The Napoleon of Crime (9 page)

With the remains of the money from the Boston robbery, Bullard and Worth purchased a spacious building at 2, rue Scribe, a part of the Grand Hotel complex near the Opéra, under the name Charles Wells, and rented large and comfortable apartments nearby. The new premises, christened the American Bar, were refurbished, according to William Pinkerton, in “
palatial splendor” at a cost of some $75,000 (the equivalent, amazingly, of more than $300,000 today) with oil paintings, mirrors, and expensive glassware. American bartenders were imported to mix exotic cocktails of a type popular in New York but “
which were, at that time, almost unknown in Europe.”

The American Bar was a two-pronged operation. The second floor of the building was fashioned into a sort of clubhouse for visiting Americans, complete with the latest editions of U.S. newspapers and pigeonholes where expatriates could pick up their mail. “
Americans were cordially invited to use it as a meeting house,” a spot where they could gather and enjoy American drinks, a quiet, sober, and entirely respectable establishment. In the upper floors of the house, however, the scene was rather different. Here Worth and Bullard set up a full-scale, well-appointed, and completely illegal gambling operation. By “importing from America roulette croupiers and experts on baccarat,” they gave the den a cosmopolitan sheen, but it was Kitty who turned out to be the principal lure, for “
her beauty and engaging manners attracted many American visitors.”

The Pinkertons’ agents in Europe began keeping a watch on the place almost from the day the American Bar opened, and declared that it was fast becoming “
the headquarters of American gamblers and criminals who here planned many of their European crimes.” Yet even the forces of the law were dazzled by the ample charms of the hostess. “
Mrs. Wells was a beautiful woman,” the detectives later reported, “a brilliant conversationalist dressed in the height of fashion: her company was sought by almost all the patrons of the house.”

While gorgeous Kitty presided, a vision in silk and ringlets, the affable Bullard played the piano and Worth carefully monitored the clientele. An alarm button was discreetly installed behind the bar “
which the bar-tender touched and which rung a buzzer in the gambling rooms above whenever the police or any suspicious party came in.” Within seconds, Worth could render the upper stories of 2, rue Scribe as quiet and respectable as the lower ones. The Paris police “
made two or three raids on the house, but never succeeded in finding anything upstairs, except a lot of men sitting around reading papers, and no gambling in sight.” Worth also bribed the local police to tip him off when a raid might be expected.

The American Bar, the first American-style nightclub in Paris, was an instant success, a gaudy magnet in the ravaged and weary city, and the Parisians were “
astonished by its magnificence. The place soon became a famous resort and was extensively patronized, not only by Americans, but by Englishmen: in fact, by visitors from all over Europe.” Businessmen, bankers, tourists, burglars, forgers, convicts, counts, con men, and counterfeiters were all equally welcome to enjoy the products of Worth’s superb chef, sip a cocktail, or, if they preferred, repair upstairs, where the delightful Kitty would help them lose their money at the gambling tables with such grace that they almost always came back for more. Word soon spread through the underworld that the American Bar was the best place in Europe to make contact with other criminals, arrange a job, or simply hide out from the authorities.

The elegant and pompous Max Shinburn became a regular patron. Like his former associates, the Baron had found it necessary to relocate to the Continent rather suddenly. Some two years earlier, to his intense embarrassment, he had been publicly arrested at an expensive hotel in Saratoga where he was “
masquerading as a New York banker” and had been charged with the New Hampshire robbery committed in 1865. Police found $7,000 in stolen bonds in his pockets and, on searching his New York address, discovered “
a complete workshop for the manufacture of burglar’s tools and wax impressions of keys.” Sentenced to ten years, the Baron had managed to escape from prison in Concord after nine months—a breakout considered “
one of the most dashing and skillful planned in criminal history”—and then fled to Europe, where his safecracking skills were still in great demand. “
With the money he made from his various burglaries, Shinburn is said to have left the country with nearly a million of dollars,” the Pinkertons reported.

Shinburn had settled in Belgium, purchased an estate and an interest in a large silk mill, and formally declared himself to be the Baron Shindell, which “
nobody cared to dispute.” His cosmopolitan existence included frequent visits to Paris and the American Bar, where the Baron liked to patronize his former criminal colleagues and spend “his money
with an open hand.” Worth resented the intrusion of the “
overbearing Dutch pig,” as he called him, somewhat inaccurately, but tolerated his presence for the sake of Piano Charley, who still owed the Baron a debt for springing him from jail.

