The Death Instinct

by Jed Rubenfeld

  Fischer sighed: 'I got it out of the air.'

  'By wireless?' asked Lahey.

  'You mean radio? I shouldn't think so. I'm very close to God, you know. Some people resent that.'

  After two and a half hours, Commissioner Enright brought the interrogation to an end, no further results having been produced. Fischer was committed to an asylum.

  Littlemore collared District Attorney Talley before the latter left police headquarters and asked him whether it was legal for United States army troops to be stationed on a Manhattan street.

  'Why not?' replied Talley.

  'I never saw infantry in the city before,' said Littlemore. 'I thought they had to call out the National Guard or something — you know, with the Governor's consent.'

  'Beats me,' said Talley. 'That'd be federal law. Why don't you ask Flynn's men? They'd probably know.'

  Littlemore returned to his office and paced, irritated. Then he cranked up his telephone. 'Rosie,' he said to the operator, 'get me the Metropolitan Tennis Association.'

  As Littlemore rung off, Officer Stankiewicz poked his head through the door, holding a sheaf of papers. 'Final casualty list, Cap,' said Stankiewicz. 'Want to see it before it goes out?'

  Littlemore leafed through the unevenly typed document, which gave for every man, woman, and child killed or wounded on September 16 a name, address, age, and place of employment, if any. Page after page, hundreds and hundreds of names. Littlemore closed his eyes — and opened them at a knock on his door. Officer Roederheusen poked his head through.

  'I found Speyer's ship, sir,' said Roederheusen, unshaven and red- eyed. 'There's a James Speyer booked on the Imperator, leaving tomorrow for Germany at nine-thirty in the morning. I saw the manifest myself.'

  'Nice work, Spanky.'

  Stankiewicz looked quizzically at Roederheusen.

  'I'm Spanky now,' explained Roederheusen proudly.

  Littlemore rubbed his eyes and handed the casualty list back to Stankiewicz, whom he waved out of his office. 'What's Speyer been up to?' he asked Roederheusen.

  'Nothing, sir,' said Roederheusen. 'He didn't go out all night. This morning at eight he went to work. He's been there all day.'

  'Who's on him now?' Littlemore went to his door and shouted, 'Hey, Stanky. Get back in here. Give me that list again.'

  The phone rang.

  'Two beat officers, sir,' Roederheusen replied as Stankiewicz reentered the office. 'Should I call them off?'

  Littlemore answered the telephone. Rosie, the operator, informed him through the telephone that the vice president of the Metropolitan Tennis Association was on the line.

  'Put him through.' Littlemore motioned to Stankiewicz to hand him the list. To Roederheusen, he said, 'No. Make sure somebody keeps an eye on Speyer all day. If he makes a move, I want to know.

  If he doesn't, you meet me at his house at five tomorrow morning. Yeah, five. Now go home and get some sleep.' Littlemore cradled the receiver between chin and shoulder as he returned to the page of the casualty list devoted to government officers. 'Where's the Treasury guy, Stanky? There was a Treasury guard who died.'

  'Hello?' said a man's crackling voice through the receiver.

  'If he ain't on that list, Cap, he ain't dead,' said Stankiewicz.

  'Hold the line,' said Littlemore into the telephone. 'Know what, Stanky? Don't argue with me today. Go check the handwritten list.'

  'The, um, handwritten list?'

  'Hello?' said the telephone.

  'Hold the line,' Littlemore repeated. To Stankiewicz, he said, 'What do I have to do, spell it for you? You and Spanky made filing cards for all the casualties. I told you to make me a list from those cards. You wrote me the list. I saw it. Then I told you to have the handwritten list typed up. This is the typed list. I'm asking you to go back and check the handwritten list. Okay? The Treasury guy's name began with R; I saw it on his badge. Maybe you missed some others too.'

  'Is anybody there?' said the telephone.

  'Um, the handwritten list is gone, sir,' said Stankiewicz.

  'Hold the god-busted line, will you?' Littlemore yelled into the receiver. He looked at Stankiewicz: 'What do you mean "gone"?'

  Stankiewicz didn't answer.

  'Okay, Stanky, you threw away the handwritten list. Nice work. How about the filing cards? Don't tell me you threw those away?'

