“Shaken Not Stirred – A Jazz Age Tale”

The following is a preview of my upcoming book “Shaken Not Stirred – A Jazz Age Tale”

Perplexed as I was about my circumstances, I still knew things were only paradoxical to someone lacking the facts or whose judgment had been compromised by bias or wishful thinking.

If the current events of 1926 weren’t entirely consistent with what I knew about that year, I couldn’t blame modern day historians. They were just interpreting what others had recorded about the past. Back in the 21^st Century, I had seen enough fake news to know that contemporaneous reports weren’t necessarily more reliable than 90-year old accounts of the same story.

After I met with Nelson Truitt and Mona Edwards, it became imperative that I determine exactly what Jake Voorhees knew about me and how he had come to know it. Even though I never expected him to be someone I could trust, if he was going to play a role in the FBI’s sting operation, I needed to understand him better.

When Truitt had said we needed someone greedy and cocky enough to cozy up to those manipulating the price of Hudson Motor Company stock, I volunteered Jake for the job. Once the U.S. Attorney got indictments against these co-conspirators, Truitt promised we’d all be offered leniency in exchange for our testimony against the Wall Street bosses.

Initially, the strategy seemed masterful. It demonstrated how J. Edgar Hoover had managed to keep his job throughout eight presidencies. Only his death in 1972 was enough to end his nearly half-century reign at the head of the FBI.

Over drinks at a Greenwich Village tavern, Jake heard my plan to buy and sell Hudson Motor Company shares using an investment pool set up by the five men on the list given to me by Leland’s secretary. Despite being seasoned analysts and traders, all of them – unlike Leland and Morrow – needed to work for a living. The temptation of becoming instant millionaires would overcome any hesitancy they had about dealing with a nobody like me and a con-artist like Jake Voorhees. I didn’t put it that way, but that’s what I was thinking.

Jake acknowledged some familiarity with investment pools but didn’t know how they could be used to drive stock prices up and down. I expected him to reject out of hand working with Leland’s men, but he readily agreed acknowledging that doing so would give the scheme “an air of respectability”. Over another round of drinks, I fielded his questions using the carefully scripted answers Truitt had provided. After his fourth or maybe fifth scotch and soda, he stood up from the table staggering and gave me a big bear hug.

Slurring his words, he said, “Bart, count me in. I like this idea better than all the crazy ones you’ve previously come up with. And, if it works, I might even bet against the Yankees in the World Series.”

After he sat back down, I suggested we order some food. Looking at the menu, I nonchalantly asked him how he knew Eli Silken. He threw his head back, burped, and answered “Who?”

“When I called the other day about betting on the World Series, you said you knew Eli Silken. Remember?” I said still nursing my second drink.

“Oh, yeah, sure. I know Eli. He’s a big-time inventor – kinda like Thomas Edison. Lately, he keeps showing up at my office looking for financing on a new idea he wants to commercialize. You know, get a patent, turn it into something marketable . . . all of that.”

   “How did he know I was renovating Leland’s estate?” I asked.

Jake looked stumped, but even in his inebriated state was able to say, “I dunno. Maybe he’s a friend of Leland – probably asked him for money too.”

I nibbled on a handful of beer nuts and thought about Jake’s answer. Somehow, it didn’t ring true. Previously, he volunteered Silken’s name when it suited his purpose, but now, he was distancing himself from the future owner of Leland’s estate. I needed to go on the offensive.

“Jake, I don’t think you’re telling me all you know about this guy Silken. If we’re gonna be partners on the biggest stock deal that’s ever been done on Wall Street, you need to reveal what you’re hiding.”

 “Bart, I’d never try hiding anything from you. Unlike most people, you already know what’s going to happen as well as everything that already has.” He paused to take another sip of his drink. “Let me put it this way, old sport. Out of nowhere, an oddly-dressed stranger shows up speaking a kind of English I’d never heard before, and he tells me I’m about to meet a Chicago architect he hired to fix up his house on Long Island. I have to say, you’re the only one who fits that description.”

 “How did he get here?” I demanded.

“We never got into details like that. I suppose by boat or train. He did say, however, he primarily lives in California. Caledonia Castle is just some place he’ll stay when he’s in New York on business.”

