King of the Cracksmen

by Dennis O'Flaherty

  That jolted Liam: “Jasus, Dineen! Someone actually saw him?”

  “Hard to believe,” Fergus said solemnly, “but whoever told the Boss swears it’s true! Still,” he said with a gesture towards a big, open-fronted saloon in the next block, “I expect it’s himself will be telling you about it.”

  Deep in thought, Liam just nodded as they approached the broad wooden steps leading up to Maloney’s. Fergus was silent too, looking anxious again as Liam pushed open the batwing doors and stepped inside.

  Liam felt his spirits sink the moment he crossed the threshold. It was always the middle of the night in here: the shutters closed tight and the heavy curtains drawn, a permanent miasma of spilled beer and dense tobacco smoke killing the freshness of the outdoors and dimming even the artificial daylight of the only electrical system in Henderson’s Patch.

  More than once Liam had wondered where the money came from—Boylan could only charge the miners so much for cheap Pennsylvania whiskey and local draft beer, and paying for a fine new Tesla steam generator and a constellation of those fancy Tesla “Helios” light globes would have called for an army division of off-shift miners drinking day and night for a century. Not to mention the steam pianola tinkling away in the background, that Boylan had brought home from the Exposition in Philly for a sum that would pay ten miners’ wages for a year.

  Thudding footsteps approached Liam and Fergus from behind, making the plank floor tremble, and both men turned to deposit their weapons in a basket shoved towards them by one of Boylan’s bouncers. Six feet tall, dressed in a good broadcloth suit with crisp white linen and a polka-dot bow tie, the thing had the stolid look of most automatons, although its rubber skin looked much more natural and human than the painted-porcelain mugs of Royce’s Acmes. And no wonder, Liam thought. Produced in Samuel Colt’s Hartford factory, with a miniaturized Stanley steam turbine, Colt’s precision engineering giving it lifelike smoothness of motion and Ada Lovelace’s latest “Predictive Engine” giving it a distant semblance of human brain power, a brand-new Lovelace-Colt “Columbia” (which this one appeared to be) cost more than all the miners in town could make in a lifetime, maybe two lifetimes.

  As the thing clomped away, bearing Liam’s pistol and Fergus’ Case knife to the checkroom, Fergus shivered and spat on the floor.

  “Sure, McCool, if I live to be a hundred years old I’ll never get used to them tin soldiers. God help us if the buggers start talking, it’ll be time to go live in a cave.”

  Liam grinned and nodded towards the back of the room: “We’d better hustle, the Boss is giving us the evil eye.”

  Seated in state at a round, polished-mahogany table near the exit was the Cerberus of Maloney’s, Grand Chieftan of the local lodge of the Order of the Shamrock Daniel Xavier (“Boyo,” if you dared) Boylan. Glowering like a thundercloud, his big shiny red face with its shiny black cap of brilliantined hair and glossy black handlebar moustache shimmering with displeasure, Boylan abruptly hoisted his 6-foot-7-inch, 300-plus pounds of muscle and hard fat out of his chair and folded his arms on his chest as he snarled at the approaching pair:

  “And just where the hell do you think you’ve been,

  McCool?”

  Liam smiled affably, sat down at the table and poured himself a drink from a half-empty bottle of Jameson’s.

  “Slάinte!” he toasted, and then: “Come to that, Boss, I’ve been wasting my morning answering questions for a Coal & Iron copper that thought I just might have killed Maggie. It wasn’t you as steered him my way, was it?”

  The big man dropped back into his chair with a thump, grabbed the bottle of Jameson’s and poured himself a drink twice the size of Liam’s, then downed it in a gulp and wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve. He gave Liam a withering look:

  “If mouth was money you could buy out Carnegie himself.”

  Liam gave him a placating grin, picked up the bottle and poured Boylan another big slug without refreshing his own. Mind your eye, McCool, he said to himself. Today wasn’t the day to be ruffling the Grand Master’s feathers—if he wanted to get out of Henderson’s Patch without stirring any dangerous suspicions about his motives he’d have to play this meek and mild and make sure Boylan believed his excuses whether he liked them or not. The last thing he wanted was to give that weaseling old humbug Pilkington any excuse to say he hadn’t held up his end of their deal.

