The Gangster by Clive Cussler
“Where’d you get an ice yacht?”
“Bought myself one in Poughkeepsie.”
“Who other than you knows how to sail it?”
“Archie Abbott.”
“I wondered where that fool had gotten to. What else are you doing?”
“I have a tapper up a pole listening to the Raven’s Eyrie telephone.”
“Outside the walls?” asked Van Dorn.
“Yes, sir. Outside.”
“What about telegraph?”
“It’s all in cipher.”
“I would lay off the telegraph wire. Culp conducts business from the estate. Telephone tapping is one thing; the law’s so murky. But we don’t want to be liable to charges of telegraph tapping for inside knowledge of Culp’s stock market trades. What else?”
“What else would the Chief Investigator recommend?” Bell asked his old mentor.
Van Dorn sat behind his desk silently for a while. He gazed into the middle distance, then made a tent with his fingers and stared inside it. At last he spoke. “Go back to that woman.”
“Francesca?”
“Find out what she didn’t tell you.”
Bell was itching to return to his detectives watching Raven’s Eyrie and guarding the siphon tunnel dig. “She already admitted to every crime in the book.”
Van Dorn said, “She knew she was headed to prison, at best, and more likely the hangman. She may have talked your ear off, but she’s drowning, Isaac. She had to hold on to something, something for herself.”
Archie Abbott woke before dawn in a cold bed in a cold room. He pulled on heavy underclothing and over it a snug suit of linen. Then he donned thick woolen hose, trousers, and waistcoat. He encased his feet in high felt boots. Finally, he buttoned a fur jacket over the woolen waistcoat and a pea jacket over the fur. He covered his head and ears with a fur hat and pulled goggles over his eyes.
He stepped outside, crossed the New York Central Railroad tracks, and hurried down to the frozen river. His ice yacht waited in a boathouse at the edge of the cove. The runners were frozen to the ice. He kicked them loose and pushed the yacht outside.
The breeze in the shelter of the cove was barely enough to stir the pennant at the masthead. But Isaac Bell had commissioned an exotic doozy from J. B. Culp’s own builder, with fifty extra feet of sail and lead ballast to try to keep from flipping upside down in a squall, and that breath of air started it moving like a restless horse. Abbott climbed hastily onto the car—the cockpit at the back end—and grabbed the tiller just as the yacht bolted onto the open river.
A bitter breeze struck the rigid sail. Abbott sheeted it in tight and concentrated on the tiller to dodge oversize ice hummocks, rocks along the shore, and wind skaters flashing by with sails on their backs. She was a light-footed gazelle. She felt like she was making thirty miles an hour until they overtook a New York Central express. Judging by the locomotive’s flattened smoke, Isaac Bell’s ice yacht was cracking forty-five.
When the sun cleared Breakneck Mountain and cast thin, cold rays on Storm King on the other side of the river, Archie turned the boat toward Raven’s Eyrie. Unlike the other Hudson River estates where lawns rose from the water’s edge, Culp’s place was easily recognized by the fir trees that screened its walls.
He crossed the frozen water in a flash and commenced the first of many cold, cold passes by Culp’s dock. Some Van Dorn had to freeze half to death keeping vigil and Abbott was the one, atoning for his stupidity and staying out of sight of the Boss on the slim chance that Antonio Branco may suddenly embark by ice yacht. At least Isaac hadn’t condemned him to be one of the operatives on hogshead duty—watching from inside the barrel left at the service entrance and spelling each other only in the dark—though he would have if Archie wasn’t too tall to fit.
Other boats started skittering down the river, flying Poughkeepsie and Hudson River Ice Yacht Club burgees and speeding, like his, on the edge of a smashup. Archie joined in impromptu races with them and the sail skaters. Bell had issued strict orders not to draw attention by winning races, for word of a new fast boat would get back to J. B. Culp in a flash. But it was still a welcome change of pace and a natural cover for the Van Dorn watch.
The visiting room in the women’s section of the Tombs was divided by a wall broken with a small mesh-covered window. Francesca Kennedy looked so gaunt that Isaac Bell suspected their steak dinner had been the last she had eaten. Her face was pale, her expression sullen.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came for what you didn’t tell me,” Bell said bluntly.
“Didn’t I give you enough to send me to the gallows? Oh, what am I talking about? I keep forgetting.”
“Forgetting what?”
