The Gangster by Clive Cussler
The crypt had another door, opposite the one they had entered. Bell jimmied it open and they found themselves in a narrow, low-ceilinged passage between mortuary vaults. A bare electric light bulb hung from the ceiling at the far end, illuminating a flight of stone steps.
Bell whispered, “Wally, you cover me here. Harry, go back out, around the corner, and watch the front of the church.”
Bell mounted the steps.
He cracked open a door at the top and peered into the church. Despite the late hour, there was a scattering of worshippers kneeling in the pews. The front door was closed to the cold. The altar and choir seats were empty. Candles flickered in an alcove on the other side of the pews. There, an old woman in a head scarf waited her turn at a confessional booth, and nothing looked different than Bell would expect in an ordinary church in a city neighborhood.
He stepped back from the door and turned to start down the steps. Then he saw what looked like a cupboard door: a narrow slab of hinged wood. It was not locked. He turned sideways to fit his shoulders through the opening and stepped up into a cramped space that had a bench and grillwork that admitted light. He sat on the bench and looked through the grille into a similar booth. It had an open door through which he could see a black velvet rope that blocked the entrance from the pews.
Bell had already figured out that he was sitting inside a confessional booth. But it took a moment to orient himself. This was not the confessional where the old woman waited in the alcove across the pews but another in a corresponding alcove on his side. He sat there a few moments, pondering what it meant. The door to his side was closed. He was in the booth where the priest listened. Suddenly, a man scurried into the alcove and stepped over the rope.
With his broken nose and mangled ear, he could only be Vito Rizzo of the Salata Gang. Rizzo hurried into the booth beside Bell’s and closed the door, and Isaac Bell realized that Antonio Branco was an even a greater twisted genius than he had imagined. Branco commanded his gangsters from this booth at the end of the tunnel between his store and this church. They “confessed” in complete secrecy, and he offered “absolution” in complete secrecy. Best of all for the mastermind, the gangsters never saw their Boss’s face.
Rizzo was trembling. He looked terrified. He spoke, suddenly, in Italian.
Isaac Bell drew his gun.
But why was the hard-as-nails gangster so scared? Because, Bell realized, Rizzo was new to this. This might be only his second “confession” since his boss Salata was killed. Only his second direct contact with a mysterious boss.
Bell pressed his handkerchief to his lips.
“Talk American,” he muttered.
Through the grille, he saw Rizzo’s eyes widen with surprise. But Bell had guessed right. Rizzo was too scared to question his boss. “O.K. I know good American. Forgive me, Father, I sinned . . . I’m sorry I missed confession last week. The cops were after me. So I didn’t get your orders . . .”
“Go on.”
“All I know is, Salata’s dead. I don’t know who takes over.”
“You,” said Bell.
“Thank you! Thank you, padrone—I mean, Father. Thank you, I’ll do good, I promise . . . Can I ask ya something?”
“What?” said Bell.
“There’s funny talk on the street about the Branco store blowing up. Does this have anything to do with us?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know. I hear maybe Branco is Black Hand. Is that so?”
“What if he is?” asked Bell.
“I don’t know.”
Bell let silence build between them. Rizzo started fidgeting, tugging his mangled ear. Bell spoke suddenly.
“Did you do what I told you last?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what you did.”
“I did what you said.”
“Tell me exactly what you did.”
“I went to Storm King. I opened a saloon. I got my keys scaring the pick and shovel men. And all that time I waited for the guy to come with the sign.”
“What sign?”
“The sign you said to look for.”
“Which?”
“The one you said. The pay token with the mark.”
“Did he come?”
“Yeah. I did everything he told me.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? I told you to stick close.”
“No you didn’t.”
Bell let a silence build. Rizzo broke it.
“You told me to do what he said. I gave him what he wanted. I ain’t seen him since.”
“What did he want?”
“Clothes, food, stick of dynamite.”
“You must know where he went.”
“I don’t know.”
“When did he come?”
“Four days ago.”
“And you haven’t seen him since?”
“No. He left.”
Bell sat silent. He had learned a lot, though hardly enough. But he doubted that Rizzo knew any more. The “guy with the sign” could be Branco or not, but even if he was Branco, Rizzo couldn’t find him. Still, not a bad night’s work, and Bell decided he had to act as if Branco was attempting to make contact with J. B. Culp. For if he was, President Roosevelt was still in danger.
It was time to shift his Black Hand Squad up to Storm King.
“What do you want me to do, Boss?”
“I want you to raise your hands.”
“What?”
“My son, twelve inches from your head is the muzzle of a .45 automatic.”
“What?”
“Raise your hands.”
“What did you say?”
“In your fondest prayers, it won’t be a flesh wound. Elevate!”
“Who are you?”
“Bell. Van Dorn Agency.”
The Black Hand gangster shouted a string of curses.
Bell sprang from his booth, threw open the confessor’s door, and pressed his gun barrel inside Rizzo’s good ear.
“Such language in church!”
