Your Mother is Dead

Finn opened the door of his dorm room and found the Hollis Hall house porter standing on the landing. The man handed him a Western Union Telegraph envelope, then disappeared down the stairwell. The telegram was brief and to the point:

April 18th, 1906

To: Finnegan Titus DeBoort,

Hollis Hall, Harvard University, MA

YOUR MOTHER IS DEAD.

GRIESSMAN.

Finn went to the Bursar’s office and was granted use of the college telephone. The long-distance operator parlayed for him a priority connection from Boston to New York, and from New York to the 37th Street mansion party line.

Earnest Slocum, the butler, informed him that he could not speak to his father because DeBoort Senior was in D.C., meeting with President McKinley. Should he fetch Mr. Griessman?

Finn told Slocum that he would prefer to have his eyes poked out with a red hot poker.

“Put the housekeeper on instead,” said Finn.

“Mrs. Grommet is resting in her room,” said Slocum. “She is feeling poorly.”

“You’re kidding me.”

Earnest Slocum was a mirthless man.

“Well, put Jenny on the telephone.”

“No,” said Earnest Slocum. “Jenny is not permitted use of the telephone. The house is on lockdown owing to your mother’s death.” Slocum was cool and distant. “We are all subject to Mr. Griessman’s supervision and command.”

Griessman was the DeBoort fixer, a master of dark arts. Now that Finn’s mother was dead, Griessman would call the shots. Mrs. Grommet and Jenny would be lucky if they still had jobs within the week.

“Look, Slocum, I’m coming home. When’s the funeral?”

“Mr. Griessman is overseeing affairs for your father.”

Slocum sounded no better informed than Finn.

“Well, tell Griessman—tell my father—that I will be there Sunday evening, in time for dinner.”

Finn hung up without waiting for a confirmation.

It was Friday.

Piet DeBoort sat in the back seat of the Baker Electric coupe and breathed deeply. He did not like to be kept waiting, especially by his own son. The boy had picked up bad habits during his first year at Harvard, and there were precious few signs that he had learned anything useful so far. Case in point: last night’s dinner, when DeBoort and Finn had clashed over the faddish subject of universal suffrage—or, as DeBoort called it, “universal suffering.” The boy was overcome with an improper zeal for a subject that did not even concern him. And now Finn was five minutes late. It was seven-twenty; they had forty minutes to get downtown to Trinity Church, where the invited mourners included New York Mayor McClellan, U.S. Senator Depew, and Thomas Edison. Even DeBoort’s midtown neighbor, J.P. Morgan, had committed to attend the funeral service. Ada’s death was an opportunity to temper the steel of strategic relationships in the crucible of organized grief. Though, of course, they were not the kind of men who grieved at another man’s loss, and their attendance was not really voluntary.

DeBoort checked his watch. Seven-twenty-one. Where was the boy?

Finn knew exactly what time it was, but he was unhurried. He lingered out of filial respect. His father treated his mother’s funeral like a golf game—an excuse to rub shoulders, bend ears, and buttonhole his business and political acquaintances. There would probably be a phalanx of Blackshirts in attendance as well, the ultimate insult to his mother. Let the bully boys wait. Let them cool their jackboot heels. The funeral was a sham.

Finn was late, but his intention was to irritate, not enrage. His father was capable of doing something insanely cruel—not to him, but to an innocent bystander. Piet DeBoort possessed what the new breed of clinical alienists described as a “lesion of the psyche.” Finn’s father was psychotic and might have been languishing as a prisoner in New York’s infamous Tombs if he were not, instead, one of the richest and most powerful men in Manhattan, and therefore the world.

So it was not Finn’s intention to tarry any longer. But when he walked from the bottom of the grand staircase across the hallway to the front door, a beautiful young woman with auburn hair and delicious green eyes leaped out from behind a marble column like a ballerina. She had a black silk top hat in her hand.

“Oh God, I nearly forgot,” said Finn, grinning at Jenny Sorensen, who stood before him like a sentry.

“You look so handsome,” said Jenny, reaching up and brushing a stray silky lock of hair from his forehead.

Finn’s heart pounded in such close proximity to his childhood friend, who had magically turned into a beautiful woman in the six months he’d been absent at college.

“Jenny, I missed you,” he said, blushing, shocked at his own honesty.

“Yes, I’m sure, Finn. That’s why you didn’t write any letters to me or Mrs. Grommet.”

“It’s hard to write when I’m so busy.”

