13

THE BADGER GAME

By the fall of 1909, Florence was living at a boardinghouse at 39 Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. From 1909 to 1910, she seems to have moved every two or three weeks, either for nonpayment of rent or because the proprietor discovered her true identity. Her room and her personal appearance reflected her fall from respectability. No longer a beauty, no longer “the Belle of Bedford Avenue,” Florence took on a slatternly, unhealthy appearance. Her hair was rarely combed and her clothes were rumpled and dirty. Whatever room she rented—never an apartment or a flat, but just a room—was littered with empty liquor bottles and cigarette butts.¹

In November 1909, Florence fell while drunk and broke her arm. On the evening of December 9, she encountered a fellow lodger in the street in front of the boardinghouse and asked him if he would buy her a drink. He could tell she had already been drinking, but he took pity on her because of her broken arm and shabby dress. Whether Florence had targeted this young man or stumbled upon him accidentally, she hit upon the perfect mark: an abstainer of alcohol, a mender of broken wings, a knight in shining armor, a man of character, a perfect patsy.

CHARLES WAYLAND HURLBURT

Charles W. Hurlburt was born in 1879 in Palmyra, a small town near Rochester in western New York, to a prominent but litigiously inclined Wayne County family. In 1884, when Charles was five, his thirty-seven-year-old mother died and his father, Lyman, eventually remarried. Lyman Hurlburt, his brother John, and their deceased brother Theron’s widow were involved in a rancorous, contentious legal battle that began in 1884 and did not end until 1895. It was a feud that, in its intensity and its duration, had a profound effect on young Charles, who was a sensitive and gentle soul. Added to that were the other court battles fought by Lyman Hurlburt over properties he had amassed, until, as his brother-in-law put it, “the family was at loggerheads with most of its neighbors.” The effect on young Charles was to turn a “bright and cheerful boy” into a “silent and morose” man.2

The father of Lyman, John, and Theron Hurlburt put $12,000 in a Rochester bank in Theron’s name so that Theron could access it for him, as the father lived in a small town with no bank and had no way to get to Rochester. Theron, however, died unexpectedly in September 1883, when he was just thirty-seven, and the father died four months later. Ella, Theron’s widow, claimed that the money in the bank account belonged to her late husband as an outright gift from his father and refused to give any of it back, whereas Lyman, as his father’s executor, claimed it belonged to that estate. The case came to a trial three years later and a jury found for Ella, probably because there was no writing to back up the alleged agreement.

Lyman filed his own lawsuit against Ella Hurlburt and got $3,000 from that. When he died in 1893, he left some of his property to the surviving brother, John, who then died a couple of years later, leaving his entire estate to … Theron’s widow and daughter! John must have had some feelings of guilt for the extended feud, most of which seems to have been perpetuated by Lyman.

Lyman Hurlburt’s will left his widow, Anna, a life estate as long as she did not remarry and also stipulated that she take care of his son Charles, then fourteen, and make sure he was educated. Her obligation to house him and take care of him ended at his majority, age twenty-one, unless he wanted to stay in the family home longer, and then she had to continue to provide for him. If she remarried or died, Lyman’s entire estate went to Charles. There was also a “secret trust” set up by Lyman for his son when Charles reached the age of thirty-five, as the father felt that nobody under that age was disciplined enough to handle inherited money prudently.³

Charles, however, had other plans than to live off his stepmother. He went to law school in Rochester, took the bar exam, and was admitted to the New York State Bar in May 1900. Perhaps his career choice was influenced by his family’s perpetual legal difficulties. In December 1900, he applied for the manager’s position, or any other available, with the Little Rock, Arkansas, Travelers baseball team, which was to be included in the newly formed Southern League. In his application, he said he had experience with state league baseball and was hoping to get involved with something at a higher level, like the Southern League, which would comprise several states.4

However, Charles probably did not help his chances when he stated that because of his poor health from an unstated cause, his doctors had advised him to be out in the fresh air, and this is why he wanted to manage a baseball team! “One word in regard to the salary,” he wrote. “Of course, I can make a dozen times over practicing law what I could running a team, but it is, as I said before, my health that compels me to resort to baseball, together with my love for the game. There would be no trouble about the salary.” The Little Rock Travelers eventually became the Arkansas Travelers, one of the most successful and renowned minor league franchises in history. Today, they are the Double-A team of the Seattle Mariners.

