Lifters

By Roger Neale

Emma Prothero is a store detective with a passion for mountaineering who stumbles on a gang of well organized and clever shoplifters at work in the flourishing department stores of 1908 Seattle. Her investigation is disrupted by her discovery that her father is a con man with a dark secret that is destroying her family.

As she struggles with guilt and a fierce need to save her brother from breaking bad, Emma’s journey takes her to a world championship wrestling match and a final fatal confrontation with the leader of the shoplifters on the crevasse-ridden glaciers of Mt. Rainier.

The vibrant boom-town that was Seattle in the early 1900s - where Emma's turbulent and dramatic story plays out -- has never been more colorfully and convincingly brought to life than in "Lifters," a must-read for historic detective stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roger Neale
• Release date: Mar 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301581399

Roger Neale

Roger Neale is a published author, playwright and blogger. He has climbed Mt. Rainier, which looms large over Seattle and in his latest novel, and worked in the outdoors industry.An avid endurance athlete, Roger has competed in five Ironman distance triathlons and numerous half Ironman and Olympic distance triathlons.He's very proud to have his one-act play "Offramp" under production at Freehold Theater in Seattle. Discover more about the author on his blog, at http://rogerneale.blogspot.com/

Book preview

Part One

SHOPLIFTERS

Shoplifting was a crime unknown in America until the rise of the department stores in the early 1900s.

Chapter One

Shoplifting for beginners.

I don’t get it, Emma said to her brother once. If you were going to steal something, wouldn’t you spend a little time looking around at how people shop?

Nah, said her brother. If nobody was watching I’d grab it and get out.

The girl with the freckles on the bridge of her nose studied a kidskin glove at Redelsheimers’ glove counter. Emma watched her run a pensive finger along the row of buttons on the wrist.

The girl’s brown skirt was faded from sun and wear. The cuffs of her shirtwaist were frayed from too much time in the bleach basin. She didn’t try the gloves on. She inhaled and blew out a breath through puffed cheeks. Three, maybe four pairs of soft, creamy gloves disappeared inside her coat. She turned and walked toward the escalator.

It is unlikely she would have noticed Emma following her even if she had turned to look. If she had, she would have seen a woman, a little taller than the average, the young wife of lawyer or accountant dressed in a blue skirt and subdued grey jacket, studying the scarves on the counter, oblivious to the people around her.

It was eleven o’clock. In an hour the shopgirls and typists would flock into Redelsheimers on their lunch break. They would flitter through the aisles like sparrows in a cherry tree, chattering and stroking soft leather shoes and silk jabots displayed on countertops. But now, at eleven, it was the ladies from the Queen Anne mansions who passed through the aisles. The new escalator carried them gracefully from one floor to the next. Some drew from a sleeve or reticule pages cut from the current issue of Colliers or McCall’s showing the season’s fashions from Paris, the narrow columnar Empire look from the houses of Paquin and Doucet. For spring the hemline had risen from floor to ankle, making elegant footwear imperative. Mannequins displayed expensive dresses in the stylish new paler colors for 1908, eau d’Nile and Ashes of Roses.

The inviting aisles offered any woman the freedom to caress the textures of silk, voile and brocade, and let the sensuous feel of the fabric arouse seductive images of a luxurious and romantic life.

The freedom to wander among the aisles that aroused fantasies for some meant opportunity for others. And that was why Emma Prothero strolled inconspicuously among the shoppers at Redelsheimers. Emma was employed by the Cody Detective Agency and Mercantile Patrol.

Emma sometimes wondered why beginners didn’t allow themselves a risk-free apprenticeship of observation. If a thief-in-training was smart she would see that trying to be as inconspicuous as possible was not the best way to avoid the store detective’s attention. The professional detective, who observed shoppers the whole day, was better than the novice thief at avoiding notice.

Once the detective identified a possible shoplifter, a moment of improvised theater began. Thief and detective both played the role of the innocent shopper. The shoplifter moved deceptively, handling merchandise, then concealing it. The detective moved with a matching deceptiveness, trying to close with her prey and observe the concealment without being noticed.

