The Death Instinct

by Jed Rubenfeld

  'War.'

  'They got it, didn't they?'

  'Beyond their wildest dreams.'

  The next morning, newspapers reported that Senator Fall, who the previous day had announced his intention to attend the inauguration of General Obregon, had been denied the visa required for entry into Mexico by confidential agent Roberto Pesqueira of the Mexican Embassy In response to questioning, Mr Pesqueira would say only that the Senator was an enemy of the Mexican people.

  Meanwhile, the United States army was massing on the Mexican border. Dispatches from Mexico City asserted that President-elect Obregon had come down with a sudden and unexplained illness, preventing him from attending his scheduled preinaugural events.

  Colette had arranged a meeting that morning with Mrs William B. Meloney, chairwoman of the Marie Curie Radium Fund. Younger made her pack her things before they left.

  'Why?' asked Colette.

  'We're changing hotels.' In part this move was precautionary. Younger hadn't told anyone but Freud where he and Colette would be staying, but someone keeping an eye on the harbor might conceivably have spotted them. Or someone monitoring the transatlantic cables might possibly have seen Freud's wires. Younger's chief motivation, however, was pecuniary. He needed cheaper lodging.

  They took the subway to Mrs Meloney's house on West Twelfth Street. Younger insisted on accompanying Colette there. Then he headed uptown, making Colette swear not to leave before he returned.

  When Littlemore came down from the elevated train on his way to work that morning, he was so deep in thought that he got out at his old station, Grand Street, by mistake. He was halfway to police headquarters before realizing his error. There was something the detective didn't like, but he didn't know what it was.

  At the Sloane Hospital for Women on Fifty-ninth Street, Younger gave his name and asked for Dr Frederick Lyme. A short time later,

  Younger was greeted by a man of about forty, prematurely gray, with wide-rimmed glasses, a clipboard, and a stethoscope over his white jacket.

  'What can I do for you, Dr Younger?' asked Lyme, taking his glasses off and placing them in a pocket.

  'I'm here about the McDonald girl. You spoke with a policeman named Littlemore; I'm the one who sent him. The girl has radium inside her neck. She needs an operation immediately.'

  'Radium,' said Lyme lightly. 'How could Miss McDonald possibly have gotten radium inside her? I already told the policeman the idea was quite absurd. I have nothing further to say. Good day.'

  'Cancer,' said Younger, 'is the most likely cause of the growth on her neck. If she was diagnosed with cancer, she could very well have taken a radium treatment for it. I believe the needle of radium is still in her neck.'

  Lyme put his clipboard to his chest: 'Miss McDonald never took any radium treatments, and cancer did not cause her tumor. Syphilis did. Surely you're aware that third-stage syphilis produces gummas — granulomas, growths — which can appear anywhere on the body. Syphilis was also the cause of her dementia. She had already begun raving. She had delusions of persecution. Perhaps she said something?'

  'No.'

  'Syphilis was found in 1913 to be the cause of general paresis,' said Lyme. 'Or don't you keep up with the literature?'

  'I'm familiar with the finding,' said Younger. 'Dr Lyme, I took X-rays of the girl.'

  'How? When?'

  'When she was at Bellevue. The X-rays clearly indicated the presence of radium.'

  'Ridiculous. Your X-ray machine was obviously malfunctioning. Either that or you didn't know how to operate it.'

  'I've confirmed the diagnosis with Madame Curie herself in Paris. There was no malfunction; radium produces the specific fluoroscopic pattern I found on her X-rays. At least open up the tumor and have a look. It can't hurt her.'

  'It can't help her either,' said Lyme. 'She's dead. Now if you'll excuse me.'

  When he finally reached his office on Wall Street, Littlemore had the operator ring Senator Fall's chambers in Washington. It took over an hour before he managed to speak with the Senator. 'What if the Mexican government didn't order the bombing, Mr Fall?' asked the detective. 'What if it was just one or two rogue Mexican officers?'

  'You're not getting cold feet, are you, son? The war's going to be a cakewalk. Our boys will be home by Christmas.'

  'Obregon says Torres had no connection to the Mexican government,' said Littlemore.

  'What do you expect him to say after what you found in Torres's room?' the Senator replied.