Charles Hurlburt, spurned by the Travs and with no choice left but to practice law indoors, opened an office in the Rochester-Palmyra area until 1904, when he decided to try his chances in New York City. There, he was in practice with a lawyer named Madison Haden Haythe until Haythe died suddenly in 1905 at age forty. Eventually, Charles got a position with the Lawyers Title Insurance & Trust Company on Broadway. A Wayne County judge called him “one of the brightest young men [of] the local bar,” but his position with Lawyers Title was not so much adversarial as it was research-oriented. This is where he was working when he met Florence in December 1909.⁵

THE FLEECING OF CHARLES HURLBURT, PART I

Although Hurlburt was three years older than Flo, she was way ahead of him in life experience and sophistication. He was a naive country boy from a small upstate town, while she had been surviving on the streets of Manhattan for a year or more. So, when Flo asked him to buy her a drink that evening as he was coming back from his supper, he relented, even though he told her he was “not a drinking man.” He took her to a café across the street from their boardinghouse. In spite of her appearance, Flo must have retained something of her former charm and seductive appeal—at least, enough of it for someone like Charles Hurlburt—because when she later invited him to her room, he went.

There, she told him she was about to be evicted for nonpayment of rent and asked him for a couple of dollars to prevent that. Flo played on his sympathy by telling him that her broken arm prevented her from getting a job as a stenographer or a telephone girl but that she would work if only she could. This, of course, was a lie, as she had never sought legitimate work in her life. Charles gave her two dollars and left. If he thought this would be the end of it, he was sadly mistaken.

A few days later, Charles encountered Florence again. She told him she had fallen on the ice and refractured her arm, and indeed he could see that the bone was sticking out in an alarming fashion. He took her to a Dr. McIntyre, who had set her arm previously, and paid the bill for this.

Flo stayed at their boardinghouse at 39 Seventh Avenue for a few more days after this, then moved to nearby 43 Seventh Avenue, where the two of them began a sexual relationship if they had not already done so. Charles gave her money to buy clothes and other necessities. After three or four weeks at the new address, Flo moved again, this time to 247 West 22nd Street in January 1910, then shortly after that to 217 West 22nd Street. Somewhere in here, she got the bright idea to start her own boardinghouse as a source of income. And where would she get the money for this? From Charles Hurlburt, of course! But by now, Charles was getting wary of her—he might be naive, but he wasn’t stupid—and began visiting her less and less. He did, however, agree to give her the money for the first furniture payment in the boardinghouse venture: $150 for the residence at 607 West 136th Street.

It is not to be supposed that Florence was interested in Charles Hurlburt for romantic reasons. He was not at all her type, which ran to “bad boys” and those with far more personal magnetism than Charles possessed. She thought of him as “sort of an old fossil who always had a lot of things to tell me.” He didn’t drink, he didn’t know how to play cards, and he was very fastidious and straitlaced. Still, at some level she must have appreciated his genuine kindness, generosity, and sympathy, even as she angled ways to part him from his money.

Now a new player enters our drama, which will become very dark indeed: Edward H. Brooks.

