The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles

Chapter 20-2

Moments later, there was another loud

pounding at the front door. Charley jerked his Colt and walked to

the door. I grabbed my shotgun. Charley pulled the door open to

find Bat’s man who had been hiding in the rental house across the

street.

“Christ a-mighty… don’t shoot,” the man

said. “Is the lady okay?”

Charley pulled the man inside.

“What do you know about it?”

“I seen her get throwed from a buggy just up

the street a ways.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “What do you

mean she was thrown from a buggy?”

“There was two men, and one of ’em pushed

her out as the buggy went by.”

By now Bat’s other man had joined us from

his post on the back porch. I wrote the doctor’s name and address

on a piece of paper and asked the man to get him. When he had gone,

I carried Mother upstairs to the bedroom she was sharing with Anna

Marie. It was then that it hit me.

Where was Anna Marie? My heart was pounding

now, and I could feel a wave of panic sweep over me.

“Mother, Mother!” I shouted. “Where’s Anna

Marie?”

Mother’s eyes were wide with fear now. “Oh,

William, I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”

She tried to sit up. “No, no, lie still… The

doc’s on the way,” I said.

“But Anna Marie…” Then she passed out

again.

Katharina took my mother’s hand. “Don’t

talk.” She looked at me and nodded for Charley and me to leave the

room. A few moments later, she joined us in the hallway.

“Your mother has a terrible laceration on

her head… She probably has a concussion. We need to let her be

until the doctor gets here.”

By now, I was on the verge of losing control

of myself. “Goddamn it… The son of a b***h has my little girl.”

I looked at Charley and Katharina, and I

could feel the rage surging inside. My first instinct was to grab

my shotgun and run outside. Of course, that would have been futile.

The carriage was long gone by now.

Katharina looked at me, her eyes welling

with tears. “It’s all my fault.”

“No, no,” I said. But Katharina was

adamant.

“It is, William. That monster is after me,

and he is using Anna Marie to do it.”

Charley pulled me aside. “Let’s go see Bat.

He knows everybody in this town. Ain’t many places that tub of guts

can go without someone seein’ him.”He was right. Bat knew everybody

in Denver from hucksters like Soapy Smith to just about every low

life pimp and flannel mouth in the city.

A half hour later, the doctor arrived and

began tending to Mother. After several minutes, he called me into

the room.

“Your mother has a severe concussion, some

cracked ribs, and a badly sprained ankle. I’ve given her some

morphine for the pain, but she wants to see you. Better hurry

before she falls asleep.”

When I walked up to the bed, my mother’s

hand grabbed mine.

“I’m so sorry, William,” she rasped. “We

were walking along and talking like we always do, and suddenly,

this buggy pulled up beside us. They grabbed us both and pushed us

inside.

She stopped for a moment to take a drink of

water.

“Anna Marie was screaming and kicking, and

so was I. But the buggy was going fast, and after a block or so,

the man who was holding me let go after I bit him on the arm. He

shouted and just pushed me out of the buggy. When I fell, I must

have been knocked out for a few seconds because when I came to, the

buggy was way down the road.”

She closed her eyes. I could tell she was

struggling to stay awake.

“I stumbled along and somehow got home.” She

propped herself up on one arm. “Oh, William… Anna Marie, Anna

Marie…” Then she fell back onto the bed and closed her eyes.

“Doc!” I yelled. He came into the room and

took her pulse. Then he nodded.

“She’ll sleep now,” he said. “Best leave her

be.”

“Will she be okay?”

“You just don’t know about a concussion. It

could take a few hours, a few days, or even a few weeks. Depends on

how severe the injury is. You have to let these things heal in

their own time. Keep her still. No working or doing anything

strenuous for the next few weeks.”

“I’m sorry… What’s your name again. I wrote

it down, but in the excitement, I forgot it.”

“Scofield’s the name. Boston Scofield. I’m

over on Thirteenth. I’ll check in again tomorrow.”

After he left Charley and I took the trolley

downtown to Bat’s office. We left Bat’s two men in the house with

Katharina and Mother with orders to shoot anybody who tried to

enter.

“I don’t suppose anybody’s tried to contact

you yet?” Bat asked.

I shook my head. “I’m just not sure what to

do… call in the police? Or what?”

“No police,” Bat said. “We can handle this.

He took Anna Marie for one reason and one reason only. He wants to

exchange her for what your lady friend has. It’s that simple.”

It made sense. Eichel was probably ordered

by the German government to acquire whatever it was that Katharina

had received from her former sister-in-law.

As detestable as Eichel was, he didn’t

strike me as someone who would harm a child, and I said as much to

Bat and Charley.

“s**t, Billy, they chucked Aunt Hanne out of

a movin’ carriage,” Charley said. “That don’t seem too friendly to

me.”

“Billy is right,” Bat said. “I don’t see

what Eichel gains by harming a little girl. It just makes the

offense that much worse. My advice is to wait for someone to

contact you, make a trade, and then we’ll pin the lick fingers

afterward.”

