The Gangster

17

Isaac Bell paced the New York field office bull pen, driven by a strong feeling that he had misinterpreted the Cherry Grove conversation. The words were clear; he had no doubt the brothel owner had heard most, if not all, with his ear pressed to an air vent.

What are you waiting for?

An opportunity to talk sense. Would you please sit down?

My mind is made up. The man must go.

But Bell could swear that he had missed what they meant. Though he knew his notes by heart, he read them again.

Would you please sit down?

My mind is made up. The man must go.

He paced among file cases. Then paused at a varnished wooden case that held the field office’s Commercial Graphophone — a machine for recording dictation.

A telephone rang. He reached over the duty officer’s shoulder and snatched it off the desk. “It’s Isaac, Mr. Van Dorn. How are you making out in Washington?”

“That depends entirely on how you’re making out in New York.”

Bell reported on the heroin holdup and the waterfront shoot-out. “Salata got away, Leone’s dead. The only thing we know for sure is the Black Hand is out of the counterfeiting business.”

“I am still waiting for the go-ahead to warn the President.”

“I have nothing solid yet,” said Bell.

Van Dorn hung up. Bell resumed pacing.

He stopped to regard a wall calendar, a promotional gift from the Commercial Graphophone salesman. 1906 was winding down fast, but what caught his eye was the advertisement that ballyhooed, “Tell it to the Graphophone.”

Bell wound up the spring motor and read his notes aloud into the mica diaphragm.

“What are you waiting for?

“An opportunity to talk sense. Would you please sit down?

“My mind is made up. The man must go.”

He shifted the recording cylinder to the stenographer’s transcribing machine, which had hearing tubes instead of a concert horn, and fit the tubes to his ears. His own voice reading the words sounded like a stranger in another room. Or two strangers downstairs in the library.

What are you waiting for?

An opportunity to talk sense. Would you please sit down?

My mind is made up. The man must go.

Isaac Bell heard what he had missed.

He headed to Research.

Grady Forrer started apologizing. “Sorry, Isaac. Slow going on the fixers. The tycoons use different men for different tasks. Twenty, at least, among them.”

“Forget that, I’ve narrowed it down to one-in-seven.” He slapped his list on Forrer’s desk. “The fixer who will hire the killer to murder the President is one of the men in the library.”

“Impossible. These men hold seats on the Stock Exchange and controlling interests in railroads, mines, banks, and industries. They’re as close as we’ll get to gods.”

“One of them only runs errands for the gods.”

“It’s not a conversation, not even a discussion. They’re not equal partners. The first speaker is the boss, the second an employee. I don’t care if he shouted or whispered. What are you waiting for? He is the boss. The fixer is not a tycoon, even though he’s in the tycoons’ club… I feel like an idiot, it took me so long.”

“O.K.” Forrer nodded. “I get it. I feel like an idiot, too. So how do we separate servants from gods?”

Bell said, “Start with where they live.”

The Social Register turned up addresses for four — Arnold, Claypool, Culp, and Nichols. Cross-checking telephone directory numbers with company records revealed New York City addresses for the other three. The newspaper society pages turned up the names and locations of the country estates for six of the men. The same six had Newport summer residences. In both cases — country homes and seaside cottages — the one exception was Brewster Claypool.

“He’s from the South,” said Bell. “Attended law school in Virginia. Maybe he’s got a plantation down there.”

There were Claypools in Virginia, including Brewster’s brothers, but Claypool himself owned no plantation.

“Not even a town house in New York. He lives in the Waldorf Hotel.”

“Perhaps,” said Forrer, “Claypool prefers the simple life.”

“A bachelor’s life,” countered Bell. He himself lived at the Yale Club when in New York, in what Marion called his monastic cell.

“What if he lives in a hotel because he isn’t as rich as the others?”

Research came up with Claypool’s connections to boards of directors in steel, telegraph, and streetcars, but mostly as an adviser. He was, in essence, a Wall Street lawyer who worked as a lobbyist. Like a stage manager, Claypool stayed behind the scenes and avoided the limelight, which fit the definition of a fixer at the highest level.

Interestingly, Research came up with no pictures of Claypool, none of the engravings of prominent men found in the Sunday supplements, and no up-to-date photographs. He was definitely an offstage operator.

Bell, who always dodged cameras in the interest of investigating incognito, knew full well the threat of the accidental photograph. “Find out where he vacations. Some camera fiend must have snapped him with a Kodak… Meantime, if Claypool is our fixer, who does he fix for?”

“Pull is an ancient elixir,” Brewster Claypool drawled in a soft Virginia accent. “Pull sweeps aside obstacles. But this can’t come as news to a Van Dorn detective.”

“Wouldn’t a Wall Street lawyer prefer to go around obstacles?”

Brewster Claypool laughed. He was a little wisp of a man, wearing an exquisitely tailored pearl-gray suit, bench-made English shoes, and a blasé smile that concealed an all-seeing eye and a brain as systematic as a battleship’s centralized fire director.

“Excellent distinction, Detective.”

From the windows of Brewster’s office on the top floor of a building at Cortlandt and Broadway, Bell could see into the steel cagework of the Singer skyscraper under construction. The new building would block Claypool’s view of Trinity Church and the harbor long before it rose to become the tallest building in the world, but, at the moment, the view included a close look at ironworkers creeping like spiders on the raw steel.

Claypool said, “May I ask to what do I owe the pleasure of your presence? Your letter was intriguing, and I was impressed, if not flattered, when you quoted my notion that it is humiliating to confess ignorance of anything in Wall Street. Beyond that, I felt curiosity mingled with admiration, having caught wind of the Van Dorn success in retrieving a kidnapped child from the Black Hand. Extraordinary how your operatives found their way straight into the lion’s den.”

“That is not commonly known,” said Bell.

“I do not make a business of common knowledge,” said Claypool. “But tell me this. Have you noticed a sudden quiet in the Black Hand camp? Little activity other than small-potatoes attacks on hapless pushcarts.”

“Few peeps out of them lately,” Bell agreed, wondering why Claypool was showing off for him by establishing credentials beyond the canyons of Wall Street. “The Salata Gang got its nose bloodied by the Irish, and things have quieted down since.”

For a man who enjoyed boasting, Claypool appeared oddly immune to flattery. Suddenly blunt, he asked, “What can I do for you, Mr. Bell?”

“The Van Dorn Agency needs a man to provide inside information.”

Claypool looked genuinely puzzled by the offer of employment. “I’m sure that private detectives are better up in gangsters than I. My interest in the underworld is peripheral to my other interests.”

“This is not about gangsters.”

“About what, then?”

Isaac Bell pointed out the window. He traced with his finger the route of a crosstown street that began at the East River and ended at Broadway, hard against Trinity Church’s graveyard.

“Wall Street?” Claypool gave him a broad wink and joked, “Tread cautiously, Detective. President Roosevelt will clap you in irons.”

“What do you mean?” asked Bell. The slick Claypool did not strike him as recklessly bold. That he blithely dropped the name of Roosevelt suggested he was unaware of a plot against the President. If so, Bell’s “fixer hunt” had just hit as dead an end as Wall Street’s graveyard.

“The manipulation of insider information by Wall Street tycoons is among Teddy’s most despised bugaboos… But surely you know that.”

Bell said, “You don’t have to be a tycoon to manipulate inside information… But surely you know that.”

Still acting vaguely amused, Brewster Claypool geared up his Southern drawl. “Spoken as a private detective who believes he already has inside information — about me.”

“I do have such information,” said Bell. “We’ve learned a lot about you.”

“Why did you look into me?”

“I just told you. The Van Dorn Agency is seeking the services of an inside man. Diligent investigation into your ‘interests’ indicated that we would find that man in you.”

Claypool regarded the tall detective speculatively. “Services rendered by inside men are expensive.”

“But not as expensive as services performed by a tycoon.”

“Don’t rub it in, Detective. You’ve already made it clear that you know I am not a tycoon.”

“But I am among the very few who know that,” said Bell. “Most people, including people who should know better, assume that you are as great a magnate as your associates. They put you in the class of tycoons like Manfred Arnold, William Baldwin, John Butler Culp, Gore Manly, Warren D. Nichols, or even Jeremy Pendergast.”

If Claypool recognized an alphabetical list of members of the Cherry Grove Gentlemen’s Society in attendance the night the President’s life was threatened, he gave nothing away, drawling only, “I am flattered to be regarded in such company. But as you’ve already deduced, I am only a hardworking lawyer. By keeping my ear to the ground, my finger on the pulse, and my eye on the ball, I cultivate clients a thousand times wealthier than I could even dream of becoming.”

Bell said, “The fact that you are assumed to run with such company forces the Van Dorn Agency to offer a higher fee.”

Claypool’s reply was brisk and to the point. “Save your money. I’ll take my fee in trade.”

“Done,” said Bell, extending his hand. If Claypool were innocent, then the Van Dorn Detective Agency had just gained a shrewd source inside the upper echelons of American business; if Claypool were guilty, the Van Dorns were inside the inside man.

They shook on it, and Brewster Claypool asked, “What can I tell you about Wall Street?”

Isaac Bell leveled a cold-eyed gaze at the window. “Who down there hates the President of the United States enough to kill him?”

