The Mammoth Book Of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits Part 12

Presidium.

29 March.

To the Central Committee, British Communist Party.

Moscow.

Dear Comrades, "Dear Comrades," he murmured. The phrases rolled off his wet lips like plump sturgeon giving up their roe. "It is indispensable to stir up the ma.s.ses of the British proletariat . . . a successful rising . . . to count upon the complete success of an armed insurrection."

He sat back in his chair, and plonked his boots on the battle-scarred edge of his desk. This letter, linked to Rothstein, along with Premadasa's seditious speech in Hyde Park would give him sufficient ammunition to convince his boss of a plot, which was aiming to reach its culmination soon. The problem was, he needed to come up with a target. He had some ideas on that, but he wasn't about to tell Banks. Let the sergeant run around chasing shadows. This would be his own personal triumph.

The gambling club hadn't changed much in forty years. Since the day that Billy Orwell had invested the proceeds of his prizefighting days into the shabby building in the East End that had become his goldmine. Downstairs you could first dance with cheap women, and then upstairs, the rolling chemin de fer tables would conclude your expensive night. As many as sixty men were playing at any one time including shop-keepers, artisans, and gentlemen fond of slumming. And if your gambling desires were not sated, there was always the tape machine relaying racing information right into the premises. Old Billy still presided over this empire, his aging and battered features, crudely rearranged by other fighters' bare fists, beaming over his customers' eagerness to part with their hard-earned cash.

John Banks sidled up to the narrow door in the alley wall that suggested nothing of the pleasures that lay within. But Orwell's club did not need to advertise to draw in the gambling addict from the working cla.s.ses. Indeed, the very opposite was the case. The exterior was so modest as to be downright invisible. Those who needed to, knew where to go. And how to gain access.

Banks tapped on the Judas-slitted door, which slid back revealing a pair of suspicious eyes. It was his informant, a former pugilist called Attey.

"Is he still here?"

Jack Attey worked for Orwell, but was in debt to Banks for being kept out of jail over the little matter of beating up a prost.i.tute. He had been the first to respond when Banks put the word out about the names involved in the case. The pug-faced man nodded nervously, and quickly opened the door to let the policeman in. Banks slid past Attey, and made for the stairs up to the gaming room. He declined the offer of services from a heavily-scented blonde girl who hung around the landing, and strolled inconspicuously into the smoky fug of the chemmy tables. It took him a while to spot his quarry, but eventually he saw him. Tommy Fields was staring disconsolately as a pile of money was raked away from in front of him. Banks eased into the seat beside Fields, resting a firm hand on his shoulder.

"Can I buy you a drink, Tommy?"

Fields turned his dulled eyes on to the inconspicuous, little man at his side. The last thing he wanted was some eager football fanatic at his shoulder.

"Do I know you?"

"Does it matter? You need a drink, and I'm offering one."

Fields shrugged, and acquiesced to the man's offer. He was all done in, despite his physique. Banks thought he looked defeated. He pulled the day's Daily Herald out of his pocket.

"You're not in the team, then."

Fields scanned the West Ham team named for tomorrow's Cup Final. Hufton, Henderson, Young, Bishop, Kay, Tresadern, Richards, Brown, Watson, Moore, Ruffell.

"It doesn't look like it, does it?"

The card game continued around them as Banks whispered in the footballer's ear. "It could be worse."

"How?"

"You could be in jail."

Crowds of men were already beginning to pour out of the Metropolitan Railway station at Wembley Park, and it was only morning. The Cup Final between West Ham and Bolton Wanderers was four hours off. It was a similar situation at the Great Central Railway station at Wembley Hill, and Wembley station on the London and North Western Railway line. The site of the Empire Exhibition was witnessing a steady stream of capped and raincoated figures making their way towards the new stadium. To Albert Potter, standing at one of the upper window of the stand, it resembled a busy line of worker ants scuttling inexorably towards their target. The two white towers of the stadium sparkled in the late morning sunlight. From behind Potter, Sir Charles Clegg, President of the Football a.s.sociation, tremulously voiced everyone's concerns.

"Does this look like a crowd of fifty thousand to you?"

That had been the attendance at the last Cup Final at Stamford Bridge.

