Twin Cities Noir

by Julie Schaper

  I was in my mid-thirties then, she was about ten years younger, so these weren’t fatherly feelings I was having, but I didn’t stop to analyze them at the time. It wouldn’t have changed anything anyway. We made some small talk. She told me she was Thornton nee Gallagher, a St. Agnes graduate. You can bet that tugged at my heart strings. In fact, it put a face to the premier fantasy in my rich array of hooch-induced fancies: Catholic school girls in Little Bo-Peep shoes, white knee socks, and those short plaid skirts they wear for God only knows what perverse reason. When I was a lad my pals and I would sometimes get a peek of alabaster thigh as they walked away. Of course, if we caught some Protestant or God forbid a sheeny doing the same, the gauntlet went down.

  I managed to elicit a fair amount of personal information in the guise of professional inquiry. For example, why a proper young lady like herself married a muckraking Wobbly and a Methodist to boot, who’d published his high-minded broadside out of a cheap storefront on Selby. It came down to this: After eighteen years in the grasp of the nuns, and two more clerking at the Golden Rule department store, she wanted some excitement.

  “Walter was always railing about something, and there were all these interesting people around, some with beards even,” she said. “I guess I just got carried away.”

  She told me she was living with her mother, that they made ends meet with help from their fellow parishioners at St. Andrew’s and some Reds who’d admired her hubby. I told her Slap was my uncle on my mother’s side, that I was unmarried, an irregular confessor. Close to an hour passed before we got down to business.

  Margaret wanted what I had an unsullied reputation for delivering, the truth about an unsolved murder. “I need to get on with my life,” she said.

  She had a notion of what the truth was, and she made it clear that she’d be gratified if I validated it. That’s not unusual, most of my clients want their preconceptions confirmed, but her problem was anything but routine.

  “Walter was murdered because Harry Ford wanted to stop him publishing,” she explained, and her blue eyes lit with sudden passion. “I don’t blame Lloyd Jensen. I blame the man who has everything but the respectability Lloyd Jensen could bring him. I don’t even care if Mr. Ford is tried for murder. I just want it on the radio and in the newspapers what a dreadful person he is.”

  “That’s all? Nothing to it. It should be easy to get the goods on a defenseless fellow like Harry Ford.”

  “You can do it, Mr. McDonough. Your uncle says you never fail.”

  Her confidence was touching, but it was a daunting prospect. I’d heard rumors that Harry Ford was behind Thornton’s murder, everybody had, but those rumors had no legs because most people loved the guy, and, more important from my perspective, those who didn’t knew better than to cross him.

  She brought up the matter of my fee. I said we’d discuss that after I nosed around. I’d known her less than an hour, but she already had me putting first things last. I escorted her out the back, and opened the car door for her. There weren’t many women drivers then, and to me she looked brave and vulnerable behind the wheel, all the more so because I recognized it as the same bucket that shared the front page with her the day after her husband’s murder. They’d iced the poor stiff when he stepped out of this very automobile.

  She gave me a little smile that faded quickly, exited down the alley, and over to Sherburne. That spared her a demoralizing sight around front. Lloyd B. Jensen’s cortege was going past, and people were surging into the street, but not to kiss the governor goodbye. Harry Ford was seated at the passenger window of the hearse, and whether they knew it or not they were crowding up because they believed in what he stood for—redemption. They practically trampled each other trying to touch his cashmere coat, as if some of his magic might rub off on them.

  According to the story that every Twin Citian knew, Harry Ford was born to a waterfront whore in Seattle. He’d spent his childhood scrapping for change on the docks, and took off for the Wild West at age sixteen. He worked as a saloon bouncer and a gold miner, then soldiered for Pancho Villa. It was in that latter capacity that he made his first fortune, selling the hides of the cattle slaughtered to feed Villa’s army, about two thousand skins a month, at ten dollars each. Those hides were all he’d asked for in return for his valuable services making deals for supplies in U.S. border towns, but he went AWOL pronto when Pancho realized what a good thing he had going.

