The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy

by David E. Fessenden

  I looked up and realized that everyone in the room was staring at me, as if they had seen a ghost. I learned later that the police had called the paper, under the assumption that I still was employed there, with a garbled report of a crazed killer attacking me. Most of the newsroom staff had not expected to see me alive again.

  “What are you doing here, Watson?” Jones called from across the room. “I thought you’d been fired.”

  “Actually, what Rosenbaum said was, ‘Don’t come back until you’re prepared to bring a story.’ And so I did.”

  “Well, then, you’d better tell Charlie about it, before he sees you and throws you out on your ear.”

  I looked over at Charlie Rosenbaum and saw him hunched over his desk, his nose buried in a mound of copy. He had missed my grand entrance. I strode over to his desk and cleared my throat loudly. “I’m here!”

  Looking up from his work, he eyed me strangely, as if he’d never seen me.

  “I’m ready to write the story on the explosion at the speakeasy,” I said breathlessly. “A dentist did it.”

  Still he sat and stared. Why didn’t he understand?

  “I thought I fired you,” he finally said. He spoke in a monotone, blinking his eyes repeatedly. I detected no anger or remorse in his voice, just a trace of doubt, as if he was just waking from a deep sleep and hoping I was a bad dream.

  “You said not to come back until I could bring the solution to the speakeasy explosion. Well, I’ve solved it—it was Ragan’s dentist!”

  Charlie blinked a couple more times, then raised his bushy brow as a flicker of recognition seemed to dance across his eyes. “Oh, you mean the dentist who tried to kill one of his patients? Yeah, Larry’s already written that up. Pretty flimsy story, if you ask me. And Jones didn’t even get the name of the patient. But I don’t see what that has to do with Ragan’s killing—and how would you know anything about it?”

  This was too much. “I know every detail of that story about the dentist!” I shouted. “I was the patient! ” Even though I was pleased to see that my revelation got his attention, I inwardly kicked myself. I had vowed not to lose my temper.

  My outburst attracted Larry Jones’s attention too, because he got up from his desk and came over, obviously to defend his turf.

  “Let me look at that story,” I said, surprising myself with a tone of authority I had never dared to use on my boss. Apparently I surprised Charlie, too, because he picked up the paper (it was on the top of the pile on his desk) and handed it to me with no argument. I glanced at it quickly and actually laughed out loud. Jones stepped in and grabbed the paper from my hand.

  “What are you doing, Charlie? I’m not gonna have my stories critiqued by an amateur!” He slammed the paper down on Rosenbaum’s desk and turned to walk away. But this time, I wasn’t going to allow him to bully me into submission.

  “What’s the matter, Jones? Can’t your work stand up to a little scrutiny?”

  Jones spun on his heel and stalked toward me with his jaw clenched and murder in his eye. Ignoring him, I said to Charlie, “Flimsy doesn’t even begin to describe it. You can’t print that story. It’s not what really happened—or, at least, it’s not the whole picture.”

  “You haven’t even read the story. How would you know?” Jones was breathing fire into my left ear, but by now I had calmed down. I turned and stared him down with an indulgent smile.

  “Jones, does your story say that I was the one the dentist was trying to kill? Does your story say that the dentist confessed to the murder of Ragan and his companions?” Then in a few clipped sentences, I revealed what had happened to me, the connection between Ragan and the dentist, and the facts behind the speakeasy explosion. Charlie was still mulling it over when his secretary stepped over to speak to him.

  “Mr. Rosenbaum, there’s a phone call for Mr. Watson,” she said, and smiled at me. Apparently I had risen a notch or two in her estimation. Up to this point, she had always looked right through me—and I had never been called Mr. Watson by anyone at the paper. I began to wonder if the effects of the gas had not worn off after all, because everything was starting to feel like a dream. The aura of unreality was about to increase, however.

  Charlie tapped the phone on his desk with a finger. “Take it here. And be quick about it. The bigwigs don’t take kindly to personal calls.”

  “Hello?” I spoke into the receiver. “Yes, I’m Thomas Watson . . . Oh, it’s a pleasure to speak with you, sir . . . Yes, it was a close call, but I’m feeling just fine now . . . An article? Well, I suppose I could. I’d have to check with my employer . . . Yes, he’s right here.”

  I put my hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s the editor of the National Bazaar, Charlie. You know, the magazine.” The magazine’s offices were right here in the city, so why was Charlie looking so puzzled? “The publisher is asking if you would permit me to write something for them about my experience with the dentist and how I solved the murder of Harry Ragan.”

  Both Rosenbaum and Jones gaped at me in disbelief.

  “It’s not a conflict of interest, Charlie. They want more of a feature article than a news report . . .”

  Charlie stopped staring and clamped his mouth shut. With a decisive gesture, he tore the mouthpiece from my hand and barked into the receiver. “Who is this?”

  His eyebrows rose perceptibly as the faint sound of a forceful voice issued forth tinnily from the earpiece. With the look of a deflated man he said, “Oh, Mr. Waterbury, it really is an honor to speak with you . . . Me? Oh, uh, Charles Rosenbaum, managing editor . . . Mr. Watson? Oh, of course, he is welcome to do the article. After all,” he gave a self-conscious chuckle, “he hasn’t an exclusive contract with us or anything . . . Yes, yes, he is a bright young man, one of our up-and-coming reporters. We were just talking about how he would handle the Ragan story.”

