by The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King- A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt
It was Nan who rescued me. “Sir, have you not seen his badge?”
The house detective had a moment of panic. He looked at my red mustache, as if he were appraising a stallion at his own private stable.
“Mr. Roseyvelt? I’m the innocent party here. This vulturous female is a vagrant. She belongs in the workhouse at Blackwell’s Island. She’s registered here under false pretenses, living off the fat of the land, but the Fifth Avenue Hotel ain’t a charity ward, I’ll have you know. Her credit is worthless. She signed fake notes.”
“I will vouch for her credit. Have the manager call Police Headquarters.”
The detective stroked his mustache. “Well, that’s a bird of a different feather. And I will apologize to all parties involved.”
He didn’t apologize. He pulled his derby over one eye and disappeared into that vastness, searching for some other transgression. And I was left with Mrs. Morris and her feathered hat.
“I did not ask for your help, Mr. Roosevelt,” she said in a musical voice, with a touch of acid.
Nan must have sensed something familiar in Mrs. Morris’ mysterious manner—another lady who had been bitten too hard. “Roosevelt, you have not introduced us.”
It seems Mrs. Morris had followed Nan’s articles in the World—her exposés of Manhattan rookeries.
“Nan,” I said, with a catch in my throat, “meet Mrs. Valentina Morris. She was a friend of my late little brother.”
“More than a friend,” said Mrs. M.
“That will suffice,” I answered as direct as I could. “Mrs. Fowler does not have to know your business. You can return to your room.”
But she was harder on me than she’d been with the house detective. “I will not accept your chivalry, Mr. Roosevelt. You are Elliott’s hangman brother.”
Ellie’s hangman.
The colic was gone. I was filled with fury.
“Madam, this conversation is over. Return to your room at once.”
But Mrs. Morris would not move. Her face was quivering. She was barely under control. I didn’t want to send for the wagon from Bellevue. She could never have gone back to the Fifth Avenue, not as a guest. Her belongings would have been bundled up and delivered to the madhouse.
“Madam,” I said in a neutral tone, “my brother deserted his children and his wife—for you.”
My words riled her even more—I was like Buffalo Bill shooting candles in the dark. I must have hit the mark.
“Mr. Roosevelt, I never kept Elliott from his children. He was a devoted father. But he did not enjoy your matrimonial bliss. His marriage was not blissful.”
My temples were pounding. “I will not listen.”
She crumpled up in front of Nan, sobbing in the Fifth Avenue’s hollow foyer. The chandeliers had their own strange, silent music that seemed to fill the cavern like a sinister balloon. I took Mrs. M. in my arms, shielding her from that eerie silence. Was it to soothe her, or rescue my soul from damnation? I was like some whiskey judge in the Badlands. I’d condemned my brother, stolen him from the daughter he loved—lanky little Eleanor. Indeed, I was the orphan-maker.
“Madam, I beg you, return to your room.”
I could feel the heartbeat through her winter robes. It thumped like some great primitive bird. I watched Mrs. M. shuffle toward the passenger cars with a shambling gait. Had I been ripped of all humankind in the Badlands, become as relentless as the cougar?
“Roosevelt,” Nan said, “you must show a little mercy to that poor woman. It does seem that she did love your late brother.”
“She was his paramour,” I said, prim as a deacon.
Nan pounced on that word. “Paramour.”
“I’d rather end this conversation right now,” I said, playing the deacon again.
“No one can hear us,” she said, her nostrils flaring with anger. “We are all alone in the lobby of a hotel where your rival reigns like an emperor behind a desk that belongs in a dollhouse.”
“The Senator isn’t my rival.”
“What is he, then?” she asked.
“A son of a bitch.”
She laughed. But it did not embolden me. I was not my father’s son. I did not have his Brave Heart. Papa could produce the impossible, make my asthma disappear—in our carriage rides through the cold winter, on his own version of the midnight ramble. I could breathe like a brand-new boy as we sped through the deserted streets, with one lantern after the other glowing like a lopped-off head. It was a ride that resembled no other ride, right after the war, when discharged soldiers in random uniforms sometimes haunted the avenues.