ELDRIDGE HILDRETH BROOKS

Although twenty-seven-year-old Eddie Brooks passed himself off as Edward H. Brooks, his real name was Eldridge Hildreth Brooks III. In an ironic twist of fate, he bore the same surname as the young man Florence was accused of shooting in 1902, but he was not related to him. In 1910, Eddie Brooks stood just under six feet and weighed 150 pounds. He had a dark complexion, dark hair, and dark eyes.6

The first Eldridge Hildreth Brooks, Eddie’s great-grandfather, was a hero in the Mexican-American War, enlisting in the 1st Dragoon Regiment in 1844 at the age of twenty-nine. He was killed three years later, shot through the head in the New Mexico campaign at Pueblo de Taos, New Mexico, and is buried in the military cemetery there. The name skipped a generation, then was given to Eddie’s father, who went by “Ed.”⁷

Eddie had a long way to go to live up to the accomplishments of his father, but although he inherited his ambition, he did not inherit his work ethic or his moral compass. Ed Brooks, originally from New Jersey, moved to New York City and married Grace Atkins in Brooklyn in 1881. Their two children, Eddie and Miriam, were born in 1883 and 1889, respectively—he in Jersey City, New Jersey, and she in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.⁸

Ed Brooks had lots of irons in the fire and was always looking for the next entrepreneurial opportunity. In 1885 or 1886, he moved his wife and their toddler son to Lebanon, Pennsylvania, to become the superintendent of the Edison Electric Light Company and began installing arc lights around the city. As an adult, young Eddie would remember Lebanon as the place that where he spent most of his childhood—from age two to age ten, the longest time he had ever lived anywhere when he was growing up. In January 1886, a near-tragic incident occurred when the coal stove in the house the Brooks family had just moved into emitted serious sulfur fumes. They managed to escape just in time.⁹

In 1890, Ed filed a patent for a handle to be attached to axes and hammers to prevent the head from flying off, and his Keystone Handle Company did a brisk trade in the product. In 1891, he was instrumental in establishing the Lebanon & Annville Street Railway. For the groundbreaking ceremony, instead of the usual ceremonial token turnover of a spade in the dirt, Ed, dressed for labor, “stepped forward, spat on his hands, and seizing a pick, for about ten minutes struck lustily into the earth, loosening several cart loads of earth in this short time, while the perspiration rolled down over his forehead.” The contractor joked that if Brooks didn’t stop, the men he had hired would be out of a job and the railroad would be completed in a day. More than anything else, this vignette sums up the essence of Ed Brooks. When something needed to be done, he did it without hesitation. No matter how lofty his title, he never backed down from manual labor. He was not afraid of hard work.

Ed Brooks once hired an African American as a wiper at the electric company, but this did not sit well with the two engineers on duty, who refused to work “under the direction of a colored man.” Brooks and an assistant had to cover their twelve-hour shift, from 7:00 P.M. to 7:00 A.M., which he did without hesitation. Many another superintendent might have delegated this to an underling.

Other enterprises Ed undertook were partial interests in a startup market company, an inn, and an insulated wire company. Brooks himself tested the insulated wire by burying it in the ground for six months to see if it was still good when it was removed. It was.

In 1893, having exhausted his opportunities in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, Ed moved his family to Everett, Washington, to run a vessel—possibly a ferry—on Puget Sound. His friends back in Lebanon were not surprised to hear that his business was doing well, as “Ed has the grit in him to succeed at almost anything.”

By 1895, the Brookses were in Red Bank, New Jersey, where they had moved from Asbury Park, New Jersey, then on to New York City shortly after that, where Ed was superintendent of a match company. In April 1898, he went back to Lebanon on a business trip to investigate some financial investment opportunities there. At the Lebanon Iron Company one afternoon, his overcoat slipped off his shoulders and, as he bent to retrieve it, he suffered a massive stroke on his left side. He was taken to his hotel room and a doctor was summoned, but the doctor realized that his unconscious patient was dying. He sent for an ambulance and for Ed’s family. Grace and her two children, Eddie and Miriam, arrived the day before he died. Ed Brooks, mourned as “an able and energetic business man, of a genial disposition and honest purpose,” was forty-nine years old.

The upheaval of his youth, coupled with the early death of his father, had a profound effect on young Eddie. Despite the many ventures of Ed senior, he must not have left much money for his widow. In the early years of the new century, she would have to go to work, which she did as a clerk in a publishing house. Eddie turned fifteen the year his father died and would also have to help support the family. At seventeen, he was working as a drugstore clerk. In 1902, the family lived in Brooklyn, and from then on, they seemed to alternate between there and Manhattan.

