The DeValera Deception

by Michael McMenamin

  Nitti turned to Cockran. Replacing his revolver, he shrugged and placed his hands out palms up and said in a casual tone of voice as if he were ordering a cocktail in a speakeasy, “Explaining three bodies would be difficult. One more in Lake Michigan is no problem.”

  Nitti turned to McBride and the surviving federal agent. “Take the bracelets off my friends’ hands,” Nitti said pleasantly. “Now!” Nitti barked when the two hesitated.

  A white-faced McBride and the agent quickly unlocked the handcuffs. Nitti gestured for Cockran and the other two to enter the back seat of his maroon Cadillac. “All of your bags are in the trunk, Mr. Cockran,” Nitti said. “I took the liberty of having them packed. I don‘t want the three of you to miss your plane,” he said as he closed the Cadillac‘s door with a firm thunk.

  Nitti motioned for Cockran to lower the rear window. “I appreciate your courtesy in leaving so quickly after our conversation. Don‘t worry about your airplane‘s departure. I‘ll place a phone call in a few minutes and make sure it doesn’t leave without you.” With that, Nitti walked up to the driver, slapped his hand on top of the Cadillac and the big car moved forward.

  45.

  Your Virtue Is Safe With Me

  Chicago

  Meigs Field

  Friday, 16 August 1929

  12:45 p.m.

  Nitti obviously had influence, Cockran thought, as the long maroon motor car pulled up at a gate leading directly onto the airfield. His man, Angelo, who looked as if he moonlighted as a bouncer, approached the gate and spoke a few words to the attendant who promptly swung it open. The chauffeur got back into the motorcar and said over his shoulder, “I‘ll take you directly out to the plane. In case you didn‘t notice, there was a black Packard that tried to follow us from the warehouse but we gave him the slip a couple miles back.” Cockran hadn‘t noticed.

  The Cadillac rolled slowly across the tarmac and pulled up parallel to the airplane. The 12:55 p.m. Northwest flight Chicago to St. Paul was a Ford Trimotor, its corrugated metal fuselage catching the glint of the early afternoon sun, its nose high in the air, its three heavy-duty Ford engines still idle. Inside the plane was an aisle with single wicker seats on either side, each with its own window. The air hostess assisted Rankin to a seat near the front cabin and led Cockran and Mattie to the two seats side by side in the rear of the cabin, as Cockran had requested.

  “The Fords are fairly noisy once we‘re in the air,” he told Mattie, “But back here at least, we have a better chance of carrying on a reasonable conversation without shouting.”

  Other passengers were boarding now and the air hostess seated them and began passing out pillows and blankets. The cabin seated twenty-two, but it was barely half full. There were four empty seats between Mattie and Bourke and the other passengers. The Ford engines roared to life, the cabin shaking from the vibration as the plane slowly moved forward onto the runway. Minutes later, they were airborne. When the plane had reached its cruising altitude of 3,000 feet on its nearly two-hour journey to St. Paul, the air hostess began serving hot tea, coffee and fruit juice in heavy crockery mugs, followed by sandwiches. At cruising speed, conversation was possible. Two or three nights alone with Mattie McGary was an appealing prospect to Cockran, complicated only by the troubling prospect of how or whether to confront her with the green earring. There had to be an innocent explanation. He hoped there was.

  “Fitzgerald promised to follow up on the freight cars and telegraph any information he finds to the Fairmont in San Francisco,” he told her. “Several of his bigger clients are high-level executives with some of the railroads. He thinks he‘ll have better luck tracking the freight cars.”

  Mattie nodded and took a small bite of her sandwich. “I found out more about our friend Philip Dru Cromwell. Did you know his father had been a partner at the Morgan Bank?”

  “No, I didn‘t. I’m surprised. From what I heard of him when he was in government service, he wasn‘t the kind of guy to keep that sort of thing to himself. I wonder why he did.”

  “Embarrassment. His father committed suicide in the panic of ‘07. Jumped from a hotel window. The Sherry-Netherland. Took his mistress with him too. Lots of big headlines.”

  “What about his connection with Hearst?” Cockran asked. “You still touchy about that?”

  “Come on, Cockran, I apologized for that once. Hearst is a great boss. He‘s very loyal to his people. All he expects is loyalty in return.”

  “So what about Hearst and Cromwell?”

