The Attempted Murder of Teddy Roosevelt Read online

  “Not that I know of, though I could not say for certain one way or the other. But I will tell you, if you are asking, that I have never delivered a lecture in … where did you say? In Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Maybe I ought to. But even if I did, I can’t be held responsible for everyone who listens to me, Mr. Hay. Nor am I responsible for what they do.”

  “There is such a thing as inciting to riot.”

  “Is that what you are accusing me of?”

  “I am not accusing you of anything. I am simply asking a question.”

  “And I have answered it. Do I know this Mr. Madden? I do not. Are you satisfied now?”

  “What are you drinking?” I said.

  “Water.”

  “Nothing for me, please,” I said. If asceticism was the game, I would compete. “Tell me, if you would, what happened in Omaha.”

  “Nothing happened. That is why I am back in New York. They let me go, as surely you know, for lack of evidence.”

  “That was not my understanding. I was told”—I prayed that Cortelyou’s information was accurate enough—“that you were seen in the company of known communists who are skilled as bomb-makers.”

  Emma Goldman gave rather an easy laugh. “Who told you that mishegas?”

  “You were arrested for plotting against the president, were you not?”

  “The authorities can make up whatever charges they wish. I cannot be held responsible for their literary imaginations. I have said this every time someone has asked me: I do not believe in killing the president. Not because it would be an evil in itself but simply because it would not succeed. The reaction would undo any good that the action might bring. Isaac Newton understood these things. I daresay you do as well, Mr. Hay.”

  She reached under the table—I froze—and returned holding a cigarette, which she lit by leaning into the candle. She offered me one.

  “No, thank you,” I said. “Though I would like to reserve the right to change my mind.”

  “Why should you have that right and not everyone else, Mr. Hay?” She was looking at me oddly, examining me like I was a bug under a microscope. “I have seen you before,” she said at last. “At one of my lectures.”

  I felt like I was blushing. “How did you know?” I said.

  “Where was it?” The eyes behind the glasses snapped alive. “Tell me, where? You sat in the second row, in the center.”

  “In Brooklyn,” I said, amazed. “How did you know this?”

  A shrug.

  I said, “But you have no recollection of Euclid Madden?”

  That easy laugh again. “Do you believe me now?” she said. “It is immaterial to me whether you do or not, but let me tell you another reason why you should. Two reasons. If this … collision was the work of an anarchist, he would have used a gun, like Mr. Czolgosz did, not a trolley car. He would want a sure thing. And he never would have kept the crime to himself. He would have shouted it from the rooftops. Otherwise, what was the point? Mr. Czolgosz confessed his crime. He was proud of it.”

  “But only because it succeeded. Why brag about failure?”

  “You miss the point,” she said. “The ease of the attempt reveals the state as vulnerable, and if the state is vulnerable the people can take back their power. I will admit my involvement if that is the truth, and I will deny it when that is the truth. I am naive enough, Mr. Hay, to still believe in the truth, and I am even more naive to believe that you do.”

  * * *

  “So, what did the old girl say?” The squeal was either the president or the telephone line. I was calling from an apothecary around the corner from the saloon.

  “Young girl,” I replied. “Well, young woman.”

  “So, what did the old girl say?”

  “She doesn’t remember ever meeting the motorman.”

  “Which doesn’t mean she didn’t.”

  “I suppose not.” I preferred not to explain why I believed her. “But there is no evidence that she did.”

  “Your job is to find it.”

  “I understand that, but I cannot find evidence where it doesn’t exist.”

  “We have been through that, Hay. So you need to look for the evidence where it does exist.”

  “Where is that, would you say?”

  “Pittsfield.”

  The reply I had feared. “On a Friday?”

  “No time to waste, John.”

  My Christian name—he was pulling out the stops. In my experience, a life without time to waste wasn’t worth living. But I could never expect an apostle of the strenuous life to agree.