  'There's no proof, Mr Fall.'

  'Courtroom talk. Wars aren't fought in courtrooms. You keep your eye on the ball, son. We got the signature of the Mexican financial minister on letterhead paper and a goddamn terrorist boot camp run by their military. That's more proof than we need.'

  'What if it was just some bad apples, not the whole government?'

  'I'll be honest with you,' said Fall. 'I don't care if the bombing was ordered by El Presidente de la Republico or El Ministerio de la Financio. What difference would it make? We still got to clean out Mexico City. Hunt down the sons of bitches who bombed us. Wipe out that boot camp. If Obregon wasn't behind it, that means he can't control his bad apples, so we got to put in somebody who can — before they spoil the whole damn barrel.'

  Static filled the line.

  'Tell you what, son,' said Fall. 'I'm coming up your way to meet with Bill McAdoo on Saturday. Got to figure out what we're going to do about Houston. Tricky business funding a war when your Secretary of the Treasury is being paid off by your enemy. We always have dinner at the Oyster Bar. Why don't you meet us there?'

  'The Oyster Bar?' said Littlemore.

  'You know the Oyster Bar — in the terminal?'

  'Sure, I know it. Sounds good, Mr Fall.'

  A short while later, Littlemore was still standing by the telephone.

  Younger knocked at the door of Mrs William Meloney s townhouse on West Twelfth Street, which was filled with purring cats and shelves full of testimonials to Marie Curie.

  'These are letters,' Mrs Meloney explained to Younger, 'from cancer patients who have been cured with radium therapy. I'm collecting them for Madame Curie when she arrives. One is from a botanist who wants to send Madame Curie an entire hothouse of flowers. We must raise the rest of the money. We simply must.'

  'It's all arranged,' said Colette with excitement. 'We're going to visit Mr Brighton's luminous-paint factories tomorrow — one in New Jersey, one in Manhattan. Mrs Meloney says there's a chance at a very large donation.'

  'Mr Brighton,' said the older woman knowingly, 'is very close to contributing an even larger amount than he did before. As much as seventy-five thousand dollars. He told me so himself. All it will take is a little feminine push.'

  'Seventy-five thousand dollars — can you believe it, Stratham?' said Colette. 'That's more than we need. The radium will be paid for.'

  On their way back uptown, Younger told Colette about his visit to Sloane Hospital. 'Lyme insists it was syphilis,' he muttered. 'I should have asked to see the Wassermann test. I've never heard of tertiary syphilis in a girl that age.'

  Littlemore walked down the steps of the Sub-Treasury and into Wall Street. Next door, soldiers were still stationed in front of the Assay Office, where deep in basement vaults the nation's gold reserves were stored. He crossed the street to the Morgan Bank.

  Wall Street was crowded as always. Though in the way of the hurrying pedestrians, Littlemore walked slowly up and down the length of the sidewalk outside the bank, inspecting the places on its exterior wall where the concrete had been scored and gouged in the bombing.

  Everyone had assumed this damage was caused by the bomb and the shrapnel. Littlemore examined the pockmarks more closely. It was strange that they were concentrated below and around a first-floor window. Some of the uneven gouges — particularly the larger ones — might well have been the product of shrapnel, but most of the pockmarks were small and round, as if the concrete had been repeatedly struck by bullets. />
  Littlemore went next to City Hall. In the basement land offices, he pored over the gas, water, sewer, and subway maps for lower Manhattan. It took him hours. He was pretty certain he wouldn't find anything, and he didn't. Ordinary plumbing, power, and gas lines ran under Wall Street. No sewer pipes crossed from Wall to Pine. A subway had been announced for Nassau Street in 1913, with a station at the corner of Broad and Wall, near where the bomb went off. But unlike the other eighty subway routes announced in 1913, the Nassau line had never been built.

  The hotel into which Younger moved was the kind that provided in every room a set of old, unmatching utensils and an electric hot plate. Seeing these implements, Colette declared that she would cook. She took Younger shopping — at a greengrocer's, a butcher's, a baker's. It was, she said, like being in Paris. Or would have been, if there had only been a bottle of wine to buy.