18

John Butler Culp’s grandfather built a Hudson River estate at Storm King Mountain. Culp’s father hugely expanded it, and the mansion was currently being enlarged and modernized by the son. They called it Raven’s Eyrie, after the Raven—the grandfather’s first steamboat that spawned their river, railroad, mining, and financial empires. Brewster Claypool dubbed it, archly, affectionately, and extremely privately, the Birdhouse.

Claypool found Culp in the gymnasium sparring with Lee, one of the prizefighters he kept on the place. The gym was a physical culture temple brightly lighted by a wall of windows. The morning sun beamed on the men perspiring in the ring. The other prizefighter, a heavyweight named Barry, was exercising with full-size twenty-pound, twenty-eight-inch Indian clubs. Neither of the boxers was the broken-down pug type that some rich men kept around as bodyguards, but competitors in their prime. Nonetheless, Barry had a black eye.

Black eyes tended to happen sparring with Culp, and Claypool helped him inflict another by flourishing his gold-headed cane to reflect the sun. Momentarily distracted, Lee received a powerful jab that knocked him into the ropes. That ought to teach him never to let down his guard around Culp.

Culp dismissed his fighters with orders to go to the kitchen and tell the cook to give them beefsteaks for their black eyes. Then he vaulted over the ropes, landed beside Claypool with a crash that shook the floor, and demanded, “What happened with Isaac Bell?”

Claypool reported in detail.

Culp snatched up his Indian clubs. But he listened intently, even as he whirled the bulbous lengths of varnished wood around his head like the Wright brothers’ propellers. He interrupted only when Claypool said, “Finally, Detective Bell asked, ‘Who hates Roosevelt enough to kill him?’”

“What did you answer?”

“I handed him the membership directory of the New York Stock Exchange.”

Culp dropped the clubs, slapped his thigh, and roared with laughter.

The master-servant indignities suffered by Claypool as “Culp’s man” were vastly mitigated by the sheer pleasure of conspiring with him.

“What’s he looking for?”

“He’s fishing.”

“Can we be connected?”

“Never.”

“Why?”

“We are separated by a long chain of people who don’t know each other, much less us.”

“Then where did Bell get his list? Manfred, Bill, Gore, Warren, and Jeremy Pendergast were all at the club the night you and I discussed this.”

“Here, I believe, Isaac Bell made a mistake. He gave up quite a clue with that list.”

“Right he did! Now we know someone in that room told him who was there.”

“So it would seem.”

“I want to know who? And why? Who’s going to try to use this against me?”

Claypool said, “It couldn’t have been any Cherry Grovers; none heard a word that could lead to putting two and two together.”

Culp, growing agitated, asked, “The girls?”

“Of course not. Unless you indulged in uncharacteristic pillow talk.”

“That’ll be the day. What about you?”

“I left early that night,” said Claypool. “With much on my mind.”

“Then who?”

“I was as baffled as you are. Until I had time to think about it on the train. Do you recall that the Cherry Grove reopened immediately under the new name? The very weekend after Coligney’s Pink Tea?”

“Of course I recall. I was there. So were you until you hustled the twins upstairs. Tammany called in a marker; you can bet they now own a bigger slice of Nick.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard,” said Claypool.

“What do you mean?”

“Tammany did not impose its will on Captain Coligney.”

“Then how… Oh, I see what you mean… Nick.”

“Nick Sayers must have given Coligney something to be allowed to reopen.”

“But how would that weasel know?”

“That I don’t know. Perhaps it had nothing to do with us. A coincidence.”

“I’ll have the fellows sweat it out of him.”

“I don’t recommend that.”

“Who is a whorehouse owner going to complain to?”

“If Isaac Bell catches wind of Nick suffering a beating, it will put him wise and he will be on Nick like a tiger.”

“The fellows can make it impossible for Nick to be found by Bell.”

“Unnecessary complications could ensue. As things stand now, there’s no connection to whoever will do the job. No reason to stop. You can press ahead. If you still insist.”

“I still insist.”

“Then we definitely don’t want any more complications.”

“What’s Bell’s next move?”

“Don’t be surprised when he comes calling on you.”

“Why me? You said it can’t be traced.”

“It can’t be traced. Which means he has to call on every man who was in that room. Including you.”

“Especially me. He’s already called on you. It won’t take a Sherlock Holmes to connect us.”

“Point is, what you insist on doing can’t be traced to us.”

Culp pondered that a moment. “I hope he does call on me.”

“Why?”

“Because he’ll wish he hadn’t. And that will be the end of it.”

Brewster Claypool fell silent.

Culp glowered at him awhile. “O.K. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t mean to ascribe to the Van Dorns powers they don’t possess. But they have a motto and they stick to it.”

“I read it in the Police Gazette: ‘We never give up.’”

“‘Never’ being the operative word.”

“A dramatic slogan to raise business.”

“Even melodramatic,” said Claypool. “But…”

“But what?”

“The trouble is, they stick to it.”

“I stick to things, too.”

“That you do, sir. It is among your most admirable qualities.”

Suddenly, Culp’s expression darkened and he got the thundercloud on his face that made him dangerous. “Wait a minute! Even if we can’t be connected, our man’s going to have a hard time doing it when they warn Roosevelt someone’s gunning for him.”

Claypool smiled.

“What are you grinning about? The Secret Service will take precautions.”

“I am not ‘grinning,’” said Brewster Claypool, “I am smiling, because I am imagining Teddy’s reaction when they tell him he must take precautions.”

“How? What? What will he do?”

“He will suck in his belly, stick out his chest, and declare that he is not afraid.”

“So?”

“The funny thing is, he’ll be telling the truth. Teddy won’t be afraid. And he will refuse to take precautions.”

19

Isaac Bell went back to the Cherry Grove. The name gold-leafed above the lintel had been changed to “Grove House.” He asked Nick Sayers which of the women had worked in the library the night Sayers had overheard the plot.

Only Jenny, a raven-haired beauty. Bell took her upstairs and, when their door was closed, handed her one hundred dollars and said, “I have a simple request and whatever you answer I’ll tell no one.”

Jenny said, “Don’t worry, I always say yes. What do you want?”

“On the Saturday night before the Pink Tea shut down the house, two of the men in the Cherry Grove club left the main club room for the small library.”

Jenny looked alarmed. “How do you know about the club? Are you friends with them?”

“Not really. One of the men was Brewster Claypool. Do you remember who went with him?”

“Does Mr. Sayers know you’re asking this?”

“Would you like to ask him to confirm it?”

She looked Bell up and down and said, “Well, that explains that.”

“Explains what?”

“I was wondering why you came to a sporting house.”

Bell smiled back. “I’ll take that as a compliment, thank you. And may I say that if I ever felt the need to come to one, I’d make sure you were in it… Do you recall who Mr. Claypool left the room with?”

“He left alone.”

“All alone?”

“I looked in a couple of times. He was just sitting there sipping his whiskey until Mr. Culp joined him.”

Isaac Bell armed himself with solid information from Research about the members’ habits in order to put his Cherry Grove Society suspects at ease. Then he cornered them, one by one, while masquerading as a gentleman who shared their interests. Most were not the sort who would ask his line of business when meeting in a social situation. Those who did learned that Isaac Bell was an executive in the insurance business.

He ran down the first at the Grolier, a club for bibliophiles. He borrowed a police horse to catch up with another cantering in Central Park. Allowing a close-fought victory in a late-autumn race for New York “Thirties,” he and Archie Abbott accepted drinks at the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club. He lunched at the Union League, and he met with a banker at the Chase National headquarters on Cedar Street, who declined to lend Bell money to buy a two-hundred-foot steam yacht. Of the seven, only one proved elusive, and Bell found him back where everything started, at the brothel.

All were easily maneuvered into admitting knowing Claypool. Two praised him for doing them the favor of getting them out of “sticky situations.” The Chase banker dropped, casually, “Everyone knows that ‘Brew’ Claypool is Culp’s man.” But he was the only one who made the connection. Of the bunch, two struck Bell as possible presidential assassins of the type who would hire a killer — J. B. Culp and Warren D. Nichols.

Culp made no secret of disliking Roosevelt. The affable Nichols had a wintery eye; a valuable quality in a banker, perhaps, but something about him made Bell wonder whether the wintery eye might mask a hunter’s heart.

“Thin, thin stuff,” he reported to Joseph Van Dorn. “A tycoon who hates the President and a banker with a cold eye.”

The Boss agreed. “We’ve said all along that the threats overheard could be nothing more than angry talk. Maybe that’s all it is.”

Two hours later, Bell sent to Van Dorn on the private wire.

Van Dorn wired back.

Culp’s industries and mines and timber operations were protected by brutal strikebreakers. Culp’s stock holdings were enriched by the best manipulators on Wall Street. His Washington lobbyists had bribed legislators to change the site of the inter-ocean ship canal from Nicaragua to the Isthmus of Panama. His agents in France and Panama helped him gain control of lucrative canal stock.

