American Lightning Page 5

  Nearly two hours later he was in the city room when the explosion occurred. He tried to escape down a flight of stairs, but the flames pushed him back. In just an instant the flesh was seared from his arms and chest. He retreated, moving back from the fire until he was up against the windows on the First Street side of the building. There nowhere else to go, so he crawled out onto the ledge. It was hot to his touch. He was three stories above the ground. The fire was moving toward him. Smoke attacked him. His burns were incredibly painful. He did not know what to do. He had run out of options.

  Then he heard shouts coming from the street. He looked down and saw two fireman and a policeman holding a net. From this height, the net looked very small. But they were yelling at him, pleading with him, to jump. Harvey-Elder realized it was his only chance. He jumped.

  He missed the net. He landed on the concrete. But he was still alive when they carried his body to the ambulance. He hung on to life at Clara Barton Hospital for a few more hours, and then at seven-thirty that morning he died. Harvey-Elder’s was the final death.

  In all, twenty-one people died. They were editors, linotype operators, printers, pressmen, compositors, telegraph operators, and Harry Chandler’s secretary, who had decided to linger in the office for a few minutes after his boss had left. Sixteen of the dead men left behind widows and children. Seventeen people were injured. The building was a ruin.

  But there still was a paper to get out. Eyes brimming with tears, Harry Chandler addressed the survivors. He assembled them on a street within view of the smoldering building. The air was heavy with a noxious, charred smell. The ambulances, bells clanging, continued to take away the dead, their colleagues.

  The publisher, Chandler explained, had been fearful that the paper would be attacked. As a contingency, he had months earlier set up an auxiliary newsroom and composition plant. It was just a few blocks away on College Street. The owners of the Los Angeles Herald had agreed that the plates could be run off their presses. They had two hours to get the first edition out.

  As Harvey-Elder lay dying at Clara Barton Hospital, a one-page special edition of the Los Angeles Times ran off the borrowed presses. An eight-column streamer stretched across the entire page: UNIONIST BOMBS WRECK THE TIMES.

  The front page also carried “A Plain Statement” signed by Harry E. Andrews, the paper’s managing editor. It read:

  The Times building was destroyed this morning by the enemies of industrial freedom by dynamite bombs and fire.

  Numerous threats to this dastardly deed had been received.

  The Times itself cannot be destroyed. It will be issued every day and will fight its battles to the end.

  The elements that conspired to perpetrate this horror must not be permitted to pursue their awful campaign of intimidation and terror. Never will the Times cease its warfare against them . . .

  They can kill our men and can wreck our buildings, but by the God above they cannot kill the Times.

  Even on that first day, as the story was told in headlines across a shocked nation, not everyone was as certain as the Times editors about what had caused the explosion. Many people had the suspicion—and some had the firm belief—that the obvious cause was too obvious.

  EIGHT

  ______________________

  IN BILLY BURNS’S orderly world, tardiness was an unforgivable sin. He would not tolerate it when his agents were late, and his usually genial mood would quickly turn sour and often abusive. He lived his own life, too, by a precisely calibrated timetable; punctuality, he lectured his four sons, was the necessary foundation for a logical mind. So on Saturday morning, October 1, 1910, Billy’s anxieties lifted when his train pulled into Los Angeles station at eight. He was right on schedule. He’d have sufficient time to go to his hotel, freshen up from the journey, get his suit pressed, review his speech one last time, and then head to the American Bankers Association luncheon.

  His satisfied mood was reinforced when he looked out the train window and saw Eddie Mills, from his Los Angeles office, waiting on the platform—just as scheduled. Mills would help with the bags and then drive him to the Alexandria Hotel. Perhaps there would even be time for the two of them to catch up over breakfast. Billy loved a good breakfast. “A good day needs a good start” went another of the precepts he repeatedly shared with his sons.

  He hurried to the platform to meet his agent. Only then, as he looked into Mills’s somber face, did Billy realize something was not right. Mills handed him the morning papers, and he read the shocking headlines: twenty-one dead, the Times Building destroyed.

