, so I availed myself of the McLeod’s inexpensive, if somewhat seamy, taproom. I can’t say it helped much. After the third beer I was as puzzled as when I started. If Whitner was working the insurance game with Sadie, the first explanation that came to mind was that they had collaborated in killing Charles Elwell. Because if Elwell was alive and Sadie planned to meet up with him, why bring Whitner into it? On the other hand, if Sadie and Whitner had killed Elwell, it would have been wisest for him to leave town and stay away until she received her death benefit. What would be the point of taking a room in an expensive hotel and making friends with Aunt Nell and Charlie? He must have another game going, with or without Sadie’s awareness. I could think of only one solution that could account for all of that: Whitner knew Elwell was still alive and assumed either his wife or Sadie was conspiring with him. He was waiting to blackmail whomever it turned out to be. In the meantime, he was spending his time keeping track of the two. It made sense, but the one thing it didn’t explain was why Whitey Schuler was following Whitner.

  When I went out to the lobby, the clerk handed me a package an express company had just delivered. Up in my cell, I found it contained Keegan’s files on Robert Mason. Nothing was more current than the year before, and most of it was just copies of policies that had paid out and official reports. No recent photographs, addresses, or associates, or anything else that might be useful—outside of the fact he had family in several small towns across the state.

  8

  On the way to Charlie’s office the next morning, I managed to solve another little puzzle. It was Sadie he had gone to visit at the Tifft House the night before. He must have taken up where his father had left off. That would explain the desk clerk telling me that Charlie Elwell wouldn’t need to write. I’d been referring to Charles Senior, but he was talking about young Charlie. It also would explain why Jack Whitner rushed out of Sadie’s room just after arriving: she must have told him she was expecting Charlie at any moment.

  Charlie had a position with a law firm in the Largest Office Building in the World. After a brief wait I was led down one corridor and then another. He had a small office on the air shaft, but it beat any office I’d ever had. He welcomed me with a friendly handshake and we sat down.

  “First of all, I wanted to let you know why I’m in town.” I had settled on a story that didn’t rely too heavily on deceit and at the same time didn’t reveal too much. “You see, I’m working with some insurers trying to locate Robert Mason.”

  “Robert Mason? He’s been gone quite a while now.”

  “Yes, but last week’s fire at the Eastern has brought to light some new information that might aid us in locating him.”

  “Really? What sort of information?”

  “It looks like Mason had been running a smuggling ring using the elevator as a base.”

  “Well, that wouldn’t surprise anyone. From what I’ve heard, Mason was a man who was always up to something. My father was often telling me stories.”

  “Given your father’s position at the company, didn’t he object?”

  “No, he found it quite amusing. My father wasn’t one to be overly concerned with ethics himself. ”

  “Do you think your father would have been mixed up in a smuggling operation?”

  “No, no. At least not directly. But he wouldn’t be terribly troubled at the idea.”

  “Is that why you didn’t join your father’s firm?”

  “My father wasn’t a partner with a firm. He had his own practice, on the same floor as the Elevator Company. Frankly, some of his work was a little sordid. He came from Buffalo’s rough and tumble era and he couldn’t expect me to relive that.”

  “Do you think his equivocal attitude applied to the stock scheme as well?”

  “He insisted that he lost money when the stock collapsed.”

  “Did you believe that?”

  “I know he owned common shares that did lose value. But I also know there were suspicions he was involved. All I know for certain is that no profits from it ever came into our household.”

  “Did you like your father?”

  “Except for how he treated my mother, sure. You couldn’t help but like him. Everyone liked him. But Mother, of course.”

  “I did notice that your mother didn’t seem very upset over his disappearance. One might almost call it indifference.”

  “Oh, no, Mother’s not indifferent. She’s much happier now. I don’t mean happy he died, just relieved the charade is over. Home life was a bit of a strain for both of them the last few years.” He paused. “But why do you use the word disappearance? The authorities are sure he died in the storm.”

  “Sorry. To an insurance company someone isn’t d
ead until a medical examiner or a court says so. But given your depiction of his character, don’t you think there’s some chance your father merely staged the accident?”

