Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [61]
“I can identify him,” said Younger, putting on his watch.
“Hate to tell you, but your say-so became a little less weighty when you got yourself charged with attempted murder.”
Younger eyed the detective.
“That’s how the DA saw it,” said Littlemore. “Assault with intent to kill. I was lucky to get you out. The judge wasn’t going for it until I mentioned that you were a Harvard man. Harvard man and Harvard professor. And Roosevelt was your cousin. And you slept with Roosevelt’s daughter. Okay, I didn’t say that.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Younger, looping his tie around his neck, “I did intend to kill him.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Who does he say he is?”
“Funny thing,” said Littlemore, “but he’s not talking. Seems his mouth is wired shut because somebody broke his jaw in three places. Boy, you better be right.”
“It’s Drobac. He was limping. He had marks on his face.”
“Not proof.”
“Can’t you take his fingerprints?”
“Did it,” said Littlemore. “But they have to match something. We got no prints on the knives. No matching prints in the room downtown. No matching prints on the car. No prints at all on Colette’s laboratory box. Nothing. He knew what he was doing.”
Neither spoke.
“Why would he come after us?” asked Younger.
“Maybe he wanted to get rid of the people who can finger him.”
“Where is she?” asked Younger, fastening his cuff links.
“The Miss? Giving her lecture.”
“What?”
“She wouldn’t take no for an answer,” said Littlemore. “Made me get all her samples out of the evidence locker.”
That night A. Mitchell Palmer, the Attorney General of the United States, arrived in Manhattan by special train from the nation’s capital. A long black-and-gold car—a Packard Twin Six Imperial, the kind of car only very rich men could afford—was waiting for him outside Pennsylvania Station. Inside was a dapper gentleman who wore a top hat, with the points of his shirt collar up.
The car took Palmer to the Treasury Building opposite the Morgan Bank on Wall Street. Soldiers, saluting, stepped aside as the two men ascended the marble stairs and passed through the massive portal. A half-hour later, Palmer and the well-dressed gentleman reappeared. The latter led the Attorney General around the colonnade to a narrow alleyway separating the Treasury from the adjacent Assay Building. The alleyway was barred by a tall wrought-iron gate, which had to be unlocked to let the Attorney General through.
The two men walked halfway down that alley, the top-hatted gentleman pointing up to the second floors of the not-quite-abutting buildings. There, one story above the street, what looked strangely like garage doors in midair faced each other across the alley. Attorney General Palmer shook his head grimly, then informed the gentleman that he would be quitting New York the next day. The investigation of the bombing would remain in the hands of Bureau Director Flynn. Palmer himself would travel on to Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, to visit with family.
The Marie Curie Radium Fund held a special lecture presentation on September 17, 1920, in the Saint Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue. The Fund was the brainchild of Mrs. William B. Meloney, a well-upholstered lady of a certain age, well known in New York philanthropic and literary circles. Mrs. Meloney was a working woman, a newspaper woman, who by virtue of her tireless reporting on Manhattan high society had eventually taken a place in it. Like many American women, Mrs. Meloney had avidly followed—indeed she had reported on—the travails of the great Marie Curie of France.
“How outrageous it is,” declared the bow-tied Mrs. Meloney from the opulent but somber church chancel, “that Madame Curie, the world’s most eminent scientist, the discoverer of radium, should for mere want of money be prohibited from continuing her investigations—investigations that have already led to the radium cure for our cancers, the radium face and hand creams that eliminate our unsightly blemishes”—Mrs. Meloney was, in addition to her other pursuits, editor of