Murderers, Scoundrels and Ragamuffins Read online

  Naturally, Capt. Regan was not happy when he went on the stand yesterday. It wasn’t his day to be happy. He had taken charge of the startling case at the outset; had made excellent progress; had started out the men who unearthed the bodies of the murdered man and woman; had found the notary to whom Bonier had confessed forgery; had taken statements of important witnesses, and in other ways was working hard to untangle the mass of mystery and bring somebody to Justice.

  Vacationless

  ◆◆◆

  “So where is he this week?” snorted Mazie sarcastically.

  “He isn’t ‘he’! He is your father,” huffed Annie. “Be respectful. Refer to him as such, not by some pronoun.’

  “All right. Sorry. But Pop is never, ever around, Ma! Not like my friends’ fathers always are. It’s August and he’s on vacation from the city hall yet he takes us no place at all!”

  “Stop complaining. Your father is an important man. Why, he’s President of the Common Council! Do you know what a privilege and responsibility that is? He virtually runs this city! He works hard to provide for us. You and your brothers and sisters have lots of things that none of your other friends do.”

  “Yes we do—for one thing, we have an absent father! We have never once gone anyplace overnight as a family. Never! Uncle Jim and Aunt Hannah rent a cottage at Crystal Beach every summer. They always invite us but we never go because of Pop. So why can’t we just all go there without Pop? Why are we always stuck right here? I want to go someplace where my clothes don’t stink and become gray with soot by the end of the day! Why don’t we? Why can’t we rent a cottage someplace during the summer? Why must we be trapped in this hot filthy smelly noisy place while Pop gets to travel all over the country?”

  “Mazie, stop it! Your father is an important politician without whom this city could well fall into ruin! In addition to that he directs the largest ice company in the region. You should be proud of what he’s accomplished, and grateful. Your cousins next door don’t enjoy half of what you have. Don’t be such a little snot!”

  “If we got so much more than them why do we live in this awful little house surrounded by terrible neighbors and so much racket that I can’t even sleep at night? Why is our cousins’ house bigger than our house if we have so much more? Only three kids live over there, with all that room to spare, while we’re eight, and stuffed in here like sardines! I want my own bedroom like cousin Nellie’s got!”

  “Mazie! Respect your father! And respect me! I am your mother!”

  “Oh Mother! You said it yourself, many times. You’ve had screaming fights with him right in this very parlor with all of us listening, telling him that he abandons you to raise us alone! Why are you defending him now?”

  “Shut up! I never said any such thing.”

  “Mother! How can you possibly say that to me? You’ve said it many times, even recently.”

  “Mazie, you are a selfish, self centered little girl. An ingrate! Go to your room!” Annie was quite exasperated trying to counter Mazie’s truths.

  “Why are you defending him, Mother? Why do we always have to be ‘patient’? Patient for what? What are we being patient for? He is always gone. He gets to go to New York and Baltimore and Cleveland and Washington and God knows where else. We never get to go nowheres at all! And he brags in the newspapers about how he never takes a vacation as if that’s some kind of badge of honor. He’s right, he never takes a vacation—with any of us! But he’s always off having a grand old time traveling the country with his friends all the year ‘round nevertheless, attending banquets, staying at fine hotels, eating in expensive restaurants. We have never once eaten in a fine restaurant as a family. Never. Weeks go by when we don’t ever see him, not even once. You want us to wait and wait and wait and be patient and never get nothing in return for it. Just once I’d like to wear a pretty dress to attend a banquet in some other city. Why don’t we ever get to go to New York with him?” Mazie seemed to be barely getting started in her tirade. Annie needed to shut her down.

  “You’re an insolent, ungrateful little brat!” her mother criticized. “I’m going to take you to see Father O’Connell so he can have a talk with you!”

  That morning’s Buffalo Express is what had set Mazie off:

  ALD. SULLIVAN STAYS AT HOME

  To His Mind no Summer Resort has Half the Charms this City boasts.

