Chapter 4
LAURIE
New York offices of The Rational Appeal
Newspaper Row, Park Row, Manhattan
“Have a good vacation?”
Laurie crunched the last shards of ribbon sweet between his teeth and glanced up. Sam Sullivan “Steamship” Warren leaned from Laurie’s office doorframe with one hand, like he might hang off an ocean liner’s rail.
“How were the Hamptons?” Sam went on, chipper. “And have you changed your mind yet?”
“The Hamptons. Very funny. And no. I haven’t.”
While Laurie had been on sugaring-season “vacation” in upstate New York, Sam—having ignored Laurie’s expensive telegram in characteristic fashion—had had a secretary provide a drawerful of references: the Herald, the World, the Sun, and all the rest of ’em rags, all mentioning the Wrights and Wright Glass Manufacturing.
Some, too, mentioning Brooklyn Glass, their competitor across the river.
Everything an intern could remember, just in case.
The stack had been waiting for Laurie upon his return, as though to convince him.
It hadn’t.
Sam straightened and entered, shutting the door behind him.
Sam Sullivan was a small man, but a tornado of one, with a fierce reputation.
He had built The Rational Appeal from the ground up.
A hundred percent Irish to Laurie’s much-less-maligned Scotch-Irish, he had an accent that hinted at Gaelic having been spoken in his boyhood and stubbornly never erased.
A meticulously kept blond mustache was the only facial hair he’d ever been seen or photographed with.
He leaned his whole petite frame over Laurie’s desk, palms flat. “What! A mysterious death and inheritance, and still no? That’s not what I wanted to hear.”
Laurie had been writing for him for too long to be cowed. He leaned back in his swivel chair, popped another ribbon candy into his cheek, and said thickly, “I haven’t changed my mind, Sam. Your target doesn’t even have a name of his own.”
It was true. Chary—Charles Edward Wright, Jr—had been firstborn to Mr. Charles Edward Wright, Sr., and Philippa Wright née Drury. He’d been sole inheritor, an apparent only child for twelve years.
Then had come a brother: Charles Edward August Wright. As though the Wrights had been displeased with the first version and had said, Let us seize upon this second chance.
Laurie thought he knew what’d displeased them. Twelve years old; it must’ve been obvious even then. For the upper crust, it was usually getting caught fooling around with a near-of-age servant boy.
And that, Laurie chastised himself, was a truly vile thing to be speculating about a man’s boyhood. Probably—hopefully—there had been nothing like that to out him. Likely, Laurie’s own past was tinging his assumptions.
Sam lit a cigarette, held it delicately in its jade holder.
“Charles Edward Wright. Firstborn, written out of his father’s will because he’s a queer, didn’t inherit.
Inherits now, due to his brother’s tragic ‘accident.’” He made quotes in the air with his free hand.
“And the last thing that fool brother did before his death was buy an enterprise that hasn’t turned a profit since the Civil War.
You want to tell me that lead’s not intriguing? What happened to you?”
“A blueberry farm, Sam. It isn’t Union Stock Yards. You want me to document child labor, there’s other places.”
“Other places, like a glassworks.” Sam raised an eyebrow.
Too true. But modern glass production, being comprised of work that was highly specialized, skilled, and stratified, with apprenticeships controlled by restrictive unions and a hefty amount of nepotism, was nigh-impossible to infiltrate. Unless one was ten years old and plucked from the poorhouse.
Laurie sighed. “That’s a dead end. You know I can’t get into a glassworks.”
“I do.” His editor blew a smoke ring. It floated up over the frosted-glass cubicle wall to the plaster ceiling. “But that’s all aside. If you ask me, somebody killed the brother.”
“Maybe,” Laurie scoffed. “Why do we care?”
“Why do we care? Your Mr. Wright has the beginnings of any fairy-tale villain ever penned.”
That much… was also true.
There was nothing much in the rags of Chary himself. There was plenty of his late, Lothario younger brother—the brother for whom he’d been passed over.
Out to New York society in 1902, August Wright had been infamous for his wildness, his good looks, and his fast and unlikely friendship with his equally wild, equally rich, equally handsome contemporary: the disinterested heir to Brooklyn Glass, one T.
F. Raberding. Laurie didn’t care much for what the society writers called truth, but there was nary a photo of them apart—if Raberding was hands-off the business he’d inherited, he was certainly hands-on here.
If Laurie were going to take this story, Raberding would’ve been the first place he looked.
But Laurie wasn’t going to take the story, so it was moot.
