Authors: Howard McEwen
“That’s where you come in, Mr. Gibb,” said my boss, Prescott Carmichael.
I looked to him hoping my look asked the question for me. It did.
“You have connections there and know people… from working on the subway with your father. You know how they live, how they think and a bit of their German, no?”
I nodded. I had no desire to cross into Over-the-Rhine looking for Otto the Kraut and a runaway American heiress. Then again, like I said, I was bored.
“I’ll need something to go on? You know any of Otto’s family, addresses, anything?”
“No,” said Mr. Firebridge.
“You have the late Mr. Heinrich’s address?”
“No. Why would I?”
“I don’t know. In case his son ran off with your notebook and daughter?”
Mr. Firebridge gruffed. Mr. Carmichael frowned. I continued.
“Tell me about Otto.”
“Typical Kraut. He showed up for work, put in a hard day, did what he was told without questions. They’re not really a free thinking people—especially the Catholic varieties. They’ve not much experience with freedom. I never met his mother or any other family—just his father. I know they lived in Over-the-Rhine but no idea where.”
“How about your daughter? Tell me about her.”
“She’s pretty enough but not too bright. I’ve spoiled her and it shows. She’s twenty-two but acts thirteen—except in her sex-life. She goes through men like I go through toothpicks. She’s about five two, blonde, medium build. Fair skin.”
“Any habits or interests?”
“Besides men?”
“Besides men.”
“She’s a vegetarian. She has been for a while.”
“Vegetarian?”
“Yeah. No meat. She does whatever that flake Dr. Kellogg writes.”
“The cereal guy?”
“Yeah. She eats wheat and grass and oats. She’s more careful about the food she puts into her mouth than the men she brings into her bed.”
Mr. Firebridge seemed to get lost in his thoughts. Mr. Carmichael left him there and spoke to me.
“Would you mind taking a trip into Over-the-Rhine to see if you could find Miss Firebridge and Mr. Firebridge’s notebook?”
I knew it wasn’t a question.
“Of course not.”
Mr. Firebridge gave me a picture of his daughter. The face was prettier than her father lead me to believe. She was a bit vapid looking, but I’m sure she turned a head or two.
Mr. Firebridge thanked Mr. Carmichael—he didn’t thank me—and left our offices.
“When do you want me to start looking?”
“No time like the present.”
“She’ll probably turn up as soon as Otto’s money runs out.”
“Most likely.”
“Or as soon as she tires of the smell of Over-the-Rhine.”
“I’ll let you know if she does.”
So he wasn’t letting me off the hook.
I turned, left Mr. Carmichael’s office, picked up my hat, put it on and stepped out onto the sidewalk. As soon as I headed north, I ran into a familiar fat man with a familiar ugly face.
“Hey Jake, you don’t look the worse for wear after last night”
He was smiling, but his ugly eyes were still cruel.
“Hello, Pox.”
Those eyes darted from my face to the top of my head.
“This is not good, Jake,” he said earnestly.
“What’s not good? I’m square with Bill.”
“It’s not good that you’re wearing Polly’s hat.
Damn, I thought.
“I saw her win it last night, Jake. I took her home for the boss. I saw her carry it into her building. I stayed on the street until I saw her apartment lights turn on. I know she don’t get up until after lunch, Jake. Here it is, ten in the morning, and you’re wearing her hat.”
He had me.
“Drop it, Pox.”
“No, I can not drop it, Jake. I am loyal to the boss. I am not handsome, Jake. I am not too bright. You know what I am? I am loyal. That is why I am a valued employee to Mr. McGinn, Jake.”
Pox gave me a hard right jab just above my belt buckle.
I felt my gut implode. My bowels loosened. I caught control of them—barely. My bladder not so much. The front of my pants damped a bit. Pox pulled back his sledgehammer of a fist. It was the only thing holding me up. I hit the sidewalk.
“I figured you for stupid but not this stupid, Jake. That punch is from me and the hell I will be catching from the boss for not watching Polly closer. I’ll fill him in later today on this situation. If he says you’re dead, you're dead. You know why? Because I am loyal and what the boss says goes. Have a good day, Jake.”
I got to my feet and looked toward the office. Neither Mr. Carmichael or Mrs. Johnson noticed. There was no one else on the street I cared about either. A shoe shine boy caught the scene, but no one would listen to him. I walked into a hotel lobby, found the john and let fly with what Pox had loosened. I finished, slapped some water on my face, over-tipped the attendant and headed straight for Over-the-Rhine. Bill McGinn’s anger could be felt across the Ohio in Newport but not in Over-the-Rhine. A name like McGinn carries no weight there. I’d be safe there.
I walked north six blocks and was stopped in my tracks when I came to the cross street. I flicked the stub of my cigarette into its gutter. It’s a broad, beautiful boulevard the city dubbed Central Parkway. Unlike the narrow streets to the south, this street lets in the sun. A series of newly planted elms stand every fifty feet down the median. Someday they’ll stand tall and offer shade, but in the here and now they’re choked by the exhaust of the Chevys and Fords and Durants buzzing by on each side. It’s the first time in my life I’ve crossed Central Parkway into Over-the-Rhine. The city opened the street last fall, but the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood doesn’t hold anything for an American like me. Plus, I hate this street. I hate the very idea of it.
When I was a little kid, the street was a disease spreading ditch called the Miami and Erie Canal. It started up in Toledo and brought traffic from Lake Erie across Ohio to Cincinnati and the Ohio River. Railroads knocked the canal out of business. By the time I was a boy, it’d become a faux river serving as a dump that stunk up the city. The canal was the ‘Rhine’ that the German immigrants crossed to and from their homes north of the canal to their jobs on the south side of the canal—in the city. This ‘Rhine’ separated good, Anglo-American Cincinnati from the Germans that lived ‘Over-the-Rhine.’
