The P.I. and the Harvey Girls

By Dewey Johnson

The Fred Harvey Company is one of the most successful companies in America. From small beginnings in Topeka, it now has hotels and eateries and newsstands at Santa Fe Railroad depots from Chicago to Los Angeles. Its menu is outstanding, and its waiters – actually, the men have been replaced with waitresses – are exceptional. Harvey Girls are the hallmark of the Fred Harvey Company, their reputation zealously guarded by The Tenth Legion, Fred Harvey's management team.

 

A number of robberies in the summer of 1928 puts their reputation at risk. If the public, which tends to suspect the worst of single working women, finds out how the Harvey Girls are abused during these heists, they will blame the Girls not the bandits, and the scandal could crumble Fred Harvey's hospitality empire. Kansas City private investigator, Lake Chancellor, a tough guy with a strange eye, is hired to stop the bandits and keep the robberies out of the newspapers. It's an impossible case, but Lake is armed with an active imagination and tracks the bandits to Vaughn, New Mexico. His Harvey Girl twin-sister Stormy and a stranded Charles Lindbergh offer their help, as do the Harvey Girls in the Las Chavez Hotel lunchroom. But catching the bandits is only part of the challenge. How can he bring them to trial without scandalous publicity about what the bandits have forced the Girls to do? The bandits aren't acting alone. There are powerful men in Santa Fe and Albuquerque behind them. Who are they? What is their intent? What's coming next?   

 

The Private Investigator and the Harvey Girls is a fun look at the Harvey Girl phenomenon through the lens of the Roaring Twenties.

 

  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dewey Johnson
• Release date: Aug 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536561296

Dewey Johnson

Dewey Johnson is a New Mexico storyteller who grew up in Roswell and lives in Albuquerque. His books include Summer of Champions, Down to Earth in Roswell, The P.I. and the Harvey Girls, The Lord's Prayer: Hope for the Neighborhood, and most recently When Sputnik Hit the Wall.

Book preview

Chapter 1

A bird in the bush

Anoise outside woke him. Opening one eye, he studied Big Bad Ben on the nightstand. 4:06. Another sound, rustling branches outside the window. Someone was moving through the bushes. Reaching for his .38 on the nightstand, he eased out of bed. Two steps and he stood in the dark with his back against the faded wallpaper, left shoulder adjacent to the paint-chipped window jamb. He was ready to return fire, but he heard nothing more. The trespasser must have heard the squeaky bedsprings as he got out of bed. Mexican standoff.

Big Bad Ben ticked off a slow-moving minute as no more than a summer breeze came through the window. His mind raced back through recent cases. Had someone taken offense or felt threatened or assumed he knew something he didn’t? No name came to mind, and any self-respecting button man would have already machine-gunned the bedroom to rags. Who was out there?

Another minute went by, the silence broken only by the ringing of the black candlestick phone. Hey, Shrub! Would it kill you to come get the blower? I’m a little busy now.

He heard movement headed away from the bungalow. Darting out the living room door onto the porch in his boxer shorts, he could barely distinguish a figure hightailing it down the block. But even in the dark, it was obvious that Shrub was no heavyweight. Too thin and light on his feet.

The phone had stopped ringing but started again. Chancellor, Lake Chancellor, can I help?

It was the manager at the Deluxe Hotel. His office had been bombed!

LAKE LEFT for the brown brick hotel. Businessmen rented rooms off the lobby for office space. He’d been there two years. The hotel operator took his messages, he didn’t have a secretary. Most of his furnishings had been left by the previous tenant, a salesman, who was clenched by a heart attack trying to clinch his last deal.

Ten minutes later he was viewing the damage. A pineapple had been tossed through the glass pane in his office door. It rolled beneath the oak desk which then bore the brunt of the explosion. The swivel chair was splintered and charred, his Corona typewriter hurled against the back wall, keys jammed atop one another like fingers of a badly disfigured arthritic hand. The two straight back chairs used by clients were in relatively good shape – they had been positioned in a corner, out of the way of the blast – but some of the upholstery had been burnt off the armchair. All of it standing in water.

