American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century (11 page)

Frustrated and exhausted, weighed down by the growing enormity of the challenge, Greaves went off to interview still another nitro distributor, this one in Portland, Indiana. Fred Morehart was a garrulous man and glad to have company, even if it was the laconic Greaves. Without much prodding, Morehart confirmed that he had sold several crates of nitro to a stranger a month or so before the Peoria bombing.

The buyer had introduced himself as J. W. McGraw. Said he worked for G.W. Clark & Co. in Peoria, and they had some hard rock that they wanted to blast. Nitro, McGraw explained, would do the trick better than dynamite. Morehart was reluctant to sell explosives to a man he didn’t know, but McGraw pointed to the ring on Morehart’s finger. I’m a Knight of Pythias, too, he announced. That assuaged some of Morehart’s suspicions; members, after all, joined the fraternal order to work for universal peace. Then moving quickly to seal the deal, McGraw took a thick roll of bills out of his pocket and peeled off three twenties as a down payment. The final payment would be made, McGraw promised, when the crates of explosives were delivered.

The delivery arrangements struck Morehart as odd, but he went along with them. According to McGraw’s instructions, Morehart was to load his wagon with the explosives and drive to a road intersection two hundred miles away. McGraw would be waiting there with his own wagon.

A few days later Morehart met him at the designated junction. McGraw, Morehart explained, seemed familiar with the proper method for handling the explosive and with the laws concerning its transport. That helped to assuage Morehart’s doubts, and he carried the nitro out of his transport crates and loaded them into the other wagon. “I got my money, and that was that,” he told Greaves. “Never saw McGraw again.”

But Greaves was curious. The delivery arrangement was not only irregular but, to the detective’s mind, furtive. He asked More-hart for directions to the intersection where the nitro had been transferred from one wagon to the other.

Two days later Greaves was standing at the spot. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he began walking around, eyes to the ground. Lying amid the tall grass by the side of the road he saw something. Scattered like rubbish were the papers that Morehart had used to wrap his cans of nitro. When the cans were put in McGraw’s wagon, the papers apparently had been discarded. Greaves knelt down to get a closer look at one of the wrapping papers and saw that the remnants of a coarse sawdust still remained in the folds. Greaves collected the sawdust, filling two glass vials he carried with him; a detective, he had been tutored, must always be prepared to preserve evidence.

In Chicago, the sawdust from the Peoria bomb and the sawdust gathered from the roadside were placed under a microscope. They were identical. Greaves had identified the bomb-maker—J. W. McGraw.

As he concluded his story for the chief of police, Billy began talking much too quickly. That was his habit; when the thrill of a new chase loomed, words would gallop from him. His men, Billy went on rapidly, had immediately checked out the company McGraw had claimed to work for in Peoria, only to find that it didn’t exist. But Morehart, he said, had provided “a good description of McGraw”: mid-thirties, chubby, medium height, bushy mustache, dark eyes. “Next was to get his signature. Greaves hunted through the various hotels in the town around Portland and finally came to a register in Muncie, Indiana, with the name J. W. McGraw upon it. Greaves made a tracing of this signature.”

I’m certain, Billy continued, that the bombings in Peoria and Los Angeles involved the same man. We found where he bought the nitro. And now we are going to find where he bought the dynamite.

“Then,” Billy announced with confidence, “I will be one step closer to finding the elusive J. W. McGraw.”

Just as D.W. learned that San Francisco was the place to rent costumes, Billy quickly discovered that the unique 80 percent dynamite used in the Los Angeles bombs would also likely have been purchased up north. The Bay Area was dotted with companies that manufactured the explosives needed for construction work. San Francisco, he decided, would be his destination, too.

Accompanied by Greaves, suitcase in hand, he took a taxi from the Alex to the train station. He bought two tickets to San Diego. Both men boarded the express, traveling south down the California coast, and entered a first-class compartment. Greaves hoisted his boss’s suitcase into the baggage rack above Billy’s seat, and the two men settled in. But as the train was about to depart, Billy stood and announced that he was going to the lavatory.

