The Sporting House Killing: A Gilded Age Legal Thriller Page 8

  Catfish swiped his mustache with one hand. His son needed to learn that facts had to come before conclusions. Doing it the other way around would get a client convicted. “Don’t have one yet. But it’s particularly interesting, isn’t it?”

  He moved closer to the building. The bricks around the window framing were charred black on every window. “Huh.”

  Inside, a flicker of movement whisked by in the split between the closed drapes.

  Somebody was home.

  Catfish drew back from the window. “Look to you like there’s been a fire?”

  “It does,” Harley answered. “You know, I think I remember some building here burning up in a fire last year, maybe the year before.”

  The front door opened and a man stepped out. Big, burly fella dressed in a plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Curly brown hair. One drooping eyelid. No smile. He was the same fella who’d been with Miss Jessie in court.

  He cut his eyes between Catfish and Harley. “Can I help you gentlemans?”

  “How do, mister.” Catfish extended his right hand. “Name’s Catfish Calloway, and this is my son, Harley. We were admiring the architecture.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, crossing his arms. Not moving.

  “This your house?” Catfish continued.

  “I work here.”

  “Is it Miss Jessie’s house, by any chance?”

  Stock still. “What of it?”

  “I was wondering if we might have a word with her?”

  “She’s busy right this very minute.”

  Catfish smiled. “Mind if we wait inside?”

  “Miss Jessie don’t allow no dogs.”

  “Set!”

  Colonel plopped on the edge of the street, eyes on Catfish.

  The man nodded for them to follow and led them into the parlor. Nobody else was there.

  “You can be waiting in here.”

  “Thanks. And your name is?”

  “Joe.”

  “Joe Riley, by any chance?”

  “No.” He disappeared down the hallway.

  “Who’s Joe Riley?” Harley asked.

  “Nobody I know.”

  The place reeked of sweet perfume, like somebody had emptied a bottle somewhere. Catfish had expected the place to be gaudy, but it wasn’t—with the exception, perhaps, of the art. There were more photographs of naked women than you could shake a stick at. But for them and the gilt statue and the perfume, this might have been the parlor of a banker’s house.

  There was a framed certificate on the wall. He put on his pince-nez and read aloud. “‘Know ye that whereas Miss Jessie Rose, on the first day of April 1894, paid to the city secretary the sum of fifteen dollars and seventy-five cents, being the license imposed on a bawdy house, and otherwise complied with the regulations of the city ordinances in this behalf, therefore, the said Jessie Rose is hereby authorized and empowered to operate a bawdy house of five rooms for the term of three months, from the first day of April 1894. Signed William C. Cooper, secretary of the city of Waco.’”

  He drew back for a look at the walls and trim. “This room’s been painted not too long ago, and the molding’s new.”

  “May I help you gents?”

  Miss Jessie glided into the room with a different bearing than she’d displayed at the courthouse. She was more casual in her dress today. As a matter of fact, there was considerably more of Miss Jessie than of her dress.

  “How do, ma’am,” he replied. “I’m Catfish Calloway and this is my son, Harley.”

  “I’m pleased to make your acquaintances. Have a seat. Would you care for some amusement?” She lit on a chair and winked.

  “Well, that’s awful kind of you to offer us your hospitality, but we’re here on business,” he answered, as though she’d offered a cup of tea.

  She eyed him closely. “I remember you from the inquest. Are you a new deputy?”

  “Oh no, ma’am, nobody so important.” He handed her his calling card.

  “What’s your business here?”

  “Would you mind answering a few questions about the killing? And maybe let us take a gander where it happened?”

  She glanced at the card and tossed it on the table. “Whose partem are you representing?”

  “We’re defending the boy accused of the killing.”

  “The murderer?”

  “Well, folks say he’s a murderer. Do I understand correctly you’re one of those?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “He shot her in her bed.”

  “You have any differences with Miss Georgia?”

  “No.”

  “How about this house? Own it yourself?”

