The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy

by David E. Fessenden

  But after I gave it to him, he still wore his usual perpetually bored expression. Moments later, he looked down the row of desks, over the heads of the other reporters, and caught my eye. With a wave of his hand, he motioned me forward. As I walked down the aisle between the neat rows of desks, I thought, not for the first time, about how much the layout of the newsroom reminded me of the seating arrangements in a grade school class. Being called on by the city editor felt uncomfortably like being summoned to the teacher’s desk to have my knuckles rapped.

  “What are you working on this story about the explosion for? We already got the details from the cops.” He paused to snatch a white ceramic coffee cup from his desk, took a sip of the dark liquid, and wrinkled his mouth in disgust. “Jones is working on it from the report in the police blotter.”

  “Charlie, I was there last night. Wouldn’t you rather have an eyewitness account?”

  “Oh. Well . . . yeah.” He glared over the top of his glasses at me, then shook the pages of my story and scanned the words as if he were reading them for the first time—and for all I know, maybe he was. I waited in silence as he read; I knew better than to leave before I had been dismissed.

  “Where did you get hold of this guy, this waiter?” Charlie said finally. He picked up a mangled stogie from an ashtray on the corner of his desk, stuck it in his mouth and eyed me strangely. He seemed suspicious about something.

  “At the scene,” I said, a little more defensively than I wanted to. “What’s the problem?”

  “The problem,” he said, his voice rising dangerously, “is that your report is the only one that mentions this waiter. The morning papers say nothing about him.”

  “What, you think I made him up?” I said with a laugh, but then lost all humor when I saw in his eyes that this was exactly what he was thinking. I tried another tack. “Maybe my story is the only one with his testimony because I was on the scene, and these other reporters wrote the story secondhand. Maybe I’m the only one who talked about the waiter because I had the presence of mind to get him away from the scene before anyone else could collar him.” I paused for breath. Rosenbaum wasn’t buying it, I could tell. “Look, if you don’t believe me, call up Feeney at the station. He was there. He interrogated him.”

  “Nah, nah. I was just checking,” he mumbled, but I walked away from his desk with a sick feeling. Only a few minutes later my worst fears were confirmed. Rosenbaum called Larry Jones, the crime reporter, over to his desk and handed him my story. With the stupidity of youthful enthusiasm, I walked over and asked him what it was all about.

  “Get back to work!” he snarled, but I didn’t move. He tried to ignore me, but I could be just as stubborn as he was. Finally, he sighed and gave me the look of a drill sergeant getting a question from a buck private.

  “Okay,” he said as he rubbed his right temple, “we’ll say you wrote down everything this waiter told you verbatim—the locked door, the angry face in the keyhole, everything. That still doesn’t square with me. Maybe this guy was a little tipsy—”

  “He was perfectly sober!” I interjected.

  “Then maybe he’s publicity-hungry. At any rate, his statements don’t make sense. We’d look like idiots if his story didn’t pan out.”

  “We’ll look like idiots if you leave it out and the other papers include it!”

  Charlie stared at me for a second, then averted his eyes. “I’ve already left it out. There’s no time to double-check it. But look, I handed your original story over to Jones. He’s going to talk to his contacts and see what he can add to it for a follow-up piece.”

  It was useless to argue. I went back to my desk and sank into my chair. My first chance at a front-page story had been snatched from me. Lost in thought, I didn’t even notice that Jones had stopped at my desk until he began to talk to me.

  “Nice touch with the waiter story,” he drawled, “but this was no time to try your hand at fiction. It was obviously a mob hit—oh, pardon me. I forget that you are not familiar with American slang.” He leaned closer and spoke slowly. “It . . . was . . . an . . . assassination.”

  I stood up abruptly, then closed my eyes and gripped the edge of the desk, trying to keep myself under control. How I kept myself from punching him in the face I’ll never know. He backed away for a second, then shrugged his shoulders and leaned against my desk with an unwelcome familiarity. I’m sure he had no idea how close he came to losing that triumphant grin.

