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

by William L. DeAndrea

  “Well, Mr. Hand, I was saying it ain’t so much I recognized him, it’s that he recognized me. He wouldn’t have done what he did if he didn’t. Hell, hadn’t been for your man Baxter running out of the house and pulling the horse to a halt, I would have been minced meat, and my man, too. That Baxter’s a strong one. Too bad you seen him first.

  “Anyways, that Muldoon has seen too much. This time I got to kill him. You follow me? Bad business, otherwise.”

  Hand nodded. He could see Sperling’s point—Muldoon’s stories of the attempts on his life could make things very uncomfortable for Eagle Jack. And he’d be happier with the Irishman out of the way, too—Cleo had been in the front room today, according to Baxter. If only he could make the Rabbi see all this. If only he even knew how to make contact with him.

  As if in answer to this unspoken thought, the telephone rang. He could hear Baxter answer it. Sperling looked at him while he waited for the butler to summon him. It was a short wait.

  “Telephone, sir,” Baxter said expressionlessly. “I think it’s the Rabbi.”

  The millionaire took a deep breath, and went to answer the phone.

  He returned a few minutes later, shaking his head.

  “Sir?” Baxter asked. “What’s the lay?” Sperling wanted to know.

  “That Hebrew bastard,” Hand said, “is a hateful, blackmailing scum, but he has a brain. He does have a brain. This is what we’ll do.”

  The Rabbi’s suggestion had indeed been brilliant. Peter Baxter, alone in his secret, could barely keep from smiling as he heard it.

  The heart of the story was to be true—that T. Avery Hand, eminent industrialist, had hired Eagle Jack Sperling, for protection. This was to be told to the police—Captain Ozias Herkimer for preference, though it was not his precinct, and strings would have to be pulled. Herkimer (or whoever) was to be told, however, that the protection was not for Hand’s person, but for his property. He was after all, a wealthy man the Mansion Burglars had not yet victimized, and he was leaving town overnight to be sure a present that was in preparation for his bride-to-be—a custom sidesaddle a craftsman in Riverdale was making—was finished and true to what he had wanted.

  No sooner had he hired Sperling than a man known to the security expert as Dennis Muldoon had stolen his carriage. Chase had proven futile.

  “I don’t get it,” Sperling had said.

  “Don’t you see? Muldoon is already in disgrace with the police over the woman. When they catch him as a carriage thief, what matter what he says? They’ll think he’s lying to protect his own skin. And now, we needn’t care who knows you and your ten men are staying here.”

  Baxter noted that in his enthusiasm for the plan, the millionaire had forgotten completely that it was to protect him from the Rabbi that he had hired Eagle Jack in the first place.

  “Well, I must get things started. I’ll call Herkimer, then go up to Riverdale in a spare carriage and find a sidesaddle somewhere. Baxter, you take the damaged carriage and dispose of it. Sperling, you stand guard.”

  “I still think I ought to kill him,” the bald man said.

  “This is better. I want no more killing before my wedding. Whatever else she may be, Essie May is very sensitive.”

  “Mr. Hand?”

  “Yes, Baxter?”

  “After I dispose of the carriage, may I have the rest of the evening off?”

  “Of course. Sperling, no one is to bother the young lady upstairs, do you understand?”

  Eagle Jack was hurt. “My men are hand picked, Mister.”

  “Very well. On your way, Baxter.”

  And Baxter had gone, ditching the carriage somewhere along the Boulevard, north of Coontown. Walking back now, he smiled. His comrade did have a brain, a brain that not only had calmed the fears of Hand and Sperling, but had seen to it that Baxter got the night off.

  Now he had plenty of time.

  Time to check the placement of the dynamite, to see that his measures to keep the water from seeping in had been effective. Time to test-run some lengths of fuse. Time to place the final charges.

  Time, most of all, to imagine what it would be like Sunday afternoon, when he set off those carefully shaped and timed charges to blow a large chunk out of the north wall of the Croton Reservoir. When the underwater charges behind them would lift the twenty million gallons or so of water into a veritable tidal wave. When that massive wall of water would go crashing across Forty-second Street onto Mr. T. Avery Hand’s front-lawn wedding, washing him, his bride, Mr. William Jennings Bryan, and all the other capitalists into oblivion, the way a thunderstorm washed dead leaves and horse leavings into the sewers.

