Murder in Deep Ellum

By Brick Jordan

Police Detective Ted Hinton has a murder to solve, but is unsure that the suspect they have in custody is the killer. But, how to prove it, especially, when an angry mob shows up at the City Jail to take his prisoner out and hang him for the crime? Thats when an old friend, Texas Ranger Sergeant A.J. Morales shows up. Morales is a former Dallas cop who left the force to join the Marines during the First World War. Returning to a heros welcome he was offered a job as a Texas Ranger, and he accepted. Ten years of chasing banditos through the Rio Grande Valley, or putting corrupt officials behind bars has produced a man tough as nails and good with a gun. Morales has survived being shot, stabbed, or clubbed a dozen times and is unafraid to face the mob. He is even less afraid to take on the real killers who committed MURDER IN DEEP ELLUM. But, can he do so before his star witness is murdered? And, can he overcome the treachery he will face in the city he used to serve?

Set against the backdrop of Prohibition and the Great Depression, MURDER IN DEEP ELLUM takes place in Dallas, Texas in early 1930. It is a story that pits good versus evil in a town where some people think they can get away with anything, even murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456745820

Brick Jordan

BRICK JORDAN is a native of Kansas City, MO and a graduate of the University of Missouri. He lives in Dallas, TX with his wife, Vicki, and two cats. His life-long dream was to write a novel. MURDER IN DEEP ELLUM is the culmination of that dream.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

DALLAS, TEXAS 1930

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

INTRODUCTION

Deep Ellum, on the eastside of Dallas, Texas was once described as the hottest place on earth. Not the temperature, the music! If you wanted the best jazz and blues, then you didn’t just go to Dallas, you went to Deep Ellum.

The neighborhood was a thriving commercial district, mostly serving Dallas’ black community along the tracks of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, called Central Track, and got its name from the way early settlers pronounced the word, Elm. Thus, going deep on Ellum Street was to go east, away from the downtown business district. Simply put, Deep Ellum is Dallas, east of Central. Strangely, the name —and the spelling — stuck.

As the city expanded during the late-19th and early-20th centuries, Jewish immigrants from the East Coast settled in Deep Ellum opening shops, stores, delicatessens, and bakeries. Several entrepreneurs, including automobile mogul Henry Ford and cotton magnate Robert Munger, built factories in Deep Ellum, adding jobs and bringing prosperity to Dallas. Union Station, the city’s main rail depot, was originally built there as well, and for travelers arriving in Dallas by train, Deep Ellum was their first experience of this growing southwestern metropolis.

Here, too, was built the Texas Baptist Memorial Sanitarium, championed by the Rev. George W. Truett who envisioned it as, a great humanitarian hospital. The success of that vision culminated in 1921 when the sanitarium was renamed Baylor Hospital, reflecting its relationship with Baylor University, and the sprawling campus quickly became the most prominent landmark in Deep Ellum.

Prior to the First World War Central Avenue south of Union Station became famous as a jazz and blues hotspot. The music became a popular form of expression among blacks throughout the South, but especially in Dallas. Some of the best black musicians and entertainers of the day including, Huddie Lead Belly Ledbetter, Ida Cox (the Sepia Mae West), Texas Bill Daley, Bessie Smith, and Blind Lemon Jefferson helped make Dallas a popular musical scene through regular performances in Deep Ellum’s theatres and dance halls.

This fame, however, came with a price and soon Deep Ellum –- far from the downtown business district and close to the railroad station –- was equally known for the number of cardsharps, pigeon droppers, pickpockets, prostitutes and outlaws on the run that came there. By the end of the Roaring Twenties Deep Ellum’s reputation as the South’s premier venue for blues and jazz was sullied by the prevailing view that it was a violent place filled with vice and all manner of crime.

DALLAS, TEXAS 1930

CHAPTER ONE

Joe Howell is a fixture in Deep Ellum. The fifty-one year old black man has spent his entire life here and he knows Deep Ellum like the back of his hand. Knowing where, and where not, to go is an essential skill for anyone navigating this side of de tracks because, if you aren’t careful, you can easily lose your money in an quick hustle from the card-sharks and shell gamers. If they don’t get you the hookers will, or the pickpockets who roam Central Avenue along what has come to be called, the Stroll.

Beneath the brightly lit marquees of theaters, movie houses and night clubs Ol’ Joe, as the locals call him, walks through a cacophony of sound. The air is filled with music as bands employed inside the dance halls compete with the musicians outside who play for whatever change a passerby might drop into the hat at their feet.

