The Titanic Plan

by Michael Bockman

  “What’s going on? What do you want?”

  “Just sit back and enjoy the scenery, Captain,” the harsh voice uttered. “Ain’t New York lovely?”

  Archie peered out. It was only a few blocks from where he was strolling, but the world was far different here: darker in every respect. Dilapidated tenements loomed close to the street, which was pocked with potholes and strewn with garbage. The few pedestrians on the sidewalk were Negro men in shabby clothes. Archie grew uneasy watching small knots of dusky men crowded on the street corners, suspiciously eyeing him going by.

  “San Juan Hill, that’s what they call it here,” his kidnapper said. “Just like what ol’ Teddy Roosevelt charged up with his gang o’ Rough Riders. San Juan Hill. The perfect place for a good fight. Quite a neighborhood, huh, Captain? Wait’ll ya see what’s next?”

  “What’s next” was a few blocks south. It was even more squalid than the Negro section, with a stench of rotting rubbish and open sewage that paralyzed the senses. Rather than being barren of people, these filthy streets teemed with life. Above, on balconies, inexhaustible women squawked to each other while hanging laundry over the rusting iron railings. Along the sidewalk large, rough men loitered in groups, their oily caps cocked on their heads. Archie saw a dead horse rotting near a curb. A group of scruffy children leapt back and forth over the decomposing corpse. One boy pushed a little girl into the horse just as she was taking her jump. She tumbled into the dead animal’s desiccated ribs. The boy laughed. After a moment’s pout, the girl started laughing too. The whole group of mangy gamins started laughing then they all ran and took flying leaps onto the decaying carcass.

  “Welcome to Hell’s Kitchen, Captain,” his captor said.

  Archie didn’t answer; he was entranced by the spectacle outside, observing it as an anthropologist would view the strange habits of a foreign culture. The car turned down a small dirt alleyway and pulled near a crumbling building’s back entry. The driver jumped from the parked car and hustled through a moldy door.

  “Time to move out, Captain.”

  Archie felt the gun jab into his ribs again. He lifted the door’s handle then slid out. It was the first time Archie was able to see his kidnapper’s face. Rather than the coarse, burly man he expected, the person behind him was a small, angel-faced boy who looked no more than thirteen, if that. Seeing Archie’s surprise, the boy smiled, revealing a Grand Canyon gap between his front teeth.

  They stepped into a dank warehouse that was stacked with barrels and smelled of beer mixed with motor oil. The floor was cold and moist. On the far side of the warehouse was a half open door. Archie’s young kidnapper knocked gently. “Bring him in,” a voice from inside called.

  The boy pushed Archie into a low, murky room whose only light came through a grimy window. As his eyes began to adjust, Archie saw a large map of New York on one wall and a rickety desk near the back of the room, on which was a half-eaten chicken. The man at the desk looked like he might have been the driver, though Archie wasn’t sure. He wore no chauffeur’s cap. Instead, he had a torrent of long black hair that cascaded onto his shoulders.

  “Captain Butt,” the man said, rising from his seat. He looked like a poorhouse apparition, albeit a handsome one, with a strong face that was smudged with several days growth of beard. His wool sweater was unraveling near the bottom of the sleeves and the leather of his high, heavy boots was cracking. His poverty-stricken appearance belied the way he moved – graceful and confident like a cat.

  “Excuse the primitive quarters, Captain, but I thought it would be appropriate to meet in surroundings that might make us both feel comfortable.”

  “Is this your idea of a joke, sir?”

  “Not at all,” the man said cheerfully. “Shitholes like this is where we spent most of our time together.”

  “You’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

  “Com’on Captain, doesn’t the rottenness of this place remind you of those romantic nights in Manila?”

  Archie’s body snapped at the mention of Manila. He squinted to get a clearer look at the man whose coal black eyes glimmered through the darkness. Archie stammered: “Mick?”

  The man saluted. “Corporal Michael Shaughnessy, sir.” And with that he threw his arms around Archie. “Goddam Captain, it’s good to see you.”

  Archie stood with his hands awkwardly by his side.

