by Jim Musgrave
I went through the same inspection process as I entered the dockside building where McKenzie had his center of business. “Watch it with your hands, ladies,” I told them, “don’t touch anything you don’t want to buy,” I added, as they felt all around my legs and up my back.
“He’s clean,” said a ham-fisted gangster wearing a dock worker’s uniform of black gabardines and red suspenders. He also had a cargo hook hanging from his belt that probably served more as a weapon than as a loading utensil. The three of them pushed me into the back room and slammed the door.
Today, Walter McKenzie was not in his cups. Instead, he had two prostitutes, one on each knee, giving him little chucks under his three chins and whispering sweet nothings in his cauliflower ears. They wore Chinese gowns with gold dragons on the front, and their black stockings could be seen as their legs crossed each other.
He swiveled his big chair around toward me. “O’Malley, is it? Ya ain’t no relation to Father O’Malley, the priest who comes down to the docks to tell us we’re all goin’ to Hades, are ya now?”
“No, I’m just trying to show the world that the Irish aren’t all a bunch of sots and drunkards. I thought maybe you could answer a few questions for me now that you’re not besotted. The case I’m working on has to do with events happening in New York City from 1846 to 1849.”
“It depends. I ain’t no stool pigeon. And I won’t help the police,” McKenzie said, pushing the girls off his knees and standing up. “Get back to work on your backs!” he laughed, and the women left the room giggling.
“I won’t ask anything that would put your grand reputation in jeopardy,” I said, “and I am not a flat foot. I’m a vet who’s trying to make a living in private investigations.”
“A man of the Union, are ya then?”
I nodded.
“That’s a horse of a different color, now ain’t it? Ask away, O’Malley, me boy-o. Ya risked your life so’s the likes of me can stay in business, and I’ll give ya my best memory, ‘though there’s been a lot of malt into me bowels and a few whacks on me skull during all these years,” McKenzie laughed, pointing to his head.
“Did you ever work for a gentleman by the name of John Anderson? He owned a tobacco shop in New York during those years,” I said.
“Anderson. Let me see now. That name’s familiar. It was an Anderson come to me about that Rogers girl. Mary Rogers was her name. But it weren’t a Mister Anderson. It were Missus Anderson who come to me about the woman trouble that Rogers was having. She was ready with the money, and I told her about the best: Madame Restell, the female doctor with the mansion on Fifth Avenue.”
I tried a different approach on the old blackguard. “All right. I know about Mary Rogers and her troubles. What I want to know is if Mister Anderson was mentioned at any point in your conversation with his wife?”
McKenzie furrowed his brow. “Ya know, she did say that the girl was living with them when she got into trouble. I thought it were strange, but these rich bastards are always knockin’ up the hired help, if ya know what I mean,” he snickered into his big hand. “She also asked me if I could send somebody to follow this Mary Rogers around. Missus Anderson said she was worried that she’d get into more girl trouble. So’s I sent Bernie Ryan to do it.”
Most of this information, except for the hired goon, verified what the poet William Ross Wallace was telling me about Anderson and his relationship with the Rogers girl. Ergo, if Anderson got his tobacco shop girl pregnant, and his wife found out about it, then she would certainly want to have the problem taken care of post haste. Mary Rogers and her mother moved into their own place shortly after that. She was finally out of temptation’s way.
However, if Anderson did impregnate the girl, it still didn’t prove he wanted to kill Poe. Poe, in fact, according to Wallace, was hired to write the story that helped keep the police from suspecting the tobacconist millionaire of killing the girl. Anderson would not have wanted Poe harmed, if he were being helped by the famous writer. No, there must be another connection between Poe’s death and the death of Mary Rogers, and I needed more information to find out what that connection was.
“Is there any more information you remember about Rogers and the Andersons? Also, did you ever hear about Edgar Allan Poe having anything to do with the Rogers death?” I asked McKenzie.
“No, all I knew were that Missus Anderson wanted the problem handled by the best. I never heard no Mister Poe mentioned at all, me boy-o,” said McKenzie.
