The Ballad of Black Bart

by Loren D. Estleman

  He himself felt a bitter urge to chuckle at the picture of a mounted lawman carrying a gentleman’s handkerchief from one laundry to another, the effete thing flapping like a lady’s silk scarf tied round a knight’s arm. No, when a robber’s fate turned on an item of haberdashery instead of a fast horse and a sure aim, the West was no longer a place for knights.

  If in fact it ever had been. He’d spent most of his time as Alameda County Sheriff either frying in the sun or red-ass from constant soakings in the rain, staking out reeking outhouses and whoring parlors where the women’s breasts hung like feed sacks and the crabs were as big as snails in a French restaurant.

  Still, there had been adventure in it, and no suspicion that what he was about couldn’t be managed by a servant with congested lungs. He hadn’t signed with the Company in order to plod from one homely sopping-wet establishment to another like some gentleman’s gentleman dropping off his master’s soiled underdrawers. But for his regard for Hume, Morse would be tempted to put in for a post as a shotgun messenger at a substantial reduction in pay.

  At the beginning, the Black Bart affair had appealed to his methods. He’d traced the bandit’s route through gold country, stopping in at settlers’ homes hoping to prove his theory that even the hardiest of trekkers would seek the comfort of a bed and a ceiling overhead, if only for a night, but had been unable to find anyone who recalled putting up anyone more interesting than a weary middle-aged victim of economic ruin. That had been his cardinal error, to buy into the prevailing assumption that only a young man in full possession of his health would essay such an undertaking; that, on the evidence of Hume’s voluminous files, applied to highwaymen in general. He little thought the dusty old derelicts he learned of fitted the mold. Now he understood that most, if not all, of these unfortunates described to him were indeed one man, or took under consideration what now seemed obvious: Cleverness was often a byproduct of years and experience.

  As sheriff on the trail of rogue Mexicans, he’d had the advantage of his Irish heritage, and of a shared understanding of revolution against foreign authority. The rebel strain had enabled him to think as they thought, and predict their course. This was the best strategy of the detective, years before he’d applied to himself so top-lofty a title: the ability to crawl inside the mind of a criminal.

  Now he was forced to borrow Hume’s own tactic of keeping records. Ninety-one laundries made a prodigious list, and led to the necessity of striking off each place he’d visited to avoid retracing old ground. For one of the enterprises was much the same as the rest, whether it was a dreary room in a shared flat where an old woman or a man even older, in pigtails and a filthy mandarin’s cap, scrubbed dingy shirts in a galvanized tub and sweated over a red-hot iron, or a production line where a dozen laborers without proof of legal residency stood at mangles in rows, pressing creases into hundreds of sheets and tablecloths delivered on pallets from hotels, hospitals, and restaurants. He developed a lifelong revulsion for the smell of lye soap and cornstarch and hellish humid heat; as well as a decidedly unprofessional pity for those who were forced to spend fourteen hours a day in their presence.

  And the list itself was unreliable. On the strength of rumor and applied eavesdropping, he visited at least a dozen venues that operated without a license; most with a hand resting on the butt of his revolver, lest one of the edged weapons typical of the riffraff make its appearance. The city’s inspectors were infamous for ferreting out unlawful shops under the guise of a customer or a visitor on some business other than exposure.

  Blank faces met his inquiries; that, and native suspicion of an outsider penetrating their society without a bundle under his arm to justify the expenditure of their time. Even the hint of reward for assistance in the extraction of a festering thorn in the Company’s side met only suspicion from the Chinese. In the history of Wells, Fargo’s practice of offering bounty, not a single resident of Oriental blood had seen a cent.

  Once, shortly after leaving behind another dead end, he found himself followed by three Chinese in slop-shop suits and tight-fitting caps, potential Tong highbinders, likely armed with hatchets and daggers. They remained behind him at a distance of twenty yards for three blocks, until he swung aboard a passing trolley. After this encounter, he made certain to prepare himself subsequently with a sack of his own clothing, sometimes supplementing it with perfectly clean items fresh from the business he patronized regularly. Despite Hume’s promise, he had no hope of redeeming the expense. The Messrs. Wells and Fargo might lay out a thousand dollars to revenge themselves against the felonious loss of a hundred, but would balk at authorizing six bits for a pristine stack of shirts. Still, it was a cheap enough price to pay to prevent bloodstains in the next bundle.

