The Attempted Murder of Teddy Roosevelt Read online

  “Go to fucking hell.”

  “Nobody?”

  “No. Only Frank.”

  “Forney?”

  “Yeah, Frank.”

  Samson, again. Frank Forney was everywhere. In Governor Crane’s suite at the Willard. On Mason’s Island, kidnapping Lizzie and shooting at me. In Pittsfield, in David Pratt’s room at the House of Mercy. I had seen him there. Did somebody see him there again on Friday night?

  I can’t explain where my next question came from, but I nearly shouted it: “What did Frank Forney have on your father?”

  Davy moaned and turned pale.

  Suddenly, things made sense. Why on earth would a man of wide respect cause a collision that might have killed the president, the governor—himself? Was five thousand dollars enough? Ten thousand? Money made no sense to me as a motive. This was the reason: He had to. He had no choice. Because Frank Forney had something on him; he knew something that David Pratt Sr. didn’t want known.

  “What did he…” I started to repeat myself, before I noticed that Davy’s chin had fallen to his chest. His eyes were shut and his torso tipped back down on the cot.

  I had lost him, before I could ask whether Frank Forney was left-handed.

  * * *

  At the livery stable behind the Hotel Wendell, I found a buggy that would take me to Dalton. The driver was a bulky young Irishman with a crooked nose. I recognized the facial topography.

  “A prizefighter?” I said.

  “Was.” A proud and wicked smile, a front tooth missing.

  On the way out of Pittsfield, we traded tales from the ring. His were more poetic than mine. His snout took its current complicated shape when a muscled African with a shaved head slammed uppercuts into his face while three thousand people watched in silence.

  The houses and storefronts of Tyler street gave way to the meadows and orchards and farmland along Dalton road. Clop, clop, clop—the only sound, other than our voices. I learned a little about Dublin and too much about Boston and less than I wanted to know about Dalton. Yes, he had known David Pratt. Not a bad fellow. As a horseman, among the best in the Berkshires. A skilled driver, best he knew. One of the governor’s favorites, which counted for something. The governor didn’t suffer fools, gladly or otherwise.

  “You like that about him,” I said.

  “I do, sir. None of the typical…” The driver glanced back at my silk hat—and forgave me for it. “Bullshit. You know these petunias in Boston—in Washington, too.”

  “I do indeed,” I said.

  The buggy sliced through dark woodlands and up a slight incline into the town of Dalton. Crane’s mills lined both sides of the road. The village had its attractions, if you liked mills—paper mills, sawmills, woolen mills, the gristmill, all powered by the east branch of the Housatonic River. Old stone houses, too—from the century past, but with evidences of the new one as well. When Theodore had arrived in Dalton, the night before the collision, festoons of lights had greeted him—strings of electricity, Chinese lanterns, Roman candles. He had planted an elm on the governor’s lawn and spent the night in his home.

  David Pratt had lived across the tracks, in a two-story frame house attached to his livery stable. It had rough-hewn gray shingles and a rickety porch in need of paint. The door was ajar. When I pushed it open, it creaked. The foyer was empty but for an elderly armoire and two umbrellas propped next to the door. I heard children squabbling in the backyard. An argument was under way upstairs between a man’s rough voice—I knew that voice!—and a woman’s sobs. At the thud of flesh against flesh, I took the steps two at a time. There was no railing.

  The combatants were in the master bedroom, such as it was. The wallpaper was peeling and the bed was unmade. The gray-haired woman—Mrs. Pratt, I assumed—sat hunched on the bed, her forehead resting on her forearms, weeping quietly now. Standing over her, quivering with rage, spittle at his lips, his right arm raised, ready to strike, was a big, red-bearded man. Frank Forney himself. Samson.

  I threw myself at his head, and his arm changed trajectory. His fist caught me under my chin and rammed into my throat. I went down, onto my back, striking the bedpost, gasping for breath. I saw his heel driving toward me and I rolled to my right and felt the breeze of his leg whoosh by. He delivered a gratuitous kick to the groin and hissed, “I told you to stay out of this, Hay!”