By my teens, someone had the bright idea to drain it, lay down some tracks, cover it and give Cincinnati a subway. My dad was a foreman for the company building said subway, which meant I spent all my time after school and in the summers working for him. I spent too many damned hot days climbing into that ditch to work alongside crews of Micks and Krauts, but mostly Krauts. I dug with them, I poured concrete with them, I sweated with them. They gave me my first beer, my first decent sausage and taught me a bit of their language. Then at the end of the day, they went to their neighborhood and Dad and I went to ours.
Eventually, like all government projects, the costs got too high and then Mr. Ford’s Model T came along. It let people move out of the city, away from the stench and into open spaces and fresh air. They still needed to come into the city to work, but they sure as hell didn’t want to be squashed into a box and sent underground. If they wanted that, they’d have moved to the east coast. The city finally pulled the plug on the subway, they topped over the ditch, made it a road and tossed my dad out of his job.
Dad worked thirteen years on that subway. He got a paycheck, sure, but a man needs more. He needs to be able to point to something and say, ‘I did that.’ For those thirteen years? He had nothing to point to. He works in a factory now. He hates it. I hate this street that was used to hide his work.
Now even though the canal was gone, the Over-the-Rhine name has stuck. I’d rarely gone into Over-the-Rhine when working on the subway—mother didn’t approve—but on the occasional Friday when I had some pay in my pocket and when boredom had overtaken me, I’d agree to go have beers with some of those German boys. Usually, it was a guy named Karl who took me to his dad’s bar.
“Can an American get served in this place?” I taunted Karl.
Karl looked up. He recognized me but didn’t want to be too enthusiastic about it.
“We’re all Americans in here, Jake.”
“There were fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence. Not one Kraut among them. They were all my people—Englishmen and Scots.
I felt eyes boring into me. Karl and I had picked up where we’d left off ten years ago.
“Sit the hell down, Jake. Let me get you a real German beer. What brings you to Over-the-Rhine?”
“A girl.”
“A girl?
“And a man.”
“A man? This is a family bar, Jake.”
“No. I’m looking for a man and woman. She’s American, he’s one of you.”
“We’re all Americans.”
“Keep thinking that.”
“How’s your beer?”
“Like I remember.”
“When you become a man, you’ll like it. What’s the name of the man?”
“Otto Heinrich. About twenty-two.”
“I don’t know him. Got anything else?”
“The American girl. Pretty. Blonde. Eats oats?”
“Oats?”
“Yeah. Doesn’t eat meat. She’s a disciple of Dr. Kellogg’s. Up in Michigan. You know the guy?”
“Yeah, he’s in the papers. I see his cereal in the stores. If this Heinrich is going to feed this American mare, then he’ll have to go to Koch’s on Republic. He sells that stuff. He says it’s healthy. I don’t see anything healthy about not eating sausage and drinking beer. They make a man strong.”
“Agreed. Which block on Republic?”
“Fifteen hundred. Another beer?”
“No thanks, I’m still chewing my first one.”
Koch’s window was filled with posters of bright faced blonde children running in wheat fields and forests. The boys wore lederhosen and the girls wore dirndls. They looked strong and healthy. Inside, there were jars of grains and cereals and some greens and nothing much else except some crazy looking contraptions I was afraid to ask about.
I slapped down the picture of Doris Firebridge. The man behind the counter, who I took for Koch, looked down and muttered something in German.
“Don’t give me that. You know her?”
More German.
I jabbed my finger at the picture and spoke louder.
“Otto Heinrich. This girl. See them?”
More German.
I reached into my breast pocket and pulled out my wallet. I laid a twenty dollar bill on the counter. Grover Cleveland’s profile winked at me. He looked at it and picked it up.
“They’ve come in the last three days right before closing,” he said.
“When’s closing?”
“Four o’clock.”
“You have their address?”
“No. No deliveries. They come here.”
I looked at my watch. I had some time to kill.
“That twenty buys you keeping quiet, got it? You tell them I’m here and I’ll smash your front window. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it, mister.”
There was a bar across the street. In Over-the-Rhine, there’s always a bar across the street. I walked in and got all the eyes on me. I don’t know if it was my clothes or my American-ness. I ordered another beer and sat by the front window waiting.
I’d finally made my way to the bottom of the glass when I saw the young Ms. Firebridge strutting down the sidewalk earning herself a few backward glances from the men she passed. She was followed by a sheep dog with its head down that could only have been one Otto Heinrich. They didn’t look like runaway love birds to me. She looked like a pretty prima donna. He looked like a dog that chased cars, finally caught one and now didn’t know what to do with it.
Through the bar window across the street and through Koch’s poster covered window, I eyeballed Lady Firebridge parading around the store pointing to items. Herr Koch ran to each, measured out whatever it was, bagged it and placed it on a counter. When she was done, young Heinrich was the one that reached into his coat pocket, brought out his wallet and paid. He shook his head while doing so.
That’s the one thing I learned working for Mr. Carmichael—the rich don’t pay for anything. When joining them for drinks or dinner, just know you’re going to be stuck with the bill.
I hopped across the street and was there when Koch opened the door for both of them.
“Hi, Doris,” I said.
I surprised her but not for long. She was young but confident in a way that only beauty and being born into money can give a woman.
“And you are?”
“Jake Gibb. Your father sent me.”
“Who is this?” Otto muttered. His accent told me he was born in the new world but was of the old world.
We both ignored him.
“Tell my father I’m an adult and not interested in him or what he has to offer.”
“I don’t think your father is too interested in you anymore. He’d mostly like his notebook back. Otto here took it.”