The Ripper of Storyville and Other Ben Snow Stories Page 8

  Later, when the cool of the night had come sweeping across the plain, Ben and Sue rode out under the stars. He knew he would be leaving soon—there was no longer a place for him in Twisted River now. But for tonight he needn’t think about that.

  “It was odd,” he said, riding slowly beside Sue. “Doc Robin could have earned that money honestly just by charging folks to watch him fly. And Jethro Aarons needn’t have feared him at all. And chances are the townspeople wouldn’t have done too much if they had known about Aarons.”

  “They would have drawn their money out of his bank.”

  “Probably,” he sighed. “Money, it’s always money. Doc Robin wanted to make it crooked when he could have made it honest, and Jethro Aarons wanted to make it honest when he could have made it crooked. People are pretty strange.”

  “Were you scared out there, Ben?”

  “Scared? No, I knew I could outshoot him.”

  “Knew it? But how could you?”

  He smiled a strange sort of smile, the smile of a wanderer, of a gunfighter. “Doc Robin knew about both of us,” he said simply. “And he tried to hire me first . . .”

  THE MAN IN THE ALLEY

  Ben Snow looked up from the fresh deck of cards at the tall man across the table. The other players had drifted away, cursing the luck of the cards and the skill of the dealer, and this was the only customer now.

  Ben waited until he’d dealt two hands of blackjack, winning on both, then said quietly, “Find anything?”

  The tall man nodded slightly. He was handsome, well dressed, and half French. His name was Claude Musset and he worked out of the New Orleans office of Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency. “I think we have him located for you, Mr. Snow.”

  “Where?”

  “St. Louis.”

  “What name is he using?”

  Claude Musset frowned a bit in uncertainty. “I’d rather tell you that in St. Louis. Can you be there by Friday?”

  Ben gave only a passing consideration to the job and the girl who’d held him in Kansas City this long. If the man he wanted was in St. Louis, that was where he would be on Friday. “I’ll get a train out of here tomorrow night,” he told Musset.

  “Fine. Meet me at the new Art Building in Forest Park on Friday morning at nine. He’s living near there.”

  “All right,” Ben said. “Another hand?”

  The Pinkerton man shook his head. “A couple more and you’ll have won enough for our fee. Goodbye, Mr. Snow.”

  Ben waited until the other dealer relieved him on the hour. Then he strolled slowly through the gilt-edged palace of splendor, searching for the head man. The bar was filling slowly with the weeknight’s usual crowd, mingling East and West, city and frontier, with a scattering of war veterans. “I was right behind Teddy going up San Juan Hill, and now he’s the Vice President!” Ben smiled a little and kept on going. For as small a war as it had been, there sure were a lot of veterans around these days. And they all knew Teddy Roosevelt personally.

  Back in his room, a little place that never pretended to be home, he started packing a suitcase. He’d told the boss he was leaving, and now Jane was the only one left to tell. There was no one else in Kansas City who would care.

  She came in while he was packing. “Going somewhere?”

  “Away for a few days. To St. Louis. I’ll be back.”

  “What’s in St. Louis?”

  “Business.”

  “The Frenchman?” He’d told her about it one night, told her more than he should have.

  “Yes, if you must know. He’s found my man.”

  “Does it mean so much to you, Ben? Does it mean more than your job . . . and me?”

  He sat down on the bed and pulled her to him, feeling the smoothness of her familiar flesh beneath the dress. “Jane, Jane—look at me. I’m forty-one years old, and what have I done with my life? Cowboy, army scout, bartender, dealer in a gambling house—a different job, a different town, every year. I settle down and lead a normal life until someone happens through who knows the name, or the face, or the story. Ben Snow, sure! The fastest shot in the West, the man who’s really Billy the Kid because everyone knows Billy isn’t dead”

  “Ben . . .”

  “In every town it was the same. Either I ran or I stayed. And when I stayed I ended up killing someone. They all wanted a shot at Billy the Kid. Or they wanted to hire my gun for their own purposes.”

  “But that’s gone now, Ben! This is 1901—the twentieth century! The West is tamed. No one wears a gun anymore, at least not in Kansas City.”

