The Last Days of Night(60)

“What is all that stuff?” asked the thief, peering over Paul’s shoulder.

“Not much,” answered Paul before moving to the other rear office. This looked more promising. It contained a simple cherry desk, a tall chair at which to sit, and two filing cabinets. This would be where Brown conducted his real business: manipulating the public.

Paul set his candle on the desk as he looked through Brown’s papers. It was no surprise that almost all were letters. Paul flipped through the documents on the desktop and in the drawers beneath, finding little that he would describe as being scientific. There were no schematics, no diagrams, no plans. Only letters to editors, letters back to Brown, letters from city commissioners and concerned citizens and journalists and curious mayors and from…

Thomas Edison.

There was Edison’s letterhead. Paul instinctively skipped straight to the bottom. Edison’s signature. He was holding a letter from Edison to Brown. Proof of their conspiracy.

It was only when Paul started to read the letter’s contents that whatever elation he had felt at the letter’s existence quickly dissipated.





Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.

—BILL GATES



“HAROLD BROWN HAS designed something he calls an electrical chair,” said Paul.

George Westinghouse frowned. “How can you make a chair out of electrical current? That is nonsense.”

“The chair isn’t made of electricity—it transmits electricity to whoever is sitting in it.”

“Why in God’s name would you ever want to do that? It’d kill you.”

“Exactly.”

The men were speaking aboard Westinghouse’s private rail car, the Glen Eyre. The empty acres of Pennsylvania countryside sped by. The recent snow had left the landscape a dull white, an even plain stretching into the distance.

He explained to Westinghouse that what he’d found in Brown’s office was a series of letters between Brown and Edison that confirmed their conspiracy.

It appeared that, in secret, Harold Brown had petitioned the New York State Legislature to consider alternate methods of execution for those whom the state had sentenced to death. The noose was ancient technology. Perhaps, Brown had suggested, a more scientific method of execution could be used. And did he have a method in mind? He did. It was this “electrical chair.” A convicted criminal would be strapped to a chair made of wood, with metallic contacts attached to his forehead and lower back. These contacts would then be hooked up to an electrical generator. When the generator was turned on, the convict would be dead instantly. This, Brown had argued, would be much more humane than the noose. Not to mention the firing squad.

Brown had even taken the trouble of specifying the type of generator that would be best for such a device. It ran on A/C. And it was manufactured by the Westinghouse Electric Company.

That company’s namesake took this news poorly. Edison and Brown were working to make his alternating current the official current of execution. The state-sponsored current of death. Westinghouse’s A/C systems were selling briskly, and the initial installations in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and Oregon City Falls, Oregon, had gone well. But who in the world would want to install the same technology in their home that the New York State Legislature had chosen to install in their prisons?

“But Edison doesn’t support the death penalty. He’s campaigned against the thing. Publicly. I’ve read his sanctimonious editorials.”

“That was before he recognized that the death penalty could be put to his own advantage.”

Westinghouse stared out the window at the wintry fields. “You almost have to respect the ingenuity.”

“?‘Almost’ being the operative word.”

“And I suppose no one cares that it wouldn’t even work? My system, properly constructed, would do a poor job of killing someone.”

Paul’s expression made perfectly clear that the public was uninterested in this kind of logic.

“So how do we respond?” asked Westinghouse.

“I’ve sent word to Albany. In two weeks I’ll argue before the New York State Legislature that the use of an electrical chair in executions would constitute cruel and unusual punishment.”

“You’re not making the argument that D/C should be the official current of executions?”

“I don’t want to ask the state senators to be scientists. I’m asking them to be humanitarians.”

“What happens if you lose?” asked Westinghouse. “If they do use my equipment to build this electrical chair? How can we possibly compete under those circumstances?”

“We can’t.”

“So what do we do?”

Paul looked out at the clean white expanse. A city was just coming into view along the horizon.

“We hope that for the next few years, no one in New York commits any murders.”

“Or,” added Westinghouse ruefully, “at least that they don’t get caught.”

—

Typically, Paul’s trips to Pittsburgh were brief—ten hours in transit for a meeting with his client, then an overnight trip back. But this time, Westinghouse asked if he’d like to stay the night. They were having friends for dinner on the following evening, and Marguerite had wondered why Paul never came by the house anymore. She’d invited him to attend, if he was free. The guest apartments were all made up.