  I scrunched up in pain. But something had registered: that was the voice, the one that had threatened me in Park Square.

  Samson rushed from the bedroom and down the stairs. The front door banged.

  The silence was stunning. Mrs. Pratt’s crying had ceased. My back was wedged into the bed at an awkward angle. My groin was on fire, although my nausea was beginning to ebb.

  I must have passed out, at least briefly, and blessedly, because the next thing I remember was opening my eyes and finding myself on a bed. Mrs. Pratt was staring down at my face. Her cheeks looked parched, a schoolmarm’s pucker; the bags under her eyes were black.

  “I’m fine,” I said, the sort of overstatement I would make after a punishing round in the ring. I ached everywhere, especially below the belt. I glanced down to make sure I still had a belt. I did. Trousers, too, although my cravat and my collar were awry. “Are you all right?”

  The slightest nod.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said. “You are Mrs. Pratt, are you not?”

  Her worry had changed to trepidation. “What do you want with us?” she said. “Haven’t we suffered enough?”

  “I have no doubt of that,” I said. When I tried to sit up, every movement hurt, but I did it anyway. “But I want to understand what happened to your husband—and what just happened here. Don’t you want that, too?”

  “Who are you?” she said.

  I explained as best I could—representing the president, my usual gibberish—but she didn’t seem convinced. I couldn’t blame her.

  “It … wasn’t … his … fault,” she said. Her husband’s words, negated. No coincidence, surely. She had heard his complaints, his fears. His confession?

  “What wasn’t his fault?” I said.

  “The collision—it wasn’t his fault. You can’t blame him!”

  “Then, who should we blame?” I said.

  She moaned; her gray eyes glanced at the doorway.

  “What did he want?” I said.

  No reply.

  “Did he strike you?” I said.

  Her head shook like an aspen in a gale.

  “How many times?” I pressed.

  Her lips tightened.

  “Why?” I implored. “I know it wasn’t your husband’s fault.” A defensible lie, under the circumstances. “What did Mr. Forney have on him?”

  Mrs. Pratt burst into tears. She swiveled her head side to side, unable even to raise her hands to her face. I let her cry, as if I had any choice. It probably lasted no more than a minute, although it seemed like ten.

  A gentler approach. “Please, Mrs. Pratt, who is Frank Forney?”

  She tried to gather herself. “Nothing but trouble,” she whimpered. “I never wanted him in this house.”

  “Then why is he here?”

  “My husband insisted. Knew his father, he did—knew him well. Frank Senior was a blacksmith here in Dalton, down from Québec.” She pronounced it in the French manner. “We took on his son as a favor. So first he gets in trouble as … worse than an anarchist. Canada this, Canada that—his homeland, so he says, though I haven’t seen him moving back there. Then look at what … he…” A sob escaped. “Does … to … us.”

  “What did he do to you?” I said. No point in subtlety. “Tell me, what hold did he have over your husband?”

  Her eyes closed, as if she were looking at something she wouldn’t let me see. I willed myself to patience. When her eyes reopened, they were showing signs of life. She had decided something.

  “Have you seen our grandson?” Mrs. Pratt said. “Arthur’s younger boy, Francis. Francis! He has red hair, too.�
�

  * * *

  Back in Pittsfield, I had one more stop to make. The prosperous neighborhood near the House of Mercy was a mix of mill-style houses and gabled Victorians. The livery driver stopped the rig at 65 Burbank. I gawked at the turrets, the stone balustrades, the Gothic windows.

  “Should I wait?” the livery driver said.

  “You think it’s safe?” I said.

  “I can take care of myself, sir.”

  “For me, I mean.”

  The Crusader-arched door opened before I knocked.

  “Mr. Hay,” said a young woman with a light-brown complexion and a saucy manner. “Mrs. Turtle is waiting.”

  She ushered me through the stone foyer and along a marble corridor into a room as spacious and cold as a Bavarian castle. A fire was burning in a man-size hearth, dwarfing the silhouette of Katherine Turtle. She was a small, delicate woman with a defiant posture and huge brown eyes. Her plain black dress reached to the floor and did nothing to conceal the blond ringlets or the rosiness in her cheeks. In spite of her husband’s death, I wondered, or because of it? She reached forward in long black gloves and shook my hand. Her grip was strong.

