The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King

by The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King- A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt

  “King, I’m not interested in your clientele. You’re harboring roundsmen.”

  “And that’s my shame,” he muttered. “I’ve been derelict, sir, in my duty.” And he growled at the six officers. They adjusted their tunics, put on their helmets, and paraded past me. I could have noted their badge numbers, chided them in public, demoted them to desk jobs at Mulberry Street, but that would have meant waging war with the other Commissioners. So I let them catch a glimpse of my ire—my disappointment in their dereliction. And that deep frown was enough to sear through their brass buttons and burn a hole in their collective hearts. These lads would not be caught cooping again at the King’s Table. I seldom had to warn a roundsman twice, even those under the sway of King Callahan.

  I couldn’t even bask in the little glories I still had as Police Commissioner. I recognized a man with stark white hair who sat at one of the tables, and I realized that my forage into the saloon would not end well. Whitey Whitman he was, a deputy inspector I had forced to retire. Whitey once strode across Manhattan like a colossus; he ran prostitutes and a galaxy of pimps, protected gamblers from police raids, yet what irked me the most was that he preyed upon newsboys, ripped their pockets right out from under them. I reprimanded him at headquarters, or, as Sissy might say, I shriveled him in front of his own men. And here he was, with that splendid mane of white hair. He’d gone into the construction business, with the help of Tammany Hall and our own Republican bosses. His finances hadn’t suffered. He was far richer than any Roosevelt. Yet I had stolen what was essential to him—his hierarchy at headquarters. Mulberry Street had been his roost. He’d strut about in his braided sleeves with a certain majesty, cracking the skulls of boisterous men and boys, who’d been assigned to our cellar jail. But what troubled me about Whitman was that he had the angelic face of a choirboy. He was never loud. His voice was soft and silky, and that’s where his menace lay. He was the poet of violence. I’d never met another feller remotely like Whitey Whitman, not in the Badlands, with all its desperadoes. The Dakota man had some kind of a draw, a telltale delivery—a nervous tic, a sneer, a demonic laugh—but Whitey had none.

  “Hello, Mr. Roseyvelt,” he said, in a voice that echoed the lazy Harvard drawl; his boots were propped up, and they had a brilliant sheen. “I’m going to scatter your brains in front of Pulitzer’s pet. Then I’ll treat her to a shandy.”

  “Now, now, Whitey,” said King Callahan. “You can’t threaten the Police Commissioner.”

  “Shut up,” Whitey said with that silken cord of his. “I’d like to hear from Madam—ah, I mean Miss Nan.”

  “Mr. Whitman,” she said, “I will not drink your shandy.”

  Whitey grinned. “Roseyvelt, I propose to marry her. You could perform the ceremony as our chief constable—while you can still hold a pen.”

  He couldn’t have known that Miss Nan had once been a bride with two babies and a brownstone on Union Square.

  “Up with your dukes, Whitey,” I growled like a grizzly, “and a little less of your gab.”

  “Dukes,” he said, and Callahan’s white-haired angel turned waspish with one twist of his tongue. “I’m strictly an elbows man.”

  The lads at the King’s Table understood his lingo. Whitey was a barroom brawler. It wouldn’t have mattered one atom to him that I had nearly won the lightweight cup at Harvard. I had boxed with fellow students in a ring, and brawled with politicians, who might have been ex-prizefighters, but I’d never tangled with a defrocked deputy inspector. Whitey Whitman had no rules. He was a reckless machine. He’d chewed off a man’s ear once, blinded others, and had beaten felons into a crippling insanity inside the Tombs.

  He gulped down a shandygaff, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and with his tongue untwisted, he turned into an angel again. He was a head taller than Commissioner Ted, and had a much greater wingspan, so I had to crouch against his assault. I was tempted to wear my pince-nez, but he would have blinded me with the first whack of his elbow.

  Callahan made one last appeal, as I took off my sombrero. “He’s an appointed official, Ted is, and if you murder him, boy-o, there’ll be no appeal from a sweet-talking attorney like Hummel or Howe. You’ll sit in Sing Sing until you’re catatonic.”

  Whitey scoffed at him. “It’s a small matter. He humiliated me in front of my men.”

  For a big lad he had the dainty feet of a dancer, and dance they did. He could have been the Harvard boy, and I the barroom brawler. I felt unmanned. I forgot all the lessons I ever had from “General” Lister, my boxing master at Harvard, who taught me how to hit as hard as I could and to waltz away from a blow.

