The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction (55 page)

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 off,” 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.

*

Dutch moved through the foyer. The house had a musty smell. The furnishings were shabby. Bo checked the other two floors, came back down.

“Nothing here,” Dutch said. “You find anything?”

Grim, Bo held out a small card to Dutch. It was Esther’s calling card.

19

The men who called themselves Butch and Sundance were holed up in a dingy lodging-house that let to sailors and dockworkers. It was convenient to the East River piers and taverns, and the rooms were cheap.

Butch climbed the rickety stairs to the third floor, stepping over the drunk collapsed on the staircase. He was carrying a newspaper, a bar of soap, and a honed and stropped straight razor. In the room, Sundance was lying on the bed snoring. Butch tilted the bed, sending Sundance crashing to the floor. “That goddam whore you knocked over at the first bank, the one stole your gun; done us in good.” He dropped the folded newspaper on Sundance.

Blinking, Sundance sat up and unfolded the newspaper. There they were, right on the front page. “Pretty good likeness, I’d say.” He scrambled away from Butch’s kick, adding, “I always said I was a good looking hombre.”

“It’s in every newspaper, on the front page. We got to get out of here.”

“One more bank,” Sundance said.

“You looking to get hanged? Not me, pardner.” He handed Sundance the soap and the razor. “Get rid of that ratty face-hair.”

“How the hell will we get out? They’ll nail us for sure if we get on a train.” He brightened. “We could buy us a horse and wagon. We got the cash.”

“We’re going to need every bit of it. No telling where we’ll end up.” Butch peered out the grimy window. If you stood in the far right of the window, you could just about see the iced-up river that was locking all shipping in the harbour. “If we get lucky and there’s a thaw, we can take one of them steamers.” He laughed. “I hear South America is wide open for good businessmen with a little cash.”

20

It had been a week since Robbie Allen and his friend Harry Kidder put Henrietta de Grout on the New York Central train to Dyckman Street, and the farm in Inwood. The men remained at Missus Taylor’s boarding house, trying to come to a decision about their next move. The mild weather in the beginning of January had turned wicked, bone-chilling cold.

This morning they took a hackney down to South Street, got out and walked.

A sudden change in temperature, a slight warming, had shaken loose the solid field of ice on the rivers. Now huge blocks on both the Hudson and East Rivers were locking ships, freighters, tugs, and other boats, large and small, in the harbour. They kept walking, past the piers, past the shacks and warehouses along the waterfront.

Robbie stopped to roll a smoke. “So what do you say?”

A man on a bicycle, riding fast, pulled out of a side street and blocked their way. He jumped off, letting the bicycle fall, and confronted them. His two holsters were hung low like a gun fighter. “I know you!”

Never taking his eyes off the stranger, Harry smiled.

“Uh uh. Don’t make no quick moves, neither. The reward poster says dead or alive.” The stranger’s guns came out of their holsters quick and slick.

Harry’s Colts emerged, quicker and slicker. He fired both weapons. The stranger never got off a shot. He slumped against a warehouse wall, staring at his bleeding hands, stunned.

Robbie checked to see if anyone heard, but the waterfront was a noisy place, even with boats and ships out of service. He picked up the bicycle and righted it.