  'I don't think so, sir.'

  'You better not have. Or you'll be back on patrol next week. Go through every card. This time make sure you get everybody.'

  Alone in his office, Littlemore identified himself to the vice president of the Metropolitan Tennis Association and asked whether an Edwin Fischer had ever won the United States Open.

  'Edwin Fischer? replied the crackling voice. 'The gentleman in all the newspapers?'

  'That's the one,' said Littlemore.

  'Did he ever win the United States Open?'

  'I asked you first,' replied Littlemore.

  'Certainly,' said the vice president.

  'How many times?' asked Littlemore.

  'How many times?'

  'Okay, I'll bite,' said the detective. 'More than three.'

  'Oh, yes, it was at least four — mixed doubles. A record, I believe. He was number nine in the country back then. Still has one the best overheads in the game. How on earth did he know about the bombing?'

  Littlemore hung up. A messenger entered his office and handed the detective a package containing a written report and an envelope. Inside the envelope was a small white tooth, broken cleanly into two pieces.

  Littlemore met Younger in a diner that afternoon, reporting to him over acidic coffee that the redhead at Bellevue Hospital was still unconscious.

  'She should have woken up,' said Younger. 'She wasn't shot in the head. There's no injury to her skull.'

  'What about her voice?' asked Littlemore. 'Colette says she sounded like a man.'

  'The growth on her neck must be impinging on her vocal cords. I took X-rays of her yesterday.'

  'How'd you do that?' asked Littlemore.

  Younger didn't answer that question: 'The X-rays didn't go through. In fact I've never seen anything like it. I'm going to New Haven tomorrow to see what Colette thinks of the films.'

  'New Haven?' answered Littlemore. 'You can't leave the state, Doc. You're on bail for a major felony, remember?'

  Younger nodded, apparently unimpressed by the argument. 'This is serious,' added Littlemore. 'They can put you away for jumping bail.'

  'I'll keep that in mind.'

  'Let me put it this way. If you go, I don't want to know about it. And whatever you do, you got to show up for your court date in a couple of months.'

  'Why?'

  'Because I posted the bail bond, for Pete's sake. If you don't show, they're going to seize my bank account and everything I own to pay the bond. Plus I'll probably get fired, since a law officer isn't supposed to bail his pal out of the joint in the first place — and especially not if the pal ends up on the lam. Okay? When did you stop caring about the law anyway?'

  'If you're about to die in a storm,' answered Younger, 'and you see a barn where you could save yourself, do you stay outside and die or do you break in, even though it's against the law?'

  'Of course you break in,' said Littlemore, 'if you're in the middle of nowhere.'

  'Everywhere s the middle of nowhere.'

  'No wonder the Miss wants to go back to Europe. You're so cheerful. Well, I got some news for you. The headless girl from Wall Street? They never identified her. She disappeared from the morgue body, head, and all.'

  'Why am I not surprised to hear that?' asked Younger.

  'The one good thing is that they had already done the autopsy. Guess what: she was missing a molar. Couple of molars, actually. It's not proof, but I'd say we found your Amelia. Found her and lost her, that is. Something else too. Look what my dental guys found.' The detective took out his magnifying glass and, in a handkerchief, two tiny halves of a tooth, which he set
down on the table. He let Younger examine them through the magnifying glass. 'That's the tooth Amelia left for the Miss at your hotel. See the holes?'

  Pockmarking the internal enamel — the inner surface of the tooth, exposed where it had been broken in two — were dozens of almost microscopic vesicles or pores.

  'Caries?' said Younger.

  'What's that?' replied Littlemore.

  'Tooth decay.'

  'Nope. The dental guys said it can't be normal decay because the outside of the tooth is too perfect. No discoloration even. It's like the tooth was being eaten away from within.'

  Colette's letter arrived in Younger's hotel room the following morning. He read it lying in bed. The letter provoked in him a wave of contradictory feelings. He both wanted to go with Colette to Vienna and found himself contemptible for having that desire.

  What kind of man would accompany a girl halfway across the world to find her long-lost lover? He pictured himself smiling as he was introduced to Hans Gruber. The image filled him with disgust. What exactly was he supposed to do in Vienna? And why exactly did she want him there?