"Don't worry, Sir Charles," said Potter confidently. He was a board member of British Empire Exhibition Inc, and felt the need to rea.s.sure the FA Committee members standing around him in their plush overcoats and bowler hats. In fact he was more than a little worried himself. But that was because Superintendent O'Nions had asked to see him on site in a few minutes time. "We had a full infantry battalion marking time on the terraces yesterday. They're as solid as a rock. Besides we can accommodate over one hundred and twenty thousand."

Relieved, the committee members chuckled through their luxuriant white moustaches. A hundred and twenty thousand. Such a large figure for the Cup Final was inconceivable. Potter slipped out the room, and left the gentlemen to their refreshments. In the long concrete corridors below the stand, his footfall echoed hollowly. They were windowless and lit only by electric light. He turned a corner, and at the farthest end of the long corridor that ran the length of the stand, he could make out two figures. As he approached, the larger one resolved into O'Nions. He was pacing agitatedly up and down under the full glare of a lamp. Beside him, slightly in shadow, stood the slim, impa.s.sive figure of Sergeant Banks. His face gave nothing away.

"Ah, Mr Potter, good. The King is not due until two o'clock. So we have time to conclude this matter. Banks tells me he has arranged for Fields to do as he was instructed, and leave the outer door to the changing rooms open. Rothstein is no doubt going to slip in that way and carry out his plans."

"You don't really think that Harry intends to kill the King, do you?" Potter was shocked at O'Nions's interpretation of Harry Rothstein's intentions. He could imagine Harry trying to harangue the crowd, to appeal to their working cla.s.s sentiments, to boo and hiss the King like some music-hall villain. That degree of protest he thought Harry quite capable of. But murder? Never.

O'Nions shook his head at Potter's naivety. "I have seen the instructions from Moscow. There can be no doubt what Premadasa and Rothstein planned."

"And the steam shovel?" This was Banks, daring to question his own boss in front of Potter. "Fields told me that Rothstein planned to use the steam shovel from the building site for something. What's he going to do? Brain the King with it?"

O'Nions face went puce at such impertinence. His future career depended on his handling of this affair, and he wasn't going to let a Bolshie police sergeant interfere. He wished he had left Banks hanging out to dry during the Police Strike. Once a Red always a Red. Shame, he would have made a good policeman. Through gritted teeth, he told Banks to go and check on the uniformed police allocated to the King's protection. There were five hundred constables on site, and most of them were on that detail. Banks shrugged, and disappeared round the corner. Potter was left dealing with an embarra.s.sing silence. He tried to break the ice.

"I could have done with some of those constables on the exhibition site today. We have been taking delivery of some exhibits for the Ceylon Pavilion. A bit early, but they had to come all the way by sea, and better they arrived early than late. That's what I say. Nevertheless, it's a headache, when you realize their value . . ."

He knew he was burbling, and O'Nions was paying him no attention. He decided to leave the superintendent to his plotting.

"I'll just go and see how . . ."

Potter followed Banks down past the players' changing rooms, and out on to the approach road to the new stadium. After the hollow silence of the concrete underworld, the noise and bustle outside a.s.sailed his senses. The crowds were even larger now, thousands of men milling around like a human whirlpool. And he was in danger of being sucked in. His head spun, and he almost pitched over. A strong hand grasped his upper arm, and pulled him to one side. It was the hand of Sergeant Banks.

"There's going to be a lot of people here today, Mr Potter. And the police aren't going to be of much use."

They watched as the press of people at the back of the crowd forced those at the front closer to the turnstiles. There was a trickle feeding through each turnstile, but the crowd outside was like a river in spate. Already some men were clambering over one turnstile gate simply to escape the suffocating pressure. The man at the turnstile was helpless.

"How are we going to spot Rothstein in amongst all these people?" groaned Potter.

"Do you really think he's going to sneak in and kill the King?"

"Don't you, Sergeant Banks?"

"I don't know, Mr Potter. But what I do know is that the guv'nor is basing everything he's got on two things. What Tommy Fields told me, and that letter. The problem is, I don't know where he got the letter from."

Potter looked confused. "Didn't he tell me that you found out about the letter?"

"Yes, I did. But I never managed to lay my hands on it." Banks gloomily contemplated the moment when he burst into the shop in the East End with two uniformed constables in tow. Amy Clark had looked shocked at first, then had fixed Banks with a censorious stare. He could see the disappointment in her eyes, as he went through the shop and office with a fine tooth comb. For the first time, he felt shabby doing the job he loved.

"The thing was, there was no letter there."

