The Lunatic Fringe: A Novel Wherein Theodore Roosevelt Meets the Pink Angel

by William L. DeAndrea

  So, when the occasion presented itself, Commissioner Roosevelt went looking for cabs with two drivers. He would just like to see the extra man jump down through the trap into the passenger compartment and try to take his money away.

  Apparently, though, all the criminal drivers had their vehicles elsewhere. The driver of the cab taken by Roosevelt and Muldoon was distressingly honest, and courteous as well, wishing the Commissioner a very good evening.

  “Actually, sir,” Muldoon told him, “I don’t think any but an honest hackie is likely to be stoppin’ for you. Even if you wasn’t the best-known man in New York, you’ll never pass for an easy mark, and easy pickin’s is what they like.”

  “I suppose you’re right, Muldoon,” the Commissioner said, as the cab approached Muldoon’s beat.

  Judging from what he could see through the small window, a person would never think anything out of the ordinary could happen in that neighborhood. There wasn’t a cop to be seen, and the crowds had gone to seek excitement in other places.

  Muldoon had calmed down considerably. In little bits, Roosevelt had put the patrolman at ease by asking him questions about himself.

  “Actually, sir,” Muldoon found himself saying, “it was me own idea to join the Force. Me mother intended me for the priesthood, God rest her. That’s how I come to be a high school graduate, you see. Many’s the time I was for leavin’ school and goin’ on to a better job at the brewery, drivin’ a wagon, maybe, like me father did, instead of workin’ the blasted graveyard shift loadin’ those gut-bustin’ hogsheads onto the drays.”

  “Well, Muldoon, I believe life must be lived strenuously; with vigor. And hard work has done you no harm. On the contrary, it has left you the legacy of a magnificent muscle structure.

  “You know, Muldoon, as a wealthy man’s son, I led a soft life in my early years, and I was a sickly, asthmatic child because of it. It wasn’t until I put myself on a schedule of vigorous exercise that I began to enjoy good health. Hard effort is a necessity, Muldoon.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, sir,” the patrolman replied, “but it’ll always be amazin’ to me that it hasn’t left me the legacy of permanent bags under me eyes. It wasn’t the workin’ that was so bad, mind, it was the not sleepin’ nights.” Muldoon sighed. “Still and all,” he said, “I’m glad I stuck it out. Seems to me as sensible for a cop to be an educated man as it is for a priest to be.”

  “How is it you came to change your mind?”

  Muldoon made a face and scratched his head. “Well, I tell folks it’s because just about the time I was to leave for the seminary, me mother and father and me younger brother, Jimmie, all took fever and died, leavin’ me alone to care for me three sisters.”

  Roosevelt held up a hand. “You needn’t speak further on the matter, Muldoon. I quite understand. My sincere sympathies.” On Valentine’s Day, 1884, Theodore Roosevelt’s mother and his wife both died. He wrote that day in his diary, “The light has gone out of my life.” And though he was very happily remarried, it was obvious much of the grief remained. Muldoon had heard it said that in the twelve years that had passed since the tragedy, Mr. Roosevelt had never once been able to bring himself to utter his first wife’s name.

  “I thank you very kindly, sir,” Muldoon said softly, “but since you’ve been so square with me, my bein’ anything less than square with you would be an insult. And I don’t intend to be insultin’ the only man I’ve met tonight who doesn’t want to parcel me straight off to the loony bin.

  “No sir. It goes without sayin’ the loss of me family members was a horrible blow, but I could have taken me Orders and still seen to the welfare of Katie and Brigid and Maureen. I hope, Commissioner, that you haven’t taken the notion that the Holy Roman Catholic Church would stand to one side watchin’ a priest’s family starvin’ to death!”

  “No, no,” the Commissioner hastened to assure him. “I never had a thought like it.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Muldoon said. “The real reason I left off tryin’ to become a priest—and I know it does me no credit to have to say it—was females.”

  “Females?”

  Muldoon shrugged helplessly. “They like me, sir. And I can’t live without ’em. All that summer I was tryin’ to prepare meself for a lifetime of service to the Lord; but every time a colleen would lower her eyelashes at me, I’d be overcome with an unholy yearnin’ to fall from grace.”