Billy walked into the facilities and then immediately walked out. He kept on walking, leaving the train and heading into the crowded terminal. As the train pulled away, he was already in a cab, driving downtown. It was the start of a long, circuitous trip to San Francisco, but Billy was confident he had lost the man in the brown suit. And that he was on his way to find J. W. McGraw.

FIFTEEN

______________________

A
S BILLY BEGAN
his manhunt up north and D.W. motored to Santa Monica to scout oceanfront locations for
Enoch Arden,
Darrow settled in. To his great satisfaction, the lawyer had recently signed a long-term lease on the apartment he had previously been renting month to month. When the nearly penniless Darrow had returned to Chicago resigned “to begin all over, be a slave to that irksome law work,” he had moved into an inexpensive apartment in an unfashionable neighborhood near the University of Chicago.

His seventy-five dollars a month got him nine rooms and views from the large bow windows looking straight out toward Lake Michigan and the trees of Jackson Park. He had the walls connecting a string of boxy rooms demolished, creating a grand sunlit space that he lined with shelves to hold his book collection. This imposing room served not only as his library but also as a place for entertaining. Sitting in his favorite wicker rocker adjacent to the fireplace, a glass of dry Italian wine in his hand, Darrow was a convivial and eclectic host. He enjoyed the challenge of vigorous ideas, and he deliberately pushed conversations until they became, to his amusement, heated debates.

One evening each week the Evolution Club would convene in his apartment. Other nights groups of instructors and professors from the university assembled in his book-lined sanctuary and discussed great issues. The victimization of the working man. The rapacity of capital. The existence of God. Often renowned thinkers, activists, politicians, and journalists appeared and took part in the give-and-take. Jane Addams, Harold Ickes, William Jennings Bryan, Joseph Medill Patterson—all were guests. Yet Darrow, cantankerous and often mischievous, always remained the focus of attention. Robert Hutchins, the scholarly, liberal-thinking president of the University of Chicago, remembered, “When I think of Clarence Darrow, I see a tall, majestic man debating with our faculty members, opposing their views, defending their rights, holding long, quizzical, deliberate conversations with them in the dark red library of his apartment on East Sixtieth Street, plumbing and challenging them, taking their measure.” These evenings in his apartment brought Darrow great pleasure.

His days, however, were less satisfactory. As a partner in Darrow, Masters and Wilson, he handled a diverse caseload—tax problems for International Harvester, corporate reorganizations for William Randolph Hearst and his newspapers, and for the city of Chicago, zoning matters. He avoided great causes and instead focused on using his lawyer’s license and his celebrity to make money. The routine was numbing, but Darrow persevered. After two years he had paid off nearly $15,000 of his debts. And he finally felt confident enough in his financial future to sign a long-term lease on the apartment he had grown to love—his sanctuary, his stage.

Life, a weary and resigned Darrow tried to persuade himself, could be measured out in small pleasures, not great passions. And he tried not to think of Mary Field or wonder about her days and nights in New York.

SIXTEEN

______________________

T
HE GIANT POWDER WORKS
was housed in a red-brick warehouse just a short walk from Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. The busy, well-established concern specialized in fabricating powerful explosives for the building trades. When Billy walked through the company’s front door, he had already been in the city for a day, working his methodical way down a list of firms that sold sticks of 80 percent dynamite. So far he had nothing to show for his effort. He had found no records of sales to a J. W. McGraw. Nor had he found any suspicious purchases in the weeks before the L.A. bombing.

But he wasn’t discouraged. He had spent most of his adult life knocking on doors and asking questions. He still enjoyed the hunt. He always “played the game hard,” he told his operatives. In this case, however, the stakes had increased in importance. He felt as if the entire country were watching, waiting for him to solve the mystery. He was determined to get his man. And if the L.A. bombing was in fact tied to the one in Peoria, he was on the trail of a much larger, possibly nationwide conspiracy. He could not even begin to guess at how many people might be involved.

