The Fall

by Sean Moynihan

“Yes, it’s in the papers today. He just announced that he’s running.”

  “Well, that’s not good. A guy like that moving into a position of power in the government. What’s next?”

  “And I guess he has a big following, too. Being famous and all.”

  “Right. I figured. Wait a minute—look, Jimmy.”

  Falconer pointed across the street to where a young man was walking out of the old apartment building. “Is that him?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s him.”

  “Good. Let’s start walking across the street but try to stay behind him.”

  “Got it.”

  Falconer waited a few seconds as the young man across the street pulled his cap down over his brow and started walking down the sidewalk towards Winter and Kramer. He then nodded at Halloran and started walking diagonally across the street, careful to avoid passing wagons and carriages. Signaling to Halloran to move across to the sidewalk and follow up directly behind the man, he quickened his pace and started gaining ground on the hoodlum. Just as he was about to hop onto the sidewalk, however, his quarry suddenly glanced over his shoulder and stopped—leering directly at Falconer. The man then bolted down the sidewalk, with Falconer close at his heels.

  Falconer watched as the man—clearly fleet of foot—raced down the sidewalk between unsuspecting pedestrians, wandering dogs and cats, and well-stocked apple carts, and then approached the corner. Just as he was about to spring across the intersection, however, Winter and Kramer jumped out from behind a newsstand and moved to bring him down. The young malefactor, though, immediately shoved an older man straight into them and managed to evade their grasp.

  Running after him, Falconer saw the man sprinting down the sidewalk unconcerned about the many people being tossed and thrown aside before quickly turning at the next corner. Falconer sped around the corner, too, and saw the suspect getting farther away, so he attempted to run faster despite the many people filling the sidewalk. The man kept running hard, jumping rabbit-like between people and leaping high over boxes and feed bags left for store owners, and, just when Falconer felt that it was futile—that his target was going to escape and delay the investigation further—he glanced ahead and saw the man look quickly back at him just as a young patrol officer, athletic-looking and solidly built like a boxer, stepped out of a grocery store, directly in the way of the fleeing sprite.

  The man and the officer, who had time to brace for impact, met with a thud, and the suspect went down to the sidewalk, groaning. As the officer bent down to hold him fast, however, the man rolled away and somehow managed to leap up, raise his fists, and take a large swing at the young officer’s head. Falconer slowed up and watched in wonder as the officer deftly parried the blow and landed several hard jabs to the face and hooks to the ribcage. Then, as the lunging criminal took one last swing with his fist, the officer ducked quickly, rose, and struck the man with a hard blow to the jaw, knocking him senseless to the ground.

  Falconer ran up as the officer was placing handcuffs on the dazed man, and, when the arrest was completed, Falconer smiled at him. “You were pretty good with those fists, officer,” he said, showing his badge. “Detective Sergeant Falconer for the Detective Bureau. You a prizefighter when off-duty?”

  “No, sir,” the officer said, grinning slightly as he stood up. “Just learned a few things on the street, is all.”

  “Well, I thank you for bringing our suspect down,” Falconer said. “He could be an important break in a big case.”

  “No worries at all, detective sergeant. Just part of the job.”

  “What’s your name, officer?”

  “Schlager, sir.”

  “How long you been on the force?”

  “Just a few years, sir. I thought about becoming a lawyer for a bit, actually, then figured that would be kind of boring, so I signed up to be a cop instead.”

  “That’s an interesting choice, Officer Schlager. But I respect it. I once knew a detective who did the same thing, and he was an outstanding man for the force.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Just then, Winter, Kramer, and Halloran ran up and surrounded the stricken prisoner.

  “This is Officer Schlager, gentlemen,” Falconer said. “He just gave our suspect a little well-earned beating.”

  “Well, I’m all for that, boss, as long as the guy deserved it,” Winter said.

  “We’ll take it from here, Schlager,” Falconer said. “And again, thanks for your assistance here.”

  “No problem, sir,” Schlager said. “It was just good timing, I guess.”

