The Sporting House Killing: A Gilded Age Legal Thriller

by G. Reading Powell

The lady asked him and Professor Charlton to have a seat at a long table in the middle of the room. Other tables was around the room, stacked with books and papers and such. Against the left wall, right in the middle of the room, was a big ol’ rolltop desk like the postmaster had back home, with papers sticking out of pigeonholes and a stack of papers with blue wrappers and red ribbons. Heavy-looking books was stacked on the top. Another desk was across the room on the opposite wall. Electric lights was hanging from the ceiling. Maybe someday his family could get an electric light for the house. It would sure help Momma with her mending at night after supper, but for now they couldn’t even afford enough oil for the lamp. They made do with candles.

  They waited not more than ten minutes before a man arrived, and then another one not long after. They was both tall. The older one seemed to run things. Lawyers, they said, but he expected that, of course. They was Mr. Calloway and Mr. Calloway, and they wasn’t wearing no wigs. It was yet to see if they was big talkers.

  The older one was the kind of fella that makes you look twice. He didn’t need no wig ’cause he had a bushel of white hair of his own. He had a white mustache that curled up at both ends. Daddy would call his face ruddy. But it was them eyes that grabbed hold of you and wouldn’t let go. They was real blue, like Grandma’s sapphire pin Momma wore sometimes. His wearing clothes was different too, the kind of long black coat that none of the city fellas wore anymore and a silver fob hanging from a watch chain on his vest. Lawyers in Texas looked more like preachers than that Buzfuz lawyer in the book.

  The other lawyer, Mr. Harley Calloway, wasn’t exactly no yearling. He was a younger version of Mr. Catfish Calloway, with the same face but without the wrinkles. His eyes wasn’t blue, and he didn’t have no mustache. His suit of clothes was more like other city fellas wore these days.

  “Tell us what happened to Cicero,” the older one said, leaning forward across the big table.

  “Well, he didn’t come back last night.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  Jasper crossed his fingers under the table just in case. “He went out.”

  “Out where?”

  “Don’t know exactly.” He tightened down on his fingers.

  The older lawyer glanced at the younger one and got real quiet. Seemed like he was just thinking. At that moment, he was the scariest old coot Jasper’d ever eyeballed. Then he asked some more questions, dead serious like a preacher, but Jasper still didn’t give him much information. Every now and then the lawyer’d pick up some spectacles, pinch ’em onto the tip of his nose, and write something down. When he looked up over the top of them specs, it was like his questions might punch right through a brick wall. Them blue eyes just wouldn’t let loose. But he didn’t get nothing out of Jasper. It wasn’t this fella’s business if Cicero was still getting acquainted with that lady at the whorehouse, and Jasper wasn’t about to tattle.

  Finally, the man stopped firing off questions like a six-gun, leaned back in his chair, and looked over at Professor Charlton. “Professor, I know you have other responsibilities. If you want to head on back, we can take it from here.”

  “I do need to get back to campus,” Professor Charlton said. “Jasper, Mr. Calloway and his son are here to find Cicero. Please do what you can to help them, and they’ll bring you back to the dormitory later.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  What was this lawyer fixing to do?

  After Professor Charlton left, the younger lawyer got up and went over to his desk, where he sat and read a book. The older lawyer took off his coat. He was packing some kind of artillery under his shoulder. He took that rig off and hung it up on a hook by the door with his coat. For some reason, he turned the flame down on the table lamp. Then he settled back into a chair on Jasper’s side of the table, propping his feet up on the table like he was fixing to take a nap.

  I’ll be. He was wearing boots.

  The lawyer ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it flopping down like a horse’s forelock. Made him look younger somehow. Then dang if he didn’t grin like Daddy, and everything just got different.

  “Colonel!”

  Jasper hadn’t even noticed the dog, who must’ve been sleeping by the front door. He padded over and stood by Mr. Calloway, who reached down and rubbed the two big ol’ floppy ears.

  “Got a dog?” Mr. Calloway asked him.