Many fixers worked for Culp behind the scenes, but Bell developed the strong impression that Claypool hired the fixers. All of them. Except Claypool was not about to personally hire murderers, much less presidential assassins. He would hire an agent, who would hire another agent, and on down the line. When the job finally reached the man with the gun, Claypool and Culp would be miles away.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” said Francesca Kennedy.

Her scarf concealed her face, but the hunch of her shoulders and her fingers anxiously working her rosary and the stricken tone of her voice were a convincing image of a woman desperate to save her soul. Had life been kinder to her, thought Branco, she would have been a great actress on Broadway.

“What sin did you commit, my child?”

“I lured a man to his death.”

Branco laughed. “Relax. Tommy McBean’s as alive as you.”

“Do I still get paid?”

A woman who was good for killing was a rare and valuable resource and should be treated as such. She loved money, so money she would have.

Branco shoved a rolled hundred-dollar bill through the grille. “Of course you get paid. You earned it. It took some doing to wake him up.”

“You know something?” she whispered. She turned to face the grille. “I think I’d rather do it with them when I know I’m the one that’s going to do them after — instead of just setting them up.”

“It takes all kinds.”

“And you know—”

“Enough confession,” Branco interrupted before she got wound up in a talking spree.

Though she had never seen his face, Branco had known of her since she was an ordinary streetwalker the night of her first murder — a customer who brutalized her. Her cool deliberation had so impressed him that he ordered Charlie Salata to rescue her from the cops. Francesca was a survivor who could turn on a nickel and give you the change. The instant he interrupted her, she went straight back to business.

“What’s my next job?”

Branco passed another fortune through the grille. “Confess here on schedule. You’ll know it soon.”

“I get antsy sitting around.”

“Put your impatience into preparation.” He pushed more money through the grid. “Buy clothes to drink tea at the Knickerbocker Hotel. A suitable outfit to get past the house dicks. You must look like you belong there.”

“That’s easy.”

“For you it is. You are an unusual woman.”

Branco returned to his store through the tunnels under the graveyard and the tenements.

He filled a pitcher with clean, cold water and brought it and a glass to the underground room where he had locked Ghiottone.

20

“Kid Kelly” Ghiottone heard a flood. A street main had burst, some hundreds-year-old pipe laid by the Dutchmen who used to run the city, rusting, rotting, thinner and thinner, and suddenly exploding from the pressure. Water was everywhere, spouting out of the cobblestones, flooding basements. He would drown, locked in the cell, deep in Branco’s cellar. But before he drowned, he would drink.

“Wake up, my friend.”

He woke to the same smell he had fallen asleep to — mouldering sausage and the stink of his own sweat and despair. There was no broken main, no flood. Not a drop of water. He was dreaming. But he heard water. Opening his eyes and looking about blearily, he saw Branco standing outside the cell again. He was pouring water from a pitcher into a glass. Again.

“It is time to drink.”

Ghiottone tried to say “Please.” His mouth and throat were dry as sand. His tongue was stiff, and he could barely make a noise, only a croak, like a consumptive old drunk crawling in the gutter.

“Who asked you to hire a killer?”

Ghiottone tried again to speak. His tongue filled his mouth. No sound could escape. It was buried in dust. Branco put the pitcher and the glass down on the floor. Ghiottone stared through the bars at the glass. He saw a drop hanging from the lip of the pitcher. The drop looked enormous. Branco handed him a pencil and a piece of paper.

“Write his name.”

Ghiottone could not remember how many of Branco’s pencils he had broken, nor how many sheets of paper he had ripped. He grabbed the pencil and paper and watched, astonished, as the pencil moved across the paper, scribbling, “He will not know any more than me.”

“One thing at a time,” said Branco. “His name. Then water.”

Ghiottone wrote “Adam Quiller.”

Antonio Branco read it. Adam Quiller, a fat, little middle-aged Irishman he’d seen scuttling about the district carrying messages from the alderman. Quiller did Ghiottone favors in exchange for the saloon keeper delivering Italian votes on Election Day.

“Of course. I could have guessed and saved us both such trouble. But I had to know. Here, my friend. Drink!”

He opened the bars and offered the glass.

“Kid Kelly” Ghiottone lifted it in both hands and threw back his head. The water splashed on his lips and ran down his chin. What entered his mouth and spilled down his throat was cold and delicious. He tipped the glass higher for the last drop.

Antonio Branco watched the saloon keeper’s elbows rise until they were parallel with his shoulders. The movement caused his vest to slide above the waistband of his trousers. His shirt stretched tight over his ribs.

“Have another.”

He took the glass and poured it full again. “Tell me,” he said, still holding the glass, “how would the killer be told the target?”

Ghiottone, thoroughly beaten, could not meet his eye. He tried to speak and found he could whisper. “When you give me the killer’s name, I pass it up to—”

“To Adam Quiller.”

Ghiottone nodded.

Branco frowned. “Then the target is passed all the way back down the chain? That sounds slow, cumbersome, and not private enough. I don’t believe you are telling me all the truth.”

“I am, padrone. They didn’t say how, but it would not come down the chain. They have some other way of telling him the target.”

“And the money? The fifty thousand? How does that come?”

Ghiottone straightened up. “Through me. They will send me the money when the job is done. My job is to give it to you.”

Branco handed him the glass, saying, “That makes you a very valuable man.”

Ghiottone lifted it in both hands and threw back his head. This time, most of the water entered his mouth. He swallowed, reveling in the coldness of it, and tipped the glass to finish it.

Branco stuffed the body in a sugar barrel and nailed it shut and went to his stable, where he woke up an old Sicilian groom and ordered him to hitch up a garbage cart and dump the barrel in the river. Then he went hunting for Adam Quiller.

21

Late in the afternoon, when the Van Dorn detective bull pen filled with operatives preparing for the night by perusing the day’s newspapers and exchanging information, Isaac Bell sat alone, opening and closing a pocket knife, reviewing notes in the memo book open beside him, and listening.

“Tribune says the Harbor Squad found “Kid Kelly” Ghiottone floating in the river.”

“Looks like the Wallopers got some back.”

“Why would the Wallopers do Ghiottone? He didn’t run with Salata.”

“He was Italian, thereby permitting the Wallopers to demonstrate they, one, are enraged about their dope being lifted, and, two, have the guts to snatch him out of Little Italy. His body was a mess, according to the paper; looked like he was beat with hatchets.”

“That is not what happened,” said Isaac Bell.

“Thought you were napping, Isaac. What do you mean?”

“Ghiottone wasn’t beat up. At least not when he was alive.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Barrel staves were floating around the body.”

Every detective in the bull pen lowered his newspaper and stared at Isaac Bell.

“Meaning, they dumped the body in a barrel,” said Mack Fulton.

“And a ship hit the barrel,” said Wally Kisley.

“The steel-hulled, five-mast nitrate bark James P. Richards,” said Bell. “Outbound for Chile. According to the Harbor Squad.”

Bell continued practicing with the pocket knife. Mack Fulton voiced a question. “Can I ask you something, Isaac?”

“Shoot.”

“Your criminal cartel theory is driving you around the bend, and the Boss is all over you about the President.”

“I’m aware I’m busy,” said Bell. “Which is why I depend on you boys’ invaluable assistance. What do you want to know?”

“Being so engaged, what made you query Roundsman O’Riordan about an Eye-talian saloon keeper floating in the river?”

“What do you think?”

“Because,” Kisley answered for Fulton, “Isaac thinks Ghiottone is Black Hand.”

Bell shook his head. “That’s not what I got from Research, and they got their info straight from Captain Coligney, who used to ramrod the Mulberry Street Precinct. Ghiottone was a Tammany man — so what strikes me is, somebody’s got it in for Tammany Hall. Adam Quiller was tortured and murdered last Saturday; Harry Warren says he was Alderman King’s heeler. And this guy Lehane, Alderman Henry’s heeler, was also tortured.”

“Those reformers are getting meaner every day,” said Walter Kisley.

Bell joined the laughter. Then he said, “Both heelers were finally killed with a stiletto.”

“I didn’t see that in the paper.”

“You’ll see it tomorrow. Eddie Edwards just spoke with the coroner. The papers will go wild when they see all three victims connected by a stiletto.”

“How about connected by a Tammany boss under investigation who’s killing off witnesses?” asked Kisley.

“Not likely. Bribing witnesses and jurors is more a boss’s strategy. But here’s the thing that strikes me. Look at the order of when they were killed — each stiletto victim stood a rung higher on the ladder of political power — Ghiottone, at the bottom; then Quiller, a heeler and block captain, one step up; then Lehane, the district election leader’s heeler. Makes me wonder who’s next.”

“District leader?”

“More likely his heeler.”

Helen Mills rushed into the bull pen. Detectives straightened neckties, smoothed hair, and brushed crumbs from their vests. She spotted Bell and handed him a small envelope.

“What’s this?”

“Claypool.”

Bell slit it open with his knife. Out fell a photograph, so recently developed it smelled of fixer. The picture was slightly blurred, as Claypool was turning his face, but it was him for sure, and anyone who knew the camera-shy lawyer would recognize him.

“Where’d you get this?”

“I snapped it. Some girls from school came into town. We pretended we were tourists, and I snapped him while snapping them, when he left his office for lunch.”

