Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [85]
21-9-1920
Dearest Stratham,
I am finished with your Professor Boltwood. He is going to prevent Yale University from awarding Madame Curie an honorary degree when she comes. He says she is both academically and morally unfit. He is unfit to tie her shoelaces. My one consolation for running his laboratory is that I am disproving his theories. I can’t stay on here, no matter what.
But I also have wonderful news! I dared to wire Dr. Freud in Vienna, and he has wired back. He says he will see Luc again, and also that he is very eager to see you as well. He says he has a great deal to tell you.
Please, please come. I need you there with me.
Affectionately,
Colette
Younger returned by himself that night to Littlemore’s waterfront clip joint. A woman in red lipstick and an orange dress approached while he drank the foul whiskey. “What about it, handsome?” she said.
“No thanks,” he replied.
ELEVEN
THE ORDINARILY GENIAL POLICE COMMISSIONER Enright like to drop in on the men he wanted to see. Written summonses appeared only in cases of severest displeasure; they struck dread in the Commissioner’s subordinates. On Friday morning at police headquarters, Littlemore received such a summons.
“Is it the Rembrandt in the evidence locker, sir?” asked Littlemore as he walked into the Commissioner’s office. “I can explain.”
Enright, behind his mahogany desk, raised his eyebrows: “You have a Rembrandt in the evidence locker?”
“Was it the horseshoe, Mr. Enright? I couldn’t let Flynn get away with that story about Haggerty.”
“I didn’t ask you here to play horseshoes, Mr. Littlemore, or to discuss portraiture.” Enright got up, his gold watch chain glinting on an extensive waistline, his wavy gray hair abundant over a fleshy, good-natured face. A prodigious reader, an eloquent speaker, and largely self-educated, Enright had the eyes of a man who loved reciting poetry from memory. “You remember Mayor Hylan, I’m sure, and Mr. McAdoo, the President’s adviser?”
Littlemore turned and saw those two important gentlemen at the other end of the office. McAdoo was seated, cross-legged, in an armchair, staring imperturbably at the detective, taking his measure. Hylan, standing and fidgeting with a glass object he’d picked up from Enright’s bookcase, studiously avoided eye contact.
“Mayor Hylan received a visit from an attorney yesterday, Littlemore,” Enright continued. “You were the subject of that visit.”
“Me, sir?”
“I want him fired, Enright,” declared Mayor Hylan.
“The attorney,” Enright continued, “is a man of considerable reputation, well connected to the political establishment of this city. A client of his is currently a guest in one of our custodial facilities.”
“I said I want him fired,” repeated the Mayor, who had decidedly less poetry about him than did the Commissioner. Hylan was a short personage, greasy hair falling over his forehead in continual need of a comb, eyes darting like a squirrel’s. A favorite occupation of Mayor Hylan’s was railing from a podium, which he did often and poorly. He wore an air of perpetual embattlement, as if enemies were constantly casting outrageous aspersions on his good name. Prior to becoming Mayor of New York, he was an engineer with the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad Company, which discharged him after he nearly ran a locomotive over a supervisor. He had ascended to the mayoralty from nowhere, politically speaking, dredged up from obscurity by Tammany Hall, the doyens of which rightly estimated him a man they could trust. “And I want that man out of jail. Today.”
“Unfortunately, Mr. Mayor,” said the Commissioner, “much as I wish I could execute your orders without question, I am subservient to another master as well—the law.”
“Don’t law me,” retorted Hylan. “I know the law. Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Enright. I could have you fired too.”
“That’s your prerogative,” answered Enright.
“Let’s keep our tempers,” said McAdoo mildly, “and hear the facts, shall we?”
“This is none of Washington’s business,” snapped Mayor Hylan.