City of Saints

by Andrew Hunt

  “What brings you out here, Art? And please don’t tell me you just happen to be out for a late-night drive to savor the cool lake air, because I won’t buy it.”

  I gestured to Roscoe. “He and I knew the deceased. Seymour Considine. He was a writer for the gossip rags.”

  “I know,” said Buddy. “I talked to Considine a couple of times. Arrested him once, right after Helen Pfalzgraf was murdered. He was a real pain in the neck. Let me ask you. Do you think his death had anything to do with the Pfalzgraf homicide?”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea.”

  Buddy made a pained face and shook his head. “C’mon, Art. I have a sneaking suspicion you have a good idea whether this is connected to the Pfalzgraf case. How about you level with me?”

  “I can’t,” I said. “Cannon doesn’t want me sharing any information with the police. If it bothers you, talk to him.”

  Buddy looked in both directions—east and west—and then at me. “I don’t see Cannon anywhere near here. It’s just you and me and Roscoe, and I’ve got this nagging feeling that you know something that might actually help me in getting to the bottom of Considine’s death. Now, out with it.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  Buddy smiled, hands in his pockets. “Uh-huh. I see. Well, if you change your mind, you’ll see me in church on Sunday.”

  He turned and walked along the shore, heading to the cluster of police cars with their bright headlamps and spotlights bathing the water in light. We watched him until we could no longer see him.

  Out of the corner of his mouth, Roscoe said to me, “Ever think of quitting that goddamn church of yours?”

  “See you around,” I said, smiling. “Good luck, Roscoe.”

  “You, too, Art. You, too.”

  Eighteen

  I stood at a lectern facing rows of folding chairs. Half a dozen reporters were scattered around the room, mostly men but also one woman (a dead ringer for Marion Davies), along with four radio technicians and a pair of silver microphones, one from station KSL, the other KDYL. In my blue suit and red necktie, I held a stack of messages typed onto index cards by Faye Meadows. I developed a case of cottonmouth halfway through the presentation and drank from a nearby glass of water. Reporters jotted notes in their spiral pads as I spoke.

  “Henry D. ‘Puddinhead’ Morgan—” I stopped and glanced up at the reporters. “With a name like Puddinhead, he must be a dangerous outlaw.” The audience laughed, but Sykes, standing in the corner, shook his head disapprovingly. I resumed. “Mr. Morgan was captured yesterday by sheriff’s deputies while running a fifty-gallon still in a barn in Murray. Deputies Lester Hansen and G. T. Fisher destroyed the still and smashed four hundred and fifty gallons of mash and twenty gallons of rye liquor. The deputies retained two gallons of the illegal brew for evidence.”

  I sipped more water. Switching cards, I said, “Once again, deputies from the sheriff’s office have clamped down on John Papacostas’s South Town Roadhouse at 501 West Thirty-third South, due to the serving of illegal liquor inside of the said enterprise. Mr. Papacostas insisted that this was a soft drink establishment, serving only legal beverages with their dinner specials. Deputies worked closely with J. L. Francom, a federal dry agent from Salt Lake City, in carrying out the raid. We felt vindicated when Mr. Papacostas, while being booked and fingerprinted, boasted of being cited more than one hundred and forty times for liquor law violations and other offenses without being convicted a single time. We sincerely hope that the latest charges against Mr. Papacostas stick. He has long been an undesirable element within this community, and unless he’s punished for his flouting of the law, he will more than likely resume roadhouse operations soon.”

  I glanced at the clock. Closing in on nine. “I see our time is almost up, but I will take questions from the reporters now.”

  A hand went up, and I called on the blonde in the green dress, Amelia Van Cott, a reporter for the Ogden Post. “Mr. Oveson, there’s a body in the morgue identified as Seymour Considine, a writer. He was working on a story about the Pfalzgraf homicide. The coroner says he was stabbed fifty-three times and then dumped into the Great Salt Lake. Is there a connection between the Considine and Pfalzgraf homicides?”

  Sykes glared at me and shook his head forcefully. My sights switched to Miss Van Cott. “We have not found any sort of link between the two murders.”

