Crossings (A Harry Reese Mystery Book 2) Read online

  “Sure, he was in here,” he said. “And he was a regular when we were on the other side.”

  Just about everyone I spoke with seemed to remember a fellow named Farrell, but not surprisingly, each of them remembered a different Farrell. I lost another five dollars of expense money and then headed back across the river. Keegan was still in, so I went in to give him a report.

  “My theory is that Huber met Barclay while visiting poolrooms,” I said. “They both gambled and Barclay seems to have gone over to a place in Greenpoint. Farrell may well have gambled some too, and maybe he likewise crossed the river.”

  “And the reason for Huber’s suicide?” Keegan asked. “Gambling debts?”

  “Right now, it would be my guess,” I said. “His brother insists it isn’t the case, though he can’t come up with anything else. But how do I establish a fellow had illegal gambling debts? They don’t publish lists in the newspapers.”

  “Yes, that’s a problem,” Keegan agreed. “Let me make some calls this evening. I’ll see if I can set up a meeting with someone who could advise us. Make sure you’re in the office at ten in the morning.”

  Then I headed off for home. Emmie and her mother were just getting in from Good Friday Mass. Mother seemed to have had a good time, but Emmie was in one of her blue funks. It wasn’t that she was upset with me for abandoning her and her mother the previous evening. She just felt I had let her down by—apparently—not being on a case. And in the not-too-distant background, there was the resentment she was nursing over my vetoing a move to the Margaret. She announced that after putting her mother on the train on Monday, she was going to visit a college friend down in Washington. I made the mistake of agreeing too readily.

  4

  The next morning, Emmie had planned to take her mother back to St. James for the Holy Saturday show. But at breakfast she suggested that perhaps Dorothy could accompany Mother while Emmie made the arrangements for her trip.

  “Well, ma’am, I’ll be attending Mass later with my mother and sister.”

  “Perhaps you could persuade them to attend at St. James instead?” Emmie wasn’t going to be dissuaded. “It is the Cathedral. They do a very fine Mass, don’t they, Mother?”

  “Oh, yes,” Mother agreed. “They have a wonderful choir.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Dorothy,” Emmie said. “Mr. Reese will pay for you to take everyone out for a nice luncheon after Mass. Why don’t you telephone your mother and make arrangements.”

  I still hadn’t caught on to what this was about when Dorothy returned to say that the deal was on. I took out my wallet and handed Dorothy three dollars. She looked at it briefly, then told us her two aunts would also be coming. I gave her another dollar. She was about to put it away, but stopped herself.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed. “I just remembered—today is supposed to be a fast day.”

  Apparently, the going rate for enjoining a servant to break fast was two dollars and fifty cents. I handed it over and then moved to the door before I could be cajoled into funding indulgences for her distant cousins. Emmie was there, with her coat on.

  “We can ride across together, Harry. If you don’t mind going over the bridge.”

  Now I was on to her. My encouraging her to take the trip to Washington made her realize I was on a case. One has to be very careful with Emmie. Every conversation is a game of maneuver. Make one unguarded remark and you find your flank has been turned.

  We took a Park Row car up Flatbush. At Pierrepont, I said good-bye and left her on the car, then walked over to the bankers’ ferry. This was the boat that ran between Montague Street and Wall Street. Emmie had gotten off the car and was about half a block behind me. But there were no more than two dozen men waiting for the ferry and there was no way for her to catch my boat without showing herself. She stayed back and waited for the next boat.

  On the other side, I didn’t wait for her but went right up to the office. Keegan showed up about 10:30 and told me he had found a fellow willing to help me with my investigations into Huber’s gambling.

  “Mr. Demming is an authority on the subject,” Keegan informed me. “I asked him to meet us at your apartment at eleven.”

  “My apartment?”

  “Yes, I couldn’t very well ask him here. And it needed to be someplace private. Is there any problem with that?”

  “Well, my mother-in-law is visiting, but she shouldn’t be back until later. The other problem you know about.”

  “What other problem?”

