Across the three-story red brick building at 89 Centre Street, Howe and Hummel’s sign ran forty feet long and four feet high. In thick block lettering, stenciled on two windows, and on a pair of flanking columns as well, the partners’ names were repeated to numbing effect.
Above the Tombs, wispy clouds blew across a brilliant sky. For an April day, the wind was pouring in, sharp and cold off the harbor.
Max entered the stark waiting room, a pair of raw wooden benches pressed against unadorned walls. In the center of the room, a battered stove leaked a bit of smoke. Nearby stood an enormous safe. Cheek to jowl, the waiting clients had drifted in from different universes. A straight-spined man in a high beaver hat and frock coat sat next to a henna-haired woman whose generous powder, rouge, and lipstick were more mask than makeup. A man with a sun-glazed face and wild stalks of hair looked like a fishmonger. Next to him, but sitting at the farthest edge of the bench, a veiled woman in widow’s weeds held herself stock-still.
One client stood out, though, a fierce-looking young woman whose false fingernails appeared to be made of sharpened metal.
Suddenly, a tiny, warty-faced man raced into the room and began twirling the safe’s combination wheel. Fascinated, Max watched as the clerk swung the massive door wide, revealing nothing within but an old scuttle. Dashing into a storeroom, the little man, who sported a pair of shiny, pointed shoes, retrieved a shovelful of coal, dumped it in the pot-bellied stove, then locked the implement up again for safekeeping. Max managed to catch the man’s flying sleeve before he disappeared again. The Mourtone name produced a magical effect. Immediately, the clerk led Max to an inner cubicle furnished with three plain chairs and told him to wait.
Max had been reading about Howe and Hummel for years, though he had never laid eyes on them. It was common knowledge that the Five Points gang the Whyos and the monosyllabic Tammany leader Richard Croker kept Howe and Hummel on retainer. Howe had represented General Abe Greenthal’s Sheeny Mob, a pickpocket juggernaut, and Chester McLaughlin’s Valentine Gang, expert forgers. Hummel protected luminaries of the theatre as well. Max had heard that P. T. Barnum used the firm, as did Edwin Booth, Tony Pastor, John Barrymore, and, in order to guard her artistic freedom, Little Egypt.
Abe Hummel was also fond of sending subpoenas to men of substance, invoking their imaginary promises of marriage to certain carefully trained chorines and actresses. These breach-of-promise suits amounted to a genteel form of blackmail that New York’s sporting men considered a hazard of their exploits.
Yet Howe and Hummel were so well situated that The Herald once ran a laudatory article about a dinner they threw for Police Superintendent Byrnes at Delmonico’s. In that anonymously penned piece, the author referred to Howe as “the Nestor of the criminal bar.” Max was certain that he had come across other stories about the lawyers in the Worlds Sunday supplements as well.
Howe’s chief fame, however, sprang from his storied performances in hundreds of murder trials. Max knew he had represented Dr. Jakob Rosenzweig, who had earned the name the HackensackMad Monster for express-mailing parts of Alice Augusta Bowlsby south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Other bloody-minded clients included Annie Walden, the Man-Killing Racetrack Girl; Handsome Harry Carlton; and Michael McGloin, Whyo captain.
So Max knew quite a bit about William H. Howe and Abe Hummel. Even so, he wasn’t prepared for Howe in the flesh. Busy with papers, the mountainous man behind the desk barely looked up, giving the young reporter a moment to absorb the spectacle. A skinny messenger stood patiently at the lawyer’s shoulder.
Howe, in a doeskin waistcoat, a green patterned shirt, and a royal-purple suit, offered up a paean to clashing colors. Instead of a tie, a dewdrop diamond, held in place by a cloverleaf of white, pink, and black pearls, glistened at this throat. Hanging from a gold chain, stretched to breaking across his great abdomen, a diamond fob sparkled. A yachting cap with a blue brim was tipped back on his enormous head. Max tried to gauge the man’s age, perhaps sixty or so. There was something antique about his garishness, suggesting the days when lawyers attracted their clients less by their skill in the courtroom than with their flashing stones.
Finishing his subpoena with a flourish, the attorney issued orders to his messenger. “Say you’re from Western Union, you’ve got news of an inheritance. That’s a good one.” Here he turned for the first time, his blue eyes disappearing in pockets of flesh, and melted Max with a smile worthy of a Bowery comedian. There was something both captivating and grotesque about Howe’s looks. A strong nose, a high forehead, a generous mouth, but more of each than was necessary.
He continued to instruct his process server, while with a broad wink he drew Max into his conspiracy. “Say you’re the milkman, the gas man, the iceman, the butter-and-egg man. Put on a dress. But serve, man, serve!”