Sophie Lyons, who often traveled to Europe on business (entirely criminal in nature), was another familiar face at the American Bar, and soon a motley cluster of crooks, many of them familiars from the criminals’ New York days, began to orbit around the Paris club at a time when professional American bank robbers were migrating across the Atlantic in increasing numbers. “
I could name a hundred men who got a good living at it [bank robbery] and then came over to Europe to try their luck. France used to be a particularly happy hunting ground,” wrote Worth’s friend Eddie Guerin.

Out of the criminal flotsam eddying around Paris, an unscrupulous and unsavory bunch, Worth would eventually forge one of the most efficient and disciplined criminal gangs in history. Fresh from clearing out the First National Bank of Baltimore, for example, came Joseph Chapman and Charles the Scratch Becker.

Chapman was a habitual lawbreaker with a long beard and soulful eyes who had, according to a contemporary account, “
but one vice—forgery; and one longing passion—Lydia Chapman,” his wife and “one of the most beautiful women the underworld of the 1870s had ever known.” Becker, alias John Blosh, was a neurotic Dutch-born forger of wide renown who was said to be able to reproduce the front page of a newspaper with such uncanny verisimilitude that when he was finished no one, including Becker, could tell the original from the fake. Pinkerton considered him “
the ablest professional forger in the world.”

Other patrons at the American Bar included Little Joe Elliott (alias Reilly, alias Randall), a rat-like burglar of intensely romantic inclinations (“
a great fellow for running after French girls,” Worth called him); Carlo Sesicovitch, a Russian-born thug with an ugly temper but an uncanny knack for disguise; his Gypsy mistress Alima; and several more criminals of note.

But by no means all the clientele at the American Bar were rogues and miscreants. Many were simply visiting businessmen, “
swell Americans who were not aware that the keepers of this saloon were American professional bank and safe burglars,” and tourists keen for some nightlife and a flutter at the roulette or faro tables. Their number even included some who had fallen victim to the club’s owners in earlier days.

According to one police report, the American Bar “was visited by Mr. Sanford of the Merchant’s Express Co. while he was in Paris,
but Mr. Sanford did not know until his return to New York that Wells was the man Bullard, who had robbed the company of $100,000” back in 1868. It was also said that visiting officials from Boston’s Boylston Bank spent an enjoyable evening at the club, little suspecting how the mahogany card tables and expensive furnishings had been financed.

For three years the American Bar prospered and the peculiar
ménage à trois
of the owners continued, amazingly enough, without a hitch. Kitty Flynn, her telltale Irish brogue now quite evaporated, was becoming the gracious grande dame she had always hoped to be, even if half her admirers were thieves and con men. Bullard was happily consuming American cocktails in vast quantities, beginning his day when he opened his eyes in the late afternoon and ending it when he closed them, around dawn, usually face-down on the ivories of the club piano. “
In the gay French capital he soon became a man of mark as a gambler and roué”—one pair of American detectives recorded—which was all Piano Charley had ever really wanted to be. Worth was also contented enough yet strangely restless. Serving drinks was profitable, while the gambling den was a standing invitation to show his hold over fate. But the Paris operation was hardly the grand criminal adventure he saw as his destiny. The demimonde thronging his card tables were glittering and amusing, to be sure, but he had more ambitious plans for himself and Kitty than merely the life of an upscale croupier and a club hostess.

In the winter of 1873, a most unpleasant blot suddenly appeared on the horizon of the merry trio when William Pinkerton, the scourge of American criminals, wandered nonchalantly into the American Bar and ordered a drink. No man put the wind up the criminal fraternity more effectively than William Pinkerton. The detective had become a stout and florid man, whose ponderous frame belied his astonishing energy and his unparalleled talent for hunting down criminals. Pinkerton’s face was known to just about every crook in America, and so was his record as a man who had “
waged a ceaseless war on train and bank holdup robbers and express thieves who infested the Middle West after the close of the Civil War.” The direct precursor of the modern FBI, the Pinkerton Agency was gaining international respect as a detective force, thanks in large part to William Pinkerton’s phenomenal energy. The West’s most notable outlaws knew only too well the discomfort of having the Pinkertons on their trail. “
It was not unusual in those bandit chasing days for William Pinkerton to be days in the saddle, accompanied by courageous law officers searching the plains and hills of the Middle West tracking these outlaws to their hideouts,” one of the detective’s early admirers recalled. A man of great bonhomie and charm, Pinkerton could also be utterly ruthless, as many criminals had discovered at the expense of their liberty and, in some instances, their lives. “
When Bill Pinkerton went after a man he didn’t let up until he had got him, if it cost him a million dollars he didn’t mind,” recalled Eddie Guerin.

