American Lightning

by Howard Blum

  Still, Darrow knew he wouldn’t be wrangling with just John Fredericks, the relentless L.A. district attorney, and his crew of ambitious assistants. Outside the courtroom he’d have to deal with the sly Burns and the detective’s own legion of diligent operatives. He’d need people who wouldn’t hesitate to trade punches or, even better, strike the first low blow. Two lives hung in the balance; it was a time for bare knuckles, not squeamishness. So Darrow recruited his own squad of practical and stubbornly aggressive tough-guy investigators.

  The head of this unruly team was John Harrington, an old friend of Darrow’s. The two men had worked together on several cases in Chicago, and the attorney was convinced he was “the best evidence gatherer I have ever seen.” Harrington had lost his previous job as an investigator for the Chicago Surface Lines because of “insubordination,” but Darrow was not concerned. He was looking for someone who wouldn’t pay too much attention either to rules or to authority.

  Bert Franklin, a former head of the L.A. sheriff’s office of criminal investigations, possessed both a veteran cop’s bulldog cunning and an alcoholic’s familiarity with deceit. For someone whose job it was to conduct background checks of potential jurors, these were prized qualities.

  Larry Sullivan, however, was the bruiser in the crew, a broad-shouldered giant who could give shivers with just a long, solid look. He had been a famous exhibition fighter, going ninety-nine rounds in one river-barge bout. Now retired from the ring, he still lumbered about as if looking for an excuse to come out swinging. Sullivan came to Darrow with a warning about his “reckless unscrupulousness.” The attorney, though, did not think this caveat was any cause for concern at all.

  In addition, Darrow had to find a way to counter the daily thumping that the brothers would undoubtedly get in the press once the trial began. Otis and the other sniping news barons would demand an incriminating tone. Darrow’s only hope, and a small one at that, was to reach out directly to the crowd of reporters who’d be covering the case. Perhaps some level of objectivity was possible in a few of the dispatches. To handle this task—decades later it would be given the lofty title of “media relations”—Darrow settled on an inspired choice, Frank E. Wolfe.

  What made Wolfe so effective? What was his great gift? In part, he had earned the respect of his fellow journalists. He had been a reporter and then editor at the Associated Press, but he had made his mark as managing editor of the Los Angeles Daily Herald: Wolfe transformed a moribund daily into a influential muckraking journal with a galloping circulation. Then, too, there was his easy conviviality. Wolfe was no backslapper, but people liked him, and he also enjoyed their company. He’d happily sit drinking with his fellow newshounds until the last round was called. But most of all Wolfe was admired for his crusader’s passion. He had quit school at fourteen and found work on flatboats, then the railroad, and later as a telegraph operator. These hard-lived experiences had left him with a deep belief not just in trade unionism but in socialism as the necessary alternative to the injustices of capitalism. He was a true believer, unencumbered by doubts, and even many of those who disagreed with him found themselves respecting the integrity of his commitment.

  But the real treasure on Darrow’s team was Job Harriman, the lawyer who had single-handedly been directing the McNamaras’ defense before Darrow arrived in the city. Harriman, nearly fifty, had a presence; he was the sort of rakishly handsome man—arresting blue eyes, a mane of coal-black hair—upon whom all eyes fixed when he strode into a room. He was an affecting orator, good at getting cheers from a crowd, and by all accounts he was a steady and competent lawyer.

  But his great, invaluable gift to the defense was his well-known tie to the Socialist Party. In 1900 he had been Eugene Debs’s vice-presidential running mate on the Socialist ticket in the national election. And more important to the fate of the McNamaras, he had for years taken an outspoken—and controversial—public stand in Los Angeles. Labor and socialism, he insisted with conviction, were brothers in a common struggle. “Whenever there is a labor movement in the field,” Harrington had declared, “we should support it.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ______________________

  IN 1911 ALL across the country Socialists were packing meeting halls and winning elections. Voters in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Rhode Island had put Socialists into the state legislatures. Socialist mayors had triumphed in Milwaukee and Schenectady. And now in Los Angeles the Socialist ticket seemed poised for victory, too.

