Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [129]
“What will Harding want to do, sir?”
“Whatever I tell him.” The Senator stepped into his car. “I’ll let you know what we find on the Swede. Mrs. Cross will give you a lift back. You should get to know her. Not as tough as she pretends.”
How long you been working for Senator Fall?” Littlemore asked Mrs. Cross as she drove past row after row of the bunker-like, concrete, “temporary” War and Navy buildings squatting on the Mall—temporary by official description, permanent by appearance.
“A few years. I work for several of the senators. Mr. Harding, for example.”
“For Harding? Wow.”
“I do quite a lot for Mr. Harding. On loan from Senator Fall, of course.”
“You could end up in the White House.”
“I’ve ended up in the White House many times.”
Littlemore thought that over. “You got a first name, Mrs. Cross?”
“Grace.”
“Nice name.”
“It’s a state I left long ago. Everyone leaves their home state when they come to Washington. Here we are. The Willard Hotel. Good night, New York.”
The next morning, Littlemore received a telephone call in his closet-sized office at the United States Treasury. The operator informed him that New York City was calling. It turned out to be Officer Stankiewicz from police headquarters.
“What is it, Stanky?” said Littlemore.
“It’s Fischer, Cap,” said Stankiewicz. “He keeps calling and calling and sending wires for you. Says you’re supposed to be getting him out of the sanitarium.”
“Oh, for the love of Pete,” replied Littlemore.
“He says you were going to talk with his brother-in-law—a guy named, what was it, Bishop or something? Anything you want me to do?”
“Just ignore him. He’ll stop.”
“Okay. How’s Washington?”
“Wait a second,” said Littlemore. “ ‘Bishop or something’? Did the name sound like Bishop, or did it remind you of Bishop?”
“Yeah, Bishop or something.”
“No, I’m asking you if—do me a favor. Go get Fischer’s file. I’ll hold.”
A few minutes later, Stankiewicz was back on the line: “Got it.”
“Okay, find me the name of Fischer’s brother-in-law,” said Littlemore. “He’s the guy who went to Canada and had Fischer locked up as a lunatic. His name should be on the Canadian papers.”
“Okay, here it is: Pope. Robert Pope. That’s why I thought Bishop.”
“How do you like that?” said Littlemore. “The Popes.”
The Treasury’s personnel department was located on the second floor. Littlemore was already familiar with it; he had been poring over personnel files for three weeks. “Say, Molly,” he asked one of the girls in that office, “is Treasury in charge of the Secret Service?”
“Sure is,” said Molly. “Why?”
“A guy said that to me a couple of weeks ago, and I didn’t believe him,” replied Littlemore. “Seems he was right about a lot of things.”
A few minutes later, Littlemore was upstairs in a filing room flipping through decades of United States Secret Service employment records. He knew in advance he would eventually find the name he was looking for, improbable though it was. And he did.
The folder was virtually empty, containing only a bare indication of the year of hiring and the location of service. The year was 1916, the place New York City. After that, a few more dates were penciled in, terminating in late 1917.
Littlemore dropped the manila folder on Secretary Houston’s desk. “It might have helped, sir,” said Littlemore, “if you’d mentioned to me that the one man trying to warn people about the bombing was an employee of ours.”
Houston reacted with astonishment.
“You didn’t know Ed Fischer was an agent?” asked Littlemore.
“I had no idea. I told you—I only became Secretary in February of this year.”
“How does somebody get