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

by William L. DeAndrea

  Things might have gotten ugly, but Hand had had sufficient wit to mention the name of Sperling. Eagle Jack was his safe-conduct pass to the back door of the establishment called Max’s, a dismal place fragrant with the smell of sour beer.

  Sperling was happy to see the millionaire. “Hey, Mr. Hand,” he said softly. “Come sit down, have a drink. Let me get rid of my boy first, though. I don’t want nobody to see you. You could go, Roscoe,” the hoodlum said to a barrel-chested, one-eyed grotesque in a striped shirt. Hand was glad he wouldn’t have to be in the same room with him.

  “Right, boss,” Roscoe growled, but he withdrew just as far as the other side of the door.

  Hand entered, crossed an uneven wood floor, and sat at a scarred table across from Eagle Jack. “Sperling,” he began.

  “Just a second,” Sperling said. “Roscoe!”

  The voice of the one-eyed man came through the door. “Yo?”

  “Make sure the neighborhood knows Eagle Jack says all his friends get home safe, you follow me?”

  “I follow you, boss,” the voice said.

  “New man,” Sperling explained. “Buttering me up. Just come down from up the river. Let me pour you a drink.” A greasy-looking bartender appeared with what he claimed was a clean glass, and Sperling poured out a faintly brown liquid. “Applejack,” he explained. “They keep it for me here, special. Ain’t got the time to freeze my own no more. I go traveling around.

  “Now, what brings you down to Five Points? I mean, I know I told you you could find me here, but I never thought you’d do it personal. I hope nothing ain’t wrong.”

  Hand told him Muldoon wasn’t to be hurt.

  Sperling cocked his head. “Aw, c’mon, you can’t do business that way. Your previous order ...”

  “Yes?”

  “We already filled it.”

  The only movement Hand permitted himself was to pinch the bridge of his nose and close his eyes, the way people do when suffering a headache.

  “He was a hard-headed Irishman, sir. You can’t do nothing with that sort, though God knows I give it a try. Why do you change your mind about it?”

  And though he never meant to, and would have called the man insane who had suggested the possibility, T. Avery Hand found himself confiding part of his story to Eagle Jack Sperling.

  “Rabbi, eh?” Sperling had never heard of him. “By the way, I hear Cleo turned up. Sorry me and the boys was no help on that one.”

  “What? Oh, it’s all right, Sperling.” Hand was thinking it might have been better if Cleo had not come back after all. “Cleo is a large part of this whole business.”

  “Oh. Anything I can help you with?”

  “No,” Hand said. “No, Sperling, I don’t think so.”

  “Okay. Let me know. Always happy to work for a man pays as good as you do. Take care.”

  “Thank you, Sperling.”

  “Don’t mention it. Wait a minute. Roscoe!”

  “Yo!”

  “Your errand done?” Through the door Roscoe assured his employer that it was.

  “All right,” Sperling told the millionaire. “You oughta be safe going home.”

  But Hand still shivered.

  XIV.

  Avery was gone from the house, and more importantly, so was Baxter. That should have left no one home but Cleo and the servants, and Cleo hadn’t seen a servant since she’d been there.

  She was going to escape. She had to. She realized that it had been only natural for Avery to sell her into slavery. She had been a slave of one sort or another all her life, but a pampered one, so that she had been able to hide from herself the truth of her condition. But no longer.

  To think that Avery had been the best of those who had come to visit her at Mother Nanette’s. To think that she had voluntarily enlisted herself as his love-slave. It sickened her.

  In that mood, she was on the verge of writing off the race of men altogether, but something, perhaps the memory of that Officer Muldoon (and what had Avery done to him? she wondered) stopped her just short.

  She listened again, listened hard, to make sure she was alone in the house. Other than the baying of a dog somewhere nearby, she could hear nothing.

  She rose from her bed and dressed quietly, in a dark cotton dress she had worn only once, to a funeral. It was ugly, and she hated it, but it was black, and it didn’t rustle when she moved about. Besides, it was the only thing she owned that wouldn’t hang too long on her without a bustle. Cleo had had some experience leaving places abruptly, and she preferred to travel light.

