The Death Instinct

Chapter Three

The attack on Wall Street of September 16, 1920, was not only the deadliest bombing in the nation's hundred-fifty-year history. It was the most incomprehensible. Who would detonate a six-hundred- pound explosive in one of New York's busiest plazas at the most crowded time of day?

Only one word, according to the New York Times, could describe the perpetrators of such an act: terrorists. The Washington Post opined that the attack was 'an act of war,' demanding an immediate counterattack from the United States Army. But war with what country, what foreign nation, what enemy? There was no answer. In this respect the attack on Wall Street was not only appalling, but appallingly familiar.

Fifteen million souls had perished in the Great War — a number almost beyond human compass. Yet despite this staggering toll, the war had been fathomable. Armies mobilized and demobilized. Countries were invaded and invaders repelled. Men went to the front and, much ol' the time, returned. War had limits. War came to an end.

But by 1920 the world had become used to a new kind of war. It had started a quarter-century earlier, with a wave of assassinations. In 1894, the President of France was murdered; in 1898, the Empress of Austria; in 1900, the King of Italy; in 1901, President McKinley of the United States; in 1912, the Prime Minister of Spain; and of course in 1914, a Hapsburg archduke, launching the great conflagration. Assassination as such was nothing new, but these killings were different.

Most of them lacked any clear, concrete objective. They lacked even the erratic rationality of a festering grudge.

All, however, were somehow the same. All were committed by poor young men, usually foreign, linked by shadowy international networks and sharing in a death-dealing ideology that made them seem almost to welcome their own demise. The assassinations appeared to be an attack on all Western nations, on civilization itself. The perpetrators were called by many names: anarchists, socialists, nationalists, fanatics, extremists, communists. But in the newspapers and in public oratory, one name joined them all: terrorist.

In 1919, the bombings on American soil began. On April 28, a small brown package was delivered to the Mayor of Seattle, who had recently broken up a general strike. The return address said 'Gimbel Brothers'; a handwritten label promised 'Novelty — a sample.' Inside lay a wooden tube that was indeed a novelty. It contained an acid detonator and a stick of dynamite. The crude bomb failed to explode. But the next day an identical novelty, delivered to the home of a former United States senator, blew off the hands of the unlucky housemaid who opened it.

The following evening, riding home from work in a New York subway, a mail clerk reading the newspaper realized that he had seen over a dozen similar packages that very day. Rushing back to the post office, he found these parcels still undelivered — for insufficient postage. Eventually, thirty-six 'novelty' package bombs were discovered, targeting an eclectic roster of personages including John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan.

A month later, synchronized explosions lit up the night in eight different American cities at the same hour. The targets were houses — of an Ohio mayor, a Massachusetts legislator, a New York judge. By far the boldest of these attacks was the blast at the home of the nation's Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, in Washington, DC. Here the bomber blundered. As he mounted Palmer's front steps, his explosive detonated while still in his hands, leaving only scattered body fragments for the police to pick through.

Palmer responded with sweeping raids, his G-men breaking down doors all over America, whether by day or under cover of night. Thousands were rounded up, detained, or deported, with or without charge. Telephones were tapped. Mail was intercepted. Suspects were 'forcefully interrogated.' The perpetrators, however, were never identified.

Yet however monstrous, all this murder was directed at public men. Ordinary people felt no personal danger. They felt no need to alter the way they lived. That skin of felt security was burned away when Wall Street went up in flames on September 16, 1920.

Crossing the police barricade, Younger and Littlemore were immediately set upon. A large crowd — much larger than Younger had realized — pressed in at the roadblocks around the blast area. Women with infants in their arms tugged at Younger's sleeves, begging for news of their husbands. Anxious voices called out in the dusk, wanting to know what had happened.

Littlemore tried to answer every entreaty. He reassured one woman that no children had been killed. To others he explained where they could go to see a list of the casualties. All the rest he advised firmly but without temper to go back home and wait for more news tomorrow.

Even the officers on duty, keeping the crowd at bay, were not immune from the general anxiety. One of them whispered to Littlemore as they passed: 'Say, Lieutenant, was it Bolsheviks? They say it was bolsheviks.'

'Naw, it was a gas pipe, is all,' another officer chimed in, holding up a newspaper as evidence. 'Mayor Hylan says so. Ain't that right, Lieutenant?'

'Give me that,' answered Littlemore.

The detective took the paper, which an on-duty policeman should not have been carrying. It was the Sun's four-page extra edition. 'Can you believe this?' asked Littlemore, reading from the inner pages. 'Hylan's telling everybody it was a busted gas main.'

As both Younger and Littlemore knew, the most important fact about the blackened crater they had seen in the plaza was something that wasn't there. There was no fissure, no rupture in the pavement, as there would have been had a gas pipe broken and sent a geyser of flame into the street.