To maintain a good rate of apprehension, Emma couldn’t waste time observing customers who had no intention of stealing. Half the skill was deciding whom to watch. There were signs she looked for. Shoplifters tended to handle merchandise. All shoppers picked up a few items and examine them, but the thief was constantly touching, handling, moving things around. Emma studied what a shopper wore. A long, loose-fitting coat, a raincoat on a warm dry day. Or a full-bodied dress with pleats and folds into which a supply of lingerie could disappear. In the winter, a bulky fur muff.

There was also the matter of eye contact. Shoplifters tended to avoid looking directly at other customers, though they kept track of people near them at the counter with quick sideways glances. The shoplifter focused her attention on the item she was handling until the moment she was ready to conceal it. She raised her head and scanned the room for possible observers. That was the moment Emma waited for. The instant before the shoplifter caught her looking, Emma’s eyes flicked straight ahead. The shoplifter didn’t detect a movement of the head. Emma was just another shopper.

Peculiar, Emma thought as she watched the freckled girl. A novice, certainly, desperate even. But the desperate ones usually stole things they needed. She’ll never wear those gloves. Emma gave the floorwalker, Mr. Simmons, a sign. She liked working with Simmons. He looked at her more frequently than some of them did, and usually caught her first nod or finger movement.

In a modern department store the floorwalker’s job was to welcome and assist the ladies with their shopping. And he was there to help the detectives. A neatly dressed, tidy figure with reddish hair and skin and a lively step, he smiled and bowed and spoke ingratiatingly to his customers, nodding continuous agreement with their remarks. But he always knew where his detective was.

Emma walked quickly in the next aisle, then crossed just behind the girl with the gloves and pointed with her chin. Mr. Simmons excused himself from the customer he was chatting with, stepped across the room and tapped the girl on the shoulder before she reached the escalator. He put a firm hand on her elbow and said a few words to her. The freckles on her nose disappeared in a flush of red. She covered her face with her hands and began sobbing.

Emma watched the floorwalker lead the girl away. She was puzzled. The girl’s behavior didn’t follow the pattern of the common shoplifter. Emma could read the mental states a shoplifter passed through from the movement of the hands. Strokes of desire, hesitation, the decisive move. She did not read this pattern in the girl’s hands. The hands hadn’t expressed desire, they expressed resignation. The girl took the gloves because she had to.

Had to take the gloves? The hair on the back of her neck tingled. There was someone else at work.

Did I give myself away? was Emma’s first thought. Her signal to the floorwalker had been inconspicuous when she walked past the girl. She didn’t think she had exposed herself.

Emma drew in a single long breath, let a wave of relaxation descend from her neck through her body, centered her weight on the balls of her feet, and became as light as a fox. None of these internal actions would have been visible to an observer. In her nostrils was the gingery tang of the hunt.

She needed less than a minute. There he was, a small, nattily-dressed man in his forties wearing a straw boater and crimson bowtie in the lingerie department making quick movements with his hands.

When Emma spotted a shoplifter at work, time slowed to the point that she absorbed and processed everything she saw. Was the hand of a practiced shoplifter quicker than the eye? At the critical instant Emma’s opal-blue eye was quicker than any hand. If she reflected on such things she might have realized that the moment she discerned a thief’s hands at work was like the moment she planted her alpenstock and found a secure placement for her boot in the snowpack of a dangerously steep mountainside in the Cascades. Concentration enriched each second. Her entire being was focused on what was happening.

The boater-hatted thief was confident and skilled. Emma guessed he had recruited the freckle-nosed girl and told her he would give her money for whatever she could steal. His true purpose was to use her as a decoy who was likely to be caught. Her apprehension would divert the detective’s attention and become the cover for his own thieving.

When Emma began working for the Cody Detective Agency and Mercantile Patrol three years earlier most of the shoplifters were women. Some stole on an unplanned impulse, others were regulars. But they all worked alone. In the past months she had begun to suspect that a team of thieves was working the stores. Was it several independent gangs at work, or was a single organization directing the thievery citywide? An individual thief could make a precarious but adequate living in the department stores. An organization with an efficient way to move stolen merchandise could be another matter entirely. She was sure orchestrated shoplifting could be a very profitable game.

The floor-walker had taken the sobbing girl off the floor and was not available to help Emma. She followed the small man at a discreet distance until he glanced at his watch and walked toward the exit. Emma made a decision. She would let the thief walk away. She had never done this before. What would Mr. Redelsheimer say if he learned she had let a thief leave the store with merchandise? Maybe he would understand her desire to learn more about this thief. But maybe he would have her fired for allowing merchandise to be stolen. She couldn’t hesitate. She walked out the exit.