  She pressed something on the table next to her chair and stood up. Big Joe appeared in the hallway almost instantly. Catfish’s question must’ve touched a nerve.

  “I said all I have to say in court,” she said with a forced smile. “Unless you gents are interested in something else, I have important matters to attend.”

  So that was that. With the interview so abruptly ended, they walked up Washington past Miss Ella’s. A girl sat in a rocking chair on the front porch, painting her nails, and waved at them as they passed by.

  “Pay me a visit, gents?” she shouted.

  “How do, miss. Not today, thanks.”

  “Your loss,” she yelled. “I like your dog.”

  Catfish glanced at his son. “Friendly folks in this neighborhood, Harley.”

  Harley fussed with his tie, eyes straight ahead. “I’m not sure what we learned today that helps us.”

  “Main thing, Miss Jessie’s hiding something. Not sure what. She runs a pretty highbrow sporting house and seems well educated. Did you say she came from New Orleans?”

  “That’s what Quinn told me.”

  “Got a touch of Creole in her accent.”

  Harley snapped back into business mode. “I know a deputy in New Orleans. I could wire him and see if he knows her.”

  Now he was thinking. “See if she’s been arrested. And if she was a high-class sporting girl there.”

  “Right.”

  Something, or somebody, was missing from this picture. “Maybe we should talk to the other girl instead of the madam. What’s her name? Sally? Sar—”

  “Sadie. But I don’t think Miss Jessie—or her man Joe—is about to let us near her.”

  “They’re not, for sure, and it’s not likely she’ll leave the Reservation. But I got an idea I’m chewing on. I think Miss Peach can help us with Sadie. I want you to head over to the Evening News office and see if you can find any reports about a fire at Miss Jessie’s. Probably not important, but I’d like to know anyway.”

  “Right. But how does any of that help Cicero?”

  “Well, there’s your query, isn’t it?” That missing somebody might just be the killer. “We need to ask Cicero about a few things. That supposed confession, for one. But let’s also ask both Cicero and Jasper about these two other men there that night. Maybe between them they’ll remember something else they haven’t told us. Get Jasper to meet us at the jail in the morning.”

  Harley stopped on the sidewalk outside their office. “And we ask Cicero about the fight with Peter, right?”

  Catfish shrugged. “Sure, that too.”

  Killers got other folks to lie for them. Folks who needed them. They had to find out who Miss Jessie Rose was protecting.

  Chapter 11

  Jasper went to the jailhouse early so he could visit with Cicero private-like before them lawyers got there. He was feeling real queasy. The place stunk of piss and puke, and the air was stock still. Drunks, likely hauled in the night before, snored loud from cots against the back wall of the cell. Down at the end, somebody was rattling the bars and jabbering about Abe Lincoln spying on him, and he wanted Marse Robert to come bail him out. Somehow, the fat ol’ deputy slept through all of this in a chair by the cell block door.

  Jasper knelt outside the bars, and Cicero come over and sat cross-legged on th
e other side. Inside the cell, a plate of un-eat food drew about a hundred flies. It buzzed like a feedlot. Cicero sure looked poorly, like he nary slept in a month, though he been there just a few days. He didn’t really shave yet, but a weed patch of hairs sprouted from his chin anyways. His eyes was red around the edges.

  Cicero leaned over and grabbed the bars with both hands. “Jasper, I sure do appreciate you coming to visit. I’ve been hard up for friends in here.”

  “How’re they treating you?”

  “Tolerable. They haven’t got me pounding any rocks yet.” He smiled.

  Jasper decided he’d get right down to what he wanted to know. It was bothering him bad and had been ever since that night. “Tell me what happened in that whorehouse.”

  Cicero cut a glance at the prisoner in the next cell and lowered his voice. “I don’t know. One minute I was dancing with Miss Georgia—you saw that—and the next minute some copper was dragging me from her room.”

  “Was Miss Georgia dead?”

  “I don’t remember seeing her. My head was real hazy. God’s truth, I don’t remember anything.”

