Yet however monstrous, all this murder was directed at public men. Ordinary people felt no personal danger. They felt no need to alter the way they lived. That skin of felt security was burned away when Wall Street went up in flames on September 16, 1920.
Crossing the police barricade, Younger and Littlemore were immediately set upon. A large crowd — much larger than Younger had realized — pressed in at the roadblocks around the blast area. Women with infants in their arms tugged at Younger's sleeves, begging for news of their husbands. Anxious voices called out in the dusk, wanting to know what had happened.
Littlemore tried to answer every entreaty. He reassured one woman that no children had been killed. To others he explained where they could go to see a list of the casualties. All the rest he advised firmly but without temper to go back home and wait for more news tomorrow.
Even the officers on duty, keeping the crowd at bay, were not immune from the general anxiety. One of them whispered to Littlemore as they passed: 'Say, Lieutenant, was it Bolsheviks? They say it was bolsheviks.'
'Naw, it was a gas pipe, is all,' another officer chimed in, holding up a newspaper as evidence. 'Mayor Hylan says so. Ain't that right, Lieutenant?'
'Give me that,' answered Littlemore.
The detective took the paper, which an on-duty policeman should not have been carrying. It was the Sun's four-page extra edition. 'Can you believe this?' asked Littlemore, reading from the inner pages. 'Hylan's telling everybody it was a busted gas main.'
As both Younger and Littlemore knew, the most important fact about the blackened crater they had seen in the plaza was something that wasn't there. There was no fissure, no rupture in the pavement, as there would have been had a gas pipe broken and sent a geyser of flame into the street.
'That was a bomb crater,' said Younger.
'That's sure what it looked like,' replied Littlemore, still reading as they walked.
'That's what it was,' said Younger. 'Will you put the goddamned paper away?'
'Geez,' said the detective, throwing the paper into the backseat.
'Where's the crank?' asked Younger, in front of the vehicle, eager to get it running.
'You have been away. There's no crank; they have starter pedals now,' said Littlemore. He saw the worry in Younger's eyes. 'Come on, Doc, she's fine. She went back to the hotel, took the kid out for dinner, left a message for you at the desk, and they bollixed up the message — that's all.'
At the corner of Forty-fourth Street and Lexington Avenue, one block from the Commodore Hotel, stood a public establishment called the Bat and Table. Alongside it lay a narrow, unlit alley, which, used primarily for the collection of garbage, was typically empty of an evening. Atypically, it was occupied on the evening of September 16, 1920, by a motorcar with four doors, a closed roof, and an idling engine.
The driver of this vehicle was not a genteel man. He had a fat, round, hairless face shiny with perspiration. His shoulders were so massed up within his threadbare jacket that they left no neck at all. His hat was at least one size too small, so that his ears bulged out beneath it. Although the car was stationary, he kept his hands glued to the steering wheel, and the woman next to him could see thick short thick hairs protruding from his knuckles. That woman was Colette Rousseau, whose hands were tied behind her.
In the backseat was another individual who conveyed an air of uncongeniality less by his musculature, of which he possessed little, than by a pistol, which he pointed at Colette. His small, wiry torso was housed in an overlarge checked suit, rank with stale beer. His breath was equally aromatic; it smelled of raw onion.
These two men exchanged words in a language Colette could neither understand nor identify. The driver was evidently named Zelko; the man in the backseat, Miljan. Colette said nothing. A slight bruise showed over her left eye.
A rear door opened. Into the backseat a boy was flung headlong, followed quickly by another man, taller than the other two, dressed not well, but better, in a striped suit that was once a decent piece of gentlemen's apparel. He had so much facial hair, copious and black, that his mouth was invisible; his eyes peered out from a thicket of eyebrow and whisker. He slammed the door behind him and barked orders in the same unidentifiable language; the other two men called him Drobac.
Evidently Drobac s orders were to tie up the boy and get the car moving. At least that's what the other two began to do. In French, Colette asked Luc if he was hurt. He shook his head. She went on quietly but quickly, 'It's all a mistake. Soon they will realize and let us go.'
Miljan spat a few incomprehensible sentences that stank of onion. Drobac silenced him with a curt shout.
'They can't understand us in French,' Colette whispered rapidly to Luc. 'He didn't find the box, did he? Just nod, yes or no.'
Drobac barked unintelligibly; the driver, Zelko, jerked the car to a halt. 'Quelle boоte?' said Drobac, in French. 'What box?'
Colette, who had been facing her brother in the rear seat, now swung back around, her eyes fixed on the street ahead.
'What box?' Drobac repeated.
'It's nothing — only my brother's toy box,' said Colette too quickly. 'His precious toys, he is always worried about them.'
'Toy box. Yes. Toy box.' Drobac grabbed Luc by the shirt collar and placed the barrel of a gun to the boy's head. Colette screamed. One of Zelko's hairy-knuckled hands flew to her face, slapping her. 'You lie again,' said Drobac, keeping his pistol in contact with the temple of the struggling boy, 'I kill him.'
'Please — I beg you — it's something for sick people,' entreated Colette. 'It's extremely valuable — I mean, valuable for curing people. It won't be valuable to you. You'll never be able to sell it. Everyone will know it's stolen.'
Drobac gave a command to Zelko, who swung the vehicle into reverse. They headed back to the unlit alley beside the Bat and Table. Drobac smiled. So, inwardly and imperceptibly, did Colette.
Younger, at the front desk of the Commodore Hotel, learned from the reception clerk that no one was in Miss Rousseau's room. Neither the lady nor her brother had returned. 'My key,' said Younger, wondering if they might have gone to his room. 'And you are?' asked the clerk. 'Dr Stratham Younger,' said Younger.
'Certainly, sir,' said the clerk. 'Might I ask for some identification?' Younger reached for his wallet before remembering that he had given it to Colette. 'I don't have any.'
'I see,' said the clerk. 'Perhaps you'd like to speak with the house manager?'
'Get him,' said Younger.
The clerk's information — that no one was in Miss Rousseau's room — was incorrect. Twelve stories overhead, a man with black whiskers all around his face and black gloves on his hands stood before Colette's open closet, looking with irritation at a leather-lined case, the size of a small trunk. The case, Drobac had discovered, was too heavy for him to carry inconspicuously through the lobby and out of the hotel. Laboring, he worked the unwieldy box off the shelf and lowered it to the floor.
The ornate hotel lobby was strangely hushed. People huddled in anxious knots, below palm trees and between marble columns, whispering, disbelieving, each describing where they had been when they heard or heard about the catastrophic explosion on Wall Street. It was the same everywhere, Younger had noticed as he and Littlemore drove uptown: people were paralyzed, as if the reverberations of the blast were still propagating up and down the city, shaking the ground, confusing the air.
He felt perversely like shouting at them. This was not death, he wanted to say. They had no idea what death looked like.
'You are the man claiming to be Dr Younger?' asked the hotel manager, a tall, bespectacled man in white gloves and evening attire.
'No,' said Younger evenly. 'I am Dr Younger.'