  VIII.

  “What are you gonna do with it when you finish, Muldoon?” Brian O’Leary asked.

  “It’s not for me to say. I paid for it with Mr. Roosevelt’s emergency money. I hope he doesn’t take a mind to flay me alive for it later.” Muldoon had been busy in the house since he’d left Headquarters. The first thing he’d done was recruit some help.

  “Roscoe, can’t we be gettin’ there a bit faster? The boy is drivin’ me crazy with his questions.”

  The one-eyed man looked down from the trap into the rented carriage. “Sure we could; this is a good nag they give us. But, in my experience, you want to crack a crib, you wait till the sun goes down. Won’t be long now.”

  Muldoon could see he was right. Fifth Avenue was visible, but only in the purplish light of dusk. He could hear crickets chirping, and he saw the lamplighters at work. They reminded him of Mr. Harvey. He had learned from Mrs. Sturdevant that Harvey was going to be kept at a sanitarium on Staten Island until they got him dried out. It struck Muldoon as a good idea.

  “You know,” Roscoe’s voice rumbled down, “I don’t want to keep harping on this, but I think I’d feel a lot better if the boss knew what we was doing.”

  “Don’t you think I do, too?” Muldoon punctuated his remark by worrying another fraction of an inch off the end of his fingernail. There wasn’t much of it left. He’d be reduced to nibbling the ends of his coat sleeves before the night was over if things kept up at this rate.

  “But blast it, Roscoe, there’s no way out of it. They won’t let me in to see him, they won’t let you in to see him, what with your havin’ a record and all. We tried sendin’ Brian, and that didn’t get anywhere, either. They take those meetin’s seriously.”

  “We could have set fire to the building,” Brian said, reproachfully. “You should have let me do it. I know how. All you have to do is—”

  “Shut up before I whip your bottom.” Muldoon had another go at his nail. “Roscoe, let’s at least get to where we’re parkin’ the carriage so I can stretch me legs. It’s uncomfortable with this thing in here.”

  The “thing” was a tandem bicycle, the Zephyr Double Jewel, forty-five dollars, cash on the barrelhead. (“I can’t believe it,” Brian had breathed later, “you just opened your purse and plunked down forty-five dollars.”) The salesman had told Muldoon it’d been made by a couple of brothers named White or Bright, or something like that, out in Dayton, Ohio, but that cut no ice with Muldoon. All he cared about was that it was solid built and quiet.

  “I bet,” Brian mused, running his grubby hands over the shiny black enamel, “that Mr. Roosevelt’s kids all have bicycles already.”

  “Even if they do, what the blazes would you be doin’ with a tandem?” It was an inane topic, but Muldoon needed something to keep his nerves from feeding on themselves.

  “Rich Danny Frey has one of these. He rides girls uptown on it, you know, all the way to Central Park and like that. Then they let him—”

  “There is never,” Muldoon pronounced, “goin’ to be any makin’ a gentleman of you, I can see that.” Muldoon proceeded to lecture the boy—he felt he had to carry on the work started by the Commissioner. Muldoon told Brian about his own misspent youth, using his own exploits as Bad Example. Brian listened carefully, discarded the morals, and wound up with an excellent c
ollection of new techniques to try on the neighborhood girls next time he had a chance.

  “Okay,” Roscoe said, bringing the carriage to a halt. “Here we are, Fifth and Fortieth.” The southeast corner of the Croton Reservoir loomed high above them.

  Muldoon and the boy got out, and lifted the bicycle to the ground. The officer looked up at stars twinkling in a rich indigo sky. “Dark enough, Roscoe?”

  “Too much moon for my taste, but I guess it’ll do.”

  “Okay,” the young man said briskly. “Let’s get goin’ then. Brian.”

  The boy could sense the time for banter was over, “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Do exactly what I told you before. Guard this carriage, get the horse turned around, then keep him happy and ready to go. Give us a half hour. You got that watch?”

  “Yes, sir.” Brian reached into a pocket and showed it to him.