“It’s not the hangman anymore. It’s the electric chair.”
“I came—”
“Go away, Isaac. Anything I didn’t tell you I didn’t want to tell you.”
She was seated on a stool. Bell indicated the stool on his side. “May I sit down?”
She ignored him.
Bell pulled up the stool and sat face-to-face with her, inches from the mesh. “I came to change your mind.”
“Forget it.”
“I’ve spoken with some men in the prosecutor’s office. It is possible that I can persuade the District Attorney to offer you some kind of a break.”
“You want to give me a break? Get me out of here.”
“I can’t.”
“Let me go home.”
“I can’t.”
“So I can’t remember what I didn’t tell you.”
“I can’t get you out of jail, Francesca. No one can. But maybe I can make it better.”
She glanced about her. “Better than this wouldn’t be hard.”
“I’m thinking of much better. If we can convince a judge that you should be in an asylum.”
“I don’t think the bug house is better.”
“There are still some excellent private sanitariums.”
“Really? How excellent?”
“For wealthy patients. Very wealthy patients.”
“I’m not wealthy, Isaac. And I’m sure as heck not very wealthy.”
“I can arrange it,” said Bell.
“Pay out of your own pocket?”
“The agency will pay at first. At some point after we seize Branco’s assets, we can tap into them.”
“Won’t the government keep them?”
“Not if the Van Dorn Agency deserves a bounty. And certainly not if we, in essence, pay you for your testimony against Branco with Branco’s money.”
“That would be ironic.”
“How so?”
“Is this on the square?” she asked, and for the first time she let Bell see that she was scared.
“Yes.”
“You’ll really do it?”
“You have my word you will get a square deal.”
Francesca Kennedy nodded. “I’ll take your word . . . Shake on it.” She slipped her fingers through the mesh. Bell squeezed them before the matron interrupted with a sharp “No hands!”
Francesca flashed her a pleasant smile and said, “Sorry.” To Bell she whispered, “It’s ironic, because Branco used to be a regular customer.”
“You knew Branco? You said you didn’t.”
“Not as the Boss . . . I didn’t lie to you, Isaac. I just didn’t tell you everything.”
“When was this?” asked Bell, thinking to himself, Bless Joseph Van Dorn for steering him back to her. The “old man” had invented the best tricks in the detective book.
Francesca took a deep breath. “Back when I was streetwalking. He set me up in an apartment. All I knew was, he was a rich grocer. Gave me this little apartment and a few bucks a week if I’d stay off the streets. I said to him, ‘What are you, jealous of my other cust
omers?’ and he said, ‘You’ll get killed on the street and you’re too valuable to get killed.’ Fine with me. Nicest thing anyone ever said to me. Besides, he was right. You die on the street; it’s just a matter of time. Anyhow, ’til he showed up at the Waldorf, I hadn’t seen him in ages—not since I started ‘confessions’ with the Boss. But he had kept sending the dough and paying the rent.”
“Didn’t you recognize his voice?”
“Not through the grille. And he talked different, too. Different words. I feel kind of dumb, but I never thought for a second he was the same man.”
“Where was the apartment?” asked Bell.
“I still have it. Or did ’til now.”
“Would he hide there?”
Francesca shrugged. “He never came to my place. When he wanted me, we’d meet at an apartment he kept on Prince Street.”
“His home that blew up?”
“No, he didn’t live there. I never saw his home. Our place was over near Broadway. He just kept it for me. And whoever else I guess he had.”
“What was the address?”
Antonio Branco returned to Raven’s Eyrie the way he had left, through the cave. His handsome face was battered from the fight with Bell and Abbott, both eyes blackened, his nose swollen.
“Detectives are watching my safe house.”
“You’ve become a less valuable asset,” J. B. Culp shot back.
“It means nothing.”
“You are turning into a liability.”
Culp was ready to pick up a gun and shoot him. End this whole thing before it got worse. He had his story ready: Italian fugitive snuck in here. I caught him trying to steal my guns. Thank God I got the drop on him. Reward? No thank you, give the money to charity.
He was about to turn around and pluck the Bisley off the wall when Branco surprised him by answering mildly, “I am moving my business to Canada.”
“Canada?”
“I have padrone business in Montreal. The railroads are hungry for labor. The Italian colony grows larger every day, and many owe me their place in it. A good place to lay low.”
“What about our deal?”