  In 1909, when a special election had been held to replace the Democratic mayor who had resigned in disgrace, the Socialists had come tantalizingly close. A progressive “Good Government” coalition—popularly, and a bit derisively, known as the Goo Goos—had nominated George Alexander, a former city supervisor. “Honest Uncle George” campaigned dressed up as Uncle Sam on a moralistic reform platform that promised to rid the freewheeling city of gamblers, prostitutes, and even the bewilderingly popular blind pig races. Fred Wheeler, the Socialist candidate, had been a longtime labor organizer, and most observers did not give him much of a chance. But on election day Wheeler succeeded in getting a large turnout in the previously untapped working-class wards. He lost by only about sixteen hundred votes, a margin that was both unexpectedly narrow and dramatic.

  And now two years later in the mayoral election scheduled for the fall of 1911, the Socialists—as well as their anxious opponents—were convinced that their victory would be an inevitability. Shrewdly, the party focused on two issues that it hoped would enlarge its solid worker base to include an increasingly angry and exasperated middle class.

  One: Los Angeles was a city teetering. Another disruptive shove, and it could tumble into chaos. The high pitch of conflict between labor and capital, the stream of vituperative strikes, the tense picket lines—on any day an all-out class war could erupt that would have consequences for the entire city. Workers and the middle class. Yet, the Socialists were quick to point out, the Alexander administration had deliberately exacerbated these tensions. The Goo Goos had refused to appoint representatives of labor to city policy committees and mayoral posts. And without even a public debate, Mayor Alexander and his city council had approved a heavy-handed anti-picketing ordinance that had been drafted by the Merchants and Manufacturers Association and that had left the jails filled with grumbling workers.

  Second: The Owens Valley aqueduct project was a dishonest, avaricious scheme shamelessly endorsed by the Alexander administration. It would make the city’s political elite richer—and middle-class taxes would provide the money to finance the entire enterprise. This multimillion-dollar aqueduct, the Socialists raged in rallies and broadsheets, was not simply corrupt. It was further proof of the deep class struggle in the city. It was another demonstration of the greedy rich covertly conspiring to exploit both the workers and the middle class in order to line their already-bulging pockets.

  Both these issues were the matches that ignited the Socialist campaign, and support spread like a raging fire throughout the city. Then in early August the Socialists further improved their chances for victory in the October primary. They selected Job Harriman as their mayoral candidate and Frank Wolfe for the city council.

  With the selection of these highly visible members of the McNamara defense team, the Socialists tacitly articulated another issue in the election. They were clearly identifying their ticket with the fate of the McNamaras.

  J.J. quickly spoke up from his jail cell, endorsing Harriman: “There is but one way for the working class to get justice. Elect its own representatives to office.” Bill Haywood came to the city and urged a wildly cheering crowd to elect Harriman, “candidate of the people.” Gompers spoke at an overflowing rally in the Shrine Auditorium. “Let your watchword be ‘Harriman and Labor,’ ” he shouted. A vote for socialism would be a vote to acquit the two brothers. In fact, after the election the trial would no doubt come to a halt. Mayor Job Harriman, it was generally agreed, would dismiss th
e charges against the McNamaras.

  As the intensity of the campaign built, Frank Wolfe, Socialist candidate and trial publicist, had an idea. He had seen many of D.W. Griffith’s films, and the director’s stories about the poor and the workers had stayed strong in his mind. Then the release of A Martyr to His Cause gave his thoughts a further clarity and momentum. And now he conceived a plan that would encourage “workers to use your nickels as your weapon.”

  “Socialist propagandists who have seen the maze of people flocking to the nickel pantomime shows and who have later gone into sparsely peopled halls to deliver the message of Socialism have asked me for the answer to the situation,” he would explain. “I think I have found it.”

  Wolfe decided to “take Socialism before the people of the world on the rising tide of movie popularity.”

  In September he joined with a group of promoters to open the Socialist Movie Theater on Fifth Street in downtown Los Angeles. It would show only films “depicting the real life and ideals of the working class.”