  OUR MAIN STREET MIDWAY

  Needs only the Barkers to be the real Thing.

  John P. Sullivan is about the only alderman who hasn’t taken advantage of the August recess to seek some cool resort where refreshing breezes blow and refreshing drinks delight.

  “Vacation?” said he when accosted on Main street yesterday. “Why there is no place like Buffalo. Just look at Main street. It needs only the barkers to be a midway. The signs on the street corners are all that keep you right. And if you want to get sunburned you don’t need to go to any seaside resort. Look at Jim Loftus up in the excise office. He went to the seashore, at least he said he did, and when he came back he had to buy some dope to make himself brown so the boys would believe him. All you have to do in Buffalo is go to the beach at the foot of Michigan street and repose on the sands. You don’t want for sunburn. Of course you may have to go to a hospital to take it off, but you will have had it to show and boast of.

  As for scenery what better views could you wish than those to be had from Buffalo’s water front. To those who appreciate buildings of the colonial type there’s Sullivan’s icehouse at the Tifft Farm. To those who seek balmy airs I would suggest a visit to The Front. Since they have started fires there to burn the stuff that the garbage crematory at Cheektowaga rejects, the air is so strong that one whiff will satisfy the most exacting. I’m satisfied with Buffalo as a summer resort,” he concluded, gazing with satisfaction on a large lump of ice melting fast in front of a saloon.

  “Why are you defending him?” Mazie argued. “I don’t understand it. You are his wife, and we are his own daughters, not his… his... ladies in waiting!”

  “That does it!”

  Annie smacked Mazie in the face open-handed. Mazie reeled in a half circle but caught herself before she could fall. She looked shocked. Her mother already wore a look of regret. Annie well knew her daughter was right. Mazie was asking questions that Annie herself lately no longer had the energy to. Annie had tired of rehashing the same old objections with JP and didn’t want Mazie reminding her of that.

  As Mazie ran to her room crying she collided with little brother Johnny, also known as Junior, even though he wasn’t a real junior because his middle initial was J. and his father’s was P. Junior had been dourly listening to the heated exchange from the hallway.

  “Sometimes I think we’d all be better off if none of us kids was around no more,” Junior said to her, “then they’d really be sorry.”

  Junior returned to his room. Mickey lay there waiting on the rug, smiling up at his young master. Junior brooded on his bed in the cramped space he shared with his brothers. His arm dangled over the edge to reach Mickey, scratching the dog’s back lightly. “You’re the best dog in the world, Mickey,” he said.

  Junior was depressed again. What was bothering him was something that he didn’t understand. Something that he didn’t dare talk about. He could hear Mazie sobbing through the wall. He mulled over her stated truths. He had not thought of it exactly in that way, not until Mazie put words to it. Their father kept everyone on a tight leash despite his own footloose and fancy-free existence. He was seldom present in their lives. None of them except the eldest, Thomas, had ever had the experience of spending any unique time alone with him. Uncle Jim took cousin Jim Jr. to work with him sometimes, just the two of them. He took Nellie to her music lessons, just him and her, and sat and watched proudly as she practiced her piano, then praised her for the progress she’d made. They did things together, father and son, father and daughter, an experience neither Junior nor any of his siblings had ever enjoyed.

  Junio
r’s older brothers Tom and Dan had looked forward to being old enough to work at the ice company solely because it was the first time in their lives they’d ever gotten to spend one-on-one time with their father. The authoritarian alderman made life-altering decisions for children he barely knew. Mazie’s view was that he led a grand life full of excitement and travel while trying his utmost to prevent his own children from enjoying anything of the sort.