Here, on the Stroll, the sidewalk teams with excitement as pedestrians and late-night revelers criss-cross back-and-forth from one side of the street to the other dodging motor cars, and the occasional locomotive making its way from Union Station down to the rail yard. Once in awhile, it gets so crowded that Ol’ Joe has to shoulder his way through the throng of patrons moving in and out of stores that are open until midnight, or the theatres and music parlors that never close. But, the Stroll holds little interest for Joe Howell. He’s a player, not a hustler, and each night after leaving his job at the train station, Ol’ Joe passes through the Stroll and walks into the bowels of Deep Ellum searching for a clandestine game of chance.

Gambling can get you thirty days hard labor in the county lockup. Still, this is Texas and gambling is part of the very soul of a state where the difference between legal and illegal is often a simple matter of which side of the street you’re standing on. So, you slip the beat cop a saw buck to look the othe way. And, that’s why each night Ol’ Joe doesn’t worry about the law as he drifts from one crap game to another before moving on to a hand of poker in some dim, smoke-filled back room; like the one he’s in now, in the back of Clancy’s Garage down East Main Street.

The five men sitting around the table have been playing for several hours and for Ol’ Joe it’s been a good night, too, as the pile of cash and coin before him attests.

I fold, said one of the men, throwing his cards down.

Me, too, replied another as the heavy smoke of his hand-rolled cigarette swirled about his head.

I’m out, answered a third.

A more adventurous player said, Well, I call, and placed his cards on the table. Two pair, he announced.

Ol’ Joe just smiled. Gen’elmen, read ‘em ‘n weep, he said, laying his cards down. Full-house: Aces and Queens.

Well, I’ll be, one of the men grumbled.

Fish fire! another exclaimed.

The third player just looked at Ol’ Joe. You sho’ got de luck wi’ch you, tonight, he said.

Joe Howell chuckled as he racked the cash and coin from the center of the table, adding it to the pile in front of him. Then, standing, he began to scoop the money up, dropping the coin into one pants pocket, and the bills into another.

Wha’chu doin’? one of the men asked, angrily.

I’m afraid, tha’s ‘bout gonna do it fo’ me, this night, Ol’ Joe replied.

What? You’re not gonna give us a chance t’ win our money back? asked another.

Boys, as much as I wanna sit here and play wi’ch y’all, I’m gonna stop now while my luck holds. Besides, I gotta hurry on. My main man closes up in a little while, so I gotta scoot if I wanna get me a good bottle o’ white-lightnin’.

The four men sitting around the table gave Joe Howell contemptuous stares as the big, black man prepared to leave, pulling on a heavy, dark-gray wool overcoat.

Get your butt on outta here, an’ don’t come back, one of the men fumed.

Oh, I’ll be back, fellas, Howell said with a grin. I’ll gives y’all a chance t’ win back y’all’s money.

Ol’ Joe closed the door behind him and walked out into the cold January night turning his coat collar up around his neck to ward off the chill, and pulling a knitted, wool cap down around his ears.

Forget dat nigguh, Howell heard one of the four men remaining at the table sneer, accompanied by the sound of cards being shuffled and antes falling on the table top.

Ol’ Joe chuckled quietly to himself as he walked away. He knew his pals would let him in the next game, and if not, he knew of other tables to play.

After leaving Clancy’s Garage Ol’ Joe walked west on Main and was about to turn down Henry Street when the crack of cue balls inside a nearby pool hall caught his attention. He fingered the wad of bills in his pocket. Maybe I can double my money, real quick, he thought as he surrendered to the temptation, and walked inside. If he could win a couple of games, he could get a bigger bottle of moonshine, he assured himself, but, it wasn’t long before Ol’ Joe was back out on the street, the money in his pocket a little lighter, as he walked across Main and down Henry Street, heading to his. favorite bootlegger, Kyle Dorsey.

Dorsey owned a legitimate drug-store, Dorsey’s Pharmacy, on the corner of Commerce and Henry Streets, but after closing his doors at 11 o’clock, he would hang around and sell moonshine out the back. All you had to do was give the special knock — tap-tap, tap, tap-tap –- and Dorsey would open up for you. Most folks in Deep Ellum consider Dorsey a cool operator, who kept the police off his back with regular payoffs. After all, when a lot of other clubs, speakeasies, and backroom parlors were getting raided, Dorsey had never been bothered. Not once. At least, not yet.

It is said that at Dorsey’s you can get the best white-ligtnin’ in all of North Texas, and Ol’ Joe, could not disagree. Taking the bottle out of its brown-paper bag, he took several deep swallows, to take the chill off the winter night, he mused.