As the thief turned at the corner of the building, he glanced over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. Emma anticipated his backward glance and became an inconspicuous woman going somewhere. He blended into a crowd waiting at a streetcar stop, and she joined him.

Second Avenue. When the breeze came out of the south, it carried the salty, kelpy smells of the tideflats. When it came from the north you could feel an occasional cool spritz of overspray from the hydraulic nozzles chewing away at the hillsides of the regrade. Gulls cried and carved trajectories between the buildings. Flocks of pigeons rose and settled in sudden bursts. The sounds of streetcars rolling on steel rails and horsehooves clopping on the asphalt blended with the whistles of ships along the waterfront entering the traffic on Elliott Bay. The best time was early. If Emma arrived for work before the stores opened she could see the parade of Frederick & Nelson’s twenty-eight delivery wagons, their bright black lacquer polished every night, moving in tight formation from the up-town stables down Second Avenue to the store. The teams of big dapple-grays, hooves drumming, heads bobbing, gave the street a brisk but relaxed rhythm. The rhythm was changing, though. It seemed only a year or two ago Emma had read in the papers the count of automobiles in Seattle had reached forty. Now they were everywhere. The sound of their motors was blatty and harsh. The acrid vapors of exhaust and gasoline irritated the nostrils and teared up the eyes. The herky-jerky movement of the autos and the unpredictable routes of motorcycles veering this way and that were unnerving, and demanded a pedestrian’s attention. The streets were changing. Though the day may come, she thought, when you didn’t have to dodge the horsecrap when you stepped into the street.

The streetcar arrived, and everyone boarded.

When the man exited several minutes later in the harbor area, she made a calculation. She remained on board to the next stop. Emma was a strong runner. She had the ability to move along a sidewalk with short, quick strides that didn’t cause her skirt to swirl and billow, keeping her upper body almost motionless. Someone giving her a casual look wouldn’t notice how swiftly she was moving. She liked the freedom of the spring’s higher hem. But she avoided the Empire skirts so narrow the newspapers called them hobble-skirts. She liked the look, but knew they would impede her movements.

When she reached the previous stop she expelled a sharp breath of relief. The man was visible ahead of her, not hurrying. She followed until he entered a building a block from the waterfront in a row of old one and two-story warehouses with faded signs probably no longer connected with current tenants. Green paint pealed from the window frames. These were wood buildings that might have survived the great fire twenty years ago. Two or three wagons were tethered to posts along the block. Someone came out of a shop of a Chinese herb merchant across the street from the warehouse. She waited, containing her impatience. She was expected to be on the floor at Redelsheimers working. Ten minutes later the man in the boater strode briskly out of the building. She now ignored him, having the information she wanted. Somewhere in the harbor district warehouse with no sign over the doorway was the fence who received a skilled shoplifter’s goods. There was a gang at work here, and she was going to get them.

Part Two

THE SILENT BOY

Pyschiatrists – or alienists as they were then called – were just beginning to be recognized as experts in the unknown terrain of the mind.

CHAPTER TWO

At the shores of Lake Washington the water is still warm enough in September for bathing and boating and for strolling in the parks in shirtsleeves. Enough of the August heat lingers to make the evenings on Capitol Hill and Queen Anne pleasant, though it is no longer light until ten. But on an occasional day the wind picks up, carrying a whiff of autumn. The vivid green of summer begins to fade out of the foliage of the maple trees.

Soon the leaves will turn brittle and yellow, and float down to collect on the grass or be crushed on the roads under the wheels of wagons and automobiles. In October damp winds sometimes blow off the Duwamish flats, pressing into the faces of pedestrians walking south on First and Second. In November, the fog settles along the waterfront and fills in the low-lying areas between the city’s hills.On November 11, 1907, the Number 6 streetcar collided with a crossing streetcar at the fogbound intersection of Nineteenth and Union on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. Two weeks later John C. Higgins, senior member of the law firm of Higgins, Hall & Halverstadt, appeared in the offices of the Seattle Electric Company and announced that the firm was seeking $8,000 in damages for pain and suffering caused to a fifteen-year-old messenger boy named Carl Windell, injured in the collision.