I got up from my chair and reached out to shake Walter McKenzie’s hand. His grip was still strong at age sixty-two. “Thank you. I’ll be in touch, if you don’t mind, if I can think of anything else,” I said, and I handed him one of my business cards. “If you remember anything, just send me a message,” I said, and I left the room.
* * *
I wanted to talk to Becky again about what she had discovered concerning my suspect list. Luckily, she was in her apartment, and she let me inside right away.
“Sorry, m’dear, but I’ve just been with Walter McKenzie, and I need to deodorize myself now that I wear clean socks on my feet,” I told her while I walked over to her ever-present decanter of rosewater and poured myself a glass. I turned around to face her, and she was wearing a French gendarme’s suit of blue with a pointy cap and the gold medallion on the front. “Quite fetching, as usual,” I told her, and I walked over and sat in my usual place on the end of the sofa.
She took out the notebook she keeps for any of the information she gathers on my cases. It was inside her purse on the mantel. “Here you are, Patrick. The big event is that your lawyer, Mister Crommellin, has left the city, and nobody knows where he went or why he left. Not even his personal aide, a Miss Crumworthy. Miss Crumworthy, it seems, has an interesting appetite for the female flesh. Wanda June told me about it from her pillow talk with the young lady.”
“Now that’s certainly something I can use, Becky! Thanks for your assistance. Did you find out anything more?”
“It seems your Mister Longfellow still harbors a bit of a grudge against his old adversary, Edgar Allan Poe. One of my girls, Amanda Stocking, said he was telling her that Poe used to accuse him of copying the work of others, but that it was really Poe who plagiarized in earnest. She said the old poet told her, ‘Poe was just a lazy drunkard who stole old stories anywhere he could find them and then revised them slightly.’ She said Longfellow wanted to have Poe’s literary history completely expunged and stricken from history.”
“My, that’s quite an angry tirade about a writer who’s been dead sixteen years. How could he be a threat in the grave? I think I’ll go speak to Mister Longfellow now that I have an official appointment for today from his agent. If he enjoys the services of your ladies, then he can’t be any too angelic himself, one would assume,” I said, smiling. “Not that any of your establishments lack charm for our most distinguished citizens,” I quickly added.
“Amanda also said that Professor Longfellow accused Mister Poe of obtaining the plot for the story ‘The Black Cat’ from a story written by a French writer,” Becky said as she walked me to the door. “Why should the author of The Song of Hiawatha and Paul Revere’s Ride be afraid of Edgar Allan Poe?”
“Oh, I know. Rufus Griswold was another writer who thought Poe to be a drunken lout not worth any consideration as a real artist. I still want to talk to Longfellow. I think he might be able to shed some light on Poe and his personal habits, although I might find out more concerning our friend the Harvard professor,” I said, giving Becky a peck on her cheek.
“Wash your face when you finish eating,” she said to me, as a way of parting advice. “Your jowls glisten like a greasy spoon.”
* * *
Before I ventured over to the plush abode of Henry Longfellow, I decided to stop in the city library and read the story, “The Black Cat,” which the good professor claimed Edgar had purloined from another source. The library was near Becky’s apartment, and I was able to find the c
opy of the Saturday Evening Post where the story was published in 1843 in the August 19th issue. I had read it once before, while I was working for the master of the macabre before the war, but this time I was reading it for symbolic importance. I knew that Becky believed that dreams played an important part of one’s mental condition, and I also knew she believed I needed to get in touch with the feminine side of life in order to be able to enjoy intimacy once more with women. The cat has always symbolized the feminine, more intuitive side of life, and yet in this story, the cat is half-blinded by the narrator in a frenzy of anger. Like boys who torture cats, he cannot abide the slinking, purring and quick leaps of the cat, much as a woman can often be seen curiously spying about, jumping upon the bed and moaning when aroused--either by passion--or by the appreciation of something artistic and beautiful. It infuriates a male who sees himself as straightforward, robust and linear in composure and demeanor. I can see that much. But this black cat becomes this storyteller’s arch nemesis. Indeed, he kills his wife and tries to hide her body inside the wall, and yet this feminine spirit-being, this one-eyed monstrosity of a beast, lets out a banshee wail when the police are there, letting them know about the burial place of the poor woman, and thus ends the story, with our narrator getting his just punishment.
