The Death Instinct (19 page)

    After the sun had set, back in their small dormitory room, Colette wrote a letter:

       19-9-1920

Dear Stratham:

As I write these words Luc is pretending to be you, swinging an imaginary baseball bat. Then he pretends to be that terrible man, jumping around with his hair on fire.

I don't think he minded being kidnapped. He wasn't afraid at all. In fact he is angry because I want to leave America. I would say he isn't speaking to me, if one could say such a thing of a boy who doesn't talk.

Have you found out who that girl was or examined her neck? I have the strangest feeling whenever I think about her. I wish she had just taken that awful watch and run away.

Stratham, you will not believe me when I tell you how much I don't want to go away. I told the girl who lives upstairs about my trip to New York: one bombing, one kidnapping, one knife throwing, one madwoman in a church. She said she would have died from fright. She said I must want to get out of the country as soon as I can. I don't. I want to stay.

But I made a vow, and I have to go. I know you will not like to hear it, but I've never felt about anyone the way I feel about Hans. Seeing him again is more important than anything in the world for me, even if I only see him once more. I'm sorry. But perhaps you won't care at all; I never know with you.

If you do care, I want to ask you something very foolish - a favor I hardly dare set down, given everything you've already done for me. I am the most ungrateful girl who ever lived. Please come with me to Vienna. That's the favor I ask. I truly expect to see Hans once and never again. Whatever happens, I will wish in my heart that you were there with me. Please say you'll come.

With all my affection, Colette

    The air at Delmonico s was even thicker with smoke, but less crowded and much more subdued. In the main salon overlooking Fifth Avenue, Littlemore noticed that the usual profusion of diamond earrings and glittering crystal was not in evidence. The bombing remained the chief topic of conversation, but the stunned and speechless horror of September 16 was giving way, among some, to vitriol and rage.

    'You know what we should do?' asked one man at a table for four. 'Shoot the Italians one by one until they tell us who did it.'

    'Not all of them, Henry, surely.'

    'Why not?' retorted Henry. 'If they bomb us, we kill them. Simple as that. That's the only way to stop a terrorist. Hit him where it hurts.'

    'Why do they hate us so much?' asked a woman next to Henry.

    'Who cares?'

    'Deport them, I say,' declared the other man. 'Deport all the Italians, and there's the end of this ghastly bombing. They contribute nothing to society in any event.'

    'What about the Delmonicos?' asked the other woman. 'Don't they contribute?'

    'Deport all Italians except the Delmonicos!' cried the man, raising a glass in a mock toast.

    'No, my steak is overcooked - Delmonico must go too!' cried Henry. The table broke out in laughter. The diners were evidently unaware that the Delmonicos no longer owned Delmonico's.

    The headwaiter approached Littlemore. Asking for Mr James Speyer, the detective was led to an interior garden, where stained-glass windows ran from floor to ceiling. At a corner table a man sat alone - a man of about sixty, with hair still mostly black and the doleful eyes of a basset hound. The detective approached the table.

    'Name's Littlemore,' said Littlemore. 'New York Police Department. Mind if I sit down?'

    'Ah,' said Speyer. 'Finally a face to put on the law. Why would I mind? No man likes to dine alone.' Speyer's accent was distinctly German; before him were the plates and glasses of a fully consumed meal. He went on: 'You know what you've done? You've destroyed this establishment.'

    Mr Speyer was evidently inebriated.

    'I have a joke with the waiter,' he went on. 'I ask if they have any terrapin. I would never eat it, but I ask. He says no, the terrapin's eighty-sixed; you can't cook terrapin without wine. So I order the porterhouse Bordelaise. He says the Bordelaise is eighty-sixed, because that's illegal as well. We go on and on. Finally I ask him what he does have. He says try an eighty-six.'

    Littlemore said nothing.

    'An eighty-six - the plain grilled rib-eye,' explained Speyer. 'The one they always used to run out of. Now it's the only thing you can get. Because everything else is Prohibited.'