  “Yes, sir,” Jasper said. “His name’s Lightning.”

  “How’d he get that name?”

  “He’s afraid of it and hides under the front porch.”

  “The colonel doesn’t cotton to it, either,” he said, leaning way over and letting the hound dog lick his face. “Where’s home?”

  “Fayette County. Near Flatonia.”

  “I know it, sure. Been there. Good farm country. Your daddy a cotton farmer?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mine too,” he said with a big smile. It was like he was remembering some good days back home. “How about a soda water?”

  “Sure.”

  “Miss Peach,” he said to the lady in the front room, “would you be so kind as to go next door and fetch some Dr. Pepper’s soda for my friend?”

  She appeared in the doorway between the two rooms. “I’d be happy to.”

  “And get that bowl of Circle-A for the colonel.”

  One furry eyebrow arched up at the sound of his name.

  “I don’t think he finished the one I got him earlier.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said with a wink at Jasper.

  Miss Peach was young and she was a looker, but she was real different from them girls in the whorehouse. She had red hair all bundled up on top of her head and the sweetest smile he’d ever seen. Of course, she was a full-growed woman, but she couldn’t be all that much older than him. He was eighteen, so she was maybe twenty-one. He watched her walk out the door and head for the drugstore. She had a real skinny waist and wore a pretty blue dress that dragged the floor except when she lifted it up a little, and the sleeves of her white blouse was all puffed out. But she was real businesslike too. She had a stiff stand-up collar with a black bow tie just showing at the front.

  “Miss Peach is my stenographer.”

  “Yes, sir. She’s nice.”

  Mr. Calloway dropped his feet back to the floor and scooted his chair a little closer. He bent over, rested his forearms on his knees, and gave him the blue eyes. “Son, Baylor doesn’t really have to know every doggone thing about last night. I don’t see any reason it’s a bit of their business. But I gotta know it all if I’m gonna help Cicero. His daddy’s an old friend of mine. He wired me today and asked me to find him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So please,” he said, friendly-like, “do you know where Cicero went to last night?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Harley closed the book, whirled his swivel chair around, and eased it up to the table across from Mr. Calloway.

  “Tell Harley and me what you know, son.”

  “Well, we was at the revival with that banty preacher.”

  “Sam Jones? At the Tabernacle?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What happened there?”

  “Well, I was downright edgy. It took that preacher three syllables just to say ‘Jesus.’ He wasn’t even halfway from hellfire to brimstone before me and Cicero was ready to give religion a rest for a while.”

  “Did you go somewhere after that?”

  “Back to the dorm.”

  “Did you leave again?” Mr. Harley asked.

  Mr. Calloway sat up. “Did Cicero leave?”

  “Yes, sir. I think so.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “To Washington Street.”

  “Where on Washington Street?”

  “Almost to the river.”

  Mr. Calloway glanced over at his son. “Did he go in a hack?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you know who the hack driver was?”

  “No, sir.”

 
“Where’d Cicero go when he left the hack?”

  “He went—well, I reckon he went to a brick house across the street.”

  “Was that brick house on the side of Washington closest to City Hall or the other?”

  “The other.”

  “Whose house was it?”

  “It was, I reckon . . . it belonged to a lady name of Miss Jessie.”

  “Miss Jessie who?”

  “I don’t know no other name.”

  Mr. Calloway looked at Mr. Harley again. “See if you can find Miss Jessie’s place and learn what you can.”

  “Right.” Mr. Harley got his hat and left.

  Miss Peach come back with a sody water. Jasper took a big gulp and then wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve. She put the bowl of ginger ale in the corner, and the dog lapped it up.

  “Miss Peach,” Mr. Calloway said, “get on that talking-phone you coaxed me into buying.”

  “The telephone?” she said, real irritated-like.

  Mr. Calloway rolled his eyes at Jasper and spoke like she wasn’t in the room. “She says everybody’s gonna have one someday. Got my doubts.” He winked.

  “They got one at the dorm too,” Jasper said.

