The Gangster (26 page)

“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. “I thought I should let you open this.”

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, “Speaking from my own experience of meeting Isaac, I can only say one word: Congratulations! I look forward to meeting Francesca.”

“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.