World, Chase Me Down Read online

  At this late hour of life, I am glad of one lasting sliver of redemption: Edward Junior’s fate was not the same as the young Charley Ross that inspired my crime in the first and, in later years, the Lindbergh baby whose abduction was, in turn, modeled after my foul deed. I can imagine no greater horror. A delivery truck driver discovered the toddler’s corpse on the side of the road: the tiny skull fractured by a massive blow, the body half-burnt and bearing the marks of animal bites. I pray the infant was chewed on after his passing and not before, and that is perhaps the most macabre prayer ever sent up through the grapevine. For so long my life was nothing but darkness, and I’ve been battling my way back to the light ever since.

  And still.

  Some evil cannot be sewn up.

  What progress I’ve made I cannot discern. It is said in Genesis that God divided the light and the darkness and gave them different names. Yet, in these dwindling hours that still remain for me, in looking back on a life divided as severely as night is from the day, I wonder if there is any difference between them at all.

  Snow clicks against my window pane. A guttered candle floats in a pool of wax atop my cold radiator. The panther paces inside my chest. My mind full of history. Despite the fact that I’m so close to the end, my thoughts are not of the darkness near to come but of the advent of darkness long ago.

  BOOK ONE

  The Crime of the Century

  I

  ON THE EIGHTEENTH day of December in that first year of the century, when the old earth was nearing her darkest calendar day, Billy Cavanaugh and I parked our horse and buggy at the corner house on Dewey Avenue. Billy held the reins to our ragged silver pony. I ignited a calabash pipe with two matches after the buggy jolted to a stop, thumbing the bowl to get the tobacco rolling. Billy fit on a pair of cloth gloves and stared up at the darkening slab of sky, a low rind of winter sun in the west. The last whiskers of daylight. There was no wind. A light snow fell as gently as dust swept off a rooftop.

  Neither of us said a word to the other as we sat parked along the curbstone. The hour approached seven. I jumped down from the buggy and fed our pony an apple from my trouser pocket. I scanned the street: a brick neighborhood avenue—void of traffic—that was lined on both sides by opulent mansions, the types with cupolas and double chimneys and crawling ivy. A scarf of river fog blew over from the Missouri. A lamplighter made his rounds, igniting gas street lights with a long wand. Coming around to the other side of the buggy, I elongated a spyglass and focused its sight at the mansion on the corner. The estate, a twenty-two room Victorian surrounded by a gable fence, sat on a half acre of land and was home to Edward Cudahy and family. I glassed the young man inside the room, sixteen-year-old Eddie Junior. He was knocking around balls on a baize-covered snooker table.

  After a moment of studying the youngster, I collapsed the spyglass and returned to my seat on the buggy, crossing my arms across my chest.

  “What’s he doing?” Billy asked.

  “Playing billiards against himself.”

  “Against hisself?”

  “Nine ball by the looks of it.”

  Our pony shivered in the cold. Twenty more minutes passed and the snow fell harder: fuzzy and diagonal. Night arrived in full. A new moon hung over the trees, low and fat. Billy socked a wad of leaf tobacco the size of a walnut in his lower lip and collected his spit in an old pineapple can. Spitting on the street came with a ten-dollar fine, which was twice the amount of money either one of us had in the wide world. I pulled the large storm collar of my overcoat around my neck.

  Halfway past the hour, a police officer in a bell hat and wool tunic approached from the opposite side of the street, doing whirligigs with his nightstick as he walked his beat. Billy and I both offered a friendly nod as the officer passed.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” the officer said.

  I doffed my bowler. “Good and cold.”

  “You fellers have business on this street?”

  “What else?” Billy said.

  “Forgive him, officer,” I said. “He’s Florida born, and the winter makes him somewhat choleric.”

  Billy sneered and spit into his old can. “I’m merry in all weathers.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Ordinarily as kindly as a Texas cyclone, this one.”

  “Don’t go to upsetting me, now.”

