The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion

by Loren D. Estleman

  Eventually the trapdoor in the back parlor was discovered, and laying down their tools in favor of pistols, the Pinkertons descended into the basement quarters, where they found all of the beds stripped except one, their mattresses rolled, and no one in residence except a vagrant known and loved by the citizens of Denver, all of whom were aware of his sad story of impoverishment after the vein of gold he’d been mining had thinned to nothing and his first flush of prosperity had been squandered at the Palace and its competitors. He explained, at gunpoint, that Nell had employed him to conduct odd repairs and given him shelter. In the six weeks of his stay, he insisted, none but he had appeared below ground except the Negro maid who came to change the sheets once a week. After some difficulty over a heavy chest of drawers that had been inadvertantly pushed over the trapdoor, sealing them in the basement, the agents departed empty-handed except for the tools they’d brought with them.

  Altogether the damage to private property came to fifteen hundred dollars and change, which a judge of the First District Court of Denver County ordered the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to reimburse to Nell Dugan. The Colorado Rocky Mountain News denounced the decision in a fiery editorial that quoted liberally from Revelations and the Reverend Doctor Eccles Monsoon’s multiple-volume history of the white slave trade in North America. The Denver Post, with whom Nell advertised the more wholesome entertainments of her establishment, celebrated it in half a column, pointing out that the Pinkertons had spent more money in the Wood Palace in one day than all its other customers combined spent in a week. The wires acquired this item and enlivened the telegraph columns of the Eastern press for weeks.

  “Do we not do business with the Post?” demanded Allan Pinkerton, crumpling the copy of the Denver paper that had come by rail under Philip Rittenhouse’s subscription.

  William Pinkerton, seated in his father’s office, recrossed his legs and tugged down the points of his waistcoat. Unlike the old man, he was inclined to be stout, as was his younger brother Robert, and to bring dignity to his jowls wore coarse whiskers that twisted like rusted wire. “We have a standing order of two columns, three days a week. The Wood Palace buys half a page every Saturday. Miss Dugan may have the edge.”

  “Cancel the order. What in thunder has become of Ace-in-the-Hole?”

  “Possibly they were frightened by what happened at Spanish Trot. Were I in their place, I’d consider it an object lesson.”

  “You’re making the mistake of thinking like a detective and not like a criminal. Lessons are lost on them. They’ll see it as a blow to the competition, and redouble their efforts to fill the vacancy.”

  “Evidently not, or we’d have heard from them before this. Outlaws have been known to return to the straight and true in the past.”

  “Not these outlaws. In Brixton’s case, it would be no return. He killed his first man at the age of twelve.”

  “Ten, according to Ned Buntline. If this keeps up, he’ll have been too young to stand up to the recoil.”

  “This isn’t a subject for jest. If you spent more time studying case files and less time reading rubbish, you’d be a greater asset to this agency.”

  William pressed his lips tight.

  “It’s a conclusion with no payoff,” said the old man. “If it is a conclusion, which I choose to doubt. They must be planning something hor-r-rendous.”

  “Perhaps your confidential informant has gone over to the other side.”

  “His silence explains nothing. These fellows have a way of calling attention to themselves.” He picked his cigar out of the tray on his desk and puffed, apparently unaware it had gone cold. “I’m tempted to call in Rittenhouse from San Francisco. He knows more about what’s afoot in the Gr-reat Desert without stepping outside his office than all the men we have on the spot. Certainly his talents are wasted in the field. I should not have let him talk me into letting him go.”

  “You indulge him. One would think he was your own blood.”

  In this, William echoed the whispers of all who hated and feared the Reptile, a society which included the heir apparent. It was a transparent canard. While it is possible to father a bastard at thirteen, at that age the old man was still in Glasgow, working day and night to support his mother and younger brother; he had not had time for a liaison of that kind. In any case, there was nothing of the Scot about Rittenhouse, who was Prussian in his meticulous method and disconcertingly American in the way he spoke out. But William never missed an opportunity to undermine his authority with Allan.