33
“I hope you weren’t seeking privacy, Mr. Bell, but there isn’t a restaurant man in New York who would seat such a beautiful woman out of sight.”
Rector’s, the big, bright, loud Broadway lobster palace, was just around the corner from the Knickerbocker Hotel. The proprietor, an old friend of Joseph Van Dorn’s from Chicago, had seated Marion Morgan at a highly visible banquet table ordinarily reserved for Broadway actresses.
Bell said, “Convey my apologies to any patrons whose view I block . . . We’ll start with champagne. Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé.”
“I suspected as much, Mr. Bell. It’s on its way to the table.”
Bell and bottle arrived simultaneously.
“Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé?” said Marion. “What are you celebrating?”
“Dinner with the prettiest girl in New York. And the news that we nailed one of Branco’s top lieutenants.”
“Congratulations.”
He took his seat opposite. “Marion, I’ve never seen you lovelier.”
“Thank you, Isaac.”
Bell heard an uncharacteristic constraint in her voice. “You sound anxious. Shall I have us moved to a less noticeable table?”
“If I didn’t want to be noticed, I would not have bought a dress of cobalt blue.”
“Something is troubling you.”
She returned a tight smile. “You know me so well, don’t you?”
“If you’re worried about me, don’t be. My memory’s tip-top; I’m completely over the stupor, or coma, or whatever the devil the medicos call several solid nights’ sleep.”
Marion passed an envelope across the table. “
Bell recognized the stationery even before he read the address.
Signora Marion Morgan
The Fiancée of Isaac Bell
Knickerbocker Hotel
Flushed with fury, Bell plunged his hand into his boot.
“People,” Marion warned with a significant glance at the full restaurant. She passed him an oyster fork, and with a grateful nod Bell used its wide tine to slit the envelope.
The silhouettes of a black hand, a revolver, and a skull pierced by a dagger were drawn with exceptional skill, the work of an artist. The wording of the threat was densely baroque, the threat itself, grotesque.
Dearest Signora Marion Morgan,
You have in your feminine power to persuade Isaac Bell to convince the highest authorities to act in accordance with listening to reason. Only you, beautiful lady, can make Bell entreat the powers that are to act for the goodness of all.
Bombing Catskill Aqueduct must be prevented.
This will require one million dollars to be gathered for necessary payments to prevent attack. Radicals and agitators and criminals are banded together. The City cannot protect the aqueduct. Water Supply Board helpless.
The Black Hand stands beside you. Together we stop tragedy before it befalls. Pay part day after next hundred thousand dollar at Storm King Siphon Shaft.
Fully aware that “Dearest Signora” and “in your feminine power” and “beautiful lady” were phrases deliberately calculated to set him off half cocked, Isaac Bell still had to fight hard to douse his rage. The intent of Antonio Branco’s poisonous message was the same as a threat to bomb a Little Italy pushcart—sow panic. At least, thought Bell, it was exactly what he had predicted: a Black Hand letter to rival all Black Hand letters.
Did it mean that President Roosevelt was in the clear? Was the assassination plot that Brewster Claypool had set in motion for J. B. Culp no longer active? Just the opposite. Antonio Branco had landed on his feet. All four feet, as the saying went.
“Why are you smiling?” asked Marion.
“Am I?”
“Like a timber wolf. Why?”
“Only in America.”
“What do you mean?”
“An immigrant gangster shakes hands with a blue-blood tycoon.”
“Antonio Branco and J. B. Culp?”
Bell tossed the letter on the tablecloth. “This pretty much confirms what Vito Rizzo ‘confessed.’ The man he helped at Storm King was Branco himself. He’s probably in Culp’s mansion by now, warming his feet on the hearth.”
“Why would a man as rich and powerful as Culp shelter a criminal?”
“Each offers what the other wants. Branco wants power. Culp wants the President dead.”
Marion picked up the letter and read it.
“What is this about?” she asked, and quoted: “‘The City cannot protect the aqueduct.’”
“Branco is reminding us that it is nearly impossible to guard anything a hundred miles long.”
“What about this? ‘Water Supply Board helpless’?”
“Same thing . . . Except, funny you ask . . . Grady in Research said that initially there was a huge battle in New York whether to make the aqueduct a City-operated public project or a privately owned enterprise that charged the City for the water. The City won, but it was close-fought. You can bet the losers hate the Water Supply Board.”
“Was Culp the loser?”
“It was fought by proxies. Shell companies. Could have been. Who knows?”
“I wonder why Branco wants the money delivered at the Storm King Shaft. Where is that?”
“Fifty miles up the river at Cornwall Landing.”
“Do you suppose that the ‘powers that are’ received their own letters like this?”
“I’m sure the Water Supply Board and the Mayor both got them. Ours was probably an afterthought to get my goat.”
“Will they pay?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“But Branco dynamited Giuseppe Vella’s church job, and he bombed Banco LaCava. If he follows his pattern, he will attack.”