The two men watched on helplessly as the tide of men surged through the broken turnstile. Two policemen appeared round the edge of the crowd, and tried to restore some sense of order. It was like trying to bail out the North Sea with a bucket.

"But the fact is, it did exist." Potter still could not believe that O'Nions had faked evidence. "And there is still a danger to the King. Though how any a.s.sa.s.sin is going to make his way through this . . . mob . . . I don't know." He sighed. "To think I came here today as a diversion from my troubles at home. You see Rosalind . . ."

Banks suddenly turned to face Potter, a gleam in his eyes. "Did I hear you say as I left just now, that there was going to be a delivery of some exhibits to one of the pavilions today?"

"Yes. A consignment of pearls to the Ceylon Pavilion. If the van is able to get through this crowd. Quite valuable too, I understand. "

"How valuable?"

"They are insured for a million pounds."

"A million . . . Come on."

"Where?"

Banks was already pulling out his warrant card and flashing it at the two overwhelmed constables, who looked glad to be given other orders. The sergeant looked over his shoulder at Potter.

"The Ceylon Pavilion. It's just as you said. This a.s.sa.s.sination plot is Red Peril scare nonsense. It's just a sideshow." Potter was beginning to understand, but Banks still spelled it out.

"A diversion."

The speech-making in the Chamber of the House of Commons was dulling Potter's senses. The debate on the debacle at the Wembley Stadium when over two hundred thousand people turned up, and nearly kyboshed the whole match, droned on incessantly. Only Potter knew that the real excitement had been witnessed by only a handful of people, and had taken place way across the site at the Ceylon Pavilion.

Potter had been soon left behind by the younger, fitter Banks and his two constables. They disappeared from sight, but he trotted on past one of the unfinished constructions that was to be India's Pavilion. The building was made of steel and fibrous plaster and was already flanked with minarets hundred feet high. In front of the pavilion was a sunken courtyard surrounded by an open colonnade. As he rounded the half-finished building, he was met by the most bizarre of sights. Hong Kong intended to reproduce one of its native streets. There were already twenty-four shops on one side of the road, and on the opposite side of the road there was a large Chinese restaurant. Down the middle of the road, lumbering towards the Ceylon Pavilion, rumbled a huge contraption designed to shift vast quant.i.ties of earth with its scoop. Closing up behind this bulldozer were the two uniformed constables. Their presence seemed to flush out two desperate-looking men advancing behind the steam shovel on foot. They were soon tackled by the constables and arrested. In the meantime, the shovel ploughed on its way, the driver not having seen or heard the apprehension of his fellow criminals. Potter reckoned that if it was Harry Rothstein in the cab, he was clearly intent on smashing down the main doors to the pavilion to get to the pearls. Potter could see Banks skirting round the rumbling, hissing monster to get in front of it.

Stumbling over the builders' rubble still littered along the Oriental street, Potter came up behind the machine as Banks stepped into the road. He stood with an arm thrown out in front of him like some constable on point duty. The machine clattered to a stop a bare few feet from him . Banks called up into the cab, where sat a m.u.f.flered figure with a flat cap pulled over his eyes.

"It's over, sir. Please climb down."

The machine seemed to give an almost human sigh, and the engine died. The figure still sat slumped in the shaped metal bucket of a seat. Potter was about to beg Harry to give himself up, when Banks called out again.

"Mr Premadasa, sir."

Potter couldn't believe his ears. Junius was dead. He had seen the body. So he could hardly believe his eyes, when the figure swung elegantly down from the cab of the machine, and doffed his cap in a mocking salute. Potter looked into the dark brown eyes of Junius Premadasa.

"Junius! But then, whose body . . . ?"

It was Banks, of course, who supplied the solution.

"I think you'll find, Mr Potter, that that was the gentleman's missing chauffeur. Who was also Sinhalese, was he not, Mr Premadasa?"

Premadasa raised a patrician nose to the skies.

"A necessary sacrifice. Now, I believe you would like to handcuff me, sir."

As he spoke these words, there was a mighty roar from the stadium behind them. Someone had scored.

In the Chamber, Mr J. Jones rose to his feet to speak.

"May I say that as far as the crowd were concerned they were good-humoured . . ."

Potter scarcely heard the rest of the eulogy to the a.s.sembled ma.s.s of football supporters. Who, he had only learned later, had gladly allowed a policeman on a white horse to organize them along the touchline. And then had supplied the King with three rousing cheers. Premadasa would have been mortified at their loyalty.