  “There’s more to this than a feud between gangsters,” I said evenly, trying to keep my voice from trembling with anger. “You’ll make a fool out of yourself if you write the story that way.” Actually, I didn’t care if he made a fool of himself, but I had to say something in my defense.

  “I suppose I should take your advice,” he replied. “After all, making a fool out of yourself is your specialty, not mine. But I think I’ll stick with my original theory.” He slid his rump off the corner of my desk, then turned to go. But he stopped abruptly, whirled around, and shoved his face within inches of mine. I could smell the sickly sweet odor of his cheap cologne. “Wouldn’t care to make a wager on the outcome of this story, would you?”

  Jones had hit another sore spot—was there no end to this man’s ability to irritate me? But he could not know how much I hated gambling, because of the pain it had caused in my family. It was my father’s one serious vice, and he immersed himself in it. He once admitted to Holmes that half his military pension was used up playing the horses, but if anything, he was understating his problem. Until he conquered it late in his life, it was a chronic shadow in our otherwise happy household, and the reason we were strapped for cash during much of my childhood. For this reason, as well as the fact that I rarely had a spare dime to my name, I usually bowed out of a bet. But Jones caught me off guard.

  “I don’t usually gamble,” I said, stalling for time as I tried to analyze this new challenge. “Besides, what good is a bet like that? I’m bound to lose, because you’ve already decided to slant your story toward the mob hit angle.”

  Jones bared his teeth and slammed his fist on my desk. “I don’t slant my stories!” I looked up just in time to see him brush away a greasy lock of hair that had flopped down aimlessly across his right eye. Apparently he hadn’t used enough Brilliantine that morning.

  I didn’t speak, just briefly raised my eyebrows, then turned my eyes back to the papers on my desk. I’d let him stew—a trick I’d learned from Sherlock. When discussion reached an impasse, studied silence can often cause your opponent to force his hand. I wasn’t sure it would work on a loudmouth like Larry Jones, but it did.

  “Look, I’ll talk to Rosenbaum and get him to put you back on the story. I’ll bet you a ten-spot—no, make that twenty—that you can’t come up with information in the next three days to prove it was anything but a mob hit.”

  “I have to prove it to your satisfaction?” I said with a sneer. “No, thanks.”

  “You prove it to Rosenbaum’s satisfaction and it’s okay with me. We won’t even let him know there’s a wager on this. If he prints your story, you win. Hey, I’ll even give you a week.”

  I glared at Jones. His one-week deadline was just a smokescreen. A follow-up story had to be written within a few days, and once it was printed, Rosenbaum would never let me keep working on the case.

  “It’s a bet,” I said, and we shook hands on it.

  I went home that evening kicking myself. I couldn’t afford to lose twenty dollars, and I couldn’t see any way to get out of the bet. For years I had prided myself on not having my father’s weakness for a wager. Well, perhaps I did, after all. Perhaps Mr. Holmes was right; perhaps a youth cannot improve on his elders.

  Basil had prepared a sumptuous meal—roast beef (I didn’t ask how he paid for it), potatoes, carrots, and celery, with a light and buttery Yorkshire pudding—but I was too quiet at the table, it seems. Mycroft wanted
to know what was wrong, and when I wouldn’t tell him, he was able to deduce much of it. “You left here in good spirits with your story on the explosion, yet you come home with your tail between your legs. Wasn’t the story good enough for your editor?”

  “Pass the potatoes,” I growled.

  “No, it can’t be that,” he continued, dangling a slice of pudding in the air as he pondered this latest mystery. “The story must have been good enough. I can tell from your face that you’re not disappointed in yourself. I take it, then, your editor doubted the facts.”

  “Oh, all right!” I said, perhaps a little too loudly. “My editor thinks I made up the interview with Basil, or if not, that Basil is embellishing the story. He handed it over to another reporter, and I bet him twenty bucks—twenty bucks I don’t have—that I could prove it wasn’t just a mob hit. My first big story taken away from me, and I’m going to pay twenty bucks for the experience to boot! There—now you know the whole story! Are you happy?”

