The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx (7 page)

At that very moment, Paul decided to accept Samuel Bush’s offer. After all, it might similarly kickstart his fledgling engineering career.

Paul waited by his desk until 5 that afternoon. Sure enough, his phone rang just as he was about to leave.

“Capitán Pablo!” he heard Carlo’s distinct accent.

“How are you doing?”

“Good,” he said curtly.

“You know, that address you gave me wasn’t where you live,” Carlo said provocatively.

“Carlo, you and I really don’t share the same politics.”

“This saddens me greatly,” Carlo replied. “Someone with your skills fighting to help the peasant class would make a big difference in the struggle.”

“I am committed to helping the poor, but I don’t believe in violence. I don’t approve of all the bombings I’ve been reading about. And I think our system of government can repair itself.”

“Allow me to explain that mankind is in the fight for its life between the greed of the very rich and the rest of us. If we lose that fight, we will all be at the mercy of the rich forever.” Carlo sounded far more articulate than the playful youth he remembered in Mexico.

“I disagree,” Paul said. “But you don’t have to worry about me going to the authorities, I simply ask to be left alone.”

“Viva la revolución,” Carlo said, and hung up. Paul hoped this was the last he’d hear from the guy.

On a positive note, the call to his mother seemed to have reestablished their relations. She began teasing him with the title
Captain Paul
. She also gave him constant updates about his younger brother. Mr. Robert was attending dozens of municipal hearings, pitching the beauty and equity of his great Standardization Plan.
“It values competence over seniority, meritocracy over cronyism …”
Bella loved mimicking her youngest son.

Soon after Paul’s phone enounter with Carlo, Samuel Bush requested a meeting with him in one of the Senate office buildings. When Paul arrived, he found the contractor huddled with a small group of men outside a Senate Armed Services hearing.

Instead of saying hello, Paul simply approached the contractor and asked, “Who exactly will I be explaining these engineering plans to?”

“These fellas right here,” Bush said, pointing toward the hearing room. “You might be doing some public relations work with them as well.”

“And if I take the job, you’ll eventually get me signed on as the electrical engineer to some of these projects?”

“I’ll try my damnedest,” Bush replied earnestly.

Paul’s stint in the army was almost over, as was the war. With no other immediate prospects, he accepted the offer. His formal title would be lobbyist/consultant for Byrd & Hale.

His first task was assisting Bush in trying to persuade a congressional delegation from depressed areas of the country to promote legislation that would develop electrical systems in their districts. A big region that the subcontractor had targeted for development was down in Appalachia.

Several times, drawing on Paul’s credentials as a former weapons incident report writer, Bush asked him to give testimony in congressional hearings to encourage further funding for tank development and more sophisticated armaments.

While spending time with Bush, and seeing up close how lobbyists could legally bribe politicians, Paul found himself growing disgusted with his job. Much of Paul’s challenge here was to find ways that the congressmen could pitch these pork-barrel projects so that their constituents didn’t think they were driven by private interests. But Samuel was right: Paul’s intelligence and sense of social purpose immediately appealed to people. Reporters used lines lifted directly from his press releases in articles and editorials. Politicians often supported endeavors that he pushed. Each time he talked about quitting, Bush assured him that if he just stuck it out for a few years, he could surely set Paul up with an ideal civic engineering project right here in Washington, D.C.

The sudden reek of shit woke Uli just as he broke into the oval of dull light. Gasping for air, he climbed up the rigging of ropes along a three-foot ledge leading toward a dark, open expanse. He could hear a strange mix of weeping and chanting.

Exhausted, he pulled himself onto the stone floor in a giant unlit chamber. It looked like a large train terminal, like Grand Central Station. In the faint flickering of dozens of little fires, he could make out a vast group of people encamped on the wide floor; most appeared to be semi-naked.

“Casey? Is that you, son?” said a soft female voice beside him.

“No,” he mumbled back, as he lay down exhausted and dripping on the floor. Popping off his helmet and dropping it, he peered up at the large vaulted ceiling. Slowly catching his breath, he heard a periodic
boom … boom … boom …

“Casey, what’s the matter?” she asked. “You okay?”

