The Pinkerton Files Five-Book Bundle (15 page)

I never liked this city. The people are like dogs that can't decide who to bite first.

William led me to two rail cars he reserved for us. They were connected by a shared doorway. My car was both a sleeper and an office. It was more than I needed for a trip to Chicago.

Police files were piled on a desk beneath the window. Clothes and personal effects, confiscated after my arrest for passing bad cheques, sat in a box on the floor.

I rummaged through the items and found that police had returned the money I swindled before getting caught. My case was in limbo so my property was restored. There were four thousand dollars in my jacket.

Our train launched into the tangled Union Station exchange. William entered my room, leaving the door open so I could see the difference between our accommodations. A stocked liquor cabinet was open. Porters cleaned his pistols. Meat sizzled on a burner out of sight.

“All the information is on the desk.” He said. “It's not a complicated case.”

“What case?”

“A bank was robbed in Geneva, on the western edge of Illinois.”

“Isn't there enough work in the cities? Pinkertons aren't often seen on the frontier.”

“My Father negotiated the contract himself.”

“I'm not going to Geneva.” I said.

“That's true. I will be at Geneva. You are going to Helena in Montana.”

Our train emerged from the exchange. Walls rattled as the track unhitched. We dropped to a lower level and clattered into the back of another train, connecting for the journey.

“I will do no such thing.” I said. “If Robert is in custody, my partner will need help.”

“The black one?”

“Ray. Yes.”

William walked to my desk. He thumbed through papers and stared out the window.

“You will go where I tell you” He said. “If you don't like it, Ryker's Island is waiting.”

Something caught his eye through the window. We were approaching an interchange. William crossed the room again and stood in the connecting doorway.

“As for your partner, you wouldn't find him in Norwalk anyway.”

Breath squeezed out of my lungs like a bellows. The air pressure in my cabin dropped as the seal between our cars split open. William stepped back to his room. The platform under our cars rotated in separate directions. Our train split in two.

“Ray was captured by William Hunt and taken back south.”

I ran, hoping to get a hand on William before he lifted away. When I reached the door, my car was already bolted to a slum market on a train headed for Montana. This was William's salute. He sent me to the wilds of the United States, against my will, tied to a barrio.

As an employee of the Pinkerton Agency, any damage my room sustained would be billed back to the Chicago office. I trashed car.

A crowd gathered to watch. They smiled and laughed, having a swell time. I hunched over with my hands on my knees. One of the onlookers made a joke of offering me a drink.

“Get back!” I said.

I leered at the mob and my eyes settled on a small man at the back. His face was obscured by tattoos, just like the person who sold Ray his counterfeit slave papers. Contraband dealers with tattoos like that are common on poorer trains. The peddlers look so much alike that, on rare occasions when police round them up to investigate a crime, it is a chore to tell them apart.

The crowd broke up. He was gone. The act of looking had caused him to disappear.

I sat on the floor of my broken room. There was nothing to do but read the case file.

The crime took place in Geneva. It was a thriving frontier town, home to five thousand people. Rich soil kept farmers in business. Deep coal mines brought new investors in a steady stream. Geneva attracted rail companies, pioneer families and adventure seekers.

The only people who weren't welcome were slave traders. Geneva was the last free territory in the west.

Like all successful towns, its core businesses supported a mix of other activities. Geneva had a school, which was open to all children within its limits. Various shops, mills and warehouses were stocked and busy. Though it was sparsely attended, a modest theatre presented shows twice a week. It is a model of what can be achieved by hardy families.

No such progress would have been possible if not for the presence of a reliable bank. True to form for Geneva, its bank operated out of the same wooden building as it did when the first farmers came looking for credit over fifty years ago. It was a modest outfit but people could trust their money to its vault.

This was the sort of case the Pinkertons always did well. The old man respects the importance of a bank. If it was odd for him to come this far just to secure a contract, it was not at all unusual for him to help a bank get its money back.

On June 22nd of this year, just after six o'clock in the evening, the town was shutting down. Cattle herders brought their stock to market that day so a number of large deposits had been made. Only two clerks remained; Eugene Pearson and Grace Patton.

They were filing receipts when a knock on the door signalled one final customer to be served. Ms. Patton was closest but Eugene Pearson waved her away. She had a chronic respiratory illness and often suffered from fatigue.

Pearson opened the door and was pushed straight back by a man in grimy overalls. The intruder's face was covered by a wide strip of torn denim and smears of black grease around the eyes. A second thief hurried in behind, dressed the same.

Pearson pedalled back. Patton screeched then heaved forward, wheezing for air. The first thief ran to the girl and held a hand over her mouth. As Eugene Pearson watched in a daze, the second thief cracked the butt of a pistol over his head.

They piled the employees into the vault and locked the door. Alone at the tills, the men collected twenty thousand dollars from the cattle transactions. They took their time to clean grease off their brows and don new outfits before leaving. The robbers melted into the evening bustle, escaping without incident.

Inside the vault, it was a desperate scene. Grace Patton tried to yell for help but could barely find enough breath to keep from passing out. Eugene Pearson slumbered for an hour. In that time, Ms. Patton struggled to her feet every few minutes, stepped over Pearson's body on the floor, and hollered until she saw stars in her eyes.

None could hear her. No one came.

She gave up hope and retreated to a corner of the vault to endure the pain of her burning lungs. Finally, Eugene Pearson opened his eyes. He sat up and asked,

“Is it over?”

