Suspension Page 36

  “That brings up another question. Is there anything tying together the men who’ve died on the job?”

  Emily and Wash discussed that for some time, but aside from the obvious fact that they had all worked together, there were few threads linking the various deaths during construction. The single most common cause of death was the caisson disease, or, more commonly, “the bends” which had nearly killed Roebling as well. Though in many ways the caisson disease was a mystery, resulting from exposure to the compressed air atmosphere of the caissons there was nothing like a conspiracy about it.

  Finally, after all the other possibilities had been covered, Tom asked, “Suppose I were a saboteur. How would I go about blowing the bridge?”

  The colonel frowned in disbelief. “You can’t be serious. Could anyone be that mad?”

  “Hope not, Colonel, but I’m paid to look at the possibilities, especially in cases like this. Right now we have only the secondhand word of a dead man that there was something going on with the bridge. Someone or some group felt that what that man knew was serious enough to kill him for it. The clipping about the caisson fire disturbs me too. You said it was ruled an accident, but you never did find the man who set it.”

  Roebling seemed to think that over as he turned to look out the window toward the bridge. “Not much of a connection, really,” he said at last. It was obvious from his tone that he thought the idea of sabotage to be a leap of logic. The technical difficulties aside, he simply could not imagine what might motivate men even to think of such a thing.

  Tom shrugged. “True, but it’s all I’ve got, so the question stands. How would I blow the bridge if I were crazy enough to attempt it?”

  Roebling seemed suddenly tired. His shoulders sagged.

  Emily, who had been sitting quietly across from Wash, shot Tom a small frown.

  “Well, Tom,” Roebling said at last. “The key to the bridge is really very simple.” For the next fifteen minutes, he outlined a plan to blow the span. He would have been shocked to know how much it resembled the plan Patrick Sullivan laid out just the night before.

  Emily had to make a stop at the bridge after they were through. She offered to drive Tom and Eli. Washington looked played out and his handshake was weak, his fingers trembling. His eyes, though, were still bright, alert, and vital. Tom had thanked him, told him it had been an honor to meet him and meant it.

  “Perhaps we can visit again when things calm down a bit, Tom,” the colonel said. He appeared to mean it too.

  “I’d like that very much. I will, of course, keep you informed of anything that develops, at least as far as the bridge is concerned.”

  “He liked you,” Emily said after they got in the carriage.

  Tom smiled warmly, surprisingly pleased at that. “I liked him too. He’s stronger than I had—well, you know how the papers picture him.”

  Emily smiled. “He was putting on a show for you. He doesn’t go much beyond an hour or so in situations like that. He’ll have to rest for hours, otherwise he won’t be able to do much the rest of the day. That’s why I say he likes you. Anyone else, he would have asked to leave long before.”

  They bumped to a stop on the rough cobbles by the bridge office. Tom got out first and helped Emily down. Emily was about to say her good-byes when Tom said that he had business inside with Jacobs. Emily grimaced.

  “Yes, charming fellow, I know.” Tom chuckled.

  They all went in, Emily looking for Hildenbrand and Tom for Jacobs. Eli brought up the rear. As it turned out, Hildenbrand was out on the span, seeing to some detail with the promenade.

  Once Tom had gotten the copy of the page he wanted from Jacobs, Emily asked, “Would you walk with me, Tom, and you as well, Mr. Jaffey?”

  They couldn’t refuse, of course. When they were up on the approach, Tom told Emily how he had spotted Watkins from the roadway near the Brooklyn tower.

  “Must have looked like a damn fool, running across the bridge like that. It was in the papers … the chase and all,” he said as if to legitimize his story.

  “Really?” she said, impressed. “I confess I hadn’t had time to read them today.”

  “All for nothing,” Tom said disparagingly. “Whoever these men are, they’re always one step ahead. One of the reasons I have Jaffey here to watch my back.”

  Eli smiled and nodded, doing his best to look confident.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cheap steel insures a weak bridge.

