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

by William L. DeAndrea

  It worked better than Muldoon expected. The man next to the driver (who Muldoon saw was his old chum Tommy Alb) ducked so energetically when Cleo raised and fired the tiny pistol that he fell clean out of the auto mobile while it was in midair. He hit the wooden planking on the grade with a wet crack, and rolled to the bottom of the hill.

  Angry people came running from the hotel, going to help the hoodlum, and shaking fists at Muldoon. The young officer wished he had time to explain.

  The ride reached a point where it ceased to be real—the angry people who had to dodge for their lives, the helmeted policemen who tooted their whistles and began to give chase, even Eagle Jack and the threat he represented, became secondary to the sensation of New York City whizzing by as he sat next to the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

  He felt almost nostalgic on the block between Thirty-second and Thirty-first, as the carriage passed Tooth’s, Marcotte’s, and Duveen’s, three art galleries where he’d tried to pick up Cleo’s trail.

  Muldoon had thought all during the wild ride that the streets had been oddly deserted for a warm Friday evening. As they approached Madison Square, and the city’s night life, he knew the reason: everyone had gone to the theatre.

  The traffic at Delmonico’s, on Twenty-sixth, was so bad that for the first time, Muldoon had to rein in the foaming, panting bay, coming almost to a dead stop. He cursed softly while Cleo at his side fretted as the auto mobile gained on them.

  They got close enough, in fact, for Cleo to fairly count Tommy Alb’s pretty white teeth, and when, almost by a miracle, there was a break in the traffic, Muldoon snapped the reins, and the horse took off again.

  “No shots,” Muldoon said.

  “Maybe they’re out of bullets,” Brian O’Leary suggested from within.

  “Or else they just don’t feel like havin’ to explain shootin’ an innocent bystander.” Muldoon’s voice was bitter; the reality of the situation had returned to him.

  “Muldoon,” Cleo said. She managed to give the impression of intimacy, even though she had to shout above the noise of traffic, “Dennis. I want you to know that however this turns out ...”

  Muldoon swept into the wrong side of the road to pass two carriages, evoking the wrath of yet another traffic patrolman.

  “... whatever happens, I think you are a wonderful man.” Muldoon mumbled a somewhat confused thanks as they crossed Twenty-third Street, and emerged into Madison Square.

  XV.

  Madison Square. The heart of New York’s social life. Hotels. Theatres. Eating places. Mr. Edison’s electric light.

  Muldoon and company crossed it in fourteen seconds. The horse was sure to go insane, Cleo thought. Muldoon had had him run such a zigzag course, it made her dizzy, but it got them through the worst of the traffic, though now, they had switched roads, and were heading, instead of due south on Fifth Avenue, south by east on Broadway.

  And the auto mobile was right behind them, still. It had simply followed Muldoon’s path. Cleo closed her eyes. What was she, to cause all this suffering? It happened to all she met, those she hated and those she liked ...

  “Why are we slowing down?” she asked, just past Nineteenth Street.

  “Well, it ain’t my blinkin’ idea! The horse is done for. If we get three more blocks out of him, it’ll be a miracle.” She could see him shake his head ruefully as he reached for the whip. Now she was even making the horse suffer.

  There was a new sound added to the noise of the motor car—the whizzing sound made by bicycle squad policemen. Muldoon heard it too, and cursed. Cleo knew the worst part of all of this, for the man at her side, was having to run from his comrades.

  Muldoon’s arm was moving constantly, now, up and down, cracking the whip on the poor horse’s body. They had gotten the three blocks and more, but at a constantly decreasing speed.

  The auto mobile was only a few carriage lengths behind as they entered Union Square, where the traffic and the din were even worse than at Madison Square.

  The men in the auto mobile were grinning now, two of the three remaining ones shouting taunts. And they were close enough for the taunts to be intelligible.

  “Give up, save the horse,” they shouted. “We’ll have you by Twelfth Street.”

  Muldoon’s face was a bitter mask. Fifteenth Street. Cleo reflected that this was the first time she’d ever passed Tiffany & Co. without looking in the window.

  Then Muldoon had an idea. Cleo could see it in his face; he had a wonderfully expressive face.

  “Get us by Twelfth Street, will they, the bastards? Hee-yah! Move, horse, dammit. One more block, I promise!”