  “You understand I couldn‘t be too open about what I was looking for but, as far as I can tell, Cromwell was named Hearst‘s lead investment guy four years ago. Since then, he‘s become indispensable. I mean, he‘s no Joe Willicombe,” she said, referring to Hearst‘s well-known right-hand man. “He has nothing to do with the publishing empire, but Hearst apparently trusts him implicitly with everything else involving money. It‘s Cromwell‘s primary job to make sure that the Chief‘s investments provide all the money he wants when he decides to go shopping. Cromwell is responsible for making sure Hearst has sufficient cash at any point to indulge any whim. And in today‘s economy and the stock market, he‘s been able to do that.”

  “So you don‘t think Hearst is involved?” Cockran asked. Mattie was glib, too glib.

  “No, I don‘t,” Mattie replied, “but it doesn‘t make it any easier that Cromwell seems to be using the Chief‘s personal acquisition accounts. Nothing is closer to his heart and there is nothing he is more sensitive about. I can‘t raise it with him until we‘re face to face.”

  After a while, they both grew silent, the strain of continuing to talk over the noise of the engines requiring too much effort. When the plane landed in St. Paul, Cockran seized the opportunity to raise the subject he had been avoiding since Chicago.

  “Mattie, I didn‘t want to mention this earlier but there‘s a problem with our tickets.”

  “Problem? What problem?”

  “Well, it seems there weren‘t two Pullman compartments left on tonight‘s train. All they had was a double compartment.”

  “So? What‘s the problem?”

  “Well, I mean...”

  Mattie laughed. “Mr. Cockran, I believe you‘re blushing. Are you afraid of heights? And you think I‘ll want the bottom bunk? Or maybe you snore? I‘ll bet that‘s it,” Mattie said.

  “I don‘t think so,” Cockran replied.

  “Don‘t worry, then, Cockran. Your virtue is safe with me.”

  46.

  Aquinas Explained

  St. Paul, Minnesota

  Friday, 16 August 1929

  3:20 p.m.

  Cockran and Mattie shared a taxi with Rankin whose direct train for San Francisco left thirty minutes before theirs. They saw Rankin off, and Cockran carried Mattie‘s suitcase as they walked from Track 5 to Track 7 for the Great Northern‘s Empire Builder No. 1.

  The Empire Builder sat there waiting, the steam from the engine hissing softly. Once inside their compartment, Cockran ordered sandwiches and coffee from the Pullman porter. Once the food arrived, they sat across from each other on soft leather couches, a table between them while Mattie pulled out her notes on Cromwell.

  “I know you‘re suspicious of the Chief” Mattie said, “but you really shouldn‘t be.”

  “Why‘s that?”

  “Well,” Mattie replied, tilting her coffee cup at him, “if Hearst had wanted to supply guns to the IRA, he wouldn‘t have waited this long to do it. And he wouldn‘t have needed to use someone else‘s money. Three million dollars is really not that much to Hearst. If he wanted to do something like that, he could have done it back in 1920 or 1921 before Ireland was free. Hearst never really forgave us Brits for dragging America into the Great War and tweaking the Lion‘s tail over Ireland would have been just his style. But not now. It doesn‘t make sense. But then again, Cromwell doesn‘t make sense either. He is the epitome of your East Coast Establishment, a rich investment banker. Why would he be involved in
IRA gun running?”

  Cockran had no answer either but his suspicions of Hearst—and Mattie—were not allayed. In the early evening, Cockran made them cocktails. When they finished their drinks, they headed for the dining car. In ten minutes a table for two opened up. Cockran looked across the crisp white linen covering the table, a small brass lamp providing illumination, as Mattie gave her dinner order to the white-jacketed Negro waiter. Cockran was struck again by the red hair framing her freckled face, her large green eyes drawing attention to her high cheekbones.

  “A penny for your thoughts, Bourke, but this gentleman is waiting for your order,” Mattie said. Cockran grinned sheepishly. How could he be so attracted to someone he didn‘t trust?

  They talked of many things over dinner. Many pleasant, some not. Her two older brothers and her fiancé, all of whom had been killed in the war. Mattie probed gently about Cockran‘s wife but he would only say she was an innocent casualty of the Irish Civil War.