Although Eddie would venture out on his own, he used his mother’s residence—wherever that happened to be—as his home base, often giving that as his home address, and just as often going back to live there. His actual residence changed so often (he admitted to twenty different addresses in 1910 alone) that he needed a fixed abode, especially for job hunting. Unlike Florence, Eddie did look for work, but he lacked his father’s self-discipline and work ethic, never putting himself wholeheartedly into any task and either getting fired soon after starting or finding a reason why he could not continue.

Eldridge Hildreth “Eddie” Brooks in his late thirties (Used with permission from www.familysearch.org and the National Archives and Records Administration)

Eddie developed a drinking problem—another thing he had in common with Florence—and was arrested for public intoxication a few times in Manhattan. He was fired from at least one job for drinking.

In December 1909, Eddie went to work for the Erie Railroad as a freight brakeman, which required running on top of the boxcars. This did not suit him, so he quit that aspect of it because of his health, unspecified, and transferred to the passenger service area. But this did not suit him, either, so he quit or was fired around Christmas of that year. He did not work in January or most of February 1910, but at the end of February he was hired by the Union Switch & Signal Company, makers of railroad signals, a job he held for only two or three weeks before he claimed the gas in the tunnels from the steam locomotives was affecting his health and that he had been “knocked out” two or three times.

An ad in the New York Herald led Eddie to the Holmes Electric Protective Company, makers of burglar alarms and bank safes. It is remotely possible that he was related to the founders, as his great-grandmother, wife of the war hero, was a Holmes. He started working there in March or April as assistant night manager, but by April 19, he had been fired for drunkenness and for missing two shifts.

From there, Eddie got a commission job (not a salaried one) in June or July with Monarch Realty Company, and from then on he passed himself off as a real estate salesman, although he did very little work and, by September 1910, had earned the paltry sum of $46.50 in commissions.

Then on December 15, 1909, a Mrs. Baker, the wife of someone he had worked with on the railroad, introduced him to Florence Brooks. They all had drinks and he escorted her home. Two weeks later he saw her again, this time in the company of Charles Hurlburt.

THE FLEECING OF CHARLES HURLBURT, PART II

Around the beginning of January 1910, Flo and Charles were coming back from a movie when Flo was hailed by someone across the street: “Why, hello, Flo!”—not “Good afternoon, Mrs. Wildrick,” spoken from a closer distance, as would have been the polite standard at that time. It was Eddie Brooks. Flo introduced him to Charles as an “old friend,” although it was supposedly only the second time she had met him. Eddie insisted on the three of them going into a nearby café, and when Charles told him he did not drink and saw no need to have one, Brooks overrode him: “We have to have a drink right away!” And the nondrinking person, the only one of the three with a steady job, paid for the drinks: eighteen or twenty rounds, he estimated. (Flo later said he was trying to show up Eddie, who was poor.) If Flo and Eddie had really not met up again since their first meeting on December 15, surely they must have given each other glances throughout this very odd evening that signaled, “Is this a born sucker, or what?” At the end of this drinking session, Brooks escorted Florence home, even though Charles had been her date, where they had sex for the first time—unless it had already happened earlier, which neither cared to admit.

They decided they would need to test Charles Hurlburt further before going ahead with a major plan to get money from him. Charles had always been generous with Florence. He estimated that over the course of their relationship, he had spent $500–$800 in money given directly to her or paid out on her behalf. However, at times, he could be stubborn in not wanting to part with his money. They would need a scheme that would give him plenty of motivation to do so.

