The Fall

by Sean Moynihan

  “Miss,” Falconer said, kneeling in front of Maggie, “Officer Halloran here will stay with you and Miss Cochran while we go get you some help, all right?”

  Maggie nodded slowly. “And what of Miss Bly?” she asked. “What’s happened to her?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out,” Falconer said. “I can assure you of that. It’ll be okay.”

  “Yes, yes, I sure hope so,” she said.

  “You just rest here for a bit, and we’ll be back, all right?” Falconer said, and she nodded again with a slight smile.

  “Okay, Jimmy, just wait here for a bit, and we’ll be right back,” Falconer said.

  “Got it, sir,” Halloran said.

  Falconer then walked out to the front of the home with Schlager, headed to the front doors of the homes that stood adjacent to Nellie Bly’s residence.

  Wednesday, October 5, 1892

  107

  Falconer sat with his men in the Detective Bureau after a long, fruitless day searching for any sign of their missing friends and Emma Goldman. He worried that the press would soon be inquiring about the missing anarchist leader, given that she had not been seen or heard from in days. He interrupted his ruminations, though, to inquire into Jacob Riis, who had also been present when they found The Fall’s secret meeting chamber underneath the streets of Manhattan.

  “So, Riis is safe?” he asked, looking at Waidler, Winter, and Kramer.

  “He is,” Waidler answered. “We got to his home in time, alerted him, and now we’ve got him and his family holed up in a safe house out in Jersey.”

  “Great, thank you,” Falconer said. “At least that’s one target they can’t get to.”

  “So, what’s next?” Waidler asked. “We’ve got no clues.”

  “I know,” Falconer admitted. “And each day that passes will make it harder to find them. I think you men need a rest—we’ve been going all night and all day. Head on home and we’ll meet again in the morning. Are you all situated in pairs?”

  “Yes,” Waidler answered. “Jimmy comes home with me, Kramer stays with Winter, and we thought Schlager here could stay with you, boss.”

  “Well, I’d like to be able to agree to that, Mister Schlager, but unfortunately, I can’t,” Falconer said. “I have a few things to do overnight.”

  “But, boss, you said yourself that we need to travel in pairs all the time,” Waidler said. “It’s dangerous for you to be alone with all this going on.”

  “I know it’s not optimal, but it just has to be that way for tonight,” Falconer said. “Don’t worry—I’ll stick with the crowds. It’ll be all right.”

  “All right, then,” Waidler said. “Schlager can also join us at my place.”

  “Thanks,” Falconer said. “Then I’ll see you all tomorrow morning. Get some rest—we’re going to need it.”

  The men then grabbed their jackets and hats and slowly shuffled out of the room, leaving Falconer and a few other late-night detectives working silently at their desks as the hands on the clock affixed to the wall over Falconer’s desk slowly moved towards seven o’clock at night.

  108

  Falconer approached the swanky Millennium Club on 5th Avenue at 8:00 PM and was stopped at the front entrance by a large doorman, who asked if he was a member.

  “No,” Falconer said, showing his badge. “Police.”

  “Oh, I see,” the doorman said, looking down at the badge. “So, is this something that I can help you with?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Falconer said.

  “Well, I think I’m going to need some sort of an idea of why you’re here, sir,” the doorman said.

  “What you need to know,” Falconer said, stepping closer to the man, “is that you’re getting damned close to getting hauled in for obstructing an officer. Now step aside or I’ll have you in The Tombs in the next twenty minutes.”

  “Hey, it’s okay,” the doorman stuttered. “No offense meant here, officer—just trying to do my job.”

  “I get it,” Falconer said, “but as I said, I’m on police business from police headquarters and I need to enter this building—got it? And it’s Detective Sergeant.”

  “Right, understood, detective sergeant,” the man said, moving aside. “Sorry to trouble you.”

