World's Greatest Sleuth!

by Steve Hockensmith

  “Oh, that’s alright,” I said, drawing a small white-and-green-striped packet from my pocket. “Neither do I.”

  I tore the wrapping off the pack and slid out a brittle stick of chaw wax—a new brand they’d been handing out free at the Fair. “Juicy Fruit,” they called it (though, as I popped it in my mouth, I quickly discovered that it was neither juicy nor tasted of any fruit I’ve ever sampled, unless cardboard grows on trees).

  Smythe eyed me, bewildered. Then he sucked in his breath as if he hoped to suck his words back in, too.

  “I mean … I always keep some cigars on hand for … uhhh … you know. But I left them in my room.”

  “Sure. I understand. That’s why I wanted a match, actually.” I grinned around the sticky, tasteless lump in my mouth. “For the you know.”

  “Heh heh … yes … heh heh…,” Smythe said. And before I could ask him about the mysterious friend he’d summoned to Chicago—the glasses-smashing Bearded Man—he turned away and lobbed a random “Nonsense!” into the still-raging debate. This brought upon him a torrent of abuse from both the colonel and Blackheath-Murray, which Smythe seemed to prefer to any further conversation with me.

  Soon after, the office door swung open and my brother tromped out throwing the words “And the same goes for you!” over his shoulder. Obviously, he’d been dealing with the local authorities with his usual deference and charm—which meant it was only a matter of time before we were both thrown in the pokey.

  I hopped up and scampered after him as he stomped across the lobby toward the hotel’s front doors.

  “What happened in—?”

  “Amlingmeyer the Younger,” a gentle voice trilled behind me. “You’re next.”

  I looked back to find Sergeant Ryan watching us. He pivoted and swept his arms to one side, gesturing for me to come into the office with him.

  “If you please.”

  Now how can you say no to a policeman who actually says “please”?

  “Where you gonna be when I’m done?” I asked Old Red under my breath.

  “The alley,” he whispered back quick. Then he swept past Mrs. Jasinska’s desk, pushed through the doors, and was gone.

  A moment later, I was stepping into the hotel office. It was a small, poorly lit affair cluttered with overflowing file cabinets and a battered rolltop desk. A telephone jutted from one wall, and there were brooms and buckets shoved in a corner.

  William Pinkerton had claimed one of the room’s two chairs. Ryan offered the other to me.

  “Sorry about Gustav,” I said as I sat. “He can be a tad … well … that.”

  “There’s no need for apologies,” the sergeant said. “Your brother’s a man of deep passions, that’s plain—and in the service of justice, no vice.”

  He leaned against the desk and smiled his serene little smile. If he felt a deep passion for justice, he was doing a good job keeping it deep—so deep I couldn’t see it, at least.

  “What got him so riled, if you don’t mind my askin’?”

  “Ohhhhh, I don’t mind at all,” Ryan replied. “Now could you tell me your whereabouts last night between eight thirty and midnight?”

  It took me a few seconds to realize the sergeant didn’t mind my asking because he had no intention of answering.

  “My whereabouts was here. At the hotel. After that dinner ‘party’ I’m sure you’ve heard about, Gustav and I came back and called it a night.”

  “But the White City would be open for hours still. You didn’t want to take another turn around the grounds? Prepare for the next day’s competition?”

  “I did prepare, Sergeant. I read up on the Exposition for a good long while before turnin’ down the lights.”

  “What of your brother, though? As I understand it, studying from guidebooks wouldn’t be his bailiwick—unless, I suppose, they had pictures.”

  I looked from Ryan, all innocent-eyed and affable, to Pinkerton, sitting there cold and hard as a marble bust of his father. If they’d badgered Old Red about his lack of learning, it wasn’t a shock he’d stomped out shouting. The surprise was he hadn’t kicked the door to splinters in the process.

  “Look,” I said, “Gustav was tired. Train travel don’t agree with him, and he ain’t fond of cities, neither. So he needed sleep, and he got it. Just ask Mrs. J up at the front desk. We didn’t go out again all night.”

