The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [273]
Parker received this speech in cold silence.35
AT NOON THE FOLLOWING DAY Roosevelt telephoned Bishop and invited him to lunch. In the latter’s words:
As soon as we were seated at a narrow table he leaned forward, bringing his face close to mine, and with appalling directness said, “Parker came into my office this morning and said, ‘You think Bishop is a friend of yours, don’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Well, you know what he said about you last night? He said you had a boy’s mind and it might never be developed.’ ”
Roosevelt’s eye-glasses were within three inches of my face, and his eyes were looking straight into mine. Knowing my man, I did not flinch. “Roosevelt, I did say that. Did he tell you what else I said?” “No, that is what I want to hear.” When I told him, he brought his fist down on the table with a bang, exclaiming, “By George, I knew it!” “There, Roosevelt,” said I, “is your snake in the grass, of which I warned you—the meanest of mean liars, who tells half the truth.”36
If nothing else, this incident served to prove Parker’s duplicity to Roosevelt. He reacted as he always reacted—aggressively—but, as in a nightmare, found that he had no weapon to wield, no target to hit. Parker continued to stay away from Board meetings, and when Roosevelt rescheduled some to suit his convenience, maddeningly stayed away from those too. Meanwhile Chief Conlin ignored the Board’s order to report on Brooks and McCullagh, saying that the Commissioners must resolve their own differences. Roosevelt promptly appealed to the Corporation Counsel for an interpretation of the law, and was told that Parker and Conlin were perfectly within their rights. They could block every major decision of the board for the rest of the century, if they chose. On 24 March, headlines in the yellow press began to mock Roosevelt’s impotence: “His the Voice of Authority, But Parker’s the Hand that Holds the Rod.”37
CONSIDERABLE SPACE was devoted to analyses of the deadlock at Mulberry Street that spring, and as reporters did their research some interesting facts came to light. It transpired that Parker had begun to amass power in the department from the day he took office. Quietly establishing control over the Detective Bureau38—the most feared in the world, outside of Scotland Yard—he now enjoyed as much potential influence in the underworld as Chief Byrnes had ever done. Just what use, if any, he intended to make of it remained to be seen. His hold over Chief Conlin was traced back to a bargain struck between them the previous year. Apparently Parker had withheld his vote confirming Conlin39 until that officer was so desperate for permanent rank he had consented to pay the price: a promise of cooperation in any future moves against Roosevelt.
Speculation as to Parker’s long-term motives ranged 360 degrees around the political spectrum. The Herald noted that Parker and Conlin were both Democrats, and that in the wake of Counsel’s ruling they had already begun to change the structure of the precincts, with a fine eye for political detail. “Mr. Parker … is calculating the possibilities and probabilities of future elections and future Legislatures … Should there ever be a one-headed Commission, and the Democrats in the ascendancy, his friends say, he may be that Commissioner.”40 The Evening Sun believed that on the contrary Parker was cooperating with Boss Platt, who, unable to kill Roosevelt with legislation, had crossed party lines in order to cripple him. Parker’s reward, presumably, would be some plum job when Greater New York came into being. Other papers speculated that Parker was working for Boss Jimmy O’Brien of the County Democracy, or, alternatively, Boss Richard Croker of Tammany Hall. But Lincoln Steffens,