  “It’s 1894, Mr. Calloway,” Miss Peach said, plain botheration all over her face.

  “And it’ll be 1895 if you don’t get on with it,” he said without even looking her way. “Ring up the police office and see if they’ve run across Cicero down in the Reservation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Calloway smiled like Daddy did on Sundays. Maybe he wouldn’t tell nobody at Baylor after all. He pulled a cigar out of a White Owl box on the table, bit the end off, and spit it into a brass spittoon by his desk.

  Smoke puffed out from the cigar, and Jasper coughed. He didn’t care much for smoke. The fan picked it up and blew it around the room, and pretty soon the whole place stunk. He coughed again, and Mr. Calloway quit puffing on it. Jasper turned his face aside to try to avoid the last of it. Leaning there against the wall by the desk was a cavalry saber. He looked for the dent in the scabbard and sure enough, there it was, just like Grandpa’s.

  “Was Cicero in any trouble last time you saw him?”

  “No, sir. He was happy as a lark.”

  “I thought he might be.”

  “Mr. Calloway,” Miss Peach said. “All the police officers are at the courthouse for an inquest.”

  He faced her sudden-like. “An inquest? Into what?”

  “A killing.”

  Jasper started shaking. God, please not Cicero. Then he just cried. He couldn’t help it. Miss Peach come over and sat beside him. She put her arm around him and held him tight. Jasper wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Dang it, he was too old to be crying.

  “It’s all right, Jasper,” she said soft-like. “The operator didn’t know who it was. It’s probably somebody else.”

  But maybe that lady hollered ’cause Cicero was hurt. Jasper worked up his courage. “Mr. Calloway, I’ve gotta tell you something else. I need to tell you real bad.”

  “What is it?”

  “I ain’t sure at all, but maybe a lady screamed inside Miss Jessie’s.”

  Miss Peach gasped. “Why didn’t you—”

  Mr. Calloway touched her sleeve.

  “Tell us what happened,” Mr. Calloway said, real calm-like.

  Jasper took a deep breath. “I was outside waiting on Cicero—I need to tell you, sir, Miss Jessie’s is a whorehouse—and he was inside getting acquainted with one of them ladies.”

  “What happened then?”

  Tarnation, but he began crying again. “I just run—I’m so sorry, I truly am. I reckon I was scaryfied. I can’t think of no other reason I done it. I been praying no grief come to Cicero, but he got hisself killed.”

  “Jasper, I’m sure he’s just fine,” Mr. Calloway said, real kind-like. “I want to find out what happened first, and we’ll talk some more later. I’m going to the courthouse right now. Miss Peach will get you back to your dormitory. Don’t worry about Cicero, son.”

  He got up and strapped on his artillery and put his coat over it. He turned back to Jasper and smiled. “And you won’t get in any trouble yourself. I’m your lawyer from now on, and I ain’t never had a client kicked out of any school anywhere for any reason. Whatever a client says to me ain’t for nobody else’s ears but mine.”

  Did he need a lawyer? He’d left all his spending money at the whorehouse. “I ain’t got no money left, sir.”

  “You won’t owe me a thing.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you. I’m obliged.”

  Mr. Calloway tossed a calling card on the table in front of him and hurried out.

  William “Catfish” Calloway

  Calloway & Calloway

  Attorneys-at-Law

  109 N. Fourth Street

  Waco, Texas

  Audi Alteram Partem

  “That’s Latin, ain’t it?” Jasper asked Miss Peach.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “‘Hear the other side.’”

  Chapter 4

  Harley was only in his fourth year of practicing law with Papa, but everybody in every courthouse knew Catfish Calloway. “Oh, you’re Catfish’s boy” was something he’d gotten used to. His name gave him immediate credibility with every judge he appeared before, whether his legal positions merited the trust or not. On those occasions where they didn’t, the judge’s face often told him “I expected better from Catfish’s boy.”