  “Oh, I did ask. And you’re right: The lady didn’t see you leave.” Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know what that proves, though. You and your brother have already demonstrated your familiarity with the back alley—as well as, I suspect, a certain persuasiveness when it comes to locked doors. Hmm?”

  If that “Hmm?” was a cue for my confession, it didn’t work. I said nothing.

  “Otto…,” Ryan said soothingly. “I may call you ‘Otto,’ mayn’t I?”

  “Anything to keep things friendly, Mo.”

  No irritation showed itself on Ryan’s face. Old Red once told me I could pick a fight with a marshmallow without even trying, but perhaps I’d finally met my match.

  “Thank you, Otto,” Ryan said. “I like to keep things friendly, too. And with someone like yourself, that’s very easy indeed. Your brother, on the other hand…” He shook his head sadly. “A hot-tempered man, wouldn’t you say?”

  Of course I would say and have said, and at great length, too. Somehow, though, now didn’t seem the time to say it again.

  “Oh, he’s just on edge, like everyone else around here now. In fact, you keep all them folks penned up in the lobby much longer, you’re gonna have another murder on your hands.”

  “What makes you so sure we’ve got one now?” Pinkerton asked.

  At that I had to laugh. “Come on, now. My brother can and I’m sure did explain it to you a lot better than I could. Ain’t no reason to have me run through it again.”

  “Humor us, Otto,” Ryan said. “Please.”

  “Alright, fine.” I brought up a hand and counted it off point by point. “Dung in hair. Dung on window. Someone in his room. Everyone hated him. Smotherin’ in cheese.”

  “What about smothering in cheese?” Ryan asked.

  “What about it? It’s completely preposterous, that’s what.”

  “He was drunk,” Pinkerton said. “You saw that yourself.”

  “Yeah, but … smotherin’ in cheese?”

  “Otto,” Ryan said, “I’ve been a policeman for sixteen years. I’ve seen a man choked to death on a mouse. I’ve seen a woman who was accidentally strangled by her own hair. Smothering in cheese? I wager I’ll see something stranger by the weekend.”

  “But it was cheddar,” I protested. “That stuff’s too hard for anyone to smother in accidental.”

  Pinkerton snorted. “Your brother said the same thing.”

  Somehow, this did not seem to stand my point in good stead.

  “They flip the Mammoth Cheese once a month, Otto,” Ryan said. “Otherwise, all the moisture collects in the bottom, and it loses its shape and turns to goo with a layer of crust on top.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “They flipped it yesterday.”

  “Two days ago, actually, but the result’s the same. I’m told the top remains soft—almost gelatinous—for at least a week. Anyway, Otto, we don’t know Mr. Curtis smothered to death. He might have had a heart attack just as he climbed in to hide that ‘egg’ of his. He could have died of a stroke as he crawled around in the tank.”

  “Sure. He might have been struck by lightning,” I said. “He could have been clubbed to death by a leprechaun.”

  Ryan shrugged. “That’s for the coroner to determine.”

  “Well, what about the dung, then? No heart attack or stroke would explain that.”

  “Strange that only your brother noticed it,” Pinkerton said, sounding like he didn’t mean “strange” so much as “suspicious.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve met folks who wouldn’t notice bullshit if it was served up to ’em à la mode.”

&nb
sp; In case there was any doubt that I’d met two such men very, very recently, I favored Pinkerton and Ryan with a big grin.

  “I think you’ll find, Otto, that you’re dealing with more discriminating palates than you might imagine,” the sergeant replied mildly. “Take your brother’s glasses, for instance. That has a certain … bouquet about it. Yesterday, I’m told, he practically needed a white cane. Yet today, he was suddenly healed as if by the hand of Christ himself. Now, what are we to make of that?”

  By the time Ryan finished, my smug smile was but a memory, and a feeble “You’d have to ask my brother” was the only answer I could offer.

  “We did,” Ryan said. “He told us—rather over-forcefully—that the question was immaterial. So it’s to you I must turn for an explanation.”

  I shrugged miserably. “I ain’t got one.”

  Ryan and Pinkerton looked at each other. After a long, silent moment, Pinkerton jerked his head toward the door.

  “Thank you for your time, Otto,” Ryan said. “You’ve been a big help.”