  For his part, the old man gave no indication that he knew anything of the rumors. He was the world’s foremost detective when it came to crime and the densest of men when it came to the office intrigue all about him. “If that were the case,” he said, “I’d never have given him leave. I treat you and Robert no differ-rent from anyone else in my employ.”

  “Excluding the Rep—Rittenhouse,” William corrected himself. He lit a cigarette to conceal his agitation.

  Alerted by this gesture to the status of his cigar, the old man struck a match and reignited it, drawing smoke deep into his lungs. He blew a ring without thinking, and scowled at it. He disliked ostentation. “Who do we have in Mexico?”

  “On the payroll, or under the vest?”

  “Both.”

  “Well, Horton’s the field man in Mexico City. We’ve a federale captain in Nogales and some informants masquerading as bandits or vice versa in Chihuahua. I can get their names.”

  “When you do, wire them descriptions of Brixton and his men, and have Denver and San Francisco send photographs and sketches. It’s been my observation that whenever a band of brigands vanishes, it’s to Mexico they’ve gone.”

  “Not Canada? It’s a closer ride to where they were reported last.”

  “They’re smart, or they’d not have lasted this long. They won’t flee the Eye to risk the Mounties. I dislike dealing with the arrogant redcoats myself, but there’s no denying they’re effective. Perhaps if we had a queen in this country we’d have the same free hand.”

  “We’re too close to Independence Day for that kind of talk.” William scowled. “While I’m about it, do you want me to recall Rittenhouse?”

  The old man smoked, shook his head. “No. We’ll let him have the bit a while longer. I’ve a hunch the apprehension of the Prairie Rose would make a fine subject for a case history. It may even tell better than Ace-in-the-Hole.”

  16

  Philip Rittenhouse, who unlike most detectives never laid claim to any sense beyond the five God had given him at birth, was oblivious to the discussion of his subject in Chicago. As it was taking place, he sat in the squeaky captain’s chair in his furnished office above a Chinese laundry on Washington Street, with a view through the streaked windows of three of San Francisco’s best-known shops of iniquity: Gilbert’s Melodeon, Bert’s New Idea, and the Adelphi. The Bella Union, more famous than all the rest, stood on the side of Portsmouth Square to which he had no window, only a patchwork quilt of playbills advertising extinct entertainments pasted over cracks in the yellow plaster.

  He was conscious of it nevertheless, as a farmer in Nebraska was conscious of the Department of Agriculture in Washington and an architect in Buffalo was conscious of the Taj Mahal at Agra. But then they hadn’t the thud of brass instruments in the soles of their feet to remind them, nor the baroom of a remote kettledrum in their ears whenever a dancer in pink tights executed a split. As Peter Ruskin, proprietor of the Ruskin Dramatic Arts Agency (est. 1875), he thrilled to the proximity of that splendid showcase of theatrical talent, and as Philip Rittenhouse, an operative with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, he had the comfortable sensation of knowing that as long as places like the Bella Union existed, his work would always be in demand; for it drew thieves and murderers the way an abandoned carcass drew vermin, and the prices it charged for admission, as well as for the diversions inside, discouraged its clientele from honest occupations and the spare living most of them offered.<
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  He’d been there, of course, as he had to its competitors. For three weeks he’d divided the rest of his time between the wormy cylinder desk, its pigeonholes stuffed with decaying programmes, telegraphic pleas for money from stranded artists, and bottles of whiskey that smelled like the sinister brown wax women used to remove unwanted hair—items left by the previous tenant—and his sweaty little quarters next to the coal furnace in a rooming house on Kearney Street built of old packing cases and green timber. For authenticity’s sake, he’d traded his usual nondescript dress for a flowered waistcoat, green glass stickpin, tan bowler, and yellow garters, and chewed licorice to cover the scent of alcohol on his breath, of which actually there was none; he was a confirmed teetotaler, and there were only so many things a man would do to support his disguise. All these things he kept track of in his expense book in his personal code, as well as the cost of the advertisement that ran twice weekly on an inside page of the San Francisco Call, which we here insert, in its proscenium-arch border:

  THE RUSKIN DRAMATIC ARTS AGENCY

  Peter Ruskin, Esq.