  * * *

  “I suspect the world can survive without you for a few days,” Alvey Adee said. He was still at the office late on a Friday, married to nobody but the department.

  “It hasn’t done all that well with me,” I replied. Margaret Hanna repeated what I’d said.

  “We might keep you away indefinitely,” Adee said.

  “That’s a strategy. Anything I need to know?”

  “Not really.”

  That meant yes. “What is it?” I said.

  “A letter from Taft. Asking you to support eight hundred more troops in Mindanao.”

  “Only to cover his sizable derriere,” I said. “My apologies, Miss Hanna.”

  “A fact is a fact,” she replied.

  * * *

  The depot was thick with men tired after a long week, heading home to unhappy wives. They scurried this way and that, crossing paths but only rarely colliding, their derbies bobbing but never displaced, a marvel of individually regulated chaos. A point for the anarchists!

  I bought my ticket at one of those marble-rimmed windows beneath the rotunda. The waiting room at the enlarged Grand Central Terminal, on Forty-second street, in an up-and-coming part of town, was immense. If you wished to feel small, this was a good place to sit. I chose a rocking chair by a fireplace and imagined myself a water bug in the desert.

  My third telephone call, to Clara, had not gone as smoothly. Not a cross word was said, but I felt all the things unsaid, having only the faintest idea what they were. I apologized for being called away, and meant it. That usually worked (I think), but not this time. She seemed distant. She was distant. My fault, no doubt—it always was. If only I could figure out how.

  All for the sake of going to Pittsfield. Lucky me. Pittsfield. I waved the ticket in my hand; the faint breeze might keep me awake. What I knew about Pittsfield would fill a worm’s ear. A small city at the western edge of Massachusetts, a few miles from New York State. In the Berkshires, but far from beautiful. Industrial, drab. A Republican stronghold, like most of the state. Hence the president’s political interest.

  These were impressions, nothing more. I would see what the place was like once I got there, not before. No longer was it too early for a drink.

  The call for my train—“New York Central, to Danbury and points north”—came none too soon. I dragged my valise through the waiting room and along the platform. My compartment was in the farthest car. The woodwork was worn, the seat cushions torn. It would do. It would have to.

  I found the parlor car, claimed an upholstered chair, ordered a whisky, and opened a volume I had slipped from between unruffled shirts. The cover was lush, the lettering in gold on a regal red.

  THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES

  ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  The spring’s literary sensation. Sherlock Holmes had supposedly died eight years before, fallen to his death at Reichenbach Falls. Everyone knew that. But now he was back for another yarn, which supposedly happened prior to his demise. A “prequel,” to coin a word. I had to admire the author’s audacity. Or was it cowardice, to yield to the seductions of commerce? Any writer should be so tempted.

  To be sure, I still worshiped Vidocq. For one thing, he had been real, the master criminal turned France’s master detective, the founding director of the Sûreté nationale. Eugene Vidocq was Victor Hugo’s model, in Les Miserables, for Jean Valjean and for Inspector Javert.
Vidocq, however, relied on deception and disguise in solving crimes—hardly my forte, even as a diplomat. While I deified him, I would never wish to emulate his methods.

  But Sherlock? No dabbling detective, such as myself, could fail to adore him. I admired his skills at boxing and at the violin and, of course, his brains. He noticed everything, missed nothing, understood the implications, then thought and thought and thought about how the pieces fit, amid clouds of pipe smoke and snorts of cocaine. He was smarter than I could ever be. On the other hand, he wasn’t real, which gave me an edge. Though an edge in what, I couldn’t say with any assurance.