  Cleo carried her shoes in her left hand and kept her right hand on the banister as she crept slowly down the main staircase.

  She would have loved to be able to open the grand front door, walk down to Forty-second Street, and vanish. Unfortunately, since Avery had announced his intention to go out, it was safe only to steal the back-door key as he lay stuporous by her side. Avery would need the front-door key to leave, and she wanted him gone.

  Luckily Avery was methodical, and the keys were plainly labeled. Cleo was worried that it all was going so easily. She’d ignored the keys for Main Entrance, Pantry, Kennel, Gun Cabinet, and Carriage House, and found the one she wanted without making a sound.

  She made her way through the house. The night was chilly for August, and the stone tiles of the kitchen floor were cold on her stockinged feet after the warmth of the thick red carpeting in the main hall.

  Cleo felt herself go all goose-flesh, whether from the chill or from anticipation of freedom, she didn’t know.

  It was going well. She breathed evenly, silently. Once outside, she’d cross the grounds, keeping to the shadows of the trees, just in case Avery or (God forbid) Baxter were to come back. She’d proceed past the carriage house, where the auto mobile was kept, and exit through the back gate, the key to which she had also managed to obtain.

  The house was so silent. She couldn’t believe there was no one stirring. So she listened. She listened until listening became almost a kind of madness. She could hear the house creak; soon she could hear her own heartbeat. After a while, she thought she could hear the very blood running in her veins, and possibly the grass growing just past that kitchen door.

  And still nothing. She went on. She opened the back door, hastily donned and buttoned her shoes. She leapt over the gravel walk, landing on the soft, silent grass. She headed for the shadows of the trees.

  There was a moon, and it gave her plenty of light to see by. Why, she wouldn’t even have to worry about her footing. It was going to be as easy as it seemed ...

  Then she heard the noise, a rustling, slapping, panting sound that got louder and closer by the second.

  The dog. Cleo had cursed herself for a fool. She had forgotten about the dog. A mastiff, Avery had told the Reverend. To protect the auto mobile. It had the run of the grounds every night. Baxter had told her once of the prowler it has savaged.

  Cleo abandoned her plan of silent escape. She ran with all the speed she could summon for the back gate.

  Even as she ran, she knew it was hopeless. The kennel was near that gate—she would be running right into the mastiff’s jaws.

  She’d come too far from the house—if she tried to go back, the dog would catch her, and she’d be torn to pieces.

  Then she saw the carriage house. She sprinted for it, dashed inside, and slammed the door behind her. She was surprised to find a lantern on inside, casting a dim light over the Duryea Brothers’ creation and the interior of the building.

  The dog was still outside, growling and scratching at the door. Cleo put a hand to her throat, and felt the breath rasping its way into her.

  She couldn’t go back out, so she picked up the lantern, and explored the building. She saw that the walls were lined with boxes, fifteen or twenty wooden crates, about the size of orange crates. One was open, but tilted away from her. She walked around so she could see inside.

  Candles, she thought. Red candles. The dim light of the lantern al
so showed her a slip of paper that had been tucked in between two of the narrow cylinders. She took it out, unfolded it and read it: 20 MILL GALS. There were some dates and figures on the paper as well, but Cleo could make no sense of them. Her mind was too taken up trying to figure out what twenty factory women would want with fifteen crates of red candles. Most factories she’d heard of had gas lights.

  She got no opportunity to puzzle it out further—someone was coming. She could hear the crunch of footsteps on the gravel walk, and the dog started to bark again.

  The barking stopped though, at a command from a male voice. Baxter’s voice. “Well done, Caesar,” Baxter said, with the mocking undertone Cleo feared and loathed. “Let’s see what kind of coon you’ve treed for us.”

  Cleo could feel her heart stop as Baxter opened the latch. The door swung open, and the tall, bony man stood behind the growling dog.

  Baxter seemed surprised at the sight of Cleo. “You!” he said. “I’m surprised you had the brass to try to leave the house.”

  “What ... what are you going to do? Are you going to tell Avery?”

  Baxter smiled. “No. And neither will you. Outside, Caesar.” He scratched the huge dog behind the ear, and it ran away happily.