  “Emmie. You remember our adventure in Glens Falls?” I was alluding to Emmie’s unfortunate visit to the race course.

  “I remember having a very agreeable time,” he said. “You have to be able to accept some losses in life, Harry.”

  “If Emmie were your wife, would you be anxious for her to make Mr. Demming’s acquaintance?”

  “Yes, that’s a fair point,” he conceded. “Well, give her some money and send her out shopping.”

  That showed how little he knew about Emmie. If you expected to send Emmie someplace, you had better first make sure that’s where she desired to go. We went down to William Street, where Keegan had a cab waiting.

  “Why do you keep looking behind us, Harry?”

  “To see if we’re being followed,” I said.

  “Who in the world would be following us?”

  “Emmie. I’ve made her suspicious.”

  “You haven’t been married a year.”

  “Oh, it’s not that. Never mind.” I’d learned by then that trying to explain life in Emmie-land to outlanders was a lost cause. We arrived at Vanderbilt Avenue and I tried to hurry Keegan upstairs. But you don’t hurry a man who weighs in at three hundred pounds. By the time Keegan was on the curb, Emmie had come up in another cab.

  “Oh, hello, Harry. Hello, Mr. Keegan,” she said breezily. “Harry, why don’t you pay my driver while I open the apartment and put on coffee?”

  When I eventually got Keegan up to the apartment, Emmie was in conversation with a man in our front room.

  “Harry, this is Mr. Demming,” Emmie announced—as if she were introducing an old friend.

  Demming was a stout man of about fifty-five, with long grey hair, and holding a tall derby in his lap. He looked like an affable Irish saloonkeeper, but was dressed more like a financier.

  “Your janitor let me in, Mr. Reese. I hope that’s all right.”

  “Yes, of course.” I took their hats and coats and then went into the kitchen, where Emmie had gone for coffee. “I’m sorry for the intrusion, Emmie. Perhaps you’d like to go out shopping?”

  “And leave our guests? That would be unthinkable, Harry.”

  “It’s simply that we have some financial matters to discuss.”

  “Oh, I won’t listen in, Harry. Don’t worry.”

  I went back out, where Keegan was asking Demming about the races that would be starting up at Aqueduct in the near future. When Emmie came in with the coffee, I tried to change the subject by mentioning that she was going to Washington the next week.

  “A wonderful trip in spring, Mrs. Reese,” Demming said. “And the horses will still be running at Bennings.” Then he gave her a playful wink.

  She gave an innocent “Are they?” in reply, but the first cat had left the bag. Until then, I’d no idea where Bennings was. But I now knew why Emmie had chosen Washington as her destination. When she had gone off and made a show of busying herself elsewhere in the apartment, Keegan introduced the reason for our little meeting.

  “Harry, why don’t you tell Mr. Demming what you’ve learned?”

  I did—at least as far as Huber was concerned. The suicide was bad enough, but I wasn’t going to discuss the coincident deaths of Farrell and Barclay with Emmie’s ear to the door. Unfortunately, Keegan prodded me until I did so.

  “Ah, that is a curious situation you have there, gentlemen,” Demming said. “But the connection to gambling would seem rather tenuous.”

  “Yes, there’s
not much to it,” I agreed. “It’s just for the want of anything else.”

  “I’ll be frank, gentlemen. I’m a little wary of being involved in anything that may be construed as slandering the trade. I do have my standing in the community to think of.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” I said.

  “It’s just that with that self-appointed Committee of Fifteen running about, and all this loose talk about a war on vice,” Demming said, “I wouldn’t want anything I say to be put in the wrong hands.”

  “Mr. Demming,” Keegan seemed genuinely taken aback. “I think you should know me better than that.”

  “I do, Mr. Keegan. And I apologize if it sounded as if I was questioning your own discretion. I simply want Mr. Reese to appreciate the risks involved. But no more need be said on the matter.”

  “Has this crusade driven poolrooms across the river into Brooklyn?” I asked tentatively. “To Greenpoint particularly.”