Bell slipped it into his memo book. “Nicely done, Helen. Take the girls to Rector’s Lobster Palace. Tell Charlie it’s on me and I said to give you the best table in the house.”

Detectives watched her leave.

Fulton said, “Quiller four days ago. Then Sullivan, Lehane’s heeler, yesterday.”

“Working their way up to a full-fledged alderman,” said Kisley.

Isaac Bell put down the knife and picked up his fountain pen. “Which of them are under investigation?”

“Which ain’t?” asked Kisley, holding up the Times with a front page column headline that read

“Of the forty crooks on the Board of Aldermen, James Martin’s in deepest at the moment. Alderman Martin was always looking for patronage. Ten years if convicted, and sure to be convicted. Word is, he won’t make bail.”

“Why can’t an alderman make bail? The whole point of serving on the Boodle Board is to get rich.”

“Broke,” called Scudder Smith, who was nursing a flask in the corner. “Lost it all to a gal and poker.”

Bell said, “Are you sure about that, Scudder?”

Scudder Smith, a crackersjack New York reporter before Joseph Van Dorn persuaded him to become a detective, said, “You can take it to the bank.”

“Hey, where you going, Isaac?” asked Kisley.

The tall detective was already on his feet, pocketing the knife and his memo book, clapping on his hat, and striding out the door. “Criminal Courts Building. See if the gal and the gamblers left Alderman Martin anything to trade for bail.”

Midway through the door, he paused.

“Harry?”

“What’s up?” asked Harry Warren.

“Would you go downtown and find a way to shake hands with Antonio Branco?”

Harry Warren exchanged mystified glances with Mack Fulton and Wally Kisley. “Sure thing, Isaac. Care to tell me why I’m going to shake hands with Antonio Branco?”

“Do it and I’ll tell you why,” said Isaac Bell. “Just make sure he’s not wearing gloves.”

Alderman James Martin shielded his face from the newspaper artists with a hand clutching a half-smoked cigar while an assistant district attorney told the magistrate that he should be jailed in the West 54th Street Police Court Prison unless he put up a bond of $15,000. The DA’s sleuth who had arrested him on the Queensboro Bridge after he left the Long Island City stone mason’s yard, where he had received the money, stood smirking in the doorway. Thankfully, thought Martin, the DA had set the bribe trap in a stone yard, where he had legitimate reason to be. He was a building contractor, after all, wasn’t he, like many a New York City alderman. He prayed the magistrate would buy that defense at least enough to reduce his bail to an amount low enough to borrow.

“Twelve five-hundred-dollar bills,” the assistant DA raved on. “One for each of his fellow aldermen he would pay off to shift their votes on an issue critical to the health and well-being of every man, woman, and child in New York.”

Alderman Martin’s lawyer asked that his client be admitted to a more reasonable bail. Martin waited to hear his fate. Home for supper or weeks in jail.

The magistrate fixed bond at $10,000. The DA’s assistant protested that it was too low, that Martin would run away, but it was, in fact, far more than he could raise, and the alderman pleaded with the magistrate, with little hope.

“Your Honor, I’m not able to furnish a bond of ten thousand.”

“The charge constitutes a felony. If convicted, your sentence could be ten years and a five-thousand-dollar fine. Ten thousand dollars bail is reasonable. I can reduce it no further.”

“I don’t have ten thousand — I had six thousand, but the DA sleuths took it.”

The magistrate’s eyes flashed. “The District Attorney’s detectives did not ‘take’ the money. They confiscated evidence, which happened to be in bills marked ahead of time to ascertain whether you would accept a bribe.”

“That money was given to me in connection with a business deal.”

“The nature of that business deal led to your arraignment.”

“I’m a contractor. It was an ordinary business consideration involving the supply of stone. I am not in the bribe line of business.”

“You will have opportunity to assert that at your trial. Bail is fixed at ten thousand dollars.”

There was a sudden commotion at the back of the small courtroom and the alderman turned hopefully toward it. He had been telephoning friends all afternoon, begging for bail money. Maybe one of them had had a change of heart.

A message was passed to Martin’s attorney, who addressed the magistrate. “Your Honor, I have a bondsman present. He will offer properties at 31 and 32 Mulberry Street as security for Alderman Martin’s ten-thousand-dollar bail.”

Isaac Bell bounded up the stairs to the bond room in the Criminal Courts Building and told the clerk, “I presume the court will accept my check on the American States Bank as bond for Alderman Martin.”

“We’ll accept an American States Bank check. But Alderman Martin is already free on bond.”

“Where’d he go?”

The clerk shrugged. “Somebody sprung ’im.”

Bell palmed a ten-dollar bill and slipped it to the clerk. “I was informed that Alderman Martin was running out of the kind of friends who would put up ten thousand.”

“You were informed correctly,” said the clerk.

“Any idea who paid the bond?”

“Fellow put up a couple of houses on Mulberry Street.”

“Mulberry? That’s in the Italian colony, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Isn’t Martin’s district in Queens?”

“Until they lock him up in Sing Sing.”

“He’s really on the ropes, isn’t he?”

“Word is he’s in hock to his eyeballs and run out of favors. The man’s got nothing left.”

Bell palmed another ten. “You must see a lot of strange goings on.”

“Oh yes.”

“Who would risk two houses betting that Martin wouldn’t jump bail?”

“Somebody with more money than sense.”

“What do you suppose they’d get out of it?”

“Something the Alderman still has.”

Bell felt someone watching him. He looked around. “Is that fellow leaning on the door jamb a DA’s detective?” he asked the clerk.

“Detective Rosenwald. He nailed Martin.”

Bell walked up to Rosenwald. “Let me save you some trouble. I’m Isaac Bell, Van Dorn Agency. And I was asking that court clerk what I’m about to ask you.”

Rosenwald said, “I’ll save you some trouble by telling you don’t try to grease my palm.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Bell. “But I would like to buy you a drink.”

“Out of the frying pan,” thought Alderman Martin, with an awful feeling he was headed for the fire. At first, it all went smooth as silk. Court officers, who were grinning like some swell had stuffed enormous tips in their pockets, let him out of the building by a side entrance. Instead of having to duck his head from a pack of howling newspapermen, he was greeted by a silent escort who whisked him inside a town car before the reporters got wise. But now that his rescuers, whoever they were, had him in the closed and curtained auto, they were not treating him with the respect, much less the deference, expected by a member of the New York City Board of Aldermen, who had jobs, contracts, favors, and introductions to dispense.

They would not tell him where they were taking him. In fact, they never spoke a word. Relieved to dodge the reporters, he hadn’t taken notice of the fact that his broad-shouldered protectors were swarthy Italians. Kidnapped, he thought, with a sudden stab of terror. Snatched by the Black Hand. Abducted for ransom by Italians too stupid to realize that he was in so much trouble already that no one would pay to get him back.

He tried to climb out when the car stopped in traffic. They gripped his arms from either side and sat him back down forcefully. He demanded an explanation. They told him to shut up.

He filled his lungs to bellow for help.

They stuffed a handkerchief into his mouth.

When the auto stopped at last and they opened the door, it was parked inside a storehouse. He could smell the river, or a sewer. They marched him down stone stairs into a cellar lit by a single bulb, glaring from the ceiling. He saw a table in a corner with something spread on it under a sheet. In the shadows of another corner, a man was standing still as stone. There was a heavy, straight-backed chair under the bulb. They pushed him into it and shackled him to the arms with handcuffs and yanked the handkerchief from his mouth.

The escorts left. The man in the shadows spoke. Alderman Martin could not see his face. He had an Italian accent.

“Alderman Martin, your heeler confess-a you order him to hire assassin.”

His heart nearly stopped beating. He had been right about the fire. This was no kidnapping for ransom. Suddenly, he was thinking clearly and knew that the entire terrible day, starting with the bribe trap, was unimportant. This was a situation he shouldn’t have gotten involved in — would not have gotten into if Brandon Finn’s people hadn’t known he was desperate — and it had gone terribly wrong. He had no hope but to bluster his way out of it.

“He would never say such a thing.”

“He didn’t want to.”

The man lifted the sheet.

James Martin would have given ten years of his life to be sitting in a cell at West 54th Street. The heeler was dead. His face was bloody as a beefsteak. The eye they had left in his head regarded Martin with a dumbfounded stare.

“What did you do to him?” Martin asked when he could draw enough breath to speak.

“We asked him a question. We asked, ‘Who told you hire assassin?’ We now ask you that same question, Alderman Martin. Who told you hire assassin?”

“You know the ‘Chamber of Horrors’?” Captain Coligney asked Isaac Bell on the telephone.

“The one at Union Square?”

“Meet me there.”

22

Isaac Bell climbed the subway steps at the Union Square Station three at a time. At 16th Street, a leather-lunged barker manned a megaphone:

“Do you want better schools and subways? Do you want green parks and breezy beaches? Want to find out why you don’t have them? Then step right up to the Committee of One Hundred Citizens’ Exhibit against Tammany Hall to see how Tammany gets away with its bunco game.”

The barker seemed superfluous. The line to get in snaked the length and breadth of Union Square and disappeared down side streets. The extras newsboys were hawking claimed that twenty-two thousand people had visited the exhibition in only three days.