  “Perhaps,” Falconer said, grinning. “Okay, boys, get this man out of here.”

  Halloran and Kramer lifted the suspect up by his arms and started walking him slowly back on the sidewalk. Falconer and Winter then nodded to Schlager and turned to follow, but Falconer suddenly stopped and looked back at the young officer. “Schlager,” he said, “you ever had an interest in joining the Detective Bureau over at headquarters?”

  “Ah…no, sir,” Schlager said slowly. “Can’t say that I ever thought I’d have that opportunity, to be honest.”

  “Well, you interested?”

  “Sure, detective sergeant. That sounds very interesting.”

  “Good then. Where do you work out of?”

  “West 47th Street.”

  “Got it. Just give me a little time and I’ll clear it with your sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir. I appreciate that. Thanks very much.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Falconer said. “We could use another guy who can handle his fists like you.”

  He then turned and walked off to join his men and their newly arrested suspect.

  93

  Falconer and Waidler strolled into the interrogation room at The Tombs the day after the arrest of John Fitzgerald, known associate of George Bliss. Fitzgerald sat in a chair with locked chains on his ankles and handcuffs on his wrists, looking glum and perturbed. Falconer walked over to another chair a few feet from him and sat down, and Waidler did the same. Then Falconer lit a cigarillo and offered a cigarette to Fitzgerald. “Care for one?” he asked.

  Fitzgerald looked at the two detectives warily, and then nodded slowly. Falconer pulled a cigarette out of a pack and lit it, then handed it to Fitzgerald, who took it with two hands and smoked copiously.

  “Well, we know who you are,” Falconer said, leaning back in his chair. “You’re John Fitzgerald of 264 West 39th Street, a sometime barman and bricklayer who’s been in and out of jail for the past ten years. You’re also an associate of millionaire George Bliss and a member of Cadere, the secret society devoted to ridding the nation of non-whites and non-Christians. Isn’t that correct, Fitzgerald?”

  Fitzgerald looked at Falconer for a moment, then took a drag of his cigarette again and placed it down in an ashtray on a small table next to him. He then looked back at Falconer. “I don’t know what you’re saying about this Bliss character, or that…society or whatever that you mentioned.”

  “Cadere, or The Fall,” Falconer said. “You meet beneath the church that’s being built down on Christopher Street. We’ve been there, Fitzgerald.”

  “Still not sure what you’re talking about,” Fitzgerald said.

  “Really?” Falconer asked. “Even though you’ve got that tattoo on your chest—the two initials, PF, for ‘Puritas Fortitudinem?’ Purity is strength?”

  Fitzgerald squinted his already deep-set blue eyes and sat back in his chair, looking at his two interrogators.

  “We know what you’re about,” Falconer said, “and we have you on conspiracy to commit murder. You’re looking at the chair up in Sing Sing, and George Bliss doesn’t give a damn about you now. So, if you want to help yourself, you’d best tell us what Bliss asked you to do the other night.”

  Fitzgerald looked at Falconer for a moment, and then reached out a
nd grabbed the still-lit cigarette from the ash tray. Taking a drag, he smiled. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but you got the wrong guy. I ran yesterday because I was just scared that this woman I was with recently went and lied to the cops about me—that’s all. I’m no conspirator about anything, and I sure as hell ain’t one to hobnob with millionaires. So, I got nothing to say to youse guys today.”

  “All right, Fitzgerald,” Falconer said, getting up. “But we’ll see you again—trust me.”

  He then stepped out of the room, and Waidler followed.

  “No rough stuff today?” Waidler asked.

  “I try not to go there if I can help it, James,” Falconer answered. “Let’s just let him cool his heels a bit and talk to him again, shall we?”

  The two men then moved down the hallway headed for the exit to the great stone jailhouse.