  A hand shot up. I pointed to Leonard Bennion of the Telegram. He stood up. “Since you masterminded the capture of Clyde Alexander, is the sheriff’s office going to assign you to solve the Considine homicide?”

  Sykes strode to the podium and did his best to put an artificial smile on his face. He said, “Mr. Considine has spent the last ten years writing sensational stories for gutter magazines, and plenty of underworld types had it in for him. We are cooperating with the Salt Lake police and sheriff’s departments in other states and expect that Considine’s killer will be apprehended soon. But let me assure you this case does not—I repeat, does not—have anything to do with the Pfalzgraf investigation, which is now officially closed.”

  Sykes stepped back and gave a slight wave. “This concludes today’s Roundup. I’d like to thank Senior Deputy and Public Liaison Arthur Oveson, for doing such an exemplary job with the announcements.”

  The radio technicians began disconnecting their mikes, and the reporters filed out of the room. I started for the exit.

  “Oveson.”

  I took a deep breath and faced Sykes, who sprinkled snuff on the back of his hand and took a snort. He blinked his eyes, opened his mouth, and flared his nostrils, then blew air through pursed lips and jerked his head.

  “So far I’ve been finding your performance on this job a little lackluster.”

  “How so, sir?”

  “You act like you’re going through the motions. And you were downright flippant when you mentioned that Puddinhead fellow.”

  “Sorry you feel that way,” I said. “I take my job seriously.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that,” he said. “Because I’ve booked a speaking engagement for you for tomorrow afternoon. The Daughters of the Utah Pioneers are having their monthly meeting at 2:00 P.M. at the chamber of commerce, and they’ve asked if you’d be so kind as to give your law-and-order, crime-doesn’t-pay talk. I said sure you would. I don’t want to disappoint these ladies, and I know you feel the same way. Their votes mean a great deal to Sheriff Cannon. How say you?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said with a grin and nod. “I’ll be there.”

  “And Oveson?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You’re not still snooping around the Pfalzgraf case, are you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “That’s funny. Dr. Pfalzgraf telephoned Sheriff Cannon and told him that you paid a visit to his office. After that, you met with Parley and Miriam Tanner at their home in Federal Heights. Ring any bells?”

  I started to speak, but he cut me off.

  “I got where I am by playing it smart.” He tapped his temple with his index finger. “I thought you did, too. But if you don’t smarten up, you’re going to miss out on some golden opportunities. I’d hate to see that happen. Get me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Bear in mind we are always—always—one step ahead of you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He placed his hand on my shoulder. “Stay levelheaded, boy. Lincoln said it best. ‘Don’t go swapping horses in midstream.’”

  “Thank you for that advice, sir.”

  I stood next to a mosaic of WANTED posters pinned to the bulletin board and watched Sykes leave the room.

  * * *

  “Hello, Art.”

  “Oh! You almost gave me a heart attack.”

  “Sorry.”

  Roscoe Lund was sitting on a guest chair in my windowless box of an office, right leg propped over left knee. He wore a straw boater and a buttoned waistcoat, but he’d come tieless. His kept his brown leather jacket draped
over his arm. I closed the door behind me, took a seat on the swivel chair on the other side of the desk, and placed my sack lunch and bottle of milk in front of me.

  “When did you get here?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry, choirboy. Cannon didn’t see me.”

  He looked around. Not much to see. I had my chair and two more for visitors, a green filing cabinet, and an electric globe dangling from a ceiling cord. Two framed pictures hung behind my desk, a family portrait (taken a few weeks before Christmas ’29) and a color photo of the Salt Lake Temple. Roscoe shook his head when he saw that one.

  “Why the fuck have you got that thing on your wall when you can step outside your office and see it from the window?”

  “It’s for inspiration.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, I have a couple of French postcards that are a damn sight more inspiring than that thing. ’Course, you’d have to take ’em off the wall when the missus drops by, if you get my drift.”

  “Drift gotten. No thank you.”

  His focus, thankfully, shifted to my sack lunch and milk bottle. “What’ve you got there?”

