The Death Instinct (41 page)

    'Can't say,' answered Fall. 'But let's not get all out of joint. I'm heading to Mexico myself. Going to attend Senor Obregon's inauguration. I'm sure all parties would like to see our disputes resolved peacefully.'

    'What will you tell General Obregon, Mr Senator?'

    'I'll tell him to keep his hands off our oil. And that having America as your friend is a whole lot smarter than having us as your enemy.'

    After the conference, Littlemore voiced surprise at Senator Fall's planned visit to Mexico City. 'Don't you think it might be dangerous, Mr Fall?'

    'I'd imagine so,' replied the Senator. 'For somebody.'

    On the express to New York, Littlemore read a stack of afternoon newspapers, which, since he knew more than the journalists did, filled him with a sense of unreality but also of foreboding, as if he had a clairvoyant's foreknowledge of an impending catastrophe that could not be averted. In Washington, the papers reported, Roberto Pesqueira, confidential agent of the Mexican Embassy, had to be forcibly restrained at a meeting of American businessmen after insisting on his country's right to its own natural resources. In Los Angeles, Mexicans were purchasing munitions in dangerously large quantities. In Mexico itself, American citizens had begun fleeing the country.

    Littlemore next removed from his briefcase the architectural plans for the Assay Office in lower Manhattan. The new vaults of the Assay Building were closer to impregnable than any bank he'd ever seen. They were eighty-five feet below ground, reinforced with three separate layers of steel and concrete, accessible only by a single door through a four-foot-wide tunnel, and surrounded by alarm systems, weapons caches, even food and water supplies in case of siege. The plans had been approved in 1917 by then-Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo. A different Treasury Secretary's signature appeared at the bottom of the other document Littlemore had on his lap.

    It was a work order authorizing the transfer of the nation's gold reserves from the Sub-Treasury in New York City to the adjacent Assay Office via overhead bridge commencing the night of September 15, 1920. The detective had found the order crumpled in the back of a filing drawer. It was signed, as Littlemore knew it would be, by Secretary David Houston.

    Younger and Colette went to the Littlemores' that night for dinner. 'What are you doing in Washington, Jimmy?' asked Colette. 'It must be very important.'

    'Not much - just starting a war,' he replied. They expected him to say more, but he didn't.

    After dinner, while the women did the dishes, Younger and Littlemore sat without speaking at the table, the detective scraping his fork back and forth along his dessert plate. 'Littlemore,' said Younger.

    'Huh?'

    'You're out-silencing me.'

    'Wars don't always go the way they're planned, do they?' asked Littlemore.

    'They never go the way they're planned,' said Younger.

    'Remember when you said that the Wall Street bombing was a way to assassinate the people? What do they want, the assassins? How about those Serbs who assassinated that Austrian duke guy in 1914? What did they want?'

    'War.'

    'They got it, didn't they?'

    'Beyond their wildest dreams.'

    The next morning, newspapers reported that Senator Fall, who the previous day had announced his intention to attend the inauguration of General Obregon, had been denied the visa required for entry into Mexico by confidential agent Roberto Pesqueira of the Mexican Embassy In response to questioning, Mr Pesqueira would say only that the Senator was an enemy of the Mexican people.

    Meanwhile, the United States army was massing on the Mexican border. Dispatches from Mexico City asserted that President-elect Obregon had come down with a sudden and unexplained illness, preventing him from attending his scheduled preinaugural events.

    Colette had arranged a meeting that morning with Mrs William B. Meloney, chairwoman of the Marie Curie Radium Fund. Younger made her pack her things before they left.

    'Why?' asked Colette.

    'We're changing hotels.' In part this move was precautionary. Younger hadn't told anyone but Freud where he and Colette would be staying, but someone keeping an eye on the harbor might conceivably have spotted them. Or someone monitoring the transatlantic cables might possibly have seen Freud's wires. Younger's chief motivation, however, was pecuniary. He needed cheaper lodging.