12

… Uli thought he was hearing the far-off blasts. A series of bomb attacks throughout the U.S. in 1917 had been orchestrated by anarchists following in the footsteps of Luigi Galleani. Russia had just revolted and these radicals believed that America, too, was on the brink. He remembered Vladimir Ustinov’s declaration that the U.S. just needed a little push to set it off.

Legislation passed quickly in Congress allowing for a stiff crackdown on these radical saboteurs who were terrorizing everyone. A series of anti-immigration and anti-anarchist laws followed.

By June 2, 1919, when a bomb detonated prematurely and damaged the home of the newly appointed Attorney General Mitchell Palmer (and killed the bomber), all of America was horrified. Eight days later, sitting in his office at Byrd & Hale, Paul read that the identity of the bomber had been revealed as none other than Carlo Valdinoci—his second-in-command in Mexico.

Coming home from work one night a couple of weeks later, Paul felt his stomach churn when he saw that a memo from the United States Attorney General’s Office had been slipped under his door. The letter requesting that he pay a visit tomorrow afternoon was signed
John Hoover
.

Paul took a taxi the next day to the Attorney General’s Office, a drafty old nineteenth-century building. Inside the lobby, he located Hoover’s name on the building’s directory. Marching up into the office, Paul passed a middle-aged secretary and stepped up to a handsome young page to ask if he knew where he could find John Hoover.

I’m
Hoover,” the kid said. “

“You’re the person who left me this note?” Paul asked, arching his eyebrows in annoyance. Hoover rose silently and led him into his office and closed the door.

“Did you know one Carlo Valdinoci?” Hoover began.

“You mean the fellow who bombed the attorney general’s home?”

“I’m not going to pussyfoot around, Moses. I know you served honorably here. I know you work for Byrd & Hale. And I know you fought in Mexico alongside this wop. I’m not after you. We got the entire anarchist mailing list. We know who’s who and what’s what. Now, I don’t care if you fought against Porfirio Díaz, but I want some names and I want them now.”

“I have to speak to my attorney first,” Paul replied, feeling only resentment toward this oily kid.

“Mr. Moses. Either cooperate with us right here and now or, so help me God, the Attorney General’s Office will be the worst enemy you’ve ever had.”

After a long pause, Paul exhaled and said, “I didn’t catch most of their last names. They were Italians. But I never even joined their fight.”

Hoover took a legal pad and a fountain pen from his top desk drawer. “I’d like a complete timetable of when you arrived there. What missions you were on right up until you left. Then I want a list of first names or monikers of your confederates and basic descriptions of what they looked like and what they did.”

Paul sighed and asked if he could have a few weeks to provide this information.

“I want it right now or you’re under arrest. And if I feel that I’m getting anything other than the absolute truth, I’m going to press charges against you, and I guarantee I’ll make them stick.”

“I did nothing wrong.”

“The attorney general of this great republic was attacked a few days ago at his home. We are in the grips of terrible times, Mr. Moses.”

“I’m truly sorry about that, but—”

“Foreign agents have brought a war onto our shores and some of these bastards worked with you. I’m willing to overlook the possibility that you might very well be one of these sons of bitches, and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you are no longer in cahoots with them—
if
you do everything you can right this moment to help us find them.” Hoover stared at Paul intensely.

Paul let out another audible sigh. Reaching across the table, he took the pen and paper and slid them in front of himself. Only when Hoover rose did Paul realize that another, larger man was standing behind him. Over the next four hours, Paul drew up an approximate timetable of missions, along with a list of places where they occurred and others he had worked with, deliberately lying about the names of those who he knew were harmless. By the time Hoover’s assistant brought him a dry ham and cheese sandwich for dinner, Paul had come up with fourteen names, mainly Italian and Spanish, and one Russian—the late Vladimir Ustinov. By 10 o’clock that night, hours after Hoover had left, he was allowed to leave provided he return first thing the next morning.

Paul came back at 9 a.m. and sat across from young Hoover, who reviewed all the facts and figures he had written on the legal pad pages.

“Right now,” Hoover said, “I really have only one question.”

“What’s that?”

“What the hell prompted a young man, someone who was an A student at Princeton, who comes from a position of wealth and privilege, to toss it all aside and go to Mexico to fight in some pointless wetback war?”