  Representing Artists

  Specialising in

  All Acts of Elocution,

  Spiritual Uplift,

  Poetical Recitation,

  Melodrama,

  Tragedy and Farce

  No fees charged except for services rendered

  Single rates for husband-and-wife acts

  Inquire at

  504B Washington Street

  (Across from the Bella Union)

  He was particularly pleased with the European spelling of “specialising,” which he thought would appeal to the tastes of his intended target, and the bit about husband-and-wife teams sharing a single rate. The list of specialties had been selected with that same purpose in mind. Originally, he’d included acrobatic acts, but the parade of tumblers, high-wire artists, and human pyramids that had tramped through his office the first week had wearied him and he’d had the line removed. In any case, Mme. Elizabeth Mort-Davies, who his research told him had been no mean physical performer in her younger days, was past the age where limbs and sinew began to rebel at anything more ambitious than a short sprint (or a bicycle ride), and Major Evelyn Davies was too fat. The stream of applicants slowed to a trickle, and Peter Ruskin, Esq. (a real name from among his father’s contemporaries, which happened to contain his own initials), turned them all down with professional brusqueness while possessing his soul in patience.

  With one exception: He promised himself that if he heard “O, Captain! My Captain!” one more time, he’d strike Poetical Recitation from the list.

  Saturday nights, he bought drinks for the bartenders in all four major houses of pleasure and left stacks of his business cards, with instructions as to the kind of husband-and-wife act he sought, promising a finder’s fee for every one he booked. He refrained from asking for the Davieses by name. No agent in the show business did that, as the whole point of the enterprise was to discover obscure talent and exploit it. Bartenders were suspicious by nature, and the history of vigilante activity in Barbary kept the proprietor of every den of dissipation on his guard; one false step, and Allan Pinkerton would never know what had become of his most reliable man in Chicago.

  On his way back to his room each evening, he stopped to purchase an armload of local newspapers, and sat up on his cornshuck mattress scanning the reviews and theatrical advertisements in the Bulletin, Call, Chronicle, and Star for some sign that the Davieses were playing locally. The fact that their names did not appear failed to deter him, as he thought it possible they sometimes worked pseudonymously, either to obfuscate their identities or in response to an old thespial superstition about changing one’s luck with one’s billing. He circled promising acts in pencil, turned out his lamp at ten o’clock in obedience to his landlord’s curfew, and spent part of the next day visiting matinees, but so far had not spotted a performing couple who matched the descriptions he’d memorized.

  At the end of these three weeks, his emotions were tangled. Pinkerton was impatient and a skinflint, and could not be expected to subsidize his subordinate’s experiment in theater indefinitely. At the same time, the old man had caught the best-selling author’s bug, and could not fail to grasp the entertainment potential in the apprehension of a company of actors who supplemented their box-office receipts with armed robbery. He might be contented with a looser grip on the reins this one time. The newspaper trail—Rittenhouse’s answer to the great Chisholm—led solidly toward a Davies appearance in San Francisco, the pleasure capital of the American frontier. On the other hand, stage players were not often creatures of logic, and the Major and the Madame might have detoured into the interior after Eureka, for no other reason than that their train had struck and killed a white heifer, souring their luck. Artists were far less predictable than the common run of road agent. That was how John Vermillion’s troupe had survived this long without having to flee a single posse.

  There was also the possibility that he had waited too long to set his trap. He’d never questioned his assumption that the company would reconvene, and he did not do so now. He’d based his timetable on the conventional theatrical season, which began during the first frost of autumn and ended before the hammering heat of summer turned auditoriums into ovens, but upon reflection there was no defensible reason to expect this particular association to behave according to convention. Perhaps The Diplomat Deposes had returned to its trunk and its champions were even then steaming east to meet the others for a brand-new season of stirring oratory, thrilling swordplay, and thievery on the grand scale.

  Such were the doubts and ruminations that befell the man who staked himself out as a goat in lion country.

