Terror at the Fair

Chapter Thirty

The fourth death at the fair set the daily papers off like dogs tearing into a slab of raw meat. Every one of them gave the latest killing their banner headline, with the Herald-American’s WHERE WILL IT ALL END? printed in red ink, an old Hearst device. Reading our piece the next morning, which carried a joint byline—Westcott and me—I learned the victim, Cunningham, 69, had been the father of three and the grandfather of four, lived in the southern suburb of Blue Island, and had probably been dead anywhere from six to ten hours when his body was discovered.

The police confirmed death by drowning but a blow to the head with the predictable “blunt instrument” probably first rendered the victim unconscious. He was found in less than two feet of water.

The Herald-American carried a front-page editorial in which the paper offered $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of “person or persons responsible for the violent deaths at our fair.”

The Trib also weighed in on the subject, although in its normal place on the editorial page:

Fred Metzger, looking haggard and with shoulders sloping more than usual, appeared in the doorway of the pressroom as I put down my paper. “I just want to tell you I think the Tribune’s coverage of... of all this... is the most measured, and the most responsible,” he said.

I nodded my thanks. “By the way, if we can move on to less somber matters, have you got any feature ideas for me? My cupboard is now every bit as bare as poor Old Mother Hubbard’s.”

“Yes, that’s the other thing I stopped by to tell you,” he said, pulling a folded sheet from his breast pocket. “Here’s something you might find interesting: Three generations of a railroad family from Indiana are coming in today, should be here by ten or so.”

“It’s a possibility,” I said without enthusiasm.

“Well, anyway, I’m giving you the right of first refusal. The Daily News has been after me to throw some features their way, but they won’t even bother to send someone out here until I’ve lined something up for them,” he sniffed, sounding offended.

“Okay, I’m willing to be persuaded. Tell me about this Indiana bunch.”

He consulted the sheet. “Let’s see now, the grandson is a conductor on New York Central passenger trains, he’s... twenty-eight. His father, who’s fifty, works as a fireman, also on the NYC, but on freights. And the grandfather, seventy-four, is a retired engineer who worked for more than forty-five years on the Nickel Plate Road. He was at the throttle of some of their crack limiteds.”

“Well, why not give it a try?” I said, not having anything else on my assignment sheet at the moment. “Lead me to ’em.”

The Indiana railroading family, name of Ferguson, turned out to be dishwater dull, including the wives. I couldn’t get a single decent anecdote out of the lot. Even good old Grandpa, who’d started in the business just after the turn of the century, had almost nothing to say about how things had changed in the last fifty years.

“More diesels today,” was one pithy observation of his. When I asked if it was a good thing, he said, “In some ways yes, in some ways no. At least you don’t have none of them doggone cinders with the diesels.” Swell, Gramps, thanks for your help.

The younger generations were no better. When I asked the twenty-eight-year-old conductor if he’d like to see his son go into railroading, he thought for a minute and replied, “Well, I guess that’d be up to him, wouldn’t it? When he gets older, of course.”

The old Indian in the Santa Fe village whom I’d conducted the non-interview with on my first day at the fair looked more exciting all the time. I now wished I had let the folks at the Daily News tackle this one.

But I did manage to stitch together a piece, embellishing the bland quotes I got from the three men and their equally taciturn wives. The day’s only surprise came when the photog who showed up was not Phil Muller.

“He got sent to a fire out near the Stockyards,” said Chuck Mills, who tried manfully but without success to get a smile out of any one of the bunch, including the kids. The group shot of the Hoosier clan in the next day’s edition looked like a funeral gathering.

After I had finished the article and dictated it to Williamson on the rewrite desk, I prepared to leave the empty pressroom and grab a ham sandwich at the Cupboard Restaurant near the main gate when my phone rang. Pickles Podgorny rasped a “hello, newshawk.”

“Lordy be! What’re you doing up at this hour, poker puss? It’s barely past noon.”

