The Sporting House Killing: A Gilded Age Legal Thriller

by G. Reading Powell

  “A salesman? Maybe so. Shall we go to your room now?”

  They went down a hallway to Miss Sadie’s bedroom. Thankfully, neither Miss Jessie nor anyone else were around.

  Miss Peach kept up the small talk as she measured Sadie. “You’re a very nice person, Sadie, and I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Well, you know how I make my wages, don’t you?”

  “One has to work, right? I’m sure it’s thrilling to do what you do.”

  Sadie’s face showed it wasn’t. “You think I like this life?”

  “If you don’t enjoy it, why do you do it?”

  She laughed. “You ever hungry, lady?”

  The only way she would gain Sadie’s confidence was by playing along. “Sometimes.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Well, I have a meal.” She stretched a cloth tape measure around Sadie’s waist.

  “How you get food?”

  “I buy it.”

  “So you got money to buy food?”

  She wrote down a measurement and then looked up at Sadie. “I see what you’re getting at. But why don’t you just do something else?”

  Sadie laughed even louder. “Listen, when you get hungry, you work. You go to that fancy department store and sell dresses and such to other fine ladies.” She tossed her hand in the air. “You sell your clothes to whoever wants them. But for me, I sell the only thing I got people will pay money for.”

  Miss Peach made a show of concern. But it was genuine. “Don’t you have family?”

  “Not much of one,” Sadie said with a snicker.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My daddy died when I was young, and Momma married a goddamned good-for-nothing. He beat me, and he took me whenever he got tired of Momma. He had boys from some other damn woman, and they was mean and trashy, and they took me too.”

  “Oh, my. How old were you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She truly was. “What’d you do?”

  “I just went along with it till I couldn’t no more, and then I run off one night.”

  “I had no idea. How long have you been with Miss Jessie?”

  “A year.”

  She was startled by a knock at the door and a husky male voice. “Miss Sadie?”

  “Come on in,” Sadie said.

  The door opened just enough for Big Joe to lean in. “You got a gentleman waiting on you.” He eyed Miss Peach.

  “Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Yes’m.”

  Joe didn’t leave. The door creaked as he pushed a little further into the room. He loomed over the women with his thick chest and powerful arms. He smelled bad. One eyelid drooped, but the other eye crept slowly up and down the length of Miss Peach.

  “You a whore?”

  “Oh no,” she stammered. “I’m from Sanger Brothers.”

  “I thought you said Goldstein’s,” Sadie said.

  “I just started at Goldstein-Migel. I’d been at Sanger’s before that.” She craned up to address Big Joe and managed a smile. “I’m fitting Miss Sadie for a gown.”

  He grunted andleft.

  Oh, my.

  “Don’t mind him,” Sadie said. “Joe’s all right as long as you don’t cross him.”

  “He seems nice enough.” She collected herself and glanced around the room. Though the whole sorry business was squalid, Sadie’s room was quite clean and not unpleasant. Some things weren’t that different from her own. Sadie had an ivory-handled mirror and brush on her table. “It seems like a very nice place to be.”

  “Nice?” Sadie shrugged. “It pays. That’s all I care about.”

  “I haven’t ever been inside a . . . boarding house before. To be honest with you,” she added sheepishly, “I wasn’t expecting something like this. It’s very elegant.”

  Never mind the art, the red velvet upholstery, the perfume, and the brute.

  “Better than most. No fleas, not many rats, no holes in the roof, and you don’t have to squat in a shit-stinking outhouse. I worked in worse.”

  “Miss Jessie must be well-to-do.”

  “Well, the owner is, anyway.”

  Miss Peach’s foot began to tap. “She isn’t the owner?”

  “Oh no, she’s just the madam.”

  “Who’s the owner, then?” She hoped Sadie wouldn’t be scared off by more direct questions.

  “Some rich gent owns it. I don’t ever see him, just hear her talk about him to Joe. She calls him the boss.” She straightened up her nightgown. “Anyway, you about done measuring on me? I got a paying customer.”