  94

  Walter Bliss, joined by several bodyguards and newly hired campaign advisors, exited the grand front doorway of the Millennium Club with a horde of reporters held back on either side by police officers and security men. The reporters yelled out questions and pleaded for a response, but Bliss just nonchalantly waved them off with a smile and an open hand. But then one aggressive reporter’s pointed question rose above the others and stopped the business tycoon in his tracks just steps away from his gilded carriage: “Mister Bliss, is it true that you’re a member of a secret cabal that the police are investigating for murder and kidnapping?”

  Bliss turned to face the reporters, smiled, and appeared speechless for a moment, but then he raised an index finger at them as if to reproach a child and spoke: “Now listen, I don’t know where this inflammatory information is coming from, but clearly it’s an attempt by my opponents to smear me and hurt my campaign. This is nothing but a hoax perpetrated by someone who doesn’t want me to win, and it’s going to fail, I can tell you that—it’s going to fail. The Democrats have made a mess of this state. The cities are full of crime and unproductive immigrants, and the do-nothing Democrats’ record on the economy is, frankly, not good. Their economy is terrible, as you know, and they are afraid of us, to be honest. They are afraid of us because we’re in the race now and we’re looking very good in the polls. Very good, indeed.”

  “Do you have anything to say to the police department given this allegation against you, Mister Bliss?” a reporter quickly shouted.

  “I would say that the police department is largely full of Tammany types and Democrats who don’t want me to win,” Bliss said calmly, “and frankly, there will be changes when I do win, I can promise you that.”

  “What about your son, George?” a reported shouted above the resultant cacophony of voices. “What do have to say to the rumors that he’s being investigated, too?”

  “I’d say that you’re a very terrible reporter, honestly,” Bliss quickly snapped, glaring at the scribe, “and your paper is truly worthless. You need to find a new job. Now if you’ll all excuse me, I have an important meeting to make.”

  He then stepped up into a carriage and it immediately pulled away from the curb, followed by a gaggle of reporters chasing it on foot before it disappeared around the next corner.

  95

  Falconer stepped off the streetcar on the Bowery and walked east on Hester Street deep into the heart of the Jewish district. It was early evening, and as the sun fell beyond the buildings to the west, a coolness finally began to settle over the densely populated tenements that filled this crowded quarter of the great city.

  He had walked these busy streets before—many times, in fact, as a beat cop—and was familiar with the community, but he had never really taken notice of the people who lived, worked, and died here. He had investigated beatings, thefts, kidnappings, lost children, murders, and had always gone about his business quietly and efficiently—because that was his job. But he had never taken notice of the people—never truly taken notice of them. Never really looked at them. Seen them. Talked to them. Heard them.

  They seemed so different to him, in dress and manner, and in the way they carried themselves so seriously and devoid of humor when he was in their presence. He did not judge them, though, as others did—the others who called them derisively, “Heebs,” “Kikes,” and “Sheenies.” They were simply different from him, these hard-working immigrants who oftentimes spoke a foreign language and had—many of them—only recently arrived from Poland, Russia, Germany, and other far-off lands.

  He saw them at work, through the windows of their dank and cluttered shops, often from eight in the morning until eight at night—sewing garments, fixing clocks and watches, laundering clothes, or baking bread: these stoic people who worked for hours and hours, and then returned to their eight-to-a-room tenements for the night, only to return to their grinding, noisy sweatshops in the morning for another long day. He saw them on the streets, peddling wares or selling fruits and vegetables, or working as dusty rag-pickers with their carts and barrels full of refuse. He saw them pray, too, when he entered their synagogues on cases, praying on their knees with Torah in hand, or standing with palms raised and opened, murmuring soft prayers, sometimes even weeping.

  These immigrants were different than he was, he knew, but he did not understand why they were demonized and forsaken, or even worse—persecuted and ostracized and sometimes murdered simply for being who they were or for praying to their God.

  He walked down Hester Street and looked around the sidewalks that were still very crowded, and he watched all the Jewish people. Women were leading children by the hand, men were gathering outside shops and rubbing their foreheads of sweat after the long day of work. Older men were sitting on stools with canes in hand, nodding silently as the cool evening breeze drifted down the corridor formed by the great tenement buildings stretching up into the sky.