  “Have I?” I almost sighed. Perhaps from the sergeant’s perspective I had been. Yet I knew I hadn’t helped myself and Gustav any.

  When I shuffled out of the office, I found Tousey, Brady, Smythe, and Colonel Crowe all clamoring to get in.

  “Let me get this over with,” the colonel said, trying to squeeze past me.

  Tousey blocked him. “King and I go next!”

  “Please, I beg you,” Smythe said to Pinkerton. “Don’t make me wait out here any longer. My nerves can’t take it!”

  “One side, pantywaist!” Crowe barked. “I’m coming through!”

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Tousey snarled.

  “Oh, yes I do!”

  Never had I seen such enthusiasm for the third degree. It was like finding a line of folks fighting to get into a dentist’s chair.

  A minute later, I rejoined my brother in the alley behind the hotel. He was pawing through more trash cans, and as I walked up a tattered, muck-splattered umbrella seemed to capture his attention.

  “Come up with anything?” I asked.

  Old Red tried to open the umbrella. It snagged halfway up and the handle broke off and something gray and gloppy—rotted cabbage, perhaps—oozed out from inside its folds.

  “Yup.” He threw everything back in the nearest trash can. “A whole lot of junk and a whole lot of rats. No more clues, though. How’d it go with Pinkerton and Ryan?”

  “I think I almost got ’em convinced Curtis was murdered. The only problem is if I did, we’d be the prime suspects. That how it played out for you?”

  “Come on.” Gustav stood and started up the alley, bound for Hope Avenue. “We’ll talk it out as we walk.”

  “Walk where?”

  “The corner of Kenwood and Sixty-first … wherever the hell that is,” Old Red said. “I reckon it’s time you and me got our shoes shined.”

  20

  UNCOMMON FEAT

  Or, We Try Our Hand at Shadowing Suspects, but the Shoe Ends Up on the Other Foot

  Under normal circumstances, taking Gustav Amlingmeyer to get a shoeshine would make about as much sense as taking a pack mule for a pedicure. Spit was the only polish ever to touch my brother’s boots, and even this was applied no more than once or twice per annum. Most times, every speck of trail dust to cling to the creased brown leather was worn with pride as a belle wears her bows or a soldier his medals.

  But Old Red had a reason to shed some of his hard-earned grime now: We were on our way to see Pyle, the bootblack who shined shoes for the Columbian’s guests, according to Jerzy the bell codger. My brother still had dung on the brain (as opposed to the dung for brains he frequently accused me of). If anyone had come back to the hotel the previous night with especially feculent feet, this Pyle might be our last chance to find out about it.

  As we weaved our way through the chattering tourist clans clogging the sidewalks, Gustav grilled me on my talk with Pinkerton and Ryan. So as to have something encouraging to report, I threw in that I’d caught Smythe in a lie about needing cigars. Whatever had taken him out of the hotel the night before, it wasn’t a hankering for a hand-rolled robusto.

  “Add that to the note in the bearded feller’s coat, and your Mr. Smythe starts lookin’ like a man with things to hide,” Old Red said.

  “Wouldn’t that just be the way? I finally find someone willin’ to pay for my stories, and he turns out to be the next Lizzie Borden. So how’d your parley with Ryan and Pinkerton go?”

  My brother shrugged. “Not much to tell. Pinkerton was the same way with me as you. Surly. Suspicious. Like he thought we had something to do with Curtis’s dyin’ like he did. Which don’t make no sense at all considerin’—”

  “He doesn’t think Curtis was murdered.”

  “Or so he keeps sayin’. And Ryan I don’t understand, either. He’s cool, clearheaded, pleasant.”

  “Not like a lawman at all.”

  “Nope. At least the ones we’ve met. It’s frustratin’. I couldn’t get a lick of data out of him, yet much as I wanted to, I couldn’t get properly mad at him, either.”

  “Could’ve fooled me, the way you was shoutin’.”

  “Oh, that don’t mean I don’t like the man.”

  “I’ll try to remember that the next time you call me a goddamn idjit.”

  “Probably won’t be long.”

  “No doubt.”

  “I just wish Ryan would listen. He seems too smart to be so dense.”