  ***

  Catfish lit up a White Owl and propped his feet on the law office table, eager for their reports. “Miss Peach, what’d you find out?”

  Her big brown eyes fluttered. “I’m a better stenographer than spy.”

  She could even employ modesty deftly. Rose Greenhow couldn’t hold a candle to Miss Peach.

  “Did they discover you?” Harley asked.

  “No, no, nothing like that. But I’m not sure I learned anything important. Miss Jessie was out, and Big Joe made only a brief appearance. I met with Sadie. An unfortunate girl. She’s led a hard life. I don’t think she had anything to do with Georgia’s death, but she might know more than I was able to find out from her.”

  Catfish blew a smoke ring at the ceiling fan and watched it disperse above him. “What’d you find out about the bald fella?”

  “Sadie calls him Winky-Blinky, but his real name is Bill. She didn’t know his family name. They call him that because he winks and blinks his eyes all the time—you remember Jasper said the bald man winked?”

  Catfish nodded. Wouldn’t be hard to find a winker.

  “Sadie said he’s a drummer but didn’t tell me what he peddles. She said he never pays cash for a visit. Miss Jessie just records it in a ledger.”

  Sporting on credit wasn’t the usual course of business. Bill probably wasn’t his real name. “Harley, maybe somebody over at the TPA knows him. Why don’t you ask around at Post H and see if anybody knows a bald drummer named Bill who’s got an eye twitch?”

  “Right.” Harley made a note.

  “What’s the TPA?” Miss Peach asked.

  Catfish tapped his cigar over the spittoon. “Travelers Protective Association. Sort of a cross between a fraternal order and a trade association for traveling salesmen. Big outfit all over the country.”

  “They had a convention here the week of the murder,” Harley added.

  “Sadie and I talked about him and about Georgia’s death,” Miss Peach said. “She didn’t act like he had anything to do with it. I think she would’ve spoken differently if she feared he was the killer.”

  “Maybe.” Catfish tilted his head. “On the other hand, if he’s somebody important and he did have something to do with the killing, she’d likely keep it to herself.”

  “Even if he’s not the killer,” Harley added, “he might know something or have seen something.”

  Catfish was anxious to hear what they learned about the madam. She was the key to the case. “Let’s talk about Miss Jessie.”

  Harley pulled some papers from his case. “Let me jump in here a minute.” He unfolded one, which appeared to be a telegram. “I heard back from my friend in Orleans Parish. He didn’t know of any whores named Jessie Rose.”

  “Well, that’s a big place. Maybe she used a different name there.” Catfish turned to Miss Peach. “Sadie tell you anything about the madam?”

  She nodded. “Like you suspected, Miss Jessie doesn’t own the house. A man does, but Sadie didn’t know his name, or at least she didn’t tell me. She told me the owner is well-to-do and Miss Jessie calls him ‘Boss.’ He clearly wasn’t Winky-Blinky, though.”

  Catfish sat up. A rich owner made sense. He smelled a killer. “He’s more than just a landlord if Jessie calls him ‘Boss.’ And that explains how she’s able to afford the house after only a year in town.”


  Harley looked puzzled. “How do you know she’s only been here a year?”

  “Made a call at the city secretary’s office this morning. The bawdy house register shows she was a prostitute last year and a madam this year. She wasn’t in the 1892 city directory or bawdy house register at all, so if she was here then, she wasn’t set up yet. Somehow in one year she went from a working girl to running her own house—and a fancy one at that.” He eyed them both. “Some rich fella’s backing her.”

  “Why are you so interested in who owns the house?” Harley asked.

  “Miss Jessie’s hiding something, but she didn’t kill Georgia herself.”

  “Why do you say that?” Miss Peach asked.

  “Doesn’t make sense Jessie’d kill one of her own girls. For running the place, she probably gets a cut of the total take, makes as much money off her girls as she does herself. And besides, if she did kill Georgia for some reason—or if Big Joe did, or Miss Sadie—they’d probably just dump her body in the river and let somebody find it downriver, far away from the sporting house. Leaving her there and calling the police wouldn’t make sense.”