And yet, the cat remains. It is an enigma, just as Edgar Poe was an enigma as a writer, and I am also an enigma as a man. We are all joined together in this mystery of terror and blood; this death of a great artist who was, most likely, just beginning to live a life of sober reflection, ready to create his greatest work ever.
Confound it! I refuse to believe he died an inebriated scoundrel, either by his own hand or by the hands of some election-day coopers who gave the alcoholic Poe drinks and dressed him up in different costumes, so he could vote many times for their candidate. No, I refuse to believe that Ethyl Alcohol killed the Divine Edgar. Perhaps it might have been the loss of his feminine spirit that killed him, just as it may kill me if I can’t find it in my own psyche. This entire case was driving me to drink!
I finally arrived at 15 Central Park West and climbed the fourteen steps up to the brownstone door, a scarlet affair with a brass knocker in the shape of an American Revolutionary cannon. The black ball was hanging out of the cannon by a gold chain, and one need only lift this ball up and let it fall against the door to arouse the person inside. Quickly enough, the door was answered by a well-dressed butler who escorted me into the parlor where Professor Longfellow stood, smoking a long pipe and drinking from a brandy snifter. He turned to me and his long gray beard almost rustled as he did so, it was so wide and thick, and I was immediately taken in by the man’s poetic affectation. His smoking jacket was Egyptian cotton, and the lining was silk, and it was a most striking blue. His cap was Oriental in appearance with a great turquoise tassel that hung down on the side and kept moving as he moved, a most disconcerting object, much like being distracted by a running child across the battlefield. I couldn’t help but imagine what I would do to that tassel if I were, for example, a black cat.
“Welcome, Mister O’Malley! A hero of the great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, God rest his soul! Why didn’t you inform me that you had such credentials? I would have let you in immediately! The Congressional Medal of Honor? Egad, man, it is I who should be interviewing you! Please, have a toddy and relax on my divan.” The great American poet motioned toward a long and ornately decorated lounging couch that took up half the parlor. Behind it was a wall filled with books. I walked over and sat down in my usual place on the end.
He, however, decided to strut before me and drink his brandy and smoke his pipe, peering down at me from the lofty heights of academe, I imagined. Certainly, this was far different than my casual meetings with Edgar Allan Poe at his tiny cottage in the Bronx, and I much preferred the latter.
“I read with great interest about the five-year altercation you had with the deceased, Edgar Allan Poe, when he was an editor in New York City. I believe they called it the Longfellow War. It began in 1839 and ended in 1845 with his accusation in 1840 that you copied most of your poem Midnight Mass for the Dying Year, from Alfred Lord Tennyson, I believe it was,” I began, watching the old man’s face for any emotion.
He became immediately somber. His entire demeanor resembled a person who had thought long and hard about something and was just beginning to be able to discuss it. “This man did not know about literature at all. He was an imposter, and he knew it. So much was made in the press about the loss of his women. His mother, his step-mother, his young bride. Oh, the tragedy of it all! He never knew about my own tragedies, and he did not care, the scoundrel! My first wife, Mary, died from a miscarriage. My second, Fanny, died horribly right before my eyes when she dropped a lighted match she was using to melt some sealing wax, and her dress caught fire. In my futile attempts to put out the fire and save her life, I was physically scarred. That’s why I wear this full beard. No, this Poe simply wanted to make a name for himself by attacking famous artists such as me.”
I was sympathetic to his personal tragedies, but there was something deeper gnawing at this Longfellow. “Why are you trying to get Poe’s work renounced by the literary establishment? Did you have any other, perhaps more personal, disagreements?” I probed.
