American Lightning

by Howard Blum

  He arrived in Seattle without a predetermined course of action, but one quickly developed. His first stop was at police headquarters, and of course, the chief was only to happy to meet with William J. Burns. Without delay, Billy was escorted to the chief’s office.

  We don’t have a lead on the bombing, the chief told him as the two men shared a drink. And, truth is, Mr. Burns, I doubt we’ll ever solve this case.

  Did you try finding the source of the dynamite? Billy suggested casually. He did not want to seem as if he were telling the Seattle authorities how to manage their investigation. He simply explained that approach had moved the Los Angeles case forward.

  That’s the problem, the chief complained. It’s as easy to buy dynamite in this city as it is to buy a beer. Seattle, he explained, was the West Coast teaching center for the construction trade. We got maybe a dozen trade schools that’ll sell you dynamite and then show you how to use it. Whoever planted the bomb could’ve been enrolled in any of them. But there’s no way of knowing. It’s not that we have a name, someone to look for, the chief complained to his famous visitor.

  But Billy had a name. In fact, he had three—Bryce, Leonard, and Morris. And he had their descriptions, too.

  He went from school to school. Then he discovered that “J. B. Bryce” had been enrolled last summer in the Seattle Trade School for a week-long blasting course. The teacher, J. D. Waggoner, gave Billy a description of his pupil that left no doubt: He was the same Bryce who had purchased the 80 percent dynamite from the Giant Powder company. The dynamite used in Los Angeles.

  Bryce? Sure, I remember him well, the teacher told Billy.

  Now why is that? You must have dozens of students going through here each week, the detective challenged. Instinct made him wary. The worst kind of witness was not the man who couldn’t remember, but the one who invented memories.

  Waggoner wasn’t put off by the rebuke in Billy’s tone. Patiently he explained that in addition to teaching demolition, he also owned a shop that sold explosives to the construction trade. Bryce had come to him to buy a length of coil. He planned to blow some big rocks and needed the coil to set off a spark that would ignite the dynamite.

  What’s so unusual about that? Billy wondered.

  Nothing, Waggoner agreed. It was just that Bryce had shown him a small can containing two sticks of dynamite. The can was marked “Portland.” Now that surprised me, Waggoner said. I didn’t know they made dynamite down in Portland, and I told Bryce that.

  Not Portland, Oregon, Bryce had corrected. Portland, Indiana.

  An instant connection was made in Billy’s mind. Bryce had purchased dynamite from the very place where J. W. McGraw had bought the explosives for the Peoria attack. Bryce and McGraw had to be two different men—their descriptions did not match at all. But somehow, Billy knew, they were connected. To the Peoria bombing. To Los Angeles. And now to Seattle. What was he up against? he wondered. What sort of conspiracy was this? What was the connection?

  The mystery kept growing, expanding, but Billy felt he was making progress. It wasn’t clear to him yet, but he was confident he was getting closer. He just needed to understand how all the disparate elements fit together.

  Anything else this Bryce happen to mention? Billy tried.

  Well, Waggoner went on, I had asked him what was he doing in Portland, Indiana, buying dynamite. Long way from Seattle, you know. So he told me it was near where he was working at the time. In Indianapolis.

  That night an excited Billy sent a telegram to his son Raymond in Chicago. He sent the message in the work code that he and his son had devised long ago. Caution was necessary; a detective could never tell who’d be intercepting his messages.

  The telegram was delivered to the Chicago office the next day. Raymond made quick work of breaking it down. Its message: LIKELY BRYCE IN INDIANAPOLIS.

  An exhilarated Billy returned to Tacoma. But his buoyant mood was short-lived. Bad news was waiting for him. The source was not the Home Colony but Los Angeles. His enemies were on the attack.

  Leading the charge was Earl Rogers, the attorney whom he had first battled during the political corruption trials years earlier in San Francisco. Rogers now worked for Otis and the M&M, and he was making headlines accusing Burns of swindling the city of Los Angeles. Months had passed, Rogers told reporters, but what had the great detective to show for all the money he had been paid? There was no evidence, no leads. Burns had no idea who had blown up the Times Building. And no less infuriating, Burns wasn’t sharing what, if anything, he had so far uncovered. How do we know, an indignant Rogers ranted, that Burns has done anything? For all the citizens of this great city know, Burns has simply pocketed the taxpayers’ dollars.