“I’ll stay here until we’ve finished Roosevelt. After, I’ll run my end from Canada. It’s easy to travel back and forth. The border is wide open.”
“What about your big idea to discredit the city aqueduct? How can you do that in Canada?”
Branco spoke mildly again, but his answer made no sense. “Would you look at your watch?”
“What?”
“Tell me the time.”
“Time to make a new arrangement, like I’ve been telling you all morning.”
“What time is it?” Branco repeated coldly.
Culp tugged a thick gold chain. “Two minutes to eleven.”
Branco raised two fingers. “Wait.”
“What? Listen here, Branco—”
“Bring your field glasses.”
Branco strode into an alcove framed with tusks and out a door onto a balcony. The day was cold and overcast. Snow dusted the hills. The frozen river was speckled with ice yachts and skate sailors skimming the glassy surface. He gazed expectantly at Breakneck Mountain, three-quarters of a mile opposite his vantage on Storm King.
Culp joined him with binoculars. “What the devil—”
The Italian stilled him with an imperious gesture. “Watch the uptake shaft.”
A heavy fog of steam and coal smoke loomed over the lift machinery at the top of the shaft, the engine house, and the narrow-gauge muck train. Culp raised his field glasses and had just focused on the mouth of the siphon uptake when suddenly laborers scattered and engineers leapt from their machines.
“What’s going on?”
Branco said, “Remember who I am.”
A crimson bolt of fire pierced the smoke and steam and shot to the clouds. The sound of the explosion crossed the river seconds later and reverberated back and forth between Breakneck Mountain and Storm King.
Culp watched men running like ants, then focused on the wreckage of the elevator house. It appeared that the lift cage itself had fallen to the bottom of the thousand-foot shaft, which was gushing black smoke.
“What in blazes was that?”
“Four hundred pounds of dynamite to discredit the city.”
39
The New York newspapers arrived on the morning train.
OVERTURNED LANTERN SET OFF AQUEDUCT NITROGLYCERIN FUSE
The overturning of a lantern at the Catskill Aqueduct Hudson River Siphon at Storm King ignited a fuse that set off 400 pounds of dynamite destroying the east siphon uptake engine house and elevator.
“The papers got it wrong. As usual,” Wally Kisley told Isaac Bell. “The contractor runs an up-to-date enterprise. There weren’t any fuses to ignite. They fire the shots electrically.”
“Are you certain it was sabotage?” asked Bell.
“Sabotage with a capital S. Very slick timing device. You gotta hand it to these Eye-talians, Isaac. They are masters of dynamite.”
Kisley sat down abruptly. Bell reckoned that the long trek down to the tunnel and back up by makeshift bosun’s chairs and rickety ladders had exhausted him. But to Bell’s astonishment, the tough old bird covered his face with his hands.
“You O.K., Wally?”
Kisley took a breath. “I can’t claim I’m a stranger to carnage.”
Bell nodded. Kisley and Mack Fulton and Joe Van Dorn had worked on the Haymarket Massacre case to determine who had thrown the bomb, and, in the ensuing twenty years, scores more bombing cases. “Goes with the job,” he said softly.
“The men were hammered. The tunnel looked like a reefer car leaving the slaughterhouse.”
“The wooden framework of the engine house crumbled and beams crashed downward toward the machinery that operates the elevator. One beam struck a brake handle, releasing the heavy wooden cage, which crashed at full speed downward to the bottom of the shaft. Twisted into a mass of debris, it choked the passage and blotted out the air and light.
“The contractor assures the public that the shaft itself was not damaged.”
J. B. Culp laughed. “No one will believe that.”
“That they had to print the lie,” Branco agreed, “tells us they are in terror.”
“Asked whether the explosion confirmed speculation about Black Hand letters threatening to attack the water system, the contractor answered vehemently, ‘No. This is the Catskill Water Supply, not some poor devil’s pushcart.’
“The Mayor concurred, saying, ‘The Water Supply Board Police have investigated thoroughly and find absolutely not one shred of evidence to support such speculation. It was an accident, pure and simple, a terrible accident, and the faster it is cleaned up and order restored, the sooner the city will receive fresh water from the Catskills.’
“Asked to comment on talk of a strike by terrorized Italian laborers fearing another Black Hand attack, the contractor said, ‘They are paid well and treated well and have no intention of striking.’
