The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction (57 page)

“Sure, and Ma and Pa came over from the famine.” He’d been brought up a strict Mormon, but what the hell. He never took to it and had run off early on. So what could it hurt? He’d heard the Irish in Crocker’s and Rafferty’s voices.

“Good boy.” Crocker continued, “You ain’t dead and you’re in my house and everything’s going to be fine. I’ll be back and we’ll have a nice long talk. Rafferty, you stay with our guest while I see the Doc out.”

A door closed, but not before Robbie heard the man say, “New blood. That’s what we need around here, new blood.”

Robbie tried again to open his eyes. Success at last with his good eye. The room was huge, lit by a chandelier up high. He moved his hand to his lips and pain stabbed through his shoulder. “Where the hell am I? Who shot me? What the hell happened?”

“You’re in Mister Richard Crocker’s house,” Rafferty told him. “You ran out of an alley on Water Street and right into Mister Crocker’s Packard.”

“Hit by an automobile?” Robbie’s rumbling laugh became another groan.

“We didn’t know who you were so we brought you here and got Doc Saperstein to look you over. Why did you run out on the street?”

“How long I been here?”

“Two days.”

Two days! It began to come back to Robbie now. Those bank robbers. “My clothes. I had money—”

“Your clothes were torn and bloody. And you had no money, no wallet.”

“Jesus Christ, those bank robbers, Butch and Sundance. I recognized them. They jumped me and pulled me into an alley and beat the crap out of me. Took everything, including my steamship tickets.” They must have been right behind him in the steamship office. Harry would think he went off without him.

Rafferty said, “My name’s Rafferty, Mister Allen. You’re lucky to be alive, but you’re even luckier that Boss Crocker is on your side.”

“Crocker? The man who called me son?”

“Yes. We all work for Boss Crocker.”

“I’d shake your hand if I could, Rafferty. Only been in New York a couple of months; seeing the sights before I moved on.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a … prospector. Was heading for South America with a friend.”

“The Boss already likes that you’re Irish.”

“I guess he’s rolling in dough from what I see.” I’m in a goddam mansion, Robbie thought. “Must be he’s a railroad man.”

“Boss Crocker runs Tammany.”

“No railroad I ever heard of.”

“Tammany is Democratic politics in New York. Boss Crocker runs it.”

*

Harry’d been waiting at Missus Taylor’s for two days now, and Robbie didn’t come back and didn’t send word. The newspapers had nothing to say about anyone being arrested, so what happened to him? For all Harry knew, Robbie could have fallen into one of them subway pits and ended up in the morgue.

What he
did
know was Robbie’d been in Joe’s Bar two days ago. Joe said Robbie had a newspaper all spread out on the bar, then he paid up and left.

Harry had about made up his mind to pack his stuff and go to Inwood. Ask Missus Taylor to hold on to Robbie’s things in case. As he headed back to the boarding house, that’s what he intended to do.

A young man was stopped in front of the boarding house looking uncertain. “You coming or going?” Harry said.

“My name’s Rafferty. I have a message for someone in Missus Taylor’s boarding house.”

“And who might that someone be?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you.”

Harry grabbed Rafferty by his coat and shoved him against the side of the brownstone; the man’s derby hit the ground.

Rafferty was scared as a rabbit, shaking in his shoes. “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me.”

“I only kill what deserves killing.” Harry let Rafferty go, brushed off the stone dust from the man’s coat, and handed him back his hat.

Rafferty said, “If you’re Harry, Robbie Allen sent me.”

25

Inspector Bo Clancy pointed his baton at the five ragged street urchins he and Dutch had lined up outside the tenement next door to No. 7 Madison Street. “Your damned spindly arses are mine. I’ll have you in the Tombs before the day is out.”

The smallest began blubbering and the other four turned on him yelling, “Baby shit, baby shit.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Dutch said.

“You’ll cough up every penny you got from those two spalpeen killers.”

Mike, their leader, spit on the sidewalk. “Like hell we will, coppers.”

Bo caught himself raising his hand. He scratched the back of his head to disguise the gesture. “That does it, start marching.”

It was all Dutch could do not to laugh at Bo’s histrionics. “You better spill it, boys, or Inspector Clancy here will see you in the Tombs for sure.”

“They’s gone,” one of the boys said.