  He helped try some of Calloway & Calloway’s bigger cases. Papa called it riding shotgun, but Harley didn’t mind because that’s how he learned. He tried a few smaller cases on his own, but Papa relied on him more for his knowledge of the law, especially the law of evidence and procedure. For that, lack of experience didn’t matter. Harley argued all the law points in their cases.

  It was investigative work Papa’d sent him on this time. At Miss Jessie’s bawdy house, no one answered the door, so he decided to check the sheriff’s office for reports of Cicero. Then he ran into Papa, who said there was an inquest into a killing. He didn’t know who’d been killed yet, but he was worried it might be Cicero.

  A deputy said the inquest was in the first-floor courtroom of the McLennan County Court, so they headed there together.

  Justice of the Peace Gallagher was questioning a witness from the bench when they entered.

  He paused the interrogation. “Catfish, you and Harley know anything about this killing?”

  “No, Judge, just here to watch,” Papa answered.

  “All right, have a seat.”

  They took the right front bench in the spectator gallery. The woman in the witness chair was handsome though not quite pretty, probably in her late twenties. She was neatly dressed in a waist jacket and high-necked blouse with a large black bow. Her black hair lay curled and pinned beneath a straw boater. A slight accent gave her a certain elegance. The court reporter busily took down her testimony.

  Judge Gallagher, who also served as the acting coroner for McLennan County, had empaneled a coroner’s jury of six men. He usually gathered them from the town square in such situations; in murder cases, he wanted his inquest jury to see the body and couldn’t wait for the sheriff to issue summonses. They listened from the jury box. The bailiff and several police officers, keystone hats in hand, also listened. Police Sergeant Quinn stood, arms crossed, in front of the judge’s bench next to a cot with a body laid out, covered head to foot with a blanket.

  “Sorry for the interruption, Miss Rose,” Judge Gallagher said. “After you heard that gunshot, what did you do?”

  “I got my pistol and waited at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “Was anyone else with you?”

  “Yes, my assistant, Big Joe, and one of my other boarders, Miss Sadie.”

  Maybe her accent was French or Cajun.

  The judge took notes. “How many whores you got?”

  “I had five boarders until this h
appened.”

  Papa leaned over to Harley. “Must be Miss Jessie.”

  “Where were the others?” the judge asked.

  “Elsewhere.”

  The jurors appeared intent on the witness. The scratching of the court reporter’s pen on his pad and the humming of ceiling fans were the only noises in the room. Occasionally, on the street outside the open windows, a horse neighed or a trolley car clattered past.

  “What’d you do?”

  “We went upstairs to her room. We listened outside the door but didn’t hear anything.”

  She seemed quite at ease in front of a judge and jury. Most witnesses directed their answers to the one questioning them, as in a conversation. Miss Jessie seemed to understand her testimony was as much for the jury as the judge. It probably wasn’t her first time in a courtroom.

  “I knocked and called out her name,” she said, “but there was no answer.”

  “What’d you do then?”

  “We went inside.”

  “What’d you find?”

  “Miss Georgia was lying across the bed with blood all over her and the sheets.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Her eyes were wide open.” She turned from the judge to the jury. “She had a look of ineffable terror on her face.”

  Papa made a barely audible grumbling sound. Harley had studied his father many times and thought he knew all his courtroom habits and practices, but grumbling was something new. He probably felt frustrated that he couldn’t cross-examine this witness, like a horse he couldn’t ride, or a gun he couldn’t shoot, or a whiskey he couldn’t sip. Papa had made his reputation cross-examining prosecution witnesses. Careful observation of the witness was the key; he picked up every nuance, every subtle facial expression. Then, in his boyishly charming way, he would steal the stage from the witness. Harley had practiced the art of observation himself, but stage-stealing was another matter.

  Harley settled back in his chair.

  Judge Gallagher paused to finish writing something. “Step down, Miss Rose, and go over there to that cot. I’ll ask the officer to pull the blanket back just a bit for you.”

  The jurors all sat upright and craned their necks to see. Quinn pulled the blanket back just enough to reveal the face to the witness while blocking the view from the gallery. Papa leaned to see around him, but Harley couldn’t see a thing.