  It occurred to him at last that she did not want him there: that her reason for inviting him was simply that she needed money to pay for the trip. The realization made him stare at the ceiling for a long time. Surely not. Surely Colette would never stoop to using him for his money. Would she?

  He wondered how, without his help, she intended to pay for the voyage. And he saw, of course, that she had no means.

  Chapter Ten

  At the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighty-seventh Street, a stone's throw from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stood a grand mansion in the classical style. On Tuesday morning before the sun had risen, Littlemore instructed Roederheusen to cover the back of that mansion while he approached the front door.

  There was no activity in the house. Fifth Avenue was quiet at five in the morning; a lone omnibus clattered down the street. One block north, a limousine idled on the park side of the avenue. Littlemore wondered whether it was Speyer's car, waiting to take him to the harbor.

  Littlemore rang the front bell — and rang again and again, when no one answered. At last he heard footsteps on stairs. A light went on in the foyer.

  'What is it? Who's there?' called a man's voice from behind the door, with the same German accent Littlemore had heard at Delmonico's.

  In his best cockney accent, which was fair, Littlemore said, 'Is there a Mr Speyer in the house? Sailing today on the Imperator? Message for him from the Captain.' The Imperator was a British ship, its crew English.

  'The Captain?' asked Speyer, opening the door.

  'Yeah,' said Littlemore, pushing through and entering the foyer. 'The Police Captain you played for a sap on Sunday.'

  Speyer, in a burgundy satin bathrobe, belted at the waist, fell back a step. 'I wronged you, Officer. I ask your forgiveness.'

  'Turn around,' said Littlemore.

  Speyer complied, saying, 'I ask you to forgive me.'

  Littlemore jangled his handcuffs behind Speyer. 'Give me one good reason not to haul you downtown for absconding from a police officer.'

  'I broke faith with you. Please forgive me.'

  'Stow the forgiveness thing, will you?' said Littlemore, handcuffing Speyer.

  'Sorry,' said Speyer. 'I was required to ask three times today. How much do you want? I'll give you whatever you want.'

  'Now you're bribing me? That's five more years in the pen.'

  'I beg your pardon. I assumed you were shaking me down.'

  'Shaking you down. Pretty good English for a German. What did you do that I'd be shaking you down for?'

  'I'm not German,' said Speyer, pronouncing the G in German with a hard Ch. 'I was born in this city. I'm as American as you are.'

  'Sure you are,' said the detective. 'That's why you bankrolled the German army after we declared war.'

  'Not me — my relatives, who live in Frankfurt. I had nothing to do with it.'

  'Then why did your pal the Kaiser make you a knight of the Red Eagle?'

  'That was in 1912,' protested Speyer. 'And if that makes a man a traitor, you should have arrested J. P. Morgan. He received the Eagle too.'

  For the first time, Littlemore was caught off guard: 'Morgan?'

  'Yes. He won it the year before I did.'

  'If you're such a patriot,' said the detective, 'why are you skipping out of the country?'

  'Skipping out? I'm going to Hamburg to have some very important contracts signed. I'll be home the eighth of October.'

  'Show me those contracts,' said Littlemore. 'And your return ticket.'

  'In my briefcase,' said Speyer. 'On the dinner table.'

  Littlemore, pushing Speyer before him, entered a formal dining room, heavily ornamented, with a Michelangelesque fresco splashed on its ceiling. Oil paintings, large and small, adorned the walls. The detective stopped before a small portrait, so dark he could not at first make out its subject; it depicted an old man with a ruddy face and pouches under his eyes. 'This one must be worth a lot, since you can't even see it. How much does a little thing like this go for?'

  'Do you know what that "little thing" is, Officer?' asked Speyer.

  'A Rembrandt.'

  It was Speyer now who was taken by surprise.

  'Saw one just like it at the museum,' added Littlemore.

  'I paid a quarter of a million dollars for it.'

  Littlemore whistled. On a rectangular table long enough to seat twenty lay an open briefcase. Inside was a ream of bond and debenture documents in English, Spanish, and German. Littlemore flipped through them. 'And who did the full-length picture behind me?' asked the detective, without looking up. 'The one of Mr James Speyer.'

