The Angel Of Darkness

CHAPTER 32

The Ballston-Saratoga trolley system was only a year old, and looked it: the car that we boarded had polished railings and clean appointments, and it was set on top of a shining set of narrow tracks. The thing moved at a good clip through the four or five miles of countryside what separated Ballston Spa from Saratoga’s main street, Broadway, and the breeze that hit us in our seats at the front of the car was refreshing and even exciting, given where we were going. It was the kind of air what heightens anticipation, you might say; and though the trip lasted only fifteen minutes or so, it seemed to my young soul to go on forever.

When the car finally did slip into America’s greatest recreational center, it did so by way of the southern end of Broadway. From that spot we got an excellent view down into the heart of the town; and I’ve got to say, it was a wonder to behold. Lined by spreading, beautiful elm trees, Saratoga’s Broadway, taken as just a street, would’ve been a credit to any town anywhere; but behind the trees, the well-tended sidewalks, and the streetlamps stood the blazing lights of countless shops and the city’s massive hotels, all of which promised excitement of every stripe and gave the lie to the town’s outdated label of “resort.” There was no sign that retreat and relaxation were prized goods (or even possibilities) in Saratoga: the old days, when political men, scholars, and artists from all over the world had met to “take the waters” together and talk of lofty things, were definitely gone by 1897, and the place was a full-blown pleasure market.

Canfield’s Casino was a square, mansionlike building located down in a green, shady park where the Congress Spring (one of the town’s many old mineral water fountains) had formerly been the main attraction. The Casino had actually been built by another famous gambler, John Morrissey, a burly Irish prizefighter and Tammany tough who’d made use of his winnings to set himself up in the gaming room and horse track businesses (Morrissey’d also built Saratoga’s first track). During the construction in 1870-1871 of what’d then been known as “the Club House,” Morrissey’d pumped every Italianate luxury he could think of into the place, and it’d done a booming business from the start. It hadn’t been enough, though, to net Morrissey the prize he wanted most: acceptance by the society types who came to fritter their dollars away by the thousands in his establishment. He’d died in 1878, and ownership of the joint had passed around to various second-rate operators for a time, until it was bought and refurbished in 1894 by its current owner, Richard Canfield.

Canfield, like Morrissey, had made a personal fortune in the gambling trade, though he didn’t have the thug’s past what’d kept Morrissey from ever being treated like a true gentleman. Having run gaming houses in Providence, Rhode Island, and then in New York, Canfield had spent his spare time (and a short prison term) turning himself into a kind of self-taught scholar and art critic. When he took over Morrissey’s Club House, he put all his learning to work, filling the joint with top-of-the-line furniture and art, building a big new gourmet dining room and hiring one of the most famous French chefs in the world to cook for his patrons. And by refusing to allow women and kids to play at his tables, he’d even outsmarted the reformers who, for a short time during his early days of operation, had tried to shake things up in Saratoga and had actually succeeded in getting a lot of other, smaller houses closed down. At the same time, though, Canfield had built said women and children a nice big lounge where they could amuse themselves with ices and entertainments-and tell their husbands and fathers what bets to put down for them.

The park around the Casino was a suitable setting for all this luxurious recreation, with its fountains, pools, statues, and handsome trees lining the walkway to the ivy-covered walls of the three-story Casino. We entered the building that night through the front door, the detective sergeants noting with relief that Mr. Canfield was one of the few gaming house and hotel operators in Saratoga who didn’t hang a “Jewish Patronage Not Solicited” sign outside his establishment. Once in, we found ourselves in a large, crowded, and thickly carpeted lobby what was just outside the public gaming room. Inside this room the stakes were low (white chips went for a dollar, red for five, blue for ten, yellow for a hundred, and brown for a thousand) compared to what went on in the private rooms upstairs, where everything was multiplied by a hundred.

Antsy as I was to start playing, I have to confess that I was even more anxious, that night, to meet the man who was famous everywhere as “the Prince of Gamblers.” I didn’t have long to wait: as soon as we walked in I caught sight of a fleshy but knowledgeable-looking soul, clean-shaven, with dark eyes that took in everything what was going on around him. (The face was so fascinating that it eventually snagged the interest of no less a painter than Mr. J.A.M. Whistler, who reproduced it on canvas.) When said face observed Mr. Picton’s entrance, it and the rest of the man hurried on over, putting a hand out in happy greeting.

“Well, Mr. Picton!” Mr. Canfield said. “Feeling up to a night at the tables, are you? Or is it just Columbin’s cooking that brings you up?”

“Canfield!” Mr. Picton said, with heartfelt good cheer. “No, I have some houseguests for a time, and I told them they couldn’t leave the county without seeing our greatest contribution to modern American culture!” Mr. Picton made a quick round of introductions, and Mr. Canfield greeted us all in the smooth way what marks the successful gambling magnate. But there was something more in it, too; it seemed like the simple fact that we were Mr. Picton’s guests meant that we’d get some kind of special treatment.