    'We don't make the laws, mister,' said Littlemore. 'I'd like to ask you a couple of questions.'

    'Very well,' said Speyer. 'But not here. If you must, let's go to my car.'

    Speyer paid his bill and led the detective out onto Forty-fourth Street. A silver four-seater was parked outside. 'Nice, isn't she?' said Speyer. He opened a rear door; the driver started the engine. 'After you, Officer.'

    Littlemore climbed inside. The chauffeur, meeting the detective's eyes in the rearview mirror, turned round and asked him who he was.

    'It's all right,' said the detective. 'I'm with Mr Speyer.'

    'Speyer? Who's that?' asked the driver.

    The door that Speyer had graciously opened for the detective was still ajar.

    'You're kidding me,' said Littlemore to no one in particular. The detective got out of the vehicle. There was no sign of James Speyer. Disgusted with himself, Littlemore went back into the restaurant and called his men Stankiewicz and Roederheusen.

    On Monday morning, September 20, Edwin Fischer arrived at Grand Central Terminal on a train from Canada, in the custody of two New York City policemen. Reporters from every newspaper in the city were waiting for them, together with a considerable crowd.

    The good-looking, tow-headed Fischer did not disappoint. He replied to questions with dauntless good cheer, while admonishing his greeters that he had been forbidden to discuss the bombing. Evidently overheated, Fischer removed his cream-colored suit jacket, folded it neatly, and handed it to a nonplussed policeman - revealing a second jacket below the first, this one navy blue.

    'How come the two jackets, Fischer?' one reporter called out. 'Cold up in Canada?'

    'I always wear two,' Fischer replied brightly, displaying the waistline of a navy blue pair of pants below his outer pair of cream trousers. 'Two full suits, everywhere I go.'

    The newsmen exchanged knowing winks: everyone had heard that Fischer was a lunatic. One of them asked why he wore two suits. Fischer explained that as an American, he liked to sport casual attire, while as a member of the French consular establishment, he had to be prepared for greater formality. With a sparkle in his eye, he then exhibited a third outfit below the first two, which appeared to consist of cotton whites suitable for an outdoor gambol. Asked the reason, he responded that shortly after the last time he won the Open, a pushy fellow had challenged him to a game, which he'd had to decline for lack of appropriate costume. After that, he decided always to be ready for a match.

    'The Open?' someone asked. 'What Open was that, Ed?'

    'Why, the United States Open, of course,' said Fischer.

    Titters greeted this assertion. 'You won the US Open, did you, Eddie?' someone called out.

    'Oh, yes,' said Fischer with a broad smile. He had excellent teeth. 'Many times.'

    Laughter circulated more broadly.

    'How many?'

    'Lost count after three,' he answered happily.

    'Get going,' said one of the policemen, shoving the cream-colored suit jacket back into Fischer's arms.

    From Grand Central, Fischer was taken to police headquarters for questioning by Commissioner Enright, Chief Inspector Lahey, and Assistant District Attorney Talley. Captains from the bomb squad and from Homicide, including Littlemore, sat in an array of hard chairs along a wall. Fischer had sociable words for everyone. With the District Attorney, he was especially effusive, asking after not only Talley's own health but that of Mrs Talley as well.

    'You know each other?' Commissioner Enright asked.

    'We're old friends,' replied Fischer. 'Isn't that right, Talley?'

    'I've never met the man, Commissioner,' Talley replied to Enright.

    'Listen to that,' said Fischer, smiling broadly and clapping Talley on the back. 'Always the jokester.'

    Commissioner Enright shook his head and ordered the interrogation to commence. 'Mr Fischer,' he said, 'tell us how you knew there would be a bombing on Wall Street on the sixteenth of September.'

    'Why, I didn't know, did I?' answered Fischer. 'I only knew it would come after the closing bell on the fifteenth.'

    'But how? How did you know that?'

    'I got it out of the air.'

    'The air?'