  “Sure and no offense was meant, Boss.” Liam said in his most disarming manner. “The truth be told, I was just on my way here when I ran into Fergus looking for me. What can I do for you?”

  “You can give me your report on the Pottsville tunnel, and none of your lip.” He glared at Liam, but he was mollified enough that his tone was more bark than bite.

  Liam nodded reassuringly: “Everything’s looking lovely,” he said, “the boys figure they’ll be crossing under the prison wall by tonight, and that leaves plenty of time to get everything ready.”

  “How far beyond the wall do you mean to dig?”

  “Another six feet will put us right under the middle of the seats they’re putting out for the nobs. With all the fireworks the boys are hauling in there, you’ll be able to hear the bang in Pittsburgh.”

  Boylan nodded grimly. “Maybe when the dust settles they’ll realize the Mollie Magees still have all their teeth. And how many invites have they given out?”

  “Our pet screw reckons it’s near on three hundred—every one of them some big-cheese pal of Gowen’s or the Governor’s or the Warden’s or some other good Christian that’s slobbering for the sight of Mollies dancing on a rope and pissing their pants.”

  Boylan gave Liam a grudging little smile: “For all you’re a whopping great pain in the arse, McCool, you’ve done a grand job organizing the Attack Section.”

  “I’m glad you think so, Boss, for I’m about to ask you a favor.”

  “Are you, now?” Boylan’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Well, don’t be shy, man, spit it out!”

  “I need some time off,” Liam said. “Just a couple of weeks,” he added apologetically, “so if you’d be agreeable I’d like to ask Fergus to take over as foreman till I get back.”

  Boylan’s face had turned a deep reddish-purple, bulging so furiously that for a moment Liam thought his head might explode: “Two weeks!?” Boylan roared. “Have ye gone bughouse, McCool? Right now we need every man we’ve got to be at his post, not off lollygagging.”

  “Come on, Boss,” Liam pleaded earnestly, “I’ve done everything I can to set this job on the rails and it doesn’t really need me anymore. The tunnel’s so near the end a tame badger could finish the digging. And Fergus can shepherd it to the end without a hitch, he’s a good lad and he knows the job backwards. As for me, I won’t rest till I can start tracking down the rat that killed Maggie.”

  Boylan’s fury seemed to evaporate all of a sudden and he sat for several moments sunk in thought as he stared appraisingly at Liam. Finally he said:

  “I’m thinking it’ll take you a lot longer than two weeks to find him.”

  He picked up the bottle of Jameson’s and poured two more shots. Liam knocked back his in one gulp and waited. Boylan watched him with a sour little quirk to his lips before he continued:

  “What makes you think you know where to start?”

  There was a touch of sarcasm in Boylan’s voice that Liam didn’t like.

  “Are you trying to tell me something, Boss?”

  “Sure, if I were it’d be the labors of Hercules to make you hear me, wouldn’t it, McCool? And you as ready to listen to good counsel as a cigar-store Indian!”

  Boylan’s anger was coming to the surface again and he leaned forward to grab Liam by the upper arm. He continued in a low growl, his eyes blazing:

  “Maggie O’Shea was here in Henderson’s Patch a good two years before you showed up. If you’re as fly as you’re made out to be I won’t have to tell you she was no shrinking violet. She had sweethearts whenever the mood took her and she made no bones
about it. Hell, that’s how she came here—Henderson doesn’t let anybody set up for business in this patch without paying for the privilege, and Maggie had something he liked better than money. Come to that, she was my sweetheart too, for a while, and it like to broke my heart when she gave me my walking papers. So what makes you think you know which one of Maggie’s lovers would be the one that did it?”

  Liam wasn’t happy with Boylan’s hand on his arm, but he kept his voice carefully neutral:

  “Just this: there was only one of you cleared out of town in the last twenty-four hours without leaving so much as a collar button behind.”

