Winter at Death's Hotel (36 page)

She had heard of Nietzsche's superman. Was this what the world got when the superman did whatever he wanted—mutilated and murdered women? Was he the “perfect man'?
Damn
Victoria
Woodhull.

***

Commissioner Roosevelt had been woken at home before the chase had ended, but not soon enough for him to take part. He had got his revolver, and he had had his carriage brought out, but he had been too late. He said to himself now that he should have had a horse saddled—the picture of himself riding in the chase, gun in hand, was too good to resist—but of course he had no charger at his house on Madison Avenue.

But he had been in plenty of time to learn that the Butcher had got away. That the Butcher had jumped to his death in the East River seemed an unsatisfying cheat; Roosevelt was actually relieved, then pained, when he learned in mid-morning that it looked as if the body that had gone off the bridge had been that of a milkman named Finter.

“We can't tell a milkman from a fiend?” It was after ten. He was in his office at 300 Mulberry Street with seven other men—the Chief of Police, two deputy chiefs, two of his fellow commissioners, the night's watch commander, and the acting head of the Murder Squad.

“We didn't know about the milkman at once, sir.” Deputy Chief Halloran was a smoother of feathers, a calmer, a soft-soaper. He had a lovely, soft voice that could become an Irish lyric tenor when he sang; now, he was purring for Roosevelt's benefit.

“How the devil did they think a milk wagon got on the Brooklyn Bridge without a driver?”

“I think it didn't occur to the boys at the time, sir. They were all keyed up, you know, just raring to go because of what that devil had done on Mulberry Street.”

“Within three blocks of this headquarters! Are we that hated that all he had to do was shout the word ‘cops' and the criminal residents of the tenements became an avenging army?”

Halloran looked deeply sympathetic and heaved a sigh. “It's an old tradition on the street, and a very sad one.”

“I understand that we fired three rounds.”

“Oh, yes, indeed, the mounted patrol did their very best!”

“Oh, was that their very best? Not a one touched him, in fact. Galloping down a dark street, and they're firing pistols in a place that is surrounded by dwellings? I want those two mounted policemen demoted one rank and sent back to the foot patrol.”

“Oh, Mr. Roosevelt, sir, that's harsh. They were doing their—”

Roosevelt leaned the tips of his fingers and the pads of his thumbs on his desk. He looked meaningfully at the other commissioners, then at the Chief of Police. “I cannot demand, but I can recommend! I recommend that they be reduced in rank and sent back to foot patrol!”

“Ah, yes, yes, indeed, a fine idea, of course…” Halloran looked at the chief, who was scowling but who nodded.

“Where was the Murder Squad in all this?”

Many pairs of eyes turned on an aged lieutenant named Banks, known everywhere as Bangs because he was afraid of guns. He'd been brought in from Fraud and Confidence when Cleary had been suspended. Bangs fidgeted and cleared his throat. “We weren't informed.”

“
What?
”

“Nobody told us.”

“Told you what?”

“Any of it. I didn't hear about the murder until I saw the morning paper, I swear. Sir.”

Roosevelt looked at the watch commander. “You didn't tell the
Murder
Squad
there'd been another murder?”

The man swallowed. “In the confusion of the moment. No, sir.”

Roosevelt stared at him through his pince-nez. Suddenly he threw his head back and smacked a fist into a palm. “Jehosephat! That's what they say in the West when men are unbelievably stupid—
jumping
Jehosephat
!” His mustache worked up and down; his eyes bulged. He bent toward the chief, who was sitting next to where he stood. “Chief! I can't tell you what to do, because I'm only a
civilian
. And I'm not
the
commissioner of police, but only one of five, although I am the president of those five.” He leaned still farther forward. “But I tell you, if this police department doesn't pull up its socks and get itself together, I will make such a ruckus in this city as will make the Lexow Commission look like a ladies' tea party!” By the time he finished, he was bellowing. He could have filled the Metropolitan Opera with that voice. And they were in a rather small room. Several hardened policemen flinched.

