The Big Mitt (A Detective Harm Queen Novel Book 1) (37 page)

“I have feelings for you, Trilly, please know that, but I think we’re being hasty in all of this.” As he spoke, he listened for the inevitable stamp of footsteps from above or a pounding at the door, but none came. Her face softened but she still fought to maintain her glare. “Where are you going?”

“To find Detective Cahill.” He stood up, slipping suspenders over his shoulders.

“What for?”

“I need to speak to him.”

“What about?”

He stuck out his hand, and reluctantly, she took it, pulling herself up. “He’s working on a case, and I want to find out what it is.”

“Why do you care?”

Telling police business to innocents wasn’t something he ever made a habit of, but he was feeling weak at the moment, and frankly she wasn’t innocent at all. It felt good to tell someone the position he was in. She of all people, having lived a life of trouble, might understand, especially as she was plainly involved in the case.

“The girl you knew as Maisy Anderson—that wasn’t her real name. Maisy’s grandfather came to identify the body, and said it wasn’t her. He’s been looking for clues to help find her ever since. I believe he may have enlisted Detective Cahill to help in his search.”

There, he’d confided in her. She wasn’t feeling the moment’s gravity as he was, however. She looked jolted by his words and grabbed at his shirt. Her slim, sweet bare body was already making him dizzy with lust again.

“I don’t understand. She had a different name?”

“Apparently so.” He removed her hands from his shirt and reached for his jacket, attempting to shake out the wrinkles, but it was already rumpled from too many recent nights of being slept in.

“Where do you expect to find him?”

“There’s a hobo stuck in the Central Police Station’s tramp room who he did a favor for, and I expect the favor was returned. I’m going there. And after that, I’m going to find the men who made the bloody mess in this house.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, rising hatred and fear on her face. “The people who beefed Dander and Higgins? They deserved it!”

“I despise what those two did to you, but murder is still murder, and I’m not going to let a gang of killers high-tail it back into Saint Paul unscathed.” He gave her a brief kiss, but he felt her pull back and then force herself to return his affection. Does she resent me for wanting to find Peach and Kilbane?

“Please don’t tell Karoline about what happened between us. I’d like to tell her myself.”

For an instant he thought he saw a look of cold disgust cross her face, but she turned somber instead.

“Go and complete your business, Detective Queen,” she said. “She won’t hear a thing from me, I promise.”

Although they shared the destination, the police wagon driver was still grateful to be rid of Queen when they arrived at Central. Despite getting a dollar for his extra help, a suspicious look was the only thanks the driver gave in exchange for Queen’s generosity. The hell with that, Queen thought.

Krumweide chewed on a hard-boiled egg as he opened the door to the cell full of sleeping tramps. Jesus, Queen thought. It’s eleven in the morning and they’ve all decided to take a nap together on the floor. Anyone that thinks the life of a tramp is romantic needs to get a whiff of a roomful of them together.

“Wake up, Jim,” Krumweide said, standing over a snoring heap of flesh, its face half-covered by a tilted, wrecked stovepipe hat.

“He’s a hard one to raise,” the sergeant said. “This always does it.” He grabbed a pinch of the egg with his stubby fingers, and sprinkled bits of crumbled yolk into the hobo’s mouth. The hobo sputtered and sat up, looking around, and then up at the two policemen.

“No salt,” Milwaukee Jim said disgustedly. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Get your lazy carcass up and out. This detective wants to talk to you.”

“Another one,” Jim muttered. He rubbed his eyes and adjusted them onto Queen. “You’re the short chap’s friend. The one who stood there when these fellows swiped my shoes.”

“And I’ll take your shoes again, if you don’t get your miserable ass up and tell me what I want to know.”

“I can always get another pair,” the hobo crowed, waving his soft hand in a flippant fashion.

With both mitts, Queen grabbed Jim by his dirty collar and yanked him up, pushing him through the dank sea of slumbering tramps and into the corridor.

“Will this take long? Lunch will –”

“God damn your lunch. I want to know what you told Detective Cahill yesterday.”