It turned out that he had organized the jewel heist to coincide with the Cup Final in the hope that all the other problems would divert the police, and that he could slip away in the crowd. While Tommy Fields and Harry Rothstein were sucked into a fake Communist plot, he and his accomplices, Marsh and Brown, would steal a million pounds' worth of pearls. And embarra.s.s the Imperialist exhibition into the bargain. Funds and principles both satisfied, Premadasa would be able to disappear. He was already dead after all. Banks had guessed some of it, when he tracked Rothstein down to his bolt-hole. Harry had denied all partic.i.p.ation in Prem's murder. Had a.s.sumed he was indeed still alive. But Prem's interest in the steam shovel, and the building site seemed incompatible with his ostensible plot to rouse into action the "proletarian army of the unemployed". Banks had all but figured it out then. Potter had inadvertently supplied the key. But with the hushing up of the whole affair "for the sake of the Empire" he could tell noone of his pivotal role. So it was with a sense of irony that he silently listened to the standing MP's final remarks.

"If it had not been for the conduct of the police, especially of the officer who was mounted on the white horse . . ." Here, laughter and cheers. ". . . and the good humour of the crowd . . ." Cries of hear, hear. ". . . there would have been murder."

Someone MICHAEL COLLINS.

Michael Collins has been writing about his one-armed sleuth Dan Fortune for nearly forty years, in fact for even longer if you count the stories featuring Slot-Machine Kelly, a prototype for Fortune, who appeared in short stories way back in 1962. The introductory Dan Fortune novel, Act of Fear (1967) won Collins the Edgar Award for that year's best first novel. There have been eighteen other Dan Fortune novels since then plus many short stories, most of which will be found in Crime, Punishment and Resurrection (1992) and Fortune's World (2000). Recently Collins has been reflecting on Fortune's past and origins, and in the following story, which sweeps us through the 1920s, we learn about Fortune's father and how young Daniel came into the world. At first glance you may not think about this as a whodunnit, but just ponder a while on who's the victim and that will make you wonder how, why and who.

My father came to know Owney Madden, Arnold Rothstein, Mayor Jimmy Walker, and wealthy playboy Robert Jacob (Bobby) Astor, in 1923, and it changed his life, and mine.

In 1923 the country was full of bounce. The war was over, Europe was exhausted, but America was richer and stronger, and then came 16 January 1920. Congress pa.s.sed The Volstead Act, Prohibition, and overnight the bounce turned into a binge. The country became one big alcoholic party as the money rolled in. It was, as Ernest Hemingway wrote, as if life were a long leave from the front of a war not yet over. (How true that was they could not have known then, but in a short twenty years, they and their sons would be called once more to the front.) Warren Harding was president, and whether the country reflects the president, or the president reflects the country, Harding was the perfect president for the times. On the golf course or at the poker table he vigorously enforced playing by the rules, while personally ignoring the rules of the nation with his boozing, on and off the golf course, his women, his gambling, and his turning a blind eye as his cronies pillaged the country's coffers culminating in Teapot Dome. It was anything goes, and have a drink on the house.

Kasimir Nikolai Fortunowski was born at the turn of the twentieth century in May, 1900, the only son of Tadeusz Jan Fortunowski, a Polish Lithuanian farm boy who read Marx and Lenin, was branded a dangerous agitator by the Tsar of all the Russias, and forced to run from the tsar's domains in 1892.

All that I learned from my step-grandmother, old Tadeusz's second wife. Much of the rest of this story my mother told me later in our shabby apartment on Manhattan's Lower East Side on those rare nights after school when she was at home with nothing to do but stare at the wreck of her life. Some of it I watched happening on my own with that peculiar insight children have before they turn into teenagers and see little but themselves.

Kasimir Fortunowski enlisted in the US Army the day he turned eighteen. Seven months later he returned home, having seen, as a song of the time tells us, the wonders of Paris, London, and the castles of the Rhine. He had also come to know men from all across America who were not named Kasimir or Nikolai or Fortunowski. Within a year he changed his name to Casey Nicholas Fortune, and after he found he had no chance of getting the white-collar work he thought he should have, joined the New York City Police Department.

Old Tadeusz Jan refused to speak to a man named Fortune, or to anyone who worked for the bosses as all policemen did. This did not bother my father who intended to be part of a newly confident America, and wanted nothing to do with the old country or the past of his father.

