'You really want it, don't you?' she asked.
'Been hoping for this kind of break my whole life,' he said.
She handed him a folded piece of paper from her pocket. 'It came today,' she said. 'It says how much we'd have to pay for Lily's operation.'
Lily, the Littlemores' one-and-a-half-year-old, had been born with a slight but complete atresia of her external auditory canals. In other words, at the center of her tiny, pretty, and seemingly healthy ears, where the aperture ought to have been, there was instead a membrane and probably, below it, a bone. The toddler responded well to sound, but if she was ever to hear and speak properly, she would have to have surgery – and soon. The surgery in turn required a specialist. The specialist required money.
'Two thousand dollars?' said Littlemore. 'To make a little opening?'
'Two thousand for each ear,' answered Betty.
Littlemore reread the letter: his wife was right, as usual. 'That settles it,' he said. 'I've got to take the Treasury job. It pays almost double what I'm making now.'
'Jimmy,' said Betty. 'It's just the opposite. We'll never have four thousand dollars, wherever you work. We're going to have to put her in a special school. They say we have to start using sign language with her right now. They got a school for that on Tenth Street. Free. It's the only one in the country.'
Littlemore frowned. He looked up and down Fourteenth Street – at the fine large buildings on the corners of the avenues, and at the plainer, smaller, walk-ups between them, in one of which was his own apartment. 'Okay,' he said. 'I'll turn the job down.'
Winning an argument invariably had a palliative effect on Betty Littlemore, who at once took her husband's side. 'Maybe we wouldn't have to move,' she said.
'That's right,' replied Littlemore hopefully. 'A lot of the investigating is going to be up here in New York anyway.'
In the end, it was decided that Littlemore would put it to Secretary Houston that he would need to split his time between New York and Washington. Houston turned out to be extremely accommodating. In Washington, Littlemore would have an office in the Treasury Department. In Manhattan, he would work out of the Sub-Treasury on Wall Street. The federal government would even pay for his train travel.
A man exiting Union Station in the District of Columbia – the largest railway station in the world when it opened, with marble floors and gold leaf dripping from its barrel-vaulted ceiling a hundred feet high – found himself, on a Sunday evening in October 1920, in a raw, vast, undeveloped plaza, with a fountain plunked down in the center and a few cars meandering dustily around it, unhindered by lanes or any law-like regularities of direction. Men were playing baseball on an adjacent weedy field. Across the plaza squatted a few dozen temporary dormitories, thrown up hastily during the war.
The effect was of leaving civilization for a wilderness outpost. Three blocks away stood the nation's Capitol, its dome tinted crimson in the failing sun – another monumental structure surrounded by an expanse of unbuilt land.
Jimmy Littlemore looked at the Capitol with a sense of awe, a suitcase in one hand and a briefcase in the other. It was his first time in Washington. He had a New Yorker's expectation that a throng of taxicabs would be jostling outside the station's doors, vying for passengers. There wasn't a single one.
As Littlemore was wondering how he would get to his hotel, he noticed a black car parked a short distance away, with a tall blonde woman leaning against one of its doors, smoking through a long cigarette holder. She was about thirty, dressed in business attire including a tightly fitted skirt, and exceptionally good-looking. When she saw the detective, she began walking his way, her gait attracting the attention of every man she passed.
'James Littlemore, I presume?' she said. 'From New York?'
'That's me,' said Littlemore.
'You look just the way they described you,' replied the blonde woman.
'How did they describe me?'
'Wet behind the ears. You're late. You kept me waiting almost an hour.'
'And you would be?'
'I work for Senator Fall. The Senator would like to see you tomorrow in his office. At four o'clock sharp.'
'Is that right?'
'That's right. Good luck, New York.' While they were speaking, her car had rolled up next to them. The chauffeur scurried out and opened a door for her. She climbed in, her long legs showing for a moment before they swung inside the car.
'Say, ma'am,' said Littlemore through the open window. 'Think you might give me a lift to my hotel?'
'Where are you staying?' she asked.
'The Willard?'
'Very nice.'
'Secretary Houston's picking up the tab.'
' Very nice.' She signaled the driver, who started the engine.
'What about that ride, ma'am?' asked Littlemore.
'Sorry – not in my job description.'
The car drove off, sending up a swirl of burnt orange dust that settled on Littlemore's suit. He shook his head and inquired of a couple of gentlemen nearby if they knew the Willard Hotel. One of them pointed in a westerly direction. Littlemore set off toward the setting sun, which cast a long shadow behind him.
The next morning, Secretary Houston personally pinned the badge and administered the oath that made Littlemore a Special Agent of the United States Treasury. They were in the most luxurious office that Littlemore had ever seen – Houston's own office in the Treasury Building. Gilt-framed mirrors surmounted burnished marble fireplaces. Velvet-roped draperies hung at the windows. The ceiling was painted in a celestial theme.
'Where we stand, Lincoln stood,' said Houston, 'consulting his Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase.'
When instructed to swear to uphold the laws of the United States, Littlemore asked if he could make an exception in the case of the Volstead Act – the law mandating Prohibition – which Secretary
Houston did not find amusing. When taking the oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, Littlemores voice caught. He wished his father could have been there.
'Let me show you around, Special Agent Littlemore,' said Houston.
The divisions of the United States Treasury were surprisingly extensive. Houston pointed out with pride his gigantic bureau of internal revenue, his anti-counterfeiting unit, his bureau of engraving and printing, his bureau of alcohol enforcement, and, finally, an elegant spacious marble hall with a row of tellers along one wall, each behind an iron-grilled window. 'This is where the Treasury pays money on demand to anyone presenting a valid note. We call it the Cash Room. Show me all the money you have in your pockets, Littlemore.'
'Let's see. I got a three-cent nickel, a couple of dimes, and a fin.'
'Only the coins are money. Your five-dollar bill is not.'
'It's a fake?' asked Littlemore.
'Not fake, but not money. It's merely a note. A promise. You'll find the promise in the small print on the reverse, between Columbus and the Pilgrims. Read it – where it says "redeemable."'
'"This note,'" Littlemore read the inscription, '"is redeemable in gold on demand at the Treasury Department of the United States in the City of Washington, District of Columbia, or in gold or lawful money at any Federal Reserve Bank.'"
'Without those words,' said Houston, 'that note would be worthless paper. No shop owner would accept it. No bank would credit it. A five-dollar bill is a promise made by the United States to pay five dollars in gold to anyone presenting that note here in the United States Treasury in Washington, DC. Hence the Cash Room.'
'Not too many people cashing in,' said Littlemore. Only two customers were transacting business with the tellers.
'Which is as it should be.' Houston began walking again, leading Littlemore into a long corridor. 'No one has any reason to cash in – so long as everyone believes he can. But imagine if people began to fear we didn't have enough gold to pay off our notes. Do we have enough, do you suppose?'