Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy by Eamon Javers Read Free Book Online

land was known as Bogus Island.
    For Pinkerton, it was a transformational moment. Catching the counterfeiters showed his neighbors, and maybe Pinkerton himself, that he had the curiosity, patience, and intelligence of a natural investigator. Pinkerton would go on to become the world’s first great private detective, and set up an agency that would bear his name and provide investigative and intelligence services to the biggest companies of his day. Pinkerton would, in many ways, invent the role of the private detective, and he served as a forerunner of today’s corporate intelligence operatives. *
     
    A FTER THE ARRESTS at Bogus Island, Pinkerton became a local celebrity. Gossips would stop by his barrel-making shop just to hear him tell the story of how he’d caught the crooks. Before long, his tale came to the attention of Henry Hunt, a general store manager in Dundee. Hunt and a shopkeeper named Increase Bosworthwere worried about another ring of counterfeiters who had been passing bad notes in the area, defrauding local businessmen. The two prevailed upon Pinkerton to take on a job for them in the “detective line,” as they called it.
    Pinkerton agreed, and his new partners gave him what details they had. A man who had just passed a bum $10 note was having his saddle repaired at a nearby harness shop. Pinkerton, still dressed for work as a cooper, headed for the saddle shop to see what he could find out. The shop owner tipped Pinkerton off to the identity of the customer who had passed the $10 bill, and Pinkerton strolled up to him, pretending to admire his horse. He also took careful note of the stranger: gray hair, gray eyes, about sixty-five years old, gold ring on his left hand. Pinkerton struck up a conversation with him, trying to give the impression of being the kind of guy who might be a useful recruit for a shady operation. The stranger, intrigued, invited Pinkerton for a chat outside town, where no one else could hear it. He said he was John Craig, from Vermont, and he asked about Pinkerton’s background and occupation. Craig thought Pinkerton might make a good pass-through for the dummy money operation, and he offered to give Pinkerton fifty $10 bills in exchange for $125 in real money.
    Pinkerton scrambled back to the storekeepers for the cash. He turned it over to Craig, who left the fake bills for him to pick up later under a rock. Now Pinkerton knew that there was a counterfeit ring, and what the going rate was for the bills. But he needed to catch Craig with the bills on his person in order to make an arrest. He set up another deal, for a $4,000 purchase to be made in the lobby of the Sauganash Hotel * in Chicago. At the right instant, Pinkerton made a prearranged signal, and the local Cook County sheriff charged into the room and collared Craig.
    Word of the successful undercover operation and arrest landedPinkerton the job of deputy sheriff of Kane County, where he worked part-time while continuing his barrel-making business. But he wasn’t destined to stay a cooper much longer. In 1847, William Church, the sheriff of Cook County, offered Pinkerton a chance to move to Chicago and become deputy sheriff there. Allan and Joan Pinkerton moved to the bustling young city.
    Pinkerton thrived in Chicago. The city was growing at an astonishing rate as thousands of new immigrants from Europe and the East Coast were pushing its city boundaries out into what had once been a rural landscape. In just over three years, Pinkerton became one of the most legendary lawmen in town. In 1849, Mayor Levi Boon appointed him as Chicago’s first—and only—detective. It was a tough world, and law enforcement officers were called to use their fists and boots in the pursuit of a rough sort of street justice that could keep the straining city under some sort of control.
    Next, Pinkerton jumped from the police force to a job at the U.S. Post Office, where he worked solving petty crimes as a mail agent. At the post office,