  Boylan flinched so hard that he almost dug his fingers through Liam’s bicep.

  “What the hell …?”

  Finally running out of patience, Liam took hold of Boylan’s wrist by one of the pressure points he’d learned from Harry the Jap and pressed it slightly; Boylan howled with pain and jerked his arm back, baring his teeth like a dog about to attack.

  “It’ll feel better in a few minutes,” Liam said tersely. “Meanwhile, you can tell me what you know about where Lukas went. Was it you that cleared out his rooms?”

  Boylan just stared, black fury in his eyes.

  “Because if it was, you missed a couple of things—like a picture of him with Maggie at the Expo in Philly.”

  “Pah!” Boylan scoffed. “Maggie loved that place, she’d go there with anybody that’d buy a couple tickets for the boat from Pottsville. You took her there yourself, more than once.”

  “Uh huh,” Liam said. “But that wasn’t all I found. There was a bunch of love letters, too, billy-doos from Maggie to Lukas.”

  This time Boylan looked surprised: “Where …?”

  “Never mind where I found them,” Liam said. “Just give me an idea where Lukas was headed when he left.”

  Boylan’s jaw set hard and Liam could see he wasn’t going to say another word.

  “I know it was somewhere in New York,” Liam said, “because he told Maggie a few days ago he was going there to do some of those interviews for that book of his. What happened, did he come back for something and get into an argument with her? Sure, he probably tried to get her to give him one last roll in the hay and then he lost his temper when she told him no.”

  He stared at Boylan abstractedly for a moment, visualizing the scene as Boylan stared back at him stonily.

  “That had to be how it went,” Liam said, nodding to himself more than Boylan. “Then he left here in a panic thinking somebody heard the shot and came by Maloney’s by the back way to tell you to clear his stuff out before the C & I’s came around investigating.”

  Boylan spoke again now, his voice flat and hard. “You’ve got some imagination, McCool. So why don’t you imagine this: if Lukas can order Daniel Xavier Boylan around like a plantation nigger, then just maybe he’s somebody that a smart lad like you should steer well clear of.”

  Liam nodded slowly. “Thanks for the whiskey, Boss. And when you’re next in touch with Lukas, warn him he’d better keep a weather eye out. New York is my city, and when I get back I’ll be looking up my old pals and asking them to help me search for Lukas. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Butcher Boys, but every man Jack of us grew up on those streets, and if I ask them to find me one particular flea out of New York’s ten trillion vermin, they’ll have it in a pill box before you can say boo.”

  Touching his forehead in a mock salute, Liam turned and headed back towards the saloon’s entrance. Boyle stared after him, his eyes narrowed with thought, then beckoned to Fergus:

  “Dineen, you’re the new tunnel foreman. And meanwhile go tell Collum I want to send a telegram and make sure my Flyer’s steamed up and ready to go.”

  As Fergus took off, Boylan got to his feet and looked towards the front, just in time to see Liam retrieve his pistol, push through the batwing doors and disappear into the street.

  “All right, then, Mister McCool,” Boylan muttered, “let’s see just how sharp you are.”

  Chapter Seven

  Outdoors again, the spring sunshine warm on his face and the fresh breeze blowing away the last stale fumes of beer and tobacco smoke, Liam resolved to stay away from saloons until he could do an hour of jiu-jitsu practice with his sparring partner Harry the Jap and not even break a sweat. Age was starting to creep up on him—he’d be thirty in a couple of years—and he had no intention of ending up in Potter’s Field like the legions of penniless Micks waiting there for him to join them. He meant to die old, rich and surrounded by good books, which meant he’d better get busy. Step one: pack his stuff, hire a ride to Pottsville and catch a train for Philly and points North.

  By this point in his musings Liam was ready to sprint the last half mile to his boarding house, but before he could break into a run he saw something that made him stop short. Not a hundred yards away and moving towards him with a worried, abstracted expression, his thoughts plainly miles away from Henderson’s Patch, was that fussy old maid Arthur Morrison—now the sole upstairs occupant of Maggie’s house.