  Jasper rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, somehow that girl got herself shot dead, and they’s saying you done it.”

  “I know,” Cicero said, smashing his face against the bars, “but I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even have a gun. You know that.”

  “I do, but somebody must’ve shot her.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me.” He leaned back. “That’s all there is to it.”

  “How you know if you can’t remember nothing?”

  “You know I’m no killer, Jasper. Why would I go and shoot a whore?”

  That was a good question. He couldn’t figure it out neither. “I don’t know. But she’s shot dead, and you was there. Folks is saying they’s gonna hang you.”

  “They don’t go and hang anybody who didn’t do anything wrong.” He started shaking the bars like he’d shake them loose. “I’m telling you, somebody else killed her.”

  “Who? How’s Mr. Calloway supposed to prove that if you can’t remember nothing?” This was getting exasperating.

  Cicero got real quiet-like and let loose of the bars. He lowered his voice a hair above a whisper. “It would help me if you’d tell the judge I didn’t shoot the whore.”

  Jasper shook his head. “I can’t do that. I didn’t see what happened.”

  “Well, you believe me, don’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then you’ve got to say it.”

  Jasper looked away. He felt real helpless-like, because he wanted more than anything to help his friend but didn’t know how to go about it. “I can’t tell a judge something’s true if I don’t know it for a fact my own self. That’d be lying.”

  Cicero’s eyes wetted up. “I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t kill her. If it’s the truth, then you can’t be lying if you say it too.”

  “I ain’t sure. Why don’t you just say it to the judge your own self?”

  “The lawyer says I can’t. He says I’ve got to have a witness swear to it.”

  “I reckon Mr. Calloway will find you one then.”

  Cicero wiped a tear away with his sleeve. “Aren’t you my friend?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Well if you are, you’ll lend me a hand on this. You know I’d help you if you were in here instead of me.”

  “I know you would, and I want to help you out. I want to do that more than anything in the whole world. It’s just—I’m not sure about swearing on a Bible something I don’t know’s true.”

  “If you don’t witness about the truth for me, Jasper, they’re going to hang me just like those people are saying.” Cicero gripped the bars so hard his knuckles turned white as cotton. “You don’t want that on your conscience, do you?”

  “No, I sure don’t.” He rubbed his sweaty palms along his pants legs. “I’ll have to talk to Mr. Calloway.”

  “Just tell him you know what happened and can testify for me. That’s all you need to say to him.”

  “I already done told them I didn’t see nothing.”

  Cicero looked like he’d just figured out the answer to a schoolmarm’s question. “Tell him it just came back to you. You know, you just thought real hard about it, and in a flash you remembered.”

  That didn’t sit much better with him. “I’ll talk to him.”

  The sleeping deputy jumped up as the door to the cell block clanged open and Deputy Whaley come in.

  “Lawyers are here.” Deputy Whalen nodded at Jasper. “They want to see you first. Follow me.”

  Jasper got up, but not before a last whisper from his pal.

  “Remember what you promised, Jasper.”

  When he entered the other room and took one look at them law people, he knew what he had to do. He’d already been worried like the dickens, and then Cicero gone and asked him to make up a story. He could just hear the preacher back home: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. So he sat down across the table from Mr. Calloway, Mr. Harley, and Miss Peach, and he done it. He told them what Cicero had said. Right or wrong, he done it.

  “Cicero’s scared, and that’s understandable,” Mr. Calloway said. “He knows he didn’t kill that girl, but he’s frustrated he doesn’t know what to do about it. Nothing to worry about. He’s not doing anything wrong.”

  “I been fretting over what happened all night long ever since then. I don’t know whether I’m awake and thinking or asleep and dreaming. It’s just heavy on my heart.”

  “I know,” Mr. Calloway said.

  “It’s like one of them nightmares I has sometimes. It’s like seeing Momma and Daddy’s house on fire with everybody trapped inside, but for some cause I don’t know, I can’t move a muscle to put the fire out. I keep hoping I’ll just wake up, but it don’t happen.”