The commercial alley behind Dorsey’s Pharmacy was dark, and Howell knew that the alleys and secluded back passageways in Deep Ellum were dangerous, especially at night. But, it was nearly daybreak, now, and Ol’ Joe assured himself that, at this hour, no one would be lurking here as he put the bottle to his lips and drank more of his illicit beverage, confident that he was free from any prying eyes. As Howell made his way down the darkened alley dawn was breaking in the eastern sky, but it was moonshine that had a grip on Ol’ Joe.

The black man had been up all night. And, it had been a pretty good night, too. He had won about forty dollars, he reckoned, from the dice and poker games, although he only had about half that left. He had been lucky at both games, but not so lucky when he had plopped down a few bucks on that game of billiards. Got myself hustled, there, he thought, which is why he had quit before losing any more money.

Now, he was headed home and the cash in his pocket felt good, he felt good, the whisky was good, and it was just what he needed, he reasoned, as he slowly walked the hard-packed earth of the alley towards his rooming house on South Walton Street where he would crash until noon, then clean up before heading to his job as a janitor at Union Station.

It was about six o’clock and Ol’ Joe felt the call of nature coming on. He crossed over the cobblestone at Crowdus Street, his coat collar turned up against the morning chill, quietly humming to himself as he passed a row of low-rent cottages for workers at the nearby factories. They were not much more than shacks called, shotgun houses because, it was said these narrow, rectangular structures were built with their interior doors all on the same side so that if you fired a shotgun at the front door the pellets would fly cleanly through the house and out the back.

As he walked, the pressure in his groin grew more intense, and after a short distance he stepped off to the side of a loading dock. It was then that Ol’ Joe noticed how damp and dark the alley really was, sandwiched between the back doors of the warehouses on one side, and the homes of the factory workers on the other. The smell of discarded garbage, trash, and waste from a nearby outhouse hung in the air as Ol’ Joe saddled up beside the loading dock and relieved himself.

He had just finished when something, there in the dimness of the dawn, caught his eye. He wasn’t sure at first, but then, yes, there in the shadows of the loading dock next to where Ol’ Joe had urinated, was the figure of a man. He was lying on his back between the loading dock and some trash cans. Ol’ Joe might not have seen him, except for the man’s feet sticking out. Howell leaned forward and peered down at the man lying there.

Y’alright, mister? he asked.

Ol’ Joe bent forward for a better look. Hey, mister? Y’alright? he asked, again.

The man didn’t move. Thinking he might be asleep, or simply passed out, Ol’ Joe reached down with his hand, touching the man’s chest, and gave him a vigorous shake.

Hey! he said. Y’okay? Still, no response.

As Ol’ Joe removed his hand from the man’s chest, it felt sticky and cold. Pulling his hand back quickly, and wiping it on his pant leg, he reached into a pocket, withdrew a match and struck it on a brick. The light burst upon the darkness and Ol’ Joe looked down into the face of the man lying there.

He was a white man, and Ol’ Joe could see that he was neatly dressed in an expensive looking plain, dark suit, white shirt, and tie. A crumpled, pearl-gray Stetson lay nearby. There was blood at the edge of the man’s mouth, which gapped open. His eyes were open, too, staring straight ahead, lifeless, into the cold, early morning sky. A large, dark stain covered the front of the man’s shirt. Ol’ Joe looked at his own hand. That cold, dry stickiness he had felt was the man’s blood which now smeared his palm.

Out of the corner of his eye, the black man caught the gleam of something at the man’s side. He reached down and picked it up. It was a large knife. A hunting knife, he thought; perhaps, the kind you used to skin animals. Ol’ Joe dropped the knife, and stepped back from the man.

As the match burned itself out in his fingers, once again swallowing the alley in darkness, Ol’ Joe was overcome with fright, and a sudden surge of panic gripped his body. His bottle of bootleg whisky slipped from his left hand and bounced on the hard, packed earth of the alley as the dead man seemed to be looking up, straight at Ol’ Joe who quickly turned and ran wildly back toward Crowdus Street, stumbling over a metal trash can, spilling its contents across the alley, and leaving behind his half-empty bottle of moonshine. From somewhere a dog began barking and a light came on in one of the low-rent houses, adding to the fright that Joe Howell felt in his mad scramble to get out of the alley.

At Crowdus, he turned and ran, frantically, back towards Commerce Street. Up ahead three men were walking east on Commerce. Ol’ Joe barely slowed down as he ran up to them in a fright.

Hold on there, fella, one of the men said. What’s de problem?