  The places he visited in Chinatown—the likeliest place to begin—did not lack for imagination in the proprietary marks they pressed into their washing. They used initials, numerals, Chinese calligraphy, stylized representations of Buddha, dragons, peacocks, and the single baleful eye of the Freemasons; but none fell remotely close to the F.X.O.7. There was nothing in it to suggest the Far East, but some of the Oriental enterprises were sensitive to the prevailing distrust of the race and adopted something Occidental in appearance.

  As with Hume’s own discovery of the handkerchief, success came accidentally.

  On Stevenson Street, on his way home from another disappointment, he spotted a sign in a window:

  THE CALIFORNIA LAUNDRY

  P. Ferguson & J. Biggs, props.

  It was a large operation and tidy, with a long paneled counter transecting the room, and beyond it a door—leading, presumably, to the facilities in back—set tightly into its frame so as to prevent corrosive odors from offending customers. The shirt-waisted young woman behind the counter would not commit to an answer, but went through the door, closing it quickly against a cloud of steam, and returned momentarily with a bald-headed man in a gray suit of clothes, who introduced himself as Phineas Ferguson, senior partner in the firm, and asked to see verification of Morse’s authority. He studied the shield, then nodded, stretching the handkerchief between his hands.

  “Yes, this is our mark.”

  The special agent fought back a flush. “Is there one here who could identify the owner?”

  “No,” Ferguson said; and Morse’s heart fell. “The O, you see, belongs to our branch on Bush Street. Talk to Mr. Ware.” He gave him an address.

  “And the seven?”

  “That would be the number assigned to the customer.”

  Morse took back the item, conquering the urge to snatch it out of the man’s hand. As he turned to go:

  “I doubt you’ll make it. It closes in five minutes.”

  It was a bitter setback. To have come so close after having gone down so many blind alleys, only to have to wait till morning, would make for a sleepless night. The noisome thought that his bird would fly came to him only when he was this close and something came between. But detective work, Hume had said, was “nine parts hard work and one part hope.” He pushed out into the street and swung aboard a passing trolley. He alighted at Union Square and ran a block, arriving at the address at eight minutes past five o’clock.

  Most of the ground-floor frontage belonged to a tobacco shop bearing the name of Thomas Ware; information that did not make him pause. Laundry services were used almost exclusively by men, and enterprising tobacconists often donated part of their square footage to the establishments in order to divert trade from competitors; for while one could scarcely walk three blocks in San Francisco without passing a laundry, he could expect also to find a place to buy cigars and pipe tobacco just a few doors away.

  The laundry was entered through a separate door, the top half of which was glazed. Just as he came to it, an amber-hued face as smooth as ancient porcelain (and likely of similar vintage) glared at him through the glass. She was drawing down the paper shade.

  Morse took out a fold of banknotes and brushed the edge down the pane.
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br />   The hand hesitated, then let go, allowing the shade to snap back up onto its roll with a clatter. A latch snapped. His hand was on the knob when the door swung open, snatching it from his grasp, and the porcelain face thrust itself into the six-inch gap. The tight cap of snow-white hair barely cleared the knob, and he had to reach down to take hold of it.

  “We close. Go home.” She had seen the bundle under his arm.

  “A moment of your time, madam. I’m not here for the cleaning.” He separated a note from the fold and held it out. She took it and stretched it between her hands, peering at it against the light from the front window. She turned and circled behind a plain counter, at which station she was emphatically in authority. Threads of steam issued between strings of beads hanging in a doorway at her back.

  She wore black bombazine, clutched at her throat by a cameo pin, the essence of western dress; but the ivory in the brooch matched her flesh, and from the neck up she bore a close resemblance to the Dowager Empress; although he suspected this woman was many years her senior. When he unfolded the handkerchief and offered it for her inspection, she stared at it suspiciously, then thrust the note she had crumpled in her fist into a pocket, as if he might try to take it back, took the square of soiled linen, and held it close to her face for a moment. She thrust it back. “No.”

