“How do, Mr. Lowe,” Catfish said more loudly than usual. “You mind if we have a word with you?”
“Who is it, dear?” called a female voice from inside.
Three rapid blinks, one big wink. Then again. “I’m going out for a minute, Milly. I won’t be long.” Lowe stepped out, shut the door behind himself quickly, and hurried away from the house.
They followed, Catfish almost trotting to keep up.
“What do you want with me?” Lowe asked, his voice cracking.
“Just a word or two.”
“About what? I don’t know you.”
“Name’s Catfish Calloway. I believe you already met my son, Harley.”
“Look, I’ll pay it back. I swear. It wasn’t much, and I’m good for it. Let’s just work something out, and nobody has to know anything.”
Lowe glanced back at his house. When he spotted a woman in the front window, he accelerated his pace around the corner. Finally out of sight, he slowed a little but didn’t seem very relieved.
Catfish grabbed him by the sleeve and stopped him in the middle of the street. “Mr. Lowe, we’re not interested in whatever you’ve got going on with Miss Jessie. Unless you lie to us.”
“About what?”
“About what happened that night at Miss Jessie’s sporting house.”
“Which night?”
“The night of the killing.”
His eyes went wild. “Are you police?”
“We’re lawyers for a boy accused of a murder he didn’t commit.”
Lowe brightened. “So you’re not here about me?”
“No, sir. But if you lie to us, we might just make you our business.”
“I have no reason to lie. What do you want to know?”
“You went to Miss Jessie’s that night, didn’t you?”
Lowe’s face reddened. “I did.”
“Where’d you tell your wife you went?”
He swallowed hard. “Sunday night’s my card night, and she goes to bed before I get home. The game ended early.”
“What time you get to Jessie’s?”
“I don’t know, maybe about eleven. I don’t carry a watch.” He started walking again.
Catfish surged forward to catch up. “You remember a boy leaving as you went in?”
“Maybe.”
“Your memory better improve, Mr. Lowe, unless you want to carry on this conversation at the sheriff’s office.”
Lowe’s eyes took off. “No, no, I remember him, but I don’t know who he was.”
“What’d you do when you got inside?”
His pace quickened again. “I, ah, I visited with one of the ladies boarding there.”
“Miss Sadie?”
He nodded.
“How long you visit with her?”
“I don’t remember. Not long.”
“Ever see Miss Georgia?”
“No, never.”
“Did you see any other men customers?”
“No.”
“Hear a gunshot?”
“No. That happened after I left. I read about it in the paper.”
“What time did you leave?”
“I don’t remember. Maybe close to midnight.” His pace quickened again.
Catfish tugged on his sleeve. “Hold on, Mr. Lowe, you’re wearing me out.”
They stopped, and Catfish caught his breath. They had the man’s attention, but there was more he knew.
“Now, how do you get about town?”
“I walk. Or take the trolley. Why?”
“Did you drive a red buggy of some kind to Miss Jessie’s?”
“No, I walked. It’s only about three or four blocks from my house.”
“You see a red buggy there?”
His eyes jumped into action. “Maybe, I don’t really remember.”
He did. He saw it.
“Think hard, Mr. Lowe,” Catfish said.
“All right, yes . . . I do remember a carriage of some kind. It was unusual . . . A racing rig, maybe.”
“For trotters?”
“Maybe.”
Catfish pulled Jasper’s drawing from his pocket and gave it to Lowe. “Look like this?”
“Yes.”
“You know whose it is?”
“No.”
Catfish put the drawing back in his coat pocket. “You know Bud Orman?”
“No.”
He didn’t seem to. But Orman had to have been there that night.
“Did you see any other men at Miss Jessie’s that night?”
“No,” he answered too quickly.
“You sure?”
“I didn’t see any other men except that boy you asked me about.”
Catfish looked up toward Franklin Avenue and scratched his chin. “Mr. Lowe, you see that clock tower?”
“Yes.”
The red brick clock tower rose over the nearer buildings. The sun reflected off the white clock face set into the gray slate mansard roof.