  Mattie talked about her childhood, growing up in Scotland in her family‘s big country house outside of Inverness and the smaller place across from the Isle of Skye. Hiking in the Highlands in the summer. Closing up their parents‘ big house in September and returning with the servants to their house on Eaton Square for the Season. The society balls her mother loved to attend, the sparkling dinner parties she loved to give.

  Mattie said she liked best those seven years when her father served in Parliament because he would have to travel to Inverness or Edinburgh from London almost once a month and would frequently take Mattie with him. “Father always reserved separate compartments for us but he let me stay in his compartment reading until it was time to go to bed. Even though there was an upper bunk in his compartment, he would never let me spend the night. Sent me off to my own compartment. I didn‘t like it and that‘s why I don‘t mind sharing a compartment even though I mostly travel alone. Overnight trains remind me of happier times.”

  Cockran raised an eyebrow. “Mostly alone?”

  Mattie took a sip of her coffee and smiled. “Mostly. Let‘s go back to our compartment.”

  They reached their compartment. The porter had turned down the two beds, a top and bottom bunk. The bottle of scotch was still on the table. “A nightcap?” Cockran asked.

  “Sure,” Mattie replied, picking up her glass and handing it to him. The two of them sat on the leather bench side by side, taking occasional sips. Mattie had turned off all but one lamp so that the compartment was deeply cast in shadow.

  Mattie had taken his hand and they sat there saying nothing for a good ten minutes before Cockran spoke. “Why are you doing this for Winston? Risking your life. Being attacked by an Irish thug. Is it all for a story?”

  Mattie did not respond immediately but continued to look out at the dark beyond the window, the occasional light of a farm house in the distance. “The story is part of it. I wouldn‘t be doing it otherwise. A girl‘s got to make a living, you know. But there‘s more. Winston‘s part of it, too. I‘ve known him since I was a child. He and Father were new MPs together. They first met when they gave speeches on the same night at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Winston was a Tory then, Father a Liberal but they were both Free Traders. Winston is a very warm, kind and loyal person. He inspires a similar response in his friends.”

  She squeezed his hand and snuggled closer, pulling his arm around her shoulder. “The fact that some of my best friends are Irish plays a part as well. Not the Anglo-Irish, or even my relatives, but Catholics. Professionals like you. Lawyers, writers, artists. Catholics all. I was in Dublin, you know, covering the Treaty ratification. I couldn‘t believe the hypocrisy, the vanity, the sheer jealousy of the Treaty opponents. My editor made me leave before the Civil War really started, but I‘ve kept in touch with my Irish friends over the years and…” Mattie paused and took a sip of whisky, “when Winston asked for my help on his assignment from Ramsay, I was flattered. I like adventures and a good story so I agreed.”

  “Do your editors know what you are doing?” Cockran asked.

  Mattie smiled and cocked her head at him. She really was beautiful, Cockran thought. “Not exactly. Hearst knows I‘m working on a story on weapons manufacturers, the ‘Merchants of Death‘ angle. It has a long deadline and it provides good cover for what I am doing now. Cromwell was on my list long before I met him at Anne Dawson‘s. Who knows? Maybe Winston really can persuade President Hoover to have federal authorities intervene.”

  Cockran shook his head. “The world doesn‘t work the way Winston thinks it does. Not in America, anyway. There is nothing illegal in what the IRA are doing. ‘The business of America is business‘ is what Coolidge said, and Hoover is no different. The only way Hoover will have the federal authorities take any action against the IRA is if he finds they‘re bootlegging whiskey to raise money to buy arms. Even then, he‘ll only go after the whiskey.”

  “Let me ask you the same question,” Mattie said. “Why are you doing this for Winston, especially when you have a book deadline? They shot at you in Cleveland. You‘re the prime suspect in Devoy‘s murder. And Al Capone threw you out of Chicago.”

  “I‘m not doing it for Winston. Confirming there really was an IRA operation being mounted and tracing where the money went was all Winston asked and that was what I did.”

  Mattie waited but Cockran said no more. “So why are you doing it?”

  Cockran paused and turned his head towards her, looking out the window again at Mattie‘s profile and the darkness beyond. “I told you in Chicago. A good friend was killed because of what I did for Winston. John Devoy knew how to stop all this. And they killed him.”

  “Who,” asked Mattie, “the IRA?”

  “Yes. The same man who attacked you yesterday and killed that girl in Cleveland.”

  “Who was that? McBride? He was the one who killed your wife, wasn‘t he?”