  The officer asked, “What are you twos doing on this block?”

  “Waiting on a fare,” I answered.

  The officer craned his neck to get a look at the handle of a revolver bulging from a shoulder holster inside my coat. “You got a permit for that roscoe?”

  I eased myself off the buggy and stood in front of the patrolman. I pulled open the left side of my overcoat to reveal a fake badge pinned to my suit lapel. “I’m Detective Dobbs of Sarpy County. My less cordial partner here who gets grumpy past his suppertime is Detective Saunders. We’re scouting a young man who escaped from reform school yesterday and robbed his poor auntie of five hundred dollars this morning. She’s one Mildred Finnegan, resident of 3710 South Dewey,” I said and pointed at the house next door to the Cudahy mansion. “Which is that one right there.”

  The officer considered the house. “You boys are good ways out from Sarpy County.”

  I flipped open my timepiece. “Three and one-quarter miles to be exact.”

  Billy began, “The longer this mule sticks around—”

  “Quite right,” I interrupted him. “If our young runaway would happen by and see us conversing with a uniformed lawman, it might just may scare him off.”

  “It common practice in Sarpy County to send out two detectives to retrieve a juvenile escaped from reformatory school?” the officer asked.

  Billy and I exchanged a look.

  “What precinct in Sarpy are you boys from?”

  I furrowed my brow. “What’s your name, officer? I’d like to have it in case I have to report to my captain that a third-shift beat boy of the okey-doke variety spoiled our opportunity to apprehend our suspect.”

  “My name is Donald Marsh. And you can report me to President McKinley if you want. I’m doing my duty, and I asked you a question.”

  “South Sixteenth Street Precinct,” I responded harshly. “Now, I can appreciate you doing your duty, but I’m going to ask you this once to be on your way out of respect for our surveillance. Surely you have other routes on your beat that are in need of your attention. But if I have to ask again, you’ll be stripped of your badge and folding sheets in a Chink laundry before the week’s out.”

  The officer backed away. “You Sarpy boys are a real pair of sweethearts.”

  “And a merry Christmas to you and yours on the Douglas side,” Billy said.

  “Detective Dobbs, was it?” the officer asked me.

  I tipped my hat in a parting gesture. “That’s right.”

  “Detective Saunders,” the officer said to Billy as a farewell. “Happy hunting, gentlemen.”

  We watched the officer leave. He walked briskly to the corner of Dewey and turned left, heading south. He’d been whistling a tune when he came down the street, but was silent during his exit. No longer was he twirling his baton.

  Billy paid heed to the difference. “Man left with a purpose.”

  I climbed back onto our woeful buggy.

  “Suppose he heads to the nearest call box and dials up central station to check on those names you gave him?”

  “Suppose he does,” I said and opened my spyglass again to examine the Cudahy mansion. Eddie Junior was no longer in the parlor. “He’ll find out that Detective Dobbs and Saunders are real fellers. Came into our shop a couple times for chops.”

  Billy chuckled without amusement. “You and your split tongue. How many times have you lied to me and I’ve not known it?”

  “If I ever lied to you, you’d know it good and well by the sixth syllab
le.”

  “If he doesn’t come out soon, we best pull it in for the night,” Billy said and nodded toward the Cudahy residence. “Come back tomorrow or the day after.”

  I collapsed the spyglass. “He’s coming out now.”

  The front door of the mansion opened and exiting the house was Eddie Junior, carrying a bundle of books bound in a belt strap. Tall and pale and thin-shouldered, he wore a knitted cap and knickerbockers. Following him down the drive was the family pet, a spotted collie with a bobbed tail like that of a lion. He closed the front gate behind him, calling out for his dog to stay close as it was without a leash. Billy shrugged a cape of monkey fur around his shoulders and bent his head low, leaking more tobacco juice into his can. I jumped down to my feet again and watched the young man from behind the buggy.