  Falconer felt out of place on this street, a lawman dressed in suit and tie, a son of an army officer and his New England-born bride, both themselves children of Irish immigrants. He did not live in the tenements or work in the sweatshops or pray in the synagogues. He did not know this world; he only came into it when his job demanded it. He himself felt like a foreigner, like he did not belong here and was being watched and stared at.

  He came to the corner of Hester and Essex Street, leaned against a tall light post, and lit a cigarillo as the many people walked by and around him, heading home or out to eat perhaps. They were doing exactly what Christians were doing at this hour—nothing more and nothing less. Just being people. They weren’t dirty or foul smelling; they were regular people, people just making a living and raising kids.

  He stood there, wondering why they were treated so differently, so harshly by a large portion of the population. Were they a threat somehow? Were they quietly undermining the fabric of American society, slowly bringing in their own beliefs, customs, and languages to the peril of others already entrenched across the sprawling continent?

  It all sounded so absurd in his mind. Another faith allegedly poisoning the character of the American people. And now this group, this mysterious band of criminals known as The Fall, lurking in the shadows, and devising their malevolent plans to rid the streets of impure heathens and foreign invaders. This was a dangerous new game that they were playing, and nobody knew about it—nobody except his men in the Detective Bureau and perhaps a few others.

  He felt alone on the street corner—alone with his knowledge of this new evil that he faced. Alone with the feeling that it was all too great for one man, or a small group of men, to bring down and destroy. Alone with the thought that somewhere at this very hour, at some location within the large, beating city with its thousands of drawing rooms, back alleys, and hidden, little crevasses, an assassin was slowly getting closer to an unsuspecting target whose only offense was looking different, or talking in a different language, or praying to a different God.

  He turned and headed back towards the Bowery and to unknown events along the perilous, d
ark path that he was now treading.

  96

  The veteran plain-clothes sergeant waited underneath an awning of an old building as the rain pelted down onto the street before him. The sky had darkened as the afternoon moved towards evening, and then the hard rains had come in, giving relief to the thousands who had been enduring the last vestiges of the fall heat.

  People ran swiftly through the rain as he stood looking out for the carriage that was scheduled to pull up in front of him at the appointed hour, and the rain made a steady humming sound punctuated by the occasional roar of distant thunder.

  He thought of what he was about to do—how he was essentially betraying those with whom he served and betraying the city itself. But then he thought of his struggles, of how he could not pay for his family while others on the police force with less experience and less accomplishments were given promotions with higher pay over him, and how he was left to work more and more cases and fall more and more into debt in this accursed city of demons and pandering sycophants.

  He had been approached recently by a mysterious representative of an unknown party offering a princely sum if he would only deliver certain information concerning an ongoing, secretive investigation. And he was also told that by his acts, he would be exhibiting great patriotism and would help to ferret out corruption and foreign-led machinations harmful to Americans. He had thought about it for a bit, had thought about how he had never been given any accolades or commendations over the years despite all his work and efforts, and how he had a right to the finer things in life and to a more comfortable future like others.

  And then, after pondering these issues, he had decided to agree to the exchange, and had spent some time at the Mulberry Street headquarters finding out what the unnamed party wanted to know. And now he was about to deliver the information on this rainy, windswept night in Lower Manhattan.

  A carriage interrupted his thoughts by suddenly pulling up alongside the curb in front of him. The carriage driver waved, pointing down to the door of the carriage, and he immediately walked forward. Approaching the carriage door, he saw it swing open, and he slowly stepped up into the passenger compartment. Sitting down, he wiped the water off his sleeves, fingered his revolver, and stared at the slim man sitting opposite him. He was on the younger side—perhaps in his mid-thirties—and was balding and dark-eyed, with an expressionless face that was hard to read. The sergeant said nothing for a moment, and then, to combat the anxiety that was coursing through his nervous system, he issued a warning to the young stranger: “I don’t know who you are, or who you work for, but just know that I’m pointing my revolver at your belly, and if there’s any funny business, you go first.”