  Something clicked in Liam’s mind and it must have sent out a thought-wave because Morrison halted abruptly, turned towards Liam with a look of pure panic on his face and started to back away, holding his hands out in front of him as if he were warding off some grisly specter. Then, a moment later, he turned on his heel and took off in the opposite direction, running.

  “Hey!” shouted Liam. “Hold on a minute!”

  But Morrison just ran faster, his elbows flapping out to the side as if he were some ungainly flightless bird trying to escape a hungry cat. Liam made a face and poured on the speed, closing the gap so swiftly that he came level with Morrison in moments. He reached out and grabbed the little man’s shoulder, bringing a startled “Eep!” from his prey. Morrison jolted to a stop and faced Liam with a look at once terrified and abject, the sweat pouring down his face, wilting his stiff collar and soaking the underarms of his heavy black suit.

  “What’s your big hurry?” Liam inquired mildly.

  “I … er … it’s, it’s …” Morrison stuttered.

  “Take it easy, Morrison, I don’t bite. Why are you running away from me?”

  The accountant pulled a neatly folded linen handkerchief out of his breast pocket and mopped his face before answering in a plaintive, reedy voice:

  “No offense intended, I assure you, Mr. McCool. It’s just … it’s just … well, everybody knows you’re one of the Mollies, and then there was the explosion at Mr. Henderson’s house, and the coffin notice from the Mollies, and … and …”

  He really looked as if he were about to burst into tears and Liam patted him on the shoulder:

  “No one’s going to blow you up, Arthur, don’t worry. But I have to talk to you about what happened to Maggie last night.”

  At that, every last drop of blood seemed to disappear from Morrison’s face, leaving it an alarming shade of gray. The little man jerked his head around as if he were trying to find some avenue of escape, and Liam decided he’d better take a firmer hand.

  “Come on,” he said, “let’s go across the street to Mrs. Clark’s place, I’ll buy you a drink and a ham sandwich.”

  “No,” said Morrison desperately, shaking his head so hard it looked in danger of coming loose. “No, no, I … er …”

  Liam took hold of his arm: “It isn’t a request. Let’s go.”

  As the opening door rang the little bell suspended above it, Mrs. Clark—a plump, white-haired lady in a blue gingham dress and a pink apron—looked up from a well-worn issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book and gave Liam and Morrison a grandmotherly smile:

  “Well, now! What can I bring you boys?”

  Liam returned the smile as he pushed Morrison ahead of him to a table in the furthest corner of the room:

  “How about a bottle of bourbon and a couple of glasses, Mrs. Clark? And a couple of nice thick ham sandwiches?”

  “Right away, Mr. McCool,” she said.

  As Mrs. Clark bust
led cheerfully in the background, Liam leaned forward across the table and gave Morrison the gimlet eye:

  “OK,” he said, “talk to me. I know you never go to Maloney’s till after eight, that means you must have seen or heard something downstairs before you went out.”

  The panicked look had come back into Morrison’s eyes and he kept opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water.

  “I … I can’t …”

  He got a momentary reprieve as Mrs. Clark brought them a tray with the whiskey and sandwiches and a big glass pitcher of water, but a moment later she went back to the counter and her interrupted Godey’s, leaving Morrison on the hook.

  “By Heaven,” Liam muttered, “I’m beginning to wonder if maybe you’re the one that killed her!”

  “No!” Morrison whispered hoarsely. “You’re crazy, I worshipped Miss O’Shea!”

  Liam shook his head disgustedly and poured Morrison half a tumbler of bourbon.

  “Drink that!” he ordered.

  “I don’t … I don’t really …”

  “Damn you, Morrison,” Liam said in a low voice. “You drink that up and get a grip on yourself, or I swear I’ll haul you outside and drag you up and down the street till you wish you had.”

  Despairingly, Morrison grabbed the whiskey and gulped it down. Liam watched with his arms folded impatiently until at last a bit of color came back into the accountant’s cheeks.

  Liam leaned forward and poked Morrison hard in the middle of the chest: “Now cut the shilly-shallying and tell me straight out. What do you know about the murder?”