  “This was about as far east as I could go, but even here it wasn’t far enough to outrun the stories. I tried changing my name, but it didn’t help. Nothing helped, until I hired the Pinkerton man. You see, I got to thinking that all these stories couldn’t just be rumors. Maybe Billy the Kid didn’t die in 1881 in New Mexico. Maybe he was still alive, and if I found him it would end my troubles.”

  “And now the Frenchman has found him?”

  Ben shrugged. “He’s been looking for six months. He found something —someone—in St. Louis, but I don’t know just what. Don’t you see that I have to go there?”

  “I see. I suppose I see what it means to you, Ben.”

  He kissed her gently. “I’ll be back.”

  “Unless you find him. Unless you find him, Ben, and he kills you.”

  “Don’t worry your head about that. I’m too young to die.”

  “If Billy’s alive, he’s the same age, Ben. Maybe he thinks he’s too young, too.”

  “Maybe . . .”

  St. Louis sprawled in the August heat. And at the western edge of the sprawl was Forest Park, a rambling wild place which now hummed with the toil of man. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition was still nearly three years off, but already the place was beginning to take shape. Over 1200 acres of ground were being cleared, with scores of holes marking the early stages of temporary and permanent construction. The Art Building was little more than another hole in the earth when Ben finally located it, and he sat down under a nearby tree to wait for Musset.

  He didn’t like the heat, and never had. Here, along the great Mississippi, there was not the dryness of the desert trail but rather a sort of humid mist that clammed his skin. He felt in one pocket for the little Derringer he always carried, and then took a copy of Plenty’s Weekly out of the other pocket. From Kansas City eastward, everyone read Arthur S. Plenty’s sharp-tongued views on politics and world affairs, and it hadn’t taken Ben long to acquire the habit.

  President Vacations in Ohio While Supreme Court Denies Citizenship to Puerto Ricans, one subhead read, and though it wasn’t strictly accurate, it made good reading for Plenty’s people.

  Ben was plowing through an editorial about the year-old assassination of Italy’s King Humbert when the tall Pinkerton man came into view through the trees. “You’re late,” Ben greeted him. “I was beginning to think I had the wrong place.”

  Musset smiled. “A lovely park, isn’t it? Your first trip to St. Louis?”

  “My first. Where’s our man?”

  “Well, I fear I have some bad news for you, my friend. He’s gone.”

  “Gone! After I came all the way here?”

  “Listen, please. Just listen. Our man, using the name of William Kidd—”

  “That’s him! William Kidd—Billy the Kid!” Ben could feel his heart beating faster.

  Musset smiled his slow smile. “Don’t jump to conclusions. That is what people have been doing about you for nearly twenty years, remember. Unfortunately, the name is our strongest piece of evidence. William Kidd is the right age, and he has lived in the West, but that’s all I can tell you. Here in St. Louis he’s been doing odd jobs, and associating with some most interesting people.”

  “Who, for instance?”

  “He has a wife—or mistress—named Sadie, who travels with him. They had an apartment just beyond the park until yesterday. And he frequently associates with a woman Anarchist named Emma Goldman, who has quite a reputation. She’s from Rochester, in New York State, and she travels about the country making speeches for the cause.”

  “If she’s still here can’t we question her as to where Kidd might have gone?”

  “Oh, I know where he’s gone. He and Sadie bought train tickets for Buffalo.”

  “Buffalo!”

  “It’s near Rochester, and it might mean some sort of Anarchist meeting. On the other hand, perhaps Kidd just likes fairs. The Pan-American Exposition is on in Buffalo now and a number of St. Louis people are up there looking around, getting ideas for 1904, you know.”

  “Could we go there?” Ben asked. “I’ve come this far.”

  The Frenchman smiled. “I anticipated you. I have already notified my office that we’d be traveling to Buffalo.”

  Ben laughed and they started out of the park together. “You really think this man might be Billy, Claude?” he asked, using the detective’s given name for the first time. “Who knows, my friend? Perhaps he is only the descendant of Captain Kidd . . .”