“Tunnel work will continue as soon as the ruins are lifted out by means of horses and a windlass. Besides three Americans killed, there were among the dead numerous Italians and Negroes.”
“What were Negroes doing down in the tunnel?” asked Culp.
“Best rock drillers in the business. And the contractor keeps some around in case Italians get any ideas of striking for higher wages.”
“What about this strike they’re talking about? Labor striking would make the city look like they lost control of the job. Will they strike?”
“They’ll strike when I tell them to strike,” said Antonio Branco.
“What are you waiting for?”
“Would President Roosevelt come here to make a speech if they were on strike?”
“Good question,” Culp concede
d. “He might take a strike as a challenge . . . No, he’s too damnedly unpredictable.”
“That reminds me,” said Branco. “Can you pull wires to have the Italian Consul General invited to the ceremony?”
“Of course. I can’t promise you he’ll accept.”
“He’ll accept. He’s got his hands full with immigration complaints. He will make friends anywhere he can. And to be invited to hear the President’s speech will be an honor for all Italians.”
Signora Marion Morgan
The Fiancée of Isaac Bell
Knickerbocker Hotel
Why you no believe us? Catskill Aqueduct bomb could have been prevented.
City no protect aqueduct. Water Supply Board helpless.
Black Hand stands by you. Together we stop tragedy.
Pay.
Or.
Next attack break hearts.
“This is beginning to annoy me,” said Marion Morgan.
She was feeling prison crazy, locked up in the Knickerbocker. Helen Mills was fine company, but she missed her job, the outdoors, the city streets, and, most of all, Isaac, who was working round the clock at Storm King. He had his detectives covering every base, but no matter how he tried, he could not find Antonio Branco.
“What do you want to do about them?” asked Helen.
“I wonder if Grady Forrer can help Isaac find how Branco gets in and out of Raven’s Eyrie.”
The women marched to the back of the Van Dorn offices, into the shabby rooms that housed Grady Forrer’s Research section. Scholars looked up from heaped desks. Researchers poked heads from crammed library stacks. Interviewers whispered, “I’ll call you back,” and hastily cradled their telephones.
“Welcome, ladies,” boomed Forrer, adding, sotto voce, over his shoulder, “Back to work, gents. I’ll take care of this.”
“Thank you, Grady,” said Marion Morgan. “But, in fact, we’re going to need everyone who has a few free moments to lend a hand.”
“What do you need?”
“The architects’ plans for Raven’s Eyrie.”
“Bought myself one in Poughkeepsie.”
“Who other than you knows how to sail it?”
“Archie Abbott.”
“I wondered where that fool had gotten to. What else are you doing?”
“I have a tapper up a pole listening to the Raven’s Eyrie telephone.”
“Outside the walls?” asked Van Dorn.
“Yes, sir. Outside.”
“What about telegraph?”
“It’s all in cipher.”
“I would lay off the telegraph wire. Culp conducts business from the estate. Telephone tapping is one thing; the law’s so murky. But we don’t want to be liable to charges of telegraph tapping for inside knowledge of Culp’s stock market trades. What else?”
“What else would the Chief Investigator recommend?” Bell asked his old mentor.
Van Dorn sat behind his desk silently for a while. He gazed into the middle distance, then made a tent with his fingers and stared inside it. At last he spoke. “Go back to that woman.”
“Francesca?”
“Find out what she didn’t tell you.”
Bell was itching to return to his detectives watching Raven’s Eyrie and guarding the siphon tunnel dig. “She already admitted to every crime in the book.”
Van Dorn said, “She knew she was headed to prison, at best, and more likely the hangman. She may have talked your ear off, but she’s drowning, Isaac. She had to hold on to something, something for herself.”
Archie Abbott woke before dawn in a cold bed in a cold room. He pulled on heavy underclothing and over it a snug suit of linen. Then he donned thick woolen hose, trousers, and waistcoat. He encased his feet in high felt boots. Finally, he buttoned a fur jacket over the woolen waistcoat and a pea jacket over the fur. He covered his head and ears with a fur hat and pulled goggles over his eyes.
He stepped outside, crossed the New York Central Railroad tracks, and hurried down to the frozen river. His ice yacht waited in a boathouse at the edge of the cove. The runners were frozen to the ice. He kicked them loose and pushed the yacht outside.