“Shut your gob, Duffy,” Mike yelled. He punched Duffy hard on the upper arm where it would be hurting for a week.

Mike stopped the guff when he saw the man who’d come up behind the two coppers.

“Imagine running into youse on this fine morning, Inspectors.”

“O’Toole,” Bo said, “The blarney rolls off your forked tongue like the devil’s own music.”

“Run on home, Mike, there’s a good lad, and take your friends.” O’Toole gave his bulbous nose a swipe. “And just remember that Tammany saved youse from life in the Tombs.” He laughed as the boys ran off in different directions.

“You got a hell of a nerve, O’Toole,” Dutch said.

“Before I bid youse good day, the Boss wants to help out with a wee bit of information come to him.” O’Toole tilted his derby back. “For the good of the city. Youse might be interested in some passengers booked on a British freighter docked at Pier 32.”

“What ship?”

“T’ought you’d never ask. The
Herminius
.”

*

The shipping agent at the office at Pier 32 was padlocking his shed when Bo and Dutch arrived on the run. Though there were a lot of ships and boats docked at various piers, there was no sign of a freighter at Pier 32.

“That bastard O’Toole,” Bo said. He turned to the shipping agent. “Inspectors Clancy and Tonneman here. Who are you?”

“Shipping agent. Calvin Yard.”

“Where’s the
Herminius
?” Dutch said.

The shipping agent stared at them, his white eye tearing. “The
Herminius
? She been and gone. Bound for Uruguay. Two hours now.” He pointed out into the bay, crowded with ships and tugs. “You might be able see her steam in the distance. My eyes ain’t so good.”

“The passengers, who are they?”

“Ain’t no passengers, Inspectors. Not legal.”

“Okay,” Bo said, “To the Tombs with you.”

“That ain’t right.”

“Wait a minute, Bo. Maybe Mister Yard would tell us who booked passage, if we don’t haul him off to the Tombs for being uncooperative. What do you say, Mister Yard?”

“Okay, okay. Two passengers. Robert Doe and Harry Roe. They booked for Buenos Aires. Robert Roe and Harry Doe.”

Bo stamped his foot and yelled. “You blockhead! You booked passage for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, right out of our hands and out of New York.”

Calvin Yard grinned. “I did? Well, how the devil could I know that?”

“Go on with you, Mister Yard,” Dutch said. “What’s done is done.”

*

Early in the summer of 1903, when Jack West was going through old files, he found a packet of newspaper cuttings about the robberies committed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid that he’d ordered from a service in Chicago after the bank robberies in New York in 1901.

But by the time the packet arrived, Butch and Sundance had made their escape from New York and were somewhere in South America. So he put the packet aside and forgot about it.

Jack West had held on to the Morgan Silver Dollar Henrietta de Grout paid him for delivering her fiancé and his friend to Inwood. In fact, he planned to give the coin to little Mae in August for her ninth birthday.

But seeing the packet of clippings again awakened Jack West’s curiosity.

Lighting a fresh cigar, he opened the packet. Newspaper cuttings of various and sundry robberies of trains and banks thought to have been committed by Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch. West was ready to toss it all in the trash when he saw the list of items taken in the Tipton, Wyoming, robbery of the Union Pacific No. 3 train out of Omaha in 1900.

Part of the loot was a bag containing forty Morgan Silver Dollars.

Authors’ Note

The story goes, that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were killed in a shoot-out in Bolivia in 1908. But what if it had been the bogus Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – who robbed two New York banks, and sailed for South America on the British freighter
Herminius
?

We respectfully submit that Robbie “Allen” Parker – the real Butch Cassidy – was welcomed with open arms into the Tammany political machine by Boss Crocker. Robbie learned what Tammany already knew: that riches could be found in New York, not with a gun, but with a ballot box.

We would also like to believe that Harry “Kidder” Longabaugh – the real Sundance Kid – became a respected breeder of horses. And that he and Henrietta “Etta Place” de Grout, married and raised a half dozen children on their horse ranch in Inwood, New York.

