Pat O'Malley Historical Steampunk Mystery Trilogy

by Jim Musgrave

  “No, I wasn’t aware of that fact. Tell me more,” I said, as we walked out of the café and onto 28th Street.

  * * *

  After I took Bessie Mergenthaler back to work, I wandered down 28th Street to think about how the fates had intervened to change my outlook on life. It bothered me that I was dreaming about my mother again. I wondered why. If I believed Becky, it was because my subconscious was developing ways to intuitively tell me how to proceed in my case.

  During the Edgar Allan Poe murder case, it was certainly Becky and her transcendentalism that led to my being able to become intimate with a female again. This also gave me the additional skill of intuition, which led directly to my solving the case. I had hoped this would be what happened in this case, but nothing seemed to be developing.

  I decided to walk over to the Jewish section, which was off Essex Street on the Lower East Side. These were the working class Jews, not the wealthy Germans who lived in the Upper East Side community of Yorkville. These Jews lived in crowded tenement buildings that were over eight stories in height, and children could be seen running wild through the alley ways and in the streets.

  This was the famous “Gateway to America” neighborhood where waves of immigrants came to find a new life on the shores of New York City. However, all immigrants to this new world knew about this life in the Lower East Side tenements. They were great prison-like structures of brick, with narrow doors and windows, cramped passages, and steep, rickety stairs. They were built through, from one street to the other, with a somewhat narrower building connecting them. The narrow courtyard in the middle was a damp, foul-smelling place supposed to do duty as an airshaft; had the foul fiend designed these great barracks, they could not have been more villainously arranged to avoid any chance of ventilation. In case of fire they would be perfect death traps.

  As I walked through this neighborhood, in the cold of January, I saw a line of Jewish men standing in front of a decrepit office building on Essex. I walked over to see where the line was leading them, and one of the men spoke English with a German accent, so I asked him, “Why are you in line?”

  “There is new work down in Georgia and other southern states,” he told me. “We are here to sign up.”

  I moved up to the front of the row where there was a long table with three men sitting behind it handing out application forms to the men in line. Behind them, on the wall, were posters showing the image of General Ulysses S. Grant wearing civilian clothes, with his beard and slight smirk, standing in a regal pose with the American flag in the background. There were two sentences printed in bold white that said: “U. S. Grant. He’ll get America working again.”

  “What is this?” I asked one of the men.

  He looked up at me briefly between handing out the forms to the men in line, who would then move over to desks where there were ink wells and pens for filling out the applications. “There are new companies down South for Jews and Negroes. General Grant has developed them. You need to get in line if you want to apply,” he said.

  This looked rather strange. Why would Grant want to help the Jews and Negroes? I knew for a fact that Grant was behind the Special Order 11 that persecuted Jewish merchants in the South. I also knew that Negroes were not getting many jobs either, except for the Union veterans who were given preference over the freed slaves. Could he perhaps have changed his tune now that he was working for President Andrew Johnson? It could be. Politics always made strange bedfellows, and it would not be surprising to see this die-hard Republican going after the votes of the thousands of immigrants by getting them work down South.

  “Do you have a business card?” I asked the gentleman, and he handed me a rectangular printed card. On it, in bold lettering, it said: The American Emigrant Company Supplies Workers to New Reconstruction Enterprises.

  The address was 428 Broad Street. I knew that address. It was the Presbyterian church where my father was going on Friday.

  I knew Grant had been appointed as President Johnson’s General of the Armies of the United States. Grant had also traveled down south to inspect the reconstruction going on. President Johnson sent Grant on a fact finding tour of the South after which he filed a report recommending continuation of the Freedman's Bureau but opposed use of black troops in garrisons which were still needed in the South for protection of both races.

  Grant also warned of threats by disaffected poor people, black and white, and recommended that local decision making be entrusted only to "thinking men.” By “thinking men,” he meant men of property. In this respect, Grant's initial Reconstruction policy aligned with Johnson's policy of pardoning established Southern leaders and restoring them to their positions of power. He joined Johnson in arguing that Congress should allow congressional representatives from the South to be seated.

  I wondered what this connection between Grant and The American Emigrant Company was. If this company was offering jobs to Jews, then that meant the racist former plantation owners down South would be their employers. Dr. Arthur Mergenthaler’s Emancipation Incorporated, which placed Negroes in charge of their own businesses, was in direct conflict with what The American Emigrant Company seemed to be doing.

  If Dr. Mergenthaler were kidnapped in order to stop his company from conducting business in the South and competing with The American Emigrant Company, then I may have found a motive. I was now quite anxious to hear what my father found out by attending the AEC meeting on Friday. Chances were, he was going to hear the details of the motive behind the kidnapping and murder, and he may possibly even find out who might be the suspected perpetrator or perpetrators.