  He was standing now, whipping the horse with all the strength remaining in his arm. And getting results. The horse picked up the pace, and she could hear the auto mobile’s throttle being opened more to try to match it.

  Then Cleo looked forward. “Dennis!” she cried. He was going to kill them all instead of letting them face capture. “Don’t!” she pleaded. For Muldoon was whipping the horse full speed at an impossible tangle of trolleys and cable cars whipping around Fourteenth Street at Dead Man’s Curve. There seemed to be no way to avoid being crushed.

  The horse kept running, while Muldoon whipped him toward a rapidly diminishing opening between two of the huge cars. The horse was too bewildered with pain and fatigue to shy away, or even think of it.

  They would never make it. The space was too small already. It would be like trying to thread a needle with a clothes line. Cleo covered her eyes.

  “Jump.” Muldoon yelled. “Cleo, Brian, JUMP!”

  Without even opening her eyes, Cleo jumped. There was a thunderous crash, and then silence.

  XVI.

  Brian O’Leary bounced up like a rubber ball, and surveyed the damage with true appreciation. The auto mobile had been pinched between the two cars, and the hoodlums lay sprawled on the sidewalk in varying stages of stupefaction. Police and bystanders, he saw, were already coming to their aid. He climbed down from his perch on the overturned landau (it had been clipped on the rear corner by one of the cable cars), and rejoined Muldoon and the girl, who were just getting to their feet.

  “Let’s get movin’,” Muldoon said. It seemed to him he was saying that quite a bit, recently. It also seemed to him that he was getting to be a terror on clothes. This latest suit was ripped at one elbow and both knees, and had dust and bits of gravel ground into it. As he started to scurry with his two friends away from immediate police interest, it felt like he had bits of gravel ground into him, too.

  He noticed, to his surprise, that he had quite automatically taken Cleo by the hand. She looked fine, as though she had somehow managed to fill her skirts with hot air and float down from the landau like an aeronaut. Of course, the fact that she had landed full on top of Muldoon might have something to do with it.

  There wasn’t mark on the boy, either, but kids were made of india-rubber, anyway, so that was no surprise.

  Just around the corner, walking back up Fourth Avenue, Muldoon stood stock-still, grasped his forehead, and gasped.

  “What’s the matter?” Cleo demanded.

  “I should be hanged,” he said. “I should be hanged. I’ve gone and killed Roscoe, went riskin’ both your lives ...”

  “No, no,” Cleo said softly. Brian asked Muldoon what he was talking about. The young woman took a lace handkerchief from her sleeve, and touched it to Muldoon’s face—that was the first he realized he was crying.

  He pushed her hand away. “No, by God. I’ll face it like a man. Brian, I’m a mite beat up and sore. Would you please go see Mr. Jacob Riis, at his newspaper, or at this address,” he handed the boy a slip of paper Mr. Roosevelt had given him, “and have him get Mr. Roosevelt out of that meetin’ and bring him to me?”

  “Hey,” Brian said, “that’s a good idea.”

  “Sure, it is,” Muldoon said. His voice was full of self-hatred. “It’s a corker. If I’d only had the wit to think of it a couple hours ago, Rosco
e’d still be breathin’.” Muldoon closed his eyes and breathed deeply. When he finished, he said to the boy, “Well, are you back yet?”

  “I’m going now. But where are you going to be waiting?”

  “Waitin’?”

  “Yeah. You stand right here, the coppers are gonna get you.” An ambulance went by, bell clanging, horse galloping to the scene of the crushed auto mobile and its injured occupants. “Where are you gonna be?”

  Muldoon couldn’t seem to understand the question. Finally, the young woman gave his hand a squeeze and spoke for him. “We’ll be at the Hotel Devereaux, Brian. Miss Le Clerc’s suite.”

  The boy looked at her and scratched at his red hair. “You Cleo?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Hmmm,” he said. “Father Brannock is wrong. You’re nice. See you later. Take care of the big mick, okay?”

  “I shall, Brian,” she said, and led Muldoon back uptown to the hotel.

  XVII.