  Junior thought of how his father had kept him from those things that he loved, things his talents cried out for, like learning to play the guitar. The alderman declared it the “wasteful pastime of hobos.” He disapproved of Junior’s taking art lessons at the Albright Art Gallery on Saturday mornings. Instead he was forced into obligations such as rowing on the filthy river for the Junior Mutuals, which he despised. He loved baseball, but with the Mutual Rowing Club so integral in the life of the First Ward, and with brothers Thomas and Daniel deeply invested in the running of the Sullivan Ice Company, JP determined that his namesake should represent the new generation in the club that he himself had helped establish. Junior shuddered at the recalled disgust of rowing in the morning cold with his father watching intently out the kitchen window cracked open just far enough to bark his commands out over the infernal racket of the Buffalo Furnace. As young Junior’s oars slashed through collected rafts of garbage mixed with human feces, sending cold filthy black river water splashing into his eyes, he fantasized about drowning his father. He hated him right then for the misery he’d imposed on him.

  As he sat on the edge of the bed, rocking back and forth, sinking deeper into dark thoughts, Johnny without ever having planned on doing so removed his leather belt and looped it around his own neck.

  He cinched it tight. Then tighter. Mickey looked at him curiously.

  He was surprised to find that it was not an unpleasant sensation. Stories in the newspapers of criminals being hanged and Negroes being lynched painted the experience as horrifying and painful, but the sensation he himself found in fact was quite exciting. He then got the idea of increasing the pressure beyond that of his hand strength. He looked around, then walked into the closet. He cleared a space on a clothes hook and tied the end of the belt around it, then slid his head into the noose. Slowly he allowed his knees to buckle. Mickey came to the closet door to investigate. The dog grew agitated. He began to pace and whine. A mixture of horror and pleasure electrified Junior’s body. Mazie’s sobbing was blotted out along with all previous unpleasantries. His hatred for his father ebbed. He felt light headed at first, his ears ringing, then experienced the pleasure of an intense erection. For a moment he dangled there, lost in dreamy eroticism. Mickey suddenly began yelping, wildly nipping at Junior’s feet. It occurred to Johnny that he might be losing consciousness. He found his footing once more and raised himself against the stress of the noose. He removed it, then took to his bed, excited and horrified in equal measure by this new discovery. Mickey continued barking. “Shh. Mickey! Shut up.” His mother came to the door and opened it, alarmed by Mickey’s uncharacteristic outburst. “What’s he barking at Junior?” Annie said.

  “Oh, I was just playing with him and he got mad.” Junior crouched down to pet his dog. Mickey vigorously licked his face all over. “See? He’s all right.”

  “Leave this door open,” she said. She eyed him suspiciously as she left the doorway.

  He reminded himself he’d have to write about this in his scrapbook alongside the tobacco cards picturing his favorite athletes and Civil War Generals. Perhaps in the code he’d taught himself, in case his nosy siblings found and read it.

  “Hey little man. Whatcha doin’ just layin’ there like some stockyard horse turd?” teased brother Dan, newly returned from the icehouse. He pulled off his shirt and let it fall to the floor before collapsing onto his bed with a bounce.

  “Nothin’, stupid.” replied Junior.

  Georgie Shaw's Mother

  ◆◆◆

  It was little Georgie Shaw from up the street with his mother.

  Mazie peeked out the lace curtain when she’d heard the knock. She resented how people just walked up to her father’s door whenever they wished. She hated how he never turned anyone away. They came at all hours to seek him out even knowing at that time of day he’d more than likely be at work at the city hall. People came wanting favors, jobs, justice. They came when they were having trouble with their neighbors or their boss or couldn’t pay their taxes. They even came solely to complain about their spouses or misbehaving children.

  Hannah had looked out from her front room window and saw Mrs. Shaw and her boy approach next door. She knew exactly the reason. She’d heard the rumors.

  The alderman kept a telephone on his desk in his home office. The den was small and cozy and the pocket doors provided privacy from the family hubbub. But the Sullivan kids learned that if they tiptoed up to the door very quietly and put their ear to the crack, they could hear some pretty interesting stuff.

