The Mammoth Book of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley

  Stumbling over the builders’ rubble still littered along the Oriental street, Potter came up behind the machine as Banks stepped into the road. He stood with an arm thrown out in front of him like some constable on point duty. The machine clattered to a stop a bare few feet from him . Banks called up into the cab, where sat a mufflered figure with a flat cap pulled over his eyes.

  “It’s over, sir. Please climb down.”

  The machine seemed to give an almost human sigh, and the engine died. The figure still sat slumped in the shaped metal bucket of a seat. Potter was about to beg Harry to give himself up, when Banks called out again.

  “Mr Premadasa, sir.”

  Potter couldn’t believe his ears. Junius was dead. He had seen the body. So he could hardly believe his eyes, when the figure swung elegantly down from the cab of the machine, and doffed his cap in a mocking salute. Potter looked into the dark brown eyes of Junius Premadasa.

  “Junius! But then, whose body . . . ?”

  It was Banks, of course, who supplied the solution.

  “I think you’ll find, Mr Potter, that that was the gentleman’s missing chauffeur. Who was also Sinhalese, was he not, Mr Premadasa?”

  Premadasa raised a patrician nose to the skies.

  “A necessary sacrifice. Now, I believe you would like to handcuff me, sir.”

  As he spoke these words, there was a mighty roar from the stadium behind them. Someone had scored.

  In the Chamber, Mr J. Jones rose to his feet to speak.

  “May I say that as far as the crowd were concerned they were good-humoured . . .”

  Potter scarcely heard the rest of the eulogy to the assembled mass of football supporters. Who, he had only learned later, had gladly allowed a policeman on a white horse to organize them along the touchline. And then had supplied the King with three rousing cheers. Premadasa would have been mortified at their loyalty.

  It turned out that he had organized the jewel heist to coincide with the Cup Final in the hope that all the other problems would divert the police, and that he could slip away in the crowd. While Tommy Fields and Harry Rothstein were sucked into a fake Communist plot, he and his accomplices, Marsh and Brown, would steal a million pounds’ worth of pearls. And embarrass the Imperialist exhibition into the bargain. Funds and principles both satisfied, Premadasa would be able to disappear. He was already dead after all. Banks had guessed some of it, when he tracked Rothstein down to his bolt-hole. Harry had denied all participation in Prem’s murder. Had assumed he was indeed still alive. But Prem’s interest in the steam shovel, and the building site seemed incompatible with his ostensible plot to rouse into action the “proletarian army of the unemployed”. Banks had all but figured it out then. Potter had inadvertently supplied the key. But with the hushing up of the whole affair – “for the sake of the Empire” – he could tell noone of his pivotal role. So it was with a sense of irony that he silently listened to the standing MP’s final remarks.

  “If it had not been for the conduct of the police, especially of the officer who was mounted on the white horse . . .” Here, laughter and cheers. “. . . and the good humour of the crowd . . .” Cries of hear, hear. “. . . there would have been murder.”

  Someone

  MICHAEL COLLINS

  Michael Collins has been writing about his one-armed sleuth Dan Fortune for nearly forty years, in fact for even longer if you count the stories featuring Slot-Machine Kelly, a prototype for Fortune, who appeared in short stories way back in 1962. The introductory Dan Fortune novel, Act of Fear (1967) won Collins the Edgar Award for that year’s best first novel. There have been eighteen other Dan Fortune novels since then plus many short stories, most of which will be found in Crime, Punishment and Resurrection (1992) and Fortune’s World (2000). Recently Collins has been reflecting on Fortune’s past and origins, and in the following story, which sweeps us through the 1920s, we learn about Fortune’s father and how young Daniel came into the world. At first glance you may not think about this as a whodunnit, but just ponder a while on who’s the victim and that will make you wonder how, why and who.

  My father came to know Owney Madden, Arnold Rothstein, Mayor Jimmy Walker, and wealthy playboy Robert Jacob (Bobby) Astor, in 1923, and it changed his life, and mine.