  “Good. Take care of it, it’s Roscoe’s. If I ain’t back in a half hour, get out of here, as quickly as you’re able. Take the carriage if you’re up to handlin’ it, but one way or another, get downtown and get hold of Mr. Roosevelt, pronto, because all hell will have broken loose by then.”

  “I can handle the carriage.”

  “Good,” Muldoon said. Roscoe said, “Sure he can, nothing to it.”

  “But what if they don’t let me in to see him, like last time?”

  “Then,” Muldoon said grimly, “you have me personal permission to light fire to Headquarters. Burn down the whole damn Mulberry Street if you’ve a mind to, but get him out of there, get to him, and get us help, ’cause we’ll be needin’ it. That’s a half hour from right now. Look at the watch. Good. Thirty minutes. Got that?”

  “I’ve got it,” the boy said, closing the watch.

  “Good. We’re countin’ on you, son,” Muldoon said.

  “I won’t let you down,” Brian said.

  “We know you won’t. Don’t we, Roscoe?”

  “Damn right. Kid could work a job with me any time.”

  Brian’s thin chest swelled with pride. He felt prouder still when each of the two men solemnly shook his hand before they climbed on the tandem and pedaled silently into the night.

  IX.

  The bicycle was leaning against the fence on the Fifth Avenue side of the property of T. Avery Hand. Roscoe was picking the lock of the side gate. Muldoon was standing guard. Every once in a while, he’d cast a nervous glance down the block at the handsome home Captain Ozias Herkimer had bought with his wife’s money. All Muldoon needed was for Herkimer to catch him in the midst of a burglary.

  “They got a dog,” the one-eyed cracksman whispered.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Muldoon replied.

  “Me neither. But anybody with a lock this cheesy on their gate got a dog. It’s like a rule.”

  “Well, I’ll see to the handlin’ of any dog.” Muldoon pulled something from his pocket, something he thought he’d pick up while he was spending the Commissioner’s money that afternoon.

  It was a pistol, a beauty, a .38 caliber blue-metal Hopkins & Allan Shell-Ejecting, Double-Action, Self-Cocking, Hinged Revolver, seventeen ounces, three-and-a-half-inch barrel. Four dollars and fifteen cents, but worth it if he needed to use it. Plus sixty-nine cents for a box of cartridges.

  “No you won’t,” Roscoe said. “All we need is a gun shot out here. That poor gal is dead the minute you was to shoot. I’ll handle the dog. If there’s only one, that is. If there’s more, well, you got to shoot. And we got to face the consequences.”

  “If you don’t mind me sayin’ so, Roscoe, this is one hell of a time to be tellin’ me all this.”

  “Well, I’m used to workin’ with professionals, know what I mean? No offense. Ah, got the lock. Okay, follow me. Walk soft.”

  Muldoon obliged, wishing as he entered the grounds that he’d thought to bring along a big stick while he was at it.

  “Here, doggie,” Roscoe crooned. “He-e-ere, doggie.”

  “Are you out of your everlovin’ mind, man?”

  Roscoe shrugged. “We gotta face him sooner or later.” He let out a low whistle, then began crooning again.

  It worked. Muldoon could hear heavy panting and low ominous growls. He thought he could make out a massive, grey shape crouched against the darkness.

  “He’s got to spring at me before I can do anything,” Roscoe explained. The explanation did nothing to help Muldoon’s disintegrating nerves. Give him a good, old-fashioned street fight any day.

  “Why don’t you,” the patrolman suggested, “make a noise like a cat?”

  Roscoe turned to him wearing a look of disgust. “You mean, say ‘meow’?”

  “Look out!” Muldoon snapped.

  “What—?” That was a dog who hated cats. He sprang, coming at them with fangs like icicles and paws like manhole covers. To Muldoon, it looked like a flying rhinoceros, or an omnibus with claws.

  Roscoe was almost taken unawares, and he almost died for it. As it was, one of the mastiff’s fangs caught his prominent nose and ripped it open up the left nostril.

  But Roscoe, meanwhile, had managed to grasp the animal’s paws while it was still on the rise. He then lifted his arms straight up as he pivoted on his heels, adding the strength of his boxer’s arms and the speed of his spin to the already considerable momentum of the dog’s charge.