“Busy with the girls in Boston, I’ll bet.” Jenny handed Finn the top hat. “Hurry, you’re going to be late.”

“Are you and Grommet not coming to the service?” Finn observed that Jenny was wearing a work apron over her lilac dress.

“Don’t be silly. You know how these things work. Anyway, we’ve already said our goodbyes.”

Finn hated his father’s snobbery. He also hated to tear himself away from this lovely apparition. Had he really blurted out “I missed you” to Jenny Sorensen? His father would sack Jenny if he knew.

Flustered, Finn grabbed the hat and strode across the hallway. Slocum, the butler, opened the front door. Finn waved the hat at Jenny as he left the mansion on 37th Street.

The Baker Electric was waiting at the curb, the liveried driver perched atop the short-wheeled cab and looking ridiculous without a horse or reins. One of his father’s men at the Baker Automobile Company was working on a smaller coupe that could be steered from the back seat with two levers, dispensing with the need for a driver and therefore suited, everyone said, for use by women. Finn thought it was a grand idea. His father, naturally, distrusted any invention he had not personally commanded into being.

Finn jumped into the coupe and plumped down on the velvet-lined bench seat opposite his father, who was dressed head to toe in black, including pins and buttons, shirt and tie. A statement of allegiance. Everything Finn’s father did was loaded with meaning and messaging. There would inevitably be newsmen at the funeral.

“We’re going to be late,” said DeBoort.

“I’m sure Mother won’t notice,” said Finn. There was nothing mournful about his father, nor in Finn’s own disposition toward the funeral. It was difficult to grieve for a woman who seemed always somewhere else, remote and cold, some essential part of her already dead.

The vehicle drew away from the curb and started silently rolling down Madison Avenue, past Morgan’s huge brownstone. The hostility between father and son from the prior evening carried over to the new day; when their feet accidentally touched, Finn shifted catercorner to his father and looked out the window. JPMorgan had installed a new wrought iron gate and railings to protect the front of the Morgan mansion.

“I heard that old rhino nose caved in to you and McKinley,” said Finn.

“John Pierpont Morgan, if that’s who you are referring to, offered his support to the President, including funds for the Arctic adventure.”

“I heard you arranged for the mob to visit his home… hence the new railings.”

“Mind how you talk about these things, Finn.” There was menace in DeBoort’s voice. “If you get on the wrong side of history, there is nothing I can or will do to protect you.”

“I can look after myself,” said Finn, instantly regretting his loose tongue.

“Well, maybe I should terminate your allowances then?” said DeBoort absently, though Finn knew it was not an idle threat. His father had come up hard and never let anyone forget it.

They rode on without speaking, enclosed within the safety of the cab, while outside the cacophony and chaos of Manhattan intensified. As they approached and crossed 14th Street, the sidewalks were already filling with shoeshine boys, street hawkers, and crates of merchandise. Handcarts, streetcars, electric and gas-powered automobiles, and horse-drawn cabs charged or meandered every which way—up and down the Avenue, in and out of the cross streets. It was chaotic, dangerous, and dirty, and their progress downtown slowed to a walking pace. Time was running out. Atop the cab, the driver started shouting at the dumb animals and humans impeding them.

“The horses and carts should yield to the automobiles,” said DeBoort irritably.

Finn watched as a crimson Curved Dash Oldsmobile passed them at breakneck speed, made a right turn on 10th Street, and ran headlong into a chestnut seller’s hand wagon.

“There are fewer automobiles,” said Finn.

“Not for much longer.” Piet DeBoort controlled billions in capital and millions of workers; naturally, he believed he had the right, obligation, and ability to harness the latest scientific and technological innovations to define the future. To Finn, it was the height of arrogance, made worse by how often his father proved correct. He tried to imagine Manhattan’s crowded thoroughfares without its thousands of horses, but of course it was impossible.

“How did Mother die?” said Finn.

“I suppose the answer to that is that Ada died peacefully, in her sleep.”

“Did you love her?” Finn shocked himself for the second time that morning. It was as if he had lost a filter and become prone to Tourette’s neurological syndrome of involuntary tics and cusses. He half expected his father to strike him with his cane for impudence; instead, Finn was shocked to see him shrink slightly, close his eyes, and move his jaw as if suffering from a toothache.

“I loved the bitch.”