  In 1923 the country was full of bounce. The war was over, Europe was exhausted, but America was richer and stronger, and then came 16 January 1920. Congress passed The Volstead Act, Prohibition, and overnight the bounce turned into a binge. The country became one big alcoholic party as the money rolled in. It was, as Ernest Hemingway wrote, as if life were a long leave from the front of a war not yet over. (How true that was they could not have known then, but in a short twenty years, they and their sons would be called once more to the front.)

  Warren Harding was president, and whether the country reflects the president, or the president reflects the country, Harding was the perfect president for the times. On the golf course or at the poker table he vigorously enforced playing by the rules, while personally ignoring the rules of the nation with his boozing, on and off the golf course, his women, his gambling, and his turning a blind eye as his cronies pillaged the country’s coffers culminating in Teapot Dome. It was anything goes, and have a drink on the house.

  Kasimir Nikolai Fortunowski was born at the turn of the twentieth century in May, 1900, the only son of Tadeusz Jan Fortunowski, a Polish Lithuanian farm boy who read Marx and Lenin, was branded a dangerous agitator by the Tsar of all the Russias, and forced to run from the tsar’s domains in 1892.

  All that I learned from my step-grandmother, old Tadeusz’s second wife. Much of the rest of this story my mother told me later in our shabby apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on those rare nights after school when she was at home with nothing to do but stare at the wreck of her life. Some of it I watched happening on my own with that peculiar insight children have before they turn into teenagers and see little but themselves.

  Kasimir Fortunowski enlisted in the US Army the day he turned eighteen. Seven months later he returned home, having seen, as a song of the time tells us, the wonders of Paris, London, and the castles of the Rhine. He had also come to know men from all across America who were not named Kasimir or Nikolai or Fortunowski. Within a year he changed his name to Casey Nicholas Fortune, and after he found he had no chance of getting the white-collar work he thought he should have, joined the New York City Police Department.

  Old Tadeusz Jan refused to speak to a man named Fortune, or to anyone who worked for the bosses as all policemen did. This did not bother my father who intended to be part of a newly confident America, and wanted nothing to do with the old country or the past of his father.

  For Casey Fortune the party began in a blind pig on Fifty-Sixth Street off Tenth Avenue. He had done only average in his police training, so ended up walking a beat in Hell’s Kitchen. Three years later he was still walking that beat. The blind pigs and higher class speakeasies were raided regularly when the powers-that-be decided to flex their muscle for someone’s benefit, but between raids the off-duty policeman needed a drink or two to unwind from a bad day or to drown his sorrows the same as anyone else.

  My father was in this mostly Irish blind pig that night, off-duty and minding his own business, when he sensed trouble at his end of the bar. It wasn’t much: a slightly raised Irish-accented voice; the twitch of a shoulder; other Irish voices beginning to murmur like a low C-pedal in a symphony. Not enough to alert the bartender or the door-muscle, but they didn’t have the advantage of recognizing the accent of the second voice that belonged to the large man with the twitchy shoulder.

  Without a heart beat’s hesitation, Casey Fortune whirled, knocking over his ersatz-Scotch and his beer chaser, and had the big man’s arm in an elbow-breaking hold before anyone could blink. He quickly removed the pistol from the man’s waistband, dropped it into his pocket, and flashed his badge. “Police. Everyone just go on about your business.”

  Without another
word he hustled his prisoner out of the bar, with the man swearing in Polish at Americans, Irish, and the police all the way to the street. Once outside he marched his arrest to the nearest call box and phoned in the incident. Soon a trio of patrol cars and the paddy wagon appeared, the prisoner was shoved in, a detective took my father’s report without comment, and, of course, padlocked the now all-but-empty blind pig.

  As all this went down, my father noticed a man standing in the shadows some fifty yards away calmly watching the entire show. On the small side, the man was expensively dressed in a conservative dark blue suit and what had to be a cashmere topcoat against the late spring chill. Perhaps most impressive were the man’s homburg and black shoes so well shined they reflected even the weak light of the street lamp a half block away.