  —THE HERALD

  Coffin cursed under his breath. He should have taken the El. It would have been faster than this by a long shot. He hated the goddamn Els, though, with their smoke and noise and crowds. They made him nervous, careening about the city nearly three stories up, driven by engineers whose qualifications seemed to be that they were both Irish and drunks—at least that’s how Coffin saw it. Not that stages were exactly safe either. Just getting on and off the things was a challenge, what with traffic barreling by, not stopping even for women. But right now there was no barreling going on at all. Broadway was jammed, and he probably could make better time walking if he had a mind to.

  That he didn’t have a mind to was due in great part to Tom Braddock. Coffin was on a little pilgrimage to visit Captain Parker of the Sixteenth Precinct. He had some business to attend to with the man. The squeeze on Braddock hadn’t panned out yet; in fact Braddock showed even less inclination to rejoin the fold than he had just days before. Coffin needed to put a stop to it. He and Coogan had agreed finally just an hour before.

  “The right amount of force, the right amount of pain, the right spot,” Coffin had said. Coogan had nodded his agreement, though August could see he didn’t care much for the method.

  “If he’s got a weak spot, that’s it. But it’s got to be handled just so,” Coogan warned. “It goes too far and we’ll be dealing with this problem on a whole ’nother level.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll have a talk with Parker,” Coffin said confidently. “I’m meeting Byrnes for dinner tonight too. There’ll be no interference.”

  “You be careful how you put this to Byrnes. You say you go way back, but Braddock’s on a big case. Byrnes assigned Dolan and Heidelberg to him, so he’s taking it seriously. This mucks up the case he’ll be looking for someone’s head,” Coogan had warned.

  Coffin smiled coldly as the stage rumbled up Broadway. Coogan was always the more cautious, he the more daring of the team. If, after this final bit of pressure, Braddock could be bent to their will, they’d be unstoppable. Braddock held the key, though he wasn’t aware of it. He just hadn’t been shown the possibilities. It took vision, after all, and vision was something Coffin had in abundance. If Braddock had to feel a bit of pain first, so be it. The pain would pass. The wounds would heal with proper care, then he’d show him the future. Coogan was right in one respect, though. It was a delicate spot they aimed for, this chink in Braddock’s armor. They would do well to be cautious.

  Sullivan and Lincoln stood looking glumly at the cluttered room.

  “This might take a skosh longer than we thought,” Sullivan said. The place looked like the cavalry had camped there.

  “Not really surprised, are ye, Pat?” Lincoln shot back. “Watkins never was one to keep his camp in order. I shared a shelter-half tent with him for about three months in ’62, until he lost his half.” Lincoln stood, looking about the place.

  “Maybe we can just take the important stuff. Looks to be a lot of trash mixed in.” Pat shook his head. He didn’t like this job any more than Lincoln, but he knew the captain was right.

  “Captain said to empty the place. We could miss something important in all this shit,” Justice said.

  “Feel like a goddamn grave robber,” Pat grumbled. “Let’s get at it. The sooner started, the sooner done.”

  The two of them set about emptying the room. Watkins had rented it from a couple of Germans. Their lack of English was an advantage. For a couple of dollars a month he had this one room to himself,
while the Germans had the rest of the tenement flat. It was cramped, windowless, smelling like a long-unwashed body. Watkins hadn’t been much of a housekeeper. The floors, aside from the space occupied by the single dresser and bed, were piled high. It looked like Watkins was in the habit of picking up things he thought might have some value. Food tins, broken coffee grinders, enamelware in various stages of rust and chips, at least a dozen oil lamps, and countless other items clogged the place. It was a pack rat’s dream.

  “What the hell did he think he was going to do with all this stuff?” Justice wondered out loud after the third trip to their wagon on the street.

  Sullivan shrugged. “Who’s to say?” he mused. “Not much to show for the life he’s lived.”

  “I don’t have all that much more,” Justice said. “Less shit anyways. Never was good at keepin’ a grip on my shin plasters. Course they wasn’t worth holding for long. Started me on bad money habits, I guess.” He shook his head.

  “I haven’t done much better,” Pat admitted. “Got a little stashed in case we have to decamp in a hurry, but that’s about it.”

  “Maybe when it’s over we can cash in some of that stock in the Union Ferry Company. Should be worth a mint once the bridge is gone.”

  Lincoln always was a dreamer, Pat thought. “Don’t go spending it just yet,” he muttered.