  “Well, I can tell you one thing that didn’t do us any favors. Them specs you was wearin’ when we come to town. Ryan wanted to know why—”

  “Yeah, yeah. He asked me about that, too,” Gustav muttered, and he let a big clump of sightseers come between us. After that, he was too busy zigzagging around sidewalk vendors and telephone poles to pick up the conversation again, and I got the message, plain as from Western Union: The subject was dropped.

  Within a few minutes, we were at the corner of Kenwood and Sixty-first, and there we found a shoeshine stand worthy of the White City itself. While most bootblacks I’d seen plied their trade with nothing more than a box of polish and brushes or, at most, a couple chairs and footrests in a railroad depot, here was a long row of raised seats under a crisp white awning bearing the words WORLD’S GREATEST SHOESHINE—15¢.

  “Fifteen whole cents just for a shine?” Old Red said.

  “Well, it is the world’s greatest. And the price sure ain’t hurt business none.”

  Indeed, half a dozen men had ventured their dimes and nickels for the honor. Kneeling before each was a neatly dressed boy rubbing and buffing with such enthusiasm he could’ve put a blinding gleam on a pile of bricks.

  A somber Negro of perhaps forty years of age paced slowly up and down the line, watching over the work with an air of austere gravity. When he noticed us staring his way, he smiled and tried to lead us to two empty seats.

  “Oh, we ain’t here for shines, sir,” I said. “Are you Mr. Pyle?”

  That was enough to wipe the smile clean off the man’s face.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “We’re detectives, sir,” I said. “The private consulting kind. And we’re conductin’ an inquiry of a confidential manner that involves—”

  “Shoes,” my brother cut in. “The ones from the Columbian Hotel last night. That’s what we wanna ask about.”

  “Did some go missing?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “It’s nothing like that.”

  “Then this doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  And with that, the man moved off to prod one of the shoeshine boys with his toe.

  “Andrew. Those shoes need paste polish, not wax.”

  “Yessir, Mr. Pyle!”

  “Look,” Old Red said, “we’re only askin’ for a few minutes of your time.”

  “Which I don’t have,” Pyle snapped back without turning to face us again. “I’m running a business here. I can’t
afford to stand around shooting the breeze.”

  “Why, of all the mulish—”

  I silenced my brother with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Mr. Pyle,” I said, “it’s not against the rules for a man to talk while he’s gettin’ his shoes shined, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then…”

  I reached a hand around into the man’s line of sight. In it was a five-dollar bill.

  “Two for the World’s Greatest Shoeshine. Keep the change.”

  The greenback disappeared.

  “Right this way, gentlemen!”

  Pyle ushered us to the nearest empty seats.

  “I’ve been workin’ on my bribin’ technique,” I said to Gustav.

  He replied with a scowl that clearly said, Five dollars?

  There’s just no pleasing some people.

  “Randall! Marcus!” Pyle barked, and a pair of young boys came scampering over, shoeshine boxes in hand. The older of the two—he was all of nine or ten—crouched down at my feet and got to work lickety-split. The other squatted down before my brother … and went bug-eyed at the sight of his dirt-caked boots.

  “Is there a problem, Marcus?” Pyle asked sternly.

  “No, sir!” Marcus replied, and he stretched a rag across Gustav’s right boot and started buffing in vain. He would’ve been better served by a chisel.

  “So, Mr. Pyle,” I said, “you shine guests’ shoes for the Columbian Hotel.”

  “I don’t.” Pyle nodded at Randall and Marcus. “My sons do.”

  “Ahhhh. I see. And how’s that work, exactly?”

  “We pick up the shoes after the stand closes at midnight. The boys shine them when we get home. Then we drop the shoes back off before we open the stand again at seven.”

  “My. You fellers ever sleep?” I asked the boys.

  Randall glanced back at his father.

  Pyle nodded.

  “Not much this year,” Randall said to me.

  “There’ll be time for sleep when the Fair’s over. That’s what Dad always tells us.” Marcus rubbed with futile ardor at a deep stain just above Old Red’s right heel. “What did you do to these boots? They look like they’ve been breaded and deep-fried.”