  Mrs. Turtle insisted on serving me tea, which I was none too proud to accept. I was famished. The scones were crumbly and sweet.

  I said, “Chief Nicholson told you I was coming, I take it.”

  “No. It was a Mr. Cort … Corta … an odd name.”

  “Cortelyou?”

  “That’s the one. Got a wire yesterday saying you were coming to-day.”

  Theodore must have told him.

  “I came to pay my respects.” I gathered up my courage. “I was there.”

  It took her a moment to realize what I meant. Her eyes bulged and went blank; tears welled. She felt her way toward the nearest seat, a high-backed wing chair that enveloped her. “Tell me,” she whispered.

  “There’s not much to tell,” I said. “I was across the room and he opened the door, thinking it was room service, and he seemed to know the—” I stopped. “What do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know. What happened. What he said.”

  “The last thing he said was ‘You?’ Somebody from Washington, I would guess.” I said nothing about the woman’s voice in the bedroom. “Any idea who your husband knew there?”

  Mrs. Turtle shrugged. “He knew hundreds of people—thousands. How could I possibly keep track?”

  “In Washington?”

  “Everywhere.”

  I asked why he had gone.

  “On business,” she said. “I don’t know much more.”

  “He said nothing about the president’s collision?”

  “Oh, about that, he said a lot. He said he knew who was at fault and that he knew the right people to tell. His information was going to blow the case wide open.”

  “What did he know?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t share those things with me.”

  “He said nothing else about it? Please. This is important.”

  “I already told everything I know to Chief Nicholson, and it wasn’t very much. He was going to meet with some people and, well … just what I said. Somebody would be taking the blame. A woman.”

  “What?”

  “Oh yes, I forgot. A woman was involved. Somebody famous, was my impression.”

  I felt sick.

  “He said it would tear Washington apart,” Mrs. Turtle said. “He took a particular pleasure in that.”

  * * *

  Chief Nicholson looked as if his favorite aunt had died. Come to think of it, he usually did. The bearer of bad news—that described his job, and he was a natural.

  “Forney’s heading north, toward Canada,” Chief Nicholson said. “I got word not ten minutes ago from the chief in Bennington—that’s in southern Vermont. One of his men saw his carriage; it’s from Pratt’s livery stable. They’ll catch up with him soon enough.”

  “That’s the man who attacked me in Park Square, I’m almost positive. I recognized his voice right away.”

  “That’s not enough to hold him,” Chief Nicholson said.

  “Well, he didn’t hurt me, either. How about for first-degree murder, in the death of one David Pratt?”

  “That would be dandy. We’ll have to see if there’s enough evidence.”

  “Or for the kidnapping of Elizabeth Cameron?”

  “Elizabeth who?”

  * * *

  The Connecticut countryside was out there somewhere, in the dark. I watched my reflection in the window. I swore I didn’t look much different than I did decades ago. Didn’t the beard cover up the changes? Yes, this was my strategy for growing old with a modicum of grace: self-delusion. That, and disbelief.

  A scotch in hand, I considered yet again the mystery of Elizabeth Sherman Cameron. A famous woman. What kind of woman was she? What kinds of woman, because one thing she was was complicated. And exactly how evil was she? Yet tantalizing, to be sure. A siren, in the mythological sense. Damn hard to resist, especially since—

  No, I wouldn’t think about Del. I needed to think about Lizzie. Was she seriously willing to assassinate a president? I’m not entirely sure I would put it past her. She was that headstrong. But was she capable of actually arranging it? About that, I had my doubts. Yes, she could charm almost anyone—any man, anyway—to do almost anything she asked. And she was bright as hell, though probably too bright for her own good—or for anyone else’s. Worse, she was disorganized and impulsive and didn’t work well with others. Or play well, for that matter. Certainly not with me.

  But if Lizzie was involved, why had she been kidnapped? Had she been kidnapped? She had gone willingly, it seems, until … until the red-bearded Samson appeared. That was when she got frightened. Or so she says.

