The Lunatic Fringe: A Novel Wherein Theodore Roosevelt Meets the Pink Angel

by William L. DeAndrea

  “He doesn’t have it, Baxter. He doesn’t have it. If he’d found it, he would have used that information to squeeze me, and he didn’t.”

  There was a rather long silence.

  “Baxter?” Hand said at last.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “What am I going to do?”

  Baxter shrugged. “Fate sir. All I can see to do is follow this Rabbi’s advice.”

  VIII.

  Hand took hold of himself as he climbed the broad, carpeted stair. He reminded himself of all he’d achieved already, of the obstacles that had been already overcome. After all, Crandall had first been placated, and now somehow, was no more. Problems could be dealt with.

  Wasn’t he, after all, the richest Democrat in New York, saving only, perhaps, William Randolph Hearst himself? And he’d only been a Democrat a short time, since June, when Bryan had been nominated. Then he’d switched. Been converted, he’d told the press, to Free Silver.

  What he’d actually been converted to was the scent in the wind, the one that told him he could be one of the few (if not the only) industrialists in the country to back Bryan. It was the same wind Hearst had sniffed, and it had brought them together in the hierarchy of the Bryan campaign.

  Bryan needed money. McKinley had Hanna’s war chest, Bryan had only Hand. It was costing Hand a fortune, but if it paid off, the gamble would be worth it many times over.

  And anything that would help the gamble pay off must be done. Early on, Hand had met Reverend Burley. The parson was supposed to be helping his young friend, the candidate, with speechwriting, but if there was one thing William Jennings Bryan needed no help with, it was speaking.

  But that wasn’t important. The parson had a daughter. The daughter was homely. She had prepared (and privately published) A Child’s Study Guide to The Pilgrim’s Progress, With Elucidation of All Moral Teachings and Explanation of Allegory, which was more unreadable than the original work of Bunyan’s; something Hand hadn’t imagined possible. She was nearing forty and suicidal desperation at the same rate.

  Hand volunteered to relieve the desperation. The parson had made noises about a proposal coming so close after a first meeting, but Essie May screwed up her face and cried, and said she’d do terrible things if she couldn’t marry the handsome little millionaire from New York. Confronted with that, the parson said there, there, patted his daughter’s shoulder, and relented. So it was a settled thing.

  Cleo was supposed to make it all bearable. How could Hand know Crandall would come along with his blackmailing ways and take her from him? And now Cleo was even holding him responsible for it.

  For a long time, Hand had had problems coming to grips with the idea that he was actually in love with Cleo. It was a weakness. Anything a man wanted could be used against him; Crandall knew that; he had used Hand’s desire for power to get Cleo away from him.

  Now, though, somehow, Hand had Cleo back. And come hell or high water, there’d be no getting her away from him again.

  Hand took a deep breath, and knocked lightly on the door of Cleo’s room.

  Cleo had been thinking, too. At first, she had thought that at first sight of T. Avery Hand, she would claw his eyes out. She soon realized, though, that her strength was not violence, but guile. She was not yet twenty, but she could never have survived as long as she had if she hadn’t learned to wait, watch, and listen—and be nice to men, especially men with money.

  Then too, the waters here were deeper than they seemed. One thing she remembered from her near-drowning last night was Smooth-Ears warning her not to tell Hand about any of it, or he would see to it her face wouldn’t be fit for the bottom of a cuspidor. She would heed that warning, at least for now.

  “Who is it?” she said, though she recognized the sound of the knock.

  The door opened, and Hand walked in. He looked such a schoolboy, Cleo could never understand how he made a penny on Wall Street.

  “Darling?” he said.

  She turned her back to him. She could almost feel him wince behind her.

  “Cleo, please.” More silence. “You’re back now, and I swear, may I lose all my holdings if I lie, that I never meant for it to be this way. It’s over for you—your ordeal, I mean. Can’t you be nice?”

  On hearing that, Cleo felt her calm resolve vanish. She spun on him. “Nice?” she cried with a loud, synthetic laugh. “Nice? After you sold me, like some black slave, to that maniac? Do you have any idea what he did to me?”

  From the contortions of Hand’s face and hands, Cleo could tell the millionaire was suffering. And that suited her fine.