He studied the armchair, which was comfortable to read in. The metal pole lamp to its left had been blown across the room and slightly bent. Hopefully, both were still serviceable. Fortunately, there wasn’t a stack of books on the floor by the armchair. He had returned them the day before to the library, and because he was in a hurry didn’t check out any others. Mrs. Upshaw, the librarian, would have tracked him down and burned his library card had any of the books been damaged or lost. She was a scary lady.

The manager appeared in the hallway. His pencil-thin moustache hung on for the ride as his mouth flapped. You’re outta here, Chancellor! I should’ve never rented to a private dick. If it wasn’t for my alert staff, the whole place would have gone up in flames!

What do you mean, Harry? The sign says the Deluxe is fireproof, ‘Safest Hotel in Kansas City.’

The manager glared at him.

I’m paid through the end of the month. Prorate a refund.

Ha! I’ll apply it toward the damage.

Lake shrugged. Or I can set up office in the lobby for the next couple of weeks. Interview your guests and employees. See if they saw anything or know anything about the bombing. Parade my clients in and out.

The manager was a large man in the habit of throwing his weight around, but he backed off any notion of the bum’s rush and instead walked to his office. He’d seen what the man could do with his fists. Hurricane Chancellor, they called him.

Lake took a seat on a maroon velvet divan in the lobby and studied the situation. Guests in robes, pajamas, and slippers were milling about. They had come downstairs to see what happened, but they had not been evacuated by the alert hotel staff. Why not? A bomb goes off and who knows how extensive the damage or how a fire might spread?

Why hadn’t the hotel staff been running from floor to floor telling people to leave? Because a few of the staff had been paid off and the cops called off. No real danger, the impact had been managed. The police were already leaving, following the bucket brigade to their vehicles. None had asked him any questions. How different from a week earlier when he found himself in their headlights.

Stanley Austin’s body, blood stain on the front of his shirt, was slumped in the chair behind his desk when Lake found him at the Austin Lumber Yard. No vital signs. The cops blew in just after Lake slipped a scrap of paper from atop the desk into his pocket. On it were two words written in pencil, He knows.

A gumshoe ordered him to produce his gat. Lake didn’t have it on him. The two walked outside and retrieved it from his roadster. No smell of gun smoke, it hadn’t been fired in weeks. Taken to the clubhouse for further questioning, he had little to divulge. Lumber had been disappearing for more than a month, entire bays filled with it. He had been hired to catch the sneakthieves, but nightly stakeouts had nabbed no one. He and Austin were meeting afterhours to determine their next move.

Lake remained in police custody until Frank Phillips alibied him. He’d been at Frank’s Billiards Parlor, five minutes away, from six until straight up eight o’clock. A passerby had called the stationhouse at seven fifty-eight. Two shots fired at the lumberyard.

The manager returned with the rent refund. We’re done here.

Walking out the Deluxe Hotel lobby, Lake glanced at the 1928 Union Station Calendar on the wall in the reception nook. Red would be having breakfast.

Chapter 2

Ten men on the field

When Fred Harvey began his eateries in the 1870s along the tracks of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, commonly known as the Santa Fe, his coffee soon became known as the best in the West. Each eatery routinely tested the alkali level in the local water supply. If it was too high, water for brewing coffee was brought in by the Santa Fe, with whom Fred had negotiated free transportation for his employees and provisions. And whereas it was common practice to make coffee once in the morning and then reheat it the rest of the day, Harvey Houses made fresh urns of Chase & Sanborn every two hours. It was a ritual.

Red Thurston, wearing a rumpled tan suit, tie loosely knotted, was sitting with stacks of flannel cakes and his competition’s first editions at Fred Harvey’s Union Station lunch counter.   