“Well, good day to you too, sir!” the hobo exclaimed. “A pity the rules of polite society have gone the way o’ the dinosaur.”

Queen poked him in the forehead. “Shut your gob, chum. None of this foolishness. Tell me where you sent him before I prick that round tummy of yours like a balloon. You’re a dull-sounding bag of wind who needs a good deflate, I think.”

“Not the way to treat someone who has something you need,” Milwaukee Jim returned, self-importantly.

Hell, Queen thought. Time was wasting, and he was going to have to treat him with kindness. Certain that his flask still held a few long sips of whiskey, he willed himself to pull it from his pocket. While the thought of this half-shaven three-chinned beggar sucking on it was repugnant to his very soul, he still, reluctantly, showed it to him.

The sight was met with glistening, teary eyes.

“Very good, sir,” Jim said, licking his cracked lips. “We absolutely have a deal.” He looked around for a moment, making sure no one could overhear. “There is a man. He is in fact a tramp, but of the lowest order of tramps. The young detective asked if I recognized his name. Of course I had.” He shuddered, peered over his shoulder into the dark, and then returned to meet Queen’s gaze. “Gottschalk.”

Queen didn’t recognize the name. “And why was he important to Detective Cahill?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Jim whispered. “But I do know this: Gottschalk doesn’t have a shadow. I swear on my ailin’ mother he doesn’t. I’ve seen big bucks, brutes who aren’t afraid to pick fights with anyone, clear a path around him like skeered kittens. He has a satanical cast, and that’s the God honest truth.”

“Sounds like a scary fellow,” Queen replied dismissively. “Tell me what goose chase you sent my detective on now.”

Jim pointed hopefully to Queen’s flask. “Perhaps a taste?”

“You’ll get it all when you’ve answered my questions.”

The hobo gave a dejected nod. “Gottschalk never, ever speaks to anyone unless he can help it. He likes to be left alone, and we’re all happy to oblige. But at night, in his sleep, he speaks.”

“And what does he say?”

“Terrible things. Truly terrible. What he’s done. People he’s hurt. People he’s taken.”

“Taken?”

“Don’t you know?” asked Jim, incredulous. “I thought that’s why you were here. The young detective already knew.”

“Keep talking.”

“Gottschalk has … a preference for little boys. He takes children from the bosoms of their dear old mothers, and brings them on the road, on the rails, to do with as he will. He even carries candy in his bag. I think it reminds him of all the little ones he’s hurt. Men of that ilk, and I assure you, detective, they hold the bottommost rank among us travelers, call the children they kidnap ‘prushuns.’ It’s trampdom slang.” Jim twisted his hat’s brim anxiously and looked down. “It just doesn’t sound right, saying all this out loud.”

The chocolate candy he found on the buggy’s floor. Ollie. This was the man Trilly had warned him about, and he had simply brushed her words away. What a fool he was.

“So where is he?” Queen felt the agitation in his voice. The realization that Ollie truly had been in danger, and not just skipping around town, tore a hole in his heart. He had to find him.

“He kept saying the name Nininger, over and over. Old Slim and I talked about it afterwards. It was a real town once, but abandoned now. A few miles west of Hastings, the other side of Saint Paul. He’d say the word like a chant, and keep us all awake and shakin’ under our blankets.”

“Have you been to Nininger before, Sergeant Krumweide?” Queen asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Neither have I,” Krumweide said, appearing shaken.

“I know it intimately,” Jim said, nose slightly upturned. “Back when I was younger, there was a house I’d knock on that had the most exquisite handouts. The woman there was simply superb at baking peach cobbler. She’d give me two pieces and wrap it with cold fried chicken and I’ve got to tell you, with my most serious face,” he took off his hat and put it over his heart, “that in all my days since, I’ve never smelled anything that has tickled my nostril hairs like –”

“Hobble your lip,” Queen told Jim. Jim put his hat brim into his mouth, wearing the hurt expression of a child.

“Krumweide.” Queen turned to the sergeant, still looking queasy over what he’d just heard. “Get Mr. Milwaukee Jim his belongings and have him at the ready for when I return. Make sure he gets his lunch first.”