  “Are you saying it’s not your mark, or you don’t know whom the handkerchief belongs to?”

  “We close. Go!”

  But recognition had sparked in her eyes when she was examining the item. The Chinese were no more inscrutable than Mexicans were lazy and stupid.

  “Is Mr. Ware in?”

  “Go! We close!”

  “What seems to be the problem, Mrs. Yee?”

  Morse turned to face the owner of the voice, a well-set-up man in his thirties in shirtsleeves, waistcoat, and pince-nez spectacles trailing a green ribbon. Another door hung open behind him, offering a glimpse of a Stonehenge arrangement of deal cigar boxes on a pedestal display. “I am Thomas Ware, the proprietor.”

  Morse started to reach for his shield, but instinct stopped him. Instead he passed over the handkerchief. If this weren’t his last stop, it would soon wear through from handling. “Can you give me the name of the man who owns this?”

  Ware studied it. His expression was wary. “What is this in regard to?”

  “My name is Harry Hamilton.” His own name had appeared in print nearly as often as Jim Hume’s. “I met the gentleman briefly, but failed to get his name. He left this behind. It’s a fine piece and should be returned to its owner.”

  The proprietor’s face brightened. “Are you a mining man as well?”

  NINETEEN

  Eight years is a spell for a fox to stay loose;

  but a fox is more sly than a pig or a goose.

  Still, a hound is its cousin, just under the fur,

  and eight years or eighty, the finish is sure.

  The Buckley Saloon was furnished elegantly, as befit its location within brief walking distance of busy Union Square. It contained a long mahogany bar equipped with a brass rail, blue-enamel-lined cuspidors conveniently placed, original paintings in crenulated frames of nymphs and satyrs, and a long tilted mirror behind the bar, tinted amethyst to flatter those reflected in it, turning dissipated old sots into distinguished elder statesmen and hard-faced tarts into beauties from the rotogravure. The roseate shade extended to the glass chimneys of Chesterfield lamps suspended from the ceiling. The piano, painted white with blue trim, was unmanned at that hour, its keys covered. A mutton-chopped bartender in a figured waistcoat glowered at the two men taking up a gaming table with no deck in sight—customers who came in just to drink generally stood at the bar—but it was late morning and business was at a trickle, so he held his tongue and applied elbow grease to a sticky spill on the bar with his rag.

  They were respectable enough for that establishment: middle-aged men in good linen who didn’t demand service as if he were the Negro boy who emptied the cuspidors. And they looked good for a decent gratuity. He wished he could say as much for the moocher laying siege to the complimentary cold cuts on the strength of one beer. He was a regular, dependable as an eight-day clock.

  “Broken down to individual customers,” said James B. Hume to his companion, examining the laundry mark yet again; it had become a talisman every bit as much as Bart’s bloody flour sack. “This Ferguson is a fellow after my own heart. I should take my cleaning there.”

  Harry Morse toyed with his glass of beer. He looked down and saw he had etched F.X.O.7. in the condensed moisture on the outside. Impatiently he rubbed it out with his thumb.

  “You can check the place out yourself,” he said. “It’s only a few doors down. Since Ferguson and Biggs opened a branch in this neighborhood, the local men have relieved their wives of the chore of dropping off and picking up the laundry.”

  His superior stopped fingering the handkerchief, dipped the end of his cigar in his rye, and returned it to his lips. The man must have smoked twenty a day; but this was the first time the special agent had seen him drink anything stronger than coffee. The atmosphere round the table was one of cautious celebration.

  Hume said, “I’d much rather meet the man. If he’s as friendly with this fellow Bolton as you say, he can give us a fair picture of whom to look for. If we approach the wrong man at—What is it again?”

  “The Webb House, twenty-seven Post Street.”

  “A respectable location; but then he can afford it.” He pulled a face. “We mustn’t chance spooking our quarry. We’re not like those blunderers at Pinkerton.”