  Cockran nodded, wondering briefly how she knew it was McBride who killed Nora. It wasn‘t from him. “You‘ve made a nasty enemy with that one. He won‘t soon forget you.”

  Mattie compressed her lips tightly and said softly “Good. I don‘t want him to forget. I‘m not going to. I want him to remember me every time he looks in the mirror.”

  Cockran didn‘t know how she got him started or how it all came out but Mattie‘s questions after that were so persistent and her tone so empathetic, her green eyes locked on his, that he began talking about something he had never shared with anyone. Not his father, his son, his mother-in-law, step-mother, Donovan, or even John Devoy. His conversations with Nora. How much he loved her. How he couldn’t bear to disappoint her. By the time Cockran finished, they had drained the rest of the bottle of Johnnie Walker Red and only Mattie‘s gentle hand on his arm in restraint stopped him from cracking open a new bottle. “No, Bourke, let‘s go to sleep. You’re absolutely right. Your Nora was a wonderful as well as an uncommonly wise woman. I wish I had known her. You‘re wrong about one thing though,” Mattie said.

  “What‘s that?”

  “Nora wouldn‘t think that they were venial sins, let alone mortal ones, for you to have killed the three IRA moneymen. And she wouldn‘t have thought your failure to confess would keep the two of you from spending eternity together.”

  “Why do you say that? I think I know Nora a little better than you.”

  “Perhaps. Tell me this, Cockran. Are you a believer? I usually don‘t ask personal questions like that. But even allowing for how much you‘ve drank, you‘ve trusted me enough to tell me about three men you killed in cold blood. So I don‘t think I‘m prying too deeply.”

  Cockran slowly shook his head. “No, I don‘t suppose you are. And, no I‘m not.”

  “Did Nora know that?” Mattie asked, the train swaying as it rounded a curve.

  Cockran felt a grin spread across his face. “Sure. She only made me go to Mass with her when we were back home in Galway. She said she didn‘t want her parents knowing she was sleeping with a heathen. She made me promise tha
t all of our children would be raised in the faith. Paddy and his grandmother go to Mass every Sunday. I don‘t. Christmas and Easter is all. I guess she knows now that her daughter was sleeping with a heathen. But what‘s your point?”

  “Well, I‘m not much of a believer myself but certainly more than you. I don‘t want to believe in a God who would look benignly on the war that took my brothers and my fiancé Eric from me. But I did study comparative religion at university in Edinburgh so I know precisely how a practicing Catholic like Nora would view your killing those three men.”

  Cockran poured himself a glass of water. His head was clearing.. “Go on.”

  “I‘ve read more than one book by Thomas Aquinas and I know what he wrote about the just war, which obviously is more than you‘ve done. Especially if you‘re afraid Nora thinks you won‘t be spending eternity together because you killed them. I hope you do spend eternity with Nora. But if you don‘t, it‘ll be because of some other mortal sin you don‘t confess.”

  “I‘m not certain I understand.”

  Mattie sighed. “I‘m not surprised. Let me give you an example. If you were a sniper and you had in your sights an unarmed medical corps man attending to a soldier who had tried to kill you just the day before, would you shoot either him or the wounded soldier?”

  “No to both. You don‘t shoot wounded and you don‘t shoot unarmed medics.”

  “Good answer. Nora still has a fighting chance of seeing you in heaven. Same scenario except you‘ve got in your sights a two-man team on an artillery field piece. Both are unarmed. One loads and unloads shells while the other pulls the lanyard. Would you shoot them?”

  “Of course. Both of them are complicit in placing the lives of my men in jeopardy.”

  “Correct again. Aquinas would agree with you. I‘ll bet Nora would also. Even though the gun loader is not firing the weapon, he makes it possible for the shell to explode and kill the other side‘s soldiers. So what makes the IRA moneymen any different? They‘re only a short step removed from the soldier loading the field piece. They‘re the ones who are buying the shells and field guns that permit that gun crew to fire on your buddies. Michael Collins knew that and he knew that civilians as well as his soldiers were going to die as a consequence. That‘s why he had you take them out. No good Catholic girl like Nora who went to university like she did and studied Aquinas like she must have could possibly come to any different conclusion. If your father had sent you to the Marist Brothers in Paris where he was educated, I daresay that would have saved you years of thinking you were not living up to Nora‘s expectations.”