After his minion had darted out the door, the lawyer rose, placed his hands on his hips, arched his back and groaned. Without the slightest bit of embarrassment, he squatted slightly and produced a musical fart.
With a darting finger, he directed Max’s eye to a series of framed sepia photographs that ran along the wall above a bookcase stuffed haphazardly with leather-bound volumes. “The pantheon, Mr. Greengrass, our pantheon. Have you ever seen the like? And whom do we have here? Queen Victoria. Lillian Russell. Mr. Sullivan, of course. Jake Kilrain, a tough customer but a man of unstained character. And Miss Langtry. A Hall of Fame without them would be a sham. And whom do we have here? A little man with a great spirit and a great brain. Our Mr. Hummel.”
To Max’s shock, next to the dignitaries and celebrities hung a photograph—from the same series—of the miniature man who had retrieved the coal scuttle. Less surprising was the next portrait in the collection, William H. Howe’s. The lawyer’s somber gaze under the print’s brown finish spoke of philosophical depths, a melancholy, tragic view of life strangely at odds with the man before him.
Returning to his padded seat, Howe went on. “These pictures, you may have guessed, come from the Police Gazette Hall of Fame. To members of elevated social circles they may not seem like much, but do you know how many people read the Gazette every week? They buy these pictures, sir, for a nominal fee, to dress up their living rooms and foy-ays.”
Max noted in Howe’s uncertain h’s a trace of Cockney. His tone recalled the carnival barker.
“It gives me confidence to know that when I stand before a jury, that one or two of its members has hanging in his dwelling, pictures of little Abie and me over the mantel. He knows our exploits, he knows our good deeds. Now what about this friend of yours, young Mourtone? Nasty business.”
Howe’s mercurial shift in tone jolted the reporter. “You already know?”
The lawyer nodded his leonine head.
“Apparently, he’s been murdered.” Max’s own words sounded tinny.
“You’ve been through a terrible experience, I understand. When I was only twelve, I saw a man strangled to death. A harmless man who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Oh, I had hair-raising dreams for years. I understand your agitation.”
Max had the eerie feeling that Howe really did know about his own cat-clawing nightmares. It was hard to resist the man’s honeyed sympathy. He did feel agitated, and he hadn’t confided in anyone.
“But what makes you think he was murdered?” Howe pressed him.
“Well, I saw him. He’d been shot in the head.”
“You saw it happen?”
“No, I got there afterwards.”
“So you’re not a witness to the crime?”
“He’d been shot in the head. The back … a piece of his head was missing.”
Suddenly, Howe leaned forward and bore down on him. “But how close did you get to the body? How dark was it in that dive? Do you have a medical background? Did you perform an examination? Did you find a bullet? The murder weapon?”
“Well, no….”
Howe rocked back and offered an avuncular smile. “Don’t worry. I’ve defended hundreds of witnesses.”
What did that mean? Was the lawyer threatening him in some obscure way? “I didn’t….”
“Ahh, you’re not a witness? Then considering the ambiguous circumstances you’ve described, your friend could have passed on because of the bleeding white lung, pleurisy, brain fever, any number of foul diseases.”
This leap in illogic had a dizzying quality, the more so since Howe spoke with so much authority. At one moment the lawyer’s tone was warm, in the next accusatory. Or, paradoxically, by some theatrical trick, he struck both notes at the same time.
“I saw Martin recently, he didn’t complain ” Wary, Max withdrew into his own skin. However charming, William H. Howe was not his friend.
“He could have been found anywhere. In a lending library. Under a pleasant tree. In his own bed. I’ve done a study of this. The number of men who claim to have died in their own beds is suspect. On the other hand, spiritually speaking, we ought to have the right to die anywhere, don’t you think? Our dead friends need our protection, otherwise who will take up their cause?”
Now Max’s suspicions became fully aroused. The payment to him was a sham. The insurance tycoon must have instructed Howe to keep Max out of any real investigation. “How, exactly, do you mean that?”
“Mr. Mourtone’s been a client of mine for many years. Don’t worry. No harm will come to you.”
“Why should it?” he shot back. Reflexively, he balled his fists.
“Oh, don’t take it the wrong way. We’re working together on this.”
Before Max could sort out Howe’s equivocal hints and veiled threats any further, the great man seized a scrap of paper from the chaos on his desk, scrawled on it, folded it up, and handed it to him.
“Call this number tomorrow. We’ll see if we can find your poor friend.”
Perhaps he had jumped to conclusions. Mourtone must want to find his son’s remains, if only to resolve the tragedy in a decorous way. Why not use the last man to see Martin alive? A payoff in return for discretion might be exactly what it seemed.
Max waved the scrap of paper. “Whose number is it?”
A golden smile blossomed on the lawyer’s face. “Every day they change them. Who can keep track?”