  'A boy from the Lower East Side,' said Speyer. 'A student at the Eldridge University Settlement. One of the schools I fund.'

  The contracts concerned an enormous sum of money, evidently destined for a Mexican bank — whose chief officer was James Speyer. Littlemore also found an American passport and a ticket on the Cunard White Star sailing for New York City out of Hamburg on October the first.

  'Don't you think this is taking things a little far,' asked Speyer, 'for a bottle of wine?'

  'What bottle of wine?'

  'The one I had at Delmonico's. Isn't that why you came to my table? Isn't that why you're here?'

  'Dry laws aren't my department,' said the detective. 'Let me get this straight. Your story is that you ran out on me at Delmonico's because you were afraid I was going to pinch you for boozing?'

  'That's right.'

  'And what — you thought I'd just let you go?'

  'I didn't realize you knew who I was,' said Speyer. 'But now that you do know, I might as well warn you, Officer. I'm a rich man, and a rich man can make life very unpleasant for a policeman who troubles him.'

  'Don't give me that. You're broke, Speyer,' said Littlemore. 'You had to sell off two of your bigger paintings recently. You even let go of your old servants.'

  Speyer stared at the detective: 'How do you know so much about me?'

  'Just using my eyes.' Littlemore pointed to two spots on the wall where the slightest lightening of the wallpaper indicated that smaller portraits were now on display where two larger frames used to hang. 'You wouldn't be answering your own doorbell if you still had the servants a man who lives in this kind of house ought to have. I'd say you're trying to maintain appearances, Speyer. I'd say things are getting desperate. Why didn't you sell the Rembrandt?'

  A long pause followed. 'I couldn't let it go,' said Speyer at last. 'What do you want with me?'

  'The NYPD provides security when presidential candidates come to town,' answered Littlemore, not untruthfully. 'We have plain-clothesmen at every dinner. You were overheard at one of those dinners threatening a J. P. Morgan man.'

  'Nonsense.'

  'You deny telling a Morgan partner to watch out because the Morgan firm was combining with others to deny you credit?'

  'What? I w
asn't threatening Lamont. I was warning him.'

  'You might be surprised, Mr Speyer, but the law doesn't draw too fine a distinction between threats and warnings.'

  'You don't understand. I was warning Lamont about the Mexicans — despite everything Morgan's done to me. Mexico's new financial agent, he was the one doing the threatening. Making the wildest claims about what would happen to the House of Morgan — to Morgan himself — if they didn't lift the embargo.'

  'What embargo?'

  'The Morgan embargo against Mexico. You must know about the default?'

  'No.'

  Speyer shook his head. 'Where to begin? Twenty years ago, J. P. Morgan — the old man — floated the entire Mexican national debt. A big gamble, unheard of for a United States bank. It was a bold wager. Worked out handsomely for a long time. Made Morgan a fortune. But then Mexico had its revolution, and in 1914, the Mexicans defaulted. They haven't paid a penny since. By now they owe hundreds of millions in interest alone. Morgan pressured all the other houses not to lend Mexico any new money until they've paid what they owe on the old.'

  'What's wrong with that?' asked Littlemore.

  'Wrong? There's no right and wrong in banking. There are only bets, good ones and bad ones. Morgan didn't see the revolution coming. That's why the Morgan people are so unhinged about me.'

  'I don't follow you, Mister.'

  Speyer took a deep breath. 'I'm betting on the revolutionaries. I'm breaking the embargo. I'm the only one. Lamont knows I have funds lined up, but he doesn't know where the money is coming from. That's why I ran from you on Sunday. I couldn't afford to be arrested. I can't afford the delay — or the publicity.' Speyer sat down awkwardly, his hands still shackled behind him. 'Lamont knows I'll take my money and lend it straight to the Mexicans. He'd do anything he could to stop me.'

  Littlemore took this in. 'If Mexico can't afford to pay Morgan, why would you lend them money?'

  'Oh, they can afford to pay. They have railroads. They have silver. Most of all, they have oil. More oil than anybody else on earth. I have to make this trip, Officer. It's my last chance. My wife is very ill. If I'm not on the Imperator, I'll lose everything. I promise you I'll be back on the eighth'. I can give you collateral.'