Crossings (A Harry Reese Mystery Book 2)

by Robert Bruce Stewart

  Needless to say, the depiction presented by the Eagle appealed to Emmie’s tastes. To her, it was the equivalent of an Appleton’s Guide to the Eastern District. When I declined to escort her to the establishments enumerated, she gave me the full treatment. You’ve never really encountered a cold shoulder until you’ve felt Emmie’s. It took weeks of outings, dinners, and shows to get me back in her good graces. So you can see why I was determined to keep her in the dark about the Huber case. Any, or all, of the three deaths may have been murder. And now I’d be accompanying the brother of one of the dead men to the vice dens of the Eastern District. The attraction this would have had for Emmie is incalculable.

  While I was checking our coats at the Montauk, I found a bribable usher and instructed him to page me and deliver a message. As soon as we had taken our seats, the boy was calling my name. I waved him over and he told me a Mr. Keegan had telephoned and said I was needed at once. I made my apologies and left as quickly as I could.

  Later I would regret not inventing a more plausible ruse. It’s difficult to imagine an urgent situation involving an insurance treatise.

  3

  The Teutonia was a typical German dance hall, a big open room with a bar off to one side. There was a band playing a schottische and I saw John Huber out on the floor. When the song ended, he led a petite blonde over and introduced her as Sally Koestler. She was probably about 20, but had a girlish aspect that obscured her age. We went to their table and John handed me a small photograph of himself with his brother.

  “I told Sally all about our meeting,” he began. “She’s anxious to help, too.”

  “Is this the type of place William spent his time in?” I asked Sally.

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “If you’re from Williamsburg, and German, you naturally spend a lot of time in the halls.”

  “And he also frequented places like the Hotel Le Roy?” I asked.

  Sally had become distracted by the arrival of some acquaintances on the far side of the room and it was John who answered. “No. Not frequented. But Sally and I have been everywhere else. Someone said he’d seen William at the Le Roy a couple times.”

  Another fellow approached the table and John introduced him as Casper, a friend of William’s. He sat down and shortly afterward John and Sally went off to the dance floor. I explained why I was there and asked him about his thoughts on William’s suicide.

  “It’s a puzzler,” he said. “I’ve come to the conclusion there’s some dark mystery behind it,” then added quickly, “but don’t tell those two I said that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, they’ve spent a lot of time asking people about William, but I think if they ever found something, a real reason for him to have killed himself, they’d be crushed.”

  “John told me about William’s troubles with his college.”

  “Did he? Well, it was kind of an open secret. I don’t think many people thought less of William for it.”

  “And you can’t think of what his dark mystery might have been? He had no real vices?”

  “I didn’t say that. He had the normal vices. Gambled some, you know.”

  “Gambling gets a lot of people in trouble,” I said.

  “Yes, I guess that’s true. But he wasn’t habitual or anything. Once in a while he might stop by a poolroom, or a group of people he was with might end the night at one of the casinos.”

  “Can you think of anywhere in particular?”

  “Not really—there are poolrooms all over, and they come and go. But I remember being in Minden’s Hotel with him.”

  “You mean out on Ocean Parkway, at Gravesend?”

  “No, he has another place right here in Williamsburg. Where the ferries dock at the foot of Broadway. It’s not fancy. I’m not even sure it’s still open—it was raided last year.”

  John and Sally came back and she coaxed Casper into taking her back out on the floor.

  “Casper mentioned William gambled some,” I said. “Doesn’t that seem a possible source of his trouble?”

  “I suppose normally it would. But if William ever got in trouble he’d just go to Father and he’d bail him out.”

  “Maybe your father told him enough was enough.”

  “No, I doubt he could deny William anything. And if that had happened, Mother would have told me.”

  “Have you checked any of the gambling spots?”

  “I thought about it, but what would be the point? Who’s going to tell me anything?”