  The train to Buffalo was crowded and hot, and even a summer cloudburst on the way did little to comfort Ben. It was more than a year since he’d been on a horse—perhaps this was progress, but the new modes of transport didn’t excite him. Trains seemed to Ben to be built more for travel by animals than humans, and as they journeyed northeast his dislike of the conveyance and the countryside only heightened. Chimneys and mills and streets crowded with carriages, people and more people. Kansas City and even St. Louis seemed lovely by the time they reached Pittsburgh, a hulk of a place.

  Buffalo was smaller, but the crush of humanity seemed even more intense. Everywhere there was talk of the Exposition, and visitors—both American and Canadian—were p
ouring into the summer place. “I don’t see any buffalo,” Ben said, though he hadn’t really expected to.

  Musset shrugged. “Used to be called Buffalo Creek. Named after an Indian or something.”

  “How do we find Kidd and the girl in this mob?”

  He gave Ben his slow smile. “That is my job. Stay near the hotel and I’ll contact you in a day or so.”

  Ben didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much he could do. He spent the next day roaming the streets, where newsboys on busy corners sold day-old copies of the New York Times, and Plenty’s Weekly, and the Buffalo papers. He stopped for a beer in a new bar equipped with electric lights, then wandered back to the hotel. At six o’clock, Musset joined him.

  “It was less trouble than I expected,” the detective told him. “Kidd’s friend Emma Goldman lectured in Cleveland last May, and while she was there she met a man named Leon Czolgosz.”

  “What in hell kind of a name is that?”

  “Polish. He’s been hanging around the fringes of these Anarchist groups for some time. But the point is that he’s living now in West Seneca, just outside Buffalo. He has a room in a boarding house there, and Kidd visited him this afternoon.”

  “Where’s Kidd staying?”

  “Here in town, with Sadie. They have a room over John Nowak’s saloon on Broadway. 1078 Broadway. He may be the man you’re looking for, but he’s certainly not suspicious at this point. I followed him all the way back from West Seneca without attracting attention.”

  “Thanks, Claude. That’s all the information I need.” The Derringer in Ben’s pocket felt suddenly heavy. After all these years he was about to meet this man—William Kidd, William Bonney, Billy the Kid—who’d been only a name till now.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, my friend,” Musset cautioned. “For all we know the real Billy might be in that New Mexico grave.”

  “I just want to talk with him. I’ll be careful.”

  “He has friends. But I can tell you this Czolgosz will be out of town. He received a telegram while I was watching the place, and with a bit of a bribe at the Western Union office I managed to get a glimpse of a copy. It was from New York, from someone calling himself The Asp. He instructed Czolgosz to take a boat to Cleveland tonight, and return here Saturday.”

  “The Asp? You’re sure you haven’t been reading those Nick Carter books, Claude?”

  The detective smiled. “Anarchists are an odd lot. They like all this intrigue and chasing about. But there seems to be something big in the wind.”

  “Well,” Ben said, thinking out loud, “this is Thursday. If Kidd’s friend is away till Saturday that should give me time to see him. Maybe I could be heading west again by the first of the week.”

  “Monday’s a sort of holiday—Labor Day. We could stay over and take in the fair.”

  “Even holidays I never heard of! These eastern cities have everything.”

  “They even have laws against killing people, my friend. Different laws from the West.”

  Ben chuckled easily, but his hand went again to the pistol in his pocket. “Don’t worry, I can’t use him dead. If he’s Billy I want him alive and kicking.”

  He left Musset in the lobby of their hotel about eight o’clock and went to the little Broadway hotel where Kidd was staying. But neither he nor the girl was in their room, and after a three-hour wait Ben gave it up for the night. He went back to his room, a bit discouraged, wondering what Claude Musset had found to do in this strange city so far from home.

  Friday was warm, with scattered white clouds that seemed about to converge into a solid cover. Musset was still off on some mysterious mission, so Ben went again to the hotel over Nowak’s saloon. This time he was in luck.

  The room clerk cast a tired eye around the little room that passed for the lobby and pointed. “Sure. That’s Mr. Kidd and his wife just going into the bar.” Ben thanked him and followed.