'That was a bomb crater,' said Younger.

'That's sure what it looked like,' replied Littlemore, still reading as they walked.

'That's what it was,' said Younger. 'Will you put the goddamned paper away?'

'Geez,' said the detective, throwing the paper into the backseat.

'Where's the crank?' asked Younger, in front of the vehicle, eager to get it running.

'You have been away. There's no crank; they have starter pedals now,' said Littlemore. He saw the worry in Younger's eyes. 'Come on, Doc, she's fine. She went back to the hotel, took the kid out for dinner, left a message for you at the desk, and they bollixed up the message — that's all.'

At the corner of Forty-fourth Street and Lexington Avenue, one block from the Commodore Hotel, stood a public establishment called the Bat and Table. Alongside it lay a narrow, unlit alley, which, used primarily for the collection of garbage, was typically empty of an evening. Atypically, it was occupied on the evening of September 16, 1920, by a motorcar with four doors, a closed roof, and an idling engine.

The driver of this vehicle was not a genteel man. He had a fat, round, hairless face shiny with perspiration. His shoulders were so massed up within his threadbare jacket that they left no neck at all. His hat was at least one size too small, so that his ears bulged out beneath it. Although the car was stationary, he kept his hands glued to the steering wheel, and the woman next to him could see thick short thick hairs protruding from his knuckles. That woman was Colette Rousseau, whose hands were tied behind her.

In the backseat was another individual who conveyed an air of uncongeniality less by his musculature, of which he possessed little, than by a pistol, which he pointed at Colette. His small, wiry torso was housed in an overlarge checked suit, rank with stale beer. His breath was equally aromatic; it smelled of raw onion.

These two men exchanged words in a language Colette could neither understand nor identify. The driver was evidently named Zelko; the man in the backseat, Miljan. Colette said nothing. A slight bruise showed over her left eye.

A rear door opened. Into the backseat a boy was flung headlong, followed quickly by another man, taller than the other two, dressed not well, but better, in a striped suit that was once a decent piece of gentlemen's apparel. He had so much facial hair, copious and black, that his mouth was invisible; his eyes peered out from a thicket of eyebrow and whisker. He slammed the door behind him and barked orders in the same unidentifiable language; the other two men called him Drobac.

Evidently Drobac s orders were to tie up the boy and get the car moving. At least that's what the other two began to do. In French, Colette asked Luc if he was hurt. He shook his head. She went on quietly but quickly, 'It's all a mistake. Soon they will realize and let us go.'

Miljan spat a few incomprehensible sentences that stank of onion. Drobac silenced him with a curt shout.

'They can't understand us in French,' Colette whispered rapidly to Luc. 'He didn't find the box, did he? Just nod, yes or no.'

Drobac barked unintelligibly; the driver, Zelko, jerked the car to a halt. 'Quelle boоte?' said Drobac, in French. 'What box?'

Colette, who had been facing her brother in the rear seat, now swung back around, her eyes fixed on the street ahead.

'What box?' Drobac repeated.

'It's nothing — only my brother's toy box,' said Colette too quickly. 'His precious toys, he is always worried about them.'

'Toy box. Yes. Toy box.' Drobac grabbed Luc by the shirt collar and placed the barrel of a gun to the boy's head. Colette screamed. One of Zelko's hairy-knuckled hands flew to her face, slapping her. 'You lie again,' said Drobac, keeping his pistol in contact with the temple of the struggling boy, 'I kill him.'

'Please — I beg you — it's something for sick people,' entreated Colette. 'It's extremely valuable — I mean, valuable for curing people. It won't be valuable to you. You'll never be able to sell it. Everyone will know it's stolen.'

Drobac gave a command to Zelko, who swung the vehicle into reverse. They headed back to the unlit alley beside the Bat and Table. Drobac smiled. So, inwardly and imperceptibly, did Colette.

Younger, at the front desk of the Commodore Hotel, learned from the reception clerk that no one was in Miss Rousseau's room. Neither the lady nor her brother had returned. 'My key,' said Younger, wondering if they might have gone to his room. 'And you are?' asked the clerk. 'Dr Stratham Younger,' said Younger.

'Certainly, sir,' said the clerk. 'Might I ask for some identification?' Younger reached for his wallet before remembering that he had given it to Colette. 'I don't have any.'

'I see,' said the clerk. 'Perhaps you'd like to speak with the house manager?'

'Get him,' said Younger.

The clerk's information — that no one was in Miss Rousseau's room — was incorrect. Twelve stories overhead, a man with black whiskers all around his face and black gloves on his hands stood before Colette's open closet, looking with irritation at a leather-lined case, the size of a small trunk. The case, Drobac had discovered, was too heavy for him to carry inconspicuously through the lobby and out of the hotel. Laboring, he worked the unwieldy box off the shelf and lowered it to the floor.