Father always stopped for such a soldier, gave him a few coins and asked where he had fought. Perhaps he had helped this very lad during his own days as an Allotment Commissioner. There wasn’t another soul who had Papa’s sense of service. We’d return after an hour, Papa exhausted, his eyes sinking fast, his beard disfigured in the wind, and I utterly refreshed, reborn on this ramble. . . .
WE STOOD UNDER THE great awning on Madison Square, and stared at the hotel’s grandiloquent clock tower, its numerals etched in gold, yet it was not nearly as tall as Edison’s arc lamps that lit Broadway with a nocturnal sunrise. I could imagine my own Antarctic moon in the middle of Manhattan—whiter than white. I wasn’t done with our ramble. I didn’t have to seek out slackers in the tenement district, or worry about some relic from the old Swamp Angels wandering from sewer to sewer after a significant swipe of jewelry or hard cash. There were no Swamp Angels this far uptown.
So I accompanied Nan. Carriages stopped for us on Madison Avenue, even at this hour, but I waved them on. And then a wagon that resembled a railroad car came to a sudden halt with its team of six horses. The coachman never bothered to look at us.
A door opened. “Get in,” a voice barked at us from the interior.
We climbed onto the wagon’s metal lip and hopped aboard. Pierpont Morgan sat in the cushions with his ruinous nose. He suffered from a rare skin disease that wasn’t curable, even with Morgan’s millions. And he preferred to sit in the dark, even with his fellow bankers. His nose swelled up like a pocked pear with oozing pores—a wound on his face. Morgan was a singular man. He’d filled this enormous vault with medieval manuscripts and paintings of the Dutch masters—it was his museum on wheels. He had a palazzo on Madison, but the banker didn’t like to sleep. He went on his own midnight rambles in this ironclad car.
I had a strange affinity with the robber baron. He’d also lost his first wife, Amelia, who died in his arms, died of tuberculosis. Amelia had walked around in a veil to cover up her gauntness. She was so thin and frail in the end that she couldn’t stand up, and Pierpont had to carry her from place to place. He never quite recovered from that marriage. He had a new wife, but she was a blue blood who didn’t share his mania for art treasures and suffered from a chronic depression. Morgan had many mistresses. And I didn’t approve of the way he trampled upon the marriage bed. But he was as much of a philanthropist as my father, and a grand patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And there was a rumor that he had subsidized a lying-in hospital to provide for his own progeny of illegitimate children. He had melancholic fits where he took to mumbling for weeks at a time. He sat there in the dark, his banker’s eyes like burning coals.
Nan introduced herself. “I’m Fowler of the World.”
“Ah,” the banker mumbled, “the famous Mrs. Fowler.” We had to strain to catch every word. “Did you not call me a criminal a few days ago?”
“I did, sir.”
“You said I do not pay my workers a living wage. But I keep this damn city humming with the men and women I employ. Are you a socialist, Mrs. Fowler?”
“No,” she whispered. “But you are a tyrant, sir.”
There was a long silence in this rocking carriage.
“TR,” Morgan suddenly said out of the darkness, “you must resign. You’re massacring the police. The very best detectives have retired rather than face one of your inquisitions. They were de
pendable. I could count on them.”
“Yes, you hired them as your sheriffs,” I said. He was the most powerful banker in the world. The President was a dwarf compared to Pierpont Morgan, who served as banker to the United States. But he had short shrift at 300 Mulberry Street. My roundsmen and captains were not beholden to him, and neither was I. He could comfort the Mayor with his millions and promise Boss Platt a palazzo for the Republican Party. I desired none of that swag.
His ire rose up. I could not recognize the Dutch masters in their gilded frames. The pirate with his pulsing blue nose was angry with me. “A man has want of a sheriff in this town, TR. My messengers are being attacked in broad daylight.”
“I haven’t seen a formal complaint. And you have your own guards,” I said.
His eyes blazed out at me. It was the rare man who could stare back at Pierpont Morgan, but I did try. He could bring down empires with a look, and here he sat in his dark carriage, rambling across Manhattan until it was time to appear on Wall Street, or perhaps he wouldn’t appear at all, and he would wander in this wagon until the end of his days.
“It would be a mark of weakness,” he muttered, “to have messengers from J. P. Morgan accompanied by armed guards.”
