The Attempted Murder of Teddy Roosevelt Read online

  Wilkie took in a mouthful of smoke and loosed it upon the world. I realized the slowdown was the point of a pipe. “Possibly,” he said.

  “Or possibly not?”

  Another puff. “Or possibly not.”

  Wilkie’s men had found other fingerprints, too. He presumed that one set belonged to James Hull, the company director who had sketched the map and had offered the twenty-dollar bribe (no other word fit).

  “And another set,” Wilkie said, “which took us a while to match. But we did. Around six o’clock this morning, one of my smartest men had a hunch and tested the letter you gave us that authorized us to take possession.”

  “You mean my fingerprints.”

  “No. Someone else’s.”

  I was puzzled for a moment about what he meant. Then I remembered.

  “Chief Nicholson!” I said. “Inside the map?”

  “Inside and out.”

  * * *

  Odd.

  The White House was in a haze. Pennsylvania avenue and its traffic and its pedestrians had faded from view. I kept walking to my office as I contemplated the oddity: Chief Nicholson had never handled the map, not while it was in my keeping. I had made sure of that, in order to leave the motorman’s fingerprints unsmudged. But when else might he have touched it? The explanation must be simple—I just wasn’t seeing it. Had I forgotten?

  I probably insulted a civil servant or two by brushing past as I scuttled up the marble stairs to my office.

  The telephone operator connected me to Pittsfield immediately. Chief Nicholson was at his desk. My lucky day.

  “What?” the police chief shouted. I was grateful for the scratchy line; it gave me a chance to rephrase my question.

  “The fingerprints—your fingerprints,” I shouted back. I held the tubular receiver aloft, cradling it like a pipeline to God. “Why are they on that map?”

  “They are?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  Silence but for the crackle of invention. I waited. I doubted he was calculating how much this telephone call was costing … me. Then he growled, “I know they are.”

  Why was I not surprised? Of course he knew. “Oh?” I said.

  “Because I put it there—put it back there.”

  “What do you mean, ‘put it back there’?”

  “I found the map under the seat and examined it and put it back there.” A pause. “For you to find.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I couldn’t have. Why would you want to do that?”

  “Not to disturb a crime scene. So you could see it as it was.”

  “But you disturbed it.”

  “I had every right to. May I remind you that I am the police chief here. And besides, I restored the crime scene. What difference does it make?”

  Must I explain the sanctity of evidence to a police chief? And did I believe his far-fetched story? I trusted the man, but what did I really know about him? Only what he wanted me to know. He had seemed candid enough, strikingly so, willing to tell a stranger (me) about the flaws of a political machine to which he was beholden. Maybe he was merely a truth teller, guileless—a guileless police chief?—and therefore unlikely to succeed. Or maybe he was too clever by half, and therefore unlikely to succeed. I’d thought I understood him, at least a little, but maybe it was just that I liked him. A risky confusion for a diplomat. For a detective, too.

  I was barely listening as Chief Nicholson reported on his interview with the motorman’s previous employer, Taconic Mills, which had fired him for distributing leaflets extolling the dignity of labor. Was that illegal? Suspicious, perhaps. Also understandable (though please don’t tell anyone I uttered such a heresy; I’m a good Republican, among the best). He had also quizzed the two New York cops overheard in the Hotel Wendell lobby. They had been “just gabbing.”

  My attention revived as Chief Nicholson described what he had learned at Madden’s bank. The three thousand–odd dollars looked legitimate, a windfall from the estate of a recently deceased, childless uncle in Pennsylvania, produced by selling anthracite coal stocks, divvied up five ways. Anthracite! Surely a coincidence. In any event, was that a motive to murder a president?

  “You’ve never searched Madden’s house?” I said.

  “We tried, but Mr. Turtle blocked it in court. By way of the regular judge.”

  The streetcar company’s president, that is. “So what do you think?” I said.

  “About what?”

  “About Mr. Madden’s … role in this.” Why not just say it? “About his guilt.”