  He rose and paced around the worktable. Killers lied, but just as often they got their underlings to lie for them. She was protecting the money man, and poor Cicero was how she was doing it. There wasn’t any other explanation. Find the boss, find the killer. But if he wasn’t Winky-Blinky, who?

  He stopped pacing. “Anything else, Miss Peach?”

  “No, sir. That’s all. Sorry I couldn’t find out more.”

  “Thanks, darlin’, good work.” Needed to give her a raise in pay. He turned to Harley. “I expect we should track down who actually owns that building.”

  Harley smiled and reached for another paper from his case. “I might already know who he is.”

  That’s my boy. “Who?”

  “I found an article in the Evening News back in March of last year, and I copied it.” Harley read it to his father. “‘The three-story brick building in the Reservation, occupied by Josie Bennett, was destroyed by fire between the hours of two and three o’clock this morning. The framework of the building is a total loss, but the walls remain standing. It was the property of W. R. Orman—’”

  Catfish tensed. Orman?

  “—and was insured for $5,000 in the following companies: North British, $3,000; Dockery & Co. Agency. $2,000, Phoenix of London; J. H. Sturgis & Co. Agency. The insurance on the building covered the loss. The insurance on the furniture will not cover the loss. Most of the inmates of the establishment were out of the building at the time the fire broke out.’”

  Some things didn’t make sense. “The sporting girls were gone at three in the morning?”

  “That’s what the article said.”

  “That building was three stories, but Jessie’s is only two,” Catfish said. “Why do you think it’s the same one?”

  “I drove through the Reservation after I left the paper. There’s only one other brick house, and it’s on Second Street across the creek. It’s a two-story too, but it doesn’t look as though it was burned in a fire. I figure they cut Jessie’s place down to a two-story after the fire. Some of the top-story walls might have crumbled from lack of support.”

  “Probably right.” He couldn’t hold it back any longer. “And the rest of the article makes sense too.”

  “What do you mean?” Harley asked.

  “W. R. Orman is Bud Orman.” Harley apparently didn’t recognize the name. “Never heard of him?”

  Harley seemed uncertain.

  “He’s in real estate, and he owns most of those run-down sporting houses on the alley near Miss Jessie’s. I’ve even heard it called Orman’s Alley. I’d forgotten all about him until now.”

  He scratched his head, knocking his locks over his forehead, and looked from Harley to Miss Peach. He smiled. “And then there’s one more thing.”

  “What’s that?” Harley asked.

  “Bud Orman’s a convicted murderer.”

  Chapter 14

  Harley settled at his desk facing the colonel and Papa, who were together on the floor, an empty bowl nearby. Papa had a cigar hanging from his mouth, and a trail of smoke drifted up until the fan caught it. Miss Peach’s typewriter rattled away through the open door between the reception area and their inner office.

  Harley spread his notes out before him. “You were right about Bud Orman. I did some checking in the county records, and he was convicted not only once but twice.”

  William R. Orman, known around town as Bud, was a tinsmith by trade but had engaged in a number of different enterprises over his many years in Waco: gambler, saloonkeeper, land trader. He’d owned the Kentucky Saloon on Second Street at the time he was involved in the murder; since then, he’d operated in the skin trade, owning a number of bawdy houses between Washington Avenue and Barron’s Creek.

  “Do you know him personally?” Harley asked.

  “Met him once, and followed his trials in the newspaper, of course. Scrawny little fella, maybe about forty or fifty. Likable enough on the surface, but if you scratch him a little, you find a cheat. Scratch deeper, you find a liar. Go all the way to bone, you find a skunk.”

  Papa raised his head to blow smoke upward, then went back to watching the hound dog enjoy a good belly rub. That was Papa’s way—to chew on facts until they were well digested. Colonel Terry and a White Owl both seemed to aid his catabolism.

  “Remind me about the murder,” he added.

  Harley glanced back at the news article. “It was in ’85. He shot a hack driver named Bud Houghston.”