  It had gotten on to about ten o’clock when Sally, John, and I finally made our way to the Hotel Le Roy. It was just a few blocks away, at the corner of Rutledge and Broadway. The Le Roy was a large, but otherwise typical, Raines Law hotel. It had a men-only barroom in front, and in the back a women’s parlor, which we reached through a separate “family” entrance. A colored man was playing a piano that straddled the wide doorway between the rooms. There were a couple dozen women and a few score of men about the place. The women were very young and very friendly. Races and sexes were mixing scandalously.

  There was some impromptu dancing going on and Sally suggested she and John join in, but he demurred. She definitely stood out among those of her sex, or rather, they stood out from her. Sally was dressed for an evening of innocent, and proper, dancing. The girls of the Le Roy had a more liberal interpretation of what was proper, and what constituted dancing.

  I made a foray to the bar but had trouble enough ordering beer without entering into an interrogation of the bartender. I struck up a conversation with a fellow beside me and learned that this was a pretty normal evening at the Le Roy. I also learned that it was owned by Michael Minden. Apparently the man liked to cater to a wide clientele. His place in Gravesend was a favorite of the well-heeled horse set.

  I went back to the table, where John and Sally appeared to be having an awkward discussion. They became silent as I sat down, making it just a little more awkward. It wasn’t clear why John had agreed to come at all, as he spent his time trying to shield Sally from the spectacle. Or, perhaps more accurately, to block her from joining it. In the meantime, the piano player gave us the usual sentimental parlor tunes, with some strikingly unsentimental lyrics. And while he didn’t have much of a voice, he certainly knew how to brighten up Stephen Foster. It was nearing midnight and it was obvious we weren’t learning anything about William, so I told them I’d need to head home soon. John was of the same mind and, with some persuasion, Sally agreed.

  “Is home nearby, Sally?” I asked.

  “It used to be. But we’ve moved out now, over below Prospect Park.”

  “That’s my neck of the woods,” I said. “I’d be glad to escort you home.”

  “All right, thank you.”

  I wasn’t sure if I had interfered with some plans of John’s, as he looked a little pained by the idea. But I actually had a motive in mind. I hadn’t had a chance to speak with Sally alone all evening and I wanted to ask her about the night William died. John said he had taken Sally to her home around one a.m. Then he stopped by his parents’ house, and soon left for William’s office, arriving around four. The times were vague, but there seemed to be quite a gap between dropping off Sally and finding William.

  After saying good-night to John, we walked over to Lee Avenue and caught a Nostrand Avenue car. It was a long trip to Albemarle Road. We talked some about William, and she told me much the same story as John. She also mentioned the gambling, and the girls.

  “I’ve heard he was popular with the women,” I said. “But was there anyone in particular?”

  “William was never particular. He went through a Hell’s mint of girls. If he was ever serious about any of them, he didn’t let on to me.”

  I had the impression that if there was any jealousy on her part, it was of the fun he had, and not of the women he favored. I asked her about the night of the suicide. She said she had arrived at the Hubers’ about seven. And John was already there.

  “What about his fathe
r?” I asked.

  “He was there, too.”

  “Why hadn’t William come home with him?”

  “His mother asked that. Mr. Huber said William was out when he left. He kind of snapped at her, as if he was angry she asked.”

  The rest of it conformed to what John had told me. She couldn’t remember exactly what time she had arrived home that night, but thought it closer to two than one. The trip took us about 40 minutes. A cab would have been faster, maybe 30 minutes. Sally’s family had one of the showy suburban houses in a new development. I brought her to the door, and then walked over to Flatbush and took a car home.

  Emmie was reading in bed when I came in. I was smelling like the Hotel Le Roy and seemed destined for a reunion with her frigid shoulder. But as soon as the lights went out, she chuckled to herself.

  “Care to share the fun?” I asked.

  “I’m on to you, that’s all.”

  “On to what?”

  “Oh, I saw you talking to that usher. And then he paged you from five feet away. That wasn’t very subtle, Harry.”