  On the ride to the Alex, Billy could see a column of gray smoke rising high in the downtown sky. The smell of fire, of seared wood and stone, remained strong in the air. Within moments Billy felt as if the awful smell of disaster had become trapped in his lungs. It coursed through him like a plague. He was visiting a ruined city. They drove as close as they were allowed to the scene, and Billy saw people crowding the police lines. He imagined that many were the wives and children of the dead waiting for the bodies to be pulled from the ruins. It was heartbreaking. And futile. His mind raced. Billy thought about Otis. He detested the man. A price had been put on Billy’s head, and Otis and the Times had supported—even encouraged—the men who had wanted him murdered.

  It was only five years ago when, on secret orders from President Teddy Roosevelt himself, Billy Burns had gone off to San Francisco to make a case against a well-connected group of, as the detective called them, “rich crooks.” He succeeded in getting Abraham Rueff, the city’s political boss, to confess to taking a fortune in bribes. Rueff then testified against Mayor Eugene Schmitz, and he, too, was convicted. But after the indictment for bribery of Patrick Calhoun, the president of the United Railroad, a man whose patrician pedigree and polished demeanor symbolized, in Billy’s prickly immigrant mind, elitism and ruling class arrogance, the campaign against corruption in San Francisco turned dangerous.

  The home of the chief witness Billy had recruited was blown up. A prosecutor, Francis Heney, was shot, the bullet slamming through his jaw. The editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, Fremont Older, was kidnapped at gunpoint. An assassin was hired to shoot Billy, but the detective learned of the plot and arrested the man.

  Calhoun, however, did not in the end need to have anyone killed. He escaped conviction thanks to the indispensable help of Earl Rogers, a bombastic yet clever criminal lawyer. Rogers came up with a malicious strategy: Calhoun would, with his intransigent demands, force the unions to declare a strike against his railroad; then, he’d rush to the paralyzed city’s rescue by breaking the strike. Carrying out the plan required twelve hundred strikebreakers, but in the end Calhoun defeated the union.

  Harrison Gray Otis had made sure Calhoun became a hero. The San Francisco papers were pro-union, so Otis had special editions of the Times shipped north daily and distributed on the San Francisco streets. Each edition lauded the brave Calhoun and attacked the vindictive strikers. Thanks to Otis’s flattering editorials and disingenuous reporting, Calhoun’s accomplishments grew into legend. And the jury would not convict the man who had seemingly saved the city; the incriminating facts of the bribery case were simply a tedious irrelevancy.

  Billy, although personally sympathetic to the workingman, could also understand in principle Otis’s commitment to the antiunion cause. However, the detective was too strong a moralist to believe that Otis’s unscrupulous actions had any justification. The publisher had championed a guilty man, a man who had conspired to have the detective killed. Otis’s actions, Billy was convinced, were driven by a diabolical ethic: He would do whatever was necessary to achieve his ends.

  But this morning Billy could not help but be affected. The mood of the frightened, damaged city reached out to him. Another earthquake, he decided, would not have created such fear. He understood too well the sort of man capable of such destruction. A cunning, heartless ruthless enemy of society. A homicidal manic.

  Billy hoped the man respo
nsible would be caught soon, before he could strike again. But it was, he also knew, not his personal concern. Or his case. He had come to Los Angeles at the request of his biggest client to deliver a speech.

  Billy enjoyed speaking to audiences. Always the actor, he knew how to reach out to a crowd. He’d offer up accounts of his famous cases, playing up the suspense and the danger as he built to an inevitable conclusion—the great detective getting his man. And he loved the applause.

  He was in his hotel room, reviewing a draft of his speech to the bankers one final time, waiting impatiently for his breakfast to be delivered, when the house phone rang. The caller was George Alexander, the mayor of Los Angeles. He was in the lobby and wanted to come up.