Eddie moved into Flo’s room on 22nd Street on January 15, 1910, exactly one month after they met. It is doubtful that Charles was aware of this until the night of “the test,” which was in late January or early February. Flo invited Charles to visit her in her room, during which they had sex. While they were still in bed, Eddie opened the door and stormed in, roaring, “What are you doing here, you goddamned son of a bitch?” Charles, shocked that Brooks had been so bold as to open a lady’s door without knocking, leaped out of the bed and said he had been invited there “by the young lady,” then hurried to put his clothes on. Eddie beat him up and Charles put up no resistance. They made such a row that the landlady came in and scolded them all for “causing a rumpus.” Charles finished dressing and left.

Now the scheming pair knew another important thing besides his having money: Charles would not fight back if physically attacked.

Two weeks after this episode, Eddie showed up at Charles’s office at the Lawyers Title Company and demanded money for Flo’s boardinghouse venture. Charles had given her $150 for the first payment on the furniture, but now there was another one due and Eddie wanted it. Charles refused. He had agreed to only that one payment, nothing more. Eddie threatened to tell Tad Wildrick that he had found Charles in Flo’s room, which would give Tad the grounds he needed for divorce. He would name Charles as a co-respondent and this would cause him shame and notoriety, especially with his employers. Charles responded that Florence had told him that she and Tad were already divorced, which Eddie informed him was not true. Nonetheless, Charles stood his ground and insisted he would not contribute any more money for the boardinghouse plan. He reminded Eddie that he, Eddie, would be the co-respondent in Tad’s divorce, as he was the one who was living with Flo.

The new boardinghouse does seem to have been at least begun, as Charles saw her there once or twice in February or March and then again in April. Flo threatened him to make her payments on the boardinghouse or she would get Brooks to tell Tad. However, Charles would not budge on his stance and Flo had to give up the boardinghouse in February for a lack of funds to pay the bills. He had called their bluff and won. He did not see Flo at all in May or June.

Life with Eddie, in the meantime, was one of squalor, despair, and torment for Florence. He frequently beat her, by his own admission. He had knocked some of her teeth out, dislocated a rib, and given her black eyes. He pawned two of her rings, along with a watch of his own. There were gin, whiskey, and beer bottles everywhere in the small room, as well as cigarette butts, ashes, and other trash. Flo would stand looking out her ground-floor window and make suggestive remarks to men passing by, which sent Eddie into a rage and caused another beating.

In August, Charles met up with Flo several times at their usual place on the corner of 5th Avenue and 14th Street. She looked awful and confessed that she was not doing well. He often gave her meal money, as she didn’t look as if she was eating regularly. She told him she had a new room at 224 West 25th Street and invited him to come and talk, nothing more, but Charles was not risking another beating by Eddie, so he refused each time. Flo would call him at his office, thanking him for his past kindness to her and asking if he would send more money. Her practice, when drunk and alone, was to write a letter to Charles, so he ended up with a lot of letters—letters of thanks, of complaint about her plight, and of supplication.

Charles saw Flo a few more times in September. On the 16th, he took her to a Dr. Dennis O’Leary to be tested for venereal disease, as he had heard somewhere that Eddie had one. Charles had himself checked out on the 15th and he was negative, but when Dr. O’Leary tested Florence, he found that she did indeed have a venereal disease. He advised Charles not to have intercourse with her. Although Flo denied she had been told this and said that what she really had was common to all women—a discharge called leukorrhea, also known as “whites”10—she was taking bichloride tablets, an over-the-counter remedy for syphilis. And among the causes of leukorrhea is a sexually transmitted disease.

On Sunday, September 18, Flo met with Charles at 5th Avenue once again, which they had agreed to on the 16th, and begged him to come to her room “to talk” because she was feeling low. Her parents had “turned her down” (presumably for requests of money), her sister and brother-in-law wanted nothing to do with her, and she sometimes felt like committing suicide. Charles had always been kind to her, she said, whereas Eddie—whom she wanted nothing more to do with—often beat her.

Alarmed, Charles advised her not to think about killing herself but to go to her family in Brooklyn, as New York City was not the right place for her in her weakened and desolate condition. He agreed to walk her home but not to go inside. Along the way, she asked him to buy her something to eat, which he did, and then got him to pay for a drugstore purchase: twenty-five cents for a bottle of bichloride tablets.

