The Wrecker

16

“THAT WAS KINCAID?”

Bell knew it had been a long shot. But there was something purposeful about the way the last man had come aboard, as if he had made a special effort to leave the Ogden depot undetected. A very long shot, he had to admit. Aside from the number of trains the Wrecker could have taken, men routinely ran to catch trains. He himself did it often. Sometimes deliberately, either to dupe someone already on the train or give the slip to someone following him in the station.

“The last I heard,” Bell mused, “the Senator was in New York.”

“Oh, he gets around, sir. You know those officeholders, always on the go. Can I tell him you will play draw?”

Bell fixed Bill Kux with a cold stare. “How is it that Senator Kincaid happened to know my name and that I am on this train?”

It was unusual to see a conductor of a limited flustered by anything less than jumping the tracks. Kux began to stammer. “Well, he, I … Well, you know, sir, the way it is.”

“The way it is, the wise traveler befriends his conductor,” Bell said, softening his expression to take the man into his trust. “The wise conductor endeavors to make everyone on his train happy. But especially those passengers most deserving of happiness. Do I have to remind you, Mr. Kux, that you have orders straight from the president of the line that Van Dorn detectives are your first friends?”

“No, sir.”

“Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Bell. I’m sorry if I caused you any trouble.”

“Don’t worry yourself.” Bell smiled. “It’s not as if you betrayed a confidence to a train robber.”

“Very big of you, sir, thank you … May I inform Senator Kincaid that you’ll join his game?”

“Who else will be gaming?”

“Well, Judge Congdon, of course, and Colonel Bloom.”

“Kenneth Bloom?”

“Yes, sir, the coal magnate.”

“Last time I saw Kenny Bloom, he was behind the elephants with a shovel.”

“I beg your pardon, sir. I don’t understand.”

“We were in the circus together briefly as boys. Until our fathers caught up with us. Who else?”

“Mr. Thomas, the banker, and Mr. Payne, the attorney, and Mr. Moser of Providence. His son sits with Mr. Kincaid in the Senate.”

Two more slavish champions of the corporations would be harder to imagine, thought Bell, but all he said was, “Tell the Senator that I will be honored to play.”

Conductor Kux reached for the door. “I should warn you, Mr. Bell …”

“The stakes are high?”

“That, too. But if a Van Dorn agent is my first friend, it is my duty to advise you that one of the gentlemen playing tonight has been known to make his own luck.”

Isaac Bell showed his teeth in a smile. “Don’t tell me which one cheats. It will more interesting to find out for myself.”

JUDGE JAMES CoNGDON, the host of the evening’s game of draw poker, was a lean and craggy old man with an aristocratic bearing and a manner as hard and unbending as the purified metal on which he had made his fortune. “The ten-hour workday,” he proclaimed in a voice like a coal chute, “will be the ruination of the steel industry.”

The warning elicited solemn nods from the plutocrats gathered around the green-felt-topped card table, and a hearty “Hear! Hear!” from Senator Charles Kincaid. The Senator had opened the subject with an ingratiating promise to vote for stricter laws in Washington to make it easier for the judiciary to issue injunctions against strikers.

If anyone on an Overland Limited steaming through the Wyoming night doubted the gravity of the conflict between labor unions and factory owners, Ken Bloom, who had inherited half of the anthracite coal in Pennsylvania, set them straight. “The rights and interests of the laboring men will be looked after and cared for not by agitators but by Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given control of the property interests of the country.”

“How many cards, Judge?” said Isaac Bell, whose turn it was to deal. They were in the middle of a hand, and it was the dealer’s responsibility to keep the game moving. Which was not always easy, since, despite the enormous stakes, it was a friendly game. Most of the men knew one another and played together often. Table talk ranged from gossip to good-natured ribbing, sometimes intended to smoke out a rival’s intention and the strength or weakness of his hand.

Senator Kincaid, Bell had already noticed, seemed intimidated by Judge Congdon, who occasionally called him Charlie even though the Senator was the sort who would demand to be called Charles if not “Senator, sir.”

“Cards?” Bell asked again.

Suddenly, the railroad car shook hard.

The wheels were pounding over a rough patch of track. The car lurched. Brandy and whiskey sloshed from glasses onto green felt. Everyone in the luxurious stateroom fell quiet, reminded that they, along with the crystal, the card table, the brass lamps affixed to the walls, the playing cards, and the gold coins, were hurtling through the night at seventy miles an hour.

“Are we are on the ties?” someone asked. The question met nervous laughter from all but the cold Judge Congdon, who snatched up his glass before it could spill any more and remarked, as the car shook even harder, “This reminds me, Senator Kincaid, what is your opinion about the flood of accidents plaguing the Southern Pacific Railroad?”