He had little interest in me now that I wouldn’t do what he demanded. And he looked at Nan, who must have reminded him of some lost mistress. “Child, it’s impolite not to stare at my nose.”
The tycoon couldn’t intimidate Nan. “I’m not a child,” she said.
“Nevertheless, there’s still my nose—it oozes. It’s septic without a septic tank. Have you read Cyrano?”
“Of course,” she snapped.
“Well, Cyrano would have frightened the audience out of their seats with a nose like mine.”
Nan returned his gaze with her own blue darts. “But he would not have frightened me, Mr. Morgan.”
Pierpont Morgan knocked his fists together like a Gaelic chieftain. “TR, I like this little socialist of yours.”
His carriage lurched to a halt. The coachman pounded from the roof. We’d arrived at Bysie’s brownstone. Pierpont Morgan had already gone on to other matters. We no longer existed in that banker’s brain of his. There was a stab of sunlight on the carriage door. We hopped down from the metal lip, with Pulitzer’s girl reporter clutching my hand. The horses neighed, and that impossible railroad car hurtled along. I had my own fit of melancholy on Madison Avenue.
Two philanthropists, Father and that financial pirate. They’d founded hospitals and museums and charity wards. I summoned up the image of Papa’s beard and broad shoulders, that quiet vitality of his. He didn’t have Morgan’s thirst for empire. I loved him, and I would have shriveled at the first sign of his wrath.
Oh, Father, you should have survived those damned politicians. You would have made a marvelous Customs Collector.
I could feel a tug at my sleeve.
Sissy had come out onto the sidewalk with her latest companion, Eleanor, my little niece, who wore Sissy’s discards and resembled a rag doll with a weak chin.
Sissy bowed to Nan. “I’m his firstborn. Who are you?”
I introduced one and all, while Sissy displayed her badge that the tinsmith had fashioned at headquarters.
“Gawd,” Nan said, “a second Commissioner Roosevelt. And is Eleanor your deputy?”
“She will be. I have yet to swear her in.” Then Sissy turned to me. “TR, Mother has the ague. And she is not in the mood to countenance any outsiders. But Cook is making biscuits, and Mrs. Fowler must stay.”
Nan seemed reluctant to enter Bamie’s winter palace. Perhaps my “firstborn” reminded her of the tots she had tossed aside during her long career as a bunco artist. But Baby Lee was hard to resist. She led Nan under the stone steps and into the kitchen. Cook was delighted. Cook followed all of Mrs. Fowler’s undercover exposés, her descent into the demimonde without so much as a pocket pistol.
“Do ya wear disguises, mum?”
“There isn’t much artistry in a disguise,” she said, winking at my red sash. “I prefer a lighter touch.”
“But your face, mum. It must be known by now.”
Nan shifted expressions, went from a harpy to a young girl. Eleanor and Sissy were entranced. Cook grew hysterical and nearly spoiled the scones.
We all sat around the rugged wooden table, while Cook poured coffee and China tea, with milk and cream and maple syrup.
“Mum, what was your hardest case to crack?”
“I don’t have cases,” Nan said. “I’m not a Pinkerton. I do not have the power—or the will—to make an arrest. I simply write about what I see.”
Cook was bewildered. She’d never talked so much since we had hired her. “There were arrests, mum, after your last encounter.”
“Yes, sometimes there’s a tiny crack in the underworld.”
But she could have been a Pink. She had an acute picture of her surroundings. She sensed the sadness in Eleanor’s narrow shoulders, a sadness I did not want to see. I had blinded myself, blotted out my brother’s little girl. I played bear with her and the bunnies, let her accompany us on our summer strolls, treated her to ice cream, as if Elliott had never existed and Anna Roosevelt had never lived or died. But it was Nan who whispered to Eleanor, buttered a scone for her, braided her hair. And then she began to shiver. She could have been possessed, riven by some lightning bolt.
“TR,” Sissy asked, “does Mrs. Fowler have the ague?”
“I doubt it.”
Sissy would not be sidetracked.
“Mrs. Fowler, do you have children of your own?”
Nan broke out of her electric dream. “Yes, Sissy, I’m afraid I do. A girl and a boy. They’re both a little older than you and Eleanor.”