  Falconer brushed past him, walked up the front steps, and moved into the lobby of the grand building. He was immediately greeted by the sight of lush, elegant, wood-paneled walls stretching high up to a vaulted ceiling, with two, sweeping, marble staircases leading up to a ballroom. He could see some smartly dressed people loitering at the top of the staircases and heard a speaker inside the ballroom bellowing to a crowd that was laughing and applauding intermittently.

  Moving deliberately up one of the staircases, he arrived at the top and saw some of the tuxedo-clad men look over and stare at him. He disregarded their befuddled looks and moved over to one of the entrances leading into the large, glistening ballroom that was filled with hundreds of well-heeled diners. Stepping inside, he decided to walk over to a long bar to his left that was filled with various guests eagerly seeking to refill their glasses.

  As he stopped at the bar and leaned back against it, he looked over at the raised table at the end of the room where a dozen or so distinguished-looking men were sitting and he saw that the speaker was Walter Bliss, dressed in evening finery and standing at a small lectern positioned on top of the table directly at its middle. Bliss was in the middle of a campaign speech, Falconer surmised, and the crowd of affluent supporters sitting at the many round tables covered with expensive silverware and aged bottles of wine seemed completely enraptured by his presentation, smiling and clapping whenever the millionaire made a particularly biting remark or caustic observation. Falconer pulled out a cigarillo and lit it, listening intently to the railroad mogul’s words.

  “We’ve decided to answer the call to public service,” Bliss said, “because the state right now is in terrible shape, and we’ve got to get back to where we used to be, when we weren’t overrun by these hordes of immigrants who can’t even speak a word of English and bring in their filth, their crime, and their little children who run around like rats in the streets. Did you ever see them? These kids? They’re not in school, people—they literally just run around, stealing, pickpocketing, causing mischief, and they just ruin the city for normal people. It’s a disgrace and we are going to put an end to it.”

  The people cheered again, and Bliss had to pause, smiling back at his fervent supporters. Then, as the applause quieted down, he continued. “But, of course,” he said, “there are those who don’t want our great country to get back to where it was.”

  Falconer heard the crowd groan audibly.

  “Oh, yes,” Bliss said. “They want to tear down this great country and cause general mayhem. They are not real Americans—they’re Reds and traitors, in fact—and they want to harm us with their schemes and criminal enterprises. Like the police—did you hear this one? They’ve got a bunch of so-called detectives down at headquarters who actually tried to accuse me falsely of being a part of some mysterious cult. Can you believe that, ladies and gentlemen?”

  The crowd started to boo and hiss, and Falconer could feel their anger rising.

  “That’s right,” Bliss continued, raising his voice even more. “These dirty cops are trying to upend my campaign already—it’s very clear. They are trying to defeat us with their false claims and made-up stories, but they won’t succeed. They won’t succeed at all because of good people like you—good Americans who love our flag and love our great heritage.”

  The people erupted with applause, and Falconer looked around the room and realized that Bliss was much more than a just a celebrity millionaire who appeared regularly in the society pages of the newspapers. He was also a skilled manipulator and a self-righteous con man. Falconer had come across such men in the past—men who
knew how to play on people’s hopes and dreams and fears, and who would exploit these vulnerabilities to enrich themselves. Those men were troublesome, but this man who stood up on the dais was much more: he was dangerous.

  He stamped out his cigarillo in a crystal ashtray lying on the bar and started walking towards the exit. Moving past several tables, he then saw several men coming into the ballroom from the hallway, one of whom was Bliss’ son, George. Dressed impeccably in an expensive tuxedo and sporting his neatly combed, dark hair, the younger Bliss walked up to Falconer and smiled. “You’re Falconer, right?” he asked. “Yeah, it’s you. I’m wondering why you’re here, Falconer, after your bogus investigation got thrown in the dustbin. Are you here to apologize to my father maybe? Make up for your past ineptitude and ask for forgiveness?”