  “You look a little puzzled. I don’t see why,” Mick said, releasing his tight embrace. “I mean, I’m still the same old Mick, you can see that.”

  Actually, Archie could see that. It’s what puzzled him even more. If the man before him was defeated by life, beaten and broken, his shabby appearance could be explained. But this man before him was as powerful and dynamic as Archie remembered him to be. “You’ll excuse me Mick, I’m a little confused.”

  “Confusion is not always a bad thing.”

  “I take it there’s been some changes in your life, Mick.”

  “Just a few. Please, have a seat. Would you like some coffee? Henry here makes a cup that would wake the dead.” Mick gestured to Archie’s boy kidnapper, who flashed a gap-toothed grin at Mick’s praise.

  “No, thank you. Mick, I’m currently the chief military aide to the President of the United States. You can’t just kidnap me off the street.”

  “I can and I did, Captain.”

  “You could have just called me.”

  “I don’t think so. The Feds have a keen interest in me. I believe you and the Attorney General have already had a chat in that regards.”

  There was some sort of game being played, Archie thought, though he had no idea what it was. “He said you were responsible for the explosion at the Astor’s home last New Year’s Eve.”

  Mick grinned slyly, hearing the accusation.

  “And…were you?” Archie asked.

  “No. The Attorney General was mistaken. A furnace blew up. Everyone knows that. It was printed in the papers. Page one, New York Times.”

  “The papers don’t always get it right.”

  “In this case, they did. I’ve never lied to you, Captain. If I’m responsible for a subversive action, I’ll be right square about it.”

  “Then why are they interested in you?”

  “That is an excellent question. Come on, let’s go for a little stroll.” Mick took Archie’s arm and led him to a door behind his desk. He opened it and gentlemanly gestured for Archie to go first. Archie hesitated. “This won’t take long,” Mick said. “I know you have a train to catch back to Washington this evening.”

  He knows too much, Archie thought, stepping behind Mick into a stairwell whose walls smelled of sour ammonia. They climbed two flights then Mick swung open the door. The clamor and stench hit Archie like a hammer. Clots of people were crowded in the hallway. Babies were screaming, children screeching, women yelling, men shouting – it was a symphony of human dissonance. The smell was a sulfurous blend of gas, greasy food, human waste, cigarette smoke, sweat, grime and fetid garbage. Archie grew queasy.

  “A little different from the Morgan Library, yes Captain?”

  How did he know I was at the Morgan library this morning?

  Mick started talking as he led Archie down the hallway. “There’s no heating in the building so they come into the hallway for warmth. They stand together to generate heat. It beats freezing to death.”

  Stepping into the horde, Mick was met by a large, red-faced woman leaning against a wall, feeding twins, one on each breast. “Mornin’ to ya, Mick,” she squawked.

  “You look radiant today, Mae,” Mick answered.

  “Two babes suckin’ at m’tits keeps me flamed.” Archie smelled a noxious combination of garlic and whisky on her breath.

  Pushing his way down the hall, Mick was greeted by the wretched collection of rag and bone people like a local prince. “Hiya, Mick,” “Happy day to ya,” “Top of the mornin,” “God bless ya, Mick.” An emaciated old man with a long white beard and a face so creased he looked
like some medieval gargoyle, lifted a clawed hand to his brow and delivered a palsied salute. Mick saluted crisply back.

  To Archie it was like being jostled through one of Dante’s circles of hell, except these people seemed relatively accepting of their infernal conditions. At the end of the hallway Mick pushed open two windows that led to a fire escape. He flicked his head, inviting Archie to step out on the rusting iron platform. Archie found the blast of chilled air comforting relief after the suffocating atmosphere inside.

  “A bit stuffy in there, wouldn’t you say?” asked Mick.

  “What are you doing here, Mick? You’re a decorated solider.”

  “Actually, there were several other decorated soldiers in that hallway. I should have introduced you, soldier to soldier”

  Archie grew irked by Mick’s glibness. “Tell me what you want and I’ll be on my way.”

  “What do you see on that street, Captain?”