Roosevelt stuck his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. “Now, I'm not going to take charge.” He was looking around at all of them. “I'm not going to reach down into the ranks and tell individuals what to do. But by the Almighty, I expect there to be changes, and I expect there to be improvements! You
will
institute procedures that will have the watch commanders inform every pertinent squad when an event takes place! You
will
make sure that every such squad leader has a telephone connected directly to this building! You
will
learn from this debacle to organize a pursuit that could catch something more difficult than a child pulling a wooden toy! Do I make myself clear? Am I being understood?” His voice was thundering again.

Roosevelt in fact had no authority—except the authority of his presence. As one of the deputy chiefs had said of him a little after Roosevelt had arrived in office, “If he's willing to cut the wood, he can build the fire,” and Roosevelt, they found, was always first in line with the ax. If he didn't actually run the police department, he certainly scared the daylights out of the men who did.

They filed out quietly, saving their curses and their jeers for their own offices. As the last one went out, the Harvard man slid in. “Detective-Sergeant Dunne is waiting, Chief. You asked to see him.”

Roosevelt was staring at the American flag on the wall opposite his desk. “This failure is a disgrace to the New York Municipal Police!”

“At the very least, sir.”

“A milkman! Probably in a white coat and trousers. He threw a
milkman
over the bridge and they thought it was a killer they'd already seen wearing a long black coat and dark trousers! Are they blind as well as stupid?”

“The fog of war, sir.”

“What?”

“Clausewitz. You had me read him.”

Roosevelt folded his arms and stared down. He was still standing. “This is not a job for a man who wants to focus on the larger questions.” He sighed. “Send in this Dunne.”

Dunne came through the door seconds later. He was wearing another poorly pressed tweed suit; to English eyes he might have looked like a cattle auctioneer in some small market. Nonetheless, he carried with him that odd dignity of his: when he hove to, it was by a chair on whose back he rested a hand as if he were going to have his portrait painted.

“Sit down.” Roosevelt sat as he said it. Dunne waited until the great man's buttocks touched his own chair, then sat.

“You're the head of the investigation of these female atrocities, I'm told.”

“What they call the Bowery Butcher, yes, sir.” Dunne had missed the chase after the Butcher because he had no telephone, but he had been woken at four by a policeman sent specially by a pal at headquarters to take him to the scene of the latest murder. To Roosevelt, he seemed weary but alert—the sort of absolute professional who makes armies run, usually from the rank of sergeant major or below.

“You've been in charge for nearly two weeks now,” Roosevelt said.

“Yes, sir, but held back from doing much.”

Roosevelt pushed out his lips at that, then passed over it and said, “Anything on this latest atrocity yet?”

“We have the wagon, sir. Blood in it, bloody canvas. Also a crowbar with blood on it—used to kill the private guard and also a hack driver, we think. They lost the man they think did it, as you know.”

“And the first two murders?”

“The fact is, we're still gathering clues and doing slog work.”

Roosevelt made a pained face. “What progress?”

“Not much, sir.” Dunne got out his map and unfolded it, an operation that never went well because the map was on cheap paper and the folds had torn. Still, his circles and X's were clear enough. He said, “That's about what we know, sir. Put together by one of our best men, Detective Forcella.”

Roosevelt liked maps. They seemed to him to smack of the military—artillery barrages, the use of technological gadgets like binoculars and calibrated compasses. He said almost cordially, “Tell me what I see here.”

Dunne told him: sites of the murders, routes taken by the “old man with a wagon,” who had now been seen before and after all three murders; the place from which the second wagon had been stolen. “We're not sure about where he got the wagon for the first murder. There were four thefts reported that night; one can't have been it because the wagon was all painted up—owner's Sicilian—and one was way uptown above the park. The other two…” He shrugged. “And a lot of thefts aren't reported to us.”

“How can you know it was the same old man?”

“Timing and location, sir. And elimination—if it isn't any of the other possibilities, it's the one that's left.”

