Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [74]
19-9-1920
Dear Stratham:
As I write these words Luc is pretending to be you, swinging an imaginary baseball bat. Then he pretends to be that terrible man, jumping around with his hair on fire.
I don’t think he minded being kidnapped. He wasn’t afraid at all. In fact he is angry because I want to leave America. I would say he isn’t speaking to me, if one could say such a thing of a boy who doesn’t talk.
Have you found out who that girl was or examined her neck? I have the strangest feeling whenever I think about her. I wish she had just taken that awful watch and run away.
Stratham, you will not believe me when I tell you how much I don’t want to go away. I told the girl who lives upstairs about my trip to New York: one bombing, one kidnapping, one knife throwing, one madwoman in a church. She said she would have died from fright. She said I must want to get out of the country as soon as I can. I don’t. I want to stay.
But I made a vow, and I have to go. I know you will not like to hear it, but I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about Hans. Seeing him again is more important than anything in the world for me, even if I only see him once more. I’m sorry. But perhaps you won’t care at all; I never know with you.
If you do care, I want to ask you something very foolish—a favor I hardly dare set down, given everything you’ve already done for me. I am the most ungrateful girl who ever lived. Please come with me to Vienna. That’s the favor I ask. I truly expect to see Hans once and never again. Whatever happens, I will wish in my heart that you were there with me. Please say you’ll come.
With all my affection,
Colette
The air at Delmonico’s was even thicker with smoke, but less crowded and much more subdued. In the main salon overlooking Fifth Avenue, Littlemore noticed that the usual profusion of diamond earrings and glittering crystal was not in evidence. The bombing remained the chief topic of conversation, but the stunned and speechless horror of September 16 was giving way, among some, to vitriol and rage.
“You know what we should do?” asked one man at a table for four. “Shoot the Italians one by one until they tell us who did it.”
“Not all of them, Henry, surely.”
“Why not?” retorted Henry. “If they bomb us, we kill them. Simple as that. That’s the only way to stop a terrorist. Hit him where it hurts.”
“Why do they hate us so much?” asked a woman next to Henry.
“Who cares?”
“Deport them, I say,” declared the other man. “Deport all the Italians, and there’s the end of this ghastly bombing. They contribute nothing to society in any event.”
“What about the Delmonicos?” asked the other woman. “Don’t they contribute?”
“Deport all Italians except the Delmonicos!” cried the man, raising a glass in a mock toast.
“No, my steak is overcooked—Delmonico must go too!” cried Henry. The table broke out in laughter. The diners were evidently unaware that the Delmonicos no longer owned Delmonico’s.
The headwaiter approached Littlemore. Asking for Mr. James Speyer, the detective was led to an interior garden, where stained-glass windows ran from floor to ceiling. At a corner table a man sat alone—a man of about sixty, with hair still mostly black and the doleful eyes of a basset hound. The detective approached the table.
“Name’s Littlemore,” said Littlemore. “New York Police Department. Mind if I sit down?”
“Ah,” said Speyer. “Finally a face to put on the law. Why would I mind? No man likes to dine alone.” Speyer’s accent was distinctly German; before him were the plates and glasses of a fully consumed meal. He went on: “You know what you’ve done? You’ve destroyed this establishment.”
Mr. Speyer was evidently inebriated.
“I have a joke with the waiter,” he went on. “I ask if they have any terrapin. I would never eat it, but I ask. He says no, the terrapin’s eighty-sixed; you can’t cook terrapin without wine. So I order the porterhouse Bordelaise. He says the Bordelaise is eighty-sixed, because that’s illegal as well. We go on and on. Finally I ask him what he does