Higgins met the stony stares of the Electric Company executives and declared that the boy was in a catatonic state. He was able to walk and do simple physical tasks, but had lost his voice and ability to react to people.

The executives told Mr. Higgins that he would hear from them. Later that day the claims agent for the Electric Company hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to determine whether the boy was shamming.

When the Times learned about the case, the city editor assigned the story to Oliver Casebolt. A tall, angular man who didn’t see things in the distance clearly without glasses, Casebolt was known for his ability to give life and color, what the editor called punch, to local stories. His fellow reporters sometimes asked him to help by dipping into his rich store of adjectives. A flop of brown hair across his brow gave him a boyish look. His voice was soft and unemphatic. Whether his manner was natural or artful, he put people at ease and could get almost anyone to talk to him.

After taking notes in the attorneys’ office Casebolt took a streetcar south across the mudflats to Youngstown to learn what he could from the Windell family. Youngstown was an industrial area along the Duwamish River that had just been annexed by Seattle. The reporter found himself among plain houses of whitewashed clapboard jammed together on the hillsides rising above the steel mills that employed most of the men in the town. No one paid much attention to yards and lawn. A mungey odor of garbage not removed on a regular basis hung in the air.

What Casebolt knew was that Carl Windell was the oldest of eight children. The father had abandoned the family the year before. The Swedish Aid Society gave his mother, Albertina, an old house to live in. Her next-door neighbor, Mary Vinette, persuaded Albertina to move into the second floor of the Vinette house and put the house they’d been given up for rent. The rent, and Carl’s income as a messenger boy, allowed the mother to keep food on the table. Upper floor, four rooms in a ramshackle building, not much more than a two-story shed divided into rooms with nailed-up plywood walls, nine people finding space. Casebolt tried to keep from wrinkling his nose at the odor. He found a chaos of clothes and bedding strewn about, children fussing out of control, a stink of diapers, mildew, mouse droppings, sour milk, and garbage. The mother, trying to calm the squalling eight-month-old on her hip, was too flustered to answer his questions. Talk to Mrs. Vinette, she said.

Downstairs, Mrs. Vinette, small, black-haired, dark-eyed, a sharp-featured but attractive woman in her late twenties, darting in her movements, listened to Casebolt with undisguised suspicion. Carl Windell sat near her. His mouth hung open. His eyes were watery and without visible lashes. Blond hair rose in an unmanageable cowlick from his forehead. He remained expressionless and silent, gazing at the floor, as Casebolt tried to engage him in a conversation. Once or twice the boy glanced at Mrs. Vinette. The Electric Company claims agent had warned Casebolt Mrs. Vinette seemed to have a hypnotic influence over the boy. It was the agent’s theory that she was the instigator of a plot to extort money from the Electric Company.

So tell me about that streetcar, said Casebolt. What happened when you got hit?

He can’t talk, said Mrs. Vinette. Just leave him alone.

Casebolt’s affability wasn’t working on either Carl Windell or Mrs. Vinette. He realized he wasn’t going to get any useful information. It might be true that Mary had some kind of hold on Carl. Maybe she was a mother substitute for him, maybe she knew something that could get him in trouble, maybe he had a crush on her. There was an interesting story here, he decided. What was needed was a younger female who could gain the confidence of the Windell girls he had seen in the house.

He returned to the Times and asked the city editor for approval to hire a younger female detective. The editor tapped his nose skeptically a few times, but decided this was a potential front-page story and approved the request.

The Times has recently done a story on John Cody’s international tour of European police departments, with a flattering photo portrait of Cody that couldn’t conceal the short, thick neck and bullet head, but presented a benign-but-no-nonsense expression that inspired confidence. His views of the efficient organization of the Prussian police in Berlin were presented as authoritative and knowledgeable. Cody was said to be quietly campaigning to replace Charles Wappenstein and his corrupt administration as chief of Seattle’s police. Cody would be friendly to the Times.

Got somebody would be just the ticket, said Cody when Casebolt described what he wanted. She’s working in the department stores today. I’ll have her here tomorrow morning.

At the detective’s office the next day Cody introduced him to a tallish woman in her early twenties. Her eyebrows arched up toward her temples as though she had just asked a question and was waiting for an answer. Broad jaw. Well-defined creases that Casebolt found attractive formed around her mouth when she smiled at him. His first impression was that she was confident and observant. Probably make a good reporter.