  Archie looked down to a sprawl of people, most of them dressed in threadbare clothes, moving like a single, giant insect up and back along the crowded sidewalks, trying to keep warm.

  “This floor we walked down is only one squalid floor in one ramshackle building on one woe-begotten block. There are hundreds of blocks just like this, Captain, thousands more tenements, some far worst than this. And there are tens of thousands of people who live in these conditions. That’s why I brought you here. To see this.”

  “It’s sad, Mick, but I can’t do anything about it.”

  “You’re with the President of the United States every day,” Mick said, agitated. “You have his ear. Of course you could do something about it!”

  “My job is to attend to the President’s needs. Not to be his advisor. He has plenty of those. I am a soldier. I do my duty and that’s all I do. You know what the responsibility of a soldier is. You were the best soldier I’ve ever known.”

  “I still am that soldier, Captain. And I remain true to those I serve – the American people.” Mick swept his arm out toward the crowded street below. “These American people. I fight for them.”

  “I’m sorry, Mick, but you sound like an anarchist.”

  “Do you know who owns this hellhole of a building? Do you know who owns this entire filthy block?!”

  “I do not,” said Archie.

  “A slumlord. The richest of slumlords. Though he has never set foot in his empire here, he just sends some lackey to collect the rent. You can help, Captain, you’re in a position to. You are a courageous man, I know that.”

  “I’m sorry, Mick, this is your war, not mine. And now I must take my leave.”

  “You’ll help me. I’ll enlist you in this war. You’ll come around. I know you too well.”

  Archie saluted Mick. “As before, I wish you well soldier, if only for what was our friendship.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Mick saluted back. “I’ll have Henry drive you to your hotel.”

  “That’s okay,” said Archie. “I prefer to leave by myself.”

  * * *

  Archie rode with Taft in the Presidential rail car that evening. The discussion centered on what bon voyage gift to give Roosevelt upon his departure for safari. Archie suggested a small gold ruler that would be inscribe with Roosevelt’s favorite parting words: “Good bye – good luck.” Archie always liked that expression, especially the strong and emphatic way Roosevelt would say it. Taft wanted another line added: “and have a safe return.”

  Nothing was asked or said about Archie’s activities that day. Nor did Archie report his encounter with Mick Shaughnessy to the Attorney General’s office.

  ***

  On March 23, 1909, private citizen Theodore Roosevelt left with great fanfare for Africa. Over 10,000 people turned out to cheer him as he boarded the ocean liner Hamburg in New York harbor. Archie was there to present him with the gold ruler from President Taft. Roosevelt would not set foot on American soil again for well over a year.

  CHAPTER 6

  John Astor was euphoric. He was racing up the long stretch between Stamford and West Haven in his new Pierce-Arrow roadster, taking in the blue skies and undulating green landscape. The car bounced and skidded over the rutted dirt roadway. The blast force of wind pushed his driving goggles into his eye sockets. He looked down at his speedometer: 53 miles an hour. He was flying.

  Speed was not the only reason for his unbridled giddiness. Astor had just finalized terms of his divorce from Ava. The mess of a marriage was finally ending. Two million dollars was all it took. She did try to weasel a stipend from him, but as he had such a long laundry list of her infidelities, she wisely took what she could and boarded a ship for Europe. Ava always knew the strength of her hand, which cards to hold, which cards to play, and when to finally get up from the table.

  When Astor pulled into Newport that afternoon, he took his thundering roadster right through the center of town. All the townspeople noticed the gangly, mustachioed man behind the wheel. Everyone knew who he was. But no one waved or acknowledged him and he acknowledged no one in return. By the time Astor turned up a long horseshoe driveway and saw the imposing cream stucco walls of Beechwood, a tinge of sadness began to color his exhilaration. Not only was Ava gone, but so was his mother. And his son Vincent wouldn’t be there for weeks. A deep sense of loneliness crept over him.