  He spent the next decade “raising hell” (his term) in the Southwest. That must have included some smuggling, but mostly it was one long party that ended when the Feds fitted him up for a nose-candy charge in Denver. He hired some fancy lawyers who took his money but didn’t beat the rap. He was broke when he went to Leavenworth, where he met Herbert Warren of Warren Enterprises, a St. Paul calendar manufacturing company. Warren was in for tax evasion, and terrified of the other inmates. Ford made a deal with him. He would protect Warren in prison, and Warren would give him a job when he got out.

  Ford held up his end. Warren tried to renege many times, but Ford had some hex on him. He climbed relentlessly toward the top, and when Warren died mysteriously, he became president. He’d turned Warren Enterprises into the largest advertising company in the country, and made himself a legend in the process. Like many a millionaire before him, Ford dabbled in king-making. He’d palled around with Lloyd B. Jensen when Jensen was the county attorney, then bankrolled him for governor. He was ready to do the same for Jensen’s shot at the presidency on the Populist ticket. The smart money said that with the Depression on and Ford’s bucks behind him, Jensen could beat FDR. Then the poor man got cancer, and died. It was a sad day for many people when that happened, but it came a year late for Margaret Thornton’s husband.

  Jensen was famous for his reply when his gubernatorial opponent accused him of being a Socialist. “You’re damn right I am,” he said. That practically sanctified him among many Depression-weary voters, but he was no saint. He’d grown up poor in a mostly Jew neighborhood in Minneapolis. Many friends of his had joined the mockie underworld, which didn’t seem to end their friendship, even though he occasionally had to prosecute them. You might say he had a past by the time he was elected governor, and started making the kind of deals he had to in order to govern. That didn’t bother most voters, but it didn’t sit well with some of his fellow radicals, especially Walter Thornton, who published a yellow sheet devoted to calling Jensen a crook and a sellout. The guy was a pain in the ass who might’ve hurt Jensen’s chances of becoming president, but about the time he was getting worrisome, a car full of droppers pulled up as he arrived home one evening, and ended his career in journalism.

  A mockie button man named Shay Tilsen was tried for Thornton’s murder. He was acquitted, but everyone figured he’d done it. There just wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. The prosecution offered him a sweet deal to rat on whoever hired him, and it was on the table up to the moment the jury walked in, but he never opened his mouth.

  I had no skin in that game so I’d never given Ford’s involvement much thought. I could find out though. My clients think it’s sorcery how I get to the bottom of things, but my reputation rests on two solid facts: one—the majority of murders go unsolved. Your higher-ups don’t spread that around, and since most people don’t know it, they’re also unaware of fact two—the shamuses usually know damn well who the perpetrator is, they just can’t prove it.

  The rest of the equation is pretty simple. I’m second-generation Irish, I know most of the cops in town, and I can find out what I need to by dropping into Tin Cups and buying a few shots for the right gumshoe. If there’s any skill involved, it’s knowing who to ask what. My first stop wasn’t Tin Cups, however. I dropped into Kuby’s Place on Front Avenue the next morning. Kuby’s served as a living room for many a retired St. Andrew’s parish fellow, and sure enough, there were about ten of them there, a few alone at the bar, the rest gathered around the wood stove, warming their ale on the firebricks.

&nb
sp; When in Kuby’s, do as the Kubans do. I pulled up a stool, ordered coffee and brandy, and put my nose to the crossword puzzle. It wasn’t long before I felt a hearty whack on the back. They don’t call him Slap for nothing. He was freshly shaved and nattily attired, the picture of contented leisure. I don’t know how he does it, I thought, for the umpteenth time. By rights he should be in a bread line.

  “Top of the morning,” he said.

  I nodded. “I need a four-letter name from Shakespeare that epitomizes cunning.”

  “I don’t read that limey bastard, Martin. How did it go with the widow Thornton? And isn’t she a fine example of lace-curtain womanhood?”

  “She is, and a welcome respite from the molls I generally consort with. But why did she come to you, Slap?”

  “Ah, give me a moment…Yes, a fifteen-letter name that epitomizes cunning. Martin McDonough.”