  Chief Nicholson’s sigh overtook the static. “I wish I knew the answer to that. But I will tell you what I testified at the inquest this morning. From everything I’ve been told and my men have learned, I think … I do think … the trolley could have stopped.”

  “But was it on purpose, do you think?”

  A longish pause. “I cannot see inside a man’s mind,” Chief Nicholson said.

  That was my job, I guess. “Then they will plead guilty, I take it—Mr. Madden and Mr. Kelly.”

  “That is my current understanding. The court date has been put off for another two weeks, at the defendants’ request. You may get a chance to make inquiries before I do.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Their esteemed lawyer is on his way to your fair city, even as we speak. Scheduled to arrive to-night, a little past eleven.”

  I imagined the great and grand Mr. Turtle waddling into Washington. “For what purpose, would you happen to know?”

  “No, Mr. Secretary,” Chief Nicholson said. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  * * *

  “Just what this blessed nation needs, old boy!” Henry Adams exclaimed. “A few million more Israel Cohens!”

  “Henry!” How much of what Henry said he actually meant and how much was for show or for shock I could never decide for sure. (I am not sure he could, either.) I had mentioned, mainly for the sake of conversation—and yes, to draw a reaction—the missive to European capitals on the Roumanian Jews. “Anyway, more would be staying in Europe than coming here.”

  “Have you been to the Lower East Side?” Henry said.

  “Yes. Have you?”

  “I’ve seen pictures.”

  I reminded him of my foray into the squalid Jewish ghetto in Vienna as a chargé d’affaires decades ago, and the empathy I’d felt ever since. It only deepened his scorn.

  “Henry, do you have any feeling for anyone besides yourself?”

  “Of course I do. For you, dear heart.”

  “Allow me to decline the honor,” I said.

  “As everyone does, my nieces excepted.”

  This conversation was making me sad. This afternoon’s stroll had taken us south along Seventeenth street to the Potomac banks, into the past. I could pretend that B street was still a canal and an open sewer, as when I’d first arrived, forty-one short years ago. The Washington Monument was then a third of its present height and its grounds a swamp, not terra firma. The river was still untamed—the whitecapped moat that had kept the Confederacy (mostly) at bay. I was pretty sure I smelled sewage, although it might have been my memory playing tricks. The ground was spongy; the marshy shoreline sucked at my boots. Henry refused to risk his shoeshine, so we turned back.

  “Find anything?” I said, as casually as I could, reluctant to ask a scholar for his conclusions after a single day of perusing a railroad trust’s effluence of paper.

  “No end of forthwiths and pursuants and parties of the first parts. Legal gibberish. It is a crime that people are paid to write such things.”

  “Probably more than you earn. Or me.”

  “I appreciate your pointing that out.”

  The walk home took us past the ironworks, the Tea Cup Inn, and an ice-cream shop, then the Corcoran art gallery and the War Department offices. At the corner of Seventeenth and G, a bareheaded black woman watched as we ambled past. I tipped my top hat and said, “Good after
noon, ma’am.”

  She nodded gravely, willing to treat me as an equal.

  Henry was babbling on about the need for all right-thinking men to protect the canon of Western culture. Naturally, I agreed—how could I not?—but my heart wasn’t in it. What use was Homer or Kipling at a time like this? I worried instead about the … I went blank. Alice’s wedding, I guess. What could matter more?

  * * *

  The New Willard, in truth, was nothing like the old. The former, plain-named Willard, where president-elect Lincoln had stayed, was an attractive but unornamented building, five stories high, rounded at the corner of Fourteenth street and Pennsylvania avenue. Its recent replacement was an explosion of Beaux Arts style, with a pillared entrance and twelve stories of eye-catching gray, capped by a mansard roof of lavish cornices and a cupola. All was meant to dazzle, and it did.

  The lobby was a feast of mottled marble pillars and sensuous chandeliers. I zigzagged past the clusters of guests and early drinkers. The farthest of the three elevators was waiting, operated by a coffee-colored man with a shock of white hair and a dignified bearing. He was willing to deliver me to the fifth floor.