  “Oh yes, Bud Houghston.” Then Papa snickered. “Probably needed killing anyway.”

  Houghston had claimed Orman was spreading a lie about him sleeping with a colored madam named Annie Brown, so Houghston told people Orman’s mother and sister prostituted themselves to colored men. This little feud went on for a day or two until Orman shot him in broad daylight while he was driving his hack down the street. The state tried Orman the first time and the jury found him guilty, but the court of appeals reversed it. They tried him again, and the second jury found him guilty. That got reversed too. The third time around, the jury acquitted him.

  “If I recall,” Papa said, “George Clark represented him in that case. No wonder he won on appeal.”

  Harley nodded. “Judge Clark was one of his lawyers on the appeal, but maybe you forgot. It was Captain Blair who defended him in the first trial.”

  “No, really? Tom Blair . . . Isn’t that something?” Papa had a big grin. “I bet our county attorney won’t appreciate the irony if his old client turns up being involved in this murder too.”

  “Herring and Kelley were also in the first two trials. He hired every lawyer in sight. They did a good job. They convinced that third jury he wasn’t guilty.”

  “The jurors probably heard the judges in Austin didn’t think Orman was guilty. That’s cockeyed, isn’t it? First time I’ve ever heard Austin folks utter a kind word for anybody in Waco, and it’s Bud Orman, of all people.” Papa paused in thought. “He have any other trouble with the law?”

  “One other criminal case. It was against his brother, who apparently didn’t care for the woman Bud married. This was his second marriage in ’89. The brother—his name is Richard—hit the woman with a brick, and Bud filed assault charges against him.”

  “Assault with a deadly brick, huh?” Papa grinned and reached for the colonel’s floppy ears. “Colonel, that’s a disagreeable family, and you ought to be thankful you’re not theirs.”

  Colonel Terry arched one eye open but quickly closed it again.

  Harley flipped through his notes for another case. “And there’s a few civil cases he filed. You’ll be interested in this one.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He sued two whores.”

  “For what?”

  “For rent money.” Harley shrugged and grinned. “On the bawdy house Miss Jessie runs now.”

  �
�No?” Papa’s eyes widened. “You telling the truth? He sued Miss Jessie?”

  “Not her.”

  Papa looked confused.

  “Let me back up a little. A couple of years ago, he built that house and rented it to a whore named Josie Bennett.”

  “Josie? You think the paper got it wrong and it was actually Jessie?”

  “No, it was Josie for sure. She turned madam, but then for some reason sold her lease to another madam named Ada Davenport. In March of last year the place burned, as the newspaper article said. The same day as the fire, Josie sued Ada for the loss of her furniture. The madams had some insurance on the furniture but not enough. Orman’s security in the lease was the furniture, which burned up of course. They couldn’t pay Bud the rent they owed, and he didn’t have the furniture to foreclose on. So he sued them. Ada had moved on to Fort Worth by then. This lawsuit is still pending in county court.”

  “So Miss Ada moved on to Fort Worth …”

  Harley nodded.

  “What became of Miss Josie?”

  “According to the city directory, she’s now boarding in a place just around the corner from the house, on First Street.”

  “It’s peculiar, Colonel.” Papa scratched the dog’s head before turning back to Harley. “You might pay her a call and see what she knows about Miss Jessie and Bud Orman.”

  Another visit to a bawdy house. He could still smell the perfume from the first. “Right—oh, and daylight, Papa?”

  “Daylight, son.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The colonel let out a moan about that time. Papa rubbed the hound’s head vigorously with both hands, eyed something on his chin, and pulled the colonel’s jowls back to inspect him more closely.

  “Look at that,” he said. “He’s got some gray hair.”

  Harley laughed. “Are you surprised? He’s been with you too long.”

  “May be.”

  Papa went back to thinking and scratching. Harley sighed.

  He was ready to go see Miss Josie, but Papa hadn’t moved.

  “What’d you find in the deed records?” Papa asked eventually.