    They took the subway to Mrs Meloney's house on West Twelfth Street. Younger insisted on accompanying Colette there. Then he headed uptown, making Colette swear not to leave before he returned.

    When Littlemore came down from the elevated train on his way to work that morning, he was so deep in thought that he got out at his old station, Grand Street, by mistake. He was halfway to police headquarters before realizing his error. There was something the detective didn't like, but he didn't know what it was.

    At the Sloane Hospital for Women on Fifty-ninth Street, Younger gave his name and asked for Dr Frederick Lyme. A short time later,

    Younger was greeted by a man of about forty, prematurely gray, with wide-rimmed glasses, a clipboard, and a stethoscope over his white jacket.

    'What can I do for you, Dr Younger?' asked Lyme, taking his glasses off and placing them in a pocket.

    'I'm here about the McDonald girl. You spoke with a policeman named Littlemore; I'm the one who sent him. The girl has radium inside her neck. She needs an operation immediately.'

    'Radium,' said Lyme lightly. 'How could Miss McDonald possibly have gotten radium inside her? I already told the policeman the idea was quite absurd. I have nothing further to say. Good day.'

    'Cancer,' said Younger, 'is the most likely cause of the growth on her neck. If she was diagnosed with cancer, she could very well have taken a radium treatment for it. I believe the needle of radium is still in her neck.'

    Lyme put his clipboard to his chest: 'Miss McDonald never took any radium treatments, and cancer did not cause her tumor. Syphilis did. Surely you're aware that third-stage syphilis produces gummas - granulomas, growths - which can appear anywhere on the body. Syphilis was also the cause of her dementia. She had already begun raving. She had delusions of persecution. Perhaps she said something?'

    'No.'

    'Syphilis was found in 1913 to be the cause of general paresis,' said Lyme. 'Or don't you keep up with the literature?'

    'I'm familiar with the finding,' said Younger. 'Dr Lyme, I took X-rays of the girl.'

    'How? When?'

    'When she was at Bellevue. The X-rays clearly indicated the presence of radium.'

    'Ridiculous. Your X-ray machine was obviously malfunctioning. Either that or you didn't know how to operate it.'

    'I've confirmed the diagnosis with Madame Curie herself in Paris. There was no malfunction; radium produces the specific fluoroscopic pattern I found on her X-rays. At least open up the tumor and have a look. It can't hurt her.'

    'It can't help her either,' said Lyme. 'She's dead. Now if you'll excuse me.'

    When he finally reached his office on Wall Street, Littlemore had the operator ring Senator Fall's chambers in Washington. It took over an hour before he managed to speak with the Senator. 'What if the Mexican government didn't order the bombing, Mr Fall?' asked the detective. 'What if it was just one or two rogue Mexican officers?'

    'You're not getting cold feet, are you, son? The war's going to be a cakewalk. Our boys will be home by Christmas.'

    'Obregon says Torres had no connection to the Mexican government,' said Littlemore.

    'What do you expect him to say after what you found in Torres's room?' the Senator replied.

    'There's no proof, Mr Fall.'

    'Courtroom talk. Wars aren't fought in courtrooms. You keep your eye on the ball, son. We got the signature of the Mexican financial minister on letterhead paper and a goddamn terrorist boot camp run by their military. That's more proof than we need.'

    'What if it was just some bad apples, not the whole government?'

    'I'll be honest with you,' said Fall. 'I don't care if the bombing was ordered by El Presidente de la Republico or El Ministerio de la Financio. What difference would it make? We still got to clean out Mexico City. Hunt down the sons of bitches who bombed us. Wipe out that boot camp. If Obregon wasn't behind it, that means he can't control his bad apples, so we got to put in somebody who can - before they spoil the whole damn barrel.'

    Static filled the line.

    'Tell you what, son,' said Fall. 'I'm coming up your way to meet with Bill McAdoo on Saturday. Got to figure out what we're going to do about Houston. Tricky business funding a war when your Secretary of the Treasury is being paid off by your enemy. We always have dinner at the Oyster Bar. Why don't you meet us there?'