  William Kidd was a little man who looked younger than the forty-one years he should have been. But then Billy had always looked like a boy, which explained the nickname that had followed him for so many years. The more Ben watched him from his vantage point at the bar, the more convinced he became that here surely was the man he sought, the man who could give him a life of peace after all these years of flight and violence. He’d been so interested in Kidd that he’d hardly noticed the girl Sadie. She must have been ten years younger, with a face at once pretty and hardened. She was a Western girl, from farther west than St. Louis. Ben had seen her type before, in the bars and even on the trails. A mining camp girl, an army post girl—wherever there were men with money to spend.

  He was about to join them on some pretext when he noticed Claude Musset at the door, scanning the faces along the bar. Ben downed his beer and strolled slowly over to join him. “Looking for me?”

  Musset gave a brief nod. “I thought you’d be here. Talked to Kidd yet?”

  “No. I was just about to.”

  “Be careful. We’re getting into something big. Too big. They’re dangerous men.”

  “How dangerous?”

  Musset wasn’t smiling today. “I went back to Czolgosz’s boarding house. He paid for his room with a defective revolver he no longer needed. I assume he has another weapon.”

  “You worry about Czolgosz. This Kidd’s my man.”

  Musset nodded. “I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

  Ben went back to his place at the bar and ordered another beer. When he turned toward the table again he was startled to see that Kidd was gone. Sadie sat alone, fingering her empty glass. Well, maybe he’d just stepped into the men’s room. Ben decided it was the perfect opportunity to move in. He picked up his glass and walked over to the table.

  “Lonesome?” He knew the approach would neither surprise nor anger a girl of her type.

  “Beat it, mister.”

  “Just thought you might like a drink.”

  “Blow!”

  “That man you were sitting with looked familiar.”

  “He’s my husband, and he’d like to rattle your skull if he caught you talking with me.”

  “I’ll take that chance.” He pulled over an empty chair and sat down. “The man I know is named William Kidd. That your husband?”

  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How do you know him?”

  “Back in New Mexico, long time ago.”

  “I never knew he came from New Mexico. You sure?”

  Ben retreated a bit. “Well, we can ask him when he comes back. Where’d he go?”

  “You got me,” she said with a shrug. “But he probably won’t be back for a while.”

  Ben finally talked her into having another drink, and they sat for a time in uneasy conversation. Sadie apparently had met Kidd some two years earlier in Texas. They’d traveled to St. Louis, been married there, and settled down to —what? Ben didn’t miss the fact that Sadie carefully avoided mentioning her husband’s occupation. Toward midnight it became obvious that Kidd would not return, and she excused herself to return to the room. Ben had one more beer, then headed home himself.

  There was some sort of commotion in the street before the hotel—a growing crowd of nighttime people milling in a widening circle. As Ben started to press his way through, a woman toward the center of the crowd screamed.

  “He’s dead!” someone else shouted. Ben’s heart beat a little faster, as if he knew what he would find even before he saw it. Stretched in the gaslight’s glow, his face not twisted nor even pained—more surprised, if anything.

  Claude Musset, a detective and almost a friend, a man who shouldn’t be dead. But was. With the knife still deep in his chest. “I saw him staggering. I thought he was drunk.” Just a few minutes sooner, five minutes, ten minutes, and Claude might have been alive. “Has someone called the police?” Ben turned away, feeling sick, feeling useless, as if all this searching, this trip halfway across the country, had been all for such an ending. The violence was still pursuing him. Even here among the Easterners there was only death. And death was the same anywhere.

  Ben didn’t sleep that night. He sat up instead at the hotel room window, watching the comings and goings in the dim street below, occasionally rolling a cigarette and smoking it to a half-inch butt. With luck the hotel staff wouldn’t link him to Musset, and he wasn’t about to volunteer anything to the police. He was a stranger in a far country, and all he knew of Eastern police were the universal stories of the “Third Degree,” the “Sweat Box,” and the rubber hoses, used indiscriminately on men and women alike. He had no hankering for that sort of thing, and if anyone was to avenge Musset’s murder it was certainly up to him. He’d hired the Frenchman, brought him to Buffalo on the trail of a man perhaps twenty years dead.