Minutes later, Finn was still reeling in disbelief when the automobile became well and truly stuck at the junction of Broadway and Bleecker. At DeBoort’s shouted instruction, the driver turned left toward the Italian town, where it was just as crowded, but the path ahead magically emptied when a pair of hoodlums spotted DeBoort in the vehicle, fired pistols into the air, and began barking instructions to clear the way. “DeBoort. DeBoort!” Ragged street urchins took up the chorus, and the wearisome stop-and-go journey became a regal procession down Elizabeth Street. Men doffed their hats, women curtsied, and small boys ran alongside the vehicle, tapping on the window at DeBoort, who waved them away with an attempted smile that looked, to Finn, as if it hurt his father’s taut, pale-skinned face. Then DeBoort placed one hand inside his jacket, checking that the revolver in his shoulder holster was accessible.

After the noise and color of Little Italy, it was plain sailing through the labyrinthine web of lower Manhattan. Very soon they were zipping along Pine Street toward Trinity Church, with minutes to spare before the ceremony was scheduled to begin.

“I hear that you’ve started calling yourself Quicksilver at college?”

Finn blushed. It was a freshman affectation he had adopted on starting at Harvard: a feisty doubling down on his sallow skin and high cheekbones. If he was different from the other students, he might as well get a head start on the inevitable jokes and insults by preemptively staking out his identity with his mother’s name. “DeBoort” was the obvious fallback, though it was more likely to inspire fear than acceptance. He blushed because he had been found out. He also blushed with anger. Was his father spying on him?

“It’s nothing. Just a poke in the eye at the old money types.”

“You have a problem with old money?”

“Yeah, I do, and I think you do too.”

“You may be right about that, but you’re drawing attention to yourself.”

“Deboort is better than Quicksilver?” said Finn.

“In one sense, yes. DeBoort is better than Quicksilver. I suggest that you stop using that name, and not because I think you are inviting ridicule—which you are. It’s because…” DeBoort hesitated. “Well, I can’t tell you much about what’s going to happen, but rest assured, there’s going to be a lot of interest in the Quicksilver connection.”

“I don’t understand. You’re talking in riddles. I am eighteen years old. If there’s something you need to tell me, get it out, please. I can manage it.”

“Just stop playing games and stop using that name. It’s not even your mother’s name!”

Finn’s mouth fell open. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

DeBoort shook his head, apparently regretting the outburst. “I’m sorry, Finn. I have a lot on my mind right now.” He continued in a more conciliatory tone. “What I meant is that she chose the name DeBoort. Her name was Ada DeBoort. It is the name etched on her tombstone.”

Finn was mollified, more by the tone than by the actual words his father had uttered. Tears welled in his eyes, and he was forced to look at his feet rather than return the gaze of his impossibly overbearing father. For a moment, just one brief moment, the permanence of his mother’s death struck him hard. It was grief of a very particular kind: grief at the things he would never know because his mother had taken her secrets with her to the grave.

The Baker Electric coupe drew up behind a line of carriages and chauffeured automobiles idling curbside on Broadway, in the shadow of the Gothic church spire. Finn noticed that the adjacent cemetery was crowded with tombstones and monuments. It seemed an unlikely resting place for an Inuit woman. His father must have spent a fortune bribing the Church for a private plot near Alexander Hamilton’s memorial.

“Finn, we need to discuss the future,” said DeBoort, who checked his watch when the coupe door opened for him.

Was it a warning, a promise, a threat? In the course of this short journey, they had covered more territory than the five miles from midtown to Wall Street, and Finn’s father had arrived at some other kind of destination than a church service.

Finn stepped onto the sidewalk and was greeted by the sight of Blackshirts on either side of the main portal to Trinity church, which made him shudder.

DeBoort checked his watch. Seven fifty-eight. He scoped the small crowd of bystanders: dough-faced gawkers. What about the invited dignitaries? They must be inside. Morgan’s horse-drawn royal blue landau was ostentatiously positioned directly outside the open church doors, and the file of smaller carriages denoted varying degrees of wealth and power. Both sides of the church portal were populated with Blackshirts, visibly armed, which set the right tone. DeBoort was satisfied that everything was in order.

The boy looked unsteady on his feet, rattled by the journey downtown—or, more likely, by the conversation. Eighteen years old and frightened of his own shadow. When DeBoort was that age, he had already killed his abusive father and made his first million.

Like father, like son? It struck DeBoort as an improbable outcome.

DeBoort grabbed Finn’s arm and steered the boy into the church, where the mourners—mainly men—were standing, every eye dry.

“Let’s get on with it,” said DeBoort.