  “Lunch,” I said, narrating as I removed the contents. “Baloney sandwich, carrot sticks, apple slices, and … the pièce de résistance.” I lifted a big object wrapped in wax paper. “My wife’s apple cinnamon cake. You want to try some?”

  “Let’s go halfsies on it.”

  I unwrapped it, gave him half, and took the other, and we munched quietly for a few minutes. I unscrewed the lid on my bottle of milk and gulped down a third of it in one shot.

  Roscoe said, “Moist, but it could use a little kicker.”

  He uncapped a flask he kept hidden in his jacket and took three swallows. He tilted it toward me.

  “I don’t drink that stuff,” I said. I lifted the bottle of milk, covered with condensation drops. “This is my poison.”

  “Well, you know what they say, Art,” said Roscoe, swigging more. He gasped and capped the bottle. “Candy’s dandy, but liquor’s quicker.”

  I leaned back in my chair and popped an apple slice in my mouth and chewed it. “What brings you here?”

  “That little matter we discussed the other night over Considine’s body.”

  “The Pfalzgraf case?” I asked. “Haven’t you heard? It’s closed.”

  “Bullshit,” said Roscoe, pocketing his flask. “Tell me something, Art. What are you willing to do to solve this case?”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  He shook his head and gave me a skeptical squint. “Too vague. Spell it out for me.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you tell me how far you’re willing to go,” said Roscoe. “Are you going to turn this into some kind of happy-valley Mormon cakewalk, with a performance by the Tabernacle Choir and lots of pretty balloons and all the fuckin’ ice cream you can eat? Or are we gonna roll up our sleeves, wade into the shit, crack skulls, and get some results?”

  “The latter.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear,” he said. “Then I’m in.”

  I raised a skeptical eyebrow as I capped the milk bottle. “What made you change your mind?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you some other time. Right now, we’ve got plenty to keep us busy. Starting with a visit to Miss Harmony Tattershall.”

  “Where’d you get that name?”

  “Considine wrote it on the Valley-Vu stationery with yours. She works in a joint called Caroline House—it’s a home for pregnant, unwed teenagers, the girls that nobody else wants.”

  “She was in the Ogden police file on Dr. Wooley. Pfalzgraf filed a complaint against Wooley before the state medical board on her behalf.”

  “Let’s not sit around here socializing anymore,” said Roscoe, lurching out of his seat and tugging the boater lower on his head. “Let’s go have a word with her and find out what she knows.”

  I put my coat on and said as I went for the doorknob, “This won’t involve breaking any laws, will it?”

  “Only a half dozen or so.”

  He saw my face lose color and laughed loudly. “Relax, choirboy. We’re finally going to figure out who really ran over Helen Pfalzgraf out at the Pole Line Road. That’s what you wished for, isn’t it?”

  * * *

  The block of A Street that rises steeply above South Temple offered plenty of parking spots along the curb. I slowed my Plymouth to a halt next to a telephone pole, across from a rooming house that played home to a mix of college students, bohemians, indigents, and Mexicans. Small lawns in front of nearby houses had recently turned from dormant winter yellow to spring emerald. Roscoe and I got out of the car and hiked up the steep hill to a Victorian mansion on First Avenue that had been converted to a communal house for unwed pregnant teenagers. The place presented an eclectic mixture of styles: part Queen Anne, something vaguely resembling a castle tower on the southwest corner, a few hints of Italian villa, and a porch reminiscent of a midnineteenth-century Mormon pioneer farmhouse. Somebody in the house was practicing piano scales, and the sound of laughter floated out the upstairs windows. We went up wooden porch steps, and Roscoe gave the front door a good pound.

  We didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

  The door flung open so abruptly the knocker banged once, and there appeared a woman on the other side of the screen with long black hair tied into a bun in back. She had on a pair of wire-frame glasses and a long dark dress. The dimple in her chin was pronounced. “May I help you?”

  Roscoe flashed ID. “Patrolman Roscoe Lund, Salt Lake City Police Department. This here is—”

  I leaned my chest in near the door so she could see my sheriff’s badge. “I’m Senior Deputy Arthur Oveson, Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office.”