  As I walked up to my apartment on 42nd Street, I kept seeing that picture of General Grant in my mind’s eye. What reason would he have to be supporting such a suspicious organization as The American Emigrant Company? Would such an important figure from the Civil War risk his reputation and future political career by promoting a profit-making endeavor in the South? If so, was the profiteering connected in any way with the kidnapping and murder of the Mergenthaler brothers?

  The door to my apartment was ajar. I pulled out my Colt Army pistol and held it straight out with both hands as I stepped inside the doorway.

  As I scanned the parlor, my eyes became used to the darkness, and I saw a figure sitting on the sofa. His face was enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke, but I noticed the high black boots--cavalry boots--and the engraved design of entwined rattlesnakes on the outside of the leather. There was only one man I knew who wore such boots, and his name was William Tecumseh Sherman, my former commanding officer.

  “Uncle Billy!” I said.

  “Sergeant O’Malley, I don’t have much time. I picked your lock because I needed to get inside. I have some men who are following me, and I need to tell you something before I leave for Florida.”

  I noticed that “Cump” was still wearing a black armband of mourning for President Lincoln around the bicep arm of his suit coat jacket. It was this hawk-like stare that I had watched every day for over two years during our campaigns under Grant and in Sherman’s “march to the sea.” General Sherman was named William Tecumseh after the great Shawnee Indian chief. Sherman had accepted the surrender of all the Confederate armies in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida in April 1865, and that’s when I finally received my discharge papers.

  “Sir, what is it? It’s a surprise to see you. How are Ellen and the children?”

  I sat down next to him on the sofa. Sherman’s eyes were darting all around him, and I only remembered his being this nervous on the night he decided to burn Atlanta in order to show the enemy that he meant business. During his Indian campaigns before the war, Cump had a number of nervous breakdowns that put him into the hospital. He was called “crazy” by the press, but it was his victory over the Rebs in Atlanta that led to President Lincoln’s reelection. Without his “scorched earth policy” of combat, we still might have been fighting the war.

  “Grant has been drinking again, Jimmy,” he said
. General Sherman always called me by my middle name because he knew another Jimmy during his childhood in Ohio. “I know, you never saw Grant drunk, but I have had the displeasure many times. This time, he has fallen into bad company. Jimmy, I know you now work privately as a detective. You once saved my life, and the president--God rest his soul--awarded you for it. I am, of course, forever indebted to you, and I am here because of my gratitude to you.”

  “What’s this all about, sir? I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Grant’s drunkenness has led him down a dark tunnel. He is working with some shady characters that are pursuing a dangerous course of exploitation in the South, and I believe he will lose his position in the Johnson Administration unless he can extract himself immediately. You must get him out of this endeavor, Jimmy, because what I have to tell you will make your blood curdle and strike fear in your heart.”

  I never knew Uncle Billy to show fear about anything, so this presentation was quite discomfiting to me. I might have guessed there was something big behind this case but having its importance delivered to me by my former commanding officer somehow made the experience that much more frightening.

  “The Mergenthaler family hired me to find Dr. Arthur Mergenthaler, who was kidnapped while he was being attended to at Mt. Sinai Hospital on 28th Street. I assume you know about his case and that your information concerns my investigation,” I said.

  “Correct. This is what I know. General Grant has signed a new law to be implemented in the State of Virginia as soon as they are able to get the votes to pass it in the legislature. I have a copy of it here because Grant gave me one. He was at my hotel room in Virginia, and he was drunk. He was going on about the immigrants in this country and the dangers of the Jews. I want you to hear what this says, Jimmy. You can then see why you need to stop what’s happening in the South before it becomes unstoppable.”

  General Sherman took out a long piece of official-looking paper and leaned over on the sofa to get the parchment under the brass gaslight standing on my end table. He cleared his throat, extracted his wire-rimmed spectacles from his coat pocket, and placed them on his long hooked nose before he read.

  1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That the State registrar of vital statistics may, as soon as practicable after the taking effect of this act, prepare a form whereon the racial composition of any individual, as Caucasian, Negro, Mongolian, American Indian, Asiatic Indian, or any mixture thereof, or any other non-Caucasic and Jewish strains, and if there be any mixture, then, the racial composition of the parents and other ancestors, in so far as ascertainable, so as to show in what generation such mixture occurred, may be certified by such individual, which form shall be known as a registration certificate. The State registrar may supply to each local registrar a sufficient number of such forms for the purpose of this act; each local registrar may, personally or by deputy, as soon as possible after receiving such forms, have made thereon in duplicate a certificate of the racial composition, as aforesaid, of each person resident in his district, who so desires, born before June 14, 1854, which certificate shall be made over the signature of said person, or in the case of children under fourteen years of age, over the signature of a parent, guardian, or other person standing in loco parentis. One of said certificates for each person thus registering in every district shall be forwarded to the State registrar for his files; the other shall be kept on file by the local registrar.