  Once the blind pig had been locked down, and the still-swearing prisoner carted away, everyone left and the street was deserted once more.

  The well-dressed man came out of the shadows and approached Casey. “That was fast thinking, laddie. Prob’ly stopped a riot inside the pig, a wagon load of broken heads, and a bundle of my money. But what made you grab that guy? None of my people noticed anything wonky.”

  The moment the man moved closer and opened his mouth, Casey Fortune didn’t have to ask who he was. No cop in New York did. Owney Madden, the biggest brewer in the city, king of the Eastside and a lot of the Westside, especially Hell’s Kitchen where he had grown up to lead the Gopher gang, the lilt of his native Leeds and Liverpool still in his voice.

  “You should tell your door muscle to screen who they let in a lot more carefully, and you’d still have that blind pig.”

  “Oh, that. Don’t worry about it, kid, it’ll be open for business tomorrow mornin’. You ’aven’t answered my question.”

  Casey shrugged. “I recognized the guy’s Polish accent, and saw his shoulder move to get ready to draw a pistol. A Polack with a pistol who walks into an Irish saloon and starts mouthing off is looking for trouble. The fastest way to end it was to grab his gun and hustle him out before anyone got really riled up.”

  Madden stared at Casey and slowly nodded. “’Ow long you been a patrolman over ’ere?”

  “Three years.”

  At that Madden looked thoughtful. “Well, thanks again, kid. You’re pretty smart. Buy yourself a decent drink on me,” and peeled a hundred off a roll as thick as his wrist.

  Casey hesitated. Madden laughed. “Go on, kid, it’s naught but a drink, an’ you can spend it in one of my joints if you want and call it a drink on the house.”

  Still laughing, the dapper little man turned and walked briskly east. As if by magic, a big black Packard appeared. Its rear door opened, Madden got in, and the car vanished into the night.

  Casey Fortune walked the few blocks to his fourth floor walkup on Fifty-Second off Ninth Avenue still holding the hundred and feeling half exhilarated and half guilty. Had he taken a bribe from one of New York’s most notorious gangsters? Or had the owner of a business establishment on his beat simply thanked him for doing his job well?

  He thought about it most of the night. He was still thinking about it in the morning as he walked his beat. It was about ten a.m. when he passed where all the action had taken place last night, and found the blind pig open and operating exactly as Owney Madden had said it would. He had his answer. Madden was bribing someone a lot higher in the NYPD than he was, and a hundred-dollar drink was only a thank you.

  The expensive Scotch was the first real whisky my father had had since being overseas in the war, and made him think of those great manor houses of England he had seen from the distance, and of the people who lived in them.

  Less than two weeks later, Casey Fortune found himself suddenly promoted to detective because of his clever and decisive work at the blind pig, and transferred to a plum midtown beat full of speakeasies, most of them owned and/or supplied by Owney Madden.

  Five minutes after he was off duty the first day on the detective squad, Casey appeared in the plush speakeasy Madden used as his headquarters when he was down from Harlem. He quickly spotted the Englishman at a far corner table with three other men, and recognized one of them: Jimmy Walker, the Tammany leader. Casey held a hundred out to the bartender. “Send your big boss over there a drink of his best Scotch.”

  The bartender curled a lip in scorn. “Boss don’t take drinks from customers.”

  Casey flashed his new shield. “He will from me.”

  The badge did not really impress the bartender, but he was unsure enough of just who this cop might be that he poured the Scotch from a special bottle, and nodded the waitress to Madden’s table. She raised an eyebrow, but she went. From the bar Casey saw Madden frown angrily at the drink placed in front of him, and then look toward the bar. Casey raised his shield case in salute.

  Moments later the waitress returned in something of a trance, as if in shock. “Boss says you should join him.”

  Casey picked up his beer and threaded his way among the tables to Madden and his friends. A waiter materialized with an extra chair, and he sat down. Madden waved around the table. “Boys, you’re lookin’ at maybe the smartest honest cop in New York: Casey Fortune.” He pointed at each of his companions. “Our future Mayor Jimmy Walker you ’ave to know, Arnie Rothstein, and Bobby Astor. We’re all crooks but the one you got to watch out for is Bobby. He’s legal.”