  We both knew why she’d been steered to Slap. Eight years ago Slap was an investigator on the St. Paul force. A bootlegging operation he was looking into with little or no enthusiasm led him straight to the late Lloyd B. Jensen. That piqued his interest, and when Slap got interested he found things out. He’s always clammed up on this, but he must have known plenty. That was why the chief summoned him one day and told him an early retirement was called for. No scandal, he assured him, just a health matter (Slap will outlive me), a Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association benefit, and he was a civilian again at age fifty. A lesser man would have been devastated. Not Slap. He lived with his wife and youngest son in a frame house on Oxford, just two doors from the tracks but he claimed that the sound of the Great Northern put him to sleep at night. I think it’s a nip of the Irish that does it, but be that as it may, retirement agreed with him. I don’t know how he maintained their lifestyle, but it was no mystery why Margaret Thornton was sent his way. He was an authority on Lloyd B. Jensen’s affairs.

  “What do you think,” I asked, “was Ford behind it?”

  “Nah. That husband of hers was preaching to the converted. All that Commie crap. It would’ve helpedget Jensen elected.”

  He looked as serious as any guy with a nose like a potato and eternally twinkling eyes can, but he was shoveling a load of malarkey. “C’mon, Slap, he was also repeating rumors that you’re familiar with, that you maybe could verify.”

  “Nobody cares about that old bootlegger stuff.”

  “A guy who was in bed with gangsters can get elected president?”

  “Anybody who can end this Depression can get elected, Martin. FDR has my vote.” He shook his finger under my nose. “What about yours?”

  A few of the old gentlemen pricked up their ears at that, but I didn’t take the bait. “Never mind politics. I’ve got other things on my mind. Who hired that mockie to drop Walter Thornton? And another thing. What kind of Jew is named Shay?”

  Slap smiled. “I can tell you how to find out. Drop into a place of worship named Adath Jeshurin Synagogue, in Minneapolis. Tuesday night. It’s their social evening. The scholars get together and discuss some Hebrew hocus-pocus, the businessmen talk business, and a bunch of radicals argue with each other so loud it drives everyone else nuts. I hear Shay Tilsen comes around. I wonder who he consorts with. So should you, Martin.”

  Slap never disappoints me, but I still have to crack wise. “Should I ask him why he dropped Thornton?”

  “Nah. I was you, I’d talk to one of the Reds. Lou Rothman.”

  According to Slap, this Rothman and his buddies had Margaret Thornton’s interests at heart. They took up a collection every week and sent it her way, in honor of her dead husband. “Maybe you can find out a thing or two from them,” he said.

  I agreed and stood to leave.

  “When was the last time you talked to your mother, Martin?” he asked. I told him a week ago Sunday. “Well, I have a message from her,” he said.

  I should’ve seen that coming. I was halfway out the door before you could say home and hearth, but he shouted after me: “GET MARRIED, MARTIN—IN THE CHURCH!”

  It was raining Tuesday night, a cold November rain. The kind that turns to snow. I had to park a block away and soak my brogans. I was pursuing Margaret’s case so doggedly you’d have thought there was some money in it, but I’d already decided it was on the cuff. It was smoky and overheated inside. I took off my hat out of decent respect for an alien faith, but soon noticed that everyone else had theirs on.

  When in Hymietown…I put mine back on, wet as it was.

  There must have been fifty or more men gathered in groups, in a room way too small to hold them. I stood around until an old gent in a black skullcap offered me a glass of disgustingly sweet wine and asked what brought me there. It turned out he was some kind of facilitator. He guided me back to a knot of fellows dressed like laborers. We waited around for a pause in their heated conversation, but it got louder. Pretty soon one guy grabbed another by the collar and twisted. “Stalinist bastard!” he said, and he almost burnt the other guy’s big nose with a smoldering fag protruding from the corner of his mouth. I thought the brawl was on, but a guy about my age stepped in. He had a square jaw and a short, dark beard. He didn’t say much, but whatever he said worked. They separated and rejoined the discussion. A moment later I thought I saw one of them launch a sucker punch, but he was just talking with his hands, a common mode of discourse here, I realized, as I looked around.