Most infamous about August Wright was that after a few short years of inheritance, wildness, and a handful of jam-jar design flubs—Wright’s Improved Jam Jars wouldn’t maintain a seal beyond a fortnight, and Wright Glass had lost every contract with industrial food packers, bar none, nearly leading Wright Glass all the way into the ground—he had promptly snuffed it.
Six months before, August had been found face-down dead of the opium, smack between the bosoms of two French demi-mondaines.
Tragedy in excess and wastefulness, the way the elites knew best. And Chary, against his parents’ wishes, had inherited a nightmare of a failing business. Also blueberries.
But was any of it enough to murder a brother for?
“A villain on paper,” Laurie emphasized. “You didn’t meet the man.”
“Ah, yes. You did mention. ‘Circumstances over which I have no control,’” Sam quoted mildly, lowering his voice. “Funny name for a dick, circumstances. From whence have you plucked these sudden scruples, Laurie, dear?”
Laurie scowled.
Sam said, “A good dicking’s never stood in your way before, is what I’m saying.”
“Fuck off. How d’you figure that conjecture?”
“I’m in the business of information. You do leave a bit of a trail of broken hearts.”
Laurie rolled his eyes. Conjecture.
“I’m just not sure I can successfully villainize the man,” he said. “Not to anyone who’s met him.”
Sam waved dramatically over the stack of rags. “Who’s met him? He’s a recluse. He has no real reputation. The public will meet him when you’ve introduced him to them. That’s an unprecedented opportunity.”
Laurie cracked the candy in two. “I don’t want to introduce him to them.” Though hell if he knew why. Since when did he sympathize with rich-bastard, capitalist businessmen? “And I don’t hold with libel. I know you don’t either, Sam Sullivan.”
“There’s always something,” Sam snapped. “Perhaps he did murder his brother; that’d be fantastic. Maybe a rival did him. If there isn’t a story, then make it fiction. A serial. Write yourself a novel; set it in Nova fucking Scotia. I know Doubleday’s been after you for it.”
“It’s a nonfiction column,” Laurie growled. Meant to influence American legislation, he didn’t add. “I don’t do society speculation. I don’t do hit pieces.”
“Pivot! I don’t give a damn.”
So long as it sold.
Laurie gritted his teeth. “Are you pivoting, Sam? You want to scoop readers from the World, is that what this is? I don’t think this is worthwhile use of me or my time.
I don’t think the public will care about blueberry pickers any more than they gave a damn about cotton.
I don’t want to expose a tiny, unprofitable farm in the middle of nowhere, owned by a man who seems to have repeatedly gotten life’s short end of the stick. ”
“Then expand your scope,” Sam hissed. “Expose the whole damn blueberry industry. Fruit-packing. Glassblowing. I don’t care. Figure it out. Find out what makes this Wright man tick.”
Laurie crossed his arms. “No.”
Sam leaned in. His cigarette ashed onto one of the rags, burnt a small black hole through a Gillette ad.
“It’s Wright or nothing. Wright,” Sam grinned sharp, “or else I’m not sending you anything else this year. And if you refuse me this, maybe not next year, either. I shall send Mr. Sumner instead.” He thrust a pointed finger toward the other desk occupying the office partition, currently unoccupied.
“You will not,” Laurie rebutted. Hiram Sumner was a society writer, somewhat freelance, for the Appeal and other papers.
He was in the Hamptons, and happily so. Too bad for Laurie, as he was currently owed lunch.
“Don’t you threaten me. Hiram ain’t gonna see more than I did: a grieving, rich-boy queer. ”
“Laurie, dear. I feel you believe you’ve got more leeway than you do here.
Let me enlighten you: you have none. Business is business.
This businessman’s is exploitation and greed.
Yours is exposing him for sensationalism and subscribers.
That’s how it works. Or would you rather freelance?
” He tapped the desk. “D’you like this desk, Lawrence Tulley?
Don’t think I don’t know who covets it.”
“Sam,” Laurie scoffed. “C’mon. He covets sliding his chair ten feet north?”
He knew it, though. Hiram would snap up Laurie’s front-page spot in a gulp. He was ruthless.
Sam brushed away the ash he’d dropped. He straightened and sighed. “I get it. If it would make it easier, remember that as nice and naive and unhardened as Mr. Wright may seem now, give him five or ten years. He will undoubtedly uphold all the practices you stand against in the name of profit.”
“Like you?” Laurie spat.
Sam patted him on the shoulder, unoffended. “Don’t forget why you do what you do, lad. There are plenty of rich Dicks in the city.”
“Jesus. I haven’t— I didn’t even f—”
He shut his mouth. Sam had opened the door and was already halfway through.
“Oh, I know,” the editor called back. “If you had, it’d be no conflict at all.”