The ornate hotel lobby was strangely hushed. People huddled in anxious knots, below palm trees and between marble columns, whispering, disbelieving, each describing where they had been when they heard or heard about the catastrophic explosion on Wall Street. It was the same everywhere, Younger had noticed as he and Littlemore drove uptown: people were paralyzed, as if the reverberations of the blast were still propagating up and down the city, shaking the ground, confusing the air.

He felt perversely like shouting at them. This was not death, he wanted to say. They had no idea what death looked like.

'You are the man claiming to be Dr Younger?' asked the hotel manager, a tall, bespectacled man in white gloves and evening attire.

'No,' said Younger evenly. 'I am Dr Younger.'

The manager, eyeing distastefully Younger's blood-spattered suit, removed the conical receiver from the front desk telephone and held it in suspense as if it were a weapon. 'On the contrary,' he said. 'I personally gave Dr Younger his key two hours ago, after receiving incontestable proofs of identity.' Into the receiver, he added primly to the hotel operator, 'Get me the police.'

'They're already here,' answered a voice behind Younger. Littlemore, having parked his car, now joined Younger at the front desk. He displayed his badge. 'Dr Younger's wallet's been stolen. You gave his key to an impostor.'

The manager regarded the disheveled and dust-covered Littlemore with undiminished suspicion. He scrutinized Littlemore's badge through his spectacles and, still holding the telephone receiver to his ear, declared his intention to speak with the police to 'confirm the detective's identity.'

Cigarette protruding dangerously close to his jungle of beard, Drobac rifled the contents of Colette's laboratory case. He found two flasks, a half-dozen rubber-stoppered test tubes filled with bright green and yellow powders, and several jagged-edged pieces of ore. These rocks, as large as sirloin steaks, were jet-black, but they glistened as if made of congealed oil, and they were marbled with rich veins of gleaming gold and silver. Drobac stuffed his pockets, leaving nothing behind.

'Any dental offices in the hotel?' Littlemore asked the manager while the latter waited for his telephone call to be answered.

'Certainly not,' said the manager. 'The lines are engaged, I'm afraid. Perhaps you'd like to take a seat?'

'I got a better idea,' said Littlemore, dangling a set of handcuffs over the counter. 'You hand over the key or I take you downtown for obstructing a police investigation. That way you can confirm my identity in person.'

The manager handed over the key.

Inside a plush elevator car, the detective and doctor ascended in silence. When the doors finally opened, Younger exited so precipitously he knocked the hat off a man who had been waiting for the car. Younger noticed the man's profuse beard and teeming mustache. But he didn't notice the peculiar way the man's dingy striped jacket tugged down at his shoulders — as if his pockets were loaded with shot.

Younger apologized, reaching for the hat on the carpet. Drobac got to it first.

'Going down,' said the elevator operator.

Whatever Younger hoped or feared to find in Colette's hotel room, he didn't find it. Instead, at the end of an endless corridor, he and Littlemore found — a hotel room. The bed was made. The cot was made. The suitcases were undisturbed. On a coffee table, sprays of burnt matchsticks fanned out in tidy semicircles: the boy's handiwork.

Only Colette's lead-lined laboratory case, lying open and empty in front of her closet, testified to a trespass. Cigarette odor hung in the stifled air.

'That's what they came for,' said Younger grimly. 'That case.'

'Nope,' said the detective, opening closets and checking behind curtains. 'They left the case.'

Younger looked at Littlemore with incredulity and vexation. He took a step toward the open laboratory box.

'Don't touch it, Doc,' the detective added, glancing into the bathroom. 'We'll want to dust it for prints. What was inside?'

'Rare elements,' said Younger. 'For a lecture she was supposed to give. The radium alone was worth ten thousand dollars.'

The detective whistled: 'Who knew?'

'Besides a professor in New Haven, I can think of only one person, and she's no kidnapper.'

Littlemore, checking under the bed, replied: 'The old lady you and Colette visited this morning?'

'That's right.'

With his magnifying glass and a tweezer, the detective began examining, on hands and knees, the carpet surrounding Colette's laboratory case. 'Wait a second. Wait a second.'

'What?' asked Younger.

Littlemore, having pried a bit of cigarette ash from the thick pile of the carpet, was rubbing it between thumb and forefinger. 'This is still warm,' he said. 'Somebody just left.'

Littlemore bolted back into the hall, heading for the elevators. Younger didn't follow. Instead he went to Colette's balcony door and stepped out into the night. Far below, in the light flooding out of the hotel's front doors, Younger saw the man he somehow knew he would see, standing by the curb in his striped suit.

Younger called out: 'You!'