  A few more minutes passed, then the old gent called out, “Lou,” and the guy who’d short-circuited the donnybrook turned our way. His flat gaze came from behind fragile, wire-rimmed specs, but he looked hard nonetheless. When I told him my name and said I’d like to speak to him, he took off the goggles, came right up close, and squinted at me.

  After a few moments he said, “Lou Rothman,” and we shook hands. He had a grip like a teamster.

  The face mirrors the soul, and I’m often required to make distinctions between one soul and another, so I pride myself on characterizing faces. Nevertheless, I didn’t find the right simile for Rothman’s map until years later, after Slap’s son Danny became a Lincoln Brigadier in a fit of youthful idealism. Spain cured him of that, and when he came home he said it wasn’t the fascists who’d scared him, it was some of the characters who were nominally on his side. Rothman, it occurred to me, had a face you’d see in a doorway in Barcelona just before the bomb exploded. He was personable enough that night though. He laughed when he heard my first question.

  “His name is Isadore,” he said. “‘Shay’ is short for ‘shay-gus.’ It’s Yiddish for a certain kind of Eastern European bully that picks on Jews.”

  “So he beat up mockies?”

  Rothman gave me another long look, best described as bemused. A couple of the other Reds were in earshot, which meant real close—the din of conversation and smoke-induced coughing in that room was something—but it suddenly got quieter on our end and the whole bunch, must’ve been a dozen of them, were all looking at me. The collar-twister edged my way.

  “No,” Rothman said. “It’s an irony. When Isadore was a kid he beat up goyim who picked on Jews. He took pleasure in kicking their mick asses.”

  “Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Okay, neither did I,” he said.

  The rest of his group resumed arguing, to my great relief. Now it was my turn to lean in so I could hear what he said.

  “What brings you here, McDonough?” he asked. “You didn’t come all the way from St. Paul to find out how Isadore Tilsen got his nickname.”

  “I’m here on behalf of someone you know. Margaret Thornton.”

  “Sure. We collect money for her.”

  “So I hear. But why? I thought you fellows, you know, you lefties, liked Lloyd Jensen.”

  “Lloyd Jensen and Walter Thornton were both Farmer-Laborers. They stood squarely with the working man, and their differences didn’t matter to us.” He gestured toward his bunch. “Jensen’s widow will be well taken care of, and Thornton’s shouldn’t go begging either.”


  He was no Uncle Slap when it came to malarkey, but he was right up there with any Tin Cups hoocher, and that’s saying something. It inspired me to boldness.

  “Margaret thinks Harry Ford paid Tilsen to murder her husband. Myself, I hear Jensen had a lot of friends in this part of town. Maybe one of them hired him.”

  “Lloyd Jensen grew up in the neighborhood. Many men in this room knew him personally. They liked him, they liked his politics. You could ask if anybody hired someone to kill Thornton, but it couldn’t have been Isadore. The jury found him not guilty. What’s the matter, you don’t you trust our legal system?”

  We were nose to nose, but nobody seemed to be taking any notice. In Tin Cups and other venues with which I’m familiar, going nose to nose was the penultimate gesture before fists flew, but Rothman didn’t seem belligerent. He was just making a point.

  “Can’t stop people thinking though,” I said. “Tell me, and this is another thing I’m just curious about, why did those two fellows you broke up almost come to blows?”

  “They were arguing. Trotskyism or Stalinism.”

  “What’s that about?”

  “Trotsky doesn’t compromise on world revolution. Stalin talks about Socialism in one country. No question he’s warped the Soviet workers state to fit his own ideological deformity, but some of us wonder if that’s what’s required to fight fascism. The question is—what do the times call for? What is historically necessary? That’s what Meyer almost punched Sherman about.”

  “Doesn’t seem worth fighting over.”

  “There are two schools of opinion on that, McDonough. Some call it a trivial matter, others believe that perceiving historical necessity and acting to further it is a high calling.”

  “You should hear what us micks fight about,” I said. “Nowhere near as elevated…Is Tilsen here?”