  They worked at cleaning Watkins’s place out for over an hour. He had a prodigious collection of newspapers and periodicals. Moving them was heavy work. Patrick Sullivan had just picked up a pile of boxes, when one toppled over on the floor. A small blizzard of miscellaneous junk spread out on the worn floorboards, but one item caught Pat’s eye immediately.

  “Damn,” he said as he picked it up. “Will you look at this? Ain’t seen this picture in maybe twenty years.”

  Lincoln craned to look over Sullivan’s shoulder. “Were we ever that young? Look at you, all decked out in that new uniform. Had to be ’61 or ’62. Sure as hell nobody had a good uniform much after that, at least not a whole one.”

  Sullivan chuckled. He did look young. They all did, even the captain. They were all there, along with some others who didn’t survive the war.

  “Had fire then too,” Justice observed. “Damn, we were going to roast up Yankees for dinner, remember?” He elbowed Sullivan.

  “Yeah, ’cept it was us got roasted in the end,” Pat observed glumly. There wasn’t much fire in his words.

  “Get a load of Watkins,” Justice said, trying to change the subject. “Remember that Bowie knife? He used to say he was gonna stick it up Lincoln’s ass.” They both laughed at that, but their laugh had a hollow ring in the grubby little tenement room.

  “I want to keep this,” Sullivan said. “We should, don’t you think?”

  Justice just nodded, turning away. He cleared his throat before he picked up another box. “Be good for everyone to see that,” he said as he walked out with the last of Watkins’s effects.

  As they had all expected, nothing much came of Dolan and Heidelberg’s search. There were a couple of letters to Lebeau from a sister in Louisiana, some old tintypes of him and Emmons, looking fierce in their best Confederate getup, knives and guns at the ready. Almost every soldier who ever served had one of those. There were no weapons to speak of, nothing more sinister than a couple of sheath knives. In fact, it was the lack of anything suspicious that had Pat Dolan wondering.

  “I could toss just about any apartment in this city—any man’s place, I mean—and turn up at least one gun. Even if it’s just a boot pistol, or one of those little gambler guns, most everybody’s got a gun at home,” he reasoned. Heidelberg agreed.

  “Here we got two men and not a gun between them. Meanwhile there’s their pictures with them armed to the teeth. Seems odd.”

  “No laws against it, Charlie,” Tom said. “Maybe they had their fill of shooting in the war,” he added, playing devil’s advocate. “Wish you had turned something up but I’m not surprised you didn’t. Those two are just too clean.”

  Tom outlined the interview he’d had with the Roeblings, the few suggestions they had, and Washington’s outline of how the bridge could be blown.

  “First thing,” Tom said, “is to go over the records of materials ordered for the bridge! the stone, steel, iron, wood, wire, everything. We need to know who those contractors are. Next comes the train contracts. Anything that has to do with those trains has to be combed finer than a prize angora. Tracks, cars, steam engines, terminals, everything, including the contractors that got the jobs and the ones that didn’t too. All the bids were well conducted, according to Roebling, except for the wire. The Roeblings got squeezed out of the contract by some pretty sly maneuvering.” Tom told them the tale of political corruption and greed regarding the bidding for the wire contract.

  “You boys recall Abrahm Hewitt?” Tom asked. “Anyway he was vice president of the board of trustees, congressman, and manager of Tilden’s campaign for president.” The detectives still looked at Tom blankly. “Does this sound at all familiar to any of you? You’re looking at me like a bunch of cigar store Indians.” He went on. “Well … the upstanding Mr. Hewitt held a mortgage on J. Lloyd Haigh’s wireworks, and made a deal with Haigh not to foreclose, provided Haigh turned over ten percent of what he made on the contract. Hewitt apparently made it his business to see that Haigh got the contract. First he got a resolution passed by the board that no one connected to the bridge should be allowed to bid for the wire. Figured he’d squeeze the Roeblings out of the bidding.”

  Pat chuckled. “Pretty slick.”

  Tom held up a hand. “Wait … it gets better. Classic political bullshit.”

  “Sounds like he took a page out of ‘Slippery Dick’ Connolly’s book,” Charlie said dryly.