  Falconer stared at Bliss for several seconds and then slowly walked up to him, stopping just inches from the shorter man’s face. “Now why would you know something like that, Bliss?” Falconer asked. “The halting of an investigation. That’s not something that’s known or out in the papers, so I’m wondering if you’ve been in touch with someone in my department. Maybe even a police commissioner perhaps? Is that what happened?”

  Bliss just smiled. “Nice try, Falconer, but it is well known at this point,” he said. “Sorry, but you’re fast becoming the biggest joke in town—a fool of a detective who just isn’t good enough to play with the big boys. So good luck dealing with drunks and tramps on your beat—we need cops to patrol the dirty streets of the Lower East Side, too.”

  Falconer grinned. “I’m going to enjoy bringing you down, Bliss, as well as your two-bit con man father. Until then.”

  He tipped his hat, shoved Bliss aside with his shoulder, and headed towards the staircase.

  “Hey, Falconer!” Bliss said from behind him. Falconer turned and looked back.

  “You might want to be careful out there,” Bliss said, smiling slightly. “You offended a lot of people with how you treated my father recently, and they might be a little angry.”

  Falconer stood for a moment and then turned and walked down the staircase towards the street.

  109

  On the journey uptown to his apartment building, Falconer thought of what the younger Bliss had said to him back at the campaign dinner about being careful. George Bliss was, like his father had been earlier in his career, a pampered rich boy who took enjoyment in mocking others and feeling superior. But he was always careful to not go over the line. He had uttered his words to Falconer ostensibly as a helpful warning, but it was really a veiled threat—a promise of things to come.

  Falconer didn’t need to be warned, though. He knew they would be coming soon, as they had come for Goldman, Penwill, Houllier, and Levine. They had sent a clear message: “We will eliminate anyone in our way and will stop at nothing.” And so, as he stood on the sparsely populated cable car traveling uptown to his apartment during the late hour, he remained ready—ready for the assassins who were lurking out in the night, bent on removing all impediments to their corrupt, darkened vision.

  The cable car finally came to his stop, and he hopped off, ready at any minute to draw his .45 revolver from his shoulder holster or his other handgun secreted in his pocket. He looked around the intersection as the car rambled off towards the north and saw a few people walking on the shadowy sidewalks, and others gazing out their open windows high over the street. He started walking towards his building about a hundred yards up the block on his right, and passed several locked-up stores and cafes, and the dark alleyways that separated the buildings on the block.

  Scanning the scene with his eyes that darted to the left and right, and also to his rear occasionally, he saw no one of note, and so he kept walking with the expectation now that it would not be this night—there would be no confrontation with The Fall and he would arrive at his apartment door and get a respite from the deadly cat-and-mouse game that this had become.

  As he got closer to his building’s entrance, he saw a couple of lamplighters up ahead, standing below one of the street’s gas lamps, an elongated pole in one of the men’s hands and a ladder held over the shoulder of the other. As he walked by them, they looked at him briefly, with caps pulled down low over their brows, and they nodded, and he nodded back and kept walking.

  And then, the thought came to him.

  It’s after 9:00 PM and those lamps are never lit this late in the evening.

  He turned quickly, removing his revolver from his side, and saw the men dropping their pole and ladder and extracting something from their pockets. He was quick with his gun, but they were just as quick, and, as he shot off a round at one of them, he dove to his right to shield himself behind an old cart that was parked on the street. He heard the report of their guns as he flew through the air and landed with a painful thud behind the cart, and he instantly got up on his knees and peered around the cart, searching for them. One was running away, holding his upper arm with his other hand, obviously wounded. The other was crouched down and sprinting towards an alleyway next to the closest building.

  Falconer took aim at the dark figure right before he disappeared into the alley’s entrance and pulled the trigger. The man stumbled to the sidewalk and Falconer knew that he had hit him. The stricken suspect nonetheless got up onto his hands and knees and, groaning in pain, crawled away. Falconer stood up and, with gun at the ready, trotted after him. Approaching the alley’s entrance very carefully, he peered around the corner of the building and saw the man, still crawling in pain and unarmed, inching his way deeper into the dark tunnel between the two adjacent buildings.