  Muldoon’s voice dropped to a whisper. “And, Commissioner, sometimes—well, sometimes I went farther than yearnin’.”

  “I am ashamed of you, Muldoon. That is disgraceful. Men are to protect and care for women, not take advantage of them. Women are not called the weaker sex on the basis of physical strength alone, you know.”

  “Oh, I agree with you completely, sir. But in all fairness to meself, I feel I should be tellin’ you that these particular women didn’t seem to be in need of any serious protectin’. And sometimes, I’m thinkin’ their weaknesses are stronger than our strength, if you follow me, sir.”

  “I do not follow you!” Roosevelt was angry, now. “You are not absolved of responsibility for a wicked deed because the woman was equally wicked!”

  You’ll never learn, will you? Muldoon asked himself. Now he had Mr. Roosevelt mad at him. He was doomed.

  “I know that, sir. But I knew that as long I was like to fall from grace, and worse, enjoy the fallin’, I had no business bein’ a priest of God.”

  “If your behavior is still the same, Muldoon,” the Commissioner barked, “you have no business being an officer of the Law! The Police Department of the City of New York is to consist of men of clear grit and finest moral fiber! I mean to have it that way, and I shall not allow anyone’s animal appetites to interfere!”

  “Sir,” Muldoon assured him, “if ever I find meself in a position where I’m like to be disgracin’ this uniform, I swear I’ll take it off immediately.”

  For the first time on record, Theodore Roosevelt was struck dumb. He sputtered for a second, then said, “Muldoon!”

  Muldoon was bewildered. “Sir?”

  The Commissioner looked at him, opened his mouth, changed his mind, and closed it again with a snap of his teeth. He polished his spectacles, replaced them, and said, “You should be married, Muldoon. It’s not unnatural for a healthy young man to think about such things. That is why God created marriage. Get married, Muldoon.”

  “I’d like to sir, but—”

  “That’s an order. See to it as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, sir,” Muldoon said, but he wondered if the Commissioner really had the authority to give an order like that. The Mayor, maybe.

  The cab horse clopped around a corner into the block where the murder (or whatever it was) had occurred.

  The evening’s strange events ran through Muldoon’s mind, and with them the gnawing fear that despite his best efforts, he had done something wrong, or unworthy. Or worse yet, that he actually had gone insane.

  He fixed his eyes on the front of Mrs. Sturdevant’s building as though he expected it to gather up its foundation and run away. It didn’t, but something happened that surprised him as much.

  “I’ll be a blasted Chinaman!” Muldoon exclaimed.

  “What is it, Muldoon?” his superior demanded.

  “Old Mr. Harvey is goin’ out again. I don’t believe it.”

  “Harvey? The drunkard?”

  “Yes sir, if you’ll recall me tellin’ you, I had Mrs. Sturdevant pour him into bed before I went to Listerdale’s.”

  “I remember,” the Commissioner said. “But how can you recognize the man at this distance?” He squinted through his spectacles.

  “It’s the height of him, sir,” Muldoon replied. “He’s such a little bit of a man. And his clothin’. I’m sure you agree there’s no mistakin’ that jacket.”

  “No indeed,” Roosevelt said. “Ha! And the press calls me a fancy dresser.”

  The figure in the loud coat walked strangely, even for an
old man, but there was nothing of the usual stagger about it. It was a faster walk than Mr. Harvey usually managed; the coat was around the corner and out of sight within a few seconds.

  Muldoon assumed the first stop would be Crandall’s flat, but Roosevelt let the driver keep going until they came to Listerdale’s Literary Emporium.

  “We’ll confirm that part of your story first, Muldoon,” he said. They went upstairs to Listerdale’s quarters, above the Emporium, and knocked on the door.

  Listerdale was still awake and dressed. “A new enterprise demands a lot of extra planning,” he explained. Muldoon performed introductions.

  “Roosevelt!” Listerdale exclaimed, echoing Muldoon.

  Roosevelt laughed. “Certainly I’m not cause enough for all that astonishment, am I?”

  “What? Oh, no, forgive me. It’s just that I’ve heard so much about you. I’ve read many of your books. I sell them in the store. I must say, as a former schoolmaster, you make history, especially military history, horribly real.”