  The theater was an immediate success. And as it turned out, it was only Wolfe’s first small step into the moving-picture business.

  _____

  On another front, although the trial and the election were both still months away, Darrow’s aggressive give-as-good-as-you-get strategy had already reaped one reward. On June 16 an Indianapolis grand jury indicted William J. Burns. The charge—kidnapping J.J. McNamara. Billy was furious as he scrambled to raise the money to cover the $10,000 bond. Then he took off to Europe on a business trip. With the arrest of the McNamaras, the detective had become an international celebrity. If there was an unsolvable mystery anywhere in the world, the cry went out, Get Burns!

  So it happened that three weeks later Billy was in Paris. He spent the evening dining with an old friend, the journalist Lincoln Steffens. Steffens had years earlier filed several admiring reports on Billy’s successful work in the San Francisco corruption cases. But tonight in Paris all Steffens seemed to want to talk about was the McNamaras. He didn’t doubt their guilt, but at the same time he argued that Billy didn’t appreciate the circumstances that had prompted their actions. Billy listened politely, then told Steffens that he didn’t feel like arguing. Why ruin a delicious meal? If Steffens wanted, he could come by Billy’s hotel any afternoon this week when, without the distractions of food or bottles of wine, the detective would lay out all the condemning evidence against the two heartless brothers. Agreed, said Steffens, as the sommelier was summoned and another bottle ordered.

  But that evening when Billy returned to his hotel, he found a telegram waiting for him. It was from Raymond. His son wrote that he had to return to Indianapolis immediately to deal with the kidnapping charge. If Billy didn’t, the $10,000 bond would be forfeited.

  By the time Steffens came by the hotel later in the week, Billy had checked out. Steffens was sorry he had missed him, but he also suspected he would soon be seeing the detective again. His dinner with Billy had gotten him thinking. Steffens had made up his mind to come to Los Angeles. He would cover the trial of the McNamara brothers.

  Mary Field was another journalist determined to report on the trial. She ignored all of Darrow’s harsh letters to stay in New York. Instead, she came to Los Angeles.

  Darrow took Mary out to dinner the night she arrived. He sat across the table from her and reached for her hand. He said he was glad she had not paid any attention to his foolish advice. He was happy to see her.

  I never expected you’d change your mind, she lied convincingly.

  But she had a difficult time trying to act surprised when he insisted on walking her back to the apartment she had rented. Or when he asked if he could come upstairs for a cup of coffee.

  THIRTY-SIX

  ______________________

  THE DICTAPHONE HAD, for all practical purposes, been invented in 1881. Alexander Graham Bell, his cousin, and another scientist had been working on the problem of recording telephone conversations. They came up with a device with a steel stylus that etched sounds as grooves onto a wax-coated rotating cylinder. It wasn’t until 1907, when Bell sold his patent to the American Graphophone Company, that the machine began to be widely manufactured for business recordings and the name Dictaphone was trademarked. But it was Billy who hit upon another use for the device. He invented the first “bug.”

  Simply, quite effectively, and without any moral or legal quibbles, Billy had bugged the Los Angeles County Jail. A metal “ear”—the Dictaphone’s rudimentary, shell-shaped microphone—was hidden in the attorneys’ conference room. Every discussion by the McNamara defense team was picked up by this “ear,” then traveled through an artfully concealed, snaking rubber hose to the Dictaphone in the adjoining room. Within hours of Darrow’s jailhouse strategy sessions with his clients, a typed transcript of the entire discussion would be prepared for Billy’s attentive reading.

  Another “ear” was planted in Ortie McManigal’s cell. This time a lengthier coil of rubber hose was required. It ran out the narrow window of the third-floor cell, then crawled up the side of the prison and into a fourth-floor room where it connected to the Dictaphone. It, too, worked perfectly. The machine recorded every word.

  As the trial approached, both the prosecution and the defense were struggling to find an advantage. Theirs was a dirty little war. And it was fought on many fronts.