We heard nothing the rest of that day or

night. Then about seven o’clock the next morning, a kid on a

bicycle came to the door, knocked, and handed me an envelope. When

I asked him who it was from, he told me a man had given him one

dollar to deliver it. He didn’t know who he was. When I asked the

boy to describe the man, he described Eichel almost perfectly.

“Where were you when he gave the envelope to

you?” I asked.

“’Bout six blocks from here. I was goin’

home from my paper route when he asked if I wanted to make a

dollar. Why?”

“No reason… thanks.” I dug into my pocket

and handed him fifty cents.

“Gee, thanks, mister.” Then he sped off on

his bicycle.

I opened the envelope to find an unsigned

note addressed to “My traveling companions from the SS

China.”

“We can make this as simple or as

complicated as you wish. If you involve the police, then it will

become complicated, and I cannot guarantee the safety of the little

girl I have with me. It is up to you.

“I want the documents that Baroness

Schreiber received or illegally took from Germany. In return, I

will release Anna Marie unharmed. If you agree then, at 5:00 p.m.

this afternoon, be at the Monet Lily Pond in the English Garden.

Someone will meet you there and give you further instructions.

“If you fail to appear or if we see any

police, I will not be responsible for what happens to your

daughter.”

Bastard, I thought to myself. But

Eichel had us where he wanted us. I was not about to risk Anna

Marie’s life for a pile of German documents, and he knew it.

A few minutes later, Dr. Scofield arrived to

check on Mother. She was up now and sitting at the kitchen table

with a cup of coffee.

“I’m not sure you should be out of bed, Mrs.

Battles,” Dr. Scofield said.

“Pshaw, Doctor. I’m all right today. Just a

little headache.”

“That could be from the concussion you

sustained.”

“Please don’t worry yourself… I’ve had much

worse knocks on my noggin growin’ up on the farm.”

Mother noticed Katharina and me standing in

the kitchen doorway.

“What are your plans? What are you going to

do? Have you called the police?”

I showed Mother the note I had just received

and filled her in on the conversation we had with Bat. She read it

and looked at us both.

“Are you sure, William? Shouldn’t you

involve the police?”

“Katharina and I are taking the trolley down

to Bat Masterson’s office. We will work out something there that

doesn’t include the police.”

An hour later, Katharina, Charley, and I

were sitting in Bat’s office, discussing what we should do

next.

“Let me meet him,” Katharina said. “I will

give him the papers and bring Anna Marie home.”

I shook my head. “No, he wants me to come to

the English Garden. And Anna Marie is my daughter, after all.

Besides, he probably still holds a powerful grudge against you. I

don’t trust the bastard.”

Bat nodded. “I think Billy is right. Let’s

do what the note says. But let’s add some spice to the stew.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I have some good… shall we say,

acquaintances who have firsthand knowledge of how this game is

played.”

“Acquaintances?”

“Some of Soapy Smith’s old horde,” Bat said.

“Smith got into some trouble a few years back and had to high-tail

it out of Denver. Last I heard, he was up in Skagway, Alaska, but

some of his, shall we say, associates are still around. There isn’t

a grift or back alley swindle these crunchers don’t know about. I

think we can cook up a nice surprise for Herr Eichel.”

Anybody who lived in Denver in those days

knew about Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith II. Throughout the

1880s and into the early 1890s, Smith was the boss of Denver’s

underworld. He owned the Tivoli Saloon on the southeast corner of

Market and seventeenth streets. Bat had worked as a Faro dealer

there for a while. He also “owned” most of the city officials and

police until a new Colorado governor came to power and began

cleaning up Denver by shutting down the city’s gambling, bunko,

bootlegging, and prostitution concessions. Smith left Denver in

1895 before he could be arrested and remained a wanted man in

Colorado.

Katharina seemed fascinated by Bat’s

biography of Smith.

“Why is he called Soapy?” she asked.

“It goes back to the Prize Soap Racket that

Smith began running back in the late 1870s,” Bat said. “It worked

like this. Smith would set up his little stand on a tripod at some

Denver street corner. Then he stacked cakes of soap on the stand

and talked about how great the soap was. As he did this, he would

pull out his wallet and start wrapping some of the soap with paper

money. Some would be wrapped with one dollar bills, a few with

five, ten, twenty, fifty, and even a one hundred dollar bill. Then

he would wrap those with plain paper to hide the money.

“By now, the crowd would be getting pretty

big, and as it grew, he would mix the soap packages containing

money with those that were wrapped only with plain paper. He then

sold the soap cakes for one dollar each. A shill in the crowd would

buy the first bar, open it, and sure enough, there would be a five,

ten, or fifty-dollar bill inside. That spurred others in the crowd

to buy bars of soap, hoping to win some of the money they had seen

Smith wrap around the soap. Soon, most of the soap would be gone,

and Smith would announce that the lucky bar with the one hundred

dollar bill was still somewhere in the pile. He would then auction

off the remaining soap to the highest bidders—each hoping to get

the bar with the hundred dollar bill.

“What the crowd didn’t know is that Smith

would, through sleight of hand, hide the cakes of soap wrapped with

money and replace them with soap containing no cash. The only money

‘won’ went to the shills Smith had stationed in the crown.