  “Oh, I definitely thought so at first. But what would he have gained? He wasn’t on the run from anything. He had debts, but nothing monumental.”

  “Well, what if he had an accomplice carrying a life insurance policy on him?”

  “My mother, you mean. But if he succeeded in faking the death and she received the benefit, why would she share the payment with him? You see, I did think of that.”

  “Are you aware of any other policies on his life?”

  “No, just the two naming my mother as beneficiary. Is there another?”

  “The Elevator Company has a policy on him.”

  “Yes, I did know that. But that’s not unusual. And you can be sure General Osgood wouldn’t commit fraud to help out my father.”

  “Have you petitioned yet to have your father declared dead?”

  “No, it was suggested to me that we should wait several months.”

  I didn’t like that. That might mean no claims on the insurance had been made. “Getting back to the Elevator Company, would you know anything about a mortgage they had with a brewer, Magnus Beck?”

  “A mortgage with Magnus Beck? No, but I imagine it was one of my father’s dealings. Magnus Beck is owned by William Conners.”

  “Is that Fingy Conners?”

  “Yes, but never use that sobriquet anywhere near him.” Charlie smiled. “You see, Conners came up the hard way, and he can be pretty crass. Most of the old guard in town snubbed him, but not my father. He had his faults, but he wasn’t the type to think less of a man because he didn’t know the purpose of all eight pieces of silver at his place setting.”

  Eight? I’d have to puzzle over that later. “And Mr. Conners also owns the Courier?”

  “Yes, the Courier, the Express, the brewery, a steamship line, and, of course, the street paving business. Conners does very well on contracts with the city.”

  “So he was a good friend for your father to have?”

  “Oh, yes. I imagine most of father’s business came from Conners. But they had a bit of a falling out last year. The grain scoopers went on strike against the racket Conners had set up, then the other dock workers backed them. It completely tied up the elevators and the owners wanted a settlement. You see, they were already paying the wages the scoopers were demanding, it’s just that Conners and the others were taking a large part of it before it got to the men who earned it. The Eastern Elevator Company missed a couple of mortgage payments during the strike and they were never able to make it up.”

  “But wasn’t the Elevator Company just a side-line for your father?”

  “Yes, but he had always told me he was counting on selling his share to provide for his retirement. I think he was angry with Conners for ruining his business, and Conners was angry with him for helping to undermine his racket. But I don’t know how deep that anger went.”

  “I see. Tell me, how well do you know Jack Whitner?”

  “Jack Whitner? Not well at all, really. He’s an old friend of Father’s who stopped by to see him. This was a few weeks ago, after Father’s accident, but he hadn’t heard. Since then we’ve seen him several times. Mother seems to enjoy his company. Why do you ask about Jack?”

  “Oh, just curiosity. So you knew him previously?”

  “No, I’d never heard of him. But I think Mother may have met him earlier.”

  I ran out of questions, so I thanked him for his time and he said it was quite all right.

  “But I do have one question of my own. Do you really have a cousin named Carlotta? I can never tell with Emmie.”

  “Oh, yes, and we’ll be seeing her this evening.”

  I headed back to McLeod’s to see if there were any responses to the wires I’d sent the day before. All four companies had responded. The first three, regarding the two policies naming Aunt Nell and the other naming Sadie, were identical: no claim had been made on the policy. The Provident Life Insurance Company seemed somewhat annoyed. My wire to them and their response to Emmie’s must have crossed paths. It appeared to them I’d made two contradictory proposals in the space of an afternoon. Their response read: “Have accepted your previous offer. $300 for evidence sufficient for denial of claim, no per diem or expenses. A deal is a deal.”

  I found this all a little unsettling. Here I was, confident I could solve the disappearance of a man with seventy thousand dollars in life insurance. But I had no way to profit from it beyond three hundred dollars—not even one half of one percent. I couldn’t afford to wait around Buffalo until Aunt Nell and Sadie made their claims. And if I solved it before then, there wouldn’t be any claims. But then, three hundred dollars was three hundred dollars.

