Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [53]
Luc nodded.
“And you’re wondering if I intend to change her mind.”
The boy nodded again.
“The answer is no. She knows what’s best.”
Luc shook his head—just once, very slightly.
“Yes, she does,” said Younger. He put down his pen, leaned back, looked out the window. Then he turned back to the boy: “Well, if you are going back to Europe, we shouldn’t be wasting time. I’ll tell you what: Bring me a newspaper. We’ll see when the Yankees are playing. Maybe Ruth will hit his fiftieth today.”
The boy scampered away and returned a moment later, the morning paper in his hands and a disappointed expression on his face.
Younger looked at the page to which Luc had opened the newspaper: the Yankees were on the road and therefore not playing in Yankee Stadium—which the boy apparently understood. “Can you read English?” asked Younger.
Luc shrugged.
“I see,” said Younger, recalling how, when he was himself a boy, he had once astonished his father by having taught himself to read rudimentary Latin. He also recalled how he used to watch everything that happened in his household, understanding secret expressions on his mother’s face that he was not supposed even to have seen. “Can you speak, Luc? I’m not asking you to talk. I just want to know if you can. Yes or no.”
The boy stared at him, unmoving.
“Right,” said Younger. “Well, too bad about the Yankees. Let me think—how would you like to go to the roof of the tallest building in the whole world?”
Luc’s eyes lit up.
“Go see if your sister will let you,” said Younger. “And if she’ll join us.”
Detective Littlemore might have passed for one of the gentlemen of the press packed into uncomfortable chairs in the Astor Hotel, except that the detective’s hands were stuffed in his pockets, while the newsmen’s were busy scribbling down the remarks of William Flynn, Director of the federal Bureau of Investigation, who stood at the front of the room next to a chalkboard map of lower Manhattan. Chief Flynn had commandeered several suites of rooms at the Astor, turning them into his personal command center. Littlemore sat in the rear chewing his toothpick, straw hat so far back on his head it looked like he was braving a strong wind.
The pug-nosed, barrel-chested Flynn had massive shoulders, a correspondingly big gut, and surprisingly clean-shaven, fresh-faced cheeks. Dressed in dark suit and tie, his brown hair slicked down, he bore a striking resemblance to a nightclub bouncer. He thought of himself, however, in more militaristic terms. Flynn believed that law enforcement was essentially military in nature and prided himself on knowing how to speak in the argot of the armed forces. “At approximately oh-twelve-hundred hours yesterday,” said Flynn, tapping the map with a pointer, “an incendiary device detonated in front of the Morgan Bank at number 23 Wall Street.”
“You mean a bomb?” asked one of the gentlemen of the press.
“That is correct,” said Flynn.
“Captain Carey says it might have been a dynamite truck,” called out another.
“The New York police got zero to do with this investigation,” Flynn shot back. “The incendiary device was transported to the scene in an animal-powered transport vehicle.”
“A horse and wagon?” called out a newsman.
“Ain’t that what I said?” Flynn replied with asperity. “Now pipe down so’s I can deliver myself. I got something important for you boys, and if you’ll shut your traps maybe I can get to it. At oh-eleven-thirty yesterday morning, a United States letter carrier opened a mail receptacle here”—he tapped another spot on the chalkboard map—“at the corner of Cedar and Broadway. The receptacle was empty at that time. At 0:11:58, the letter carrier made another collection from that same receptacle, at which time he found five circulars”—a word that Chief Flynn pronounced soyculars—“without wrapping of any sort. Three minutes later, the letter carrier heard a loud noise, which was the incendiary device incendiarating. By order of General Palmer, we are making these circulars public, so’s the law-abiding