The breeze in the shelter of the cove was barely enough to stir the pennant at the masthead. But Isaac Bell had commissioned an exotic doozy from J. B. Culp’s own builder, with fifty extra feet of sail and lead ballast to try to keep from flipping upside down in a squall, and that breath of air started it moving like a restless horse. Abbott climbed hastily onto the car—the cockpit at the back end—and grabbed the tiller just as the yacht bolted onto the open river.
A bitter breeze struck the rigid sail. Abbott sheeted it in tight and concentrated on the tiller to dodge oversize ice hummocks, rocks along the shore, and wind skaters flashing by with sails on their backs. She was a light-footed gazelle. She felt like she was making thirty miles an hour until they overtook a New York Central express. Judging by the locomotive’s flattened smoke, Isaac Bell’s ice yacht was cracking forty-five.
When the sun cleared Breakneck Mountain and cast thin, cold rays on Storm King on the other side of the river, Archie turned the boat toward Raven’s Eyrie. Unlike the other Hudson River estates where lawns rose from the water’s edge, Culp’s place was easily recognized by the fir trees that screened its walls.
He crossed the frozen water in a flash and commenced the first of many cold, cold passes by Culp’s dock. Some Van Dorn had to freeze half to death keeping vigil and Abbott was the one, atoning for his stupidity and staying out of sight of the Boss on the slim chance that Antonio Branco may suddenly embark by ice yacht. At least Isaac hadn’t condemned him to be one of the operatives on hogshead duty—watching from inside the barrel left at the service entrance and spelling each other only in the dark—though he would have if Archie wasn’t too tall to fit.
Other boats started skittering down the river, flying Poughkeepsie and Hudson River Ice Yacht Club burgees and speeding, like his, on the edge of a smashup. Archie joined in impromptu races with them and the sail skaters. Bell had issued strict orders not to draw attention by winning races, for word of a new fast boat would get back to J. B. Culp in a flash. But it was still a welcome change of pace and a natural cover for the Van Dorn watch.
The visiting room in the women’s section of the Tombs was divided by a wall broken with a small mesh-covered window. Francesca Kennedy looked so gaunt that Isaac Bell suspected their steak dinner had been the last she had eaten. Her face was pale, her expression sullen.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came for what you didn’t tell me,” Bell said bluntly.
“Didn’t I give you enough to send me to the gallows? Oh, what am I talking about? I keep forgetting.”
“Forgetting what?”
“It’s not the hangman anymore. It’s the electric chair.”
“I came—”
“Go away, Isaac. Anything I didn’t tell you I didn’t want to tell you.”
She was seated on a stool. Bell indicated the stool on his side. “May I sit down?”
She ignored him.
Bell pulled up the stool and sat face-to-face with her, inches from the mesh. “I came to change your mind.”
“Forget it.”
“I’ve spoken with some men in the prosecutor’s office. It is possible that I can persuade the District Attorney to offer you some kind of a break.”
“You want to give me a break? Get me out of here.”
“I can’t.”
“Let me go home.”
“I can’t.”
“So I can’t remember what I didn’t tell you.”
“I can’t get you out of jail, Francesca. No one can. But maybe I can make it better.”
She glanced about her. “Better than this wouldn’t be hard.”
“I’m thinking of much better. If we can convince a judge that you should be in an asylum.”
“I don’t think the bug house is better.”
“There are still some excellent private sanitariums.”
“Really? How excellent?”
“For wealthy patients. Very wealthy patients.”
“I’m not wealthy, Isaac. And I’m sure as heck not very wealthy.”
“I can arrange it,” said Bell.
“Pay out of your own pocket?”
“The agency will pay at first. At some point after we seize Branco’s assets, we can tap into them.”
“Won’t the government keep them?”
“Not if the Van Dorn Agency deserves a bounty. And certainly not if we, in essence, pay you for your testimony against Branco with Branco’s money.”
“That would be ironic.”
“How so?”
“Is this on the square?” she asked, and for the first time she let Bell see that she was scared.
“Yes.”
“You’ll really do it?”
“You have my word you will get a square deal.”
Francesca Kennedy nodded. “I’ll take your word . . . Shake on it.” She slipped her fingers through the mesh. Bell squeezed them before the matron interrupted with a sharp “No hands!”
Francesca flashed her a pleasant smile and said, “Sorry.” To Bell she whispered, “It’s ironic, because Branco used to be a regular customer.”