“Now what kind of greeting is that for a man who has some information for you? Let’s show a little respect, huh?”

“Whoops, sorry. All right, fire away. You have my full attention.”

“It appears we may have located your mystery man.”

“The elusive Mr. Sam White?”

“The selfsame.”

“Well, go on, go on,” I prompted.

“Nothing absolutely definite, you understand, but one of my... acquaintances made the rounds of a goodly number of the watering holes in Uptown and Lakeview the last few evenings, asking bartenders if ‘Sam’ had been in lately.”

“And?”

“Don’t interrupt, I’m telling the story. Last night, my acquaintance, let’s just call him Benny, popped into a little joint on Wilson just west of Broadway, asking his question, and the barkeep said, ‘You mean Sam Whitnauer?’

“Benny said he didn’t know the last name, only that this ‘Sam’ owed him some money. Then he described him. The barkeep said it sounded like Whitnauer, all right, and that he usually wandered in around ten or ten thirty most nights.”

“So Benny waited for him?”

“I told you not to interrupt. No, he likes to avoid face-to-face scenes, given some of his past activities and adventures with the law. He left the saloon without even buying a drink and went across the street, where he leaned against a lamppost and waited.

“A few minutes after ten, a guy comes along on foot and shuffles into the bar. Benny, who’s seen the sketch you gave me, says no question, it’s him. The lighting’s pretty good along Wilson in that block, and Benny says everything checks out—the flattop haircut, the little mustache, and he also thought he could make out a mole on this Sam’s right cheek.”

“Nice work, Pickles, very nice work indeed. I believe we may indeed have our man in the person of one Mr. Sam Whitnauer. By the way, as a point of interest, what’s the story on your boy Benny?”

“Why?”

“Just curious. I always like to know who I’m relying on.”

“So now you don’t trust your old pal Pickles?” He sniffed.

“I didn’t say that, and you’ll notice I also didn’t ask for Benny’s real name. Tell me a little about him.”

I got silence at the other end for several seconds. “Okay, let’s just say over the years, he’s run a lot of two-man short-cons, particularly the old ‘fiddle game.’”

“What’s that?”

“You mean to say, Mister ‘Man of the World,’ you have never heard of the fiddle game?”

“Guess that’s what I’m saying.”

“You’ve got a lot to learn about life in the big city, Snap. Okay, here’s how it works: Guy Number One goes into a restaurant in shabby clothes and carrying a violin in its case. He eats, then tells the owner he left his wallet at home, which is nearby, and needs to go and get it, but he’ll leave the violin, which he dearly loves, as security. Are you with me?”

“So far.”

“Then just after he leaves, presumably to get money, Guy Number Two walks in, notices the fiddle case, and seems interested. He inquires as to what’s inside, and the owner says a violin. Guy Number Two asks to see it. When owner shows it to him, Number Two raves about it, saying it’s a centuries-old Stradivarius, worth thousands. He offers big bucks to buy it but says he can’t hang around. He leaves his business card with the restaurateur and asks him to give the card to Guy Number One when he returns.”

“I think I’m beginning to get the drift now,” I told Pickles.

“About time,” he said dismissively. “When the first guy comes back, the restaurant man—as the grifters have hoped—keeps the business card in his pocket and tries to buy the fiddle. Its owner hems and haws, and the restaurateur keeps on jacking up his offer until the guy finally sells him the worthless fiddle, for cash on the spot. Chances are, the mark had to empty his till for the dough.”

“And of course the second guy never comes back to the restaurant, right?”

“I can’t say you’re a quick learner, but now you’ve got it,” Pickles said. “Anyway, that’s what Benny was known for, along with running a few other short-cons like three-card monte, the shell game, and the pigeon drop.”

“I won’t ask you to describe those just now,” I told him.

“Good, because I don’t have all day to give you lessons in the fine art of grifting,” he replied. “Let’s just say some years back, Benny ran out of luck and got nailed by the law while running one of his many cons. He has more or less gone straight since he got out of stir, and he shuns the limelight.”