Have a seat, Lake.... Hot date? I smell smoke.

I wish. He placed his flat cap on the buffed, black marble countertop. I need you to find me another used mill at the newspaper. The keys are jammed on mine.

A Harvey Girl poured Lake a cup as he began telling Red how he also needed new office space. The freckled-faced reporter listened attentively and then ground out his cigarette in a bronze ashtray. If the cops were called off, whoever bombed your office has connections with Boss.

I agree, but who might that be? What do you know that I don’t?

Red drained his cup. Little Italy likes pineapples.

But they use ‘em primarily to scare store proprietors. Given that no one is trying to extort me, I’m wondering if I pissed someone off.

Red grinned. You do have a knack for it.

And if so, what’s the message?

Since you weren’t in your office when the pineapple landed, maybe it’s Leave town. Arrivederci."

That’s a possibility, but it’s more complicated than just my office. Lake then told him about the lightweight outside his bedroom window. 

Red thought a moment. But he didn’t fire on you, or she didn’t. Rita asked about you last week. She’s thin, wears slacks at times, and still hates you enough to shoot you. I thought you were a goner at the New Year’s Eve party. I mean, she handled that butcher knife like she grew up on a ranch taking the starch out of bulls.

Lake frowned. You don’t really think it was her, do you?

It’s possible. She sneaks to your window to see who’s sharing your bed. If she knows the twist, she’ll shoot you both. Then she realizes you’re alone and decides not to pull the trigger. In fact, she’s deliriously happy. Red began making floating motions with his hands. So happy it’s like she’s hoofing down the street with Fred Astaire, dancing to the wedding bells in her head.

How’s your novel coming? Your story telling is greatly improved.... Any other ideas?

Red reached over to the stack of his competitors’ dailies and moved two frontpage headlines in front of Lake. "Johnny Carbo has Boss Pendergast’s ear. You have anything to do with what’s eating him? ‘Businessman Murders Wife and Her Lover’. He just lost a lieutenant, Eddie Marchiando."

Lake gaped as he read the first paragraph. The husband is thirty years older than she was.

And that’s all the older he’ll get. Tomorrow’s headline, ‘Businessman Stabbed to Death in Jail.’ So, what happened?

He suspected that she was cheating. After I saw her with that ape Marchiando, I told him to forget her, file for divorce, and go make some widow woman happy.

"Marchiando was hairy, wasn’t he? Darrow missed the link when he didn’t use him as evidence at the Scopes trial. What are you going to do?"

Plead my case to Crazy Johnny. How was I to know the guy would gun down Marchiando? He’s a pillarite of the community.

No. They don’t call him Crazy for nothing. Let me check into it for you. Johnny and I talk. Given that he can write the Crime Beat a day before we go to press, I’ve been trying to talk the editor into hiring him. I doubt, though, that I can change his mind. Pack a bag and keep a low profile. I’ll let you know after we have a chat.

Okay, but what is the guy, syphilis demented?

No, just crazy. Comes to him natural like.

Red left for the newsroom and Lake ordered breakfast. The idea of having to leave town for his health was a prescription that stuck in his craw. If it wasn’t for prohibition, Johnny Carbo would be no more than a smear of dog crap on the bottom of Boss Pendergast’s shoe. As it was, staying alive in Kansas City might have just become a full-time job. Guys like Johnny liked to talk about honor, but there was no honor in their lifestyle. His trouble boys didn’t fight like men. They’d drive by and spray you on the street with their Tommy guns or catch you when you were having dinner and whack you. Red joked about how the gangster version of football was ten men on the field and one hiding in the shadows as the opposing team walked from the locker room to the field.

After finishing an order of fried eggs and ham, he paid his tab and headed for home. Rounding the corner to his neighborhood, the idea of leaving town gained traction. His bungalow was on fire!