For Casey Fortune the party began in a blind pig on Fifty-Sixth Street off Tenth Avenue. He had done only average in his police training, so ended up walking a beat in h.e.l.l's Kitchen. Three years later he was still walking that beat. The blind pigs and higher cla.s.s speakeasies were raided regularly when the powers-that-be decided to flex their muscle for someone's benefit, but between raids the off-duty policeman needed a drink or two to unwind from a bad day or to drown his sorrows the same as anyone else.

My father was in this mostly Irish blind pig that night, off-duty and minding his own business, when he sensed trouble at his end of the bar. It wasn't much: a slightly raised Irish-accented voice; the twitch of a shoulder; other Irish voices beginning to murmur like a low C-pedal in a symphony. Not enough to alert the bartender or the door-muscle, but they didn't have the advantage of recognizing the accent of the second voice that belonged to the large man with the twitchy shoulder.

Without a heart beat's hesitation, Casey Fortune whirled, knocking over his ersatz-Scotch and his beer chaser, and had the big man's arm in an elbow-breaking hold before anyone could blink. He quickly removed the pistol from the man's waistband, dropped it into his pocket, and flashed his badge. "Police. Everyone just go on about your business."

Without another word he hustled his prisoner out of the bar, with the man swearing in Polish at Americans, Irish, and the police all the way to the street. Once outside he marched his arrest to the nearest call box and phoned in the incident. Soon a trio of patrol cars and the paddy wagon appeared, the prisoner was shoved in, a detective took my father's report without comment, and, of course, padlocked the now all-but-empty blind pig.

As all this went down, my father noticed a man standing in the shadows some fifty yards away calmly watching the entire show. On the small side, the man was expensively dressed in a conservative dark blue suit and what had to be a cashmere topcoat against the late spring chill. Perhaps most impressive were the man's homburg and black shoes so well shined they reflected even the weak light of the street lamp a half block away.

Once the blind pig had been locked down, and the still-swearing prisoner carted away, everyone left and the street was deserted once more.

The well-dressed man came out of the shadows and approached Casey. "That was fast thinking, laddie. Prob'ly stopped a riot inside the pig, a wagon load of broken heads, and a bundle of my money. But what made you grab that guy? None of my people noticed anything wonky."

The moment the man moved closer and opened his mouth, Casey Fortune didn't have to ask who he was. No cop in New York did. Owney Madden, the biggest brewer in the city, king of the Eastside and a lot of the Westside, especially h.e.l.l's Kitchen where he had grown up to lead the Gopher gang, the lilt of his native Leeds and Liverpool still in his voice.

"You should tell your door muscle to screen who they let in a lot more carefully, and you'd still have that blind pig."

"Oh, that. Don't worry about it, kid, it'll be open for business tomorrow mornin'. You 'aven't answered my question."

Casey shrugged. "I recognized the guy's Polish accent, and saw his shoulder move to get ready to draw a pistol. A Polack with a pistol who walks into an Irish saloon and starts mouthing off is looking for trouble. The fastest way to end it was to grab his gun and hustle him out before anyone got really riled up."

Madden stared at Casey and slowly nodded. "'Ow long you been a patrolman over 'ere?"

"Three years."

At that Madden looked thoughtful. "Well, thanks again, kid. You're pretty smart. Buy yourself a decent drink on me," and peeled a hundred off a roll as thick as his wrist.

Casey hesitated. Madden laughed. "Go on, kid, it's naught but a drink, an' you can spend it in one of my joints if you want and call it a drink on the house."

Still laughing, the dapper little man turned and walked briskly east. As if by magic, a big black Packard appeared. Its rear door opened, Madden got in, and the car vanished into the night.

Casey Fortune walked the few blocks to his fourth floor walkup on Fifty-Second off Ninth Avenue still holding the hundred and feeling half exhilarated and half guilty. Had he taken a bribe from one of New York's most notorious gangsters? Or had the owner of a business establishment on his beat simply thanked him for doing his job well?

He thought about it most of the night. He was still thinking about it in the morning as he walked his beat. It was about ten a.m. when he pa.s.sed where all the action had taken place last night, and found the blind pig open and operating exactly as Owney Madden had said it would. He had his answer. Madden was bribing someone a lot higher in the NYPD than he was, and a hundred-dollar drink was only a thank you.