  Walker was as slender and innocent looking in person as he was in the news photos that plastered the newspapers every day. He gave Casey a perfunctory nod, and scowled at Madden, obviously not appreciating the joke. Bobby Astor, the black sheep playboy of the very proper Astor clan, lounged in his chair as if he had no spine. Under six feet, Astor wasn’t much taller than Madden, and almost as slender as Walker. But he had two of the shrewdest, most calculating eyes Casey Fortune had ever seen.

  Arnold Rothstein was the most famous gambler in New York, if not the country. But he was far more than that. In fact, as Meyer Lansky himself said later, Arnold was king of the Jewish underworld. Gambler, bootlegger – the fine Scotch Casey and Madden were drinking almost certainly came in on one of Rothstein’s boats – and narcotics financial overlord. But above all, he was a “banker.” With his impeccable family connections, and legitimate real estate businesses, he could arrange loans from banks and then finance gangsters no bank would do business with. Rothstein was the money man. He was also educated, dashing, handsome, and dressed better than Madden. In fact, Charley Lucky himself said it was Arnold who taught him to dress well, use the proper knives and forks, made him presentable in the legitimate business world.

  Rothstein’s hooded eyes studied Casey carefully, as if he were making entries in a ledger. Only Bobby Astor smiled, and said, “Too bad there aren’t more like detective Fortune, Owney. Then you wouldn’t have to pay off anyone, would you?”

  Casey Fortune had no idea what Astor meant by that, and from the looks on the faces of the others, neither did they. Except, Casey felt, maybe Madden.

  The four resumed their discussions of new Broadway shows they might invest in, how soon before the 1926 election should Walker start his campaign for Mayor, and what investments Bobby Astor could steer them to. Casey said little, but he didn’t feel bored or shut out. Far from it. These men were all rich, one way or another, all were important, all commanded respect, and all seemed to genuinely like each other – to a point. There was an aura of isolation about all of them that would forever preclude any genuine friendship.

  It puzzled Casey, and he returned to his walk-up that night still thinking about that strange isolation like an invisible wall around each of them.

  Over the next few years Casey had little time to think about that odd isolation. His midtown precinct was full of speakeasies, hotels, expensive apartments, actors’ rooming houses, theaters, restaurants where booze was always under the table, gambling houses, floating poker and blackjack and craps games, and more private games in hotel rooms than there were police in the precinct. Gangsters owne
d half the property and they were always fighting over it.

  A substantial part of the city government and the NYPD, from the top down, were on the take, but for the most part, along with the honest higher ups, the rank and file of patrolmen and detectives did their day-to-day jobs of solving and stopping the daily low-level street crime and ordinary murders, and raiding the speakeasies, brothels, gambling houses, and floating games whenever the higher ups had a point to make, or some politician needed to demonstrate how hard he was on crime.

  Everyone knew the raids were hopeless, useless, and pointless. As long as Prohibition existed, nothing was going to stop the gangsters killing each other, or the gamblers gambling, or the nationwide binge. The public wanted a party, and there was too much money to be made in giving it to them to stop it.

  So Casey Fortune arrested his murderers, solved his burglaries, collared his crooked gamblers, and remained on good terms with Owney Madden and his friends. No one asked him to do anything illegal, offered him a bribe to look the other way, or tried to buy him out lock, stock and barrel. Sure, they poured him free drinks, served him dinner on the house, shared tips on the horses, gave him free passes into any theater, and slipped him a few hundred now and then in appreciation for doing his job well and turning unwanted trouble away from their doors. They did that for every cop.

  By sheer chance, for Casey they did something more. They gave him his wife, and me, my mother.

  Handsome, charismatic, exciting, daring, well-dressed, and with perfect manners, Arnold Rothstein attracted the ladies in droves. He cultivated the image of the playboy gambler, ready to bet on anything and party all night, to cover his real activities and power in the Jewish Mob, and hence in the city.