  Whitey bowed to Miss Nan like her knight-errant and moved in for the kill. I could barely keep up with his dancing gait. I wondered if he’d had his own “General” Lister to teach him a few tricks. But he had no need of a boxing master. He didn’t box. He pummeled me with his elbows while he maintained a whirlwind defense. I couldn’t get near enough to jab at him. Blood and spittle flew from my mouth in long, merciless strings that were like the melody of my own doom. I lost a molar somewhere. Whitey hopped about, expecting to dust me. But I wouldn’t fall. He seemed agitated; puckers appeared in his face, like self-inflicted wounds. And then I must have tripped against the leg of a chair.

  Suddenly I was lying in the sawdust with a ball of blood in my mouth. I looked up at the darkening crystal of the chandeliers.

  “Stay down, old Ted,” King Callahan buzzed in my ear. “Whitey’s been an orphan-maker many a time.”

  And then I could hear Miss Nan over the roar of Whitey’s partisans at the King’s Table. “Keep your own counsel, Callahan. We have no need of an orphan-maker. . . . Roosevelt, get up. Right now.”

  And I did. I spat that ball of blood into my cuff. I begged the Lord and my father’s ghost that I wouldn’t have an asthma attack or the Roosevelt colic in the middle of my bout. I couldn’t have counterattacked while wading in a bundle of my own filth. I couldn’t have counterattacked under any condition. It was Miss Nan who devised a strategy of combat that confused Whitey and hampered his gait. She smiled at him like some barroom sweetheart and blinked with her blue eyes. Whitey missed a step, mesmerized by that bunco artist turned crime reporter, in her own imagined brothel. I landed a right and a short left between his elbows, and it was as if I had the “General” right behind me. Give him a fistful of arrows in the solar plexus, Roosevelt. My combinations were like lightning in a velvet bottle. He had nothing to answer with once he dropped his guard. His elbows lumbered like detached limbs.

  King Callahan stopped the bout. “I won’t have bloody murder in my saloon.”

  But I still had an urge to do him bodily harm. I was a crusader despised in my own town, Manhattan’s Oliver Cromwell, who tried to shut every damn saloon on the Sabbath. To Callahan’s credit, he didn’t advertise himself as an innkeeper, didn’t turn his beer hall into a lodgers’ den, where prostitutes could parade in their petticoats or a Mother Hubbard and have their own little paradise. He was a saloon man, through and through, the King was, and he didn’t involve himself in that rascality of the Raines Law.

  Whitey was another matter. Whitey found profit in those fraudulent hotels, with his own corral of prostitutes. And Whitey had a gamblers’ association, enforced by crooked roundsmen. He mocked my efforts to transform the police into genuine civil servants. A policeman’s badge meant a whole lot of boodle. Even after I had ousted him, Whitey held his own demonic dominion over Mulberry Street—I couldn’t root out all his rot. So I smashed at him instead. His partisans couldn’t help him now. They couldn’t rein in my blows. I hit him with a hook, gyrating like a bull with spectacular horns.

  “Commissioner Ted,” he cried, “I succored your brother, I saved his life, more than once—on 102nd Street.”

  I hooked him again.

  Nan didn’t know enough about Elliott. I was the orphan-maker, not Whitey. I was the one who exiled Elliott from his children. I wouldn’t even let Ellie lie dow
n in the sod with his wife.

  Whitey clutched me with his claws. “I was kind to him, Commissioner Ted. I watched over the boy.”

  “He wasn’t a boy,” I hissed. I put my sombrero back on and adjusted my pince-nez, while Nan wiped the blood from my mouth. That missing molar ached like the devil.

  “Roosevelt,” she said, “I believe we’re finished here.”