Giant Powder that afternoon churned with activity. People had lined up to make purchases, and an annoyed Billy had to wait before he got someone’s attention. When he was finally able to speak to a salesman and identify himself, the man was impressed and became quite excited. Billy’s reputation was well known in this city; there was even a squat, derby-wearing red-haired detective in the
San Francisco Examiner
funny pages named “Hot Tabasco Burns.” The manager was summoned, and then he was joined by the secretary of the company. They were all eager to help, to cooperate with the famous detective. The order books were sent for and swiftly reviewed.

And there it was. On September 16 a large order had been placed for 80 percent dynamite. Bruce McCall, the clerk who had made the sale, was summoned. He remembered the circumstances quite clearly.

The day before the sale, McCall began, he had received a phone call from a man representing the Bryson Construction Company of Sacramento. He needed the 80 percent explosive. Could Giant handle the order? McCall told the men to come by, and it all would be arranged.

When the customer appeared the next day, McCall immediately grew suspicious. The buyer introduced himself as Bryce. I thought you said on the telephone the name was Bryson? challenged the salesman. No, the customer insisted, you must have misheard me.

Bryce went on to explain that his company had been trying to uproot some stubborn tree stumps on a job in Auburn, California. After a couple of stump-pulling machines had been broken in the process, it was decided that blasting would be the only way to get the job done.

The salesman cut him off. Eighty percent is way too powerful. It’s used for demolishing rock formations. You can buy something cheaper and still get your job done.

Bryce, though, was insistent. He had a contract with a man named Clarke, and the contract specified 80 percent gelatin. Either you sell me what I want, he announced indignantly, or I’ll take my business elsewhere.

Fine, McCall thought. Customer wants to spend more money than he has to, well, that’s not my problem. He told Bryce, We don’t have 80 percent in stock, but give me a day and we can make some up. The price was $82.10. Pay now and you can pick up the dynamite at the company’s factory on the other side of the bay. You got a boat? the salesman asked.

We’ll take care of it, Bryce assured him, and asked for directions. Bryce took a flat package from the inside pocket of his coat pocket and removed four twenty-dollar bills. That caught the salesman’s eye.

“You don’t see paper gold certificates too often here in San Francisco,” McCall told Burns. “I figure Bryce has to be from out of town, maybe back east. Right?” he asked.

People were always doing that to Billy, trying to show him that they could play the master sleuth, too. Sometimes he’d throw out a bit of praise and pretend he hadn’t thought of that, exuding, “You know, that’s good, damn good bit of detecting.” This afternoon Billy was in no mood to play games. The case was too important. He simply kept a guarded, noncommittal silence.

After a moment, the salesman picked up his story. The rest of the money was paid in silver. But, he concluded, there was something “wrong” about the entire transaction. “I didn’t like the look in his eye,” he said.

Billy had let the salesman tell his story without interruption. When a witness was eager to cooperate, when his memory was sharp, the rule was, you sat back and listened. But now that McCall’s account was finished, Billy posed the one question he had been waiting to ask. Any chance you can recall, he wondered with a casualness that was all disguise, what this Bryce looked like?

Once again the salesman was a perfect witness. Bryce was thirty-two or thereabouts, five foot ten perhaps, maybe 190. Lots of wavy, sandy hair, blue eyes, or sort of grayish. And dressed like a gentleman, in a sack coat, with a four-in-hand tie.

It wasn’t McGraw, Billy realized at once.

And if he wasn’t McGraw, who was he?

And where was McGraw?

The puzzle grew even more complicated when Billy went to the Giant manufacturing plant. The big box of a building fronted the bay near Oakland. Bryce, he learned, had not come to pick up the order. Two other men had arrived with a letter signed by Bryce authorizing them to accept the delivery. One of the men did most of the talking. His name, Billy learned, was Leonard: dark hair, even darker eyes, about five foot ten and thin, perhaps 160, and wearing a derby hat. The way he talked, his entire manner, suggested he was educated, possibly a college man. Said he had killed a lot of jackrabbits while blowing stumps with dynamite; he seemed to know how to handle explosives. The other man was short and swarthy, with jet-black hair parted in the middle and sharp, distinctive cheekbones. He didn’t talk much, but when he did, he had an accent. Asked where he was from, he said he was Spanish. His name was Morris, only he pronounced it Mor
-rice,
with the accent on the last syllable.