Epilogue

The small slim man known as ‘The Boss’ was almost swallowed by the overstuffed chair in which he was sitting. Drinking from a large glass of whiskey, he reflected on his life as the mantle clock softly chimed in the new year.

His wife, an abstemious young lady, was asleep in bed and had been for a few hours. Their only real fight in almost eleven years of marriage had centered on the fact that she was a lark and he was a night owl. Neither could understand the strong biological drives of the other’s circadian rhythm.

He snorted as he thought of the term marriage. His was a sham as far as he was concerned, although, for some unfathomable reason, she loved him and tried her best to please him in every way imaginable. He had married for money, and the associated power it brought. His family was relatively well off but hers was old money, and as an only child, all of it would be hers when her parents died. In the meantime, they provided her a nice allowance. That allowance, combined with profits from the store, was used to support their rather luxurious public lifestyle.

The money from his family, never talked about, was in a separate account. He used it to fund his various shady, usually illegal, schemes. Schemes designed for one purpose, obtaining what he thought of as real power. The fact that most of the schemes resulted in more money in his bank account was a secondary benefit, as far as he was concerned. He privately thought of himself as a puppet master, sitting unseen behind the curtains, pulling the strings of those in power.

From his point of view, he’d been quite successful at pulling the strings of those in power, both political and business, back in Massachusetts and again in St Louis. He was still remembered, and well respected in both places, although it had been a close-run thing in Massachusetts.

The two thugs he’d hired as the faces for his various blackmail and strong-arm activities had performed brilliantly for almost five years before running afoul of an incorruptible new sheriff and a stiffly moral old judge

Someone in the gang the two thugs ran, had talked. With warrants out for their arrest, he had decided to protect himself. A little cyanide mixed in the whiskey he gave them at the abandoned farm they used for their weekly meeting, followed by a fire, prevented the only two people who knew he was the real leader from ever telling their tale. Unfortunately, it also meant an end to his string pulling, unless he wanted to take a more visible role, which wasn’t going to happen.

Three months later, new bride in tow, he moved to St Louis, using the age-old excuse of exciting new opportunities on the frontier. St Louis wasn’t quite the frontier he was expecting. As a matter of fact, it was down-right civilized. Still, it was raw enough he saw opportunities to accumulate real power, everywhere he looked.

He spent the first few weeks getting a feel for the town. Telling his wife that he was looking for just the right business opportunity, he would leave early in the morning returning home late in the evening. Eventually, he decided to start on the riverfront. With great care, he put together a gang of tough, often violent, river men, and mixed in a few clerks from the larger riverboat companies. In almost no time he had control of virtually the entire riverfront, skimming money from everything coming in or going out of the city through the addition of special fees and taxes. He also had advance notice on everything being shipped out, as well as arriving.

While he was gaining control of the riverfront, his wife was losing patience. She was bored in this raw town of dirt roads and uncouth men. When she had lost all patience, he tried to explain that trying to determine just which business to start, was complicated. She snorted and with derision told him that if he’d asked her, she could have told him what St Louis needed after less than a week of being here.

He listened to her describe, in detail, what was needed and where it should be located. He could see she was very serious. When she was done, he agreed with her just to shut her up. He quickly found and bought the building she told him would be perfect, and promptly turned everything over to her. His name was on the front of the business, but it was all run by his wife, who turned out to be very good at it. In no time at all, it was a thriving concern, with a reputation for stocking the latest, and most well-crafted products.

While she was building the business, he found a very nice large house in the very best section of town, bought it, staffed it, and gave it to her as a surprise gift, for doing such a good job with the business. Of course, he was also starting the second leg of his power pursuit triangle. He formed a second gang of slightly more personable toughs and had them sell ‘business insurance’ to the second-tier businesses and below. It didn’t matter what business it was, they bought insurance, or found their stores ransacked, their inventory stolen, or burned down to the ground.

The final leg of his power triangle was the most time consuming and had been underway since a few days after his arrival in town. He learned who the political and business leaders in town were. With that information, he started watching where their secretaries and clerks lived, where they had lunch, and who they socialized with.

Before long he’d found just the man he wanted. Jeb Williams was a disgruntled yet highly sociable young man, who clerked for a well-respected lawyer. With a little digging, he found the young man was involved in numerous shady deals, using information he’d overheard the lawyer and clients discussing. He hired Jeb as his valet and personal assistant.

The young man became much more than that though, as he continued to socialize heavily with the other clerks and secretaries, often buying rounds of drinks or paying for supper. The private information he obtained was priceless. Soon, virtually every business and civic leader was being blackmailed to one extent or another. Rarely was money asked for. No, the currencies being used in this power grab, were information and political votes.

For almost six years things worked better than he’d ever expected. He was a well-respected businessman, and civic leader, who outwardly supported all the right civic activities and political leaders.

Thanks to his wife, his business grew to be the largest of its kind, West of Ohio. He was also making money hand over fist from his waterfront and protection gangs. The heady days of building his triangle of behind the scenes power were long over. And that was the problem.

He was becoming bored.