She nodded. Pearson shoved against the door three of four times. It was no use. With a grin, he snapped a finger as an idea came to mind. He opened a drawer filled with coins and withdrew a half dollar. Eugene Pearson then did an extraordinary thing.

He forced the narrow edge of the coin into the face of a screw. With great effort, he loosened it and moved on to all the others holding the lock in place. It broke apart. Pearson helped Grace Patton to her feet. They exited the vault and contacted police.

That was the story bank officials provided when they hired the Agency. The first thing William did was tear it to pieces.

Pinkertons view crime as a moral failure. The old man drills this into them from the moment they're hired. Find the moral failing and you'll find the culprit.

The only one who doesn't subscribe to this dogma is Robert. He knows there is more to crime than can be contained in one grey haired Scotsman's opinion about morality. William, on the other hand, is a true believer.

His first note on the Geneva file was on these lines:

The ordinary promptings of manhood should have induced some resistance. That an active man should not have shown even ordinary courage, not have made every effort to rescue a delicate girl, marks him as a base coward. Even if powerless to defend Miss Patton, Pearson could have raised an alarm. Short of that, he might have tried to close the vault door. Any of these simple actions surely would have thrown the criminals into disarray.

-Pinkerton, W.

William has a harsh view of manhood. The only thing Pearson would have done by intervening is gotten himself shot. Nevertheless, William's suspicions would only deepen. His case file reads:

Prior to meeting bank President Henry Silby, I tested Pearson's claim about the coin and lock. In Silby's office, I tried to remove the screws holding a door handle in place. I was unable to move them. Silby entered as I strained with the loose change. Pearson is not telling the truth. I conveyed this certainty to Silby but he insists that Pearson's loyalty is beyond doubt.

-Pinkerton, W.

The most infuriating part of dealing with a Pinkerton is how often they turn out to be right. Pearson could not have dismantled a bank vault with his half dollar. He was no victim.

William reported the findings to his father. The old man advised him to follow the Pearson trail but also ensure the client believed he was pursuing a new lead. This was unlike Pinkerton. I never heard of the Agency making any effort to placate a client in that way.

Doing as his father ordered, William interviewed potential witnesses at nearby stores and spoke with bank employees about the weeks before the heist. He never expected these efforts to generate useful leads.

The case broke when William visited Grace Patton, recovering at her parents' home from respiratory attacks brought on by the incident. The house was small but well cared for, like Geneva itself. The young woman was swaddled under blankets in an airy parlour.

She described all the familiar facts of the case. Her dutiful mother stood watch to ensure the Chicago detective didn't press too hard. As the interview came to a close, Grace asked her mother for a glass of water. Alone with William, she made an important comment. The case file reads:

Ms. Patton said there was “something strange” about the robbery. Three days before, Eugene Pearson opened an account for a salesman who passes through Geneva every few months. This man was not poor but in no position to make large deposits. Pearson gave him a box near those of the bank's richest clients. The two spent a long time in the deposit room. “That is the part of the bank where robbers knew to look for the ranchers' money.”

-Pinkerton, W.

William reviewed the bank's records, never mentioning his findings to Mr. Silby. He didn't want to raise the client's ire by questioning Pearson's integrity.

Among notes he took while scanning the records, William wrote the name of a man who opened an account with a mere fifty dollars. Deposit boxes located near his made thousands of dollars worth of transactions every week.

That man's name was Newton Edwards. His deposit slip was signed by Eugene Pearson.

Pity the grifter whose name falls into the hands of a Pinkerton. Newton Edwards was on borrowed time from the moment Grace Patton agreed to speak with William.

Tracking the suspect was easy. William posed as a messenger delivering product samples to Edwards. He visited every hotel in Geneva, along with any saloon that had beds upstairs and any home advertizing a room to let.

His routine was the same at every stop. He leaned on clerks and grilled managers, claiming to know for a fact that Edwards stayed at each establishment. After two days of pestering, William caught the trail. The case file reads:

Wiltshire Rooming House. Night manager Elmore Hicks refused the samples saying Newton Edwards was no longer welcome. He boarded at the Wiltshire but was evicted on his last visit. Unregistered guests called on him late several times, one carrying a gun. Mr. Hicks did not know where to reach Edwards. He asked me to take two telegraphs, which arrived after the eviction. One was from the New Orleans police; Edwards' wife declaring him missing. The second was a notice of delivery. A crate Edwards shipped to Montana was never collected.

-Pinkerton, W.

The trail ended with those telegraphs. William wanted me to pick it up in Montana.

The first telegraph wasn't much help. Newton Edwards abandoned his wife to be part of the Geneva robbery. They had a home in New Orleans. That was the same city where Timothy Webster (RIP) first caught up with the Golden Circle. Trouble orbits New Orleans like a moon.

The delivery notice was more useful. The contents of that crate were important enough for Edwards to send it express. He didn't think this part through. Express deliveries require a signature. The recipient refused to sign, probably because the crate was tied to the robbery.

This gave me an idea. I pushed the case file aside and walked through the wreckage of my cabin. Stepping into the slum beyond, I tried to find the man with tattoos on his face.

Through the fog left behind by factories and smelters, lit from within by sparks bouncing off welding stations and repair shops, bisected by causeways and churned by the occasional oil fire, one wasn't encouraged to wander. I looked for a runner in the crowd.

Runners were akin to waiters in a tavern. People shouted at them, flashed money and pleaded for service. If you were in their good graces, there was no limit to what you could buy. If you fell afoul, the barrio became a dangerous place.