  Otis, too, was upset. He didn’t trust Burns, and the fact that the detective was working in secret only increased his suspicions. What was Burns up to? he fumed. Was the detective building a case against labor or against him? Anything was possible, Otis feared. On Otis’s instructions, Rogers urged that a grand jury be convened to investigate. The district attorney was too cowed to disagree.

  Mayor Alexander was subpoenaed and told to produce Billy’s investigative reports. But he had none. Billy had sent him nothing.

  Then Malcolm MacLaren, the manager of Los Angeles office of the Burns Detective Agency, was called to the stand. The district attorney again demanded that Billy’s reports be handed over. Mac truthfully testified that he had never received a single one.

  That night the L.A. office of the Burns Agency was broken into. Desks were rifled. The contents of filing cabinets were strewn about the floor. But if the thieves were looking for the reports detailing Billy’s search for the men responsible for the bombing of the Los Angeles Times, they did not find any. Anticipating trouble, Billy had sent all his files to Chicago. They were locked in a safe deposit box deep in the vault of the First National Bank.

  Neither the grand jury nor Otis and the men in the M&M were able to learn anything about the progress of the investigation. But that did not prevent the city from taking action. Mayor Alexander needed Otis’s support in the upcoming election, and he caved to the publisher’s will. He announced that he would immediately stop all further payments to the Burns Agency. Burns would not get another penny from the city until he produced results.

  Billy was devastated. How was he going to pay the dozen or so men he had working on the case? Over $100,000 was pledged in rewards for the apprehension of the person or persons responsible for the twenty-one murders, but before Billy could receive any reward money, he’d have to solve the case. After months spent following an inconclusive trail, Billy knew that wouldn’t be easy. He needed the monthly retainer from Los Angeles to finance what he suspected would be a long and expensive investigation. He had collected lots of leads, but he still was not sure where they were pointing. There was a likelihood, a strong one, that he might never catch the men responsible. If he borrowed the money to keep the investigation going and failed to solve the crime, he’d never be able to repay his creditors. He’d be bankrupt, penniless and ruined after a lifetime’s work. All because of his vanity. His refusal to concede that Billy Burns couldn’t solve every mystery. What about his responsibilities to his wife Annie? His four children?

  But in the end Billy decided it was a gamble he had to take. “As long as there was a chance to get Caplan or break out a trail to him,” he said, “I was going to stick.” He couldn’t imagine failing. He was the greatest detective the world had ever known. He would get his man. It was humiliating. It made him anxious. But he borrowed $14,000 and stayed on the case.

  Then all at once his faith seemed justified. He got his big break. His men in the colony sent an urgent report. Fox had a visitor. “He was a peddler of notions, women’s goods, etc. He was a loud-mouthed Jew and a strong Anarchist . . . he answers the description of Caplan, as to height, color, and age.”

  Billy rushed to the colony. He did not even bother with his hunter’s disguise. He didn’t care if he was
recognized. He was going to get Caplan, and no one was going to stop him. But when he cornered the man and started to question him, he realized “he was not the man I wanted.” The peddler was not Caplan.

  On the ferry trip back to Tacoma, Billy was as low as he had ever been. Maybe he should give up. He’d have to learn to live with his failure, his embarrassment, but it would be better than dragging his family into bankruptcy. Every detective, he tried persuading himself, encounters a case he cannot solve. Perhaps this was his.

  He entered the hotel and was heading sullenly to his room when the manager approached. Telegram, Mr. Burns, he announced as he handed Billy the yellow envelope.

  What now? Billy wondered. More bad news?