In the show window, a papier-mâché cow represented Tammany milking the city. “Don’t cry over spilt milk,” read the placards. “Get a new set of milkmaids.”

A competing Tammany Hall exhibit several doors down boasted a live elephant — representing Republicans eating the city — but it looked to Bell like the anti-Tammany show was outdrawing the pachyderm four-to-one.

Coligney had stationed a cop to escort Bell inside, where he followed signs pointing to the Chamber of Horrors. On the way, he passed “The Municipal Joyride to the Catskill Mountains,” a huge cartoon of “Honest Jim” Fryer running over a small taxpayer in a town car, a depiction of the “Story and Shame of the Queensboro Bridge” that accused Tammany Hall Democrats of wasting $8,000,000 to build “nothing but an automobile highway” that should have been spent on preventing tuberculosis.

Down the basement stairs was the chief attraction, the Chamber of Tammany Horrors, and it was stronger stuff. Silhouettes of men, women, and children encircled the room like the rings of Hell, dramatizing the price of graft: the thirteen thousand New Yorkers who had died this year of preventable diseases; the children condemned to the streets by the shortage of schools.

Captain Coligney was waiting next to an exhibit illustrated by a floor-to-ceiling billboard: “How Tammany Hands Catskill Aqueduct Plums to its Favored Contractors.”

“A DA dick told me you dropped my name on him,” he greeted Bell.

“Only your name. I was trying to get a handle on Adlerman Martin.”

“I reckoned as much,” said Coligney. He jerked a thumb at the billboard. “Thought you’d like to see Part Two of this exhibit.”

Alderman James Martin was behind the billboard, barely out of the regular visitors’ sight. He was hanging by the neck. His face was blue, his tongue as thick and gray as a parrot’s, his body stiff.

Coligney said, “He wasn’t here when they closed last night. They found him this morning.”

“What time do they close?”

“Closed at eleven. Opened this morning at nine.”

“Are we supposed to believe he committed suicide from guilt?”

“Martin didn’t have a guilty bone in his body. But, at any rate, he’s been dead a lot longer than twelve hours. Which means he didn’t hang himself here.”

“Not likely he hanged himself elsewhere, either,” Bell noted. He inspected the body closely. “But it doesn’t look like he put up a struggle.”

Coligney agreed. “On the other hand, his pockets were empty, except for one thing.” He held up a business card, balancing the edges between his big fingers. Bell read it.

“Who is Davidson?”

“Onetime reformer. Saw where the money was made and woke up thoroughly Tammanized. Big wheel in the Contractors’ Protective Association.”

“What’s his card doing in Martin’s pocket?”

“I’d guess same reason Alderman Martin is hanging here: To make Tammany look even worse than the Chamber of Horrors.”

“So Davidson locked horns with whoever hanged Martin.”

Coligney nodded. “And they’ve just sent him a threat.”

Bell asked, “How much time would I have to interview Davidson before you make it official?”

Coligney found sudden interest in the ceiling. “My cops are busy. I’d imagine you have a day.”

“I’ll need two,” said Bell. Time for Research to scrutinize Davidson before he braced him.

The side-wheel river steamer Rose C. Stambaugh struggled to land at Storm King sixty miles up the Hudson from New York. Smoke fountained from the stack behind her wheelhouse, and her vertical beam engine, which stood like an oil derrick between her paddle wheels, belched steam that turned white in the cold air.

The pilot cussed a blue streak, under his breath, when a bitter gust — straight from the North Pole — stiffened the American flag flying from the stern and threatened to hammer his boat against the wharf. Winter could not shut down the river too soon for him.

Isaac Bell stood at the head of the gangway, poised to disembark. He wore a blue greatcoat and a derby and carried an overnight satchel. Red and green Branco’s Grocery wagons were lined up on the freight deck, stacked full of barrels and crates destined for the aqueduct crews at the heart of the great enterprise. The siphon that would shunt the Catskills water under the Hudson River would connect the Ashokan Dam with New York City.

The mules were already in their traces. The instant the gangway hit the wharf, Bell strode down it and pulled ahead of the long-eared animals clumping after him. Officials scattered when they saw him coming.

If his coat and hat made him look like a New York City police detective, or a high-ranking Water Supply Board cop, Isaac Bell was not about to say he wasn’t. Two birds with one stone on this trip included a second visit with J. B. Culp. This time, it would be on his home turf, Raven’s Eyrie, which Bell could see gleaming halfway up the mountain in the noonday sun. In his bag were evening clothes. First he would look like a police detective under the mountain.

He found the site where they were sinking a new access shaft to the siphon tunnel. The original shaft had been started too close to the mountain edge, where the granite proved too weak to withstand the aqueduct’s water pressure.

“Can I help you, sir?” the gate man asked warily.

“Where’s Davidson?”

“I’ll send somebody for him.”

“Just point me the way.”

The gate man pointed up the hill.

Bell stepped close, cop close. “Precisely where?”

“There’s a contractor’s shed about a hundred feet from the new shaft.”

Bell moved closer, his shoulder half an inch from the man’s cheek. “If you use that telephone to warn him, I will come back for you when I’m done with him.”

Davidson’s official job was to provide expert advice on the labor situation. That was window dressing. His real job was collecting contract fees from the Contractors’ Protective Society — or, as former newspaperman Detective Scudder Smith put it, “Tammany’s on-site fleecer of contractors and taxpayers.” Originally a Municipal Ownership League proponent of public utilities, Davidson had switched sides after the city’s Ramapo Water Grab victory and become, as Captain Coligney had noted, thoroughly Tammanized.

Across the Hudson — where the Catskills water tunneled under and emerged from the uptake — a stretch of aqueduct was being bored by a company that had paid Davidson an “honorarium” of five percent of the contract fee for his expert advice. Or so reliable rumor unearthed by Van Dorn operators had it. Vaguer rumors had Davidson shaking down Antonio Branco for $20,000 for a provisioning contract. Trouble was, hearsay was not evidence, and graft charges would never make it to court before the statute of limitations expired.

But despite his apparent immunity, Davidson was scared. Rattled, it seemed to Bell, at least too rattled to question Bell’s masquerade as a cop. “I got the telegraph” were the first words out of the heeler’s mouth.

“What telegraph?” asked Bell.

“The message. They left him hanging there for me. Warning me off.”

“From what?”

“None of your business.”

Bell said, “If you want me to run you in, the boat’s heading back to New York. Or we can take the train if you prefer trains.”

“Go right ahead.”

“What?”

“Arrest me. I’ll be safer in your custody than I am standing here.”

“Fine with me,” Bell bluffed, “if you think you’ll be safer in a city jail.”

Davidson wet his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go see Finn. He’ll set you straight.”

“Which Finn?”

Davidson looked at him sharply. “There is only one Finn, and if you don’t know him, you’re not who you say you are.”

Bell tried to bull through it. “I’m asking politely one more time. Which Finn?”

Davidson turned on his heel and walked again, leaving the tall detective with a strong feeling he had egg on his face. He hurried into the village, found a telephone building next to the post office, and phoned Captain Coligney. It took a while to connect to the long-distance wire, and he assumed that the local operator was listening in.

“Do you know a ‘Finn’ in connection with our hanging?”

“I’m afraid you’re talking about Brandon Finn. Not beholden to the powers in the usual way. Informal, if you know what I mean.”

“You mean he operates off the usual tracks?”

“And covers his tracks.”

“Who does Brandon Finn report to?”

“The Boss. But only on a strictly informal basis. Why do you ask?”

“It might be smart to keep an eye on him.”

“Too late,” said Coligney. “He died.”

“Of what?”

“They don’t know yet.”

Bell composed a telegram in Van Dorn cipher.

If Brandon Finn was linked directly to Boss Fryer, then whoever was killing the Tammany men was nearing the top of the heap. If Claypool was the fixer who started the ball rolling, then he could be next.

Archie Abbott took for granted that he delighted women the way catnip fired up cats. So when an attractive brunette taking tea in the Knickerbocker Hotel lobby not only failed to notice him but looked straight through him as if he didn’t exist, Abbott took it as a radical challenge to the proper order of things.

“Good afternoon.”

She had arresting blue eyes. They roved over Abbott’s square chin, his aquiline nose, his piercing eyes, his high brow, his rich red hair, and his dazzling smile. She said, “I’m afraid we’ve not been introduced, sir,” and returned her gaze to her magazine.

“Allow me to remedy that,” said Abbott. “I am Archibald Angell Abbott IV. It would be an honor to make your acquaintance.”

She did not invite him to sit beside her. At this point, were he not known to the Knickerbocker’s house detectives as a fellow Van Dorn, two well-dressed burly men would have quietly materialized at his elbows and escorted him to the sidewalk while explaining that mashers were not permitted to molest ladies in their hotel — and don’t come back!

“My friends call me Archie.”

“What does your wife call you?”

“I hope she will call me whatever pleases her when we finally meet. May I ask your name?”

“Francesca.”

“What a beautiful name.”

“Thank you, Archibald.”

“Just Archie is fine.”

“It pleases me to call you Archibald.”

Abbott’s sharp eye had already fixed on her left hand, where a wedding ring made a slight bulge in her glove. “Are you married, Francesca?”