“The only question is where,” Bell agreed.
Marion said, “Storm King Shaft.”
“How do you reckon that?”
“An explosion or sabotage anywhere else could be deemed an accident. But a bomb at the same place he names in the letter would leave no doubt that he means business.”
Bell looked at his fiancée with deeper admiration than ever. “You’d be a crackersjack extortionist.”
“It has the ring of truth, doesn’t it?”
“It does indeed.”
Bell signaled a waiter.
“Pack up our dinner in a picnic basket. And ask Mr. Rector if he would use his influence to book us a last-minute state room on the night boat to Storm King.”
Marion put on her gloves and picked up her bag. “Isn’t there a Van Dorn Detective rule against bringing friends to gunfights?”
“This infernal letter makes you a candidate for round-the-clock Van Dorn protection—I guarantee no gunfights in our state room.”
“How about fireworks?”
Drill heads battered the rock a thousand feet under the Hudson River. Boring into the circular heading, they scattered a pink powder of pulverized granite. Water seeping from minute seams in the vaulted ceiling turned the powder to a sticky grime that caked helmets, slickers, boots, and faces.
Isaac Bell, introduced by the siphon contractor as a newly hired foreman learning the ropes, was no stranger to digging underground, having masqueraded as a coal miner on the Striker case. Granite, however, was a lot harder than coal; the fourteen-foot-high pressure tunnel was of palatial dimensions compared to a mine shaft; and granite grime, unlike black coal dust, colored the hard-rock gang working the 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift as pink as marzipan pigs.
Bell had a Van Dorn detective operating the shaft hoist cage and picked men stationed around the shaft house. They were backed up by the contractor’s own guards, while Water Supply Board Police roamed the perimeter. Archie Abbott had sped up on a morning train to escort Marion safely back to the Knickerbocker; Helen Mills was standing by with a newly issued sidearm that Bell knew the general’s daughter was extremely capable of using; nor did he doubt that if the Black Hand tried anything, they would never run up against a more levelheaded duo in New York.
Marion Morgan and Archie Abbott’s train to New York City hugged the riverbank at West Point. Rendered pewter by an overcast sky, the Hudson looked as cold as the stone fortifications. The sky threatened snow, and ice was hardening on still water in coves and creeks. Marion was thinking she had better buy a warm winter coat when Archie suddenly spoke up.
“I met a widow.”
“How old a widow?”
“Twenty-two . . . She married young.”
“Do you like her?”
“I’m besotted.”
“That’s a dangerous condition, Archie.”
“Call it infatuated.”
Marion laughed. “That’s worse.”
Archie looked at her, quite seriously. “It’s never happened to me before.”
Though younger than Archie, Marion felt that he was opening up to her like a big sister and she answered bluntly, “Besotted and infatuated imply a strong dose of foolishness.”
“I know that.”
“What’s her name?”
“Francesca.”
“Beautiful name.”
“It fits her. She is intoxicatingly beautiful.”
“Besotting, infatuating, and intoxicating? Francesca better look out for the Anti-Saloon League.”
“She doesn’t drink. Won’t touch a drop. I’ve become a teetotaler around her.” He grinned. “Drunk on love, instead.”
Marion said, “Speaki
“Oh, you’ll love her. She’s really interesting. She can talk a blue streak about anything.”
Helen Mills met them at the Jersey City Terminal. On the ferry, she explained that Mr. Van Dorn had arranged for the Knickerbocker to move Marion into a suite with two bedrooms, the second for Helen.
“I hope you don’t mind a roommate.”
“It will be like being back at school.”
Archie escorted them to the hotel and rushed off to see Francesca.
At the end of the long shift, the hard-rock gang packed their round of bore holes with dynamite. They moved the short distance to the shaft, took cover, and shot the explosives with electric detonators. With a muffled rumble, the granite they had drilled all day was blown from the face and the siphon tunnel was put through another couple of yards. They boarded the shaft hoist cage for a lift to the surface, too tired, as one man put it, “even for drinking.”
Isaac Bell stayed below to watch the mucking crew.
Before the smoke had cleared, the muckers raced with picks and shovels to the heading and started loading the dynamited rock into cars hauled by an electric locomotive. All but their hard-driving Irish foreman were Italian laborers. Any one of them could be Antonio Branco’s saboteur. Or each could be exactly what he looked like: a hardworking immigrant shoveling his guts out for a dollar seventy-five a day.
The muckers were just finishing clearing rock when water suddenly gushed into the heading. A water-bearing seam had opened, disturbed, perhaps, by the last shift’s blast.
“Il fiume!” cried a laborer.
The others laughed, and the Irishman explained to Bell. “Ignorant wop thinks the river’s busting through the roof.”
“Why are they laughing at him?”
“They’re not as dumb as him. They know there’s nine hundred feet of shale and a hundred feet of solid granite between the roof and the river. It ain’t river water. It’s just water that was in the rocks. How much you think it’s running? Hundred gallons a minute?”