    'Yes - from a voice,' explained Fischer informatively. 'Out of the air.'

    'Whose voice?' asked Inspector Lahey.

    'I don't know. Perhaps it was a fellow member of the Secret Service. I'm an agent, you know. Undercover.'

    'Wait a second,' said District Attorney Talley. 'Did we meet at the Metropolitan awards dinner a few years ago?'

    'Did we
meet
? repeated Fischer. 'We sat next to each other the whole evening. You were the life of the party.'

    'Oh, for heaven's sake,' said Enright. 'Please continue.'

    'Who's your contact at the Secret Service?' asked Lahey.

    'You're asking for his name?' replied Fischer.

    'Yes - his name.'

    Fischer threw Talley a look implying that Inspector Lahey was either a little ignorant or a little addle-brained, but that it would be impolite to say so: 'Goodness, Inspector. He doesn't tell me his name. What sort of Secret Serviceman would that be?'

    'How did you know about the bombing?' asked Talley yet again.

    Fischer sighed: 'I got it out of the air.'

    'By wireless?' asked Lahey.

    'You mean radio? I shouldn't think so. I'm very close to God, you know. Some people resent that.'

    After two and a half hours, Commissioner Enright brought the interrogation to an end, no further results having been produced. Fischer was committed to an asylum.

    Littlemore collared District Attorney Talley before the latter left police headquarters and asked him whether it was legal for United States army troops to be stationed on a Manhattan street.

    'Why not?' replied Talley.

    'I never saw infantry in the city before,' said Littlemore. 'I thought they had to call out the National Guard or something - you know, with the Governor's consent.'

    'Beats me,' said Talley. 'That'd be federal law. Why don't you ask Flynn's men? They'd probably know.'

    Littlemore returned to his office and paced, irritated. Then he cranked up his telephone. 'Rosie,' he said to the operator, 'get me the Metropolitan Tennis Association.'

    As Littlemore rung off, Officer Stankiewicz poked his head through the door, holding a sheaf of papers. 'Final casualty list, Cap,' said Stankiewicz. 'Want to see it before it goes out?'

    Littlemore leafed through the unevenly typed document, which gave for every man, woman, and child killed or wounded on September 16 a name, address, age, and place of employment, if any. Page after page, hundreds and hundreds of names. Littlemore closed his eyes - and opened them at a knock on his door. Officer Roederheusen poked his head through.

    'I found Speyer's ship, sir,' said Roederheusen, unshaven and red- eyed. 'There's a James Speyer booked on the Imperator, leaving tomorrow for Germany at nine-thirty in the morning. I saw the manifest myself.'

    'Nice work, Spanky.'

    Stankiewicz looked quizzically at Roederheusen.

    'I'm Spanky now,' explained Roederheusen proudly.

    Littlemore rubbed his eyes and handed the casualty list back to Stankiewicz, whom he waved out of his office. 'What's Speyer been up to?' he asked Roederheusen.

    'Nothing, sir,' said Roederheusen. 'He didn't go out all night. This morning at eight he went to work. He's been there all day.'

    'Who's on him now?' Littlemore went to his door and shouted, 'Hey, Stanky. Get back in here. Give me that list again.'

    The phone rang.

    'Two beat officers, sir,' Roederheusen replied as Stankiewicz reentered the office. 'Should I call them off?'

    Littlemore answered the telephone. Rosie, the operator, informed him through the telephone that the vice president of the Metropolitan Tennis Association was on the line.

    'Put him through.' Littlemore motioned to Stankiewicz to hand him the list. To Roederheusen, he said, 'No. Make sure somebody keeps an eye on Speyer all day. If he makes a move, I want to know.

    If he doesn't, you meet me at his house at five tomorrow morning. Yeah, five. Now go home and get some sleep.' Littlemore cradled the receiver between chin and shoulder as he returned to the page of the casualty list devoted to government officers. 'Where's the Treasury guy, Stanky? There was a Treasury guard who died.'