  OUR FINAL LANDING WAS at the headquarters of Senator Thomas Collier Platt, who held court at the Fifth Avenue when he wasn’t in Washington. Known as the “Easy Boss,” he wasn’t like his Democratic shadow, Dick Croker, the grandest of Grand Sachems, who rose up from the whimsical mayhem of his own street gang. Croker didn’t care for music or poetry and art. He was a mixer who may have clubbed many a man to death at the polls. He ruled Manhattan’s precincts, but he didn’t have Senator Platt’s wide appeal. Platt seldom spoke above a whisper. Platt had the sweet, soft hands of a violinist. Platt had even attended Yale College once upon a time. He read poetry to his children. But he was murderous in his own way. He could wreck the career of a Governor with one of his whispers. Presidents would arrive for a Sunday chat at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, sit in one of the mandarin corridors off the main lobby until the Senator was prepared to greet you in his Amen Corner—Platt had been a theology student at Yale. He slumped behind his mahogany desk, an heirloom of some sort, and looked like a cadaver in a gray suit. Senator Platt was a sallow man. He had the complexion of a spent candle. But his lips were always moist, and he stared out at you from the deep hollows of his eyes. Nothing got past the Senator’s gaze. And at the moment his gaze fell upon Nan. He didn’t care for crime reporters, any reporters at all. But he hadn’t objected to my bringing her here. And then I realized he had known Nan before she was baptized by Pulitzer. Perhaps he’d used her as a “swallow,” to entrap Republican Assemblymen he couldn’t keep in line. We were both escorted by one of his lackeys to the Amen Corner. You weren’t allowed to sit in his exalted presence, not at first. But he found a chair for Nan, an heirloom like his own, with a velvet-covered cushion.

  “You’re a clever lad, Roosevelt, to bring Pulitzer’s little girl with you. What’s her name?”

  He said all this in a menacing whisper, without gazing at me once.

  “You know my name, Senator,” she said. “I’ve sat on your lap many a time.”

  And the cadaver livened considerably.

  “But that was in the old days. . . . Can you guess why the Commissioner dragged you here in the middle of the night?”

  I could feel myself sliding down into some abyss. But Nan was as much a pol as Senator Platt.

  “I suppose it was to eat your heart out,” she said. “To overwhelm you with my wit.”

  “And your loveliness,” he said. “Don’t forget that.”

  But Nan was immune to the Easy Boss’s accolades. “I’m practically a grandma, Senator. My thighs are full of ripples.”

  “Ripples an old man might admire,” he said before that sallow ice of his returned. “But you know the rules. You will not repeat a word you hear at this table. Or there will be damage. Mr. Ted wants a favor I cannot grant—to pluck him out of a big black hole at Police Headquarters.”

  That big black hole was caused by a brand-new charter. Manhattan and the Bronx would marry Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island next year—1898—and become a Goliath known as Greater New York. The current Police Board would be out of business. “I have no future here, Senator Platt.”

  I campaigned for Mr. McKinley, visited him in Canton, Ohio, right after the last election. I wanted a bit of the spoils, I suppose. I was an expert on America’s Navy, had analyzed the War of 1812 better than any man alive. I knew that we had to protect our sea lanes, “upholster” our antiquated warships. And as quietly as I could I petitioned for the post of Undersecretary of the Navy. Platt wasn’t unfamiliar with my desires. Yet he was out to make me bleed as much as he could, and turn me into a beggar man.

  Finally he swiveled around and peered at me from the hollows of his eyes. The cadaver grinned. My sombrero and velvet sash must have beguiled him. He clapped those violinist’s hands with their long tapering fingers. “Roosevelt, is that what you like to wear on your midnight rambles?”

  “Sometimes, Senator.”

  “It’s no wonder the roundsmen draw pictures of you in their washroom—Mulberry Street’s very own cowboy at the helm.”

  I was jolted a bit. I’d never seen his bald pate in the washroom at headquarters. Did he wander above the rooftops in his spare time? “And how are you privy to that piece of information, Senator?”

  “Spies,” he said. “I have many, and you have none. You canceled the contracts of every police stool pigeon. And no decent detective can survive without his squeal. Any copper knows that.”

  “But it’s immoral to hire professional thieves,” I said.

  “Roosevelt,” he whispered, “I think you should have been the divinity student at Yale, not me. A cowboy clergyman!” He bent over his antique desk. “I’m not without resources. I spoke to McKinley. The President doesn’t trust your belligerent attitude. He thinks you’ll have us at Spain’s throat within six weeks. The people in the War Department are wary of you. Didn’t you write to the Governor about raising up a regiment of cowboy desperadoes to fight alongside the Cuban revolutionaries? Revolutions lead to other revolutions. It’s a bad habit. We have our own anarchists. I hear you’ve been receiving letter bombs.”

  I wouldn’t whet his curiosity. “With matchsticks inside, sir, and cartridges filled with sand.”