  I dropped my knife and fork on the plate with a dramatic clatter, stood up, and marched away from the dinner table. My monologue was a perfect prelude to a grand exit, but since the apartment was too small for that, I just threw myself on the couch and glared at the old man. Basil continued to eat his meal, but his face held a pained expression. Perhaps he thought I was blaming him for the problem—and I guess I probably was.

  Mycroft continued to think out loud, as if to himself. “I can’t say I blame that editor. The story is quite fantastic. Were I in his shoes I suppose I would have done the same.”

  Basil’s dour expression became more intense.

  “Of course,” he said, walking across the room to look me in the eye, “your editor doesn’t know what a man of integrity our Basil is.”

  Basil’s glum mask melted away, replaced with a look of relief. “Perhaps, Mr. Holmes, I could go down to the newspaper and speak to the editor on behalf of young Thomas.”

  “No, no, that’s no good. If he doubts the word of a man who works with him every day, why should he believe a stranger? No, what Thomas needs is some hard evidence. Why don’t you tell me your story again?” With a few quick movements, Basil had cleared away the dinner dishes and sat facing the old man, leaning forward with his hands on his knees.

  Being spoken of as if I were not present annoyed me, so I sat up and listened again to Basil’s odd testimony. I started to ask a question at one point, but Mycroft waved his hand to silence me. As the butler described the look on Harry Ragan’s face, Mycroft asked him to repeat it, then bombarded him with questions: “How was his jaw set? Were his eyes bulging? What was the color of his skin?”

  In response to this line of questioning, Basil leaned back in his chair with a furrowed brow, and his answers were unusually vague. Up to the point when he looked through the keyhole, his attention to detail had been extraordinarily keen. Mycroft noticed the difference and pounced on it.

  “Why can’t you remember going back to the kitchen?”

  “I . . . I really don’t know,” Basil replied. “From the moment I saw that face, everything was a blur.”

  “Come now, Basil,” Mycroft scolded, then he stood and leaned forward with his palms on the flimsy kitchen table, like a prosecutor cross-examining a reluctant witness. The table was not used to this kind of treatment, and it shuddered under his weight. “Don’t tell me an angry face would make you fall apart. I’ve seen you in tight situations before. You are utterly unflappable. Do you know,” he said, turning to me, “that Basil single-handedly stopped a burglar from ransacking the Diogenes Club one evening? He disarmed the man with one quick swipe of a fireplace poker across his pistol hand.”

  “That was quite a few years ago, I’m afraid,” Basil replied. “My nerves are not what they used to be.”

  “A cool-headed man becomes disoriented when he peers through a keyhole,” Mycroft said, ignoring Basil’s last remark. “That’s significant, Thomas.”

  “What I want to know,” I said, “is why the room exploded, but not the entire building.”

  “Oh, well, I can explain that,” Basil replied. “The room was a cheap wood addition built onto a solid brick building. In fact, that is why the door to the room did not blow out. It was solid oak—originally an outside door.”

  I grew tired of the discussion, especially Mycroft’s habit of stalking about the room, his hands behind his back and his chin on his chest, lecturing like a schoolmaster. So I made an awkward attempt to change the subject. “By the way, Mycroft, I may have some free time tomorrow. If you are interested in the tourist sites, we could take the train downtown and see the Liberty Bell.”

  Mycroft curled his lower lip. “While I admire the Americans for their ‘noble experiment,’ I see no reason to spend my time gaping at a carillon maker’s manufacturing defect. I may, however, wish to visit Independence Hall at some point. But for the time being, I think it best to spend our time working out our living arrangements.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Jones sauntered across the newsroom and slid his ample thigh over the edge of my desk. There was a slight crackle of static as his wool herringbone slacks met with the polished surface.

