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

  Always a Cold Deck

  by

  Robert Bruce Stewart

  Copyright © 2012 by Robert Bruce Stewart

  All rights reserved. No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-938710-01-8

  Street Car Mysteries

  streetcarmysteries.com

  To Susie

  Table of Contents

  maps & crib sheet

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  Maps & Crib Sheet

  For a crib sheet with maps, characters and a short glossary, please visit:

  streetcarmysteries.com/always

  1

  One thing very often leads to another. But until my little adventure that summer of 1900, my life had never been ruled by the cliché so thoroughly. I left Brooklyn as an underemployed insurance investigator in desperate need of ready cash and returned ten days later in much the same condition—though not without some additional baggage. In between, events unfolded with a determined unpredictability. And while the various forms of fraud held no novelty for me, the three murders did. Nevertheless, they had little to do with the unsettled feeling that would be with me ever afterward.

  I was bound for Buffalo on the one o’clock limited out of Grand Central. I had a contract with a group of New York insurance companies to investigate a fire that had destroyed a grain elevator the week before. There was nothing surprising about a fire destroying a grain elevator. But the Eastern Elevator Company had enjoyed a colorful history. There had been accusations of shortchanging by grain shippers, a securities manipulation scandal had brought down a member of the New York Stock Exchange, one former officer was on the run from the law, the corporate secretary had disappeared just a month earlier, and to top it off, the firm had recently defaulted on the mortgage and had had the elevator sold out from under it.

  The structure was insured for more than $200,000, and each of the New York companies had taken on a portion of the risk through reinsurance policies. The new owner of the elevator had inherited the insurance coverage, but if the reinsurers could prove it was issued based on a fraudulent application, they stood a good chance of not having to pay some part of the claim, maybe just five or ten percent, maybe a lot more. To completely nullify the policy would require an act of extreme fraud, or arson. But even five percent of $200,000 is $10,000.

  When there’s enough money at stake, the insurers hire outside lawyers and investigators, like myself. I had started with a firm just out of college, but after a few years on the payroll I had been good enough, or at least lucky enough, to set up on my own.

  Unfortunately, my luck had run out sometime that May. I had worked steadily for two years. But then, drought. I asked to go back on the payroll with my old employer. He was considering it when this job came up. I believe there were two reasons I was offered it. First, just about everyone else was working on claims arising from the huge fire at the Hoboken docks which had occurred that same July. Second, the vagueness of the situation made a profitable outcome less than likely. Not wanting to put their own money at risk, the insurers offered me ten percent of any sum I saved them, and a per diem of just four dollars a day, to include expenses. I wangled a four-day advance, neglected to drop off August’s rent, and arrived at Grand Central with something just under forty-eight dollars in my pocket. As soon as I bought my ticket I was down nine dollars.

  After my meager dinner of sandwiches I’d brought from home, I entered a game of quarter-ante poker with three salesmen from New York. These fellows had been passing flasks around all afternoon and I was hoping to augment my funds by exploiting their compromised condition. One of them could barely keep his eyes open and I took that as auspicious. But working against me was the fact these men were drummers, and while there is surely something positive to be said about men who are willing and able to peddle anything from carnival acts to fine jewelry, it has to be admitted they tend to take a broad view of the norms of society. That’s not to say they are common cheats. They aren’t. More often than not, they’re damn good at it. A first-rate drummer can get the better of you and then make you feel guilty for having noticed.

  I had decided on a stratagem of deliberate stagnation. I would bore my opponents into submission. Never has a game of poker moved as slowly as this one did. If it was my deal, I would shuffle, then reshuffle, then shuffle a little more. When it was my bet, I’d stare at the cards, set them down, reach for a coin, stop, pick up my cards again, maybe scratch my head, etc. By the time the deal had gone around once, the lingerie man was out cold. He gave us a loud snort about every thirty seconds, just to let us know he was still breathing. A half hour later, the hat man went down. He took on the melody with a kind of half-snore, half-grunt. By now I was up two dollars and two bits, but the leather goods man seemed to get his second wind and I was soon barely even. I redoubled my lethargy and finally, through tiresome effort, the field was mine. The leather goods man added an almost soprano wheeze to the chorus. I withdrew four dollars from the pot—enough to appreciably strengthen my capital account, but, I hoped, not so much as to be missed. Then I moved to the other end of the car. The racket by then was pronounced.

  It was close to midnight when we reached Buffalo’s Exchange Street Station. I took my bag across the street to McLeod’s Hotel and found a note waiting for me at the desk. It was from Ed Ketchum, a crack fire investigator I’d been told to check in with. He informed me that the out-of-town insurance men were keeping court in the Broezel’s taproom. The Broezel was the hotel of choice for commercial travelers. It was close to the station, but not so close the trains would keep you awake all night. Unfortunately, it was also two dollars more per night than McLeod’s—just fifty cents, on the European plan.