  He was no philosopher, this spent candle. Yes, I did try to mount a regiment of my own. We had to get Spain out of Cuba and the Philippines, had to get rid of her European rot. The Spanish fleet was in American waters, interfering with our own destiny.

  “No, no,” he said. “We cannot have a warmonger sitting at such a sensitive desk.”

  “And you mean to dissolve the Police Board.”

  “If I can. . . . You were never a real Republican, Roosevelt. Go back to the Badlands. There you can crusade for whatever you want, and lead a revolution against some ranch. You can have your own colors in the Dakotas. Haven’t you noticed? You’re political poison. You should not have behaved like a Manhattan cowboy with the saloonkeepers. The lads love their Sunday shandygaffs.”

  “I was upholding the law,” I said.

  “Law, law, law. But Pulitzer’s little girl knows better than a rough-riding Police Commissioner, don’t you, Miss Nan?”

  And I wondered if two pols were now ganging up against me. I’d have to fight against a new alliance—Boss Platt and Pulitzer’s pet.

  She warbled like a sparrow. Perhaps it was a signal to the man who was a master of birdsongs.

  “Senator Platt,” she sang, “I’m sure of one thing. I’ve been on this midnight ramble, and I have yet to taste a shandygaff.”

  She made the cadaver laugh. He whispered to his errand boy, who returned with a shandy on a silver platter from the Fifth Avenue’s bar, which should have been shuttered at this hour.

  The Senator was dee-lighted with himself. He watched Nan devour her beer and ginger ale in two gulps.

  And now the cadaver turned into an elf, played the hapless politician. “I suppose the Commissioner will arrest me for serving alcohol at such a late hour.”

  I was bellicose, I admit, bullheaded and harum-scarum. Perhaps it was because Papa had been such a peaceful man.

  “Senator,” I said, “I’m in no mood to arrest you.”

  “You couldn’t,” he said, winking to Nan. “Police Commissioners used to wear shiny gold badges encrusted with jewels. A badge like that inspired confidence. And what does my Manhattan cowboy wear? A silver badge that has all the patina and glory of tin.”

  “Well, sir,” I said, “the old badges cost four hundred smackers apiece. Mine costs fifteen. I’ll take that as a sign of confidence. . . . Good morning, Senator.”

  I bowed to His Majesty. I couldn’t battle i
t out with him. I’d have to retreat a little.

  We withdrew from the Amen Corner, with pols huddled in every corridor, waiting for a nibble from Senator Platt. Why had he invited Nan into his inner sanctum, where he had allowed no other reporter? Her rise from the criminal class couldn’t have intrigued him. She was as wellborn as the Easy Boss himself. Perhaps he wanted her to bear witness to his autonomy over me. I was nothing but dust in his domain—we all were. He ruled like a doge, without mercy or reprieve.

  We arrived in the hotel lobby and happened upon an altercation. The house detective was bickering with a lady in a fur coat and a feathered hat. He was very rude to her, this detective was. And he had a superior air, though he utterly lacked her breeding. She didn’t wear lip rouge. She wasn’t dollied up. I could perceive the situation. She was a guest at the Fifth Avenue who had run up considerable charges and didn’t have the means to pay her bill.

  The detective pawed at her. “Out, I say. You’ll collect your things when you have the cash.”

  He wouldn’t have strutted like that in broad daylight. No manager would have tolerated it. But the detective could make a fuss at five a.m. while there were no other guests around, just a ragged line of political hacks skulking in the corridors.

  “Roosevelt,” Nan insisted, “you must stop that horrible creature, or I’m gonna break a flowerpot over his head.”

  But I was paralyzed, as if I had suffered an attack of the colic, or a sulfurous wound. I could barely breathe. I recognized that lady in the feathered hat. She was Mrs. Morris, Elliott’s former mistress.

  It was Nan who declared war on the house detective. “Sir, do you know who this gentleman is?”

  “Santa himself,” said the hotel detective, who was having a bully good time in the Fifth Avenue’s cavernous lobby, with chandeliers that could have covered a battlefield. His laughter echoed right off the crystal teardrops. “But Santa’s a little too late for Christmas.”

  I could have bitten off this houseman’s head. He was as ferocious as a toy grizzly bear. But I was all twisted up at the sight of Mrs. Morris. My bowels churned.