The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 96

Sullivan, 1911

THE POLITICIANS are what I hate, them and the newspapermen. In fact, I maybe hate the newspapermen worse than the politicians, and both I hate worse than the vagrants, which I spent a life knocking around. At least a vagrant has the decency to shit on your lawn because he needs to, not like politicians and newspapermen, who shit on your lawn to make a point.

They come at me all at once that winter, all the lawn shitters in the world. All that fall, I had beat back the Wobblies, five hundred I’d knocked and thrown in jail, and I’d have made room for another thousand if that labor tart Gurley Flynn brung them. I’d make room for every Slav bum and socialist Jew and old Indian who raised a stink in my streets, streets I was paid to protect.

But then Gurley Flynn spends one night in the women’s jail and makes a terrible fuss of it, and the church and women’s groups huff and protest, and every paper from here to Boston prints this story that we’re running a brothel down there, and Christ, no one wants to protect women more than me, that’s why I don’t allow them to work in the jail, but they twist it around like I’m Chief Pimp, protecting cops. And do my boys make an occasional play for themselves? Sure, some of them are in on the dip. The city council knew it because their pockets were being lined by the same men who owned the cribs and brothels, the same men who owned the mines, the same men who paid my cops so their birdhouses could run straight.

But to put this scandal on me? Me, who was never in on it? Me, who if I had a dollar for every girl who come at me over the years, every dove tried to get off an arrest by opening her legs, I wouldn’t need a pension. Me, who never touched a one. But after Gurley Flynn writes this about the women’s jail, the mayor says, John, we need to do something about this.

Point being I should have never taken the job, I said to Annie in our living room in the flats near the courthouse, and pretty soon, every time I said that she took to patting my arm and saying, I know, John. Especially since I never even got the job I shouldn’t of taken! Acting police chief!

And that whole winter of 1910, it’s one buggering thing after another for the acting chief. First they acquit Gurley Flynn! Acquit her! When the judge should turn her over his knee and throw her in jail until she bleeds gray.

Again the mayor calls me in. John, with her acquitted, we can’t ignore this women’s jail thing anymore. And I say, Who’s ignoring it, Nellie? Not me. I got a hole the size of a fist in me guts over it. And then a patrolman sticks his head in the mayor’s office and says, Chief. You’ll never guess what happened.

Not two hours after the verdict, a Ford Model T has taken flight right into the river gorge. The mayor and I run outside and peer over the edge, and I will be damned, but there is the butt end of a car burning on the hillside across the gorge. My cop tells me the gas tank must have blown, for the front half of the car was shot off and down the canyon into the river.

Drunks, I assume, or the shite kids who steal automobiles, and if there is any justice, it’s there smoldering on the hillside.

But the day’s not even done, for one of my detectives finds a bomb in a satchel left outside the station. It’s sealed in a carpetbag, left suspicious right at the door, like maybe the bomber lost his nerve and ran off, says this detective, a good man named Hage, poor Waterbury’s old pal, and Hage says that when he saw the satchel, he thought it odd on the day of the verdict in the big union case. So rather than open it at the top, which might be wired, he cut into the leather on the side. And what did he find?

Dynamite. Hage asks me if I think it’s connected to that car in the river.

Christ, I say, do you think it is? I hadn’t thought of it.

And I really wish I was smarter, because there’s nothing in the bomb to tell us. Just dynamite and a cap stolen from a mine in Montana, and some metal scraps taken from a tin shop, but that’s it. Cold after that.

Until a few weeks later, when a note comes for me. Unsigned. Typed.

The note says, What if a certain prominent mining man in town hired someone to get inside the union, to put them at odds with the police? How far do you think that inside man would go? Would he try to bomb the police station? Would he have another bomb that might blow up a car in the river? Would he even shoot a cop investigating a burglary?

And that’s it. The whole note.

God, I wish I was a smarter man, I tell Annie that night.

Why, she asks.

Well for one, I say, to shut up those newspapermen coming at me every day, especially those pot-stirrers at the Press who mock my brogue, Nat on your loife, they quote me saying, like I’m just off the boat, and who wrote that I run the rottenest police system in the nation and must be removed and the whole department reorganized.

You are smart, John, Annie tells me.

But I’m not. And the worst is that I know I’m not. I’ve got a car in the river and a bomb outside the police station, both on the day of