  My watch said five thirty-five. I knocked on Lizzie’s door with trepidation. I had been drawn here, almost unthinkingly, but I couldn’t say why (not that I had asked). I heard footsteps and an unlatching—but nothing like Who is it? Did she think she knew already? Did she assume it was somebody else?

  The door swished open, and there she stood, radiant. It would probably be physiologically inaccurate to say that my heart skipped a beat, but metaphorically it counts as true. She had what Clara lacked—a sinuous body, a coy manner, an easy and seductive laugh. And a cruel streak, like Kate Chase’s, back when I was young and she was the Treasury secretary’s daughter and the capital’s belle. (She had married for money but died a pauper three years ago.) Lizzie Cameron was trouble—this, I knew. But somehow this was part of her allure. Why, I’m not sure I could tell you, even assuming I wanted to know.

  She was taller than Clara, and dressed more stylishly, even in the boudoir, in a green satin robe with navy blue trim and a fetching paisley scarf. As usual, she scared the hell out of me but, also as usual, I rose to the occasion.

  “Lizzie,” I said, with barely a tremble. “May I come in?”

  An instant’s hesitation. “Of course, Johnny,” she said, and stood aside.

  “Your husband, is he here?”

  “You know he isn’t.”

  “I suspected it, I must confess.” I placed my silk hat on the Queen Anne armchair. “And I came despite that.”

  “You must be very brave,” Lizzie replied, with a mirthless laugh.

  “Determined, anyway.”

  I draped my overcoat across the top of the chair.

  “Please have a seat, Johnny,” she said. “I wish I had something to offer.” My chuckle brought an amendment. “Besides bourbon, I mean. A bottle that Don left behind—inadvertently.”

  Nothing I could say would advance my cause.

  What was my cause, exactly? I wished to hell I knew. I stepped toward her, and she stepped back.

  “Would you join me,” I said. “In a drink, I mean?” I meant no more than that. I swore that was so, with an air of desperation that I didn’t trust.

  What was her pull on me? No puzzle, really. It was that I wanted her, pure and simple. I knew I shouldn’t, but I did. That was a fact. An inconvenient one, to be sure, one I ought to resist, and I did—and I would. But facts, by their nature, are hard to deny. Isn’t it best to confront them? Denied, they have an ugly habit of sticking around.

  “I suppose I would,” she said.

  “Allow me.”

  My drink was deeper—I figured I needed it more—but hers went down in a gulp. “Another?” I said.

  “Oh no, this will work.”

  She had seated herself on the beige divan, on the far end from my chair. “You seem to have something in mind,” she said.

  It wasn’t my mind on my mind. I sighed. I was, uncharacteristically, tongue-tied. “You are a difficult woman to please,” I said at last.

  “Not always.”

  “Thank you. I feel even worse.”

  She laughed. This time she meant it.

  * * *

  I was heading home before eight o’clock, none the worse for wear. Why had I had gone to see Lizzie at all? I knew why: If I hoped to master my own emotions, I needed to feel them first, and then walk away. I had to see her to know if I could resist her. And I could. I did. Granted, with her help, saving me from myself. In any event, I counted the visit as a success.

  The sky was clear and moonlit. The gravel in Lafayette Square scrunched under my feet. The park was crossed with shadows and the archway over my front door resembled a cavern roof. The entrance was unlocked. Nobody came to greet me, which was just as well.

  On the silver tray in the foyer, an official-looking envelope had my name on it, written in a familiar hand. I considered ignoring it, but only for a moment. I slit open the envelope with my thumb and unfolded the paper, then placed it under the flickering bulb. Embossed across the top: SECRET SERVICE.

  Then a scribble:

  Hay,

  Reptile staying at the Willard.