  The Littlemores had dinner in their Fourteenth Street apartment all together — parents, grandmother, and innumerable children. Littlemore's mind was not on the meal. Twice he called James Jr by the name of Samuel, which was their youngest boy, and he called Samuel Peter, even though Peter didn't look anything like Samuel, being twice his age. Betty, feeding Lily in the high chair, had never seen her husband so distracted.

  'You know,' said Younger to Colette as they ate across their tiny candlelit dining table, 'there's another possibility.'

  'Of what?'

  'Of how radium cures cancer.' He cut into the chop she had made him. 'What if there's a kind of switch in every one of our cells that turns on or off the process of cell death — and what if radioactivity flips it? In cancer cells, the switch is off; the cells don't die; that's why they keep replicating, endlessly. When radioactivity hits those cells, it turns the switch on, so the cells start dying again. That cures the cancer.'

  'But then in good cells, radioactivity would — it would-'

  'Turn the switch off,' said Younger. 'Make the cells stop dying. Cause cancer.'

  'Radium doesn't cause cancer.'

  'How do you know?'

  'One medicine can't both cure a disease and cause it. That's impossible.'

  'Why?'

  'Do you know why you are so suspicious of radioactivity?' asked Colette. 'I think it's because you didn't discover it. If you had been the first to think of God, you'd believe in Him, too.'

  In her antiseptic room, the girl with long red hair knew what it meant when the man in the white coat came in. She strained against the leather straps; she tried to scream, but the gag muffled her mouth.

  She also knew from the man's presence that she would soon feel the pinprick of a needle in her arm, and after that the gratifying warmth that would spread so comfortably up and down her limbs.

  Soon the other man was brushing her teeth again, upper and lower, front and back, taking his time.

  A folded note slid under Younger's hotel room door well after midnight. Younger read it, threw on some clothes, and went down to the front desk. 'You're out late,' he said.

  'What's the world's strongest acid?' asked Jimmy Littlemore, chewing his toothpick.

  'Strongest for what purpose?' asked Younger. 'Cutting through metal.'

  'Aqua regia. It's a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids.' 'Can you travel with it?' asked Littlemore. 'You know, bring it with you?'

  'It's safe enough in glass. Why?'

  'I might need some help,' said Littlemore. 'Could be a little dangerous. You around tomorrow night?' Younger looked at him. 'It's important, Doc.' 'To whom?' asked Younger. 'To the country. To two countries.' Younger still didn't answer. 'The war,' added Littlemore.

  'The war's going to be a mismatch,' said Younger. 'A single division of ours is larger than the entire Mexican army. Our generals could go in blindfolded, and we'd still win it.'

  'Not trying to win it,' said Littlemore. 'Trying to stop it.'

  The front pages of the newspapers the next morning were full of the escalating crisis in Mexico. President-elect Obregon had not been seen in public for two days. On the border, the United States army, Second Division, had beaten to full war strength. American warplanes had begun crossing into Mexican airspace, patrolling south all the way to Mexico City.

  The Wall Street Journal demanded an immediate invasion to protect American interests. So did the governor of the great state of Texas. In Washington, high-ranking gentlemen in the Wilson Administration, together with men whose offices would be correspondingly lofty under Harding, issued a joint statement addressed to General Obregon, President-elect of Mexico. The statement set forth the conditions necessary to a peaceful resolution of the crisis, including an amendment to the Mexican Constitution prohibiting confiscation of American-owned subsoil interests.

  According to rumors circulating on both sides of the border, the American war was to commence the next day, with the goal of occupying Mexico City by November twenty-fifth, the day of General Obregon's inauguration. It was widely asserted that the Americans would allow the inauguration to go forward — but with an individual of their own choice taking office.

  Younger accompanied Colette once again to Mrs Meloney's house on West Twelfth Street, where a car was waiting to take them to Mr Brighton's luminous-paint factory in Orange, New Jersey. The driver was the redoubtable Samuels. Younger said goodbye, waiting on the curb until he was sure no one had followed them. Then he took the subway uptown. The day was brisk and overcast.