  The telephone wasn’t connected to anything. It wasn’t hooked up. The wire ran over, then under his desk and disappeared conveniently beneath the carpet. He was a master of diplomacy, with the gift of getting people to their point expediently. Then more often than not, he’d declare “I’m going to take care of this matter immediately.” He’d pick up the telephone, pretend to summon the operator, then have a short curt one-sided conversation with the ghost of the subject of the constituent’s request or complaint. Then he’d hang up, they’d shake hands, and the citizen would be sent happily on his way, allowing JP to get back to his supper or family activity or scheming after he had made a mental note to attend to the problem at a less inconvenient time.

  Mazie railed against the constant interruptions. She had announced the month previous that she would no longer answer the door to favor-seekers. But viewing the troubled Mrs. Shaw and the downcast demeanor of the boy, she broke her pledge and opened the portal.

  “I’m sorry to bother you in the supper hour, Miss, but is the Alderman in?”

  “Yes. I’ll get him. Please come in. Take a seat.”

  The upholstered settee right inside the front door was installed there for just such callers.

  Mazie entered the parlor to fetch her father. He was exasperated, fiddling with his Edison. He had been in a foul mood since arriving home. Mazie startled him when she announced that he had visitors. The Alderman swore under his breath. He fumbled and dropped a wax cylinder. It broke.

  “Damn! I never got the chance to hear that! Damn! Damn!”

  He marched dutifully out to the entryway.

  “Well, hello Mrs. Shaw. What brings you this way?”

  “I got somethin’ serious to talk to you about, Alderman.”

  “Well come into my office please. Yes. Come. Have a seat. Now just let me shut the door. ”

  Georgie neither looked at the Alderman nor at his mother. His eyes remained downcast throughout.

  “All right. What can I do for you?”

  “Father McGill has been havin’ his dirty ways with my little Georgie!” she cracked out between heaving sobs.

  The Alderman was devoted entirely to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church. Equally fervent was Captain Mike Regan. Together they oversaw all the lawn fêtes, carnivals, dances, minstrel shows and other fund raising activities. Both men practically worshiped Pastor Father Richard O’Connell. So blind were they in their devotion that they felt he could do no wrong, and by association, neither could any of his priests.

  Georgie looked as though he wanted to melt into the floor. He was fidgeting with his handkerchief, manipulating it in his hands as if searching for a weak spot from where he could commence ripping it to shreds. His leg jittered uncontrollably as he worked the handkerchief. He never looked up.

  On one hand the alderman could well see the degree of upset afflicting Georgie and his mother. On the other he was unwilling to accept that one of Father O’Connell’s own priests could do such a thing as accused. In his head he decided he needed to mu
ll about it, about the ramifications of such a story, and then handle it from there.

  Unconvincingly he told Mrs. Shaw he would look into it, and hurried them out. He returned to his Edison. Rattled by her revelation, he tried to put it out of his mind.

  “That smells delicious!” he called out to the females in the kitchen.

  At that moment Hannah walked in the room from next door without knocking, as the two families were wont to do by their habit of familiarity. As he removed another Edison cylinder from the brown cardboard tube it came packaged in, she sidled up to him.

  “Annie’s in the kitchen with the girls,” he said barely looking at her. She didn’t move out of his way. He rudely came to attention because she had never approached him in such a physical manner previously. The two did not care for each other one iota. Normally she was quite standoffish. In a hushed voice she said “I need to speak with you, JP.”

  “What about?”

  “Can we go into your den?” Hannah asked, glancing cautiously toward the kitchen activity.

  Annie was in the kitchen fussing over the pies she and the girls had baked. They were just coming out of the oven.

  “What ever is the matter?” he asked impatiently.

  She just made a concerned expression and walked toward the den. He followed. The door was quietly closed.

  She cleared her throat. “I just saw Mrs. Shaw and her little boy leave here. We’ve been hearing things. Things about Father McGill.”

  Jesus, he thought to himself. He cleared his throat. “Oh? And what about him?” JP asked.

  “Well, it seems he’s been doin’ some terrible things.”

  “Hannah, I don’t know how these rumors got started…”