  Then, when the bewildered mastiff was lifted high above Roscoe’s head, the one-eyed man whipped his arms down and bent his body, slamming the dog on the ground across the protruding root of one of Hand’s willow trees.

  There was a sickening crack. The dog yelped, then lay motionless, its back broken.

  Muldoon had never seen anything like it. He gave his companion his handkerchief to hold to his bleeding nose. “And hardly a sound, either. You’ll have to be teachin’ me how to do that, friend.”

  “Nothing to it,” Roscoe said, grinning around the reddened cloth. “I won’t teach you the nose part, though. Fellow’s gotta have some secrets.”

  “You all right?”

  Roscoe waved a hand. “Got lots worse than this in the ring and come back to win the bout.”

  They made their way across the grounds to the house in silence.

  X.

  They had agreed there was to be no talking once they entered the house, so Muldoon tapped Roscoe on the shoulder and pointed in the direction he should go to leave the pantry-kitchen area and find the stairs. If they could leave the house with the girl without alerting anyone else, so much the better.

  There were voices in the house, voices Muldoon recognized. Eagle Jack’s men, apparently making free with the host’s liquor. Muldoon heard them talking about how this was the easiest job they’d ever done. If they’d had a sentry at the back door, Muldoon reflected, it would have been.

  As it was, they were bunched in the parlor, so the intruders had a clear path to the staircase. Muldoon had some idea of the layout of the house, from the daylight study he’d done earlier, and besides, he was the one Cleo would recognize, so he climbed the stairs to the top while Roscoe pulled a weighted sap from his jacket pocket and stopped just above the shadow line to keep watch.

  The hoodlum guards hadn’t been completely remiss in their duty—one had been posted outside what had to be the girl’s door. The man, just past a boy, really, one of Sperling’s newest recruits, was seated on a wooden chair; there was a bottle of something red and a glass on the floor beside him. He was a big kid, with a low forehead and shoulders as wide across as those on Monsieur Bartholdi’s statue out in the Harbor. He wouldn’t be a pushover in a tussle.

  Muldoon decided to employ strategy. The officer was still standing in a dark patch, below floor level, and the guard wasn’t paying any mind to anything but his dime novel, anyway. From the way he was reading it, you might have thought it was the winners of next week’s races instead of one of Mr. Horatio Alger’s Luck-and-Pluck stories. Muldoon squinted and read the title—it was one he hadn’t seen yet. He’d have to ask List
erdale to get him a copy.

  Muldoon shook his head to clear it. It was time to get down to the matter at hand. The young officer reached into his trouser pocket and clenched his fist tightly around his change, so it wouldn’t jingle, then pulled it forth. He slowly opened his hand, then selected a dime from the coins and replaced the rest, again taking care they shouldn’t jingle.

  As quietly as possible, he ascended the remaining few stairs. He held his breath—to be detected now would be fatal. Muldoon bent his legs slightly, to gather strength for a quick start. Then, with an almost casual flick of his thumb, he sent the dime sailing down the corridor. It landed with a quiet “plink” a dozen feet on the other side of the door the guard was watching.

  The guard, quite naturally, started at the noise, and turned his head in the direction from which it came. That was the instant Muldoon sprang.

  “Hey!” was all the wide-shouldered boy was able to say before Muldoon knocked the wind for any further speech out of him with a hard right to the belly. He followed that by clapping a hand over the boy’s mouth and the pistol to his head. The young thug’s eyes danced with fear as they saw the gaslight of the hall lamp gleaming dully from the blue metal of the revolver.

  “One word,” Muldoon whispered urgently in the boy’s ear, “and you’ll be whistlin’ through your temples on windy days.”

  Perspiration began to bead the hoodlum’s forehead.

  “Where’s the girl?” Muldoon demanded. “In here?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Good. Open the door. Just give me the key to it, I mean.”

  The hoodlum started fumbling through his pockets.

  “And don’t be makin’ so damned much noise about it!” Muldoon hissed.

  The boy produced the keys. Muldoon took them. “That’s bein’ smart,” he said. “I’m goin’ to let go your mouth now. Not a sound, mind, or you’re as dead as I’ll be. Which won’t be doin’ you any good.”