The Death Instinct

'Friend of the McDonald girl. Maybe her sister. Nothing to worry about.'

'I thought you didn't make assumptions,' said Younger.

'I don't. I was just trying it out to see how it sounded.'

'How did it sound?'

'Didn't make any kind of sense at all,' said Littlemore.

The two men drank for a long while. Younger could feel the cheap alcohol beginning to work on him.

'So the Miss is going back to Europe?' asked Littlemore.

'You can't tell me,' answered Younger, 'that marriage makes men happy. Do you know one married man who's actually happy?'

'I'm happy.'

'Apart from you.'

Littlemore thought about it. 'No. Do you know any unmarried guys who are happy?'

'No.'

'There you go, then,' said Littlemore.

The men drank.

At another table, a man tried to stand, failed, and fell to the floor, knocking his chair over with him. For a moment Younger thought the sound had been a gunshot. Then he heard more gunfire, but he knew it was inside his head. The recurring image that, ever since the bombing, he could neither forget nor interpret sprang into his mind again, this time with greater clarity. 'I know what I saw on the sixteenth,' he said. 'It wasn't a blackboard. It was someone shooting. When everyone else was running around in a panic, in the middle of all the smoke and dust, someone was firing a machine gun.'

'At what?'

'At a wall. Leaving marks on it.'

'Firing a machine gun at a wall?' said Littlemore. 'In the middle of the bombing?'

'Did I mention that I also saw the shrapnel flying through the air so slowly I could make out the individual pieces?'

'No, you didn't tell me that, and don't mention it again. They'll lock you up with Eddie Fischer.'

Detective Littlemore was restive as he paced the cramped offices shared

by Homicide and Special Crimes. Overcrowded desks vied for space with overstuffed filing cabinets. Typewriters clacked. Men yelled at one another, their complaints mostly jocular. The joking irritated Littlemore. A week had passed since the Wall Street bombing, and they had made no progress. Loose threads dangled everywhere.

There was Fischer, now confined in a sanitarium, whose prescient warnings remained unaccounted for. There was Big Bill Flynn, determined to hang the crime on Italian anarchists even though each piece of evidence Flynn came up with was thin as cheap typing paper. Then there was Attorney General Palmer – or rather, where was Palmer? Everything Littlemore knew about the Attorney General would have predicted Palmer's seizing control of the case, giving press conferences, taking the spotlight. Instead Palmer had passed through town for a night on his way to a family holiday – why? Finally, there was the fact that the attack seemed wholly unmotivated. If there was a target, it appeared to have been the Morgan Bank, yet Littlemore had identified no individual or organization with the right means and motives for attacking Morgan in so blunderbuss a fashion.

'Hey, Spanky,' Littlemore called out.

'Sir?' replied Roederheusen.

'Go over to the Mexican consulate,' said Littlemore, 'and get ahold of a guy named Pesky something or other. Pesky-air-uh, I think. I want to talk to him.'

'Say, Cap,' called out Stankiewicz from his desk, 'I found the cards.'

'What cards?'

'The filing cards we made on Wall Street.' Stankiewicz was holding a stack of handwritten note cards made at the scene of the bombing – one card for each of the dead. 'You remember, you thought there was somebody who was killed who should've been on the casualty list, but he wasn't on the list, so you asked me to find the cards.'

'Give me those,' said Littlemore irritably. He flipped through the note cards. 'The guy was a Treasury guard. Name began with R.'

Littlemore found what he was looking for. 'Here he is: "Riggs, United States Treasury." Now where's that casualty list?'

Stankiewicz fished through the papers piled haphazardly on his desk. 'I had it a second ago.'

'Tell me you didn't lose the casualty list,' said Littlemore.

Stankiewicz handed the detective the stapled, typed, many-paged document.

Littlemore went through it, checking both the alphabetical listing and the page specifically naming government officers killed in the blast. 'No Riggs,' said the detective. 'What happened to "Riggs, United States Treasury"?'

'Guess they missed him.'

'They?' asked Littlemore. 'Who's they? Didn't you type this list?'

'Not exactly.'

'Who did?'

'Um, the Feds did. A couple of agents came over the day after the bombing and asked if we had a list of the dead and wounded. I said sure and let them have a look – you know, at the handwritten list, which we made from the cards. They volunteered to have it typed up for us over the weekend. They said they had typists who would do a nice job. So I-'

'You gave the Feds our list?' asked Littlemore, incredulous.

'I'm not too good with a typewriter, sir. I figured it would come out better this way.'

'You figured you were too lazy,' said Littlemore. 'What kind of Feds? Flynn's boys?'

'No, sir. They were T-men,' said Stankiewicz, using the shorthand name for Treasury agents.

A second letter from Colette arrived on Thursday, but it turned out she must have sent it before receiving Younger's reply. The letter lay open on Younger's hotel room bed:

21-9-1920

Dearest Stratham,

I am finished with your Professor Boltwood. He is going to prevent Yale University from awarding Madame Curie an honorary degree when she comes. He says she is both academically and morally unfit. He is unfit to tie her shoelaces. My one consolation for running his laboratory is that I am disproving his theories. I can't stay on here, no matter what.

But I also have wonderful news! I dared to wire Dr Freud in Vienna, and he has wired back. He says he will see Luc again, and also that he is very eager to see you as well. He says he has a great deal to tell you.

Please, please come. I need you there with me.

Affectionately,

Colette

Younger returned by himself that night to Littlemore's waterfront clip joint. A woman in red lipstick and an orange dress approached while he drank the foul whiskey. 'What about it, handsome?' she said.

'No thanks,' he replied.

Chapter Eleven

The ordinarily genial Police Commissioner Enright liked to drop in on the men he wanted to see. Written summonses appeared only in cases of severest displeasure; they struck dread in the Commissioner's subordinates. On Friday morning at police headquarters, Littlemore received such a summons.

'Is it the Rembrandt in the evidence locker, sir?' asked Littlemore as he walked into the Commissioner's office. 'I can explain.'

Enright, behind his mahogany desk, raised his eyebrows: 'You have a Rembrandt in the evidence locker?'

'Was it the horseshoe, Mr Enright? I couldn't let Flynn get away with that story about Haggerty.'

'I didn't ask you here to play horseshoes, Mr Littlemore, or to discuss portraiture.' Enright got up, his gold watch chain glinting on an extensive waistline, his wavy gray hair abundant over a fleshy, good- natured face. A prodigious reader, an eloquent speaker, and largely self-educated, Enright had the eyes of a man who loved reciting poetry from memory. 'You remember Mayor Hylan, I'm sure, and Mr McAdoo, the President's adviser?'

Littlemore turned and saw those two important gentlemen at the other end of the office. McAdoo was seated, cross-legged, in an armchair, staring imperturbably at the detective, taking his measure. Hylan, standing and fidgeting with a glass object he'd picked up from Enright's bookcase, studiously avoided eye contact.