Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [52]
“It’s not that,” she answered. “I received a letter. From Austria. It was in the mail that Jimmy’s friend Spanky brought back from the hotel.”
“Stanky, Miss,” said Littlemore. “Not Spanky.”
Younger said nothing.
“Who was the letter from?” asked Littlemore.
“From a policeman who helped me once when I was in Vienna,” she replied. “Hans is getting out of jail, Stratham. In just a few weeks. I have to go back.”
PART II
EIGHT
THE MORNING AFTER THE ATTACK, a hundred thousand people gathered on Wall Street.
They came unbidden, drawn by the afterimages of devastation, the lingering proximity of death. Some were gawkers from out of town. Others had employment in the financial district. But most drifted in like wanderers, with no articulate aim, moved by a need they could not have explained, as if being there might somehow supply a void they felt without knowing they felt it.
As a result, the Constitution Day celebration was the largest the country had ever known. Workmen laboring all night erected a wooden platform in front of George Washington’s bronze statue. Bunting had been hung in red, white, and blue, festooned with American flags. With a fully armed company of solders still guarding the Treasury Building, the impression created was halfway between a holiday and a siege.
Patriotic speeches were made. “America the Beautiful” was sung, tears glistening on thousands of faces. While the words “sea to shining sea” still echoed in the great canyons of lower Manhattan, a ruddy, white-whiskered brigadier general took the podium. The crowd quieted.
“September sixteenth,” he proclaimed, his voice echoing off the skyscrapers. “A date America will never forget. September sixteenth—the date on which Americans will say for the rest of time that our country changed forever. September sixteenth. On this spot where we now stand, one of the greatest outrages committed in the history of our country was perpetrated. Are we, as American citizens, going to close our eyes to this infamy? I say no, a thousand times no.”
The word was repeated thousands of times more.
The Brigadier General held up his arms, checking the crowd’s cheers: “The vampires must and will be brought to justice.”
Thunderous applause.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have spoken this morning with Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer,” he went on, and the name of Palmer brought fresh cheers and foot stamping. “General Palmer wished to be here himself this morning, but alas it couldn’t be. The General desires me to assure you, however, not only that he is on the way to our city at this very moment but that he already knows the identity of the perpetrators of this outrage. Yes, he has their confession—their boastful confession—in hand. And he has a message both for us and for our enemies. General Palmer says, and I quote, that he ‘will sweep the nation clean of their alien filth’!”
There was a roar of satisfaction and a thrilling chorus of “Yes! Yes! Yes!” On the stage a young man stepped forward and began the national anthem. A hundred thousand voices made vigorous harmony.
Younger was writing a letter at a small table in the Littlemores’ living room when he sensed, rather than heard, Luc behind him.
In the previous hour, Betty Littlemore had clothed, fed, and packed off to school an endless string of little Littlemores. The apartment was still not wholly peaceful: babies cried, toddlers banged cooking pots, and the detective’s wife and mother-in-law were discoursing volubly in the kitchen. Younger couldn’t understand their Italian, but the topic was evidently a matter on which both women had strong opinions.
Younger turned to face Luc. The boy stood on the other side of the room, perfectly still, saying as usual nothing. His long dirty blond hair was well brushed, and his large observant eyes conveyed preoccupation with a multitude of thoughts, without giving a single one of them away.
“Your sister has told you,” said Younger in