“I am a widow.”

“I am terribly sorry,” he lied.

“Thank you. It has been two years.”

“I notice you still wear the ring.”

“The ring keeps the wrong type from getting the wrong idea.”

“May I sit down?”

“Why?”

Abbott grinned. “To see whether I’m the wrong type.”

Francesca smiled a smile that lit her eyes like limelight. “Only the wrong type would get the wrong idea.”

“Tell me about your accent, I don’t quite recognize it. I studied accents as an actor. Before my current line of work.”

“What is your line?”

“Insurance.”

“Sit down, Archibald,” said Francesca Kennedy. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

23

The gatehouse at Raven’s Eyrie looked like it had been built to repel anarchists and labor agitators. Sturdy as an armory, the two-story granite redoubt was flanked by high walls. The gate had bars thick as railroad track, and the driveway it blocked was so steep that no vehicle could get up enough speed to batter through it. But what riveted Isaac Bell’s attention were the shooting slits in the upper story, which would allow riflemen to pick off attackers at their leisure. J. B. Culp was not taking chances with anyone who had it in for the rich.

“Please inform Mr. Culp that Isaac Bell has come to accept the invitation he offered at Seawanhaka to view his ice yacht.”

“Have you an appointment, sir?”

The gatekeeper wore an immaculate uniform. He had cropped iron-gray hair and a rugged frame. His sidearm was the old Model 1873 .45 Colt the United States Marines had brought back into service for its stopping power in the Philippine Campaign.

Bell passed his card through the bars. “Mr. Culp invited me to drop by anytime.”

Five minutes later, Culp himself tore down the driveway in a six-cylinder, air-cooled Franklin — the same six-cylinder model that had just made a coast to coast run across the continent in a record-breaking fifteen days. “Welcome, Bell! How do you happen to be up here?”

“We’re underwriting some of the aqueduct contractors’ insurers. Hartford asked me to have a look at our interests.”

“Lucky you found me at home.”

“I suspected that phones and wires cut you loose from the city,” answered Bell, who had had an operative keeping tabs on Culp’s comings and goings since eliminating the other Cherry Grove suspects.

“Hop in! I’ll show you around.”

“I came especially to see your iceboat.”

Culp swung the auto onto a branch of the driveway that descended along the inside of the estate walls all the way down to the river, where crew barracks adjoined a boathouse. Yard workers were hauling sailboats up a marine railway. Inside the boathouse, his ice racer was suspended over the water, ready to be lowered when it froze. It had the broad stance of a waterspider, a lightweight contraption consisting of a strong triangular “hull”—two crossed spars of aluminum — with skate blades at the three corners.

“Entirely new, modern design,” Culp boasted. “Got the idea for aluminum from my Franklin. Strong and light.” It struck Bell that Culp sounded like a typical sportsman obsessed with making his yacht, or racehorse, or auto, or ice yacht a winner.

Bell marveled at the rig hanging from the rafters. “Monster sail.”

“Lateen rig. Beats the tried and true Hudson River gaff main and clubfooted jib. I cracked ninety knots last winter.”

“Ninety? You’ll beat the 20th Century.”

“I’ll beat a hundred, this winter. Come on, I’ll show you the house.”

The house at Raven’s Eyrie was a very large mansion with striking views through sheets of glass so big they could have been department store show windows in New York. Here, too, Culp struck him as more the proud homeowner than a killer. For the interior, Culp had gone shopping in Europe. Bell exclaimed politely at regular intervals, and stopped dead in his tracks to study an enormous silver, lapis lazuli, and ivory sculpture on the dining room table. Dominating the table, where it would tower over thirty guests, it depicted Saint George, on horseback, running his lance through a dragon. Bell had just figured out that the giant bowls at the dragon’s head and tail made it a salt and pepper cellar when Mrs. Culp suddenly appeared, leading her cook and majordomo.

She looked to be a decade Culp’s junior, closer to Bell’s age. She would hardly be the first rich man’s wife whose husband spent nights in the Cherry Grove bordello, but, thought Bell, Daphne Culp was such a looker it would not seem worth the trouble leaving home.

“Bell,” Culp introduced him brusquely. “Met him racing at Seawanhaka.”

Bell praised the ice yacht and her house, and she asked, “Do I hear the faintest trace of Boston in your voice, Mr. Bell?”

“Guilty, ma’am. I thought most of it rubbed off at New Haven.”

“Butler went to Yale, too, didn’t you, dear?”

“John Butler Culp was a legendary Old Blue when I arrived,” said Bell.

“Not that old, for gosh sakes,” said Culp.

Daphne soon established she and Bell had in common distant cousins by marriage, and she asked him to stay to dinner. “Did you come up from New York? You better stay the night.”

“Let me show you the gymnasium,” said Culp.

“Your own prize ring,” said Bell.

“And my own prizefighters.”

Culp introduced Lee and Barry. They were well-knit men, with firm, elastic steps. Lee was tall and lean, Barry slightly shorter and twice as wide, and Culp would reap the benefit of training with different types.

“Did I hear somewhere you boxed for Yale?” Culp asked.

“I believe I heard the same about you.”

“Shall we go a couple?”

Bell took off his coat and shoulder holster.

Culp asked, “Do you have much occasion for artillery in the insurance business?”

“Violent swindlers are notable exceptions,” Bell answered, hanging his coat and gun on a peg. He stripped off his tie and shirt, stepped up onto the ring, ducked through the tightly strung ropes, and crossed the canvas into the far corner. Culp removed his coat, tie, and shirt and climbed in after him. “Do you need gloves?”

“Not if you don’t.”

“Put ’em up.”

Barry, who had been punching the heavy bag, and Lee, twirling the Indian clubs, watched with barely concealed smirks. Barry banged the bell with the little hammer that hung beside it. Culp and Bell advanced to the center of the ring, touched knuckles, backed up a step, and commenced sparring.

Bell saw immediately that Culp was very, very good, sporting a rare combination of bulk, speed, and agility. Though ten years Bell’s senior, he was extremely fit. Bell was not surprised. At the yacht club, Culp had bounded about the decks of his New York “Thirty” like a born athlete. What was slightly surprising was how determined the Wall Street titan was to give him a black eye. In fact, he seemed bent on it, swinging repeatedly at his head, to the point where it made him reckless. Frustrated by Bell’s footwork and impenetrable guard, he began unleashing punches that opened chinks in his own defense.

Lee rang the bell, ending the first round. They took a moment’s rest and went another.

In the third round, Culp threw caution to the wind and charged, using his bulk in an attempt to startle Bell into dropping his ground and hurling at him a mighty right. Had it connected, it would have knocked Bell through the ropes.

Culp tried the tactic again, and Bell decided to end it before things got further out of hand. He opened Culp with two swift feints of his left hand, then planted a light jab with the same left in Culp’s eye.

Unpadded by gloves, Bell’s knuckles took their toll, and Culp staggered backwards. His face darkened with anger, and he stepped through the ropes, holding his eye.

“Take over!”

The tall, lean Lee put down the Indian clubs and climbed into the ring.

Culp lumbered toward the door. “You’ll excuse me, I have to dress for dinner. Enjoy the facility, Detective Bell.”

“I wondered when you’d figure that out,” said Bell.

“Long before I saw your gun.”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Now I know for sure what you’re up to.”

Culp laughed. “You won’t know your own name when these two get through with you. Go to it, boys.”

He whipped Bell’s holster off the peg and took it with him.

Lee put up his fists. “Shall we say fifteen rounds?”

“Or until you get tired,” said Bell.

“When he gets tired,” called Barry, “it’s my turn.”

At the end of five rounds, Lee said, “Something tells me you didn’t learn that footwork at Yale.”

“South Side,” said Bell.

Lee was breathing hard. So was Bell. Barry was watching closely, learning his moves.

“South Side of what?”

“Chicago.”

“Thought so.”

Barry rang the bell.

Lee backed slowly out of the ring after ten rounds. “Finish him.”

Barry swung through the ropes, feet light on the canvas floor, which was slick with Lee’s blood. “O.K., Chicago. Time for lessons.”

“You’ll have to do a lot better than your pal.”

“First lesson: A good big man will always beat a good little man.” Barry glided at him, fast and hard.

Isaac Bell was tired. His arms were getting heavy. His feet felt like he had traded his boots for horseshoes. His ear was ringing where he had caught a right. His cheek was swollen. No serious damage to his torso yet. Barry moved in, feeling for how tired Bell was.

Bell locked eyes with the bigger man and threw some feints to send messages that he was still strong and dangerous. At the same time, he forced himself to override the desire to move fast, which would tire him even more. Barry kept coming, jabbing, feeling him out. Suddenly, he tricked Bell’s hands up with his own feint and landed a left hand to the tall detective’s chest. The slim, long-armed Lee had thrown stinging punches. Barry hit like a pile driver. Bell forced himself to stand tall and hide the damage.

“Lee!” he called. “Come back.”

“What?”

“I’m getting bored. Why don’t you both get in the ring; we’ll make this quick.”

“Your funeral.”

Lee climbed in slowly, stiff, sore, and exhausted.

“Hey, Barry, give your pal a hand, he’s moving like an old man.”