“You knew Branco? You said you didn’t.”
“Not as the Boss . . . I didn’t lie to you, Isaac. I just didn’t tell you everything.”
“When was this?” asked Bell, thinking to himself, Bless Joseph Van Dorn for steering him back to her. The “old man” had invented the best tricks in the detective book.
Francesca took a deep breath. “Back when I was streetwalking. He set me up in an apartment. All I knew was, he was a rich grocer. Gave me this little apartment and a few bucks a week if I’d stay off the streets. I said to him, ‘What are you, jealous of my other cust
“Didn’t you recognize his voice?”
“Not through the grille. And he talked different, too. Different words. I feel kind of dumb, but I never thought for a second he was the same man.”
“Where was the apartment?” asked Bell.
“I still have it. Or did ’til now.”
“Would he hide there?”
Francesca shrugged. “He never came to my place. When he wanted me, we’d meet at an apartment he kept on Prince Street.”
“His home that blew up?”
“No, he didn’t live there. I never saw his home. Our place was over near Broadway. He just kept it for me. And whoever else I guess he had.”
“What was the address?”
Antonio Branco returned to Raven’s Eyrie the way he had left, through the cave. His handsome face was battered from the fight with Bell and Abbott, both eyes blackened, his nose swollen.
“Detectives are watching my safe house.”
“You’ve become a less valuable asset,” J. B. Culp shot back.
“It means nothing.”
“You are turning into a liability.”
Culp was ready to pick up a gun and shoot him. End this whole thing before it got worse. He had his story ready: Italian fugitive snuck in here. I caught him trying to steal my guns. Thank God I got the drop on him. Reward? No thank you, give the money to charity.
He was about to turn around and pluck the Bisley off the wall when Branco surprised him by answering mildly, “I am moving my business to Canada.”
“Canada?”
“I have padrone business in Montreal. The railroads are hungry for labor. The Italian colony grows larger every day, and many owe me their place in it. A good place to lay low.”
“What about our deal?”
“I’ll stay here until we’ve finished Roosevelt. After, I’ll run my end from Canada. It’s easy to travel back and forth. The border is wide open.”
“What about your big idea to discredit the city aqueduct? How can you do that in Canada?”
Branco spoke mildly again, but his answer made no sense. “Would you look at your watch?”
“What?”
“Tell me the time.”
“Time to make a new arrangement, like I’ve been telling you all morning.”
“What time is it?” Branco repeated coldly.
Culp tugged a thick gold chain. “Two minutes to eleven.”
Branco raised two fingers. “Wait.”
“What? Listen here, Branco—”
“Bring your field glasses.”
Branco strode into an alcove framed with tusks and out a door onto a balcony. The day was cold and overcast. Snow dusted the hills. The frozen river was speckled with ice yachts and skate sailors skimming the glassy surface. He gazed expectantly at Breakneck Mountain, three-quarters of a mile opposite his vantage on Storm King.
Culp joined him with binoculars. “What the devil—”
The Italian stilled him with an imperious gesture. “Watch the uptake shaft.”
A heavy fog of steam and coal smoke loomed over the lift machinery at the top of the shaft, the engine house, and the narrow-gauge muck train. Culp raised his field glasses and had just focused on the mouth of the siphon uptake when suddenly laborers scattered and engineers leapt from their machines.
“What’s going on?”
Branco said, “Remember who I am.”
A crimson bolt of fire pierced the smoke and steam and shot to the clouds. The sound of the explosion crossed the river seconds later and reverberated back and forth between Breakneck Mountain and Storm King.
Culp watched men running like ants, then focused on the wreckage of the elevator house. It appeared that the lift cage itself had fallen to the bottom of the thousand-foot shaft, which was gushing black smoke.
“What in blazes was that?”
“Four hundred pounds of dynamite to discredit the city.”
39
The New York newspapers arrived on the morning train.
OVERTURNED LANTERN SET OFF AQUEDUCT NITROGLYCERIN FUSE
The overturning of a lantern at the Catskill Aqueduct Hudson River Siphon at Storm King ignited a fuse that set off 400 pounds of dynamite destroying the east siphon uptake engine house and elevator.
“The papers got it wrong. As usual,” Wally Kisley told Isaac Bell. “The contractor runs an up-to-date enterprise. There weren’t any fuses to ignite. They fire the shots electrically.”