“Well, to be honest with you,” Paul replied awkwardly, “I was in love with a girl and she brought me into it.”

“I sensed that might be the answer,” Hoover said with a smile. “The only woman you can ever trust is your mother.”

Paul smiled back, just wanting out.

“All right, here’s the deal. A contingent of these foreigners who you broke bread with got munitions training south of the border and now they’re using it up here. If everything you told us checks out, no charges will be filed against you.” Looking Paul in the eye, Hoover pulled his seat forward and added, “But frankly, I’d like you to leave this city.”

“I live and work here.”

“Look, you’ve come here with a group of terrorists.”

“I have no connection with any of them!”

“That might be the case, but we’re planning on rounding them all up and tossing them out of the country. You were born here so we can’t do that to you. But I’ll sleep a lot easier just knowing that you aren’t around.”

“I work for a major corporation.”

“Tell you what,” Hoover said almost sympathetically. “I’ll give you two weeks, so you can turn in your notice today.”

“I’ve been absolutely honest and direct with you and I don’t think this is fair.”

“Mr. Moses, if I didn’t think you were honest and if you didn’t serve honorably in the military and attend Princeton, I guarantee I’d have you in jail serving at least three to five years.”

“For what?”

“For my peace of mind.”

As Paul left the old building and tried to hail a cab back home, he thought maybe this was all for the best. He was getting sick of Washington and he missed New York. Upon arriving home, he promptly contacted Bush and delicately explained that it was time for him to head back to New York. He was giving his two weeks notice.

“Paul, you’re throwing away a very promising, lucrative career here.”

“It’s not a money issue.”

“You want to do design work, I promise I can—”

“It’s not that, it’s just that I’ve always wanted to work in the public sector in New York,” Paul said, trying to find a comfortable excuse.

“Look, I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep, but we’ve donated a lot of money to the Harding campaign. I might be able to arrange a nice administrative appointment.”

“I’ve decided I want my old job back,” Paul lied, and thanked Bush for all he had done.

Paul had been using his spare time in Washington, as well as the data he had access to, working on a paper that examined New York City’s power system losses and transformer tap settings. The gist of the study was that the metropolis could acquire electricity more efficiently by installing hydroelectric generators along the St. Lawrence River. When he showed his plans to an old colleague who had become an executive at Con Edison in New York City, he was quickly offered a job as a property assessor.

Meanwhile, Mayor Mitchel had abandoned young Robert Moses and his notorious Standardization Plan in an effort to regain some popularity. But it had made little difference, and in 1918 Mitchel lost his reelection bid to John Francis Hylan, “Red Mike.” Bella said she had never seen her youngest son so crestfallen as he had become since losing his job. In addition, Mr. Robert had been stigmatized in the press as a privileged rich kid, an enemy of the working man.

Bella told Paul how his brother had been contacting everyone he knew and was going out on every job interview he could get. It was then, almost as if their fates were inversely related, that Paul got accepted into a prestigious new executive program at Con Edison—just the break he had been waiting for. He was now in line to move up the ranks and make some real policy decisions.

Seeing these developments as an opportunity to bridge a gap that had widened between them over the years, Paul decided to pay an unannounced visit to his brother. Robert’s new wife Mary invited him in, but told him that her husband was out looking for work. Robert called him back that night and explained apologetically that it was a bad time for him to see people.

It was kind of like the opposite of going to a dentist’s office: Uli found that if he concentrated hard on something painful, he could remain in the moment. He pinched himself and counted at least thirty small fires illuminating the wide underground encampment. A group of people were kneeling by a wall under what appeared to be a series of large, sealed sluice gates. Uli realized that this vast space had probably been some kind of dried-out, obsolete catch basin. It appeared that water had once drained down into the sewer pipe he had just climbed out of. Clusters of groaning people huddled around the huge, flat cement bottom of this empty reservoir. The walls of it sloped upward at about a forty-five-degree angle. All appeared filthy, most of the men in rags and loincloths and sporting beards of varying lengths. Several had no clothes on whatsoever, which made Uli feel less self-conscious about his own nudity.