8

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

This chapter is dedicated to Niagaraweasle, who hoped for a "Florence Nightingale" scene between Christopher and Althea after the ballroom fight. I agreed, but my muse had other ideas and the scene that developed took a direction that probably is nothing close to what NW anticipated.

-SG

CHAPTER 7

St. Paul, Minnesota
Friday, August 14
1925

Nina strode over, followed by Louie, the bouncer, and belatedly, the two rent-a-cops. She handed Louie the shotgun and shook her finger under Christopher's nose.

"Are you out of your mind? What did you think you were doing, going bare knuckles with Tommy Jergensen? Don't you know he's Jack Dempsey's favorite sparring partner?"

"I couldn't let him-"

"Louie and I could've handled it. Now I've had to 86 one of my best customers."

She continued berating him, but Christopher wasn't listening. He was mulling over the fact that he'd KO-ed the Manassa Mauler's top sparring partner - someone who made his living trading punches with the man who'd worn the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship belt since 1919.

No wonder he hurt so damn bad.

"Christopher, he might have killed you," Althea said.

"I'm not so sure he didn't," Christopher said, the trace of whine creeping into his voice.

'That's it,' Chance sent. 'Milk it.'

'Huh?'

'Milk it. Make her think you're hurt worse than you are.'

'I am hurt worse than she thinks I am.'

'No you're not,' Chance sent. 'But women love fussing over a man when he's hurt. Pretend you're feeling weak and dizzy.'

'I am feeling weak and dizzy.'

'No, you're not. But say something so she'll know you're in pain but trying not to show it.'

'Like what?'

'Anything.'

Christopher brought his hand up to his brow. "Ooooh, me head."

'Now faint.'

'What? Men don't - '

Chance snatched control, sagged at the knees, and dropped to the floor in a heap.

"Oh, dammit!" Nina Clifford snapped. "Here we go again."

Althea knelt beside him, started to pat his cheek, then drew her hand back. "What should we do? Shouldn't we call a doctor?"

"What do you think, Louie?" Nina asked.

"Let's get him to a bed and see if he comes around. I'll see if I can find some smelling salts."

Nina turned to the bouncer and the rent-a-cops. "You boys help get him upstairs. Althea, go with him, see if you can coax him awake. Louie, fix a couple of ice-bags, too. I'll send Etta up with the first aid kit. Put him in Mazie's room again. I haven't replaced her yet."

Christopher played possum until the bouncer and rent-a-cops had settled him on the bed and departed. Althea plumped his pillow, then sat on the edge of the bed and picked up his hand. It was swollen and the knuckles scraped and bloody. His temple throbbed and his ribs hurt like hell. But Althea was holding his sore hand in her cool fingers and that made all the pain worthwhile.

"Christopher, are you awake?"

One eye was swollen almost shut. He gazed at her through the other. "Don't think I am," he said. "I'm dreamin' there's an angel sittin' at me bedside."

Etta came in, carrying a white metal box with a large red cross on it, and an ice-bag. She handed Althea the kit, then positioned the ice-bag under Christopher's cheek.

"That should feel better. Call me if you need anything else," she said and left the room.

Muttering to herself, Althea opened the first aid kit and rummaged through the contents. She removed a bottle of mercurochrome, tape and gauze, and a wad of cotton. She lined them up on the nightstand next to a glass container that looked like a candy dish but held a supply of condoms.

She didn't have the feather-light touch Christopher had imagined. It soon became apparent Althea had no gift whatsoever for doctoring injuries. After one or two dabs at his raw knuckles with the stinging mercurochrome she gingerly placed his hand back in the middle of his chest.

"I'm sorry. I can't do this. I can't bear the sight of blood. Fatima, our housekeeper, always took care of the bumps and scrapes my brothers came home with. Willa's, too. She was worse than the boys - " She gulped back a sob.

"There now, don't be thinkin' about it. Just sit there and look beautiful, and let me rest my poor sore eyes on ya."

Louie came in carrying another ice-bag and a tumbler full of an amber liquid that burned Christopher's throat like a brand. He gasped, choked and spluttered.

"What in blazes is that," he asked, squinting at the tumbler.

"Some of Nina's private stock. Figured it'd do you more good than smelling salts."

"If it doesn't kill me."

Althea handed Louie the mercurochrome. "Louie, I need to go change before I spill something and ruin Nina's dress. Will you help Christopher with this?"

Louie gave her a look, but said, "Sure thing, Miss Althea."

Louie made short work of applying salve he found in the kit, then loosely bandaging Christopher's hands. "So how bad are really hurt?" he asked.

"Not bad. Just sore."

"Uh-huh. You'll be peeing blood come morning, though."