  Passing warehouses and slaughterhouses, Younger walked to Tenth Avenue, where he entered Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, the medical school attached to the Sloane Hospital for Women. Younger knew two researchers who worked there. He found one of them — his name was Joseph Johanson — in his laboratory. Younger asked him to call the hospital to see if he could pull the charts on a female patient named McDonald under the care of Dr Frederick Lyme.

  'There's no Dr Lyme at Sloane,' replied Johanson.

  'There was yesterday,' said Younger. 'I talked to him.'

  Johanson looked dubious but made the call. Presently they learned that there was indeed a patient file for a Quinta McDonald, but that all her charts were gone, having been removed on instructions from the family. What remained was a death certificate, which indicated that the patient had died five days previously from syphilis.

  'Who signed the death certificate?' asked Younger.

  Johanson relayed the question to the nurse, who reported that the signature appeared to be that of an attorney by the name of Gleason. She also said that she had never heard of a Dr Lyme at the hospital.

  'Wait a minute: Frederick Lyme — I know that name,' said Johanson after ringing off. He took down from a bookcase a large loose-leaf binder: a directory of the faculty of Columbia University. 'Let me just — here he is. He's not a doctor. He's in physiology. Not even a Ph. D.'

  'Why would a physiologist,' asked Younger, 'be treating a patient in your hospital?'

  Colette and Mrs Meloney, received like dignitaries by Mr Arnold Brighton at his luminous-paint factory in New Jersey, were each presented with a diamond stickpin — a token, Brighton said, of his appreciation. Mrs Meloney was delighted. Colette tried to look it.

  The factory, Brighton proudly showed them, operated under the scrupulous supervision of laboratory scientists, who took care that precisely measured micrograms of radium were properly added to the drums of blue and yellow paint, which were then sealed and spun to ensure uniform hue and dilution. Lead screens separated the radium-infused paint from the rest of the factory floor. Radioactivity detectors were located in various spots to sound an instant alarm in case of a radiation leak.

  Mrs Meloney brought up the subject of the Marie Curie Radium Fund.

  'Yes, Marie Curie,' said Brighton reverently. 'You can't quantify what the world owes that woman. Even Samuels would have difficulty measuring it. He's a gifted accountant, my Samuels. You wouldn't guess it from looking at him. It just shows you can't judge a man by his cover. Isn't that right, ladies?'

  Col
ette and Mrs Meloney agreed that you could not.

  'Was I saying something?' asked Brighton.

  'Our debt to Madame Curie,' prompted Mrs Meloney.

  'Yes, of course. The profit from my radium mines in Colorado, the profit from my luminous-paint sales — I owe it all to Marie Curie. Of course, I do own a few other little things here and there.'

  'Mr Brighton,' Mrs Meloney explained to Colette, 'is one of our nation's great oilmen.'

  'That's how we discovered radium in Colorado,' said Brighton cheerfully. 'We were sinking exploratory lines for oil.'

  Mrs Meloney gently reminded Brighton of the Fund.

  'Fund?' he asked. 'What Fund?'

  'The Radium Fund, Mr Brighton.'

  'The Fund, the Fund, of course,' he said. 'Marvelous idea, yes — I can't wait to meet Madame Curie. And I can't wait for you to see my factory in Manhattan, where we put the paint on the watch dials. I am one of the largest employers of women in New York, Miss Rousseau, did you know that?'

  Colette politely denied such knowledge. With a theatrical sigh, Mrs Meloney declared, 'What a pity that Madame Curie will not be coming to America after all. The Fund is still woefully short of what it needs. Sixty-five thousand dollars short, despite the magnanimous contribution with which you started us off, Mr Brighton.'

  'Sixty-five thousand dollars short,' repeated Brighton, with strange good cheer. 'It would be a great relief to know whether I will be making another donation, wouldn't it?'

  'We are most eager to know, Mr Brighton,' replied Mrs Meloney.

  'No more so than I, Mrs Meloney,' said Brighton. 'No more so than I.'

  Colette and Mrs Meloney exchanged glances at this mysterious remark.

  Younger called next at Columbia University's Department of Physiology, located on the grand new campus far uptown, where one of the buildings bore his mother’s maiden name. The secretary in the small physiology building confirmed that Frederick Lyme was a member of the faculty.

  'What's his specialty?' asked Younger.