  The servants expected his arrival and set out a simple lunch of foie gras, tea sandwiches and white Rhine wine. Astor wandered through the mansion alone, finding his way to the heart of the house, the ballroom. He strode across the polished wood floor to a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows. The view onto the ocean was spectacular. It was as if the ballroom, with its gentle swirling arches and seaweed lighting sconces, was an extension of the shimmering blue ocean outside. The light flooded in. Astor closed his eyes and tried to retrieve the memory of the music and gaiety that had long filled the room. All he heard was the crashing waves. An overwhelming weariness overtook him. He went up to his bedroom and lay down for a nap. He slept till the next morning.

  “The Season,” as it was simply known in Newport, officially began the first week in July and ended the last week in August. The quaint Rhode Island town was a center of commerce during colonial times and became a cultural retreat in the mid-nineteenth century with summer visitors that included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry and William James, and Edgar Allen Poe.

  August Belmont Sr. built the first “cottage” on Bellevue Avenue for his wife Caroline, who was a Newport native. No matter how large and ostentatious a Newport mansion was, it was always referred to as a “cottage.” It wasn’t until 1881, when the Mrs. Astor beseeched her husband, William Blackhouse Astor, Jr., to purchase the modest cottage of Beechwood, that the floodgates flew open and society began flocking en masse to Newport. Mr. Astor bought Beechwood for $150,000 and thought he got a bargain. The dour Mr. Astor loved bargains. The Mrs. Astor knew how to turn any bargain into an expensive extravagance and proceeded to hire the most famous architect of the era, Richard Morris Hunt, and pump $2,000,000 into renovating the place. A year later Beechwood opened and became the social hub of Newport society.

  Following Mrs. Astor’s lead, new “cottages” began springing up along Bellevue Avenue like gaudy flowers. Oliver Belmont, August’s son, built a Louis XIII–style castle called Belcourt. Alva Vanderbilt one upped Belmont with the building of Marble House, a mansion entirely constructed of exquisite marble – black marble, white marble, veined marble, yellow Sienna marble, pink Numidian marble, gold leafed marble, rough hewn marble, polished marble, marble inside and out. Not to be outdone by his social climbing sister-in-law, Cornelius Vanderbilt II commissioned Richard Morris Hunt to build the grandest cottage of them all and expense be damned. Hunt created a 70 room, four-story limestone manor called the Breakers. With a grand entrance hall whose ceiling rose 45 feet above its floor, a kingly salon, a rococo dining room of marble and gilded bronze, music rooms, separate ladies and gentlemen reception rooms, a library whose great stone chimney was imported from a
French chateau, the Breakers stood as the ultimate lavish expression of an excessively lavish age.

  By 1909, the building frenzy had long stopped. The giants of the Gilded Age were either dead or doddering, and “The Season” had devolved into highly stylized rituals of leisure carried on by a younger generation who lacked the inspired gusto for conspicuous consumption. Yes, there were parties and polo and lawn tennis and swims at Bailey Beach, but the unbridled decadence and extravagant spending sprees of the new breed paled in comparison to their mothers and fathers.

  The last remaining vestige, the final link to the full golden bloom of the Gilded Age was, ironically, the poorest – Mamie Stuyvesant Fish. Mamie would often crack that she and her husband “were not rich, we only have a few million.”

  On the evening of July 23, 1909, the now 58 year-old Mamie was hosting her annual ball at her cottage, Crossways, a relatively modest dwelling for Newport – only 37 rooms and a manicured lawn that rambled over an acre to a dramatic view of the ocean. The theme of the ball was “Mother Goose.” Everyone attending was to dress up as a nursery rhyme character. Mamie was Mother Goose, in a blue bonnet and carrying a long staff, which she’d occasionally goose her guests with.

  John Astor hated these parties, but as the only Astor left in Newport, he was obliged to go. In tow was his son Vincent. At 17, Vincent was the spitting image of his father. Long and gangly, with a thin, bony face and an awkwardness that was compounded by adolescence, Vincent shuffled through life with his eyes cast shyly down. Ava despised her son for looking like the husband she hated, and constantly berated the boy. Vincent was dressed as an owl, in a feathered suit, with a beak and huge round glasses. Astor came as the pussycat.

  Mamie approached Astor and Vincent as they strolled into the grand living room. “Ah, Mr. Pussycat, been munching on canaries?” she asked.