“That’s the courthouse. You’ll be answering questions there if you don’t tell me the truth right now.”
Four blinks, two winks. “Look, I can’t be a witness in your case. I just can’t. It would ruin me. My wife would leave me, and I’d lose my job.”
“Maybe you should’ve thought about that before now.”
He began to whimper. “Please don’t get me involved in this.” He wiped his eyes with a handkerchief and glanced around, then took off up the street again. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but please don’t get me involved.”
“What’d you see?” Catfish asked in his serious voice.
“There was a man. A young man. When I left the . . . boarding house, he was crossing the street from the Red Front and tossed something into that buggy you asked me about. Then he came back across the street, heading toward the boarding house.”
“Miss Jessie’s?”
He nodded.
“What’d he look like?”
“I don’t remember, I really don’t. I’m sorry. I wish I could help you, but I wasn’t really paying attention to him.”
“How young was he?”
“Older than the boy you asked me about. Maybe a little younger than you.” He nodded at Harley.
“What was he wearing?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“Wearing a hat?”
“No.”
“What color hair?”
“It wasn’t dark, but I don’t really know.”
“So he had light-colored hair?”
“Maybe.”
Catfish hooked his arm through Lowe’s. “Mister, if you give me enough information to find that man, I won’t have to tell anybody about you. You want to cheat on your wife and steal from your employer, that’s your business. But if I don’t have enough information to find that young man with the red buggy, I’ll have no choice but to tell the sheriff you’re a witness. Then everybody’ll know what you been up to.”
“But I’m not a witness,” he said. “I didn’t see anything. Please, please, I’m telling you the truth.”
“What did he say to you when you passed him?”
“Nothing, I swear. I’ve told you everything I know.” He broke down in tears and buried his eyes in his hands.
Catfish pulled out his calling card. “Mr. Lowe, you remember anything else later, you let me know.”
“Oh yes, sir, I sure will.” He stopped walking and faced Catfish. “You won’t tell anybody about me, will you?”
“Tell anybody about what?” He gave him the card, turned his back on Lowe, and walked off. He glanced over his shoulder. “But you better hope I find that man with the light-colored hair and the red buggy.”
Lowe scuttled toward home as Catfish and Harley walked on toward the surrey.
“Where we going, Papa?”
“To pay a call on Bud Orman.”
“Do you think he was the fellow there that night?”
“I don’t know anybody who’d say Bud wa
s young, but then again it was dark. Let’s talk to him. See if he has a red buggy.”
Chapter 19
Papa had said Bud Orman was in his mid-forties, but that was overly generous. His face looked as though he’d been through at least another decade of hard living. His face seemed weighted by heavy wrinkles and hooded gray eyes.
His office was a repository of relics from his tinsmithing and saloon-keeping days, jumbled with sundry papers on every surface and rolled-up plats in the corners and on the floor. A county map stretched across his desk. The room reeked of kerosene from five lamps. A calendar hung crookedly on the wall beside his desk, and every day passed had been Xed off. On the opposite wall, a mounted fox head sported a miniature derby hat between his ears, a pipe protruding from his mouth, and a bow tie and winged collar under his long, pointed snout.
“How can I help you, gentlemen?” Orman asked, rocking back and propping his alligator skin shoes on the desk.
“I have a few questions about a sporting woman you might know.”
Orman grinned, flashing yellow teeth. “Oh, y’all looking for a romp, eh?”
“No, sir. I’m too old and he’s too busy.”
A tarnished spittoon hid in the back corner near the dapper fox. Every now and then, Orman discharged a tobacco-brown projectile at it with practiced precision. Ding! Harley’s chair, thankfully, was well outside the flight path, and Papa seemed unfazed by the barrages of spittle arcing over his shoulder. He’d be taking that suit to Hop Lee’s laundry.
“This girl’s involved in a case we’re defending,” Papa said matter-of-factly.
“Oh, I see. Who is she?”
“Miss Jessie Rose.”
“Don’t know her.” He shook his head definitively.