Kincaid, who had apparently had too much to drink at dinner, answered loudly, “Speaking as an engineer, the rumors of Southern Pacific mismanagement are scandalous lies. Railroading is dangerous business. Always has been. Always will be.”

As suddenly as the shuddering had begun, it stopped, and the ride smoothed out. The train sped on, safe on its rails. Its passengers exhaled sighs of relief that the morning newspapers would not be listing their names among the dead in a train wreck.

“How many cards, Judge?”

But Judge Congdon was not done talking. “I made no reference to mismanagement, Charlie. If you could speak as a close associate of Osgood Hennessy rather than as an engineer, sir, how are things going with Hennessy’s Cascades Cutoff where these accidents seem to be concentrated?”

Kincaid delivered an impassioned speech more suited to a joint session of Congress than a high-stakes game of poker. “I assure you gentlemen that gossip about reckless expansion of the Cascades Line is poppycock. Our great nation was built by bold men like Southern Pacific president Hennessy who took enormous risks in the face of adversity and pressed on even when cooler heads pleaded to go easy, even when braving bankruptcy and financial ruin.”

Bell noticed that Jack Thomas, the banker, looked less than assured. Kincaid was certainly doing Hennessy’s reputation no favors tonight.

“How many cards would you like, Judge Congdon?” he asked again.

Congdon’s reply was more alarming than the Overland Limited’s sudden rough ride. “No cards, thank you. I don’t need any. I’ll stand pat.”

The other players stared. Bruce Payne, the oil attorney, said out loud what they were all thinking. “Standing pat in five-card draw is like galloping into town at the head of marauding cavalry.”

The hand was in its second round. Isaac Bell had already dealt each player five cards facedown. Congdon, “under the gun” to Bell’s immediate left in a position that ordinarily passes, had opened the first round of betting. All of the men playing in the palatial stateroom except for Payne had called the steel baron’s first-round bet. Charles Kincaid, seated to Bell’s immediate right, had impetuously raised that bet, forcing the players who had stayed in to throw more money in the pot. Gold coins had rung mutedly on the felt tabletop as all the players, including Bell, had called the raise, largely because Kincaid had been playing with a noticeable lack of good sense.

With the first round of betting complete, the players were permitted to discard one, two, or three cards and draw replacements to improve their hands. Judge Congdon’s announcement that he already had all the cards he needed, thank you, and would stand pat, made no one happy. By claiming that he needed no improvement, he was suggesting that he held a winning hand already, a hand that utilized all five of his cards and would beat hands as strong as two pairs or three of a kind. That meant he held at least a straight (five cards in numerical sequence) or a straight-beating flush (five cards in the same suit) or even a full house (three of a kind plus two of a kind), a potent combination that beat a straight or a flush.

“If Mr. Bell would please deal the other gentlemen the number of cards they ask for,” gloated Congdon, who had suddenly lost interest in the subjects of labor strife and train wrecks, “I am anxious to open the next round of betting.”

Bell asked, “Cards, Kenny?” And Bloom, who was nowhere near as rich in coal as Congdon was in steel, asked for three cards with little hope.

Jack Thomas took two cards, hinting that he might already hold three of a kind. But it was more likely, Bell decided, that he held a moderate pair and had kept an ace kicker in the desperate hope of drawing two more aces. If he really had trips, he would have raised on the first round.

The next man, Douglas Moser, the patrician New England textile-mill owner, said he would draw one card, which might be two pair but was a probably a hopeful straight or flush. Bell had seen enough of his play to judge him as too wealthy to care enough to play to win. That left Senator Kincaid, to Bell’s immediate right.

Kincaid said, “I’ll stand pat, too.”

Judge Congdon’s eyebrows, which were rough as strands of wire rope, rose a full inch. And several men exclaimed out loud. Two pat hands in the same round of draw poker was unheard of.

Bell was as surprised as the rest of the men. He had established already that Senator Kincaid cheated when he could by skillfully dealing from the bottom of the deck. But Kincaid hadn’t dealt this hand, Bell had. As unusual as a pat hand was, if Kincaid had one it was due to genuine luck, not double-dealing.

“The last time I saw two pat hands,” said Jack Thomas, “it ended in gunfire.”

“Fortunately,” said Moser, “no one at this table is armed.”

Which was not true, Bell had noticed. The double-dealing Senator had a derringer tugging the cloth of his side pocket. A sensible precaution, Bell supposed, for men in public life since McKinley was shot.

Bell said, “Dealer takes two,” discarded two cards, dealt himself two replacements, and put down the deck. “Opener bets,” he said. “I believe that was you, Judge Congdon.”

Old James Congdon, showing more yellow teeth than a timber wolf, smiled past Bell at Senator Kincaid. “I will bet the pot.”