Jim’s head shot up and he stared wild-eyed at Queen. “Whatever do you mean?”

“You want this?” He held the whiskey flask up, like a carrot to a mule. “Then you have a little more work to do. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

Col. Fred Ames’s office sat directly next to his brother’s, and it was there that Detective Harmon Queen entered, interrupting the police superintendent from some paperwork and a roast chicken sandwich.

“We need to talk,” Queen said brusquely, closing the door behind him.

“I’ve been wondering where you’ve been hiding,” Ames replied with a cold glare. He put down his pen and leaned back in his chair. “Unless you sent Tom Cahill to rescue Mother Mary herself, you had no business countering my direct order. You spat in the very face of my authority, Queen. It is the last straw. Give me your badge.”

With a toss, Queen sent it skittering across the desk and into Ames’s lap. “I don’t give a damn about your goddamn police force anymore. What do I care, anyway? I can get paid more money as a private detective.” He took out a cigarette, struck his match with a quick flick of his wrist, and inhaled hard and fast. “I’ve been thinking this morning, about how Sheriff Anderson was waylaid last night outside on the corner of Third Street and Fourth Avenue. Right in front of the Dandelion Saloon. It seems odd, doesn’t it, that the owner of that shit hole was on the list I turned in to you just yesterday afternoon?”

Queen put his hands on the Colonel’s desk, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, and snarled. “You pulled the trigger on a mitt game without my knowledge.”

“I did.”

“And a good man is in the hospital. It didn’t go the way it was supposed to, did it?”

Colonel Ames’s thin lips turned to a frown. “I had instructed Detective Norbeck to escort him out of town. Evidently the former sheriff didn’t comply.”

“Norbeck? This was his doing?” Queen couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Everyone knew Chris Norbeck could be volatile when pushed. An operation like this required a man with a steady, calm head. He was going to give Chris Norbeck the beating of his life when he saw him next, with or without his badge.

“And, you, Queen, usurped my direct command. If Tom Cahill had been with him, watching him, perhaps I wouldn’t have felt the need to go to such extremes. I wanted Sheriff Anderson out of this city if I couldn’t get a direct line of information regarding his doings. I felt I had to act.”

“Well, for your knowledge, Detective Cahill didn’t listen to me either. I asked him to look after the prostitutes from Dander’s brothel. He never went.”

Colonel Ames’s mouth dropped. “The hell you say.”

“The hell I say.”

“Oh, Lord.” Ames’s expression swung from hostility to distress in the blink of an eye. His shoulders collapsed and he released a crestfallen sigh. “I feared this might happen.”

“Feared for what?” Queen was flabbergasted at Ames’s transformation. The man always looked so formidable, but the mention of his protégé, out on his own, seemed to have cut the life right out of him.

“Sit down, Queen. Please.”

Queen took a chair and sat. “You need me to send for a doctor?”

“No, no, no,” he replied, shaking his head. “I don’t need a doctor, and if I did, my brother would insist on doing the honors himself.” He looked up at Queen with deep lines on his brow, fumbled for the detective’s badge and slapped it down on his desk. “Please take it back. I spoke in haste, and I regret it. We both have the interests of Mr. Cahill at heart, wouldn’t you say?”

Queen nodded. “We do,” he said.

“He’s in trouble, I just know he is.” Ames wiped perspiration from his forehead with his handkerchief. “You know he looks up to you, don’t you? He says you’re often harsh to him, but only because you want him to do better. In his words, to learn the ways of the streets.”

I already owe Cahill an apology, Queen thought. Now he felt guilty, treating the kid the way he had.

“I didn’t know he thought that way about me.”

“Well, he did. He does,” Ames said. He reached for two glasses and a bottle of scotch, an expensive brand, from a cabinet behind him and poured. “I think we both need a drink for what I’m about to tell you. I’m going out on a limb with this one, Queen, but only because I think you’re the only one who can help with this. God help me, but I never thought I’d ever say that to you.”