His answer was surprising. Orman didn’t act as if he was lying, but then again, a man like Bud Orman was probably as adept at his lying as he was at his spitting.
“Oh? I thought you might be acquainted somehow,” Papa said, scratching his head until his hair flopped over his forehead. “Probably in her late twenties, black hair, came from New Orleans a couple of years back. Slight accent.”
“Sorry. I know a few whores, but not that one.” Orman broke into another big grin. “I can fix you up with a fine mulatto gal, if that’s your taste.”
Ding!
“Kind of you, but we’ll pass on that,” Papa said.
Orman rocked forward and searched his desk until he found whatever he was looking for beneath the map. “If you’re having trouble, mister, try some of these.” He held up a box of oriental sex pills. “Friends tell me they work. Don’t know myself, of course.” He cackled.
“No, sir. But thanks kindly for your offer.”
Orman shrugged.
“You know a man named Buford Lowe?” Papa asked.
“Never heard of him.” He seemed as sure of that as anything.
“Got a nervous eye twitch.”
“Don’t know him. Sorry.”
Papa rubbed his hands along the thighs of his pants. “Well, sir, looks like we’ve troubled you for no good reason. We’ll let you get back to your business.”
He got up, and Harley did the same.
“Sure, always happy to help law.”
Papa drove the surrey back to the office. They hadn’t learned much from that cagey old man. Harley wondered what Papa thought but didn’t ask. It would come once he’d digested it thoroughly.
He urged the horse into a trot up the long, straight stretch along Fourth Street, and his white hair flew back from beneath his black Stetson No. 1. He didn’t even slow at the intersections, except when they approached the Katy Railroad tracks on Jackson.
Would he look toward the depot? Harley didn’t stare, but he shot his father more than a glance. He knew how Papa felt.
When the Katy came in, they’d repainted the old Missouri Pacific terminal. It had been eight years, but it looked much the same. The carriage rattled over the tracks.
Harley looked down. We could talk about that day. About Schoolcraft. About the trial.
As soon as they were across the tracks, Papa lashed the horse into the final stretch. In no more than a minute, he parked outside the office on Fourth Street.
As Papa tied the reins, Harley finally asked, “Do you think Orman’s lying about Miss Jessie?”
“Probably.”
He followed Papa into the office.
“How do, Miss Peach.” Papa swept by.
“Welcome back, sir.” She eyed Harley knowingly.
He trailed behind Papa into their office. Papa headed for his desk, tossing his hat on the table in the center of the room, and Harley went to his own desk.
He glanced at Papa across the table. “Why didn’t you ask him whether he owned the whorehouse?”
“Didn’t want to scare him off.” Papa put his satchel on the desk, then took off his coat and carried it back over to the coat hook by the door.
“Scare him off from what?”
“From lying, if he’s got a mind to.”
“Huh?”
Papa spoke over his shoulder as he removed papers from his satchel. “Lies hop off a killer like fleas off a coon dog. Give him a chance, and he’ll lie. But if he thinks you’re watching to see what hops when you get close, he’ll shy away.”
Maybe Papa noticed something he didn’t. “He didn’t act as if he was lying—to me, anyway.”
“He’s lying if we find he knows Jessie Rose.”
“Yes, sir.”
Papa sat and whirled his chair to face him. “Now, Harley, don’t you think it’s about time you go look at those deed records?”
It finally sunk in why a mortgage on furniture from Jessie Rose to Bud Orman might be important. Harley stood up again abruptly.
“Right, Papa. I’ll go now.”
***
Harley pored over the big clothbound deed books in the county clerk’s office, looking for any legal instruments filed by Orman in 1893. He’d have filed a lien on the furniture if Miss Jessie had executed one to him, so he could enforce it by foreclosure if necessary. There were no liens in Orman’s name in the grantee index. The grantor index under R showed nothing for Jessie Rose. Harley even checked Georgia Gamble and Sadie Wiggins. Nothing. He didn’t know Big Joe’s last name. Jessie had other girls working for her, but he didn’t know their names either.