Barry turned to help. Bell drove between them and somersaulted over the ropes.

“He’s running for it,” yelled Barry, and both scrambled after him.

Bell turned and faced them. “I’m not running, I’m evening the odds.”

He had a twenty-pound Indian club in each hand.

“Put those down or you’ll really get hurt.”

“Teeth or knees, boys?”

He swung the clubs at their faces. They raised fast hands to block and grab them. Bell had already changed course. The clubs descended, angling down and sideways. The heavy bulging ends struck like blunt axes. Barry gasped. Lee groaned. Both dropped their guard to clutch their kneecaps. But they weren’t down. Both were fighting men and both battered through their pain to lunge at Bell.

Bell had already swept the clubs up and back to a horizontal position at head height. Gathering his strength in one last effort, he carried them forward simultaneously.

Isaac Bell strolled into the Raven’s Eyrie dining room dressed for dinner in a midnight blue tuxedo. John Butler Culp was seated at the head of the table, Daphne Culp at some distance to his right, and a place setting across from her to Culp’s left. The Saint George, his horse, and dragon cellar had been moved close to curtain off the rest of the long, long mahogany table, creating a cozy space for their small party.

“Good evening, Mrs. Culp,” he said to the beautiful Daphne. “I’m so sorry I’m late. Evening, J.B. Say, where’d you get the black eye?”

Culp glowered.

Mrs. Culp said, “Jenkins, don’t just stand there. Bring Mr. Bell a plate… Mr. Bell, are you quite all right? Your face is bruised. Butler, did you do that to Mr. Bell?”

Bell leapt to defend his host. “Of course he didn’t. He wouldn’t, even if he could… Oh, I almost forgot, J.B. The gentlemen who work for you in the gymnasium asked would it be possible for the cook to send soup or broth to their room. Something they can eat through a straw.”

“O.K.,” said Culp. “You won this round.”

“I have indeed,” said Bell. But he knew, and so did Culp, that he had won a hollow victory. One look at the tycoon, angry as he was, showed a man still absolutely secure in his belief that regardless of Bell’s suspicions, John Butler Culp was still insulated from the dirty work, still set so high above the law that he could plot the death of the President. The crime would proceed.

That thought chilled Bell to the marrow: wheels were in motion, gathering speed like a locomotive fresh from the roundhouse, oiled, coaled, and watered, switched to the main line, tracks cleared, and nothing could stop it, not even Culp himself… Not quite no one, he thought on reflection. The one aspect that even Culp couldn’t control was that Bell knew. He couldn’t prove it yet. But he knew and he could stop it or die trying.

“Detective Bell,” Culp said, “you’re smiling as if very pleased with yourself.”

Bell put down his knife and fork and leveled his gaze at the statue of Saint George, his horse, and the dragon. “Please pass the salt.”

Mrs. Culp laughed out loud. “Mr. Bell, you’re the first guest who’s had the nerve to say that to him — Butler, at least smile, for gosh sakes.”

“I’m smiling,” said Culp.

“It doesn’t look that way.”

“It will.”

24

“You look like you’ve been pounding rivets with your face,” Harry Warren greeted Isaac Bell at the office.

“Slipped in the bathtub… I read Finn’s obituary on the train; hard to tell, between the lines, who he really was.”

“A first-rate heeler. Old-school, hard-drinking, hail-fellow-well-met. But not one to cross. Strictly backroom, and connected direct to Boss Fryer. Except you won’t find a witness in the world to testify to that.”

“Probably our direct connection to Claypool. If he weren’t dead.”

“By the way, Claypool doesn’t need our protection. The boys spotted a pack of off-duty police detectives camping at his office round the clock.”

“That cinches it. Claypool knows he’s next.”

“With his pull, he’ll have the best protection. O.K. I shook Branco’s hand. Now what?”

“Right hand?”

“Of course.”

“Notice anything about it?”

Warren thought a moment. “Yeah. He’s got a couple of weird calluses on his fingers.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Inside his index and middle fingers. Nearly an inch long.”

“That’s what I noticed the other night in Little Italy. Sort of recalled them the first time we shook hands. What do you suppose they’re from?”

Harry Warren shrugged. “You tell me.”

Isaac Bell took out his pocket knife. “Watch my fingers.”

“I’m watching.”

He opened the blade. “These fingers, index and middle.”

Harry’s eyes gleamed. “From opening it again and again and again.”

“Practice.”

“Cute way around the weapon laws.”

“Branco told me about them. Though he left out the practicing.”

Warren stared. “Wait a minute. Wrong hand. That’s your left hand pulling the blade. I shook his right hand.”

“He’s left-handed. I saw him catch an orange that went flying. Snapped it out of the air faster than a rattlesnake.” Bell folded his knife closed, then opened it again. “Of course, no matter how fast you whip it out, you still only have a short blade.”

“Not necessarily,” said Harry Warren. “I’ve seen Sicilian pen knives with handles so thin, you could shove it into the slit the blade makes.”

“A legal stiletto?”

“Until you stick it in somebody.”

His friends at Tammany Hall took over Tony Pastor’s vaudeville house for Brandon Finn’s wake.

Isaac Bell brought Helen Mills with him. “Keep your eyes peeled for Brewster Claypool. Question is, is he next? Assuming Finn was at the top link of a chain down to ‘Kid Kelly’ Ghiottone, did Finn get his orders from Claypool?”

Bell’s theory that doorkeepers and floor managers did not question the presence of a man with a good-looking young girl on his arm proved correct and they mingled in the crush of politicians, cops, contractors, priests, and swells, eavesdropping and asking questions carefully.

Two things were obvious: Brandon Finn had been loved. And the rumors that he may have been murdered baffled his friends. Who, Bell heard asked again and again, would want to hurt him?

As the drinking went on, tongues loosened and — as at any good wake for a loved man — tales of Finn’s exploits began to spawn heartfelt laughter that rippled and rolled around the theater. Helen, who had a gift for getting men to talk, reported twice to Bell that Finn — dubbed admiringly as the “last of the big spenders”—had been spending even more freely than usual the night before he died.

Bell himself heard the phrase “came into big money” several times.

He speculated that the money had come from outside the Tammany chain, which would pay him in patronage rather than cash. He told Helen that an outsider had tapped Finn to send a request down the line to “Kid Kelly.”

“What,” she asked, “did he want from Ghiottone?”

“Keep in mind he did not want it specifically from Ghiottone — the whole point was not to know any names — but wanted someone who could deliver like Ghiottone.”

“A murderer.”

“Only the guy who paid Finn knows for sure. But since we know what was said at the Cherry Grove, we have to presume they want a murderer.” Bell pointed. “There’s Mike Coligney. I’ll introduce you. He’ll look out for you while I pay my respects to Mr. Finn’s companion.”

“I don’t need looking out for.”

“Mourners are eyeing you cheerfully.”

Bell maneuvered close to Rose Bloom, Finn’s paramour’s stage name, and spoke loudly enough for her to hear over the roar of a thousand mourners. “Brandon Finn cuts a finer figure laid out in his coffin than the rest of us do standing up.”

“Doesn’t he?” she cried, whirling from a clutch of men vying for her ear to take in the speaker of the compliment.

Bell was not exaggerating. The dead man’s checked suit was tailored like a glove. A diamond stickpin glittered in his necktie. Three perfectly aligned cigars thrust from his breast pocket like a battleship turret, and his derby was cocked triumphantly over one eye. Even the Mayor McClellan campaign button in his lapel proclaimed a winner.

Rose Bloom had red eyes from weeping and a big brassy voice. “He was always the handsomest devil.”

“I am so sorry for your loss,” Bell said, extending his hand and bowing over hers. It was not hard to imagine what a couple they had made, a “Diamond Jim” Brady and Lillian Russell pair having a ball, with New York at their feet.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Bell. Isaac Bell. My deepest condolences.”

“Oh, Mr. Bell. The things you don’t plan for. Just gone. Suddenly gone.”

“They say the Lord knows what’s right, but it doesn’t seem fair at the time, does it? Were you together at the end?”

“The very night before. We had the most splendid dinner. At Delmonico’s. In a private booth.” Her voice trailed off and her eyes teared up.

“A favorite of his, I presume?”

“Oh, yes, his absolute favorite — not that we went regular. Much too expensive to eat there regular.”

“I’m sure he’s smiling down on us, glad he took you to Delmonico’s his last night. Certainly not a night to save money.”

She brightened. “Brandon’s luck held to the end. Didn’t cost him a penny. A Wall Street swell poked his head in the booth and picked up the check.”

Men were pressing from every direction to catch her attention, and Bell knew he was running out of time. “Was this the swell?” He opened his hand to reveal Helen Mills’ snapshot of Brewster Claypool and watched her face. She knew him.

Before he turned away, he looked directly into her eyes. “Again, Miss Bloom, my condolences. I grieve, too, that you lost your good man.”

Outside on 14th Street, he sent Helen back to the office with orders for Harry Warren to dispatch operators to the Waldorf Hotel and the Cherry Grove. “Tell him I’ve gone to Claypool’s office.”

“It’s after hours, Mr. Bell.”

“Claypool knows he’s next. He reckons he’s safe at his office surrounded by cops.”