“Mr. Picton was a big help at a particularly dicey time,” Mr. Canfield explained, as if he could hear the thought what was in my head. “During the town’s nasty little reform fit, he argued to the county that Saratoga could shut down all the smaller houses it wanted to, but that it had to let ‘establishments of quality’ like the Casino stay open-unless it wanted to go back to depending on mineral water for its livelihood.”

“I don’t know that I was quite so instrumental, Canfield,” Mr. Picton said. “Even the staunchest of the reformers eventually saw that they were cutting their own throats. How’s the crowd tonight?”

“Oh, they’re all here,” Mr. Canfield answered, starting to walk us toward the dining room. “Brady, Miss Russell, Jesse Lewisohn-and Gates is upstairs, still determined to set a record.”

This lineup had me speechless: the names of Diamond Jim Brady, the railroad supply magnate with a stomach six times normal size and an appetite for food that was almost as big as his lust for precious stones, and Miss Lillian Russell, the famous entertainer and Brady’s constant companion, were, of course, well known to the world at large back then, as they still are; but in gambling circles, the names of Jesse Lewisohn-“the sporting banker”-and Mr. John Gates (who’d soon earn the nickname “Bet-a-Million” for losing and then winning back almost that sum-all in one day-at Saratoga) were just as legendary, and cause for even greater excitement.

“Brady’s in the dining room, of course,” Mr. Canfield went on. “Been through half of Columbin’s stock already, and he’s calling for more. I’ll get you a table away from him-even with the diamonds, he doesn’t do much for other people’s appetites at moments like this.” Signaling to a waiter at the entrance to the dining room, Mr. Canfield shook Mr. Picton’s hand again. “Albert’ll take care of you all-I’ll see you in the gaming room. I assume you won’t want any action upstairs?”

Mr. Picton shook his head with a smile. “On my salary? Not a prayer, Canfield. We can injure ourselves quite sufficiently in the public room, thanks.”

Mr. Canfield paid his respects to the rest of us and then started to disappear back into the crowd; but then, seeming to remember something, he stopped.

“Oh, by the way, Picton. Word’s going around that you’re going to reopen that case-the one where the kids got shot?”

The rest of us couldn’t do much to hide our surprise; but Mr. Picton just smiled and shook his head.

“All right, Canfield,” he said. “I’ll try to keep you posted.”

“You know how it is,” Mr. Canfield answered with a respectful shrug. “People in this town’ll bet on anything, and do-there’s bound to be a line on the manhunt and the trial. I’d just like to be able to set some reasonable odds.”

“Two to one on the manhunt, for now,” Mr. Picton answered. “As for the trial, I’ll let you know.”

Mr. Canfield gave that what you might call an appreciative look. “Two to one? Confident.”

“Confident,” Mr. Picton said. “Though who we actually arrest may surprise you.”

Mr. Canfield nodded, turned, and, with another signal of departure, went back to his business of making suckers happy.

“And that, my friends,” Mr. Picton said, “is what I mean about word traveling fast in these towns.”

“Do you mean to say they’re going to bet on this case?” the Doctor asked, taking in the wealthy crowd and starting to look a little revolted.

“Unquestionably. But you can get that gleam out of your eye, Moore,” Mr. Picton said, glancing at his friend. “Canfield didn’t get where he is by letting people with inside information fleece him.” Mr. Picton began to walk toward the tar end of the lobby. “Well, then-let’s eat, shall we?”

Our table in the dining room might’ve been far away from Diamond Jim Brady’s and Miss Lillian Russell’s, like Mr. Canfield said, but we still had to pass by that famous pair to get to our seats; and such was not exactly a heartening experience. Not that we had any actual contact with the couple or their party; but I quickly found out just by watching their antics that what makes an amusing legend can sometimes amount to a pretty depressing reality. I knew all about Diamond Jim’s famous sets of jewelry pieces, the sum of what totaled some twenty thousand diamonds. And of course, I knew about his appetite. But none of those stories prepared me for the sight of a hog-faced man-whose famous girth was stuffed inside clothes what vanity dictated be two sizes too small-going about his usual mealtime trick: starting with his diamond-studded belly about a foot from the table and refusing to stop eating until it touched the edge of the thing. At the particular moment we walked by, he was doing his worst to a whole family of lobsters, and had a bib tied around his pricey white suit and his precious diamonds. He was loud, too; loud, foul-mouthed, and very easy with what he said to his ladies, knowing full well that, given his millions and their own lack of any talent other than being pretty, they’d not only have to put up with it, but smile and laugh too. Next to Diamond Jim was Miss Lillian Russell, whose face, of course, I’d seen on billboards in New York-though it occurred to me, when I saw her in the flesh for the first time, that they’d been damned flattering billboards. She, too, was lapping up Brady’s loud vulgarity like a cat going at a dish of milk. Now, I don’t mean to sound prudish: God knows, my mouth wasn’t then and still isn’t what it ought to be. But there’s a difference between certain ripe choices in vocabulary and downright obnoxious behavior, and Brady was what you might call that difference made flesh. We all knew the rumor that Miss Russell didn’t actually grant her sexual favors to Brady (it didn’t seem possible that anybody could actually perform the physical act with that tub of excess) but was rolling in the hay with Brady’s pal Jesse Lewisohn. That night, though, I figured that Mr. Lewisohn wasn’t getting such a hot deal: Miss Russell might’ve been a famous performer, but she also had a figure what showed she’d done some damage at many a dinner table herself. Whatever poor team of maidservants had to stuff her into the kind of tight-waisted gown she was wearing that evening earned their pay as sure as any coal miner, that much was certain.