  Hand was almost unable to meet her eyes. “Wh—what did he do?” he whispered.

  Hand and Cleo were precisely the same height, so it wasn’t easy for the young woman to look down her nose at him, but somehow she managed it. “Why do you ask, Avery?” she said haughtily. “Are you afraid your goods have been damaged in handling?”

  “Oh, darling, don’t torment me this way,” the millionaire moaned.

  Cleo had heard of Charles Darwin, most people had, but aside from people being just some new kind of monkey, she didn’t know much about his theories. She did, though, have her own ideas about the Survival of the Fittest, and it had nothing to do with who your grandfather was. Cleo knew there were many ways to be fit, and she picked one to suit each occasion. Sometimes she ran like a rabbit, or hid like a turtle. With Hand, it was best to be meek and wide-eyed, like a fawn the hunter can’t bring himself to shoot. She had almost forgotten.

  “He—he tied me up, Avery,” she whispered.

  “The brute!” Hand ran to the woman and wrapped his arms around her. “I should have killed him myself, if he hadn’t committed suicide.”

  Cleo said nothing.

  “You are trembling,” Hand said. “Now, don’t think any more about it.”

  Hand broke off his embrace, and started to pace the room. He paced six steps one way, then six steps the other, all the time holding his hands clasped behind him. He gave the impression that if he were picked up and set in the middle of the Desert of Arabia, with nothing but flat emptiness separating him from the horizon, he would still continue to pace those six steps.

  Just when Cleo thought she would go mad from watching him, Hand stopped pacing and said, “Cleo?”

  “Yes, Avery?”

  “Then what did he do?”

  “Then what did who do?” Cleo asked.

  “That swine, Crandall. What did he do after he ... after he tied you up.”

  “Oh, Avery, must I? It is torture for me to even think of it.”

  “I know, darling. But I must know. Just this once. Please?”

  Cleo suppressed a smile. She might not fully understand what was going on, but she could still make Hand dance to her tune.

  “He painted me, Avery,” she said. “Or drew pictures of me, with charcoal. Or just stood, looking at me. Day and night. Hardly any time for meals, and when he did feed me, he said it was to ‘maintain my glorious form.’ He—he tied me again,” Cleo started to sniffle, “any time he left the room.”

  Cleo’s tears were tears of anger. The very memory of it made her itch for revenge against the dead man. In her lifetime, Cleo had been bought, sold, given, and borrowed, but no way she’d ever been treated, and nothing she’d ever done, had made her feel as low as what Crandall had made her do. He’d made her feel like a thing, a still life, a bowl of fruit, or a piece of driftwood. She’d been suffered to exist because the artist had found her pleasing to look at.

  She was trying to find the right words to impress this on Mr. T. Avery Hand, who, after all, had had no small part in her humiliation. But Hand had other things on his mind.

  He was thinking of Crandall’s death. Suicide, as it seemed, or murder, as that patrolman Herkimer had mentioned insisted, that bill of sale was not to be found in Crandall’s room.

  Unless Herkimer had lied to him. But why should he have? At least in so subtle a fashion? No, Hand was convinced Herk
imer was playing it square. The captain had a reputation as an honest man—once bought, he stayed bought.

  Who had the paper then? And what did they plan to do with it? For certain, it wasn’t the Republicans who had it. Hand shuddered at the thought. If Hanna, or any other McKinley man had gotten that paper, the extras would be on the street even now—BRYAN BACKER’S LOVE-SLAVE SOLD TO DEAD MAN. Oh, wouldn’t Pulitzer have loved to have gotten hold of that.

  A shrewd grin that usually meant trouble for Hand’s business opponents crossed his face. The corpse must be the key. The patrolman, whoever he was, must be right. Whoever had the paper must have killed Crandall, for some reason as yet unknown to Hand.

  The industrialist smiled. The biggest, sharpest political dagger of the campaign, and it was too dirty for either side to pick up and stick in the other. So far.

  He nodded, then reached tentatively for one of Cleo’s soft hands. He smiled when she did not pull it away.

  “I,” he said, “have missed you more than I can say, my darling.”

  Cleo looked him straight in the eye. “And I you, Avery,” she lied. Well, perhaps it wasn’t a lie. Whatever Hand’s shortcomings, at least he didn’t tie her up.