  Ortie McManigal was the object of much intrigue. In Chicago, Billy had gotten the detailed confession that was central to the prosecution’s case. And in return for turning state’s evidence, McManigal had received a generous deal: He would escape prosecution. But Darrow was undeterred. If he could get McManigal to recant, to say that the confession had been coerced by Burns and his thugs, the case against the McNamaras would crumble. So with well-practiced cunning, Darrow went to work.

  Billy had expected the attorney to try to undermine McManigal’s confession; that tactic, after all, had succeeded in the Haywood case. But still Billy was fooled. Emma McManigal, he was forced to admit, “trimmed us and trimmed her husband.”

  Billy had previously used a fortune-teller to manipulate the unsuspecting and vulnerable Emma. But now it was Emma’s turn for mischief. With a cool nerve, she set in motion her plan to play the famous detective. First she went to the Burns office in Chicago and asked for a fifty-dollar ticket to Los Angeles so that she and her two children could visit her husband in jail. Burns readily agreed. His operative Malcolm MacLaren, who on Billy’s instructions had been visiting McManigal daily, had passed on reports about the “half crazy” letters that the prisoner was writing to his wife, desperate appeals to see her and the children. Billy reasoned that fifty dollars was a small sum to pay to win the gratitude of the McManigal family. But when Emma arrived on theWest Coast, she was met by Job Harriman, just as had been arranged from the start. When the two waiting Burns detectives approached, Emmapointedly refused to speak to them. She went directly to a rooming house owned by Harriman.

  The next day she arrived at the jail and set to work on the second part of her—and Darrow’s—plan. “Mrs. McManigal,” Billy fumed, “managed to get into her husband’s cell with him alone and begin her task of winning him away from us.”

  She did not hesitate. One small kiss of greeting for her husband, and then she announced, “I want you to sign a note to Clarence Darrow. Place yourself in the hands of the union’s attorneys.”

  She followed this up with, first, the enticing carrot: The lawyer had promised to provide for the whole family for life. There would be a cash gift, and McManigal would also get a lucrative job once he was freed.

  Then she swung the heavy stick: If he didn’t sign a note requesting that Darrow represent him, he’d never see her again.

  McManigal, already driven to despair by his predicament, was now pushed into an even deeper hopelessness. Desperate, he attempted to explain what would happen if he were convicted.

  Emma put her fingers in her ears.

  “Please,” her husba
nd begged.

  “Shut up,” she ordered.

  And finally, McManigal, sobbing, signed the note.

  “Things looked very bad,” Billy conceded. “His wife, it seemed, had done the work she was sent to do.” But Billy, who loved a good fight, refused to give up. He ordered MacLaren to come down hard on the prisoner.

  Mac, dour and officious, did. It no longer matters if you recant, the operative warned McManigal. Burns himself has gathered the evidence to substantiate every bombing. At the trial you’ll be the fall guy. The defense will put all the blame on you. You’ll hang.

  Emma played tough, too. One day she would refuse to visit her husband; the next she would hurl threats about losing her and the children unless he cooperated with Darrow. She continued to reiterate how prosperous the family would become once the trial was over.

  Of course, Billy knew what was said during her visits. The Dictaphone recorded every harsh word. And Billy used this intelligence to bolster the sting of Mac’s rebuttals.

  The needling went on until McManigal, pulled in opposite directions by his two unyielding opponents, finally broke apart. Day after day he sat hunched in his cell moaning and sobbing.

  In the end Billy won. McManigal would listen to MacLaren’s solemn warnings, and after each new lecture he could imagine himself being led one step closer to the gallows. McManigal signed a note repudiating the earlier one. He would not work with the defense.

  The wife had failed. So, gamely, Darrow turned to the uncle. Throughout McManigal’s lonely childhood, his uncle, George Behm, was the one person who had offered him any affection. When Darrow discovered this, he quickly brought Behm across the continent to Los Angeles.

  McManigal cheered up when he learned Uncle George was coming to visit him. For days he looked forward to the occasion. But the reunion, he quickly discovered, was only one more attempt to persuade him to change sides and sit with the defense. Feeling betrayed and exploited, McManigal sank even lower.