  Falconer was upon him in seconds and slammed the man to the ground with a well-placed foot between his shoulder blades.

  “Agh!” the man yelled out.

  “Turn over,” Falconer said, but the man just wheezed and ignored the command.

  “I said, turn over!” Falconer said louder, kicking the man in his side.

  “Ow, goddamn it!” the man yelled out, rolling over onto his back. “You son of a bitch!”

  He was around thirty years old, with large, dark eyes and black hair, and, in Falconer’s mind, appeared to have the crazed look of a lunatic.

  “You’re with Cadere, aren’t you, pal?” Falconer asked, his gun pointed at the man’s head.

  “To hell with you, Falconer,” the man answered, smiling.

  “Well, you know my name, so you’ve answered my question, frankly,” Falconer said. “So, where do you have my friends hidden?”

  “Um…in Nellie Bly’s closet,” the man replied, smiling again.

  “So, you’re a comedian, are you?” Falconer said. “I see. That’s fine.”

  BLAM!

  The bullet tore into the man’s knee and he screamed out in agony as Falconer pointed his gun at the other knee.

  “I asked you a question,” Falconer said. “What have you all done with my friends, Miss Bly, Penwill, Houllier, Levine, and Emma Goldman? I need an answer.”

  The man gritted his teeth and then spat at Falconer. “Never, you pathetic cop,” he sputtered. “You’re done, Falconer. Someone else will visit you very soon—trust me.”

  “I get it,” Falconer said. “You want to protect someone. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  BLAM!

  The man screamed out again in pain as he reached down for his other leg, now bleeding from a new gunshot wound. His cries reverberated throughout the cavernous alley, and people began to peer out of their windows, so Falconer grabbed him by his collar and dragged him several feet behind a row of large barrels.

  “All right, one last time, my friend,” he said to him. “Where are my friends? Are they alive? Maybe this one will convince you.”

  He pointed the gun directly at the man’s groin and spoke again: “You might be willing to give up the use of your legs. How about this?”

  The man looked down in t
error and then back up at Falconer and finally held up his hands. “Wait! Wait! All right! All right! I’ll talk…”

  Falconer lowered his revolver and took out a cigarillo. Lighting it, he looked down at the man again. “Tell me where my friends are, if they’re even alive,” he said. “This is your one chance.”

  “I’m not sure where they are right now, but they are alive,” the man said, groaning as he spoke. “They don’t tell me these details, but I do know they’ll be bringing them to the headquarters on Friday at 9:00 PM to decide what to do with them.”

  “The headquarters,” Falconer said. “You mean beneath the church on Christopher Street?”

  “Yeah,” the man said. “9:00 PM this Friday—they’ll be deciding what to do with them then. I swear, that’s all I know.”

  “All right,” Falconer said. “You’ll be taken into custody tonight and given medical attention. But if you’ve somehow given me a load of lies, it’ll be the end of you, understand? We’ll make you disappear from The Tombs.”

  The man nodded. “I swear, it’s the truth,” he said. “But don’t tell them I told you—they’ll kill me. They don’t mess around.”

  “I can tell, pal,” Falconer said. “I’ll be right back with help.”

  He turned and strode back towards the street, leaving the stricken assassin lying in the darkness and lingering gun smoke of the bleak alley.

  Wednesday, October 5, 1892

  110

  Falconer sat at a round table in Brackley’s Tavern joined by Waidler, Halloran, Winter, Kramer, and Schlager. He had instructed them to meet there instead of at the Detective Bureau to avoid any further leaks from the unknown mole who was certain to be operating still inside the Mulberry Street police headquarters. He had just finished telling his story of the previous night’s events near his apartment building and wanted to formulate a plan of attack against The Fall.