“Sherlock Holmes.” Roosevelt, a voracious reader, expected some agreement. Dunne's face might have been made of hardened clay. Roosevelt returned to the map. “So what, taken altogether, does it mean?”

“It doesn't mean anything yet, sir. I may have a better idea when I interview everybody involved in last night's business. And we trace the wagon. Maybe it's significant he headed for the bridge; maybe it isn't. It may be only that he came down Mulberry because he knew he could play that trick of his, which, besides being clever, suggests that maybe he's an old New York bhoy from one of the gangs. Or maybe not.”

“You're very noncommital.”

“Well, if you commit, then you're in it, sir. I'd rather get some facts first.”

“It's been
two
weeks
, Dunne.” For the first time, Roosevelt's voice hardened.

“Aye, but I wasn't free to
work
until a few days ago. So what we did was pussyfoot about and do what we could on the sly. These little marks on this paper may not look like much, but they took hours and hours of work, every one of them. What they're going to tell us one day is where this devil is going and where he comes from. And then we'll have him.”

“If he commits enough murders, I suppose you mean.”

“As you say, sir. It's a sad fact.”

Roosevelt, who was still being astonishingly mild considering his thunderings at the high brass, said—and by saying so revealed why he hadn't lit into Dunne—“What restrictions were put on your investigation by Lieutenant Cleary?”

Dunne frowned, put his tongue sideways between a couple of teeth, and with a questioning look that meant “Is it all right?” began to fold his map. He spent several seconds folding the map just so, and when he spoke, it was very tentatively. “I was told to do nothing that would bring in the, um, the private life of the young lady who was the first victim.”

“Lieutenant Cleary told you that?”

“From the highest level, he said.”

Roosevelt sat back. “How did you interpret that instruction?”

“I took it to mean I was to do nothing, sir. I took it to mean that identifying her was off limits, sir, and so was the young man she was said to be seen with. And so was the witness who saw her.” Dunne, who was fearless, although he didn't look it, stared right into Terrible Teddy's pince-nez. “I believe it was you got a letter from that witness, sir, and passed it on to Cleary with the instruction to deal with her.”

“I didn't mean for him to silence her!”

“Well, the best-laid plans of mice and men, sir. So I didn't talk to her—I mean Mrs. Doyle, which is the lady's name. Not then, I mean. And then when the second murder happened, I was told to keep the two deaths separate and not to connect one with the other.”

“With every newspaper in the city making them the work of the same madman!”

“Yes, sir.” He held up the now folded map. “I exceeded Lieutenant Cleary's instructions, sir, and I won't disguise the fact.”

“Cleary's out of it, so forget about that!” Terrible Teddy lunged forward. “All right, Dunne, here's what you're going to do. You appear to be the only competent man—maybe the only sane man—in this entire damned disaster! I want you to go full speed ahead, all stops out, to hell with the limits on boiler pressure! You understand me? The people of New York won't stand for more foot-dragging in these murders.
I
won't stand for more foot-dragging! Interview that woman who saw Mrs. Harding in the hotel. Get a description of her paramour—he's your best bet for the killer, isn't he? Get to it! I want an arrest!”

“Does that include Roscoe Harding, sir?”

Roosevelt got very still. “Harding's a very important man.”

“And as likely a suspect as the ‘good-looking young man' is.”

“I prefer you leave Harding out of it.”

“His name was in the
Express
yesterday. It was in all the afternoon papers.” The two men seemed to size each other up. Roosevelt, no mean judge of men, was surprised at the amount of spine he was facing. Before he could say anything, Dunne said, “I was at the City Mortuary as soon as I read Harding's name yesterday. They didn't want to cooperate, so I've applied for a warrant. But one of them implied that you, sir, had something to do with Harding being able to take his wife's body away without signing or having his name appear in the book. As neither does yours.”

Roosevelt turned away and took a step toward a window, then back. He said, “If you mean to try some sort of blackmail on me, Sergeant, I warn you—”