“Are you certain it was sabotage?” asked Bell.
“Sabotage with a capital S. Very slick timing device. You gotta hand it to these Eye-talians, Isaac. They are masters of dynamite.”
Kisley sat down abruptly. Bell reckoned that the long trek down to the tunnel and back up by makeshift bosun’s chairs and rickety ladders had exhausted him. But to Bell’s astonishment, the tough old bird covered his face with his hands.
“You O.K., Wally?”
Kisley took a breath. “I can’t claim I’m a stranger to carnage.”
Bell nodded. Kisley and Mack Fulton and Joe Van Dorn had worked on the Haymarket Massacre case to determine who had thrown the bomb, and, in the ensuing twenty years, scores more bombing cases. “Goes with the job,” he said softly.
“The men were hammered. The tunnel looked like a reefer car leaving the slaughterhouse.”
“The wooden framework of the engine house crumbled and beams crashed downward toward the machinery that operates the elevator. One beam struck a brake handle, releasing the heavy wooden cage, which crashed at full speed downward to the bottom of the shaft. Twisted into a mass of debris, it choked the passage and blotted out the air and light.
“The contractor assures the public that the shaft itself was not damaged.”
J. B. Culp laughed. “No one will believe that.”
“That they had to print the lie,” Branco agreed, “tells us they are in terror.”
“Asked whether the explosion confirmed speculation about Black Hand letters threatening to attack the water system, the contractor answered vehemently, ‘No. This is the Catskill Water Supply, not some poor devil’s pushcart.’
“The Mayor concurred, saying, ‘The Water Supply Board Police have investigated thoroughly and find absolutely not one shred of evidence to support such speculation. It was an accident, pure and simple, a terrible accident, and the faster it is cleaned up and order restored, the sooner the city will receive fresh water from the Catskills.’
“Asked to comment on talk of a strike by terrorized Italian laborers fearing another Black Hand attack, the contractor said, ‘They are paid well and treated well and have no intention of striking.’
“Tunnel work will continue as soon as the ruins are lifted out by means of horses and a windlass. Besides three Americans killed, there were among the dead numerous Italians and Negroes.”
“What were Negroes doing down in the tunnel?” asked Culp.
“Best rock drillers in the business. And the contractor keeps some around in case Italians get any ideas of striking for higher wages.”
“What about this strike they’re talking about? Labor striking would make the city look like they lost control of the job. Will they strike?”
“They’ll strike when I tell them to strike,” said Antonio Branco.
“What are you waiting for?”
“Would President Roosevelt come here to make a speech if they were on strike?”
“Good question,” Culp concede
“That reminds me,” said Branco. “Can you pull wires to have the Italian Consul General invited to the ceremony?”
“Of course. I can’t promise you he’ll accept.”
“He’ll accept. He’s got his hands full with immigration complaints. He will make friends anywhere he can. And to be invited to hear the President’s speech will be an honor for all Italians.”
Signora Marion Morgan
The Fiancée of Isaac Bell
Knickerbocker Hotel
Why you no believe us? Catskill Aqueduct bomb could have been prevented.
City no protect aqueduct. Water Supply Board helpless.
Black Hand stands by you. Together we stop tragedy.
Pay.
Or.
Next attack break hearts.
“This is beginning to annoy me,” said Marion Morgan.
She was feeling prison crazy, locked up in the Knickerbocker. Helen Mills was fine company, but she missed her job, the outdoors, the city streets, and, most of all, Isaac, who was working round the clock at Storm King. He had his detectives covering every base, but no matter how he tried, he could not find Antonio Branco.
“What do you want to do about them?” asked Helen.
“I wonder if Grady Forrer can help Isaac find how Branco gets in and out of Raven’s Eyrie.”
The women marched to the back of the Van Dorn offices, into the shabby rooms that housed Grady Forrer’s Research section. Scholars looked up from heaped desks. Researchers poked heads from crammed library stacks. Interviewers whispered, “I’ll call you back,” and hastily cradled their telephones.
“Welcome, ladies,” boomed Forrer, adding, sotto voce, over his shoulder, “Back to work, gents. I’ll take care of this.”
“Thank you, Grady,” said Marion Morgan. “But, in fact, we’re going to need everyone who has a few free moments to lend a hand.”
“What do you need?”
“The architects’ plans for Raven’s Eyrie.”