All of this was consistent with the facts as I knew them, but it was still hard to believe a card like Jake Voorhees.

  “So, based on what Mr. Silken told you, who do you think I am?” I asked.

“Cora told me you just fell from the sky – into her cellar.” He paused to look around the room to see if anyone was within earshot. Then he whispered, “I’ve heard that the Germans are training their soldiers to jump out of airplanes using parachutes. Maybe you’re one of them.” He began to slump in his chair.

   “Do I sound German?”

“No, you sound like a well-bred New Yorker playing a prank on the Lelands, but for the life of me, I don’t know why.”

  “What’s your opinion of Eli Silken?”

 “He’s an awful lot like me. Knows a good business deal when he sees one. Otherwise, just another sharp-looking dude with some potential, that is, if he doesn’t waste it on women and strong drink.”

 “Do you believe him?”

   “I have no reason not to.”

 I left Jake at the tavern around seven. Although I had accomplished part of what the FBI wanted me to do to buy my freedom, I remained unsure about my accomplice. He seemed far more willing to accept my false identity than I was to accept his.  As I walked home, I remembered the promise I had made to Carter to get together for a rooftop chat that evening. When I reached my tenement house, he was waiting for me on the front stoop.

“I was beginning to think them thugs had gone and beat you up again,” he said with a grin.

 “No, I’m fine. I just had to meet someone in the Village. C’mon up,” I replied unlocking the door.

  “Was that someone of the female type?”

“Do I wish. No, it was just some guy Cora introduced me to. Not anyone you’d care to know, I’m afraid,” I said as we walked up five flights of stairs to the roof.  Once again, we had the place to ourselves. The sun was already down but its afterglow made the hodgepodge of metal roof fans and vents look like a crude model of the St. Petersburg skyline.

Finding two of the same wobbly chairs we had sat in last time, I asked Carter how work was going. He tried to be positive, but I could tell Aldous Barkley’s absence had been harder on him than it had been on me. In the weeks since his old man’s sudden illness, Silas hadn’t managed to say more than a few words to Carter.

 “Bart, I just don’t know if I’m cut out for this furniture designing business. I’d be happier building stuff on Barkley’s production line instead of copying the same old designs day after day.”

“Yeah, I feel the same way sometimes but for a different reason. Marshall Field now has me working with his chamberlain’s wife. That tells me he thinks I’m doing women’s work…. but you know, there have to be worse ways to make a living.”

“Ain’t that the truth. I bet you’ve never picked cotton under a blazing Carolina sun like my daddy and grand-daddy did.”

I was about to answer Carter when I heard a mechanical buzzing sound unlike anything I’d heard in the 1920s. I gazed up at the surrounding rooftops and expected to see a large insect or bird or even some kind of fireworks, but at first there was nothing visible in the growing darkness of the City. Then a flashing green light identified the source of the sound.  It was a drone carrying a camera.  As unexpected as that was, I immediately knew we were the subject of someone’s videography.

“Well, will you look at that,” Carter said pointing nervously at the nearly stationary aircraft. “Now, I can tell my mama I’ve seen everything New York has to offer. What do you think that is?”

I was speechless. I didn’t know how to answer him without telling him everything about me, 21^st Century technology and all I had been doing to escape this time and place.

Then I lied. “I dunno. Maybe something the government uses to keep an eye on regular folks like us.”

 “Why would they do that?”

 “All I know is things in this country are changing a lot faster than its people are,” I answered philosophically.

For the next ten minutes, the drone filmed us from various angles and distances, apparently unseen by anyone who might be out on one of the neighboring buildings. I tried to distract Carter by naming the stars I recognized from our lofty perch, but he remained mesmerized by what he called the “Baby Airship”. The introduction of airplanes just a quarter century earlier made heavier-than-air flight completely plausible to him, but certainly not in such a miniaturized package.

Eventually, the thing flew off taking with it, I’m sure, excellent footage of our rooftop chat.

Between submarines peeking out of the Atlantic surf, rock ‘n roll radio stations on the airwaves and now drones doing surveillance over Manhattan, I knew 1926 had undeniably been altered by my presence.

Carter just shook his head. “Maybe it’s just the Lord telling me New York’s no place for a sharecropper’s son. Could be time I go see my daddy and mama again,” he sighed.