    'The Oyster Bar?' said Littlemore.

    'You know the Oyster Bar - in the terminal?'

    'Sure, I know it. Sounds good, Mr Fall.'

    A short while later, Littlemore was still standing by the telephone.

    Younger knocked at the door of Mrs William Meloney s townhouse on West Twelfth Street, which was filled with purring cats and shelves full of testimonials to Marie Curie.

    'These are letters,' Mrs Meloney explained to Younger, 'from cancer patients who have been cured with radium therapy. I'm collecting them for Madame Curie when she arrives. One is from a botanist who wants to send Madame Curie an entire hothouse of flowers. We must raise the rest of the money. We simply must.'

    'It's all arranged,' said Colette with excitement. 'We're going to visit Mr Brighton's luminous-paint factories tomorrow - one in New Jersey, one in Manhattan. Mrs Meloney says there's a chance at a very large donation.'

    'Mr Brighton,' said the older woman knowingly, 'is very close to contributing an even larger amount than he did before. As much as seventy-five thousand dollars. He told me so himself. All it will take is a little feminine push.'

    'Seventy-five thousand dollars - can you believe it, Stratham?' said Colette. 'That's more than we need. The radium will be paid for.'

    On their way back uptown, Younger told Colette about his visit to Sloane Hospital. 'Lyme insists it was syphilis,' he muttered. 'I should have asked to see the Wassermann test. I've never heard of tertiary syphilis in a girl that age.'

    Littlemore walked down the steps of the Sub-Treasury and into Wall Street. Next door, soldiers were still stationed in front of the Assay Office, where deep in basement vaults the nation's gold reserves were stored. He crossed the street to the Morgan Bank.

    Wall Street was crowded as always. Though in the way of the hurrying pedestrians, Littlemore walked slowly up and down the length of the sidewalk outside the bank, inspecting the places on its exterior wall where the concrete had been scored and gouged in the bombing.

    Everyone had assumed this damage was caused by the bomb and the shrapnel. Littlemore examined the pockmarks more closely. It was strange that they were concentrated below and around a first-floor window. Some of the uneven gouges - particularly the larger ones - might well have been the product of shrapnel, but most of the pockmarks were small and round, as if the concrete had been repeatedly struck by bullets.

    Littlemore went next to City Hall. In the basement land offices, he pored over the gas, water, sewer, and subway maps for lower Manhattan. It took him hours. He was pretty certain he wouldn't find anything, and he didn't. Ordinary plumbing, power, and gas lines ran under Wall Street. No sewer pipes crossed from Wall to Pine. A subway had been announced for Nassau Street in 1913, with a station at the corner of Broad and Wall, near where the bomb went off. But unlike the other eighty subway routes announced in 1913, the Nassau line had never been built.

    The hotel into which Younger moved was the kind that provided in every room a set of old, unmatching utensils and an electric hot plate. Seeing these implements, Colette declared that she would cook. She took Younger shopping - at a greengrocer's, a butcher's, a baker's. It was, she said, like being in Paris. Or would have been, if there had only been a bottle of wine to buy.

    The Littlemores had dinner in their Fourteenth Street apartment all together - parents, grandmother, and innumerable children. Littlemore's mind was not on the meal. Twice he called James Jr by the name of Samuel, which was their youngest boy, and he called Samuel Peter, even though Peter didn't look anything like Samuel, being twice his age. Betty, feeding Lily in the high chair, had never seen her husband so distracted.

    'You know,' said Younger to Colette as they ate across their tiny candlelit dining table, 'there's another possibility.'

    'Of what?'

    'Of how radium cures cancer.' He cut into the chop she had made him. 'What if there's a kind of switch in every one of our cells that turns on or off the process of cell death - and what if radioactivity flips it? In cancer cells, the switch is off; the cells don't die; that's why they keep replicating, endlessly. When radioactivity hits those cells, it turns the switch on, so the cells start dying again. That cures the cancer.'