Many years later Worth, in an interview with William Pinkerton, feigned nonchalance when recalling the detective’s unexpected and unwelcome arrival at the American Bar. “
We were rather troubled at what had brought you to the club,” Worth said. Frantic would have been a more accurate description.

Worth recognized the burly detective at once and, opting as ever for the brazen approach, offered to buy him another drink. Pinkerton blithely accepted, knowing full well he was enjoying the hospitality of the Boylston Bank robber. It was a strange encounter between the arch-criminal and the man who had already spent five years, and would spend the next twenty-five, trying to put him in prison. They chatted awhile on the subject of mutual acquaintances, of which they had many on both sides of the law, until Pinkerton announced that he ought to be getting along. The two men shook hands, without ever having needed to introduce themselves.

The moment Pinkerton left the premises, Worth summoned Piano Charley and a visiting ruffian known as Old Vinegar and set out into the rue Scribe to follow the American detective. “
There was no intention to assault you,” Worth later assured Pinkerton. “We just wanted to get a good look at you.” Pinkerton was fully aware he was being tailed, and after leading the trio through the streets of Paris, he suddenly turned on them. Piano Charley, his nerves frayed with drink, “
nearly dropped dead” with fright and the three bolted in the opposite direction. “
Old Vinegar went into hiding for weeks,” Worth later remarked with a laugh.

He might not admit it, but Pinkerton’s surprise visit had rattled him. Worth was only partially reassured to discover, from a corrupt interpreter with the French police by the name of Dermunond, that the detective was not in pursuit of him and his partners but was in the pay of the Baltimore Bank and had his sights set on Joseph Chapman, Charles Becker, and Little Joe Elliott. Indeed, the informant warned, Pinkerton was already preparing extradition papers with the French authorities. Worth sent the message to his colleagues that they were in mortal danger and should on no account come to the bar. A few days later Pinkerton, accompanied by two French detectives, walked into another of the gang’s favored dives, a dance hall called the Voluntino, where Worth was dining with Little Joe Elliott. Worth happened to catch sight of the brawny detective as he came through the door, and rightly assuming the “
entrances were guarded well,” he bundled Elliott upstairs to a private room, opened the window, and, holding Joe’s hands, dropped him fifteen feet into a courtyard below. “
Joe made the drop alright and got up and hobbled away,” Worth recalled, but it had been another unpleasantly close escape.

The gang got a welcome, if only temporary, reprieve when Pinkerton was called away to help investigate a series of forgeries perpetrated on the Bank of England. Pinkerton accurately identified the forgeries as the work of brothers Austin and George Bidwell, “
two well known American forgers and swindlers” who also happened to be two of Worth’s regulars. While the Pinkertons were busy chasing the Bidwells (Austin was arrested in Cuba, George in London), Joe Chapman and the others slipped out of Paris and went into hiding.

By now Worth had concluded that the days of the American Bar were numbered. During his brief visit to the club, Pinkerton had correctly guessed that some sort of early-warning system was in place to alert the gamblers upstairs of an impending raid. On his return to the United States, he informed the Paris police of this hunch and began pestering the Sûreté to do something about the nest of foreign criminals flourishing in the rue Scribe. Even the French police, sluggish through bribery, were propelled into action when Pinkerton provided detailed case histories of Worth, Bullard, Shinburn, Chapman, Becker, Elliott, Sophie Lyons, and many of the bar’s other regulars. The following May, Worth was again tipped off by Dermunond to an imminent raid and managed to remove all evidence of gambling just minutes before the police burst in. But the attentions of the Sûreté were proving bad for business, particularly among the jittery criminal clientele. “
The respectable people did not patronize it, and it soon went to the dog,” Pinkerton recorded triumphantly.