  He waited until he was in his room to open it. It was from his son Raymond, sent from Indianapolis, and it was in code. He began to decipher it, slowly at first and then with increasing excitement. Raymond had spotted someone in Indianapolis. Only it wasn’t Bryce. It was J. W. McGraw.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ______________________

  ABOVE ALL ELSE, twenty-five-year-old Raymond Burns wanted to please his father. Raymond knew he was a disappointment to the detective, but he felt it was not all his fault. True, Raymond deserved some blame. There was no doubt he had made a mistake three years ago in San Francisco. He had been given a great responsibility—a great opportunity—and had let his father down.

  That unlucky Friday the thirteenth, in November 1908, had begun, Raymond recalled with remorse, with such promise. At breakfast his father had informed Sherman, Raymond’s younger brother, that he wouldn’t be able to attend his football game at Lowell High School as he had promised. Threats had been made against Frank Heney, the prosecutor who was trying the case against Abraham Rueff, the city’s former mayor and a leader of the corruption ring. Billy needed to be in the courtroom at Heney’s side.

  What about George? Sherman had asked. The oldest brother, his father explained, had left town yesterday for Reno. He was pursuing Peter Claudiannes, a suspect in the attempted murder of a witness in the trial. That was when Raymond spoke up. Go watch Sherman play, Dad, he urged. He’d take the detective’s place in court. He’d protect Heney. He was twenty-two; he wasn’t a kid. Billy mulled in silence for a moment. C’mon, Dad, Raymond repeated. At last Billy acquiesced. Be on guard at all times, he told Raymond. The chances of anything happening are slim, nevertheless be on guard.

  As a trial recess ended, as people filed back in, as Raymond bent over the courtroom stove giving the fire a stir, a man in a black overcoat moved toward the prosecutor. He pulled a revolver from his coat pocket and fired. The sound boomed through the confined space, and Raymond turned at once. He leaped at the shooter, knocking the pistol out of his extended hand before another round could be fired. But it was too late. Heney had collapsed facedown on the prosecution table, blood was forming a deep red puddle beneath his head. The bullet had sliced through his jaw and gone on to lodge in his neck. Heney was still breathing when he was rushed to the hospital, but death seemed imminent.

  The next morning Billy Burns emerged from the hospital to address the crowd of reporters; they had been waiting all night for some news. “Frank is going to make it,” he announced. “You folks know,” he added with a relieved laugh, “how hard a lawyer’s jaw muscles are.”

  But Billy had no jokes for Raymond. He could not forgive the boy’s failure.

  Three years later Raymond could understand both his culpability and his father’s continued anger. But he also believed this was only a partial explanation for the relentlessness in his father’s attitude. The larger, unarticulated reason was not his fault.

  Raymond could not help it that he was not George. George was his father’s favorite son. George, the tall, thin handsome one, who had followed his father into the Secret Service; the charmer who dated showgirls and palled around with George M. Cohan. But now George Burns, the designated heir to the nationwide Burns Detective Agency, was gone. In May 1909 George, not yet thirty, had contracted tuberculosis. He died in a hospital in Monrovia.

  Billy was bereft. His pain was such that he was unable to express his sorrow; it was beyond words. Raymond suffered through the detective’s silent bitterness and felt his cold, sorrowful glare. In time, Raymond understood that words were unnecessary. He knew what his father was thinking: The wrong son had been taken from him.

  And so when Raymond had received the telegram from his father announcing that Bryce was in Indianapolis, he was determined to track him down. He wanted to prove to Billy that he could get the job done. He wanted to demonstrate that although he could not replace George, he, too, was his father’s son.

  He left Chicago promptly, and on the train to Indianapolis he worked out a plan of action. First, he would check the phone books to see if a J. B. Bryce or Bryson was listed. If that failed, he would try to find where Bryce worked. Since Bryce was familiar with dynamite, Raymond reasoned that he would most likely be employed in the construction business.

  The Structural Iron Workers headquarters was in downtown Indianapolis. Raymond assumed that an unemployed worker returning after some time on the coast would stop by the union offices to see if any job sites were hiring. Raymond understood, of course, that the union would not cooperate with him or anyone connected with the Burns Agency; organized labor had made it clear that they believed that they were being set up to take the fall in the Los Angeles bombing. But Raymond had a description of Bryce. The union offices were on the fifth floor of the American Central Life Building on First Street. He’d hang around the lobby and wait till he spotted Bryce. It wasn’t much of a plan, but all he could do was hope that it would work.