  There was one more: the likelihood, if his quarry did not surface soon, that Peter Ruskin would be forced to sign one of the acts that passed through his office. Agents, while discriminating, had to live, and if word got around that the representative was refusing to represent anyone, he stood the risk of discovery, or what passed for it in lieu of evidence to the contrary. There was no more certain route to a death sentence on the part of the shadowy hordes than to be exposed as a “crusher” working undercover for established law and order, no matter who was the object. Merely to be suspected invited tarring and feathering at the least. Ritten-house made up his mind to offer his services to the next glimmer of talent that crossed his threshold.

  Fortunately—for he was far less confident of his abilities as a booker of exhibitions than as a detective—that glimmer happened to belong to a middle-aged woman of preposterous height and her companion, who was as fat as a rolled armadillo and dressed like the Prince of Wales. He had made contact with the Prairie Rose at last.

  The fogs of San Francisco harbor vanish, burned off as by a magnesium flash by a Panavision shot directly into the sun, with its chain of reflective circles: Welcome to the Chihuahua desert, where it’s always 105 in the shade, and the nearest shade is in El Paso. The state bird is dead. Even the gila monsters have migrated north to the relative comfort of Caliente Infierno, which translates roughly as Hot as Hell.

  But heat is of small consequence in the little village of San Diablo, where a fiesta is always in progress. Careering down from the Sierra Madres, we hear first the drunken tinny blatting of trumpets and the out-of-synch crash of tambourines, then swerve around a pie-faced peasant in a tattered sombrero fancy-stitching his way down the broad main street with a bottle in one hand, and pause with a pleasant sigh to regard the girl dancing barefoot on a plane table in the middle of the square. She is all flying black ringlets, bare brown shoulders, whirling skirts, slender feet, and the regulation dagger strapped by a garter to one thigh, to the accompaniment of guttural cheers from the guitar players and that climbing, tongue-fluttering squeal ending in a high-pitched cackle that no Norteamericano can imitate. In six years, the girl will resemble the gourd-shaped women in weeds grinding corn in stoneware bowls on the front porch of the mayor’s hacienda nearby, slit-e
yed, contagiously vilipendent, but just now she is a welcome sight after all those rocks and cactus. Her name is Fiona, but it may as well be Dolores, Conchita, Rosario, or Mirabelle. There is one in every community of its size in old Mexico; but one only.

  Our pause is regrettably brief, as we are not here to take in the local fauna. From there we move on to a small pavilion constructed of four cypress trunks supporting a roof of woven fronds topped with black Spanish moss. Beneath its screen, Jack Brixton, Tom Riddle, Mysterious Bob Craidlaw, Breed, and the Kettlemans sit on cane chairs in a semicircle facing a man who is fat even by the standards of a generation that would elect Grover Cleveland to the presidency; the yards of white cotton in his simple shirt and trousers alone would furnish dust covers for a parlor full of furniture, and his hips are stuck fast between the arms of his fan-backed chair. Bandoliers of large-caliber shells cross his ringed torso. With one hand he fans his huge streaming moustachioed face while the other cups a convenient breast belonging to the fat seÑorita seated astraddle his enormous left thigh. His name is Matagordo.

  Mexico’s blood-flecked history has not been kind to Matagordo; even his first name has been lost. He was a general in the revolutionary army of Benito Juarez, which he joined after the government of Maximilian refused to promote him beyond the rank of lieutenant colonel. Had he accepted a peacetime post in Mexico City and helped to oversee the return of the country to its citizens, his fame might have survived that of his successors, Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata, but he chose instead to return to rural banditry. In June 1875, he’d settled into semiretirement in San Diablo, where the mayor was his creature, and Ace-in-the-Hole his guest.

  “My friends, your stubborn sobriety pains me. In this pueblo, we nurse our children with tequila and wean them from their virginity after Communion. We produce bastards the way other pueblos produce apricots; therefore we depend upon visiting seed to prevent our women from bearing idiots. Por favor, help yourself to our hospitality. Business without pleasure violates our charter.” His English was impeccable, if somewhat prosy, as he’d learned it from crumpled pages torn from American dime novels used as packing material for the weapons he ordered from New Mexico and Texas. Owing to the fragmented nature of his reading, he thought Buffalo Bill was a figure of mythology, part animal and part man.