  Only now did I notice the rain pelting the club car’s window. My scotch had been reduced to melted ice. I ordered another and sipped it with care. I was indifferent to the taste; it was the heat I sought. Raindrops splashed off the window ledge, into the night. I thought again about Del. About Del, about Lizzie. About Del, about—

  I sat up with a jolt. Del. Lizzie. Del and Lizzie. The timing was indisputable—irrefutable. It had been staring me in the face from the first. I had been loving her, or thinking I did, for a year now. Del had died just a few months earlier.

  Del’s death was the itch. Lizzie was the scratch. It was so obvious. Why hadn’t I seen this before? Maybe I had, at the periphery of my understanding, just past recognition. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to know.

  Now I did. I took a full, deep breath and exhaled slowly through my nose. I felt as if a hundred-pound weight had fallen from my neck. Naming the problem—understanding it—removed the urgency. Shouldn’t it? I could hope so, anyway. Maybe I could break loose.

  I drained the second scotch, decided against a third, and eased The Hound of the Baskervilles from my valise. I tried to read about Stapleton wandering the moor, carrying his butterfly net, shocked at the corpse Sherlock had found there. I kept seeing Del splayed across the ground, his limbs at unnatural angles.

  I can’t remember what happened next, but I must have fallen asleep in my seat, because my eyes snapped open and my head was on my chest. Drool hung from my lips. The screeching of the brakes had awakened me; the railroad car halted in fits and starts. I looked around. I was alone. I was frightened. Of what? A primal, childhood fright, behind the navel, above the bowels. I shook my head fiercely and returned to myself.

  Welcome to New York. I passed through Manhattan—the night was a blur—and ferried across the Hudson. Even near midnight, the wide walkway was noisy and smelled of pork. Did Jersey City never sleep? I did. I was sleepwalking, placing one foot in front of the other, heading for the train home. Home! Clara, under the sheets! Our sheets.

  I emerged into the half-moon’s light. Thirty or forty feet ahead of me, the silhouette of a man looked familiar. A big man—broad back, heavy shoulders, straggly mane.

  I stopped in my tracks. I kn
ew all too well who it was. Literally the last man I expected—or wanted—to see.

  It was Frank Forney. Samson.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1902

  I couldn’t sleep. The bed in the Pullman was small and lumpy, and the railroad bumped and swayed, but that wasn’t why. What was he doing here? He was heading for Canada, wasn’t he? What was he doing on his way to Washington? More to the point, who was he going to kill next?

  I had an awful feeling I knew the answer to that last question: the president.

  This provoked the next question: How could I stop him? He was bigger than I, and surely he was armed; my derringer wouldn’t even up the odds. He was somewhere on this train. There was nothing I could do about it now except catch some shut-eye.

  Ha!

  The night was long, it was long, never ending.

  A cadence like the wheels of the train.

  Once it started, the dawn never came.

  Not bad.

  Suppose it never came, never came, never came, never came.

  Suppose the world was round.

  Stuck. But wait. End it there! The verse, if not the poem. Why not? Forget the rhyme. To hell with the rhyme. Let the cadence, the sounds—and hey, the ambiguities of meaning, in all their glory—prevail.

  I stopped writing and fell asleep instead. Then I woke up abruptly, in thrall to a dream of my legs pumping uncontrollably, like a dog’s when you scratch the right spot. I blinked my way back to reality, only this time I was the predator instead of the prey. The stalker, not the stalked. The stalked was on the train someplace—that much I knew. I made myself invisible, which meant staying in my compartment, venturing out only for nature’s call.

  Eventually, she called, and I had to reply.

  That was how I came to glimpse the back of Frank Forney’s head, rising above the seatback halfway down on the left, in the next car, a second-class car. I knew the head was his; it was large. And at my mercy—the prey unaware of the predator. I could steal up behind him (as he had done to Pratt?) and … what? I felt in my waistcoat pocket for the comfort of my derringer. Could I use it with other passengers in the car? Knowing how loud it would be? Not a chance. Anyway, what was I thinking about—vigilantism?