Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [130]
“The Director of the Secret Service makes those hires.”
“Who’s the director?”
“Bill Moran.”
“Can I talk to him?”
Houston called for his secretary and ordered him to find Mr. Moran. In the ensuing silence, Houston stood at a window, hands crossed behind his back, surveying the White House grounds. “I won’t miss this job, Littlemore. How am I supposed to balance an eight-billion-dollar budget with revenues of four billion? We live beyond our means. Neither a borrower nor a lender be—that’s what my father told me. Now that’s all I do—borrow and lend.”
“You’re not going to miss being a Cabinet member? You’re on top of the world, Mr. Houston.”
“What, because I hosted a dinner for the British Ambassador last night? My wife likes that sort of thing. I can’t stand it. Every word out of one’s mouth a lie. Well, it will all be over in five months, when Harding takes office. I may resign sooner. Go abroad. Yes, I think I might.”
Houston’s secretary came back in with William Moran, head of the United States Secret Service. Mr. Moran positively denied having hired Edwin Fischer. “There—you see,” said Moran, looking at the file. “Fischer was hired in 1916. I didn’t take over until the next year.”
“Who was the director before you?” asked Houston.
“Flynn was.”
“Flynn?” repeated Littlemore. “Not Big Bill Flynn?”
“Sure,” said Moran. “Before he became Chief of the Bureau, Bill Flynn was head of the Secret Service.”
On November 2, 1920, having run full tilt through the vast, echoing Union Station to make his train, Littlemore settled into his seat, breathing hard, and realized that it was Election Day. He further realized that he wouldn’t be voting. His train would arrive in Manhattan well after the polls had closed. The thought caused him a surprisingly sharp pang of disappointment.
As the train passed one small town after another, Littlemore felt an inexplicable sympathy: with the small frame houses, with the smoke rising from their chimneys, with the little piles of firewood stacked outside, residue of a man’s labor—sympathy with all the quiet, hard, uncounted lives of which no stories would ever be written. Then Littlemore imagined the citizenry in each of these towns lining up to vote for their country’s leaders. It filled him with pride—and with a sense of estrangement at missing it for the first time. But then Littlemore was not even certain he was entitled to vote. Technically he might now be a resident of the District of Columbia, and Washingtonians did not vote for the nation’s president.
Not that his vote mattered. That was the oddity of democracy: nothing mattered more than voting, and voting didn’t matter. In any event, Warren Harding, the Republican, was certain to win; the Democratic candidate, James Cox, had about as much chance as Eugene Debs, the Socialist candidate, who was still in prison. Which meant that Secretary Houston, a Democrat, would not be a secretary much longer, while the Republican Senator Fall would soon be Secretary of State.
Women all across America celebrated on that November Tuesday, when for the first time they exercised the national suffrage. At many polling booths, men stepped aside to make way for the womenfolk as an act of courtesy, but the women wouldn’t have it, insisting on taking their place in line and waiting as long as the men had to. Back home in their kitchens and parlors, they gathered in little groups, treating themselves to sparkling cider, a lawful substitute for prohibited champagne.
Blacks were not received quite so chivalrously at the polls; nor did the revelry subsequent to their voting have the same genteel character. When, for example, two black men had the temerity to exercise their suffrage in Ocoee, Florida, the Ku Klux Klan decided to set an example. Two black churches were sacked, a black neighborhood was burned to the ground, and some thirty or sixty black people were killed, one of them strung up a telephone pole and hanged by the neck.
But the country elected itself a new president, and there was great festivity and a galvanization