Just as he was ready to leave, he decided to check the grantor index under O. He couldn’t conceive why there might be a conveyance by Orman rather than to him, but he could hear Papa’s voice asking if he checked anyway.
And there it was.
The index entry jumped out at him: William Robert Orman, Grantor, to J. R. Reneau, Grantee. He pulled the proper deed book and flipped through it until he found the page. Orman had conveyed the whorehouse property after the fire to J. R. Reneau. Could Miss Jessie be Jessie Rose Reneau?
He made some notes and got up to leave. What would Papa expect him to do next? He’d probably ask if Harley had wired Orleans Parish to see if they had a record of Jessie Rose Reneau, so he might as well try to find that out first.
At Western Union, he wired his deputy sheriff friend: FOLLOWING UP PREVIOUS INQUIRY. DO YOU HAVE RECORD OF WHORE NAMED JESSIE ROSE RENEAU?
He checked back an hour later, and a reply had come. JESSIE ROSE RENEAU CONVICTED JUNE 1892 PROSTITUTION. FINED FIFTY DOLLARS. COULDN’T PAY. SERVED TWO MONTHS JAIL. RELEASED. NO RECORD SINCE.
He didn’t have to hear Papa actually say it. There’s your query. How could she afford to buy a sporting house in Waco when she couldn’t even pay a fifty-dollar fine in New Orleans?
He stared at the deed book. Maybe Papa was on to something. If Bud Orman wasn’t Miss Jessie’s boss, then who paid for that house? Or had there really been any payment at all? Maybe the sale was just a sham. Maybe Orman was at the bottom of it all somehow.
Chapter 20
After that, Papa remained convinced that Bud Orman was somehow involved in the killing of Georgia Gamble.
He said it had to be him—there was nobody else who made sense. Orman must have been at the sporting house that night, and he must have arrived in a red gig. Lowe was mistaken that the man there had been young. Orman had lied about not knowing Miss Jessie. It was just a matter of finding proof, Papa said.
They spent the rest of May and into June searching for that evidence. Papa sent Harley to city and county offices. Next, it was the utility companies. But the answers were always the same. Jessie Rose paid the bills herself—county property taxes, bawdy house fees, telephone bills, water bills, electricity bills. No trace of Bud Orman anywhere.
Then Papa sent him back to look again. This time he wanted to know who paid those bills before Orman put title to the place in Miss Jessie’s name. Was it Josie Bennett or was it Bud Orman? Harley came back with an answer Papa didn’t like: Bud Orman had paid all the bills on the house before the fire. Josie Bennett never had.
Papa sent him back a third time to check the other whorehouses on Orman’s Alley. The deed records, the tax records, the utility records—all in Bud Orman’s name.
Still not satisfied, Papa went back to see Bud Orman, despite Harley’s protests that the man obviously wasn’t involved. This time Papa confronted him directly about ownership of the house. Orman said he sold it to J. R. Reneau, but he never met Reneau in person. His son had handled everything for him. He didn’t even know Reneau was a woman. No, he insisted, he didn’t know if J. R. was actually Jessie Rose.
He finally got testy when Papa just wouldn’t take no for an answer. “I wouldn’t know this Jessie Rose woman if she kissed me on the ass. Now get the hell out of my office.”
Far from being satisfied, Papa became more suspicious than ever. He sent Harley back to the county clerk to see whether it was Orman himself or his son who’d brought the deed in to record, but the clerk refused to talk about it. He said instructions had come down that nobody in the office was to help the Calloways anymore. He wouldn’t say who the directive came from or the reason for it.
Papa attributed it to Orman.
Harley crossed his arms and shook his head. “Why would the county employees help Orman? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Orman’s a lying scallywag. He’s lying to them, too.”
“I’m sorry, Papa, but I think we’re chasing up the wrong tree on this. The trial date is fast approaching, and we’ve got to either find another defense for Cicero or try to make a plea agreement.”
The Sporting House Killing: A Gilded Age Legal Thriller Page 13