Chapter 3

In need of a new address

For the past half century Fred Harvey had expanded a hospitality empire westward along the tracks of the Santa Fe Railroad. The Santa Fe was the lessor, Fred Harvey the lessee. Furthermore, in an era of pioneers and settlers, the pioneer was Fred Harvey the man, the settler Fred Harvey the company. With the opening of Union Station in 1914, the company had settled into its headquarters in Kansas City.

Gray-suited members of the management team, the Tenth Legion, named for Caesar’s elite fighting force, dined most often in the elegant dining room but sometimes in the lunchroom. Because he wanted to keep tabs on the common man, Dan Benton almost always ate in the lunchroom and knew Lake to be a lunchroom regular. But he hadn’t seen him lately, and the company needed his services. Instructing all shifts in the 200-seat lunchroom to be on the lookout – many of the Girls knew Lake by sight – he had no luck. Dan then devoted an early morning to asking lunchroom regulars if they had seen Mr. Chancellor recently.

You’re Tenth Legion, right?

Dan Benton. The two men shook hands. And you’re fourth estate? The newshawk was so freckled that his face blended in with his orange-brown suit coat. 

"Red Thurston, Kansas City Star. Have a seat." Dan had the yellowed fingers of a chain smoker and a high-pitched voice. Looked to be in his early forties.

You know Lake?

Ever since we shared a trench with the French.

Really? I didn’t know Lake had been ‘over there.’

He doesn’t talk about it, period.

A Harvey Girl filled Dan’s cup and refilled Red’s. I have a job for him, but his phone’s been disconnected.

Another? After losing his convention bonus, Lake figured you’d never hire him again.

Dan shook his head. It was unfortunate. The guy was obviously asking for it, but Lake hit him so hard it broke his jaw. The Pinkertons got upset – it was the second time Lake had slugged one of their agents – and took it out on Ford Harvey. He then took it out on Lake.

Red grinned. But how else would he have hit him? Have you ever seen him fight in the train yard?

No, but I guess you’re right. I’ve heard stories. I also heard what happened to Lake’s office, and I personally saw what’s left of his bungalow. Must be laying low. Avoiding his landlord?

Ray laughed. The landlord is the least of his worries. Let’s just say he finds himself in need of a new address. 

Dan lit a cigarette. Then he’s in luck. The case is up his alley way out of town. Can you set up a meeting?

Maybe, but if he’s spotted, his health could go south in a hurry.

Taking a drag, Dan thought as he exhaled. How about the Harvey House in Topeka tomorrow morning? Tell him to pack a bag if he thinks he might be interested. He can leave from there.

Red said he would do what he could, put a nickel tip under the saucer, and left to pay his tab.

LAKE HAD worked for the Fred Harvey Company during the 1928 Republican National Convention held in Kansas City a month earlier. Ford Harvey, Fred Harvey’s son and president of the hospitality company since his father’s death in 1901, was a robust fellow of sixty-two years of age, recently widowed. While planning for his role as a convention host, Ford worried about the crime and vice that such a gathering would attract under Boss Tom Pendergast’s expanding influence. Ford would be entertaining delegates on the golf course and at his home. Son Freddy was putting together a polo tournament and hosting late evenings of socializing at Gay Paree, a nightclub. To maintain their reputation for topnotch hospitality, Ford Harvey was thinking about hiring security.

Given the size of the crowds, the Tenth Legion advised hiring the Pinkertons to maintain order at Fred Harvey’s businesses at Union Station but not at Ford’s or Freddy’s gatherings. Their presence would make participants feel uncomfortable, perhaps unsafe. As one of the managers said, Pinkertons would stick out more than Salvation Army officers welcoming clients to a bordello. Freddy Harvey, handsome and a daredevil by nature, placed another possibility on the table.

Lake Chancellor’s a trained private investigator. How about him for an inside man? He could circulate as though he were a delegate and still keep matters in hand.