  “I’ve felt the same way, son. But the judge is gonna tell you that you can only swear to what you know for a fact because you saw it with your own eyes. If you didn’t see it, you can’t swear to it.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  Mr. Calloway ran his fingers through his hair, and it flopped over his face. “There’s one thing maybe you can do to help him.”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t decided on this yet, but it’s something we might do.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I can call you as a character witness. You can stand up for your friend by doing that, and it won’t peeve the judge.”

  Maybe he could help after all. “What would I be saying if I was a character?”

  “That you know Cicero’s got a good reputation as a lawful and peaceful person, not the kind of fella who’d kill somebody.”

  “Why, I can do that for sure, Mr. Calloway.” He nodded at Mr. Harley too. “I can swear to that ’cause I know it’s true.”

  “The thing is,” Mr. Harley said, “if you’ve ever heard anything bad about him at all, even just back fence talk or gossip, the law allows the prosecutor to bring it out and make Cicero look bad.”

  Jasper shook his head hard. “I ain’t never heard nobody talking bad about Cicero Sweet. Everybody likes him.”

  “Good, good.” Mr. Harley had a kind smile, just like his daddy. “That’ll help him. You can do your part for him that way.”

  Mr. Calloway had the deputy bring Cicero in without his father. He said Mr. Sweet’s presence might affect Cicero’s answers. Miss Peach prepared to take notes as Cicero settled next to Jasper.

  “Boys,” Mr. Calloway began, “got some more questions for you. I thought maybe if the two of you were together, you’d remember something you didn’t think of before.”

  “What do you want to know, sir?” Cicero asked.

  “First thing—another fella was there when you arrived. Came down the stairs with Miss Georgia and left. What’d he look like?”

  Jasper looked at Cicero.

  “I didn’t really see his face,” Cicero said.

&n
bsp; “Me neither,” Jasper added.

  “Hair color? Clothes? Anything about his voice? Did he say something you remember?”

  “Nope.”

  “No, sir.”

  “All right.” Mr. Calloway lit up a cigar.

  Jasper coughed, but maybe smoke would choke out the jail stench.

  Mr. Calloway eyed Jasper, then Cicero. “Jasper passed another fella coming out, older and bald. Cicero, you ever see him? Maybe in a hallway or the parlor?”

  “I never saw him.”

  He turned to Jasper. “Say anything to you as he passed?”

  Jasper tried to picture the man, but he passed him in a hurry to get out. “No, sir. He looked my way, but—” Hang on, there was something, wasn’t there? He looked up. “I think maybe he winked at me. It was odd-like.”

  Mr. Calloway glanced at Mr. Harley and back at Jasper. “Winked at you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did he smile when he winked?” Mr. Harley asked.

  “No, sir. Just winked.”

  “That’s peculiar,” Mr. Calloway said.

  He and Mr. Harley exchanged looks again. It was hard to stay calm when these men were talking between themselves with no words.

  “Here’s what I want you to do for me, Jasper,” Mr. Calloway said. “Waco’s not that big a place, and this fella probably lives somewhere within a mile or so of where we are right now. I want you to keep an eye peeled for him everywhere you go, especially on the trolleys and on the sidewalks. Can you do that?”

  That was easy. Relief washed down the back of his neck. “Yes, sir, I sure can.”

  “Good. Let me move on to some other things. Either of you see any bad blood between Miss Georgia and the other girls?”

  “No, sir. Not as I can recollect,” Cicero replied. “What exactly have you got in mind?”

  “Miss Georgia get along with Miss Sadie?”

  “She sure did,” Cicero said. “You could tell they were friends.”

  Jasper nodded in agreement. They’d been real nice ladies.

  “How about Miss Jessie? Miss Georgia worked for her. Look like they were on good terms?”

  “Yes, sir,” Cicero answered, “from what I could see.”

  “I didn’t see no bad blood,” Jasper agreed.

  Mr. Calloway said to Cicero, “Jasper told us he saw a hack parked on the street outside Miss Jessie’s. You see it?”