  “Horribly?” The Commissioner was upset.

  “I’m sorry. No reflection on your writing intended, as I said, you make it live. But I’m in agreement with General Sherman when he says ‘War is hell’.”

  “Sometimes, hell must be endured, Mr. Listerdale. It is glorious to conquer, even to die, in the defense of Right. It is base to ignore that responsibility. It is shared by all, and it is the sternest of all tests: the test of righteous war.”

  “Eloquently put, Mr. Roosevelt. You have carried your point.” The Commissioner acknowledged with a bow. “Tell me,” Listerdale went on, “when will Mr. Putnam publish the fourth volume of The Winning of the West? I have one customer who says he can’t wait to discover how it turns out.”

  There was general laughter, then Listerdale asked how he could be of help. The Commissioner told him what he wanted, and the bookseller obliged with an account of his meeting with Muldoon. He confirmed the patrolman’s story, up to the time Mrs. Sturdevant screamed, in every particular. Listerdale went on to say that he was acquainted with the victim, because Crandall once or twice ordered a high-quality drawing paper from him.

  “Thank you,” Roosevelt said on leaving. “I’ll see you get a copy of my book when it appears.”

  Outside, he turned to Muldoon and said, “Now we’ll see if the rest of your story holds water.”

  VIII.

  Muldoon showed the Commissioner to Crandall’s rooms and reenacted his discovery of the bodies, first the dead one in the sitting room, then the lively one in the boudoir. The Commissioner listened intently, silent except for an occasional loud, hissing inhalation.

  Muldoon guessed Mr. Roosevelt made that noise because his asthma still caused him some trouble, and he preferred to hiss the air in through his toothy grin than to hint at infirmity by panting or wheezing. Muldoon kept his guess to himself, of course.

  “... And there you have it, sir,” he concluded. “The seemin’ of it is she vanished into the atmosphere like a human camphor flake.”

  Commissioner Roosevelt sniffed, as though testing the air for fumes. “Let’s first make sure she was here at all, Muldoon.” Slowly, being careful of the fabric of his trousers, he knelt beside the canopied bed.

  Not knowing anything better to do, Muldoon knelt, too, but it struck him as an odd hour to be saying his prayers. “Mr. Roosevelt?” he said.

  “Be still, Muldoon.”

  “Yes, sir. I was just wonderin’ what it is we’re at.”

  “I have no idea what you’re doing. I am casting for a trail.”

  “Under the mattress, sir?”

  For the first time, Roosevelt looked up from his work. “Officer, I know you are aware of my ranch in Dakota. Listerdale told me you have at least perused my book, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman; were you also aware that in my time in the Bad Lands I have served as a deputy sheriff?”

  Lord, Muldoon thought. Thirty-eight years old, and already he’d been a state legislator, a Western rancher and lawman, a book writer, and the Head Policeman of all of New York City. Whatever was he going to find to do with the rest of his life?

  “In fact, sir, I wasn’t aware you’d done any sheriffin’. But bless me, if you’d taken the trouble to talk it up more, I’ll warrant you’d have made a better showin’ when you stood election for Mayor in eighty-six.”

  “That’s irrelevant, Muldoon,” Roosevelt snapped. The Commissioner had finished third in a three-man race, behind Abram Hewitt, the Democrat, and Henry George, the radical originator of the single-tax movement. It was not Roosevelt’s favorite memory.

  “The point is this: If I am not too proud to kneel in mud to look for traces of a cattle rustler, I am not too proud to kneel on the carpeting to look for traces of a missing woman.” He gave his attention back to the bed. “Aha!” he exclaimed. “See this, Muldoon.”

  The Commissioner was pointing a strong, square finger at a juncture in the bed frame. A strand of stiff fiber was caught there. Roosevelt plucked it free. “Hemp,” he said. “You described a coarse rope, did you not, Muldoon? Tied around the woman and the bed? Well, here’s evidence of your sanity. A coarse rope has been tied on this bed, and tightly enough to force a strand of it between the wood.”

  For the first time in hours, Muldoon drew an un-sour breath. “I thank you, sir, with all me heart. ’Twas a work of genius; you’ve saved both me honor and me hide.”