"Wha'd he hit me with?"

"Champagne bottle. Full one. Good glass, though. Didn't break. Where'd you learn to fight like that?"

"YMCA."

"No, I don't mean the boxing. Way you box, you're damn lucky Jergensen didn't pound your face in. I mean the fancy stuff you used on the other guys."

'Where, exactly, did we learn that?' Christopher sent.

'Tell him Pinkerton Secret Agent school.'

"Pinkerton Secret Agent school."

"Bullshit." Louie dumped the medical supplies back into the first aid kit and closed it. "All right, don't tell me. But'chu get in any more fracases in here, all the boxing and 'secret agent' fighting in the world's not gonna keep Mrs. Clifford from having your ass for a foot-warmer."


St. Paul, Minnesota
Saturday, August 15
1925

"Whatcha gonna tell Mrs. Gustav when she sees that shiner?" Chance asked as Christopher dragged himself from bed the following morning.

They had tiptoed in around three A.M., stealthy as a husband sent to the corner store who stayed to play poker with the boys. Mrs. Gustav locked the doors at ten PM, but Christopher knew where she hid the spare key.

"That I got in a fight over a floozy in a whorehouse. Maybe then she'll keep her daughters away from me evil clutches for a while. Oooooch!" Chance winced along with him as Christopher tried to bend over to pull on his socks.

"They think you're cute," Chance said. "I heard them whispering your name and giggling."

Christopher groaned again as he pulled his suspenders into place. "Just don't encourage them. I live in fear that someday the three of them will ambush me and lock me naked in a cold, dark cellar until I agree to marry one of 'em."

"Or move to Utah and marry all three. At least you'd eat good, if they cook like their mother does. Hey, maybe you should marry Mrs. Gustav. That'd solve a whole bunch of problems."

"Saints preserve us."

After breakfast, with a raw beefsteak he'd cajoled from Mrs. Gustav pressed to his black eye, Christopher returned to his room. He was leafing one-handed through his mail when the telephone rang.

"Your shooter's here," Dan Hogan said. "Come have that chat you were wantin'."

Twenty minutes later, Chance and Christopher arrived at the Green Lantern.

Chance thought Willie "Banjo" Barnes was about the most unlikely looking paid assassin he'd ever seen, and said so.

"That's 'cause I ain't any assassin, paid or otherwise," the scrawny man in an ill-fitting suit said. "I'm a hotel thief. A second-story man."

And a smart one. Unlike Hogan, who'd burst into whoops of laughter when he saw Christopher's face, Barnes offered no comments on, or jokes about, black eyes. Every few minutes he reached for a water glass with both manacled hands, and drank noisily.

He probably weighed a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet, and stood maybe five-foot-nine. His long, narrow face sported a sparse new salt-and-pepper mustache and scraggily beard. His freshly shaved scalp gleamed with sweat. He plucked at a button on his vest that dangled by two or three threads, his gaze flitting from Hogan to Christopher to the two muscle-bound enforcers who'd removed him from the train, thrown him into a car, and frog-marched him into the Green Lantern.

"I never hurt anybody before, I swear it."

"You know you killed the wrong lady," Christopher said.

"Hell yes, I know - now. It was in all the papers. I can read. How was I supposed to know it was the sister?"

"A sixteen year old schoolgirl," Christopher said, his voice dripping icicles.

Banjo cringed in his seat. "It wasn't supposed to happen that way. I'm sorry, okay?"

"It wouldn't have happened at all if you'd followed the Code," Dan Hogan said. "You know you'll be servin' life for this. Damn shame they abolished the death penalty."

"I wouldn't've done it 'cept the sheba's husband swore there wouldn't be no heat. Said he had connections. Well, I'm not gonna take the fall alone. He paid me. That makes him as guilty as I am, even if he did only give me half of what he promised. Loaned me the gun, too."

Dan Hogan leaned forward across his desk. "Can you prove to me Humphrey Macklin hired you?"

"Why should I? This ain't no court of law."

"Pretend it is," Christopher said in a whisper that made Chance almost feel sorry for Barnes.

"What becomes of you," Hogan said, "largely depends on what I and my associates decide to do. Cooperate, tell the truth, and you'll get a nice cozy cell at Bayport. Maybe even parole. Dummy up, and I'll turn you over to those gentlemen for a nice long ride out of town and some brand new cement overshoes. Macklin gets away Scot-free."

Like hell he will, Christopher thought, but kept silent while Banjo considered his options.

"I got no witnesses," Banjo finally said. "He didn't want a middle-man. I still got the gun. Damn cheapskate didn't even put bullets in it, and tol' me to give it back when the job was done. I kept it 'cause I'm still waiting for what he owes me." Manacles clinked as he set the empty glass on Hogan's desk. "Can I have some more water please?"