  Eddie Junior stopped three houses down: a three-story, Georgian Colonial affair with sash windows five across on the top floor and a wraparound porch. He rasped at the door and was greeted by a woman in a gingham apron who invited him inside immediately. His collie waited on the porch, pacing.

  I ran a pocket comb through my beard. “Get the rig ready. When he comes back out, we’ll scoop him up on his way home.”

  “Suppose he stays for a while?” Billy said, taking up the reins.

  “Beware the fury of the patient man.”

  “You and your literature.”

  Four minutes passed. The entire block was dark save for the flicker of the gas streetlamps. Our pony whinnied and snorted the frosty air. Snow fell in fat wet patches. Billy dug the grassy chaw out of his bottom lip, flung it into his fruit can, and wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand. Finally Eddie Junior reemerged from the neighbor’s house, offered an indistinct farewell to someone back inside the foyer, and closed the door behind him. The books he’d been carrying by a belt strap were gone. His collie yipped and took up behind him again, staying close to his heels.

  Billy whipped the buggy around, making a full turn to come up the other side of the street. The pony clopped at a trot over the icy brick, and Billy steered the coach halfway up onto the sidewalk, tipping the carriage as the two left wheels bounced over the curb. Eddie Junior was heading straight toward him and paused at the sight of the man in the fur cape seated on the platform. Darkness between the streetlamps hid his face.

  I crossed the avenue on foot, taking a long route to get behind the young heir to the Cudahy meatpacking fortune. I approached with my five-shot revolver drawn at my side and the big collar of my overcoat hiding my face. My hat scrunched down low past my eyebrows. My crunchy footsteps in the new snow made Eddie Junior turn around. He was blocked from escape in both directions.

  “We’ve got you now, Eddie Jones,” I said, keeping a distance of five feet.

  The young Cudahy stammered. “My—my name’s Cudahy. Not Jones.”

  I threw open my overcoat, revealing my fake badge just as I had done for the inquisitive police officer. “Sure it is. I’m undersheriff of Sarpy County, and you’re under arrest.”

  Eddie Junior looked as if he might sprint away. Billy drew his Spencer rifle from a scabbard hidden alongside the buggy and held it sideways in his lap.

  “I live in that house right over there,” Eddie Junior said and pointed toward his home less than thirty yards away.

  I stepped closer. “You escaped from reform school last night and stole five hundred dollars from your aunt. You’re not fooling me, Eddie Jones.”

  “But I’m Eddie Cudahy, and I live right there!”

  “That game won’t work, son,” I said, drawing the young man’s attention away from his house. As I moved to take him, Billy bolted off his seat and threw his monkey fur over the boy’s head. Young Cudahy tried to fight off the garment, but Billy was quick to wrap his arms around the boy and tackled him to the ground. The collie dog snarled and barked but didn’t attack. Eddie fought and screamed, but his fists and voice were muffled under the heavy cape. I whacked his head through the fur with the checkered grip of my revolver, rendering him motionless. Billy stood up gasping from the effort. After wiping the snow from his pants, he found his hat on the ground and dusted off its crown.

  Together, we lifted the boy’s body and carried it to our buggy as casually as furniture movers hauling a sofa. After propping up the young man into a sitting position to give him the appearance of a cloaked passenger, I canvassed the street in both directions. There wasn’t a person in sight. I glanced at every house on both sides of the block, making sure no one had come to a window or front porch.

  The commotion set Eddie’s collie into a frenzy. Billy kicked at the pooch, just missing its muzzle with the spurred heel of his boot. The dog ceased its hysterical yipping long enough for us to resume our seats on the buggy platform, the unconscious young Cudahy squeezed between us. Billy clucked his tongue twice and we were off at a trot. The buggy rocked back and forth with its newly added weight. The boy’s collie kept pace with our carriage until the end of the block but gave up the chase as we rounded the corner and disappeared from view into a flurry of sideways snow like a ship lost to storm.