“I won’t ask you what ‘more or less’ means.”

“Let’s put it this way: Benny didn’t cost me a farthing on this business because he owes me a couple of favors—big ones,” Pickles said, “but I’m certainly expecting some consideration for services rendered from you.”

“I hear you, and be assured consideration will indeed be given,” I told him. He started to squawk that he had expected a more concrete response from me, but I lied about being right up against a deadline and hung up the phone.

I sat staring at the blank plywood wall for several minutes after Pickles’s call, contemplating a next move. I could go to the bar on Wilson Avenue myself and take a gander at Whitnauer for myself, maybe even trying to engage him in conversation. Or I could call Fergus Fahey and dump this information in his lap. In the end, I opted for the latter course, in part because of all the times Catherine had urged me to stop acting like I was some sort of rogue avenger, operating like a copper without a badge.

“Is he on the premises?” I asked Elsie Dugo Cascio when she picked up the phone and chirped “Chief Fahey’s office.”

“He just got back from a meeting with Commissioner Prendergast, and he’s in an even more foul mood than usual. Am I to assume this is important?”

“It truly is, you vision of loveliness. You can tell him I chose to call him rather than to take the law into my own hands.”

“I’ll relay the message.”

“What in the hell is this ‘taking the law into your own hands’ crap about?” Fahey bellowed when he came on the line.

“I just made a command decision to stop playing hero, which should please you. I think I have the identity of the man who we’re calling ‘Sam White,’ you know, the one who—”

“Yes, I know who you’re talking about! Well, spit it out. Let’s have it.”

I proceeded to give the chief chapter and verse, including the name and address of the Wilson Avenue saloon, which Pickles had supplied to me.

“Very interesting,” he snarled. “And just how did you happen to come by this little nugget of information?”

“Somebody I know thinks he might have seen White, or rather Whitnauer, going into a bar in Uptown.”

“And how, pray tell, did this ‘somebody’ know what Mr. Whitnauer looks like? We haven’t released the sketch to the newspapers—unless of course one somehow fell into your hands,” Fahey said in a tone laced with sarcasm.

“Fergus, isn’t the important thing here that we’ve got a bead on Whitnauer? Does anything else really matter? And since I’ve passed along to you what may turn out to be valuable information, I’d like something in return.”

“What?”

“Has he, Whitnauer, been spotted going into the fair since the sketch got distributed?”

“Come on, Snap, think for a second. If he were seen, do you think he’d still be on the loose?”

“Good point.”

“But,” Fahey went on, “I will tell you this, off the record. Three visitors to the fair have been stopped and interrogated. To the ticket-sellers, they looked enough like the drawing of White, or Whitnauer, that they got detained. One was a guy with a mustache and crew cut from Medinah, Ohio, another a man with his family from someplace in Iowa, and the third a writer for a railroad fan magazine doing an article about the fair. He was really pissed off at us and threatened to sue somebody.”

“I can believe it. Those journalism types can be a pretty doggone surly lot. Well, good luck with Mr. Whitnauer.”

He growled. “Snap, when all of this is over, by God, you and I are going to have a very long talk.”

“I look forward to it.”

“I’ll just bet you do,” he said, slamming down the phone.

So I had done my civic duty and turned information over to the law. Feeling self-righteous, I dialed the Tribune morgue and got Hazel on the second ring.

“Believe it or not, Snap, I was just about to call you,” she said.

“I’ll bet you say that to all the boys.”

“Only the ones I really like, and especially those who remember what I like to drink. It took me longer than I thought to assemble the clips you wanted. I kept getting interrupted by reporters needing information. The nerve of them!”

“I’ll say. Some people have no consideration. Was there a lot?”

“Tons. It’ll take you a while to wade through all of it. I’ll admit I wasn’t terribly discriminating, but I felt that when in doubt, I should let you decide if a story had value.”

“That’s a good line of thinking. I’ll stop by the Tower after work and pick up the stuff.”