“Please come in,” she pleaded when they arrived at 224 West 25th Street. “Eddie has gone to Boston for the day and won’t be back.” Charles was still hesitant, reluctant to believe her claim that Eddie was in Boston, but he was concerned about her mental state. Was she really suicidal? He kept asking her, “Are you sure? Could he come back early?” Despite her assurances, however, Eddie Brooks was not in Boston. He was right across the street.

THE BADGER GAME AS GRAND GUIGNOL

Although the Badger Game may have changed its name over the years, it has never gone out of vogue. It was probably practiced by the ancient Egyptians because it is—even today—a more effective extortion tool than threatening someone with groundless or unprovable accusations. With the Badger Game, the victim participates in his own downfall, which is backed up by witnesses or photographs or, in the modern version, a damning video from a hidden camera. In its pre-technology form, the essence of the Badger Game was for a woman to lure the mark (always male, always wealthy) to a compromising location, such as her apartment or a hotel room, where they would have sex. Suddenly, a man—or two men—would burst through the door, claiming to be the woman’s husband/father/brother and threatening the mark with death or dishonor … unless money were paid to keep it quiet. If the man held a particularly high-profile position in politics or society, it would do no good for him merely to deny it, especially in light of the photo or the testimony of the witness(es). The damage would be done with exposure and would likely cost him his job and his family.11

However, Charles Hurlburt had already indicated that he would not cave under a threat of being a co-respondent in Tad Wildrick’s divorce suit, since Eddie Brooks was a more likely candidate for that position. Flo and Eddie would have to come up with something much more convincing. What they decided on was sodomy.

In the New York of 1910, and possibly in many other states, sodomy was a felony that included all forms of oral and anal sex no matter who the participants were: a man and a woman, two men, or two women. Although Flo would claim that Charles Hurlburt did not really like sexual intercourse, but preferred oral or anal sex instead, it is doubtful that this was true of this very conventional, very fastidious young man.

The day before the plan was to be put in operation, Eddie had gone to the landlady, Celestine Grygiel, and borrowed a screwdriver from her, then loosened the bolt on the door to their room in order to make it easier for him to break down the door in a “rage.” (Mrs. Grygiel assumed that Eddie was Flo’s husband because Flo had told her this.) Then he arranged with a friend, Martin Held from Monarch Realty, to play the part of the unassailable witness and also to help with getting Charles’s “cooperation,” if needed. Martin Held, which was probably not his real name, was thirty-five to forty years old, five-feet-eight, heavyset, with broad shoulders and a dark complexion—an intimidating presence, which was undoubtedly the intent in selecting him.

On that Sunday, Flo got ready for her part in the venture by drinking two half-pints of gin before going to meet Charles Hurlburt—not the wisest of choices for keeping sharp in the midst of what was likely to be a scene of unpredictable confusion. The old military maxim that no battle plan, no matter how perfect—and theirs was not—survives first contact with the enemy was not heeded by these two, who seem to have assumed that all would go swimmingly once Charles was confronted with his options.

In fact, in approaching the house, Charles almost spoiled the whole game by spying two men sitting on a porch across the street. It was dusk and he couldn’t see clearly, but he thought he recognized Eddie Brooks and, like a skittish horse, backed off. Florence had quite a job on her hands of assuring him that was not Brooks and that he was in Boston. Despite his reluctance, Charles entered the house.

Florence’s room in the Grygiel boardinghouse consisted of a bed, a bureau, a rocking chair, a sitting chair, and a stand. For the mostly transient community that populated the boardinghouses of that era, almost all such rooms were furnished by the landlady or landlord. As soon as they entered, Florence made a show of bolting the door without, however, sliding it into the latch, then grabbed Charles and threw him down on the bed, kissing him and begging him to help her “get back on her feet again.” He had not removed any clothing. She had said she only wanted to talk, and this was a bit much for him. He stood up and declared he would be going.