  “Yeah, well, Hewitt was a lot more slippery than anyone gave him credit for. Roebling was so insulted that he and Emily wrote his resignation. Delivered it to Henry Murphy, the president of the board.” Murphy wouldn’t accept it; said it had to be voted on by the entire board. Never brought it to a vote, though. So Roebling did the only other thing he could: sold his stock. It was the only way for his company to bid.”

  Charlie shook his head. “That took guts! How’d Hewitt get around that?”

  Tom smiled wickedly, admiring Hewitt’s ruthlessness on some level. “He wasn’t about to let Roebling outmaneuver him out of his ten percent,” Tom explained, “so he tried a different tack. All bids had to be in by early December ’76. The Roeblings had submitted the lowest bid for Bessemer steel. Haigh submitted the lowest bid for Crucible steel. The plans didn’t specify Bessemer or Crucible,” Tom said slowly so they’d follow him. “With me so far? By some incredible coincidence, which Roebling didn’t believe for a second, the Herald ran an interview with an unknown engineer named Albert Hill who questioned the specifications for the wire.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember that article. Caused all sorts of shit if I’m thinking of the same one. Course that was years ago,” Charlie said.

  “I didn’t remember it myself,” Tom admitted. “So, Hill claimed that Roebling’s specs were poorly written, too complex, vague, that sort of thing. He also questioned Roebling’s having final say on the tests, in spite of the fact that he was not told which manufacturer had submitted each batch of wire for testing. Even worse, he said Roebling wasn’t the man for the job due to his injuries.”

  Jaffey, who had been listening intently, said, “Basically just an outright smear campaign. How was the colonel supposed to defend himself? Anything he said would look like excuses.”

  Tom slapped Eli on the back. “Exactly, Eli. That’s why it was pure genius. Now, Hill had never built a suspension bridge himself. God knows where the Herald found him, but once it was all over the press, people started believing him. Bessemer steel was suddenly not good enough.”

  Tom took a sip of his coffee before going on. He felt that this was a great example of the kind of fraud, maneuvering, and chicanery they should be on the lookou
t for.

  “Roebling was mad as hell. Even now I could see how much it bothered him and his wife. His honor and reputation were dragged through the mud. When Kinsella, the publisher of the Brooklyn Eagle, backed Hill, it put the last nail in the coffin.”

  “We know how that turned out,” Pat mused.

  “Yeah. Haigh got the contract. Hewitt got his ten percent, I guess too. Nobody ever questioned his motives or integrity.” Tom shook his head in disbelief. “Not even after Haigh got caught in the wire fraud. Hell, Haigh even kept the contract!”

  “Unbelievable! Pays to have powerful friends. Same old story,” Dolan said.

  “The point of this tale, gentlemen, is that there could be more than one Haigh or Hewitt out there, one that’s willing to kill to keep his secret and his profits.”

  Dolan and Heidelberg agreed immediately.

  “We’ll start with the big ones,” Charlie said, “then we’ll work our way down.”

  “Might pay to have a look at some of the contractors’ order books too. Get an idea of whether they match up with the bridge contracts,” Pat added.

  “Right. May as well start there,” Tom replied. This sort of work didn’t thrill him but at the moment it seemed the only avenue.

  They left it there for the evening. Pat and Charlie stayed to finish up some paperwork from another case while Tom and Eli headed off for Pell Street and Master Kwan’s class. Jaffey didn’t know what to expect. He’d never had any organized exercise, except for calisthenics at the police school. He thought he was in pretty good shape, but, in truth, he had no way to measure that. He was nervous about the Chinese too, especially the head man, whom Tom told him to call “Master Kwan” or just “Master.” He felt strange about calling any Chinese “Master.” To be Chinese in New York was to be even lower than the blacks. The Chinese exclusion acts were proof of that. Jaffey had never heard of any race being excluded from the country before. He didn’t know enough about the Chinese to know the reasons why either. They were a mysterious, quiet people, about as different from him as a human could be. That was part of the problem, he suspected—they were so different from the majority of the population. Maybe it was the opium trade that seemed to follow them wherever they went. He had learned a little about the opium problem during training, but it didn’t seem to be taken too seriously. There were said to be scores of opium dens in the city, but even though a law had been passed making it a misdemeanor to smoke or eat opium, there had been only twelve arrests in ‘82 and not many more in ’83.