  The only lead Charlie had offered me was that his father’s office was near the Elevator Company’s. I decided to pay Emmie a visit and see if she could access it. I surprised her by entering without knocking. And she likewise surprised me—she was actually typing a letter.

  “It’s my weekly dunning. I try to make each letter sound more ominous than the last, but I’m afraid I’ve exhausted my rhetorical skills as a bill collector. Now they just sound rather silly.”

  “Have you tried threatening bodily harm?”

  “The old paving stone to the head?”

  “It’s crude, but very effective.”

  “I’ll save that for the next round.”

  “By the way, I had a nice chat with Charlie this morning.”

  “Really, what about?”

  “Oh, this and that. Mostly about his father. He mentioned your uncle’s law office was near this one.”

  “Yes, it’s right next door.”

  I was going to need to humor her. “Well, it occurred to me there might be something in there to connect your uncle to the smuggling. And if we establish a connection, it may provide a clue as to who had him murdered.”

  “Then you do agree that it’s likely someone had him killed?”

  “Well, I’d say it’s a strong possibility.”

  “I’ve been giving it a great deal of thought and I believe I have the outline of their plan. First, they kill my uncle. Perhaps he tried to blackmail them. But if the body is found, the method of the killing would point to the murderers somehow. So they hide the body and take out my uncle’s boat and make it look as if he’d been caught in the storm and drowned. But without a body, it might not be believed. So they’ve cunningly stored the body somewhere in the lake, or a canal. After a few months, they retrieve it and have it wash up on shore. Now the death is confirmed, but the cause is obscured by the months of deterioration.”

  “I see.” I didn’t really see at all, but I thought it best to play along. “So all we need to do is find out where they’re storing the body?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Or, perhaps our first step is to find out who the murderers are.”

  “Yes, that would make the rest much easier. So you want to search my uncle’s office?”

  “That would seem a logical next step.” At least I didn’t need to argue the case.

  She pulled a small key ring out of a drawer and in getting up knocked her book on the floor. I bent down and picked it up for her. It was Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, complete with Robert Mason’s autograph. I flipped through it quickly and handed it to her. She made sure her place was still marked and set the book on her desk. Then she led me down the hall and to a door with “Charles Elwell, Esq.” painted on it. A door I’d walked by five times previously and hadn’t noticed. I was never a man for details.

  There was an outer office and two inner offices, the same layout as the Elevator Company’s. Elwell’s office held his desk and shelves of law books, but not much else. It also had its own door to the corridor. I was hoping Emmie would leave me to go through things myself, but this was obviously going to be a shared endeavor. The problem was that she was
looking for some connection to the local underworld, and I was looking for something quite different. We went through the desk together and found nothing that interested either of us so we went on to the next office. This looked to be a clerk’s room, with a large desk and shelves of law books from floor to ceiling. We made another joint search and again found nothing of note, beyond the fact that the former occupant had used a particularly fragrant cologne.

  Then we rifled the two desks in the outer office—nothing. This left just the files. I suggested she start on the correspondence while I looked through the legal and financial records. Both tasks were formidable, as Elwell had been in practice for thirty-odd years.

  Elwell’s practice was mainly commercial—articles of incorporation, contracts, claims, etc. But before she was even out of the A’s, Emmie had a long list of clients involved in criminal cases. There was a concert saloon owner accused of procurement, a number of fraud cases, several assaults, and one murder. The last occupied her for some time, and I began to realize that she had a weakness for the sensational. But she finally agreed there was little chance that Uncle Charles was involved in a man’s strangling of his mother-in-law.

  Meanwhile, I dug through the financial records. I was hoping to find some trace of assets he had kept hidden from his family. It was slow going, but from the bit I saw everything here was business-related. Uncle Charles didn’t have a lot of assets. I imagined keeping Sadie in the Tifft House was his principal investment outside of the elevator.

  Then Emmie cried, “Eureka”—figuratively, anyway. She had come across a saloonkeeper in the C’s who was accused of smuggling Chinamen into the United States. It was fairly recent, and probably the case the boys at the customs office had told me about. The name was Henry Croteau. He owned a saloon on Canal Street and had been arrested in March on a charge of aiding and abetting the illegal entry of Chinamen.