They were playing pot limit, which meant that the only restriction on any one bet was the amount on the table at that moment. Congdon’s bet said that while he was surprised by Kincaid’s pat hand, he did not fear it, suggesting he had a very powerful hand, more likely a full house rather than a straight or a flush. Bruce Payne, who looked extremely happy to be out of the hand, helpfully counted the pot, and announced, in his thin, reedy voice, “In round numbers, your pot bet will be three thousand six hundred dollars.”

Joseph Van Dorn had taught Isaac Bell to gauge fortunes in terms of what a workingman earned in a day. He had taken him to the toughest saloon in Chicago and watched approvingly as his well-dressed apprentice won a couple of fistfights. Then he steered Bell’s attention to the customers lining up for the free lunch. Clearly, the scion of a Boston banking family and a graduate of Yale had insights into the thinking apparatus of the privileged, the boss had noted with a smile. But a detective had to understand the other ninety-eight percent of the population, too. How did a man think when he had no money in his pocket? What did a man do who had nothing to lose but his fear?

The thirty-six hundred dollars in the pot for just this hand was more money than Judge Congdon’s steelworkers made in six years.

“I bet three thousand six hundred,” said Congdon, shoving all the coins in front of him to the center of the table and tossing in a red baize sack with more gold coins in it that thunked heavily on the felt.

Ken Bloom, Jack Thomas, and Douglas Moser folded their cards hurriedly.

“I call your three thousand six hundred,” said Senator Kincaid. “And I raise the pot. Ten thousand eight hundred dollars.” Eighteen years’ wages.

“The line must be very grateful to you,” said Congdon, needling the Senator about the railroad stock with which legislators notoriously were bribed.

“The line gets its money’s worth,” Kincaid replied with a smile.

“Or you would have us believe that your pat hand is very pat indeed.”

“Pat enough to raise. What are you going to do, Judge? The bet is ten thousand eight hundred dollars to you.”

Isaac Bell interrupted. “I believe the bet is to me.”

“OH, I AM TERRIBLY sorry, Mr. Bell. We skipped your turn to fold your cards.”

“That’s all right, Senator. I saw you just barely catch the train at Ogden. You’re probably still in a rush.”

“I thought I saw a detective hanging off the side. Dangerous work, Mr. Bell.”

“Not until a criminal hammers on one’s fingers.”

“The bet,” growled Judge Congdon impatiently, “is my three thousand six hundred dollars plus Senator Kincaid’s ten thousand eight hundred dollars, which makes the bet to Mr. Bell fourteen thousand four hundred dollars.”

Payne interrupted to intone, “The pot, which includes Senator Kincaid’s call, is now twenty-one thousand six hundred dollars.”

Payne’s calculations were hardly necessary. Even the richest, most carefree men at the table were aware that twenty-one thousand six hundred dollars was enough money to purchase the locomotive hauling their train and maybe one of the Pullmans.

“Mr. Bell,” said Judge Congdon. “We await your response.”

“I call your bet, Judge, and Senator Kincaid’s ten-thousand-eight-hundred-dollar raise,” said Bell, “making the pot thirty-six thousand dollars, which I raise.”

“You raise?”

“Thirty-six thousand dollars.”

Bell’s reward was the pleasure of seeing the jaws of a United States senator and the richest steel baron in America drop in unison.

“The pot is now seventy-two thousand dollars,” calculated Mr. Payne.

A deep silence pervaded the stateroom. All that could be heard was the muffled clatter of the wheels. Judge Congdon’s wrinkled hand crept into his breast pocket and emerged with a bank check. He took a gold fountain pen from another pocket, uncapped it, and slowly wrote a number on his check. Then he signed his name, blew on the paper to dry the ink, and smiled.

“I call your thirty-six-thousand-dollar raise, Mr. Bell, and the Senator’s ten thousand eight hundred, which by now seems a paltry sum, and I raise one hundred eighteen thousand eight hundred dollars … Senator Kincaid, it’s to you. My raise and Mr. Bell’s raise means it will cost you one hundred fifty-four thousand eight hundred dollars to stay in the hand.”

“Good God,” said Payne.

“Whatcha gonna do, Charlie?” asked Congdon. “One hundred fifty-four thousand eight hundred dollars if you want to play.”

“Call,” Kincaid said stiffly, scribbling the number on his calling card and tossing it on the heap of gold.

“No raise?” Congdon mocked.

“You heard me.”

Congdon turned his dry smile on Bell. “Mr. Bell, my raise was one hundred eighteen thousand eight hundred dollars.”

Bell smiled back, concealing the thought that merely to call would put a deep dent in his personal fortune. To raise would deepen it dangerously.

Judge James Congdon was one of the richest men in America. If Bell did raise, there was nothing to stop the man from raising him back and wiping him out.