  “Hey, Harry! You’re late!” a fellow yelled from the bar. Half a dozen New York men were there and I exchanged small talk with each of them. Whenever there’s a big fire, train wreck, or natural disaster, you’ll find the fraternity of adjusters and claims investigators holed up in some saloon they’ve designated as a temporary clubhouse. I spotted Ed Ketchum sitting alone at a table, engrossed in his paperwork. He beckoned me over.

  “I think they’re stuck paying here, Harry. I don’t know why they called you in. It looks like a classic case of spontaneous combustion.” Ed was now glancing at his notes. “The Eastern elevator was a wooden structure with metal cladding and had a capacity of 1.5 million bushels in 211 separate bins. The grain had been held for up to nine weeks in some of the bins. There had been a period of sustained rain and moist air. And, as is typical of this time of year, temperatures were rising. By the 24th of July all the ingredients were in place.”

  This is why Ed was sitting alone. He’d much rather spend time with a good treatise on spontaneous combustion than with a crowd of boisterous dipsomaniacs.

  “So no chance it was arson?” I asked.

  “There’s certainly no evidence of it. No, I’m sure it was caused by natural conditions. There are another dozen elevators out along the waterfront and I wouldn’t be surprised if another exp
lodes before summer’s out.”

  “The powers that be seem to be hoping that there was some misrepresentation by the Elevator Company in the policy,” I said. “But they didn’t offer any clues as to just what they had in mind.”

  “Well, I did find something that struck me as odd—an elaborate brick storeroom, but no one seems to know what it stored. It’s not on the builder’s plans. And there’s no addendum to the original policy. We can look over the site tomorrow morning and I’ll show you.”

  Ed’s news gave me hope. Meaningfully altering a building after a policy has been issued required notification of the insurer. How meaningfully it was altered would determine how much the insurers might be able to withhold, ten percent of which would be mine.

  We joined the others at the bar and found things had deteriorated markedly. They were at the stage where each of them half-recollects some blurry memory of what happened sometime or other, to someone or other. The saving grace was that no one could remember who bought the last round. I got out without dropping a dime.

  2

  Ed picked me up the next morning and we walked the few blocks down to the river.

  “We can hire a ferry to take us over to the island,” he said.

  There was a large excursion boat taking on passengers just down the river from us, but nothing that looked like a ferry. He led me down some steps to a little dock where there were half a dozen flat-bottomed skiffs. In each of the first two was a dozing old man. Further on several boys were tossing coins in another.

  Ed asked who was next and one of the boys directed us to his boat. After some physical discussion with another boy over division of the spoils, he got in and pushed us off the dock. He stood near the rear of the boat and had a single long oar that sat in a crotch at the center of the stern which he used to both steer and propel the boat. It wasn’t at all like the dinghies you typically see on the waterfront, but sort of a Yankee version of a Venetian gondola.

  River traffic was busy and our gondolier spent most of his effort just staying out of the way. Tow tugs were backing a grain ship downriver and another was pushing a small float of canal boats upriver. Somehow we ended up between the two processions and were buffeted a good deal by their competing wakes. We had only gone 150 yards, but the trip had had an epic quality.

  We climbed out at what remained of the Eastern Elevator’s wharf. It seemed incredible that, just a week before, a giant 160-foot elevator had stood on the spot. Now, all that was left of it was a series of piles being sorted by a small army of laborers. To the right, there were piles of charred wood. Just in front, there were piles of uncharred wood. And to the left, where there was a rail spur, there were piles of metal sheets on flatcars.

  “That’s what I was referring to last night, Harry.”

  Ed pointed back toward a brick vault about ten feet from the far end of the wharf. The masonry was completely blackened and a lot of the bricks had cracked from the heat. It had rounded sides and a rounded top. It was about six feet high, more at the peak, and maybe twelve feet long by six feet wide.

  If this was all there was to it, it wasn’t going to be much help to me. It would have amounted to maybe one-tenth of one percent of the original structure. Ed went over and yanked the steel door open. Inside was a little derrick on wheels.

  “This is just how it was after the fire, except I had a lock cut off,” said Ed.

  We wheeled out the derrick and it just fit through the door. It had a long arm that could be folded up. When extended it was about twenty feet long. And at its base was a hand winch.

  “I don’t think this could lift more than a couple hundred pounds,” Ed said.

  We went back into the vault and by lighting a number of matches verified that it was otherwise empty. There seemed to be a concrete floor, but it was impossible to tell because the whole vault was lined with tin sheet, neatly brazed at the seams.

  “This was below one of the grain bins,” Ed explained. “There was a timber superstructure supporting the bins, and those timbers surrounded the vault. But it wasn’t on the builder’s plans submitted for the policy. I’ve interviewed the foremen and most of the rest of the Eastern’s crew and they said it was a storeroom, but no one could say what it was used to store.”