  Too few minutes later, there was a knock on the bedroom door.

  “Mmmmff,” Hands said. “What is it, Baxter, damn it?”

  “Someone,” the butler said, “to see you, sir.”

  “Tell him to go away.”

  “He calls himself ‘Rabbi’, Mr. Hand.”

  There was a silence. Then Hand said, “Have him wait a moment, Baxter. I’ll be right down.”

  IX

  It was twilight when they heard the cab. They knew it must be Roosevelt cabs weren’t frequently heard this close to Mackerelville. Most things with wheels on them around here were to be found under a load of fish.

  Muldoon looked out the window of the second floor flat, and sure enough, there was Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, just alighting to the street. Muldoon saw the Commissioner speak a few words to the driver, then enter the building.

  “Here he is, darlin’s,” Muldoon said. “Now, remember the plan. Keep him here five minutes. That’s all the time I’ll be needin’. And don’t be lettin’ on there’s anything up, mind.”

  “You just put your mind to the handlin’ of your end of the business,” Katie told him. “Maureen and I know what we’re about.”

  “I’m glad to be hearin’ it,” Muldoon replied.

  “Now go on with you,” Katie said. Dennis kissed his sisters, then left the flat and ran down the hall to hide in the privy.

  If the Pink Angel could play tricks with doors and stairways, so could Dennis Patrick Francis-Xavier Muldoon. He waited until he heard Katie answer the door and welcome Roosevelt inside (laying it on a mite too thick, to Muldoon’s thinking), then raced quietly downstairs.

  About now, Muldoon thought as he reached the bottom, Maureen should be telling the Commissioner that her brother had stepped out for a few minutes, and in the meantime, would he mind explaining if Macduff chopped off Macbeth’s head in a fit of pique, or if it was a regular thing for Scotchmen to be doing to each other.

  Outside the tenement, Muldoon walked jauntily up to the hansom with his hands cupped together in front of him.

  “Evenin’,” he said politely. Muldoon was pleased to see the driver (the Commissioner had found another honest one, apparently) had a decent size to him; it was all the better for his plan.

  “Engaged,” the driver said.

  “Nope,” Muldoon replied. “Not even keepin’ steady company at the moment.”

  “Well, I should smile,” the driver said, with no humor at all. “I mean the cab is engaged, you chowderhead. I’m waiting on a passenger.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Muldoon asked. “Mr. Roosevelt, right?” Muldoon held up his cupped hands. “Here. He sent me down to show you this.”

  “What?”

  “Are you deaf, man? Mr. Roosevelt wants to know what you think of this I’ve got in me hands. Bend over and take a look.”

  The driver, who had lots of things he’d rather be doing of a Sunday evening, shrugged, and leaned over the box as Muldoon raised his hands.

  The young officer then grabbed the man by the collar and pulled him from the box. Muldoon was spared further effort by the way the man hit the sidewalk. For a moment, Muldoon’s victim was powerless.

  The moment was all Muldoon needed. He caught the driver under the arms, and dragged him into the alley alongside the fishmonger’s.

  “I’m sorry to be doin’ this,” Muldoon told the driver. “But it’s got to be done all the same.” He’d brought a piece of clean rag from upstairs. He tied it now around the driver’s mouth, then stuffed the whole driver into an empty fish-barrel. The smell was atrocious, but the fellow would be able to work himself loose before he stifled. Besides, Katie and Maureen were under orders to see to the poor man’s welfare as soon as Muldoon and Roosevelt were out of sight.

  Muldoon went back to Avenue A and mounted the box of the hansom. Even as he thought over what he would do next, a part of his brain was pleased to be holding the reins of the animal now relieving herself on the cobbles. She was no beauty, but it would be a lark to drive her after the burnt-out wrecks he’d had to deal with during his few turns on the beer dray.

  Theodore Roosevelt came out of the building, grumbling under his breath. He barely looked at Muldoon as he got into the cab. “Uptown, driver,” he barked.

  Uptown was fine with Muldoon. He took the cab uptown and east, to one of the Consolidated Gas Company’s coal yards hard by the East River.