Longfellow began to strut before me like a cock on the walk. “The man was demented. Have you read his work? People being chopped up with pendulum blades, bodies buried in walls, women murdered in cold blood! Ghastly! I’m no prude, but death belongs in its place. War and patriotic endeavors certainly have a place for death, but this is macabre, and this man was a perversion of the arts!”
“Did he do anything you found to be reprehensible in his personal life?” I asked, penetrating a bit deeper.
“Yes, yes he did! While his own dear wife was dying in her bed, he was carousing with the young tart in the tobacco shop! I saw him with her on several occasions walking hand-in-hand in Central Park! And then she turns up molested and pregnant and dead in the river! That man deserved to be investigated, but nobody did so!”
“I see. Well, I thank you for this information, Dr. Longfellow. It certainly opens up some new territory for inquiry. I’ll keep you apprised about my research. I hope to clarify things when I’m finished, and you’ve been quite helpful.”
I stood up to go, but the old man grabbed me by my shirt. “It was the drink, you know! That’s what made him truly evil and deserving of death. Have you ever seen a man become perverted by drink? It’s a horrible thing to watch, and I’ve seen it happen. It’s a mortal sin, and it’s an abomination to civilization!”
“Yes, well, keep up the good work, Professor. I’ll be seeing you,” I said, wrenching myself out of his rather perilous grasp and heading out the door.
“Watch yourself, war hero! That man can strike you from beyond! His soul was as black as any Hottentot witch doctor’s!”
* * *
When I returned to my thinking booth inside the Sons of Liberty tavern, I wasn’t able to put my new puzzle pieces together before the grappling hook gangster from Hoboken came up to me, out of breath, and he had a message from his boss, the Plug Ugly king, Walter McKenzie.
“O’Malley? Boss says you need to watch yer back. Word on the street says somebody’s got a contract out on yer. Boss must like yer, ‘cause he don’t do this for nobody. If you got the money, he can even put some protection on yer sorry tail.”
“Okay, but tell the boss I don’t have the money to pay for protection. I’ll try to safeguard my own sorry ass,” I said, and the lout just smiled and walked away, his cargo hook swinging from his belt like a gruesome talisman.
I now knew I had angered somebody with my investigation, and the stakes were getting higher because I was closer to the solution. I decided to order a draft beer and play my game of “stare down the devil.” I did this whenever things became tight for me. It was a way for me to focus on what I needed to think about, and, of course, I never took that first drink!
; Chapter 5: Connecting the Pieces
As the evening crowd of revelers assembled inside the Fraunces, I mentally arranged the information I had so far in my investigation into the death of Edgar Allan Poe. I knew that Dr. Moran had given me a lot of specifics proving the circumstance that Poe had not been drunk when he was admitted into the hospital, even though the historians seemed to want to accept his inebriation as fact because of his past alcoholism. Certainly, the poet, Longfellow, believed this, as did Poe’s former colleague, Dr. Rufus Griswold, who died of consumption in 1857. After Poe’s untimely death, Griswold tricked Poe’s aunt, Maria Clemm, into giving him all of Poe’s authored works in exchange for promised money. However, he never put this into a contractual writing, and the result was Griswold’s “gift” to Mrs. Clemm of six sets of the two volumes of the Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe to sell for whatever she could get.
Griswold was a most despicable character, in that he re-wrote many of Poe’s personal letters to make Griswold look good and Poe look bad. He also wrote that “Poe was expelled from the University of Virginia” when, in fact, he voluntarily left. Griswold also said that Poe was “a deserter” from the military, but Poe was honorably discharged. Why should anyone believe this cad when he says that Poe died from alcoholism in Baltimore when Griswold was caught falsifying documents and letters and lying about his former rival?
I wanted to see how close Longfellow was to this Griswold. I think the old professor had become enraged enough by Poe to want to do him harm, and if Griswold was fuel to his fire, so to speak, it might have just been enough to push him over the edge into murder.