No one heard. Younger was too high up, and the street noise was too great. A car skidded up next to the striped suit, its rear door opening from within. The sudden, swerving halt threw a small body — a little boys body — half out of the car. A moment later, the boy was snatched back inside by invisible hands.

'No,' said Younger. Then he called out at the top of his lungs: 'Stop that car!'

This time Drobac hesitated. He looked up, searching but not finding the source of the cry. No one else took notice. Younger shouted the same futile words again as the man climbed into the backseat, and again as the car sped down Park Avenue, its headlamps and taillamps going suddenly dark, disappearing into the night. Two drops of Younger's blood, flung from his hair as he cried out, drifted downward and broke on the sidewalk not far from where the man had stood.

By the time the echo of Younger's voice had died, Littlemore was back in the room, having heard the doctor's shouts.

'It was the man at the elevator,' said Younger.

'The guy with the hair,' replied Littlemore, 'and the bulging pockets? Are you sure?'

Younger looked at the detective. Then he slowly lifted the coffee table — the one with Luc's matches on it — off the floor and hurled it into a mirrored closet door. There was no satisfying explosion of glass. The mirror only cracked, as did the coffee table. Burnt match- sticks spun in the air, like maple seedpods spiraling down in autumn.

'Jesus, Doc,' said Littlemore.

'You saw something in his pockets,' Younger replied quietly. 'Why didn't you stop him?'

'For having something in his pockets?'

'If you had stationed a single man in front of the hotel,' said Younger, 'we could have caught him.'

'I doubt it,' said Littlemore. 'You know you're bleeding pretty good.'

'What do you mean you doubt it?'

'If I put a uniform outside the front door,' the detective explained, 'the guy doesn't use the front door. He goes out a side door. Or a back door. We would have needed six men minimum.'

'Then why didn't you bring six men?' asked Younger, advancing toward Littlemore.

'Easy, Doc.'

'Why didn't you?'

'You want to know why? Besides the fact that I had no reason to,

I couldn't have gotten six men if I had tried. I couldn't have gotten one. The force is a little busy tonight, in case you hadn't noticed. I'm not even supposed to be here.'

Instead of responding, Younger shoved Littlemore in the chest. 'Go back then.'

"What's the matter with you?' asked Littlemore.

'I'll tell you why you didn't stop him. You weren't paying any goddamned attention.'

'Me? Who waited four hours before noticing that his girlfriend had disappeared when she was supposed to be gone for half an hour?'

'Because you took her,' shouted Younger, taking a straight left jab at Littlemore's head. The detective ducked this blow, but Younger, who know how to fight, had thrown a punch designed to make Littlemore tin just that Younger followed it with a clean right, putting Littlemore on the carpet and taking a lamp down with him.

'Son of a gun,' said Littlemore from the floor, his lip bloody.

He sprang toward Younger, charging low and driving him backward all the way across the room. Younger's head snapped back against the wall. When they came to a standstill, Littlemore had his right fist raised and ready, but Younger was staring blankly over his shoulder.

'How many died today?' asked Younger. 'Thirty?'

'Thirty-six,' said Littlemore, fist still raised.

' Thirty-six,' repeated Younger contemptuously. 'And the whole city's paralyzed. I hate the dead.'

Neither man spoke. Younger sank to a sitting position on the floor. Littlemore sat down near him.

'I'm taking you to a hospital,' said Littlemore.

'Try it.'

'You know I outrank you,' said the detective.

Younger raised an eyebrow.

'Captain beats lieutenant,' added Littlemore.

A police captain doesn't outrank a doughboy in boot camp.'

'Captain beats lieutenant,' repeated Littlemore.

A silence.

'What do you mean you hate the dead?' asked Littlemore.

'Luc wrote that to me — Colette's brother. He doesn't talk. I was — what was I doing? I was reading a book he'd given me. Then he handed me a note that said, "I hate the dead."' Younger looked at the detective. 'Sorry about — about-'

'Slugging me in the jaw?'

'Blaming you,' said Younger. 'It's my fault. My fault they're in America. My fault she went off by herself.'

'We'll get them back,' said Littlemore.

Younger described what he'd witnessed from the balcony. Littlemore asked him what kind of car he had seen. Younger couldn't say. He'd been too far overhead. He couldn't even be sure of the color.

'We'll get them back,' Littlemore repeated.

'How?' asked Younger.

'Here's what we do. I go to headquarters and put out a bulletin. We'll have the whole force looking for this guy by tomorrow. You wait here in case they send a ransom note. Meantime I question the old lady you met with. What's her name?'

'Mrs William B. Meloney. Thirty-one West Twelfth.'

'Maybe she told some other people about the samples Colette brought with her.'

'It's possible,' said Younger.

'So maybe the wrong kind of person found out.' At the doorway, Littlemore added: 'Do me a favor. Patch up your head.'