  “We’re looking for someone named Harmony Tattershall,” said Roscoe. “Do you know where we might find her?”

  “I’m her,” said the woman. “Only I go by Harmony Baker now.”

  “Miss Baker, we would appreciate it if you’d let us ask you a few routine questions,” I said. “This shouldn’t take long.”

  She nudged the door open a few feet. “Please…”

  She led us through the first floor of the house, where young women (I couldn’t keep exact count of how many) were engaged in various activities—practicing piano scales, cooking food, crocheting, sitting around a blackboard and learning lessons—and into a huge kitchen with a tiled floor, where a pair of pregnant teens were scrubbing dishes in soapy water. She pushed another screen door open, and we followed her out. On the screened-in back porch, there were a half-dozen white wicker chairs with green cushions. We each sat down.

  “Would you gentlemen care for something to drink?” she asked. “Milk? Tea? Lemonade?”

  “No thank you, ma’am,” I said. “We’re fine.” I cleared my throat. “Four years ago, Dr. Hans Pfalzgraf filed a complaint on your behalf to the state medical board. As a result of that complaint, Dr. Everett Wooley was barred from practicing medicine in the state of Utah.”

  She nodded. “Yes. That’s correct.”

  I said, “We need you to tell us what that was all about.”

  “I’ll make a long story short,” she said. “I got pregnant. I was sixteen at the time. The father of the baby was also my father. I didn’t want to have the baby. I tried different things to get rid of it. Jumped off the roof of our house. Drank insecticide. Dry heaved for an entire week, but it didn’t do anything to the baby. I rode my horse as hard as I could, but the baby kept growing in me. So I visited Wooley, and he operated on me. Afterward, I got sick. I came down with a fever and an infection. I remember sweating so badly … and the pain—it was like someone threw a spear into me. I would’ve died if it weren’t for Margaret.”

  “Margaret?” I asked.

  “Margaret Collins. She runs this place. She runs another one just like it in Denver. Goes back and forth between the two. The woman’s a saint. She took care of me. She nursed me back to health and convinced m
e to adopt my mother’s maiden name. She made me read a book by Charlotte Perkins Gilman called The Yellow Wallpaper. At first I didn’t get the book, but I read it a second time, and it opened my eyes like nothing else. Margaret helped me to understand that women have to fight for their rights—”

  Roscoe cut her off. “So you completely recovered, thanks to this Margaret lady?”

  She shrugged, and her thick glasses could not conceal the pain in her eyes. “I can’t ever have a baby again. My uterus was damaged, thanks to Dr. Wooley. But I am happy to be alive. I volunteer here, to help the girls.”

  I said, “Why did Pfalzgraf agree to submit a complaint in your name to the state medical board?”

  She kept rubbing her hands against her forearms, as if trying to warm herself. I’d written it off as a nervous tic, but she wasn’t letting up. If anything, she was doing it with even more frenzied intensity now. She took a deep breath and said, “I think he had a number of reasons for helping me. He’s got a decent side to him. Part of him wants to help people. No question about it.”

  “Why else?” I asked.

  “Guilt.”

  I looked at Roscoe. Roscoe looked at me. We both looked at Harmony Baker. I said, “Can you elaborate? Why did he feel guilty?”

  “Because I came up fifty bucks short. That’s why he turned me away.”

  Roscoe’s eyebrows twitched. “Who turned you away? What are you talking about?”

  “Dr. Pfalzgraf,” she said. “He charges two hundred and fifty for his surgeries. That’s why all of his clients are rich women. And girls.”

  I was nearly too stunned to speak—I felt my body shaking—but I managed to spit out the words. “You mean … Pfalzgraf … Dr. Hans Pfalzgraf … was … is…”

  “He’s an abortionist,” said Harmony. She smiled and let out a pained laugh. “You mean … you didn’t know? You guys are cops, right? How can you not know?”

  “We know now,” said Roscoe. “So among other things, Wooley was competition for Pfalzgraf?”