  “Nonsense,” Roosevelt barked, though he looked pleased. “It’s simply a matter of experience. Having been in the West, I know something of rope. In fact, if I can find a few more fibers, I may be able to say precisely what sort of rope this is, and that in itself may be the start of a trail.”

  “I hope so, sir,” Muldoon said. “And if you don’t mind, you’ve started me thinkin’. There’s something else I’d like to be checkin’ if I might.”

  “Bully for you! It’s high time someone showed some initiative in this matter. Go to it, Muldoon.”

  Muldoon went to the window, leaned backward out over the sill, and surveyed the wall above the fire escape for marks of the bullet the Pink Angel had fired at him, but to no avail. What with the effects of age, weather, and previous trouble in the neighborhood, those bricks might once have stood at the back of a shooting gallery.

  Muldoon sighed, and looked down at the spot in the alley where he’d last seen the girl. He remembered the kiss she blew him, and wondered what that would have felt like without sixty yards of air between her lips and his.

  An urgent whisper cut short Muldoon’s reverie. “Muldoon!”

  The constable turned to see the Commissioner standing with his back pressed to the wall alongside the door. He signaled Muldoon to join him.

  Someone was creeping across the outer room. Muldoon could hear it now, too. He reached for his revolver, then cursed silently when he remembered it wasn’t there.

  The footsteps drew nearer, then stopped just outside the door. Roosevelt set his jaw. Muldoon held his breath.

  The doorknob wiggled and started to turn, but the intruder’s nerve failed, and running footsteps in the opposite direction could be heard.

  “Stop him!” bellowed the Commissioner, who immediately followed his own order. He threw the door open, catching Muldoon neatly on the point of the chin, and sprinted after the prowler.

  Muldoon shook his head to rattle the stars away from his vision, then ran to follow. From the hallway just outside the sitting room came a great angry sputtering from Mr. Roosevelt, and equally great angry screams from a very indignant landlady.

  Muldoon broke it up. “Mrs. Sturdevant,” he began.

  “Please, madam, I—oof!” said Mr. Roosevelt.

  “Take that!” said the landlady.

  “Mrs. Sturdevant, please. Stop this. It’s me. Officer Muldoon. Dennis. Look.” She finally did, but only after Muldoon took her by the chin and twisted her neck to a position where she had to see him.

  “Dennis!” she exclaimed. “I demand you put this ... this
monster under arrest!”

  The Commissioner made a choking noise.

  “I’m afraid I can’t be doin’ that, ma’am,” Muldoon said.

  “I’d like to know why not! He attacked me! He attacked a decent, God-fearing woman in her own house!” She shook a meaty fist. “You arrest him, Dennis. I demand it!”

  Muldoon took a deep breath. “Mrs. Sturdevant, I’m afraid we’ve all been laborin’ under a bit of a misapprehension,” and he presented the Commissioner to the landlady.

  “Delighted, madam. Hah! Pardon me. I shame to admit it, but I took you for a criminal, as I suppose you did us. I do apologize. Muldoon and I wanted not to disturb you.”

  “Not disturb me! Sneaking in and rummaging around that way? Still, you’ve been more, civil, I have to admit, than that captain. Hmpf, I hope Dennis told you about him.”

  Commissioner Roosevelt promised to speak to Captain Herkimer, and informed the lady he needed to return to Crandall’s rooms. She grumbled some, but at last gave her blessing.

  He was only there a moment, removing the last of the hemp fibers from the bed, and placing them with the rest in the back of his pocket watch.

  “Tell me, Mrs. Sturdevant, how did you happen to know Muldoon and I were here at all? As I implied, we tried not to make any undue noise.”

  “If you made noise, I wouldn’t have taken such a fright! I heard you only because I happened to pause just outside the door. You see, I have a batch of bread going—I like my bread fresh on a Sunday morning—and I thought I’d come up and check on poor Mr. Harvey.”

  “An excellent idea. Have you,” the Commissioner grinned, “managed to accomplish your mission?”

  “Why, no.”

  “Then let’s see to it immediately.”

  Mrs. Sturdevant preceded them across the hall. She paused outside the old man’s room. “Hear him whimpering?” she asked.

  Muldoon sniffed the air. “I hear somethin’ cracklin’ in there, too.