  “Very creative touch, Watson, introducing that waiter character.” Jones began his usual primping, adjusting his shirtsleeves so his rhinestone cufflinks were more conspicuous.

  “Oh, shut up, Jones,” I muttered. “You would never have met him, because you would have been too busy writing out every gory detail about the bodies.”

  “It sells newspapers, Watson.” Charlie Rosenbaum suddenly appeared at my desk. “And as long as we’re on the subject, if you pull another stunt like that waiter character, you’ll be out the door.”

  It took me a moment to realize what Charlie was saying. He still thinks I’ve concocted the whole interview with Basil! I glanced over at Jones, who was smoothing his garish red silk tie and struggling to hold back a grin. “Charlie, whatever would give you the idea that I made up this guy? I told you yesterday that Officer Feeney could verify my story. But if that’s not enough for you, I can produce him—the waiter, I mean. I could bring him here to the office this afternoon, if you don’t believe me.” I stopped abruptly. It’s best to shut up when your voice takes on a whining tone.

  Charlie’s burly eyebrows closed together and lowered over his eyes. “But Jones told me—”

  “Whatever Jones said, he did it so he could get his byline on my first major story!” I stood up and faced Jones toe-to-toe. “Just what did you tell him, Larry?”

  Now the grin leaped across his face, but he still said nothing.

  “Look, Watson.” Charlie cocked his head and revealed just a trace of a smile. “I sympathize. I really do. But bylines come and go. There’ll be other stories. Right now, I’ve got more obits for you.” He turned and walked away.

  “Thanks a lot,” I said out of the side of my mouth. Jones still sat on the edge of my desk, a childish look of triumph on his face. I sat back down and started shuffling papers, but he didn’t get the hint. “Is there something wrong with your chair that you have to park your backside over here?”

  Jones chuckled and eased himself off the desk, to its apparent relief, as it let out an appreciative squeak. “You’ll never make it in this business, college boy.”

  Charlie dropped a packet of obituaries on my desk a few minutes later. Pulling up a chair, he sat down and studied me for a moment, as if he were looking at a parakeet in a cage. “Do you really think there might be something to this waiter’s story, Watson?”

  “I thought you didn’t believe he existed. Besides, who cares what I think? You’ll just give the story to Jones anyway.” I wasn’t being fair to Charlie, but I was pretty mad at him. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t reprimand Jones for his latest dirty trick, or why he believed his lies in the first place.

  “Do you want me to give it to Jones?” he asked, now taking
on a fatherly tone.

  “You won’t get much out of him if you do,” I replied, not about to be taken in by Charlie’s cheap attempt at manipulation. “He’s convinced that it’s a mob hit, pure and simple.”

  “And what makes you think he’s wrong?”

  “Charlie, he has to be wrong. The evidence doesn’t support it.” Charlie didn’t respond, so I continued. “For one thing, a bomb planted by the mob would have destroyed the building. This one barely blew out the windows.”

  “Wasn’t the speakeasy in a brick building? It would take quite a lot to take that down.”

  “But that’s just the point, Charlie,” I replied. “The back room was a flimsy wood frame wing, added long after the original was built. Basil said—”

  “Basil? Oh, your waiter. Go on.”

  “Basil said the door to the room was originally an outside door, so it was thick and sturdy, with a strong lock. There’s no way that anything but the most powerful explosion could get through it. The main building was virtually unaffected.”

  “I don’t remember any of this in your story,” Charlie commented, his critical editor’s tone returning with a vengeance. I said nothing, but I made a mental note to add more detail to my writing. Perhaps Charlie had better reasons to trash my story than I thought.

  “What about the victims?” Charlie stood once again, planted the knuckles of one hand on my desk and pulled his tattered cigar out of his mouth. “How did they die?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “If the explosion barely blew out the windows, they should have survived the blast.”

  He was right. Wow, I had missed a lot. “I could go talk with the coroner,” I said, “but I’ve got these obits to write.”