The idea was intriguing. Known as one of the toughest characters in Kansas City, he cleaned up nicely. A newspaper once wrote, Lake Chancellor is a sheik who squires numerous shebas about town.

Tell them of his character and training, said Tolly Tolliver, semi-retired, the oldest man in the room.

In my book, he’s a clean potato. I’ve known him since Harvard. He went undefeated on the boxing team as a freshman and then, like many of us, dropped out to go to war. He was only sixteen. After the war, he worked for the Pinkertons in New York City.

What Freddy didn’t tell them was how Lake walked off the job after coldcocking a superior. No letter of recommendation would be forthcoming, but no further deliberation was needed. The approval was unanimous. Lake would handle convention security for Ford and Freddy. The Pinkertons domain would be Union Station. They could easily keep an eye on Fred Harvey’s businesses – the lunchroom, dining room, perfumery, drug store, toy store, bookstore, and gift shop replete with Fred Harvey Indian curios – as they squelched crime trackside and elsewhere inside the depot.

After the meeting, Tolly grinned and said, Good idea, Freddy. Lake will do just fine.

Chapter 4

The bare facts

Waiting at the Topeka Harvey House, Lake wondered what kind of case Dan had. Harvey House men and women worked together closely, the Boys as chefs, bakers, cooks, and butchers. They prepared the food, the Girls served it. Add to the mix the amorous interests of Santa Fe stiffs at the depot and local yokels in town, and Harvey service was a recipe for heartburn.

Maybe a Girl had been murdered, and the case, which involved a jilted gandydancer or a lonesome cowboy or a luckless miner, hadn’t been solved by the local authorities. Skirts were in short supply in the West. Many a suitor felt the need to fight off claim jumpers. Still, Harvey Girls weren’t exactly known for showing gam at the gin mill. It was mandatory that they dress like junior nuns in black-and-white uniforms, avoid makeup, and keep their hair short. They worked twelve-hour days, six days a week, serving meals, setting tables, cleaning the lunchroom and dining room, polishing the coffee urns and utensils. Their dating availability was further curtailed by living in an on-site dormitory with a dorm mother and a curfew.

In addition to wages and tips, Harvey Girls received free room and board. His sister Stormy said it was a job that most valued and needed. Many a Girl sent her entire pay home to help support parents and siblings eking out a living on a hard-scrabble farm.

Dan Benton, looking even thinner than Lake remembered, walked in the second-floor lunchroom at Topeka. It was straight up ten o’clock. Sitting down at the counter next to Lake, he said, Sorry to hear about your health problem.

Maybe your job is what the doc calls for. What’s up?

After a Girl filled his cup and refilled Lake’s, Dan whispered, Two bandits are robbing Harvey Houses in the Southwest.

Lake scrunched his brow. Fred Harvey’s business was THE business of Kansas City newspapers. He’d read nothing about it. Red hadn’t mentioned it. 

Three so far – two in West Texas, one in New Mexico.

The law can’t catch them?

Dan sipped his coffee and said, We haven’t contacted law enforcement officials. He then explained that discretion was needed. Indeed, secrecy was the reason he had joined Freddy and Tolly in arguing that the case be given to Lake. The Pinkertons had far more resources, but they’d attract attention and multiply the odds of the story leaking to the press.

Lake was bewildered. How much of a story is there to leak?

Dan leaned in closer. They make the Girls take off their clothing. Sitting back in his chair, his cloud-gray eyes searched the small room for rabbit ears. None that he could see. After the last train of an evening, two bandits round up the employees. They threaten to shoot the manager if the Girls don’t strip and parade about.

Lake’s jaw hit the counter. Holy Mosey! Do they molest the Girls?

No, just make them undress. Then they force the manager to open the safe. It’s cost us over two grand so far, but what’s a bigger problem is the Girls can’t work with the men afterward.

Because they’ve seen them—

"Right. I know that half the dolls you run around with would pay for the chance to take it off in public, but our Girls aren’t giggle-water flappers. They’re