"What kind of gun," Chance asked.

"One-a them Colt's automatics. Don't like 'em much, they jam too easy, but this one's a sweetheart. You wanna see it? It's right here-"

As Banjo twisted to reach his coat pocket, the two enforcers leaped to grab him. At the same moment, Hogan shoved his chair backward. He collided with the enforcers, tumbling all three men and his chair to the floor. Christopher lunged across Hogan's desk to snag Banjo's cuffed wrists. The enforcers scrambled up and the sound of revolvers cocking brought the melee to a stand-still. One of the enforcers helped Hogan to his feet.

"What's the matter with you two?" Hogan shouted. "You don't know enough to frisk a guy before you bring him in here?"

"We figured the guys who had him already did," one of the enforcers said, his voice a whine. "They came all the way from Ogden with him." He picked up Hogan's chair, very gently set it down, and dusted off the seat with his handkerchief.

"Could be one of us ought to search him again," Christopher murmured, then coughed to hide the snigger Chance couldn't repress.

"You do it," Hogan said, tugging on his lapels to straighten his coat. "I don't trust these two ijits to find the damn outhouse on a hot day."

Christopher reached into Banjo's coat pocket and withdrew a small nickel-plated Colt's .38 automatic. It was a beautiful gun, the frame intricately engraved, pale ivory grips. He whistled in admiration. After removing the clip and checking for a round in the chamber, he sniffed the barrel.

"Hasn't been cleaned. Shame to treat such a sweet little tickler so bad."

"The problem is," Dan Hogan continued as if the interruption had never happened, "he could have gotten that gun anywhere. And how do we know it's the gun used on Willa Miller?"

"Ask Macklin if it ain't his gun," Banjo said. "Hell, ask the wife. He said she gave it to him, to scare off bank robbers. Thought using it to bump her off was funny as hell."

It should be simple enough to demonstrate, Chance thought. He was no ballistics specialist; his expertise lay in eliminating evidence, not preserving it. But he knew as much as any regular viewer of true crime television shows about matching marks on cartridges and slugs to the gun that fired them. He wasn't sure how far the science had progressed by 1925, but as Banjo said, this wasn't a court of law. All they had to do was nudge Dapper Dan in the right direction.

"You can look at the marks on the brass from test-rounds fired from this gun," he said, hoping no one noticed Christopher's brogue had disappeared. "Compare them with the shell-casings at the crime scene. If the marks match, you've got your murder weapon."

He got the impression Christopher was following him with sudden interest, but was met with blank stares from the enforcers, Hogan, and Banjo. Where was CSI when you needed them?

Chance tried again. "If I can show you marks on the ejected cartridges from Willa's bedroom that match marks on cartridges we shoot with Macklin's gun, will it be proof enough it's the gun Banjo here used?"

Dan Hogan rubbed his jaw. "I think I read something about that. Article in the Saturday Evening Post. A month or two ago…."

'I saw that, too,' Christopher sent, then said aloud "'Fingerprinting Bullets'. Talks about how the Bureau of Forensic Ballistics in New York is workin' to provide firearms identification services for cities that don't have their own facilities."

"Show me those marks," Hogan said, "and I'll be satisfied."

'Christopher,' Chance sent, 'where's the brass from the crime scene?'

… … … … … …

"The mother wouldn't let my men into the girl's bedroom after the body was removed," St. Paul Police Lieutenant Swenson told Hogan over the telephone. "Even so, why pick up spent cartridges?"

"Fingerprints!" Hogan slammed the receiver back into its hook.

"We need to get those cartridges before they're lost," Christopher said. "Hogan, come with us - me, so you'll know we're collecting the shells from Willa's room."

"I'll do that. Just let me help Tweedledum and Tweedledee put this boy-o on ice."

Hogan shooed Barnes and the enforcers ahead of him out a side exit from his office.

"Call Althea's parents," Chance said. "Tell them not to let anyone touch Willa's room 'til we get there."

Grabbing one of the telephones on Hogan's desk, Christopher vigorously jiggled the receiver hook to summon the operator.

"Hello, Central? Central, get me the Whitney Miller residence on Dayton Avenue. Yes, St. Paul."

Chance viewed the process with captivated interest. He'd seen cross-town telephone calls made by telephone operators in movies about the gangster era, but never expected to witness the complicated task first hand.

After a time, Christopher hung up. "No answer."

"We've got to get over there," Chance said. "Where's Hogan?"

"Right here, me lad." Hogan returned through the side door just in time to hear his name. "I'll have me car brought around-"

"Mine's right out front," Christopher said. "C'mon."