Trafalgar

Charles Todd

From a husband-and-wife writing team to a mother and son. Charles Todd is the writing alias of Caroline and Charles Todd who, though both American, have chosen to set their novels in Britain. Their primary series features Inspector Rutledge, who has returned to Scotland Yard after the First World War but is affected by shell-shock, and is haunted by the memory of a soldier, Hamish, whom he had been forced to execute in the trenches. The Rutledge series began with
A Test of Wills
(1996), which was nominated for an Edgar Award. The series has been praised for the authenticity of its characterization and post-war atmosphere. The following story takes Rutledge across the length and breadth of southern Britain to solve a murder, where the roots seem to go back over a hundred years to the Battle of Trafalgar.

Mumford, Cambridgeshire, 1920

The old dog died at two o’clock, thrown unceremoniously out of his warm bed by the fire and on to the cold January ground.

And it was this fact that troubled Rutledge as he delved deeper into the mystery of Sir John Middleton’s death.

It was the housekeeper-cum-cook, gone to the village for onions for Sir John’s dinner, who found the old dog lying by the wall under the study window. Mrs Gravely, stooping to touch the greying head, said, “Oh, my dear!” aloud – for the old dog had been company in the house for her as well – and went inside to deliver the sad news.

Opening the door into the study as she was pulling her wool scarf from her head, she said anxiously, “Sir John, as I was coming in, I found—”

Breaking off, she cried out in horror, ran to the body on the floor at the side of the Georgian desk, and bent to take one hand in her own as she knelt stiffly to stare into the bloody mask that was her employer’s face.

Her first thought was that he’d fallen and struck the edge of the desk, she told Rutledge afterwards. “I feared he’d got up from his chair to look for Simba, and took a dizzy turn. He had them sometimes, you know.”

The doctor had already confirmed this, and Rutledge nodded encouragingly, because he trusted Mrs Gravely’s honesty. He hadn’t been particularly impressed by the doctor’s manner.

Rutledge had been in Cambridge on Yard business, to identify a man brought in by the local constabulary. McDaniel was one of the finest forgers in the country, and it had appeared that the drunken Irishman, taken up after a brawl in a pub on the outskirts of town, was the man the police had been searching for since before the Great War. He fitted the meagre description sent round to every police station in the country. In the event, he was not their man – red hair and ugly scar on the side of the face notwithstanding. But Rutledge had a feeling that the McDaniel they wanted had slipped away in the aftermath of the brawl. The incarcerated man had rambled on about the cousin who would sort out the police quick enough, if he were there. When the police arrived at the lodgings that their man in custody had shared with his cousin, there was no one else there – and no sign that anyone else had ever been there. The case had gone cold, and Rutledge was preparing to return to the Yard when the Chief Constable came looking for him.

“Sir John Middleton was murdered in his own home,” Rutledge was told. “I want his killer, and I’ve asked the Yard to take over the inquiry. You’re to go there now, and I’ll put it right with the Chief Superintendent. The sooner someone takes charge, the better.”

And it was clear enough that the Chief Constable knew what he was about. For the local constable, a man named Forrest, was nervously pacing the kitchen when Rutledge got there, and the inspector who had been sent for from Cambridge had already been recalled. The body still lay where it had been found, pending Rutledge’s arrival, and, according to Forrest, no one had been interviewed.

Thanking him, Rutledge went into the study to look at the scene.

Middleton lay by the corner of his desk, one arm outstretched as if pleading for help.

“He was struck twice,” a voice said behind him, and Rutledge turned to find a thin, bespectacled man standing in the doorway. “Dr Taylor,” he went on. “I was told to wait in the parlour until you got here. The first blow was from behind, to the back of the head, knocking Sir John down but not killing him. A second blow to the face at the bridge of his nose finished him. I don’t know that he saw the first coming. He most certainly saw the second.”

“The weapon?”

Taylor shrugged. “Hard to say until I can examine him more closely. Nothing obvious, at any rate.”

“Has anything been taken?” Rutledge asked, turning to look at the room. It had not been ransacked. But a thief, knowing what he was after, would not have needed to search. There were framed photographs on the walls, an assortment of weapons – from an Australian boomerang to a Zulu cowhide shield – were arrayed between them, and every available surface seemed to hold souvenirs from Sir John’s long career in the army. A Kaiser Wilhelm helmet stood on the little table under the windows, the wooden propeller from a German aircraft was displayed across the tops of the bookshelves, and a half dozen brass shell-casings – most of them examples of trench art – were lined up in a cabinet that held more books.