  This is marvelous, Muldoon thought. This is one for the Police Gazette. He had invited Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, who, if he were ever to meet God Almighty face to face would probably tell Him the Ten Commandments was a good idea, but didn’t go far enough, to meet him in the hotel suite of a Kept Woman. Well, he’d report to the Commissioner, then turn in his shield (figuratively—Herkimer still has his real one), and after that, it wouldn’t matter what anyone thought of him. It wouldn’t even matter what he thought of himself.

  Lord, his head hurt—not from a bump, his head had somehow managed to escape the crash unscathed—but from fatigue, and from failure. Trying to see the bright side, he reminded himself that the pain in his head doubtless kept him from feeling the full effects of the pains in the rest of his body.

  He was sitting on something of carved wood, lace, and pink satin that was too wide to be a chair, and too narrow to be anything else. Cleo was in a different part of the suite, doing something or other.

  “Cleo?” he called. He didn’t like the thready sound of his voice, so he tried again. “Cleo?”

  “Yes? I am just getting some hot water. Please bear with me a moment. Apparently, my maid has despaired of my ever returning and has left me.”

  Of course she would have a maid. A fancy place like this, she’d need one. Katie didn’t; probably wouldn’t have stood still for one.

  “I seem to recall,” Muldoon said, “durin’ the course of the evenin’, lettin’ words slip me lips that I should never have said in the presence of a lady. I apologize.”

  Cleo reentered the room, bearing a small basin of hot water, a sponge, and a towel. When she heard Muldoon’s words, she felt very strange. It had been so long since anyone had cared about her sensitivities (not, she told herself, as though she had any), or had considered her to be a lady, that she almost blushed.

  “I especially wish to apologize,” Muldoon continued, “for snappin’ at you back at Hand’s mansion. What I said was unforgivable, and I—”

  “It was not unforgivable,” Cleo said. She sat the basin down on the floor and knelt beside it in front of Muldoon. “It was totally justified. I was trying to play on your feelings, as I had when we first met. That has been on my conscience. It was only a wicked habit that made me simper and whine as I did when you rescued me tonight. My only excuse is, well—I am not accustomed to being treated squarely. My misfortune has been to fall in with those who think only of themselves. In all my life, I have met no one who didn’t betray my trust in the end.”

  Muldoon knew she was talking of Madam Nanette. His memory showed him a picture of the elegant old woman eating the poisoned almond torte he’d so gaily urged on her a moment before. God, Muldoon, he thought, you’re a walking menace.

  He also remembered about the mixup when the brothel keeper had decided to retire. “You’re wrong, you know,” he told Cleo. “There was somebody who—what are you doin’ to me feet, girl?”

  “I’m taking off your shoes. You landed heavily, and I believe you have twisted your ankle. Yes, you have, and cut it, too.”

  Gently, she bathed the wound with the hot water. “You may take off your own jacket and shirt,” she said while she dressed the ankle.

  “Listen,” Muldoon said, “I am in no mood for it, do you understand?”

  He regretted it the instant he said it, as he saw Cleo’s lovely dark eyes moisten, and start to run.

  “I suppose,” she said, flicking the tears away with a finger, “I deserve that. But I—”

  Muldoon reached out a big hand (wincing, for his shoulder hurt) and patted Cleo’s head. “I’m just a big, beat-up, stupid, thickheaded Irishman. Pay me no mind.” He began to take off his jacket and his shirt. She seemed to know what she was about.

  Cleo suppressed a gasp when Muldoon was done. Not at his torso, though it was strong and manly—she had seen one or two better—but at the state of it. The men she’d known had been rich, and pampered. She’d never seen a man in a state like this.

  For Muldoon’s right shoulder, and much of his chest, was a bloody mess, the result of a series of long parallel gashes at the shoulder, not deep or dangerous, but nasty and painful. Muldoon winced as she touched them with the sponge, no matter how light the touch.

  And as the blood disappeared, she saw the bruises, new and old, on the young man’s body. Cleo wondered what Muldoon had been through for her sake.

  “I’ll be back in a moment,” she said. She went to the bathroom cabinet, and got the bottle of laudanum. She had wanted to ask Muldoon what her ordeal (and his) had been all about, but that could wait. His mind and body were in pain, and that had to be eased first.

  “Take this,” she said, handing Muldoon the dose of narcotic. He drank it and made a face. “Have you any whiskey lyin’ about? God, what a nasty taste.”

  “I have some brandy,” Cleo said.

  “That’ll do.”