The rest of the activity in that dining room-which was a beautiful, long hall, with small stained-glass windows set into the ceiling and a polished oak floor-tended along the lines set at the Brady table: all the other patrons in the place were stuffing themselves, drinking like fish, talking way too loud, and “flirting” in ways that would’ve earned the average streetwalker in New York a night in the local precinct. These were respectable people, too, in their ordinary lives: people who, when they went back down the Hudson, were responsible for big business and government decisions, and for the lives of millions of ordinary people into the bargain. It was a good thing we’d come for the gambling, I began to think: if we’d had to do any socializing, I don’t think I could’ve stood it.

I wasn’t alone, either: by the end of our meal the general mood at our table had grown pretty disgusted-and as we walked out I discovered that such was exactly why the devious Mr. Picton had brought us to this spot. “Get a good last look, all of you,” he said. “Because if we succeed in bringing Libby Hatch to trial, it won’t be just the outrage of the humble citizens in towns like Ballston Spa that we’ll have to deal with. No, no-all the mighty weight of this sparkling society will come crashing down on our heads, too. For it’s the essence of hypocrisy, isn’t it, Doctor, that it requires masks to hide behind? And the masks of the idyllic home and the sanctity of motherhood are the first and most untouchable of all. Yes, if I’m right, you can expect to see some of these same faces sitting in the galleries of the Ballston court house in the weeks to come.”

Which wasn’t exactly the most charitable thought to offer at a moment when some of us were trying to fix our sights on recreation. Miss Howard, for her part, had seen all she could stand in the dining room, and elected to head back to Mr. Picton’s house on the trolley right away. The Doctor, Cyrus, and the detective sergeants-none of them possessing much real sporting blood-all agreed to accompany her, clearing the field for the true enthusiasts. Mr. Moore and Mr. Picton had a couple of quick drinks while I gave them a brief summary of my roulette strategy, and by the time they headed into the public room they were looking and sounding like they’d managed to drown their repulsion with the crowd. As for me, barred from actually watching the games, I was left to pick between heading into the ladies’ and children’s lounge and going outside for a smoke: not what you’d call a tough choice.

Wandering in amongst the long branches of a weeping willow what hung over one of the little pools of water in the park outside the Casino, I pulled at my starched collar and tie with an annoyed groan, wishing I could just take the things off. Then I lit a stick and began to think, not about what my earnings might amount to if all went well inside, but about what Mr. Picton had said in the dining room. It wasn’t what you’d call comforting, to think that by prosecuting Libby Hatch we’d be riling-and maybe even threatening-all those rich, powerful hypocrites and philanderers; and at first I thought it was just the unpleasant notion of what lay ahead that was starting to give me a distinctly nervous sensation. But soon I realized that the ripples in my stomach had a more immediate cause, something to do with the area right around me at that moment. I couldn’t say just what the uneasiness was, at first, but after a couple of minutes I put my finger on it:

I was being watched.

Spinning around, I stepped deeper into the branches of the willow and searched the darkness all around me; but there wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere in that part of the park. All the same, I grew more convinced moment by moment that somebody somewhere was observing every move I was making. Pulling at my tie and collar again as I broke into a cold sweat, I started to shift from foot to foot, breathing very fast. Finally I called out, to what seemed like nothing but empty darkness:

“Who’s there? What do you want?” Realizing that I was being a bit unreasonable but unable to prevent myself, I shoved one hand into my pants pocket. “I’ve got a gun!” I called out. “And I’ll use it, I’m telling you-”

Suddenly a dark blur passed in front of me: dropping down, it seemed, from the sky came a fast-moving shadow, one what hit the ground softly but nonetheless caused me to shriek and jump back. Only by grabbing the trunk of the willow did I keep from falling into the pool; and though I heard fast footsteps moving away from me, by the time I looked up the person who’d made them was gone.

As I caught my breath I realized that I was now definitely alone: I felt that as certainly as I’d sensed the stranger’s presence. Whoever’d been hiding in the tree-probably some kid, I stupidly figured-must’ve been terrified by my mention of a gun, and had lit out, more scared of me than I’d been of him. Realizing that I’d dropped my cigarette, I lit up another and then started back for the Casino, laughing at my own foolishness and never realizing what a close brush I’d had with real danger.

I’d learn, though: for in a matter of hours, I’d confront that danger again, and see its face.