Jed Rubenfeld - The Death Instinct

'Keep your voice down,' whispered Fall. 'You tell anybody yet?'

'Yes, sir,' said Littlemore quietly.

'Who?'

'You.'

'Apart from me, goddamn it,' said Fall.

'You mean Mr Houston?'

'Yes — did you tell Houston?'

'I came straight here, Mr Fall.'

'Good. Let's keep a lid on this, Littlemore. Don't want to cause a panic. Tell you what: Just leave it to me. I'll make sure the right people find out.'

'Got you, Mr Fall. Keep a lid on it. But somebody better talk to Mr Lamont right away.'

'Don't you worry, son — I'll talk to him.'

'What'll you say?' asked Littlemore.

'I'll tell him — why, I'll tell him-' Fall had difficulty finishing the sentence. 'Damn it, you're the one who said I should talk to him.'

'I figured you'd want to tip him off,' said Littlemore.

Fall didn't flinch. 'What did you say?'

'You know when I knew, Senator Fall? It was when you told me that you and Mr McAdoo always have dinner at the Oyster Bar. I realized that Ed Fischer was in Grand Central when you two met here a few months ago, after the Democratic Convention. A lot of people think Fischer's crazy, but everything I heard him say turned out to be true.'

'Are you drunk, Littlemore?'

'Then I saw the whole thing. Finding those Mexican documents was way too easy. Torres's apartment — it was a fake, wasn't it? A setup. That's why you had Mrs Cross come with me — to make sure I'd find the hole in the wall where the documents were hidden. What a sucker I was. Sure, a Mexican envoy is going to bring incriminating documents with him from Mexico in a cardboard tube — nothing else, no files, no suitcases, barely any clothes, just those documents — and then leave them for me in an open wall safe after I knock on his apartment door. Torres wasn't really a Mexican envoy at all, was he? You invented him. That's why Obregon denied the guy's existence.'

Fall took out a cigar. 'You're all twisted up, son. Not thinking straight.'

'From the very start,' said Littlemore, 'Lamont tried to put me onto Mexico. Every time I talked to him, something having to do with Mexico would come up. I just didn't see it. Same with you, Mr Fall. You pretended you thought the Russians were behind it, but you were steering me to Mexico the whole time. Brighton was in on it too, wasn't he? You and he staged that scene in your office for my benefit, when he was complaining about the Mexicans seizing his oil wells. Then Lamont calls me again and conveniently mentions that Mexican

Independence Day is in the middle of September. You were doing the same thing with Flynn, sending him hints about Sacco and Vanzetti, hoping he'd put together their Mexico connection, but he never did. So you had to make me think I'd found proof — the documents in Torres's wall. But they're all fakes. Forgeries.'

Fall lit his cigar, taking his time. He glanced left and right and spoke almost inaudibly: 'The Mexicans bombed us, Littlemore. Massacred us. You're the one who figured it out. Let's say those documents are fake. Let's just say. If that's what Wilson and his Secretary of War needed to see the light and send in the troops, that's the way it had to be.'

'Except the Mexicans weren't behind the bombing,' said Littlemore.

'What are you talking about?'

'You were behind it.'

Fall blew a cloud of smoke over Littlemore's head. 'You think I bombed Wall Street — killed all those people — to steal a little gold from the Treasury? You're out of your mind, boy. No one will believe you.'

'The gold was icing,' said Littlemore. 'The cake was war. Invading Mexico, getting rid of Obregon, installing your own man as president, taking the oil fields. That would have been worth maybe half a billion dollars to your pal Brighton. And a few hundred million more to Lamont. And who knows how much to you.'

'That's big crazy talk, boy. You could get in trouble talking big and crazy like that.'

'You're making a war for their oil.'

'Their oil?' Fall hissed. 'That's our oil you're talking about. We bought it, we paid for it, and now a bunch of Reds are trying to steal it. You think the Mexican people like being ordered around by a gang of God-hating, gun-toting bandits? The Mexicans'll thank us. They'll cheer our boys when we march into Mexico City.'

'Sure they will,' said Littlemore. 'They love the US of A., just like you do.'

At that moment Mr McAdoo came out of the restaurant, along with Mrs Cross, who was carrying Senator Fall's overcoat.

'What's going on, Fall?' asked McAdoo. 'Is there a problem, Mr Littlemore?'

'No problem. Senator Fall and I were just talking about how you and he planned the Wall Street bombing.'

'I beg your pardon?' said McAdoo.

'You were the one who knew about the gold,' Littlemore said to McAdoo. 'You were Secretary of the Treasury in 1917 — before you started working for Brighton. You knew exactly how and when the gold would be moved. You knew Riggs. You probably had him transferred from Washington to New York.'

'Don't answer him, Mac,' said Fall. 'Ignorant talk — that's all it is.'

'Answer him?' said McAdoo. 'I would sue him for slander if it weren't so palpably risible.'

'How much did they promise you?' Littlemore asked McAdoo. 'Or were you just getting back at Wilson?'

McAdoo bristled. 'Why would I want to "get back" at my own father-in-law?'

'Maybe because he took the nomination from you?' answered Littlemore. 'You were going to be the next president of the United States. Must have been so close you could taste it. But Wilson took it away. All because you married his little girl, thinking it was your ticket to the White House. Kind of backfired, that move. Wilson stayed a step ahead of you all the way, didn't he?'

'Let it go,' Fall said to McAdoo. 'He's just baiting you.'

'Woodrow Wilson,' replied McAdoo, 'will go down in history as a president so bedazzled with his role as Europe's peacemaker that he didn't see the war being made against us by our neighbor to the south — the first president since 1812 to permit an attack on American soil.'

'Sure, if only there had been an attack,' said Littlemore. 'But there wasn't. You just made it look that way. You figured you'd hire some men to bomb Wall Street, make it look like the Mexicans did it, rustle up a little war — and come out a billion dollars richer. Lamont owns the land across from the Treasury Building. He digs a tunnel to the one spot where the gold is vulnerable while it's being moved — the overhead bridge between the two buildings. Then on September sixteenth, Mexican Independence Day, you pulled the trigger. You covered your tracks too. Nobody knew. But you made one mistake. You were overheard by Ed Fischer.'

Fall laughed out loud. Then the Senator spoke more quietly: 'That's your evidence? We were overheard by a certified lunatic? I hate to break it to you, son, but I never talk anywhere I can be overheard.'

'You've talked here before. In this corner. Outside the Oyster Bar.'

'How would you know?' replied the Senator. 'And what if I have? Nobody can hear us.'

'Ed Fischer can,' said Littlemore. Lowering his voice to the quietest whisper, the detective added: 'Come on out, Fischer. Tell Mr Fall whether you can hear him.'

'Indeed I can!' cried Edwin Fischer's voice from across the crowded gallery. Soon they could see him practically bounding through the crowd. 'It's just like before,' he said jauntily when he reached them. 'The same voices — out of the air!'

'What on earth?' said McAdoo. 'What is this?'

Fall looked at Fischer as if he were a species of exotic bird that ought to be exterminated. 'Is this your idea of a joke, Littlemore?'

'I don't think Commissioner Enright finds it funny, Mr Senator,' said Littlemore as Fischer was followed by Enright and Stankiewicz. 'Commissioner Enright, could you hear the Senator and Mr McAdoo talking just now?'