  II

  THERE’S NO DENYING it: a man outside the law’s pale revels in an existence unmatched by anything else in creation. A clever man, a pretty famous desperado in his own right, once told me that being miserable ain’t the same as being good. And he was right. But he also left the equation half short.

  I was eleven years old when the Big Nose George Gang descended on my family’s ranch in Colorado. Daylight silvered out, the sun under the mountains and well on its way to causing the other half of the world its share of trouble when four riders crested the brow of a stony hill. I was the first to see them. In the goat pen harassing a rattlesnake with a tree branch, if memory serves. Their shapes as oneiric as shadows in a dream. The lead rider bellowed a greeting from a distance. He rode a cinnamon mare and wore a stovepipe.

  “Hey there, youngster,” the man said and spit. He moved around a wedge of tobacco as big as a jawbreaker in his cheek. “Your pops somewhere abouts?”

  I nodded and ran for home, past the chicken coop, to fetch my father. The leader introduced himself as George Parrott and politely asked if he and his men could be served a supper and take shelter for the night in the barn, as he calculated a rainstorm advancing in the red clouds over the Rockies. He said they’d rode nearly a hundred miles in the last twenty-four hours without rest and badly needed a spot to recuperate for the evening.

  “Sure enough,” my dad had said and shook hands with all four men. “You can stable your horses yonder and see to your washing at the well.”

  The man who’d introduced himself as George thanked him mightily for the hospitality, and his gang watered their horses at the goat trough. I brought the strangers’ horses two buckets of forage and sweet feed apiece and showed the men where they could wash before supper. George patted me on the head, told me I was an alright tyke. He gave me a silver dollar and a stick of horehound candy for my effort. A second man brought a bag of lemons inside and asked my mother if she could make lemon pies with whipping cream. She accommodated him with a mite of exasperation.

  I was sent out to the springhouse to fetch fresh milk and butter. My two sisters gathered potatoes and canned tomatoes from the root cellar. A five-pound jackrabbit cooked in the fireplace, the logs snapping and the hare spitting juice as it rotated on a spit. My mother dressed the table with her best linen and set out our queensware dishes usually reserved for holidays. The four men came into the house in a bawdy temperament. They arranged their boots by the door and hung their mackinaw coats on the hall tree and all around otherwise regarded their presence as if they’d graced our family an audience with the queen.

  The leader of the gang had a nose as big as a bird’s beak and his last name, Parrott, was a humorously fitting circumstance when regarding his large snout. He was not guarded about his physical abnormality. He even drew atten
tion to it by tapping on his left nostril three times and saying: “After I was born, my folks changed our family name from Gerardo to Parrott on account of my schnozzle. Too bad. If I’d been born with a big something else, they might’ve changed our last name to Wienerschnitzel and named me Colossus.”

  I had seen his likeness before. His mug was pasted on circulars in town. Impossible to forget a nose that size. Every telegraph pole in Leadville bore a poster of his profile.

  WANTED. GEORGE PARROTT. ALSO KNOWN AS BIG NOSE GEORGE. DEAD OR ALIVE.

  He carried a bird’s head Colt on his hip, wore a melon-colored shirt with butternut trousers, and kept his sundown orange hair cropped above his ears. He took his time poking about the kitchen cupboards as if he owned the place until he discovered an earthen jar of muddy whiskey. He poured out five lashings: four for his men and one for my father. They sat and drank, and George asked if he and his weary travelers might indulge a second slug before supper. My daddy did not refuse them.

  That night we dined on roast jackrabbit, boiled potatoes, biscuits with blackberries, and three lemon pies for dessert. The men were profane but in good humor. They masticated the rabbit and slurped berries straight from the spoon and poured the whiskey as freely as if it came from a spigot over the concrete kitchen sink. Soon their voices fell easy out of their mouths, their tongues as loose as if culling remembered song, when just twenty minutes prior they hardly had the stamina to answer a simple yes-or-no question.