“How does he know he’s in trouble?”

“He’s the last link alive between Culp on top and Ghiottone’s choice of a Black Hand assassin.”

To Isaac Bell’s eye, Brewster Claypool’s bodyguards looked like former detectives demoted when Commissioner Bingham overhauled the bureau. They were shabbily dressed, unkempt men, and had not been up to the job of protecting Claypool.

Bell found one in the elevator, one in the hall, and two inside Claypool’s office, all unconscious or slumped on the floor, holding their heads. He smelled gun smoke. Pistol in hand, he crashed into Claypool’s private office. There he found a detective, unconscious on the carpet with a Smith & Wesson in his hand, and the Black Hand gang leader, Charlie Salata, shot dead.

“Claypool!”

Bell looked to see if he was hiding in the closets and the washroom, but Claypool wasn’t there. He went to the windows that faced the Singer Building. He opened one and looked down. The office was twelve stories above Cortlandt Street. There was no balcony Claypool could have escaped to, and nothing to climb up the side of the building to the roof.

Bare light bulbs sparkled across the street inside the cagework of the Singer Building. Work had ceased for the night, and the steel columns, which had risen several tiers since Bell had been here last, were deserted, the derricks still, the hoisting engines silent. He could hear trolleys, a noisy motor truck, and horseshoes clattering in the street. Movement caught his attention. Five stories above the sidewalk, he saw the silhouette of a man climbing open stairs in the Singer frame — a night watchman or fire watch.

Bell hurried back to the closets, recalling that one had been mostly empty. He inspected it carefully this time and found a door concealed in the back, its knob hidden under a winter coat. The door opened on a stairwell.

“Claypool!”

Silence. No answer, no footsteps. It was possible that Claypool had escaped during the battle, his retreat covered, perhaps, by the wounded detective who had shot Salata.

Bell went back to the windows. The man climbing the Singer steelwork stopped and looked down. Immediately, he lunged toward a ladder and scrambled higher. Bell leaned against the glass to see. Two stories below, another man climbed after him. He was limping, slowed by his “winging” gait.

25

Brewster Claypool collapsed into a triangle of cold steel, formed by a column, a crossbeam, and a diagonal wind brace, where he could hide from the monster chasing him. It was hide and pray or simply fall to his death, he was so exhausted. Even a physical culture devotee like J. B. Culp would be hard-pressed to climb as many stairs and ladders as he had — five, before he lost count — and he could not recall the last time he had climbed stairs when an elevator was available.

He had heard the monster’s footsteps when he wedged his trembling legs into the triangle, still climbing down there, somewhere down in the dark. Now he’d lost track of him. Muffled by the wind? Or had he stopped? Was he standing stock-still, listening for his prey? For Claypool was prey. He had no doubt of that, prey in a situation that all the pull on earth could not get him out of. He tried to drag air silently into his storming lungs.

Gradually he caught his breath, gradually he began to hope that the killer had given up. Could he somehow just stay inside this little steel crook in the corner of the skyscraper until dawn filled it with workmen? Would he freeze to death? The wind had begun to gust and it was fierce up here. No wonder the engineers riddled the structure with wind braces.

“Mista Claypool.”

The voice was inches from his ear, and he was so shocked and frightened that he shouted, “Who are you? What do you want from me?”

“Who told you to tell Finn to hire an assassin?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then why did you barricade yourself with bodyguards when Finn died?”

In the shrewd, conniving worlds that Brewster Claypool had dominated his entire career, there was no one smarter than a “railroad lawyer”—except a Wall Street lawyer. But when he heard that question in the dark, Brewster Claypool felt every brainstorm he had ever had drain from his head; every parry, every counterstroke, every rejoinder.

“Why?”

Then, all the gods be praised, his brain began to churn.

“Why bodyguards?” he replied smoothly, speaking into the dark wind as if they had settled into club chairs at the Union League. “Because I watched as men were killed, one after another, each at a higher station. Were these the crimes of a madman? Or a man with a brilliant scheme? But when Brandon Finn died, I knew that the ‘why’ of it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the killing would continue, and I had better take precautions—Ahhh!”

A blade bit into his cheek and cut a line to his lip.

Isaac Bell felt warm, sticky liquid dripping on the ladder as he climbed to the seventh tier of the Singer Building cage and smelled the piercing metallic scent of blood. He looked up. Ten feet above his head, he saw the shadows of two men grappling, one tall and broad, the other a wisp of a spider. Claypool didn’t have a chance.

“Branco!” Bell shouted as he jumped for the next ladder.

Branco went rigid with surprise at hearing his name and Claypool squirmed free, slipped through the scaffolds laid across the beams, and fell.

Bell caught his hand as Claypool plunged and tried to swing him onto solid footing.

The lawyer’s hand was slick with blood. It slipped from Bell’s grasp. But Bell had arrested his fall and Claypool landed at his feet, only to slide between boards again and fall to the next floor.

Bell heard Branco scrambling overhead, racing across his tier to find a way down. It was too dark for Bell to see him. Claypool was directly under him at the edge of a pool of light cast by a dim bulb. He went down the ladder to help.

Claypool was sprawled on his back. The man was dying. His face had been slashed repeatedly, and the fall had been brutal, but what would surely kill him was the knife in his chest. His hands moved feebly, pawing at the handle.

Bell restrained them. “Don’t touch it. I’ll get you to the hospital.”

Claypool made a noise in his throat that sounded like laughter. “Only if their doctors have pull with God.” He focused vaguely on Bell’s face. “Thank you for trying to save me.”

“Was it Antonio Branco, the grocer?”

“Big aqueduct contractor. Must be Black Hand.”

“Did you tell Branco that Culp sent you to Brandon Finn?”

“Culp is my friend,” gasped Claypool, and Isaac Bell watched him die with that typically enigmatic answer on his lips. Culp is my friend told no one whether Branco’s savage interrogation had forced him to reveal that J. B. Culp was the boss he had been tracking.

Bell checked his pulse and pressed his ear to his chest, but the fixer was dead. He reached for the knife protruding from the body, pulled it free, took it under the nearest light bulb. It was a folding pocket knife with a legal-length blade. The handle was the narrow sort that Detective Warren had described, barely wider than the blade itself, and tapered even thinner at the hinge that transformed it, when open, into a stiletto.

Bell saw no maker’s mark. It had been fabricated by a specialty cutler.

He slung Claypool’s featherlight frame over his shoulder and carried him down six stories to the sidewalk and up Broadway to Cortlandt Street and into his building. There were no cops yet or police detectives. Back on the street, Bell met up with Warren, Kisley, and Fulton, who had caught up in a REO town car the agency had on promotional loan from the manufacturer.

“We’re going to Prince Street,” Bell told them. “Move over, I’ll drive!”

“Branco?”

“He’ll need escape money. I saw him. Claypool fingered him. And I have his knife.”

Isaac Bell drove as fast as he could, straight up Broadway, toward Prince Street. Traffic was heavy even at this late hour, but not at the standstill of business hours. The REO’s motor was fairly powerful and its horn was very loud. His Black Hand Squad, crowded in beside Bell and in the backseat, checked over their guns, and traded info about the case.

Bell’s Black Hand and President Assassin cases had converged like a pair of ocean liners on a collision course. The saloon keeper Ghiottone had recruited a Black Hand man to kill President Roosevelt, and Antonio Branco had seized the opportunity to send the ultimate Black Hand letter.

“The scheme backfired when Ghiottone told Branco.”

“Instead of killing the President, Branco killed his way back up the recruiting chain to blackmail the man on the top.”

“Can you imagine what Culp would pay?”

“Branco could imagine,” Mack Fulton said to general laughter. Bell wondered, though. Would it be enough for Branco to risk his entire setup or did he have his eye on something more?

Ghiottone’s saloon had been taken over by the dead man’s cousins and was doing a roaring business again. Across the street, Branco’s Grocery was dark and shuttered.

“Hang on,” shouted Bell.

He wrenched the steering wheel. The REO jumped the curb. He drove onto the sidewalk and blasted through Antonio Branco’s front door ten feet into the store. The Van Dorns leaped out, guns drawn. They fanned out into the maze of stock shelves, Bell in the lead.

“Find lights… Wait! I smell gas.”

“Maybe Branco stuck his head in an oven.”

“Stove in here is fine,” Mack Fulton called. “No leak.”

“Don’t turn on the light. Get out. Get out now!”

The odor was suddenly so strong, it smelled as if a torrent of gas was gushing into the store straight from a city main. Bell felt light-headed. “Get out, boys! Get out before it blows.”

The Van Dorn Black Hand Squad bolted for the door they had smashed.

“Leave the auto.”

Bell was counting heads, vaguely aware that he was having trouble keeping track, when he heard Harry Warren shout. He could barely make out what he was saying. Warren sounded blocks away.

“Come on, Isaac! We’re all out.”

Bell turned slowly to the door.

He saw a flash. The REO reared in the air like a spooked horse. Cans flew from the walls. Jars shattered and barrels split open, but the tall detective had the strangest impression of total silence. It was like watching a moving picture of a volcano.

Then the floor collapsed under his feet and the ceiling tumbled down on his head.