Ol’ Joe’s eyes were wide with fear and held a look of terror as if he’d just seen the Devil, himself. He glanced from one man to the other as he struggled to catch his breath which came in great, white puffs in the cold, morning air. He pointed back up Crowdus Street.

Get de cops! he gasped. There’s a dead man up there in de alley!

CHAPTER TWO

It had been quite an eventful night for Police Detective Ted Hinton. The young officer had collared a robbery suspect on Commerce, nabbed a pickpocket in Frog Town, and arrested a purse-snatcher near the Baylor Hospital campus. Yes, a busy night, indeed, for the detective. But being in his mid-twenties, with the physic and mind-set of an athlete, he didn’t mind. Besides, the over-night graveyard shift was where the real action was for a cop, especially those assigned to the Robbery/Homicide detail.

Hinton had finished his nightly reports, and was looking forward to heading home. He rocked back in his chair, which creaked under his weight, and stretched his arms out just as his partner, Claude Peters, entered the room.

Peters was a large man, with unruly red hair and a thick neck from which he got his nickname, Bull. He and Detective Hinton had been partners for almost a year and, while his frequent harangues against Jews, Mexicans and, especially, blacks often annoyed Hinton, Bull Peters was a partner that could be counted on and, for a cop, that was all that really mattered.

Hey, Peters said. Don’t leave yet. We gotta go out Deep Ellum.

What’s up? Hinton asked.

A ‘d.b.’, Peters replied.

Detective Hinton gave a slight groan, brushing back is thick brown hair, which immediately fell back over his forehead. He stood and slipped on his overcoat, unconsciously patting the .38-calibre Colt revolver hanging in the shoulder holster under his left arm, and grabbed his hat.

Let’s go, he said wearily, knowing that a d.b. meant a dead body, and being in Deep Ellum meant a killing in a robbery gone awry; revenge over losing at craps or poker; anger, or jealousy, towards any one of the many prostitutes who plied the streets for a quarter a throw; or, bootleggers fighting over turf. It also meant the young detective wasn’t going to get any sleep, either.

Just tell me it’s not in ‘Death Row?’ Hinton remarked.

Where else? Peters quipped with a smile.

The sun was already bright in the early morning sky when the two detectives crossed the tracks at Central and drove into Deep Ellum. Even at this early hour you could hear music still blaring from the all-night venues up Central Track and on Main Street, which was filled with pedestrians scurrying in all directions; their breath filling the air with great, white puffs in the January cold.

There’s our turn, Detective Peters said, pointing ahead to where Main intersected with Crowdus Street.

Got it, Hinton replied.

Once on Crowdus, Hinton guided their 1929 Ford Model-A cruiser to the curb. Several uniformed officers were standing on the east side of the street around the entrance to the commercial alley, known within the police department as, Death Row, because of its high incidence of murder victims. Whether they had been lured there, or simply, dumped there, no one knew for sure. What was certain, they were found there.

A small crowd of the morbidly curious had gathered, hoping to get a glimpse of a dead body, and the uniformed officers were holding them back as the two detectives stepped from their vehicle. The pair pushed their way through the crowd and Hinton flashed his badge at one of the officers, whom he recognized as a newbie, one of the rookie officers on the force.

Right up the there, said the rookie, pointing. Just past that loading dock, by the overturned trash can.

Thanks, said Detective Hinton, as he and Peters stepped into Death Row.

Damn, nasty place, quipped Peters.

Smells like a crap hole, Hinton responded.

The two detectives approached the corpse lying between the trash cans. A few flies buzzed around the drying blood adding to the indignity that had befallen this poor soul.

Flies, Hinton thought. At this time of year!

Looking around, the detectives noticed that some of the residents, in the shotgun houses lining the south side of the alley, were looking out from their front doors.

You folks see anything? Peters called out.

Without answering, the onlookers quickly stepped back and closed their doors, but Peters could see they were watching from behind the dark-green window shades.

Peters shrugged his shoulders, dismissively. We’ll talk to ‘em after the Coroner gets here, he said. Don’t know how anybody can live out here, anyway.

The two detectives turned their attention to the deceased, who they could see was a large white man, over six-foot; about two-hundred and twenty pounds; and well dressed. Hinton couldn’t put a finger on it, but there was something vaguely familiar about this corpse. The detective pushed his grey Fedora back on his head as he knelt down for a closer look at the dead man lying in a pool of dried blood.

There was a large crimson stain across the front of his shirt just above the heart. Oddly, there was the unmistakable outline of a handprint in the dried blood on the man’s chest. Hinton also noticed a large hunting knife lying on the ground close by. Peters saw it, too.

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