  “Oh, yes,” Demming said. “You see, there’s a continual dance going on between the operators of poolrooms and policy shops, the bookmakers, etc., and the authorities. It’s very easy for a man opening a poolroom to reach an accommodation with the local police captain. He pays him a few hundred as an initiation fee and then so much a week. But as the poolroom prospers, the captain increases his fee. And, of course, he has to feed the patrolmen, the roundsmen, and the sergeants as well. The operator may decide to move his operation to a precinct where he can arrive at better terms—provided his clientele is loyal enough to follow him.

  “At the same time, the police captain is under a varying amount of pressure to close down known gambling spots. So a peripatetic poolroom can benefit all concerned. That’s why I compare it to a dance. Imagine a large ballroom with all the couples exchanging partners, first moving in one direction, and then another. When there is a new war on vice, it’s a fast two-step. When all’s quiet, a slow waltz. But the dance goes on, no matter what.”

  “How well you put that, Mr. Demming,” Keegan said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Keegan. This time, however, the pace hasn’t merely increased, the dance itself has become far more complicated. And this is due to two things: Roosevelt, and consolidation. Roosevelt and the reformers broke the captains’ hold on their precincts. In the past, a man would buy captainship.”

  “Like an officer in the British army?” Emmie asked. She had entered with a tray of stale cakes. Now she knew all about the case. The second cat had vacated the bag.

  “Exactly so, Mrs. Reese. A captainship in the Tenderloin might go for $25,000. And once purchased, the captain’s precinct was more like his fiefdom. Then the reformers came on the scene and jumbled everything, moving captains about willy-nilly.”

  “But what does the consolidation have to do with it?” Keegan asked.

  “Well, before consolidation, you had the City of New York on that side of the river, with the police controlled from Tammany Hall. And on this side, you had the City of Brooklyn, with the police controlled from the Willoughby Street auction rooms.”

  “Auction rooms?” Emmie asked.

  “Yes, old Hugh McLaughlin runs it all from Colonel Kerrigan’s auction rooms,” Demming explained. “Tammany, representing the larger of the two cities, assumed they would take charge after consolidation. Willoughby, quite naturally, had other ideas. For the last three years, they have been battling over control of the Brooklyn precincts. You may remember that last year Chief Devery, an old Tammany man, tried to transfer a number of the captains around Brooklyn. Ostensibly, that was said to be a part of the war on vice by keeping the police captains honest. In truth, it was an attempt to gain control of the Brooklyn precincts by Devery and Tammany. In the end, they were out-maneuvered by Willoughby and the order was rescinded.

  “So now we have a particularly complicated affair: poolroom operators and police, Willoughby and Tammany, the reformers and the broad-minded. All changing partners and weaving about. To get back to your question, Mr. Reese, yes, it would be perfectly understandable that a Manhattan poolroom would migrate across the river to Greenpoint.”

  Emmie was being a little too attentive, so I led her back out to the kitchen, then returned and sat down again.

  “That was an excellent précis, Mr. Demming,” Keegan said. “And it brings us to the cause of William Huber’s suicide. If we assume that his troubles were due to gaming debts, how would you suggest we verify the matter?”

  “Well, Mr. Keegan, that would be most delicate. Approaching the likely holders of such debts would be futile. Even with my contacts, I would get nowhere using such a direct approach. I think you will need to learn who this man’s friends were at these establishments. Perhaps people who went with him there, perhaps people he met there. It could take some time.”

  “Yes, of course,” Keegan said.

  “I suppose I could help by showing Mr. Reese where the places are. Then he could visit them on his own. I imagine he’ll have a reputation in no time.”

  “As a full-time gambler?” I asked. “Under an assumed name?”

  “Oh, I would use your own name,” Demming said. “It’s perfect, really. Harry Reese. A wonderfully prosaic name. No one would suspect anything of a man named Harry Reese.”

  Emmie gave herself away by giggling behind the kitchen door.

  “Besides,” Demming went on, “using an alias is much more difficult than you’d think. One slip and you bring the whole show down.”