  “What in the world would they be storing that needed a lined brick vault?” I asked.

  “It might have been to keep out rodents,” Ed suggested. “These elevators are crawling with rats. You see those holes everywhere? Rat holes.”

  He was right. The ground was dotted with holes in between the pilings of the foundation.

  “You’d need masonry to keep them out,” Ed continued. “And with the lining you wouldn’t have to worry about any cracks or gaps in the mortar.”

  “Have you ever seen anything like this in another elevator?” I asked.

  “No, and the fact no one down here has any idea what purpose it served leads me to assume it’s unique. And perhaps was used for some illicit purpose.”

  I was going to have to rethink my strategy. The vault wasn’t large enough to make a plausible argument that the structure had been materially altered. But if it was used for some illicit purpose, then we might be able to argue that information was withheld from the insurers that compromised the policies. Since we were on a waterfront that was frequently visited by ships from Canada, smuggling seemed the most likely possibility.

  Ed and I spent ten minutes wheeling the derrick around and seeing how far out the arm would extend if we brought it to the edge of the wharf.

  “Do you think that would be far enough out to reach the open hold of a steamer?” I asked.

  “I can’t say.”

  I called over the boy who had brought us and asked him the same question.

  “Sure it would,” he said.

  I’d learned long ago you can’t put much faith in what a boy who lives by tips tells you. But he knew more about the subject than either of us.

  “What do you think they kept in there?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know. But you could ask Old Mike. He might know. He might not tell you. But he might know. He was sleepin’ when we went out.”

  I walked over and found a foreman with the salvage company and asked him to leave the vault and what was in it alone for now. He said he would. Then we headed back across the river, with only a tug and a sand barge to dodge this time. When we docked Ed pulled out his watch.

  “I have to go, Harry. I need to have my report typed for the meeting tomorrow, and then I’m catching the afternoon express. Whatever this is about, it has nothing to do with the fire per se, so it’s not really relevant to my report. But I will mention it.”

  As Ed went off, I gave the boy two bits and he pointed out Old Mike, still asleep in his boat. I went over and tried to get his attention, but he just opened one eye. He listened, then rolled over and faced away. The boys all laughed. But my guide came over, leaned down, and whispered something to him. Old Mike righted himself and eyed me warily. Then he slowly got up and said, “Get in.”

  I got in and the boy pushed us off. Old Mike steered us out to a relatively quiet stretch on the far side of the river.

  “You want to know about the Eastern?”

  “We found a little brick room, and a derrick inside. I figured maybe it was to unload something off the steamers that docked there. But no one seems to know what it was used for. So I thought maybe it was used for something that needed to be kept secret,” I said.

  “Secret?” said Old Mike.

  “Well, why else would no one know what it was for? So I thought maybe they were smuggling something off the steamers.”

  “I did see some goings-on at night.” With that, Old Mike stopped and stared at me. I gave him a half-dollar. He just stared at it in his hand. I gave him another.

  “There used to be a whaleback, from Fort William. It’d unload at the Eastern real regular, I can’t remember the name. After it’d unload, it’d be tied up there all night, and you could see s
omethin’ goin’ on. It was dark, but they’d have a light in the hold. One time I saw them liftin’ crates out of the hold. And sometimes I saw it goin’ on when a canal boat was there. I figured they were smugglin’ somethin’ they could put in the bottom of a grain hold, where no customs man could see it.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Furs, maybe.”

  “How big were the crates?”

  “Like so.” Old Mike drew a cube in the air about thirty inches on a side.

  “What’s a whaleback?”

  “It’s a lake steamer with a curved deck. Sits real low in the water. Looks like the back of a whale just breakin’ the water, but with a bridge and a stack stuck on.”

  “When was it you saw these goings-on at night?”

  “Oh, not for years.”

  “How often did you see it?”

  “Well, it seemed whenever that whaleback was in port.”

  “But why were you out at night?”

  “I wasn’t ferryin’. I used to sleep on a tug tied up across the river, where the engine works is now. I’d keep an eye on the tugs and get my breakfast for it. When it was warm, I slept on deck.”

  “Is there anyone who would know for sure what went on? Maybe one of the men you saw at night?”

  Old Mike stared at me again. This time I just gave him the dollar.

  “Danny Sullivan. He was a foreman at the Eastern ’til last year. He’d know. He’s a saloon now. But didn’t buy it.”

  “How’d he get it then?”

  “Can’t say. It was one of Fingy Conners’ places.”

  “Who’s Fingy Conners?”

  “A big boss, used to be a grain shoveler hisself.”

  “Where’s Danny Sullivan’s saloon?”

  “He’s on Elk Street. I’ll show you.”

  We went up the river, past the dock we set out from, and then past the Frontier Engine Works. We docked a few blocks further on. Old Mike gave me directions from there and then exacted another two bits for the trip.