  What, in fact, was my advantage? I evaded the question by turning the page and starting to read. The master detective was examining the thick, bulbous-headed walking stick a would-be client had left behind. Inside of four pages, Holmes deduced everything about its owner, his background and position and sense of self. Only then did the owner arrive, in need of a detective to look into Sir Charles Baskerville’s recent death on the moor. Holmes was peeved to be described as Europe’s second-finest detective, next to Monsieur Bertillon, who had pioneered the use of eleven bodily measurements to identify criminals. Sherlock (if a colleague in detection may assume familiarity) was brilliant, yes, but in need of affirmation, and not beyond pique. Even this fictional detective had his faults. I sighed with pleasure. There was hope for me yet.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1902

  I woke up and had no idea where I was. Then I remembered. I had arrived in Pittsfield the night before, three hours delayed, due to a cow on the tracks in the wilds of northwestern Connecticut.

  If the Hotel Wendell was truly the stateliest lodging that Pittsfield could offer, I dreaded what else I might find here. I sat up. The hotel was new, but the canopy over the four-poster bed was already frayed. The walnut wardrobe was big enough to hold two or three corpses. Heavy beige drapes blocked any risk of daylight.

  What time was it? Did I care? Yes, I cared a lot, though God knows if I could have explained why, even to myself.

  A line of poetry floated in front of me. I had only to reach for it, which I did.

  The boondocks need not be Western.

  The last line of … something. Something bad, no doubt. I cringed—my most reliable indicator that something wasn’t up to snuff. The only poetry I’ve written that ever sold a lick was those odes to platitudes, in frontier dialect, that took me all of a week to write. Although I have to admit they weren’t bad. As for everything else, I was trying too hard. (Story of my life.)

  So, what rhymed with Western? Lectern. Pesterin’. Festerin’.

  I kicked the covers off and hopped to the window and pulled the curtains aside. The sky was a shocking blue. I looked down upon the storefronts across West street and sideways toward a swath of greenery.

  I bathed and chose my less wrinkled frock coat. I was, after all, representing the president.

  The elevator was slow in coming, and I was starting toward the stairs—five stories!—when it arrived, responsive to competition.

  “Lobby, please,” I said to the operator. He was an old gent with a rutted face and tufts of gray hair in his ears. I added mildly, “I understand you had an … accident here in Pittsfield. Involving the president.”

  The old fellow closed the cage, swiveled the brass handle to the left, and said, “Best thing e’er happen to this burg. Nuttin’ e’er happen here.”

  “You got your wish, then.”

  “But warn’t no accident.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Ask the boy at the desk.” The elevator slid to a stop, rattling like a tubercular clearing his throat. “Go ’head, ask ’im.”

  The hotel lobby had lush carpets, deep sofas, and fresh daisies in hideous vases. The reception desk was polished to a shine. Behind it, the clerk was skinny and had a shock of carrot-colored hair; the freckles on his pimpled cheeks danced as he nattered with a lodger. He looked fourteen but must have been nineteen at least.

  I sidled up to him and said, “I was interested in the, uh, accident on Wednesday involving the presi—”

  “You chattin’ up Wally there, huh? Well, was nothin’ of the sort, mister. I knows it. No accident. Heard ’em talkin’ ’bout it.”

  “Heard who?” I said.

  The boy was leaning over the reception desk but jerked his head up at me. “And who do I have the pleasure of addressing, sir?”

  “John Hay,” I said.

  “Hey, ain’t you … an actor, maybe?”

  “A boxer,” I said. “Used to be.”

  “Oh, yeah, musta seen your pitcher in a old magazine. Well anyway, some fellas from New York that was stayin’ here, standin’ just about where you’re standin’, and loud, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so, gabbing ’bout not gettin’ ta the country club in time ta see ol’ Teddy. ’Bout slippin’ the motorman a fiver ta make sure ta get there first.”

  “You think they were serious?”

  “Well they was drinkin’ a little.”

  “At what time of day was this?”

  “Early. ’Fore nine, I’d say.”

  “Did you see them after that?”

  “Say, why you askin’ all these questions, anyway?”

  “Because I want to know the answers,” I said. “I am … looking into the … circumstances.”

  “Yeah, but why?”

  Sharp fellow. I hadn’t figured out yet how much to say and to whom. Less was more, I figured, especially if it was dressed up to look like more. Rather like diplomacy. I took out my wallet instead. “A fiver, you say.”