  “It will be easy, Harry,” Emmie said as she flew into the room. “I can help. I’ve already helped.”

  “How have you helped, Emmie?” I asked with a feeling of dread.

  “Well, I’ve let it be known that you have an unusual profession.”

  “What are you talking about, Emmie?”

  “Simply that many people already think you…. Well, that you are involved in the underworld.”

  “What have you been telling people, Emmie?”

  “Directly? Nothing.”

  “What sort of profession do these people think I have? Gambling?”

  “Some. Mr. Ahearn thinks you’re in the green goods business. But he came up with that himself.”

  Both Keegan and Demming found it all very amusing.

  “Well, Emmie,” I said, “I think you’ve helped enough.”

  “Wouldn’t it add to the authenticity if I were to accompany you?”

  “No, Emmie,” I said. “I don’t think it would. Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Demming. But aren’t these establishments men-only?”

  “Yes,” he confirmed. “I’m afraid that’s true. Though….” He obligingly stopped himself when he saw my alarmed expression.

  Keegan rose and said it was probably time to go. I brought them their hats and coats and at the door Emmie let the last cat out of the bag. She addressed Demming as Mr. Larabee. She quickly corrected herself and said it was simply that he looked so like a butcher she’d been to. I accompanied the two men downstairs and Demming suggested we meet the next evening.

  “Will anything be happening Easter Sunday?” I asked.

  “No, that’s why it will be ideal for our tour.”

  I agreed, but had him write out a time and meeting place. I didn’t want to take any chances with Emmie hearing the arrangements. I went upstairs and we had lunch.

  “Did you pick up your ticket for Washington, Emmie?”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you, Harry? I received a wire from Barbara. Her baby is down with something and she thought it would be a bad time for a visit.”

  Of course, there had been no telegram from Barbara, who was probably unaware she even had a baby. What Emmie meant was that a case involving gambling and multiple deaths trumped the races at Bennings. I asked her to repay me for bribing Dorothy, and for her cab fare. She readily agreed and went and got the purse that held her earnings from her newspaper writing. She handed me her last seven dollars with a smile.

  There wasn’t much I could do on the Huber case until the next evening, so I decided
to go in to the office and see what my co-authors were up to. Emmie had no idea when I was meeting Demming, so I took it as certain she’d be following me. I walked along Sterling Place and caught the Fifth Avenue L. I saw Emmie get on the train in the car behind mine. At the bridge, I went down to the street and walked to the landing for the Catherine Street ferry, at the foot of Main Street. I had to wait a bit, but I saw no sign of Emmie. Then, on the Manhattan side, I spotted her coming out of the women’s cabin. She had somehow managed to change her scarf and jacket. This newly acquired aptitude for quick changes troubled me some. I walked down South Street and cut across to the Bureau.

  The Trow’s city directory confirmed that there were no butchers in Brooklyn named Larabee. But there’d be no sense in confronting Emmie about it, as the story would just become more twisted. I found my co-authors, Little and Cranston, in our cramped office playing cards. We had more or less finished the treatise a month or so before. But we all had gotten used to the regular paycheck and had agreed to keep it going as long as possible. It was easy enough to find some report in the insurance press about a new fraud scheme involving burglary insurance, so the updating never ended. When Keegan was out of the office, as he was that afternoon, we occupied ourselves as best we could.

  At five, I went home to find that Emmie and her mother were dressing. We were going out that evening for dinner and then to see Sarah Bernhardt at the Academy of Music. She was playing the lead in Rostand’s L’Aiglon. I suppose it counts for something to be able to say I saw Sarah Bernhardt on stage. It certainly did to Emmie’s mother. But honestly, playing a virile young duke is a bit much to ask from any fifty-year-old woman. Particularly one with a high, nasal voice. And the play itself left me cold. I don’t know who it was who told M. Rostand that Napoleon’s petulant heir would be a suitable subject, but he was not his friend. None of this bothered Emmie’s mother in the least. Nor did the fact she knew not a word of French. As she pointed out, she didn’t know Latin either and that was no barrier to her enjoying a good Mass.