  It didn’t. When he arrived in Indianapolis, Raymond discovered that no Bryce or Bryson was listed in the phone book. And after three days of wandering through the lobby of the American Central Life Building and loitering on nearby street corners, he was beginning to attract attention. Soon either he would be arrested, or a couple of burly union members would drag him off to show him what they thought of spying private investigators.

  On the fourth day, Raymond found an office in a nearby building that gave him an unobstructed view straight into the lobby of the American Central Life Building. It cost him a few dollars, but no one minded if he sat for hours and stared across the street.

  Another day passed. Then someone making his way toward the elevators caught his eye. It wasn’t Bryce, but something about the man seemed familiar. Raymond couldn’t quite place what had gotten his attention. Perhaps he knew the man from some other case? Enough! Raymond chided himself. Whatever had prompted this feeling was unimportant. He needed to focus on the job at hand, on finding Bryce.

  But only minutes later the short, round-faced man returned to the lobby. Now he was accompanied by a bigger, husky man, with a shock of gunmetal-gray hair falling over his forehead. He was handsome in a pleasant way, a man with a good-natured, even-featured face. Raymond had no idea who he was. But as he looked again at the shorter man, he had a shock of recognition. Raymond had supervised the investigation into the bombing at the Peoria train yard and the hunt for the bomber. He looked hard, and he knew: He was staring at the elusive J. W. McGraw.

  TWENTY-TWO

  ______________________

  RAYMOND JUMPED UP from his seat by the window and raced to the street. By the time he was outside, McGraw and his friend were already a block ahead and had turned into Illinois Street. Raymond moved quickly, fearful that he had lost them. But as Raymond hurried toward Illinois Street, he saw that the two men had stopped by the Orpheum Theater. They stood talking by the two huge stone pharaohs guarding the entrance. Then they went inside. After a moment Raymond followed.

  McGraw and his friend sat up front, close to the screen. Raymond thought about taking a seat behind the two men but decided it would be too risky. His father had standing instructions for shadowing: Never mind how promising may be the outlook, the shadow must draw off rather than let the subject know he is bei
ng followed. These stern words were echoing in Raymond’s ears. He feared McGraw would make him for a detective. If McGraw panicked and ran, he might never be found. It was crucial to keep on him, to track where he went when he left the Orpheum. This time he would not let his father down.

  Raymond sat in the rear, too far behind the pair to hear what they were discussing. But from this vantage point, he could keep an eye on the exits. When McGraw left, he’d be able to slip out and follow.

  Raymond waited impatiently. He wondered where McGraw would lead him. He was eager to tell his father about what he had discovered. The lights began to dim. All Raymond could do was to wait, and watch the movie.

  _____

  As it happened, the movie playing that week at the Indianapolis Orpheum was D.W. Griffith’s The Lonedale Operator. This was the third movie the director had made during his California trip. It was a small story, another melodrama, but it was so expertly done, the suspense so carefully ratcheted up, that Raymond might easily have become caught up in what was happening on the screen. And Raymond might well have noticed the parallels between the heroine who must prove to her father that she can get the job done and his own circumstances.

  Blanche Sweet played a young girl who takes over her father’s post as a railroad station telegraph operator just as a payroll shipment is due on an arriving train. A pair of hoboes thinks the inexperienced girl will be unable to prevent them from making off with the payroll. However, Blanche rises to the challenge. After failing to summon help, she holds them off. In the final scene the revolver she has been brandishing is revealed to be nothing more than a monkey-wrench wrapped in a handkerchief. What father could be prouder of his brave, resourceful daughter?

  D.W.’s great power was his ability to tell stories on the screen that would pull at audiences’ sympathies and fire their imaginations. Raymond kept a vigilant watch on the exits, but no doubt he was rooting for Blanche, too. He wanted her to triumph, to justify her father’s confidence. Just as he was determined to prove to his dad that he was worthy of his respect and his love.