  Wilkie

  First thing to-morrow.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1902

  Daybreak brought a liveliness to Washington that I had grown to detest. Had I become an easterner at heart? The city wasn’t sleepy like it used to be, nor was it quite as Southern. (Nor, happily, was it New York.) I didn’t mind an early hour, but it was better to let the world simmer a spell, if it would, which too often these days it wouldn’t. I’d found that, unlike mysteries of the heart, traffic quandaries had a way of resolving themselves if you left them alone for a while. That included the jam on Pennsylvania avenue east of Fifteenth street. The barouches and landaus and drays—eventually, all of them would reach their destination. The rumble of a streetcar scattered the pedestrians like a fox disperses hens. I imagined the chaos if and when automobiles became a regular part of the daily free-for-all rather than a passing nuisance.

  I was up and out early this morning—I regretted rushing off without even an apple in hand—to assure myself the advantage of surprise. At the stroke of seven o’clock, I rapped on the door of the Ulysses S. Grant suite, up the twisting staircase beyond the reception desk at the New Willard Hotel.

  No response.

  I banged again and heard a padding of footsteps, which stopped just short of the door.

  “Room service?” A sweet tenor.

  I grunted.

  The door opened. William Turtle, with all of his flab and folds, overflowed his tartan dressing gown. “You again!” he squealed.

  “The pleasure is mine,” I said. “May I take a moment of your time?”

  “You already have.”

  He started to shut the door in my face, but I put my foot in the way—mundane but effective. I wondered if Sherlock had tried it.

  “A moment more, then, if you would,” I said.

  Turtle considered his choices—I could sense the machinations in the willful blankness on his face—and stepped aside.

  The eight-sided, high-ceilinged sitting room was sumptuous—mahogany furniture, gilded mirrors, a painting of the eighteenth president above the marble fireplace.

  “There,” Turtle said, pointing to a divan perpendicular to the windows. “Give me a minute or two.”

  Turtle shambled into the hallway that led to the rest of the suite. What remained of his hair lay in strips across his scalp. I thought I heard a woman’s voice, back in what I presumed to be the bedroom. A few syllables, nothing more.

  I passed up the appointed divan, with its gold-braided upholstery and frilly pillows, and stepped to the window. From above, the traffic along the avenue reminded me of an intricate Black Forest toy crushed by an ogre. Across the roadway, the widest in Washington, the Grand Army Hall stood like
a redbrick sentry.

  I rehearsed my opening question. What brings you to our fair city, Mr. Turtle? Ah, such a punch to the gut, sure to provoke anyone to spill all secrets. Or, say, Tell me, Mr. Turtle, did your client or clients attempt to murder the president? Sherlock would drool with envy.

  Ten minutes must have passed before Turtle returned. He wore a white shirt but no cravat, baggy brown slacks held high by yellow suspenders, and a soiled frock coat. He lowered himself into an overstuffed armchair opposite the divan, where I now sat. His jowls sagged, pulling his cheeks down, which lent him a look of perpetual sadness.

  “Welcome to Washington, Mr. Turtle,” I began. “If I may ask, what brings you to our fair—”

  A knock at the door.

  “My breakfast, if you will excuse me,” Turtle said. He raised himself onto his feet, wobbled a moment, and crossed the room. He opened the door and exclaimed, “You!”

  The gun went off.

  The sound was the loudest I had ever heard. I froze, disbelieving. I could not hear myself moan. I could not hear anything. It took me a second or two—or twenty—to accept what I was seeing, as Turtle crumpled ever so slowly to the floor. I jumped from my seat, sprinted to the doorway, and leaned out.

  Smoke filled the corridor; the sharp smell of gunpowder nearly knocked me flat. I thought I saw a pair of narrow heels rushing away and I screamed, “Stop!”

  I was straddling Turtle, grazing his shoulder with my foot. I looked down at him. He lay on his back, an arm flung over his head, a leg pinned beneath him at a sickening angle. His dark eyes were open. A small, precise hole, edged in black, pierced his forehead. He lay still, an astonished look on his face.

  The telephone was on a marble-topped table by the divan. I ran for it, to summon a doctor—unnecessarily, I was certain—and the police. Only then did I search the dead man’s pockets.

  * * *

  I had never been in manacles before, and I wouldn’t recommend them, especially if your nose has a tendency to run, as mine does. It was damn annoying, and embarrassing besides.