  She got him a glass of brandy, which he took in his left hand while she dressed the wounds on his right shoulder. She had him lean forward, and did his back, which wasn’t so bad.

  “You must lie down,” she said.

  “Indeed I must,” Muldoon agreed. “Whew, me head is spinnin’ like a phonograph cylinder.”

  He tried to stand, then made it. Cleo led him by the hand to her boudoir, where he lay on the bed. Cleo sat at her vanity bench.

  “Hey,” Muldoon said dreamily. “Do you know a rabbi?”

  So much had happened since she’d seen him, Cleo thought for a second Muldoon meant an actual Jew holy man. “Oh,” she said when she remembered. “Yes, I do know of him. I’ll tell you later.”

  “Nope.” Muldoon giggled. The laudanum and fatigue were taking effect. “You’ll tell Teddy. Good old Teddy. You’ll tell him. I’ll be off the Force by then. Work as a bouncer in Frenchy Moriarty’s saloon. What happened, damn it? I was tryin’ to do me duty, but I, but I, I ...”

  His voice broke into quiet sobs. Cleo rushed to his side. “Shh,” she said, stroking his brow. “You did your best. You were very brave. Commissioner Roosevelt will understand. He’ll be proud of you.”

  “You ... you think he will?”

  “I’m sure of it. Now, let yourself go to sleep, Dennis.”

  Muldoon obliged. Cleo left him, went to the other room, and arranged with a corrupt but discreet bellboy of her acquaintance to get Muldoon something to wear. As she crossed the sitting room on the way back, she saw that the satin love seat was ruined, stained with water, liniment, ointment, and Muldoon’s blood.

  She didn’t care. The furniture here had been a gift from Avery, and if she’d ever felt any warm emotion for Avery, she felt it no longer. She would gladly sacrifice ten Averys for one Dennis Muldoon.

  She returned to the boudoir. Muldoon was sleeping soundly now. Carefully, Cleo removed his trousers, and attended to the injuries on his legs. Then she covered his dear, naked body with a clean sheet. She smiled to think how their roles had been reversed.

  How comforting it would be, Cleo thought, to prepare for
bed and join him under that sheet, just to hold him in her arms, and feel all night the concrete evidence of the existence of a Good Man. How wonderful it would be to spend the night with a man because she wanted to, and not because someone had paid money. To enjoy the unprecedented freedom of staying with a man, and having the option not to do anything, if that was her wish.

  But not tonight. Not when he was unconscious and helpless. Besides, she had work to do.

  She looked at Muldoon for a second longer, then bent, and burrowed softly through his moustache until her lips found his for a tender, lingering kiss. Then she turned out the light, and returned to the sitting room, where she took pen and paper and filled page after page with a detailed account of her life since Evan Crandall had appeared in it.

  She left out nothing. There was no telling what Mr. Roosevelt might find important.

  SATURDAY

  the twenty-ninth of August, 1896

  I.

  “THANK YOU, SIR,” THE reporter said, closing his notebook. “This will make a ripping good side-piece to the story of your wedding. MAN OF PRINCIPLE; Thwarts Thieves, Weds Today; T. Avery Hand, Man of Courage.”

  Hand smiled and nodded. He liked the sound of it himself. It was the Rabbi’s suggestion, of course. Another of those mysterious phone calls had come this morning, just when Hand was toying with the idea of putting a bullet through his head because of the mess last night. But the Rabbi had a plan to make it all come out right. He would be a handy man to have around. If he weren’t a Jew, of course.

  Hand figured that as long as he was here, he’d drop in on the boss. “Hearst around?” he asked the reporter.

  The fellow adjusted an eyeshade on his bald head and said, “Oh, I almost forgot. He’s in his office, and would like to see you if you have the time.”

  “Almost forgot, eh?” Hand said, rising to his full five feet four inches. “It ill behooves a journalist, I would think, to forget things.” Ah, well, he wouldn’t have the fellow fired. Despite the fact that he’d lost his dog and his auto mobile, he felt good. It had been more Baxter’s dog than his, anyway, and he’d pretty much lost interest in the motor car. The vogue would soon pass, and besides, he was about to have the Treasury of the United States to play with. He could buy hundreds of motor cars, and have the Government build roads to drive them on. He laughed at the thought of such foolishness.