Exactly three minutes after Flo and Charles had entered the room, the door burst open with a bang, followed by Eddie and Martin Held rushing in. “You goddamned cuntlapper,” Eddie screamed, then slammed Charles against the wall. He told Held he was going to “have the son of a bitch arrested.” Flo was gleeful that the plan was working so well. “You goddamned son of a bitch,” she crowed triumphantly at Charles, “I have got you now where I have been trying to get you a long time and you have to come through with the goods.” Eddie hit Charles again, then Held hit him too.

Charles, as was his wont, did not fight back physically but insisted on his innocence—“I have done nothing wrong”—and asked to be taken to a police magistrate immediately if they really thought he had committed a crime. It is the first indication that the accusation of sodomy in this and past instances (they would say they found him on his knees with his head in her vagina when they entered the room) was not true. A guilty man, especially one as passive and guileless as Charles Hurlburt, would not insist on being taken to a court to prove his innocence. And it should have been a warning signal to Flo and Eddie because this was not at all the response they had counted on.

Yet Eddie blustered on, reminding Charles of his important and responsible job, which would be in jeopardy if his employers found out about this. “These charges of unnatural sexual connections will injure you mentally and morally and physically and financially” if he did not come up with the money.

Brooks and Held searched Charles’s pockets, coming up with fifty-seven dollars in cash—quite a large sum of money to be carrying—and a blank form from Lawyers Title Company. Florence told them that Charles was worth about $15,000, which would mean $5,000 for each of them, but Charles protested that he was not worth anywhere near that. They immediately scaled down their demands to $500 apiece.

Eddie took a piece of paper and wrote out the promissory note language, which he then had Charles copy on the Lawyers Title form: $500 payable to Edward Brooks. Then he had Charles write out a second note made out to Florence for a withdrawal from his bank savings account in the amount of $500. At this point, they had run out of paper (poor planning!) and they still had the confession, the third promissory note, and two further orders to be written down. Eddie went out to look for paper and, with only one man guarding him, Charles had a burst of courage and tried to make a break for it. However, he was overpowered by Held, who hit him over the head with a beer bottle. Thereafter, every time Charles stood up over the course of his long ordeal, Eddie and Held would beat him.

Eddie came back with butcher’s paper, the only kind he could find. They cut it into pages and had Charles sign them before anything was written on them. They told him one was a confession to the crime of sodomy, one was to access Charles’s boardinghouse room, and another was for the title company to access his keys and his bank book. Eddie filled in the sodomy confession over Charles’s signature and Florence added her own witness testimony, which was probably composed by Eddie: “He cleaned my clitoris and sucked me until I was faint. He has been in the habit of doing so for several months, namely from December 10, 1909, until the present date.” Then Eddie “notarized” the confession paper.

By this time, Charles Hurlburt was a physical and emotional wreck. They intended to keep him prisoner until the bank opened the next day, Monday, at 10:00 to make sure they got their money, so they proceeded to settle in and enjoy themselves with an all-night drinking and card-playing party. The three kidnappers drank quite a bit and played casino. They tried to get Charles to play as well, but he did not know how, so they issued him a hand, which he held, and Flo played that one as well as her own. Throughout the night, they kept reminding Charles of what they would do to him if he went to the police: kill him (possibly defensible under the Unwritten Law) or expose him. Eddie had his confession in his pocket, a confession he asserted would land Charles in Sing Sing Prison. Martin Held bragged about being a “famous lawyer detective” and that Charles could never successfully hide from him. He would pursue him relentlessly.

By 5:30 A.M., the gang was drunk, restless, and bored. There were still four and a half hours left before they could get their money, and they decided to spend it in saloon-hopping. Eddie ordered a taxi in the name of Wildrick, and when cabbie Paul Adamson pulled up to the house, he was astonished to see a woman come out, accompanied by three men in a football “flying wedge” formation: two men with their arms hooked through the arms of the middle man, who was being rushed into the cab.