This is Emma Prothero, said Cody. "A capable operative. So tell us exactly what the Times would like her to do."

Nice to meet you, said Casebolt. I want to find out if this boy Carl Windell really hit his head in the streetcar accident, or if he’s faking a mental injury. House is full of females. See if you can go in there and win ‘em over. My guess is the older sisters will know better than anyone if the boy’s faking. Is he acting or not? But they might not admit it.

Emma Prothero nodded to Casebolt. I should be able to do that. How do I get access?

CHAPTER THREE

When Cody told Emma that morning he had an assignment for her, she objected.I’m on to something, she said. There’s a shoplifter gang out there, maybe a big one. I think I found the fence.

It can wait, said Cody. You’re the operative I need for this newspaper fellow. Take a couple of days and see what you can learn.

Emma pressed her lips together, but kept her frustration to herself. Cody was right, a few days wouldn’t matter.

When Cody introduced Oliver Casebolt to her, she saw he was not like the cocky, quick-talking reporters who had questioned her about cases she had worked on in the past. His smile and soft voice were disarming. She should be able to work with him.

The house they live in is Mary Vinette’s, over in Youngstown, Casebolt said. The Swedish Aid Society gave the boy’s mother the house next door. They rent it out and live on Vinette’s second floor. Maybe the Aid Society could get you an in.

Emma found the Society’s address. She introduced herself to the secretary as a newspaper reporter doing background on a story about women’s groups organizing charitable work in the city.

Our work isn’t usually news, said the secretary.

We’re going to have the vote, said Emma. Women’s work will be news.

The secretary smiled. Use my name if you think it would help.

Emma had a twinge of guilt, knowing there would be no story about the Aid Society. But these small ruses were part of her job.

When she found the right streetcar and located the address, Emma climbed the rickety outside stairway to the second floor.

Mrs. Windell, the boy’s mother, sweeping the kitchen with a slow, rocking motion that didn’t seem to be making any progress, shook her head as if she didn’t understand the questions Emma asked her. The girl working in the dank, clammy Vinette laundry space was the tallest of the children she could find. Emma rolled up her sleeves and joined the girl rinsing and running garments through the wringer. The girl didn’t ask why she was there. Emma worked through a whole basket of washed clothes before introducing herself.

I’m Emma, she said. What’s your name?

Clara, said the girl, who was perhaps fourteen, the adult shape of her nose and cheekbones just beginning to emerge from the soft roundness of her girlhood face.

I have a brother. He’s a messenger boy like Carl.

Clara made no response. After wringing out another garment Emma said, I heard about your brother. You think he’s going to be all right?

Clara nodded.

I don’t see him. Is he here?

Yesterday they took him to the hospital, she said.

I didn’t know that. Does he look at you when you talk?

Right now he can’t talk.

Did the girl know more than that? Emma thought she was pretty good at knowing when someone was acting. But a fourteen-year-old can be difficult to judge. Everything you say at that age is acting at being older than you are.

I hope he’ll be okay, Emma said. I hope it didn’t make him insane.

The girl looked up at Emma. How does somebody act when they’re insane?

Was this a sly question? Was Clara checking to make sure her brother was acting the way insane people do? Or was she worried he really was insane?

Insane people have feelings there’s no reason for, she said. They can’t tell you what they feel. Is somebody taking care of Carl?

Mary’s taking care of Carl.

Mrs. Vinette?

The girl nodded. At the hospital.

Clara didn’t appear to think her brother was faking his catatonic state. Emma passed another ten minutes wringing clothes to make sure she had secured the girl’s confidence.

After a series of streetcar rides she came to the county hospital, recently built in an open space south of the city. White canvas tents to house the consumption patients had been set up on the grounds. She could hear feeble coughing as she passed near. A Sister of Providence nodded a greeting as Emma walked up the steps to the hospital entrance. At the desk she asked if she could see the patient Carl Windell. She was directed to a second floor ward. She recognized Carl and the small, black-haired woman sitting next to the bed from Casebolt’s description. The boy leaned against a pillow with his hands limp in his lap staring at the foot of his bed. He paid no attention as she approached.

Hello Carl, she said.

Who are you? asked Mrs. Vinette. She glared with the look of a schoolmistress interrupted during a lesson.

Carl’s scheduled to be in court tomorrow, said