  Muldoon took a deep breath. Roosevelt sought a confrontation in a cab, did he? Well, here’s where he found one. He brought the horse to a rapid halt, and leapt from the box.

  Just as Muldoon grasped the door handle, Roosevelt’s voice boomed from within. “Decided to stop at last, have you, Muldoon? Bully idea. For a moment, I was afraid you planned to take me clear out of the city and into Brooklyn.” With a wide grin on his face, the Commissioner opened the door and jumped out.

  “You knew it was me?” Muldoon demanded. “When?”

  “When you turned east instead of west off Avenue A, of course. I may have been preoccupied, but really. What have you done with my driver? He’s a lout, but he didn’t try to jump me.”

  “He’ll be all right,” Muldoon told him.

  “For your sake, Muldoon, he’d better be.”

  “You have,” Muldoon said severely, “me word on it. And now, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, we’ll be gettin’ down to our business.”

  “Excellent, Muldoon. As you know, I’ve been trying to talk to you all day.”

  Muldoon made a noise. “Oh, we’ll be havin’ a talk all right. And it had best be one daisy of a talk, or I expect to be resumin’ our little boxin’ tournament. And this time, only one of us will be leavin’ standin’ up.”

  MONDAY

  the twenty-fourth of August, 1896

  I.

  ANY REPORTER WHO’D REMAINED at the Mulberry Street front stairs vigil would have had a treat. A second person came walking fast around the corner and went sprinting up the stairs to Police Headquarters. So determined was she, in fact, that she was in the anteroom to Mr. Roosevelt’s office before anyone thought to try to stop her.

  “Ma’am, I’m afraid I’ll have to announce you,” said a young woman at a desk.

  “Fine!” said Katie Muldoon. “You do the announcin’, and I’ll do the talkin’. Who are you, the secretary?” The Commissioner had caused a bit of a sensation in the press last year when he hired a girl secretary—the first in the Department’s history.

  The girl replied meekly that that was indeed who she was.

  “He ought to be ashamed of himself for exposin’ you to a bunch of men, not to say criminals. And you ought to be ashamed for puttin’ up with it.” Katie looked at the secretary. “Well, announce me. Me name is Kathleen Muldoon. We’ve met.”

  The girl
looked at Katie’s red face and decided it would be best for Mr. Roosevelt to attend to her after all. She rose to meet Katie’s demand.

  “Wait!” Katie snapped. She took her bonnet off (it was the one Dennis had bought her for Easter) and brushed a piece of ash. “Damned elevated trains,” she mumbled. “Belchin’ monsters.”

  The secretary, happy to find a bit of sisterly feeling with this mad Irishwoman, made sympathetic noises. Katie finished brushing, put the hat back on, then said, “Thank you for your indulgin’ me. Now, I mean to see Mr. Theodore Roosevelt right away.”

  She got her wish. The door to the office opened, and the head of Mr. Roosevelt appeared, asking what all the noise was about. Katie went for him like a robin for a worm, pushing him inside the office and closing the door behind her.

  The Commissioner reflected that he’d been having a wretched time with angry women over the last day or so. Against his nature, he decided this time he must forego gentlemanliness.

  “See here, Miss Muldoon. I have been having an important meeting, and I cannot allow—”

  It didn’t work.

  “Where’s me brother, you blinkin’ walrus?” Katie demanded.

  At that moment, Roosevelt reflected, he had rather been back face to face with the grizzly bear. Her attitude was fully as menacing, and her cheeks, pleasantly rosy yesterday, were now sufficiently red with anger to enrage a dozen bulls.

  “Why, ah, ask me where your brother is, Miss Muldoon? You may remember, I failed to see him when I tried yesterday.”

  “He was waitin’ for you downstairs!” Katie said. “And don’t try to be lettin’ on like you ain’t aware of it! He went down to wait for you, and he ain’t been seen hide nor hair of since. And don’t be tellin’ me he’s out carousin’, because the whole world and New York City both know Dennis Muldoon is no carouser, and furthermore, even when he does do his tipplin’, he tells us first, so I won’t be worryin’ about him, and this time he didn’t tell me anything, and by the Lord, I am worried, and I aim to know where he’s at and whether he’s alive or dead before I’m leavin’ this room!”