Eventually, one of them, after bidding up the price, would ‘win’

the cake of soap wrapped with the one hundred dollar bill. He ran

that racket for almost twenty years all over the West, and that’s

how Soapy Smith got his name.”

“How remarkable,” Katharina said. “But at

least those who got swindled went home with a bar of soap. So I

would have to say Smith was contributing to the cleanliness of

Denver, which, of course, we all know is next to godliness.”

“Hadn’t thought of it that way,” Bat said.

“Come to think of it, folks in Denver were not as rank as some

places I’ve been when Soapy was hawking his soap.”

While Bat was telling Katharina about Soapy,

all I could think about was Anna Marie and how my decision almost

four years ago had resulted in her kidnapping and my mother’s

injuries. Had I not been aboard the SS China and had I not

met Katharina, none of this would have happened.

I settled into a chair and was staring at

the floor when Bat brought me out of my reverie.

“You okay, Billy? You look a bit

peaked.”

“This is all my fault… I should never have

left Denver four years ago.” Then I remembered Katharina. Had I not

left, I never would have met her. When I looked at her, I could

tell she was hurt by that remark, and an awkward silence embraced

the room.

Charley struck a match on his trouser leg

and lit a cheroot.

Bat broke the uncomfortable stillness.

“Hell, Billy, we all make choices in our lives, and most of us are

always a-fightin’ the bit to get to some other place.”

Katharina had turned away from us both and

was dabbing her eyes with a hanky. I walked over to her.

“That was a dumb thing to say,” I said

softly. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s true. If we hadn’t have met, then

none of this would have happened,” Katharina said, her voice

cracking.

At that point, Bat spoke up—loudly.

“Stop it, the both of you! Nothin’s going to

happen to Anna Marie, and that Eichel son-of-a-b***h is going to

wish he had never set foot in my town.” Then looking at Katharina,

he added, “Excuse my choice of invective, Baroness.”

I placed my hands on Katharina’s

shoulders.

“This is not your fault,” I

said. Katharina looked at me and shook her head.

“It is, William, it is,” she whispered.

“Okay, enough… Let’s get to it,” Bat said.

“We have work to do before five o’clock.”

For the next few hours, we met in the

backroom of the Tivoli with several members of Soapy Smith’s old

flock. One woman whom Bat introduced as Bessie McCarty was the de

facto leader of the old Soapy Smith pack. She was a fifty-ish woman

with reddish gray hair and large dark-brown eyes. She had been one

of Soapy’s most trusted cohorts and had run several of his most

successful dodges during his time in Denver.

We were all seated around a rectangular

table and had been discussing possible tactics in dealing with

Eichel when Bessie explained the essence of what she and her

followers did.

“Running a successful dodge is the same as

putting on a play,” she said. “Deception is the most important

element, and the key to successful deception is to control the

environment. We write the script, create the sets, and assign the

roles. All the while, the unfortunate dupes think they are in

control. They play their parts as we have written them without even

knowing it. When the curtain comes down the play is over, the

theater is empty, and the stage is bare, except for the dozy mugs

who don’t know what hit them.”

Katharina shook her head. “You make it sound

like acting.”

“It is, my dear,” said Bessie. “Good acting

causes an audience to suspend belief, to trust what is happening on

the stage. What we do is exactly the same—only we do it in unlikely

places, and our audience is also our mark. As Shakespeare said,

‘all the world’s a stage.’”

After that meeting, I felt a lot more

confident about what was going to happen. By two o’clock in the

afternoon, we had worked out an intricate plan that would not only

allow us to retrieve Anna Marie but also snare Eichel and his men

as well.

Bat laughed. “By god, they’ll wish they

never set foot in Denver when we get through with ’em.”

As directed in Eichel’s note, I arrived at

the Monet Fountain in the English Garden at five o’clock. I sat on

a bench and waited. Several minutes passed without any contact from

Eichel or his men. Several people strolled past. Finally, about

fifteen minutes past five, a woman appeared and sat on a bench near

me.

She took a small book from her purse and

began reading. I noticed that she often appeared to look up from

her book and scan the area around the fountain. On occasion, she

looked in my direction. After about five minutes, she put the book

back in her purse and walked toward me. When she was within two or

three feet of me, she stopped and dropped an envelope on the bench.

Then she hurried off.

I picked up the envelope, opened it, and

this time, found a typewritten note. It instructed Katharina to

bring the purloined German government documents to Union Station at

nine o’clock tomorrow morning.

As we had arranged, I took the note home.

Bat, Bessie, and a few other members of Soapy Smith’s old gang were

already there having arrived discreetly during the afternoon. It

was unlikely that Eichel’s men were still watching my house. They

had accomplished what they wanted to and now were undoubtedly more

concerned with the next step in their plan.

“Where in Union Station?” Bessie asked as I

pulled the note from my pocket. “It’s a big place.”

I looked at the note. “Katharina is to go to

the southeast corner of the Great Hall and wait. Someone will

contact her.”

Bessie took the note from my hand and

studied it for a moment. “They have picked a busy place to do this.

They must think it is safer for them to conduct this business with

a lot of people around. We will see about that.”