  Every local registrar may, as soon as practicable, have such registration certificate made by or for each person in his district who so desires, born before June 14, 1854, for whom he has not on file a registration certificate, or a birth certificate.

  2. It shall be a felony for any person willfully or knowingly to make a registration certificate false as to color or race. The willful making of a false

  registration or birth certificate shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for one year.

  3. For each registration certificate properly made and returned to the State registrar, the local registrar returning the same shall be entitled to a fee of

  twenty-five cents, to be paid by the registrant. Application for registration and for transcript may be made direct to the State registrar, who may retain the fee for expenses of his office.

  4. No marriage license shall be granted until the clerk or deputy clerk has reasonable assurance that the statements as to color of both man and woman are correct.

  If there is reasonable cause to disbelieve that applicants are of pure white race, when that fact is stated, the clerk or deputy clerk shall withhold the granting of the license until satisfactory proof is produced that both applicants are "white persons" as provided for in this act.

  The clerk or deputy clerk shall use the same care to assure himself that both applicants are colored, when that fact is claimed.

  5. It shall hereafter be unlawful for any white person in this State to marry any save a white person, or a person with no other admixture of blood than white and American Indian. For the purpose of this act, the term "white person" shall apply only to the person who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian; but persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic or Jewish blood shall be deemed to be white persons. All laws heretofore passed and now in effect regarding the intermarriage of white and colored persons shall apply to marriages prohibited by this act.

  6. For carrying out the purposes of this act and to provide the necessary clerical assistance, postage and other expenses of the State registrar of vital statistics, twenty per cent of the fees received by local registrars under this act shall be paid to the State bureau of vital statistics, which may be expended by the said bureau for the purposes of this act.

  7. All acts or parts of acts inconsistent with this act are, to the extent of such inconsistency, hereby repealed.

  I had no words to describe my feelings at that moment. It was all my worst fears that were coming into focus, and I did not want to believe they were true.

  Uncle Billy simply folded up the paper and put it back into his coat pocket. He stood up, still looking around the room, and said, “This is just the first document. Grant says he wants to instate a regulatory commission in the ‘Southern apartheid districts,’ as he calls them. You must get to him and say I sent you. Tell him about the murder and kidnapping and anything else you can find out about these people working for Grant at The American Emigrant Company. If he has become associated with such criminals, his career will be over in this country. Good night, Jimmy. It’s good to see you again, Son,” he said, and he left the apartment.

  I stood in the center of my one-room abode and realized what a fantastic development this was. I was now working on a case that had repercussions all the way to the White House, and my country was again asking me to act in its best interests. I was quite frightened about what would ensue, but I was ready.

  I locked the door and put a chair under the doorknob to secure it. The night ahead seemed a lot longer than usual, and so I picked up the Bible on my night stand and read the first passage my roving finger came to: “Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.”

  Chapter 7: Eugenics

  “Of all the dangers which our nation has yet encountered, none are equal to those which must result from the success of the effort now being made to Africanize the half of our country.”--Andrew Johnson.

  These were the words of our current President of the United States. Because of the untimely death of Abraham Lincoln, this man was thrust into power, and the so-called “reconstruction of the South” was in his hands. But the complete
philosophy behind these words was ultimately given to me by Becky Charming, a successful business woman in her own right. This report was, in fact, the information from her collection of exclusive “call girls” that formulated the horrific landscape of racial apartheid that was being planned by men like President Johnson.

  Becky had collected all the details given to her by her employees and then had written them down in the form of a philosophical treatise, which she read to me on Saturday morning. In addition to this report, we were going to visit my father in Five Points to find out what he had discovered after his visit to the Presbyterian church meeting of The American Emigrant Company.

  I wanted to know what I was up against when I ventured deeper into the missing person’s case of Dr. Arthur Mergenthaler. Would I be facing a small group of fanatics or an entire organization of hardened professionals?

  Becky was seated at a desk in her offices in the Theater District on Union Square near Broadway. She was wearing spectacles, tools which were infrequently applied except for intellectual study at Vassar or for times such as these. Her blue dress and curly blonde hair were rippling in the wind in front of the open window, and she glanced up at me as I came into the room. I had the key to her abode, and I indeed felt quite honored to be so trusted.

  “Sit, Patrick. You need to hear this. I’ve been able to piece-together all the basic tenets of this Eugenics Movement. My ladies obtained this knowledge in their capacity as paramours to some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in New York City.” Becky pointed to the red divan, and I sat down on it and crossed my legs.