  “It’s not good for trollops to be curious,” Baxter said. Cleo sniffed; she wouldn’t dignify that with a reply.

  “Come here,” Baxter commanded, but when Cleo ignored him, he came to her. He grabbed her about the waist, tried to kiss her. Cleo, like a cat, tried to claw for his eyes. She managed to scratch his cheek, but he was far too strong for her. He bore her beneath him to the dirt floor.

  But even as she fought for—well, if not her virtue, as least her self-respect, Cleo noted with confusion that on this hot summer night, the sleeves of Baxter’s jacket were cold and damp.

  TUESDAY

  the twenty-fifth of August, 1896

  I.

  THERE WAS A MONSTER outside—Master Theodore Roosevelt III was sure of it. He could hear the sound of heavy, half-dragged half-slapping footfalls climbing the stoop of the Madison Avenue town house Papa was renting from Aunt Bamie.

  Ted wondered if he should wake Papa or shoot the Monster himself. Ted was nine years old.

  He wasn’t supposed to be awake at this hour (the clock was just striking three), and even if he were, he shouldn’t be in the parlor. But it was a good thing he was too excited about his trip to visit relatives in the South tomorrow to sleep. It was a good thing he’d come downstairs, or the Monster would have gotten in unmolested. It was a. very good thing Mama and Lee and the babies were safe out at Sagamore Hill.

  The Monster groaned.

  He’d better wake Papa. But he wasn’t absolutely sure it was a Monster. Policemen sometimes came to call, and they all had heavy feet, and a lot of times they groaned.

  But they didn’t smell like that. And they didn’t squish when they walked.

  The Monster groaned again and pounded on the door.

  “Go away! I have a rifle!” Ted picked up and shouldered one of Papa’s little-used walking sticks. The Monster might think it was a rifle. Monsters weren’t known for their eyesight.

  Then the Monster said, “Roosevelt,” in a slow, horrible voice, and Ted hollered at it to go away again. But it didn’t go away, it just kept pounding on the door.

  “What is all this racket?” asked the perturbed but welcome voice of Ted’s father. The boy ran to him, pointing the cane at the door and telling him about the Monster.

  The elder Roosevelt took the news cum grano, to say the least, but after a few tentative sniffs, his game-tracker’s nose told him that whatever was outside that door required some investigation.

  He told his son to keep behind him, and, adjusting his spectacles and grasping the walking stick like a club, he advanced on the door and flung it open.

  Ted was startled into crying out. The Monster had been leaning against the door, and he now fell staggering into the house.

  The Commissioner raised his stick, but the Monster rolled over, showing two shining grey eyes surrounded by a mass of filth that probably had a face under it somewhere. Ted realized that the Monster was only a man; a big, wet, dirty, smelly man.

  The Commissioner looked closely into the man’s eyes, and half lowered the stick. “Muldoon?” he inquired in disbelief.

  The erstwhile Monster struggle into a sitting position with a horrible attempt at a grin on his face. “By Jesus, Mr. Rossevelt, we’ve got the bastards worryin’ about something, now,” he said. Then he collapsed back to the floor with a thud.

  Ted tugged at his father’s sleeve. “Papa, did you hear—?”

  “Yes, son. But sometimes, in extreme circumstances, a man’s use of profanity may be overlooked.”

  II.

  Muldoon decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life (after thanking God again that he still had the rest of his life ahead of him) right there in Mr. Roosevelt’s bathtub. After twenty-odd years of having to dip in and out of a galvanized tub in the kitchen, with water heated on the wood stove, it was heaven to relax in a proper bathroom, without having to worry someone might want to be entering or leaving the house.

  “Muldoon?” Mr. Roosevelt called from the other side of the door.

  “Hah?” Muldoon exclaimed. “Oh, yes, sir. I must have been dozin’ off for a second. It’s been a tryin’ day.” Muldoon ached all over. Mr. Roosevelt had a frontiersman’s rough-and-ready knowledge of medicine, and had used it to tend to Muldoon’s cuts and scrapes. The Commissioner then pronounced the officer fit, and told him to go take a bath. Muldoon was all for the bath, but he would just as soon have had a proper doctor. He’d have said so, but he didn’t want to hurt Mr. Roosevelt’s feelings.