They first directed Adamson to go uptown and stop at 59th Street and 7th Avenue, where they piled out to go to a saloon. By this time, Charles was evaluating his chances at getting free or getting help and had decided that the cabbie was in on the scheme. (He was not.) When they got to the saloon, there was nobody in it but the bartender, so Charles thought he would wait for more people to show up. However, they left after having only one drink. Next, they went to Highbridge in Yonkers to another saloon. Now it was 7:00—still three hours from the banks’ opening. Once again, there was only the bartender in the Highbridge saloon.

At this point, a fight broke out between Eddie and Flo as to what to do next. Eddie thought they should go to breakfast, then get the money, while Flo adamantly insisted on getting the money first. Flo said the scheme was all her idea and that she was in charge of it, at which Eddie hit her in the mouth and stated that he was the boss. Flo was unfazed by this as she was used to Eddie’s tantrums. Instead, she deferred to Martin Held and asked him to decide. In a surprising move, as he was Eddie’s friend, he sided with Flo: money first, then breakfast.

They made one or two meandering stops after this, causing Paul Adamson to grow impatient and demand to know just where they were ultimately headed. They directed him to Hurlburt’s boardinghouse at 39 Seventh Avenue, where they intended to collect anything of value from his room. But now it was 8:00 and there were people on the street. Charles did not want his captors to get into the boardinghouse, so when he exited the cab, he made a break for it and ran up the street. Brooks and Held caught up to him, knocked him down, and pummeled him. He got away again and ran into the Surprise Department Store, asking for help from the clerk, a young man named Frank Fanelli.

Brooks, Held, and Flo rushed in after him, with Brooks yelling, “What are you doing here, entertaining the party? You degenerate piece of humanity. I have the evidence right in my pocket to send you to prison, you cuntlapping son of a bitch!” Martin Held claimed to be a doctor from St. Vincent’s Hospital whose mental patient (Charles) had escaped and needed to be taken back. Flo sat down and put her head in her hands, moaning, “I was never in such a predicament in my life. You will see all this on the front page of the Journal in the morning.”

With this ruckus, the store manager came out of his office and threw them all out for foul language, then sent Fanelli to find a policeman.

Fanelli did not come back with a policeman, but he later admitted, “I did not look very hard. I wanted to see the fun. I thought there would be a little excitement.” He thought the whole lot of them, except for Hurlburt, were “pretty well soused.”

The manager showed Charles a side door he could exit to avoid running into the other three. Hurlburt immediately sought out the beat cop near his boardinghouse, patrolman John Hewitt, and told him what had happened to him. He was afraid they would go to his room and get his things. Hewitt told him to call the landlady and tell her not to let them into his room or give them any of his property, then go to the police station to file a complaint. Charles first went to a nearby Turkish bathhouse to clean himself up, then purchased a gun, then went to his office.

In the meantime, having lost their victim, Florence, Eddie, and Held went down to Hurlburt’s office at 160 Broadway and tried to cash the signed note to Florence there. They were told that a company official would have to take care of that and nobody was due in until 10:00—an hour from then. They demanded to see Charles Hurlburt, who would confirm the validity of the promissory note, but he was not in. Flo threw a fit and accused the clerk of giving them the runaround, insisting that Hurlburt was there. She got nowhere with this because he really was not there. After the abortive attempt at getting the money at Hurlburt’s office, Martin Held took off and was never seen or heard from again.

Flo and Eddie got back into Adamson’s taxi and had him take them to the train terminal, where they went in but did not come out. After a while, the cabbie went in and looked for them, but they were nowhere to be found. They had taken a train to New Jersey for Eddie to collect a total of nine dollars from three men. Flo sat in a café there and drank for the rest of the day while Eddie attempted to collect this money.

Adamson was now fuming because he was owed fourteen dollars for chauffeuring these four people all around the city for an entire morning and had not been paid. He did not intend to let it slide. He knew where they lived.