  Billy told the mayor his room number and waited. He had no doubt as to why the mayor wanted to speak with him. But his mind was set. He would not take the case. He had a new company to build. He did not want, or need, to be involved in another time-consuming and politicized investigation, another San Francisco. He had already confronted too many powerful adversaries in his lifetime. Besides, he was scheduled to give a speech in less than three hours.

  “This certainly is a stroke of luck,” Mayor Alexander said as he pumped Billy’s hand. “You being right in the city at a time like this.” He was an older man, in his seventies, and with his long white goatee and a bit of the brogue from his native Scotland in his voice, he struck Burns as a comical figure, the sort of engaging character you’d see on stage in a vaudeville farce. But this morning Alexander was dour and mournful. Los Angeles had been attacked, and its mayor was frantic with concern. How many more bombs would explode? How many more people would be killed? The mayor needed the famous detective’s help.

  “I wired all over the country in an effort to find you,” Alexander went on with genuine amazement, “only to learn that you were due here in Los Angeles this morning. It seems like fate.” He appealed to Burns to take the case. The detective must apprehend the men responsible for the twenty-one deaths, “no matter what the cost and no matter who they are.”

  Billy considered. He was flattered by the mayor’s personal appeal. He knew the entire nation would focus on this case. A success would add another dimension to his celebrity. A triumph would bring new clients to the Burns Detective Agency. He even already had a theory about who might be involved. But still he hesitated.

  His graft investigation in San Francisco had created too much ill-will. Too many well-connected people in California had wanted him to fail, and Billy was certain they would eagerly work against him again if they had the chance. He feared that Otis would actively obstruct his investigation. Los Angeles was the publisher’s home territory, a city where his influence was immense. Billy doubted he had the resources, the insider’s knowledge, to challenge Otis in his own town—and prevail.

  “Mayor Alexander,” he said at last, “I have certain very influential enemies here in Los Angeles owing to some investigations I have made in the past. They will try to thwart me at every turn.”

  But Billy also knew it would be the biggest case of his, of any detective’s, career.He wanted the job—if he could get it on his terms.

  “I accept the responsibility of this investigation on the condition that I will be obliged to report to no one—not even you—until the job has been brought to a successful conclusion.”

  He needed his independence; he was convinced it was the only way his investigation could succeed. Billy, adamant, went on: “My connection with the investigation should be kept an absolute secret.”

  Mayor Alexander agreed without hesitation. He had done his job—he had hired the country’s greatest detective.

  Billy Burns was pleased, too, energized by the mystery he’d be delving into. Without feeling any guilt, he quickly canceled the day’s previous commitment. Priorities, he decided with a bit of philosophy, had rearranged his orderly world. As soon as the mayor left, he called his Los Angeles office and told Malcolm MacLaren, its manager, to inform the bankers that they’d need to find someone else to talk at their lunch. He regretted this last-minute cancellation, but he hoped they’d understand. William J. Burns would be occupied solving the crime of the century.

  NINE

  ______________________

  AN HOUR LATER, as Billy at last was eating his breakfast, an agitated Mayor Alexander returned to the detective’s hotel room. He brought news, and all of it was bad.

  Two more bombs had been found. Police Detective Tom Rico had been part of a group of officers searching the Bivouac, Otis’s mansion fortress on Wilshire Boulevard, when he noticed a suitcase wedged into the hedges. Assisted by other officers, Rico carefully removed the suitcase and carried it to a far corner of the vast green lawn. He was slitting it open when he heard a whirring sound. “Run!” he yelled. The officers had dived into a drainage ditch when the bomb exploded. The blast dug a crater out of the lawn, but no one was hurt.

  The second bomb was discovered at the home of Felix Zeehandelaar, the secretary of the Merchants and Manufacturers Association. For years he had been the object of union barbs; “Zeehandeliar,” strikers had taunted. Now he had become a target.

  Once again it was Detective Rico who had noticed a suspicious suitcase. But this time the bomb didn’t go off. The police had succeeded in cutting the wires. The device was intact.