  “Fortunately, this one doesn’t live with his mother.”

  “Thank heaven for that.”

  In 1875, agents with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency had flung an incendiary device into the Jesse James house in Clay County, Missouri, blowing an arm off the bandit’s mother and killing his nine-year-old half-brother. Jesse and his brother Frank had been miles away at the time, and the incident had elevated them from murderous bushwhackers to folk heroes. Six long years would elapse, and dozens of robberies committed, before an assassin’s bullet brought Jesse’s career to an end. The incident served as a cautionary tale for manhunters throughout the nation.

  “You’re quite sure this man Ware hasn’t been in communication with Bolton?”

  “I was certain you’d want to be in on the kill, so I followed him home from the laundry and kept watch on his house all night. At dawn I sent a message to Stone and asked him for a man to relieve me while I slept two hours. He’s still on duty.”

  “Good man, Stone.” The San Francisco police captain was a longtime Company ally.

  Hume downed his drink, drew one last time on his cigar, and mashed it out in a bronze tray. “Let us go talk to Ware, this time with the gloves off.”

  “No need to rise. That’s him, over at the free lunch.”

  Hume looked at a well-groomed young man standing at the sideboard, loading a plate with shaved ham, oysters from a bowl of chipped ice, and sliced bread, under a hefty odalisque reclining in a frame. The model wore a silk wrap that was not quite opaque enough for his taste.

  “I felt there was a reason you chose this place to meet; although you might have told me before I put out my cigar.”

  Morse suppressed a grin. “I felt you’d approve. About the saloon, I mean.”

  The former Alameda County Sheriff was accustomed to such venues, although few in those hard-riding years were as opulent. He’d picked hops and other bits less pleasant from green beer served by louts with black nails in flyblown hovels, eavesdropping on conversations that had led him to a string of arrests. Hume, on the other hand, preferred to do his drinking in private, gin-houses being the natural habitat of journalists and dime-novel scribblers.

  His companion attracted the attention of a silhouette standing in the shade of the awning outside the front window and made a quick saluting gesture. The officer stirred itself and withdrew. His assignment was ende
d.

  At a nod from Hume, Morse caught the diner’s eye and beckoned him over. The laundryman approached, balancing the plate in one hand and gripping a full beer mug with the other. He blinked when he saw Hume, started to smile; then reddened.

  “Your pardon, please,” he said. “I took you for someone else at first.”

  The two Wells, Fargo men exchanged a glance. The description the lumberman had provided of the vagabond he’d seen loitering near Berry Creek, and of the stranger who’d overnighted in the prospector’s cabin on the road from Strawberry, was confirmed: Hunter and hunted bore a close physical resemblance.

  Introductions were made. The detectives watched closely to see if Thomas Ware recognized the name Jim Hume, but he gave no indication. He drew a chair from another gaming table and sat perched on the edge. The bartender’s scowl deepened; but he went on dunking glasses in a tub of soapy water and polishing them with a fresh towel.

  “Will you forgive me?” Ware asked, glancing down at his plate. “I didn’t break my fast this morning.”

  Hume nodded again, and the newcomer picked up the sandwich he’d built. Morse, having decided to let the chief of detectives do the interrogating, finished his beer and raised his hand to order another.

  “You may have mine.” Ware slid his glass forward. “I’m not a drinking man. I ask for it only so I can lunch here and make ends meet.”

  “I should think the manager of any business in this neighborhood wouldn’t have to count his pennies,” Hume said.

  The other flushed again and lowered his voice. “I’m paying penance, I’m afraid. I lost a good bit recently at Ocean View Park.”

  “You’re married, I take it?” Morse smiled.

  Ware stared uncomfortably at his sandwich. “Charlie’s usually more reliable in his recommendations.”

  Hume jumped on this. “That would be Charles Bolton, your mining friend?”

  “Yes. Please don’t think me reckless by nature. I attended the races with him by invitation, purely for his companionship. I’d never laid so much as a nickel on a hand of cards, and bet only that one time, encouraged by the consistency of his good fortune. The horse came in fourth, by half a length. Then he said a funny thing.”