  The old five-dollar currency showed Benjamin Harrison’s picture on the front—surely a lampoon from the Treasury boys, exalting this icicle of a president. I laid the bill on the counter. The boy’s eyes lit up. It was early and his day was looking up.

  The four New Yorkers had checked in the night before the collision—this, extricated from the hotel’s registry—and checked out two mornings later. Their names meant nothing to me. They might mean more to Chief Nicholson. Eight o’clock at police headquarters, per Cortelyou’s arrangement.

  * * *

  I pocketed an apple from the dining room, a misdemeanor I had learned from Lincoln, and ventured outside. The air was crisp—a New England fall. The Berkshires weren’t the Rockies, but they deserved respect as hills. Autumn here settled in early.

  The center of Pittsfield was a block away. It felt more substantial than I had expected for a community of barely twenty thousand souls. West and East streets and North and South streets all converged at the greenery I’d glimpsed. Park Square, it was called—though it was an oval! On every side, formal limestone buildings housed lawyers, bankers, insurance agents, the city’s fathers and kingpins. The marble courthouse, a block to the east, explained why. As the Berkshire County seat, Pittsfield’s sense of importance was not entirely a delusion.

  The procession of rigs a-rushing was unending. I watched an old woman venture into the street at a steady pace, forcing a dray to yield to her will. I figured it was never too late to learn, and only a single rude gesture, from a thatch-haired youngster driving a brougham, tainted my success.

  I cut diagonally across the park. Its wide gravel paths were swept; even the pigeons looked clean. It felt oh so New England, with its birches, elms, and oaks, its stone benches and quiet self-regard. No sign of the bandstand where the president had spoken, but its presence lingered. I could almost hear his squeals of patriotism, of optimism, of moralism, of righteous anger, all greeted by waves of delight.

  School street was a block to the north, exactly where the desk clerk had told me. The police headquarters occupied a low brick building that might have passed as a tooth powder factory. Its entrance was unlocked and unmanned.

  I passed the empty reception desk and was halfway along the corridor when a baritone snarled behind me, “Halt!”

  I ha
lted. I offered a sheepish smile, hoping to draw the same, but I had known too many policemen to feel disappointed. He was as expressive as an ice wagon. I introduced myself and said I wished to see Chief Nicholson. Yes, he was expecting me.

  “Wait,” he grunted.

  He backed me into the entrance hall, which had a slimy tile floor. I found a metal seat but decided to stand. It wasn’t long before the ice wagon reappeared. He beckoned me back into the forbidden corridor, which was poorly lit and painted vomit green. At the far end we entered an anteroom, which had two hard-backed chairs and a shiny-topped desk. I was told again to wait. This time I sat.

  Soon the inner door opened. The middle-aged man who emerged was tall and lean, with a long face and a gloomy demeanor. His heavy-lidded eyes were dark and deep. His hair, tawny mixed with gray, was matted and in need of a trim; an untamed beard climbed his cheeks. He crossed the anteroom and crushed my hand. “John Nicholson,” he said. “You came from Washington to see me?”

  “John Hay,” I replied. “That I did.”

  Inside his office, I took the armless chair across the desk. “Thank you for taking the time,” I said.

  “Did I have a choice?”

  I chuckled, but he was not joking. “Of course you did,” I said. “I am obliged to you.”

  Chief Nicholson sat unblinking. It was still my turn to speak.

  “I am here at the president’s behest,” I said, “to inquire about the … collision, involving his—”

  “What is there to know?” he said.

  Bluntness begat bluntness. “Are you certain it was an accident?”

  The police chief’s stare moved from my face to my right shoulder and beyond. “Why do you ask?” he said.

  Another question answered with a question. Why not do the same? “Have you or your men investigated the … collision?” I said.

  “What is there to investigate?”

  Why should I end the streak? “What can you tell me about Euclid Madden, the motorman?”