  “You may come out any time, Muldoon. I’ve gotten some clothes for you from one of my men on the Broadway Squad.”

  The members of the Broadway Squad were the elite of the Department. Every man of them was Muldoon’s size and a cracker-jack officer to boot. Muldoon’s most cherished aspiration as a policeman was to be named to the Broadway Squad.

  Ha, ha, he thought, sounding in his thoughts very harsh and sarcastic. Fat chance of making the Broadway Squad there is for a pudding who let himself be taken by a bunch of toughs, and left for dead under a pile of garbage on one of the scows docked on the West Side, he thought.

  Big hero, lying unconscious with a banana peel astride your nose, dumped unceremoniously into the Hudson like the carcass of one of the dead horses Sanitation Commissioner White’s men always have to be picking up.

  It’s a good thing for you, a flaming miracle, if the truth be known (he told himself), that the water of the Hudson River stays cold, even in the summer-time, and that the shock of hitting it brought you to. You’re lucky you managed to ditch your shoes, before they brought you to the bottom like two water-filled anchors. You’re luckier still gals of a certain age like to go out to Coney Island, or you’d never have learned to stay afloat long enough for that passing boatload of touring Methodists to fish you out.

  Muldoon shuddered. No, he concluded, if any of those pieces of luck hadn’t come through for you, you wouldn’t have been found for three-four days, and then you’d be floating belly-up, food for the gulls. Broadway Squad, indeed.

  Muldoon made a noise, grabbed the bath-brush, and washed himself some more.

  After he dried and dressed, he went with Mr. Roosevelt to the kitchen, for some hot tea with honey and conversation.

  “I’ve been considering your report, Muldoon,” the Commissioner said. Roosevelt was as enthusiastic as a hunter on the track of a twenty-point stag. “You have put it precisely right.” He rubbed his hands together. “We have got them worried. For the first time, they’ve shown themselves. For the first time, we have outside confirmation that that woman exists, and that she is in some way important. Now for tomorrow—”

  Muldoon gripped his cup. “Tomorrow,” Muldoon said, “with your kind permission, I’m goin’ to devote meself to the settlin’ of
recent debts. There’s a particular bruisin’ I’m owin’ Mr. Tommy Alb, and I can hardly wait to get square up on it.”

  “In good time, Muldoon, I promise. But tomorrow, I want you to be dead.”

  “To be what?”

  “Dead, Muldoon.”

  Muldoon stood up, wincing. “I’d rather not. Death and me have been flirtin’ tonight, and I’d just as soon be lettin’ the relationship cool off.”

  “Nonsense, Muldoon. Don’t be obtuse. I want them to think you are dead, as they undoubtedly do now. They don’t know you are working with me—they think you are working alone, or they would never have tried to kill you. Now, they think they are in the clear, and my experience has shown an animal is much easier to trap when he thinks the hunter has given up.

  “I detest them, Muldoon, all of them, the ones we know and the ones we must find. The Sperlings, Albs, and the rest think they are strong, but they are cowards, Muldoon, with no more back-bone than a chocolate éclair.”

  From the satisfied look on the Commissioner’s face when he said that, Muldoon judged that Mr. Roosevelt felt he had paid back for the “Big Stick” remark of the other night.

  “We have a wedge in, Muldoon. We are closer to the source of the corruption. Tomorrow, we’ll be closer still.”

  “But what will I be doin’ in the meantime?” Muldoon wanted to know. “Playin’ cow-boys and Indians with Master Theodore?”

  “He’d be dee-lighted,” the Commissioner laughed, “but I have something better for you. You are going to Maine. Lovely country up there. Good hunting.”

  “I’ve never been huntin’ an animal in me life,” Muldoon protested.

  “You won’t be hunting an animal. You are to beard Joseph Pulitzer in his lair.”

  Muldoon was puzzled. “Pulitzer?”

  “Yes, Muldoon. Hearst has all but accused Pulitzer of being the power behind Crandall’s death. I think Pulitzer should have a chance to give his side of the matter.”