  “I’ll want to see it,” Billy told the mayor. He kept, however, another thought to himself. It was quite a coincidence that Rico had found both bombs. Perhaps it was even something more than a coincidence.

  “Agreed,” said the mayor. The defused bomb had been taken to police headquarters on Second Street; the detective could examine it at his convenience. But, the mayor continued, his voice suddenly faltering, there was another problem.

  Billy did not speak. He had seen too many men make agreements, give their word, and then walk away from their promises. He knew what was coming, and he prepared himself. He wanted to react with calm dignity, not with anger. His temper was famous, and he had grown old enough to be embarrassed by it.

  The mayor’s words came out slowly, forming uneasy sentences. It was the manner of a man who was unpersuaded by his own logic or reasons. There were “political realities” in Los Angeles, he explained. At their last meeting perhaps he should have disclosed the situation to the detective with more clarity. He had needed, of course, to inform General Otis and the Merchants and Manufacturers Association, as well as the Citizens’ Committee, of Burns’s appointment to head the investigation.

  So much for the mayor’s promise, so much for secrecy, Billy thought. But now that the damage had been done, temper would accomplish nothing. Resigned, he let the mayor go on.

  These groups, the mayor said, wanted their own representative to work with Burns. They felt they needed someone who would report to them on the course of the investigation. Bombs had been planted at their homes. For their own safety they insisted on knowing what progress, if any, was being made.

  “They’ve picked a man, Mr. Burns.”

  “Who?” Billy asked.

  “Earl Rogers.”

  Billy felt as if another bomb had just exploded. This was the man who had represented Patrick Calhoun. The man who had been on the side of all that was corrupt in San Francisco. It would have been difficult to suggest a more inappropriate individual. Still, Billy measured his words:

  “He’s a lawyer, not a detective, and what you need at this time is the service of the latter. Besides, I cannot cooperate with Rogers.”

  Mayor Alexander tried to persuade Billy, but the detective cut him off.

  “Turn the entire matter over to the M&M and the Citizens’ Committee. I quit.”

  Billy remained in his hotel room, brooding. He told himself he had done the right thing. He had had no choice: He could not work with Rogers.

  But at the same time he also realized that if he was truly resigned to leaving the investigation and to relinquishing the opportunity to solve the crime of the century, at this moment he’d be
on his way to the Bankers Association to give his speech.

  He waited.

  Billy was relieved when the house phone finally rang. Mayor Alexander was on his way up.

  Alexander did not argue or try to reason with the detective. With a politician’s well-practiced canniness, he offered up a very personal plea.

  “If you refuse to consent to act with Rogers, I will always be blamed if we fail to apprehend the men responsible,” the mayor said. “My administration would be discredited . . . I need your help, Mr. Burns.” His voice quivered as he spoke, and Billy felt the emotions were genuine.

  Billy understood that this was his last chance. The mayor could not be expected to beg him again. “A great detective requires great cases”—that was another of his precepts. Billy believed in his talents, but his vanity demanded that others acknowledge his skills, too. The apprehension of the men responsible for the destruction of the Times Building, for twenty-one deaths, would bring him national acclaim. He had grown used to the power and thrill of celebrity. A case of this magnitude would ensure his fame. He weighed all that was to be gained, and he made his decision: He would have to tolerate the presence of Earl Rogers. He’d simply have to find a way to prevent the attorney from meddling.

  Billy, however, did not rush to share his change of heart. With a natural showman’s timing, he let a few reflective moments tick away. Then: “I think I can bury the hatchet with Mr. Rogers,” the detective announced.

  “Wonderful, wonderful,” the mayor rejoiced.

  The two men soon left the Alexandria Hotel. They were going to police headquarters. The detective would be briefed by Chief of Police Galloway. The mayor had also arranged for Rogers to meet them in the chief’s office. But Billy had his own agenda. At headquarters he’d get a close look at the suitcase bomb recovered from the Zeehandelaar residence.