  “Well, Emmie, if you want to know the truth, some of the boys were giving a smoker for Hendrickson. He’s getting married in a few weeks. I was just afraid of hurting your mother’s feelings with an excuse like that.”

  “You really are an awful liar, Harry. You’ve been given a case, haven’t you?”

  “A case? What makes you think that?”

  “Oh, I can tell. Your mind’s been on something. And it wasn’t Mr. Keegan’s book on burglary insurance.”

  “Well, that doesn’t mean I’ve been given another case. Maybe I’m seeing another woman.”

  “You’re on a case and it’s something you don’t want me to know about, so it must be an interesting one. Another woman….” She just gave another chuckle.

  The next morning, I made a point of leaving the apartment at my normal time. Not that anyone noticed. Emmie had already left to do some shopping, and her mother was giving poor Dorothy another lesson: how to remove the grime between floorboards with a thin knife. I walked up to Bergen Street and got on a car headed for the Atlantic Avenue ferry. This was the route I usually took to work, which was well known to Emmie. So I was only mildly surprised to see her on the same car with me. She must have waited at the stop before mine and when she saw me arrive, boarded the next car. She had a book in front of her face, but held it in a way that only drew attention to herself. She got off at the stop before the ferry landing, and I saw her watching as I got on the ferry. I hoped this would be enough to satisfy her, but when I got to Whitehall, I stopped and bought a paper and waited for the boat to empty.

  Sure enough, she had been on it. She walked quickly toward the office, as if to catch up to me. But I was behind her and just as we turned up William Street I came up beside her.

  “Emmie, dear. What a surprise!”

  She jumped a good three feet—then made some nonsensical explanation about having been shopping in the neighborhood. I had had my fun, so I didn’t press the point. I gave her a kiss and went up to the office. Detective Sergeant Tibbitts showed up about 10:15. He was a tall, sandy-haired fellow, about my age, with a typical cop mustache. But he was unusually pleasant for a cop, almost friendly. He didn’t owe me any money, so I assumed he wasn’t feeling himself that day.

  “How is it you heard I was working on this?” I asked.

  “Someone at Sovereign Mutual called someone at the front office. I was told to fill you in on the deaths of Farrell and Barclay.”

  That explained his agreeable attitude. The one thing New York cops respected was wealth and they always showed a particular deference to large corporations.

  “There isn’t much on Farrell,” he said as he opened a file. “No witnesses, no reason to suspect anyone.”

  “It’s not simply these deaths I’m interested in, but what connection they might have to the suicide of a Brooklyn insurance agent.” I then described William Huber and his death. “What I want to find out now is, how did Huber meet those two?”

  “Well, I can tell you what we know.” He picked up the file, paged through it some, and read aloud whenever he came across something of note. “Farrell was a drummer for a shirtwaist company…. His territory was New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York above the city. He had a few circuits he did regularly, each one lasting a couple weeks…. Here’s something: the dates the company had him marked as being on the road didn’t match exactly with what his wife told our man.” He looked up. “Maybe he had something on the side?”

  “In Brooklyn?”

  “Who knows?” Then he picked up a second file. “Barclay had a more interesting life. He was caught running a bucket shop last summer. I worked that case, so when he was found dead, they gave me that, too. There weren’t any witnesses, but I did have a suspect. His brother-in-law, Edward Howell. It seems he’d been carrying on with Mrs. Barclay.”

  “And they all lived together at the Howells’ apartment?”

  “When the bucket shop went down, Barclay served four months. His wife moved in with the Howells. I guess that’s when it started. I never got a straight story out of any of them. At the time of Barclay’s death, Howell had left the apartment and was living at his club. He insisted the affair was long over. And he had an alibi for the time of Barclay’s accident: he was playing cards with some fellows, one of them a judge. Barclay’s wife was staying at the home of another sister, in Baltimore, not that she was much of a suspect.”

  “Of course, Howell had the money to get someone else to do it.”

  “Sure, but I couldn’t turn up anything,” he said. “No one seemed too upset the guy was dead, so after a week or two, I moved on.”