  Jones gave a disgusted sigh and folded his arms across his chest. Charlie was still speaking ingratiatingly into the phone.

  “Well, thank you so much for calling, sir . . . Oh, yes, I’ll be sure to tell him. Goodbye.”

  Charlie set the receiver down with a look of amazement on his face. He gazed into space for a few seconds, his hand still resting on the phone. Finally, he shook his head and reassumed his signature mask of weary disdain. All was right with the world again.

  “Waterbury wants you down to his office tomorrow morning at ten to discuss the details of the article. I’m giving you time off to make that appointment.” He sighed, as if it was costing him personally. Apparently it meant I was back on the payroll.

  He leaned forward conspiratorially, and in a slightly more friendly tone said, “If you need some help with the magazine article, lemme know. But don’t go embarrassing this paper with a half-witted piece you dashed off in an afternoon. Put some time into it.” He settled back into his chair and folded his hands. “But first, get the story written for the paper. And hurry. The next edition is due in an hour.”

  Charlie wagged his head several times and chuckled to himself, then caught Jones’s eye. Shifting his stogie to the corner of his mouth, he drawled, “Scooped by a cub reporter . . .”

  Jones sneered and opened his mouth to reply, but Rosenbaum held up his hand. “Now, Larry, don’t give me any back talk, and leave Watson alone. He has a story to finish—and it’s going on the front page.”

  The silence in the newsroom continued to reign for a second or two; then a phone rang and broke the spell. Soon the typical buzz of conversation resumed, punctuated by tramping feet and an occasional shout as someone across the room called to verify a fact or ask for information.

  I began my lead:

  Police charged a Chestnut Hill dentist today with the deaths of four men in connection with last week’s explosion in an illegal saloon.

  Let’s see . . . “illegal saloon” is redundant, and maybe I should add “and the attem
pted murder of a Herald reporter” to the lead. Nah, too much information, I decided. I would add that part into the second or third paragraph of the story.

  I’m not easily distracted when I’m writing, but I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye. Jones had stood up and, with an exaggerated effort at casualness, sauntered over to my desk until he was standing behind my back. I could see by the reflection in the window that he stiffened visibly when he finished reading the lead, and with a hunch in his shoulders, he returned to his chair and began to drum his fingers on the desktop. He seemed puzzled and deflated.

  With a loud squeak, his chair suddenly shot out from under him, and he stalked over to Rosenbaum’s desk. A furiously whispered conversation ensued, with Jones turning his head in my direction several times. Finally, Rosenbaum stood and removed his stogie, deliberately blowing smoke in Jones’s face. He spoke loudly enough for the rest of the newsroom to hear.

  “Forget it, Larry. I just called and heard it straight from the cops—Watson uncovered the killer and almost lost his life in the process. If he’s feeling well enough to write it up, I’m going to print it—and I’m giving him back his old job as well.”

  Slowly, Jones trudged back to his desk and slumped in his chair—a perfect picture of dejection. Now seemed as good a time as any to settle my last piece of business with him. I stepped across the room, leaned against his desk and folded my arms, but he wouldn’t make eye contact with me.

  “By the way, Jones, where’s my twenty bucks?”

  “Whaddya mean?” he replied with studied absentmindedness, as he began typing. But he wasn’t fooling anyone. The fact that he failed to tease me about my use of American slang indicated that he was trying to avoid me.

  Grabbing the arms of his office chair, I whirled him around until he faced me. “I mean the twenty you owe me. Surely you haven’t forgotten our little wager,” I said.

  He turned back to the typewriter, but he didn’t type. “So big deal, you found the killer,” he said over his shoulder. “That’s no proof he wasn’t hired by the mob. Say, Watson (and he swiveled back to face me), I understand he almost knocked you off before your precious waiter saved you.”

  “He’s a butler,” I replied, sensing I was losing control of the conversation.

  “Okay, a butler,” he said, with more than a trace of condescension. “You know, I still think he has something to do with it. How else would he have found you so easily?”

  My teeth clenched involuntarily, and I felt the veins rise on my neck, but before I could say anything, I felt a hand rest on my shoulder. It was Charlie Rosenbaum.

  “Don’t worry, Watson,” he said with a chuckle. “He knows he’s beaten. I’ve just been on the phone again with the police. The dentist insists it was an accident, and they’ve only charged him with involuntary manslaughter. So the cops have made it official: not only is it not a contract killing, technically, it isn’t even murder. Besides, if Jones really thought it was a mob hit, why isn’t he asking you for twenty bucks?”

  Larry’s eyes lit up with this new suggestion, like a caged animal discovering the possibility of escape. He opened his mouth to speak, but Charlie wasn’t through with his monologue. He leaned over Larry until they were almost nose-to-nose.

  “Okay, Jones, time to pay up. Ordinarily, I don’t approve of office gambling, but I’ll make an exception in your case. It’s time you were knocked down a peg or two. And after all the guff you’ve given Watson, he’s earned that twenty!”