“What are their names?” asked Sissy, bold as ever.
Nan paused, as if to dredge up her past, like some devilish accountant. “Melody . . . and Paul.”
“Melody,” my daughter said, “is a most unusual name.”
“Mrs. Fowler, Mrs. Fowler,” Eleanor asked, jumping up and down with more vigor than I had ever seen, “can they come and play with us?”
“Dearest,” Nan said, stroking Eleanor, “that is quite impossible.”
Nan clutched her fists, got up from the table, thanked Cook, said goodbye to the girls, and ran out like a waif. She was a waif, and it did not matter how Pulitzer had anointed her, or how many followers she had.
She stopped for a moment to stare at me. “You must not desert that child—Eleanor.”
“She’s my niece,” I said. “I have not deserted her.”
“Yet she wears the high socks and short skirts of an orphanage.”
I could have had Whitey Whitman’s elbows in my face. “She lives with her Grandmamma—in Tivoli-on-the-Hudson,” I said. “And half her clothes come from Sissy’s closet.”
“I am talking about the other half,” Nan said. And then Pulitzer’s waif wandered into the wind with that haunted look of hers.
I felt like a sea captain who had to face the wreckage he had just helped administer—on land, rather than at sea. This midnight ramble, I fear, had caused more pain than I had ever imagined. I was no Caliban, part monster, part magician. I could not bring back Melody and Paul, whereas little Eleanor, with her hand-me-downs, was almost a picture of Nan’s very own grief. No wonder Nan had clung to her—both were members of the same orphanage, an icehouse frozen in time, both were waifs. I doubt Nan would visit me again.
CHAPTER 10
POLICEMAN’S PARADISE, PART THREE
1897
HOUSE OF MORGAN DECLARES
WAR ON MULBERRY STREET
CALLS TEDDY MANHATTAN’S
LITTLE TIN CZAR
THE PAPERS HAD A HOPPING GOOD TIME SCRAPING MY feet to the fire while Pierpont introduced a police commissioner all his own. That damn Pink, Detective Taggart, had been put in charge of the New York office—only he was Major Taggart now, and with a military swagger, too. He’d developed a drag-foot sin
ce the last time I saw him. He had the same dyed mustache, but his collar was clean—and starched—in Manhattan. He hadn’t lost his Wyoming luster and flair. Taggart and his team of detectives went around in a wagon plated with metal—a gift from the old pirate, I presume. They did whatever mischief they could for Piermont and his cabal of financiers. Quietly, rampantly, they’d become a rival police force, with their own badges, billies, and silver-backed Colts.
Taggart was as cruel and calculating as he had been in the Far West. The Pinks broke up strikes, loaned themselves to landlords affiliated with Morgan, tossing out tenants who were behind in their rent, dragging them down the stairs, two at a time, leaving them in a bundle out on the sidewalk, like so much carrion to be collected. These victims had little recourse. Taggart was willing to take on my Mulberry Street men who got in his way. He would flash his silver badge and claim that local jurisdiction meant a sack of piss to him. He belonged to the “federals,” he said. Pinkertons had been the bodyguards of Presidents, and certain Senators on Capitol Hill. But he hadn’t counted on the flying squad. My bicycle patrol kept pace with his war wagon, and even the best of the Pinks couldn’t outmaneuver Sergeant Raddison. They battled billy to billy in front of the Hester Street stalls, while shirts and ladies’ underpants went flying onto the fire escapes, like a tatter of pale flags. Storekeepers and shoppers were caught in the mêlée. But Raddison himself watched over the civilians, while his lads bloodied the Pinks, who were no match for cops in striped trousers and nautical caps.
The Pinks filed a civil complaint. Harassment, they said. And of course they hired Howe & Hummel, with their silky touch and sour perfume. Hummel himself arrived at headquarters with the Major, while Sergeant Raddison stood at my side. He had become one of my aides in his spare time. He was wearing a nautical cap, as if he’d risen out of the East River like a demigod.
“TR,” said Silent Abe, looking as rumpled as ever, “you mustn’t feud with the Pinks. The Major and you are on the same side.”
“And what side is that?” I asked.