He recognized boredom would soon be followed by complacency, and complacency would quickly become sloppiness which would, sooner or later, result in arrest. He had no interest in the seedier side of the criminal world, robbery, theft, prostitution, and gambling; and he already controlled everything else. He began to worry more and more.

Two unexpected events occurred that quickly cured his boredom and his worry. The first event was a letter from his older half-brother, an Army officer. He’d never understood what their mother had ever seen in the first man she’d married. He’d apparently been a rigid conformist, and proved himself an idiot, by getting killed by a falling tree in a heavy storm, leaving his wife and four-year-old son with a nice farm, a little money, and not much else.

Less than two years later the woman was remarried to a much more successful man. He, himself, was born ten months later. By the time he was five years old, he knew that his brother was a follower, not a leader. By the time he was ten, he knew he was much smarter than his brother. More importantly, his brother knew it as well.

Shortly after he turned ten, he told the older boy to get an appointment to West Point and make his way in the world as an Army officer. The older boy listened, and with his stepfather’s help, secured an appointment. While he’d flourished at West Point, he did surprisingly poorly with the army’s bureaucracy, receiving infrequent advancements, and then only when the family’s contacts were in power.

He’d written that he was conducting an inspection of army posts in Texas and New Mexico Territory. He was in Santa Fe for a few months, waiting for spring before resuming his travels. So far, the results of his inspections were abysmal. Almost every post was built of adobe which was falling apart and leaked excessively. The food was even worse, with little fresh meat and almost no vegetables. Between the terrible buildings and bad food, the men were chronically ill.

Here were two new opportunities to gain more behind the scenes power, this time with the Army. After some thought, he wrote his brother back with detailed instructions on how to make both of them a little money, while increasing his influence within the command structure.

He also sent him the names of two men. The first would provide the stone to replace the adobe, while the second would provide all the cattle the Army wanted. Both men would send invoices with inflated prices, and the half-brother could collect the difference.

The second event was the decision by Jeb to leave his service, for better opportunities in New Mexico Territory. When pressed, Jeb told him there were two opportunities. The first was working for his brother-in-law as a Town Deputy Marshal in Santa Fe. The second was working as a Comanchero for a friend of his in the Southern part of the Territory. His plan was to meet his friend in the Comancheria in three weeks and then travel to Santa Fe to meet with his brother-in-law, before deciding which job to take.

He rapidly put all the pieces together, and within seconds of hearing what Jeb had told him, he was excited again. Boredom and its attendant worry were quickly forgotten. Here was a once in a lifetime opportunity to not only control a city, but an entire Territory; and not just any territory, but one that was larger than the state of Texas. Granted, there were far fewer people in New Mexico Territory than in Texas, but early control would most certainly lead to much bigger things in the future. He dismissed Jeb, telling him they’d talk more in the coming days.

The more he thought about it, the more he liked the possibilities. His half-brother and a gang of Comanchero thugs initially controlling the south, and Jeb, a known quantity as Deputy Town Marshal, to build his base around in the north.

Add to that all the positions of power where two-year political appointments could easily be influenced, bribed, blackmailed, or killed. The combination was just too good to pass up! But he needed more information to be sure.

He needed to meet the Comanchero leader to see if he could be controlled, and he needed to experience Santa Fe for himself to make sure it wasn’t full of do-gooders who could wreck his plans even before they started.

Accordingly, the next morning, he told Jeb he was going to the Comancheria and Santa Fe with him. He told his wife he was going to Santa Fe to try and get a cheaper source of materials, bought a horse and saddle, and rode off with Jeb, as planned.

The leader of the Comancheros turned out to be a typical Hispano thug, who spoke very broken English. He seemed to have enough brains though, to recognize the benefits of having a fort commander willing to help his raids along. With that relationship established, he and Jeb rode for Santa Fe.

Santa Fe turned out to be a mixed bag of good and bad. The town was well laid out with wide main streets, although the predominant adobe architecture left much to be desired. The business district was large and bustling, with a wide variety of establishments, although most were owned by Hispanos who seemed to lack the ability to master English.

The same was true of the general population at large, which was composed mostly of Hispanos. As best as he could tell, there were fewer than 400 white men in the whole damned town, but they did seem to run almost everything of importance.

The warehouse section of town was a gold mine, just waiting to be tapped. The Anglo led civic organizations and political leadership, while strong, were disjointed at best. The territorial legislature was another area that, in his opinion, was a joke and ripe for a takeover, even if many of the legislators were Hispanos.

All in all, while things weren’t perfect, it would do very nicely as his base of operations. The decision made, he rode back to St Louis, and informed his wife they were moving to Santa Fe.

It took another four years to make the move a reality. It also required a lot of compromising with his wife, including his agreement that it was time for babies before she agreed to move. She demanded they retain the house and staff in St Louis, as well as promote one of the store clerks to manager rather than sell the store; and again, he acquiesced.

During those four years, he began building what he thought of as his empire in Santa Fe. Working through Jeb, he began to put the pieces in place to build a gang and gain control of the warehouse district. All the while, he was working to gain control of the Comancheros.