  Standing over him with folded arms and a scowl, he waited while Jones inched a bill from his wallet and handed it over. Charlie never apologized for questioning the truth of my original story, but Jones’s humiliation was better than an apology—and I sorely needed the money!

  “Now both of you—get back to work! Watson, I want that story on my desk in twenty minutes, or I’ll write it up myself.”

  I hunched over the typewriter and nervously tried to look busy, but suddenly the irony of Charlie’s words registered in my mind, and I couldn’t keep from smiling. When had he ever given me a deadline of twenty minutes? Usually he wanted everything yesterday. And as for writing it up himself, I would have liked to have seen that. Rosenbaum was too accustomed to editing other people’s words. I doubt that he’d written anything himself in the last ten years!

  I sneaked a peek and caught him at his desk, his eyes squeezed shut, shaking with silent laughter.

  EPILOGUE

  Writing the story for the paper and maintaining a third-person voice that a reporter is supposed to adopt was difficult, but I managed to do it. Charlie seemed pretty pleased with the result, but he also noted the problem of reporting on my own experience and speaking of myself in third person. In the end, he decided it would be best to drop my byline, “so as not to confuse the reader.”

  I had the last laugh, however. The National Bazaar asked me to write the article as a first-person account and paid me handsomely for my trouble. My father would have chuckled over the magazine’s description of the piece: “A true-life crime detection story, told by the son of Dr. John Watson, biographer of Sherlock Holmes.”

  Basil still worried about backlash from the men at the bottling plant over our discovery of the tunnel, but Feeney was as good as his word. During the inspection of Ragan’s speakeasy, Feeney had waited until his precinct captain walked by, then leaned against the false wall until it moved. The captain commended Feeney for his “accidental” discovery, took a brief look at the stairs descending into the dark, and declared it to be a simple storage cellar.

  “How could anyone be that stupid?” I asked. Basil gave a wry smile before he revealed that the precinct captain had been a regular at Ragan’s place.

  With the promised proceeds from the article and Larry Jones’s twenty-dollar bill in my pocket, I had the unusual and oh-so-temporary feeling of prosperity, which inclined me toward generosity. I decided to invite all those involved with me in the adventure to join me for dinner at Luigi’s, a small Italian bistro that I had never been able to afford.

  As it turned out, however, the group was far smaller than it could have been. Mycroft adamantly refused to come, insisting there was nothing to celebrate: I had not tracked down the killer; I had merely stumbled upon him. We could all just as likely be gathering for my funeral, he said. (His blustering words were delivered with very little energy, however. I suspect he was still feeling a bit guilty for exposing me to such danger.)

  Captain Bill decided to stay home and keep Mycroft company. Feeney also refused, grumbling that he had already become far too familiar with a member of the press. (Mrs. Feeney, however, would have been more than willing to come, I’m sure.)

  So it was that I found myself at Luigi’s, being serenaded by violins and surrounded by candlelight with Basil, Maggie, and Rose. The whole scene felt too much like a double date for my comfort, and Basil didn’t help matters any when, inspired by the music, he twirled Rose around the restaurant in a spontaneous waltz. The polite applause they received from the other patrons only heightened my embarrassment, and I was somewhat relieved to see that Maggie had a twinge of red on her cheeks as well.

  Nevertheless, the meal was enjoyable and there were no more uncomfortable moments. The ladies were politely appreciative when I told them about the article for the magazine, but only Basil seemed to understand the impact it would have on my career.

  “Congratulations! What title did you give the article, Thomas?”

  “The magazine called it ‘The Case of the Exploding Speakeasy’.” I noted with satisfaction that Maggie lowered her eyes and coughed uncomfortably as I said the word “speakeasy” out loud, in public. Why did I enjoy embarrassing her? Surely, Dr. Freud would have some deep psychological explanation for the sadistic streak that emerged whenever I was around her. But this was no time to investigate a new mystery, and anyway, I had been perplexed by my habits and motivations all my li
fe. What was the chance of understanding myself now?

  I shook off those gloomy thoughts and caught Basil’s eye. “But you would be interested to know the original title I had, Basil, because it referred to you.” His left eyebrow rose slowly and worry crept into his eyes. I loved to watch him squirm.

  “I called it ‘The Butler Didn’t Do It’.” He grinned in appreciation.

  As the waiter cleared off the table and asked us what we would like for dessert, I was just beginning to relax. Then I noticed a mischievous look in Basil’s eye—a look I have since learned to dread.

  Basil lifted his glass of root beer. “While we have agreed to be law-abiding citizens and abstain from illegal spirits for this repast, I hope you won’t mind, ladies,” and he chivalrously nodded his head toward Maggie and Rose, “if we conclude our meal with a toast.” Basil stood tall and straight, oblivious to the amused looks of the other patrons. “To the founder of this feast, the vindicator of my person, the solver of this conundrum—”

  I drummed on the table with my fingers and fidgeted in my seat. I realized Basil was grateful, but wasn’t he pouring it on just a bit thick?

  “To Mr. Mycroft Holmes!”

  With a rueful smile, I raised my glass.