  “What was Barclay doing after he got out?”

  “Believe it or not, he went to work at Howell’s firm, a brokerage, Haight & Jensen. As near as I could tell, they’re legitimate. He worked there until his accident.”

  “Why would they hire someone who just served time?”

  “He made a specialty out of catering to rich women. This Haight & Jensen wanted to get into that line. At least, that’s what I was told.”

  “What about outside of work?”

  “You have something in mind?”

  “Poolrooms, maybe.”

  He pulled out a notebook and paged through that some. “Here we go. I talked to a fellow he worked with, he said they’d visited a place in Greenpoint a few times.”

  “Why would they bother crossing the river to find a poolroom?”

  “It could be their regular place moved across the river when the anti-vice campaign heated up last year.”

  He gave me the name of the place, and described how to get there. I thanked him for his help, and he said to call him if I needed anything else. Then I walked him out to the street. There was no sign of Emmie.

  Greenpoint was part of William’s territory, the northern end of the Eastern District. There’d be nothing odd in his stopping by a poolroom there. I went in and told Keegan what I had learned and asked him about the poolroom.

  “They’ll be busy this afternoon—the horses are running at Bennings this week,” he said. Gambling was a sort of hobby of Keegan’s.

  “I’d also like to call in some help—there are a lot of details to check.”

  “Detectives?”

  “Yes, I know a fellow at Newcome’s.”

  “All right, but tell them as little as possible.”

  I telephoned Dan Ratigan. He was an old friend who’d recently become a supervisor at Newcome’s Detective Agency, which specialized in corporate work. The hoi polloi think the Pinkerton agency is the last word in detectives, and I suppose it is—assuming the work involves spying on streetcar conductors suspected of holding back fares, or strong-arming some underfed mill hands into feeling content. I gave Ratigan all the particulars I had on Barclay and Farrell and asked if his people could learn anything else. I told him I was trying to connect them to William Huber, who had sold them life insurance pol
icies, but didn’t mention Sovereign. Around 12:30 Emmie showed up. She said she’d been shopping and thought I might like to take her to lunch. The truth was, she was disappointed to find me at my desk.

  “How lovely,” I said. “I know just the place.” I took her to a chop house over on Pearl Street. This was the type of place where middle-aged men sat at long, communal tables. I found one where we’d be sandwiched between two loquacious fellows discussing the nuances of steel-structure suspension bridges. Emmie didn’t last a minute.

  “I just realized, Harry, I barely have time to get home and get ready for Mass.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad, Emmie,” I said.

  “Yes, Emmie, it’s quite a disappointment,” the fellow next to her added.

  When I finished lunch, I took the uptown L to 11th Street and walked to the river, where there was a ferry landing. It was my first trip to Greenpoint, but the riverfront there was like the riverfront everywhere: docks, factories, and undefinable odors. The poolroom in question was right on Greenpoint Avenue, a couple blocks up from the ferry landing. Like most poolrooms of its ilk, it was sort of hidden in a rear room of a saloon.

  There are generally two ways to gain entry to a poolroom: be an acquaintance of the man at the door, or just look like a sure-thing sucker. He’d never seen me before, but waved me in with a smile. One wall held a large slate blackboard where the various races were listed, along with the horses and the odds being offered. Today’s board was given over entirely to the races at Bennings, wherever that was. Like most “poolrooms,” there were no pool tables cluttering up the place. I made a bet and then made some small talk. I lost that race, made another bet, and made some more small talk. This time I won, playing the favorite, but the odds were so short I won three dollars on a five-dollar bet. At the track, the odds are lopsided in the bookmakers’ favor, but in poolrooms they’re a complete sham. For every ten dollars bet, the house kept three.

  I found a local fellow who’d known William Huber, but he couldn’t say if he’d seen him in this place. I did hit on something with Barclay though. After I told the story of him doing time for the bucket shop, the cashier remembered him.