The Gangster (Isaac Bell #9)(20)

“I can’t read him yet. But whatever Antonio Branco wants, he’s capable of getting. A formidable man. Angry man, too, though he covers it. Mostly”—Bell considered Branco’s tale of the tramp and the railroad cop and added—“he’s also a first class liar.”



Wally Kisley came in the back entrance, still in the costume of a rag collector with dirty hands and face. “I got something for you.”

From his rag sack he pulled a red tube that looked like a dynamite stick. Detectives nearby edged away. Kisley tossed it to them and they dove for cover. It bounced on the floor with a hollow thunk.

Kisley grinned. “I emptied the nitro.”

Bell asked, “Where’d you find it?”

“Under LaCava’s safe.”

“Why blow the safe? It was open during the day.”

“I think it was part of the bundle that blew the wall. But it misfired. Got blown through the wall and bounced under the safe.”

“What does it do for us?”

“Read the name.”

“Stevens.”

“You can’t buy the Stevens brand in New York City. It’s made in New Jersey by a subsidiary of Dupont’s Eastern Dynamite Company and distributed to small-town hardware stores. It’s a short stick, shorter than what you’d find in mining or big excavation jobs. For farmers blowing stumps.”

“Where’d the Black Hand get ahold of it?”

“Some hardware or feedstore in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, I’d guess. Point is, they didn’t buy or steal it in New York City.”

Bell remembered that Giuseppe Vella claimed that his foreman, Russo, had discovered the overcharge too late to stop the water main explosion. It was a long shot, but he wondered whether Russo had noticed in the confusion the type of dynamite in the overcharge?

Vella had no telephone since the Combustibles Department put him out of business. Bell hurried downtown and found him at his house on 13th Street. Vella greeted him warily, and Bell guessed that he had paid the ransom the Black Hand had demanded for the rescued Maria. He showed Vella the empty Stevens dynamite tube.

“Have you ever seen this brand?”

“In the countryside.”

“Not in New York?”

“Not on my jobs.”

“Did your foreman Russo happen to say anything about the dynamite in the overcharge?”

“He was excited, yelling, ‘Big-a bang! Big-a bang!’”

“But when he disconnected the detonating wires, would he have noticed what brand it was?”

Vella shrugged. “Who knows?”

Only Russo, thought Bell. “Is it possible, Mr. Vella, that Russo himself laid the overcharge for the Black Hand?”

Vella shrugged. “Who knows? Anything is possible.”

“How likely?”

“Not likely. Sante Russo is a good man.”

“Do you know where he is?”

Vella hesitated.

Bell said, “I am hunting the criminals who ruined your job. The criminals who kidnapped your daughter. Russo can help me find them.”

“How?”

“It is important that I learn if this is the same dynamite that ruined your job.”

Vella nodded. “O.K. I understand . . . Russo sent a telegram asking would I wire him the money he was owed for his last week of work. His salary.”

“Where did you send the money?”

“What makes you think I paid him?”

“You’re an honest man, Giuseppe Vella. It would never occur to you not to pay a man who worked for you. Even if he’s on the run and can’t collect it. Did he come for the money or did you send it?”

“He asked that I wire it to St. Louis.”

Isaac Bell set his squad on a search for foreman Russo.





8





Brewster Claypool was a slim-as-a-wisp, graceful Southerner who reminded people of the witty and stylish Oscar Wilde. Slouching languidly from the Metropolitan Opera House in white tie and tails, drifting down Broadway like an elegant parenthesis, he peered into the darker cross streets with a connoisseur’s appreciation of New York’s Tenderloin. Brightly lighted Broadway was lined with fine hotels and restaurants, but the rest of the district was devoted to sin. If a vice could be imagined, the Tenderloin offered it in gambling dens, dance halls, saloons, and bordellos priced for every purse. The Progressives called it Satan’s Circus. Brewster Claypool called it Heaven.

He mounted the steps to the Cherry Grove bordello, a lavishly furnished elite house known as the Ritz of the Tenderloin, and rang an electric bell. A three-hundred-pound door guard ushered him into the sturdy brick mansion with great respect. A dazzling young woman in a red evening gown greeted him warmly. “Upstairs, Mr. Claypool?”

“I think I’ll pop into the club first.”

A group of top Wall Street men had formed a private club inside the whorehouse. The Cherry Grove Gentlemen’s Society membership requirements were: extreme wealth and no blue noses. The house rules: No conversation or event left the room. No women were allowed in wearing more than two garments—neither garment could exceed the surface area of a dinner plate; a measuring stick was kept handy to settle disputes.

Claypool found his brother members lounging in vast leather armchairs, drinking champagne and whiskey cocktails. John Butler Culp, a vigorous big-game hunter and yacht racer who maintained the physique of a college pugilist and football hero, was cursing President Roosevelt.