Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [107]
The Sixth Avenue Elevated rattled by a half block away, shaking the floors and the bed in which Littlemore and his wife were lying.
“What’s the matter?” asked Betty, seeing her husband’s open eyes.
“Nothing.”
“It’s after two, Jimmy.”
“I feel like I took my first bribe.”
“You mean because you rode in Mr. Brighton’s train? You’re the only policeman in New York who would think there was anything wrong with that.”
“He offered me five thousand dollars. Enough for Lily. He put it in my hand.”
“Did you take it?”
“No.”
The noise of the train receded into the distance. The bedroom was completely silent.
“What did he want you to do?” asked Betty at last.
“Nothing. He wanted to pay me for something I already did.”
“He offered you five thousand dollars for nothing?”
“It was for police work,” said Littlemore. “I’m sorry, Betty. I couldn’t take it.”
“You listen to me, James Littlemore,” said Betty, sitting up. “Don’t you take any dirty money. Not for me, not for Lily, not for anything.”
Littlemore shut his eyes. “Thanks,” he said.
Betty lay down again. A long while passed.
“Did I make enough of myself, Betty?” asked Littlemore.
“Enough? Nobody works harder than you. You put food on our table every day. You got us an apartment on Fourteenth Street.”
“Mayor Mitchel was mayor of New York City at thirty-four,” said Littlemore. “Teddy Roosevelt was Police Commissioner at thirty-eight. I can’t even afford to fix my own daughter’s hearing.”
“They had famous fathers, Jimmy. Your father—” Betty hesitated—“well, you did everything on your own.”
Littlemore didn’t speak.
“And you’re still going places,” said Betty. “Look at this new job of yours. None of the girls have a husband like mine. You should see the looks in their eyes. You’re like a god. Captain Littlemore of the New York Police Department. Special Agent Littlemore of the United States Treasury.”
“Like a god,” said Littlemore, smiling, wiping his eyes in the darkness. “That’s me all right.”
The morning papers confirmed Brighton’s complaints. The President-elect of Mexico, General Álvaro Obregón, had ordered troops into American-owned silver mines. He was threatening to do the same with the much more lucrative oil wells, claiming that Americans had bought their subsoil rights through illegal, corrupt transactions with the pre-revolutionary regime.
The American Society for Psychical Research had a perfectly unspiritual office on East Twenty-third Street in Manhattan, lined with scientific publications, most prominently its own. No signs of the occult were anywhere in evidence. Dr. Walter Franklin Prince, the acting director, was equally mundane in appearance. He was a large-faced, affable man of about sixty with a receding hairline, and he smoked a pipe with an unusually large bowl.
“Thanks for making time, Dr. Prince,” said Littlemore the next morning, shaking Prince’s hand. “Friend of mine told me you were the outfit to talk to about supernatural stuff.”
“Delighted to assist,” replied Prince. “My secretary, Miss Tubby, tells me you doubt whether Mr. Edwin Fischer really could have seen into the future.”
“That’s right, but I’m listening.”
“Certainly he could have. Premonitions of disaster are commonplace. In 1902, I myself dreamed in precise detail of a train wreck four hours before it occurred. In 1912, Mr. J. C. Middleton, having purchased tickets for the maiden voyage of the Titanic, dreamed two nights in a row of the ship’s foundering and of its passengers drowning in the cold sea. He refused to travel and lived.”
“Didn’t happen to tell anybody about his dreams before the ship went down, did he?”
“I wouldn’t mention it otherwise. I have no truck with after-the-fact clairvoyants. Mr. Middleton was so alarmed that he immediately told his wife and several friends. Their affidavits are in my drawer. I’ve been looking into the Fischer case myself, and based on the evidence, I’m convinced his premonition was authentic.”
“Fischer says it came to him