The Gangster (Isaac Bell #9)(31)

“But what did you hear?”

“What caught my ear, first, was one of them said, ‘Men of means will have no place in this country if he hangs on long enough to get reelected in ’08.’”

“All right,” said Bell. “Anything else?”

“Nothing for a while. Then some of them moved out of the main library into the little sitting room.”

“How do you know?”

“The sound is louder. I can always tell when someone moves there. And that’s where the good stuff happens. Just a few, trading secrets.”

“Is that where you heard about the U.S. Steel bonds?” Bell guessed, sizing up his witness.

“That’s right!” Sayers answered unabashedly, as if eavesdropping for stock tips was as legitimate a profession as medicine or the pulpit. “That’s why I listen real close when they move in there.”

“What did you hear?”

“Just chitchat, first. Like, ‘Why are you waiting?’ ‘Please sit down.’ Then all of a sudden I heard, ‘My mind is made up. The man must go.’ And someone else said, ‘He’s not just a man. He is the President of the United States.’ Then someone—some other guy, I think—got louder. ‘I don’t care if he’s the King of England. Or the bloody Pope. Or the Almighty Himself. He will destroy us if we don’t get rid of him.’ First guy asked, ‘Is there no other way?’ And then, loud and clear, ‘Theodore Roosevelt will destroy us if we don’t get rid of him.’”



Isaac Bell took Coligney’s list to Grady Forrer, the head of Van Dorn Research. His department occupied back rooms, where a small army of younger scholars was snipping articles from newspapers and magazines, poring through books, and listening intently on telephones.

Forrer read the list in a swift glance, then repeated the names aloud: “Arnold, Baldwin, Claypool, Culp, Manly, Nichols, and Pendergast. A high-flying flock of tycoons.”

“Two or more could be conspiring to kill the President of the United States.”

Forrer, a very large man, raised a skeptical eyebrow bigger than a mustache. “They can afford to hire expensive assassins.”

“Tycoons,” said Isaac Bell, “do not personally hire murderers. Can your boys find me the names of their fixers?”

“It will take some digging to run down who their ‘men’ are. Operatives who pull wires and grease the ways favor the strict Q.T. Double that when recruiting killers from the underworld.”

“I’m stretched thin,” said Bell. “I’ll take all the help you can give me.”

“How are you making out with your ‘cartel of criminals’?”

“The Black Hand Squad is working at it overtime. Trying to link kidnappers, extortionists, bombers, and counterfeiters.”

“I can see why you’re stretched thin.”

Forrer’s face was suddenly aglow with admiration. The long-legged, dark-haired Helen Mills raced into Forrer’s office like a whirlwind. “There you are, Mr. Bell. Hello, Mr. Forrer. Mr. Bell, Mr. Kisley and Mr. Fulton told me to tell you we found Ernesto Leone.”

“Where is he?”

“On the waterfront. 40th Street and Eleventh.”

Bell was already moving through the door. “What’s a counterfeiter doing on the waterfront?”

“Mr. Kisley said he hoped you could figure that out.”





14





Isaac Bell rushed from the Knickerbocker Hotel, caught a crosstown trolley, stepped off when it got hung up in traffic at Tenth Avenue, and hurried down to Eleventh Avenue. Spying a seamen’s shop, he draped his business suit with a secondhand watch coat and removed his derringer from his hat, which he traded for a canvas cap and longshoreman’s loading hook. Three minutes after bursting into the shop, he was dashing down Eleventh Avenue.

Kisley and Fulton met him at 40th Street.

“We got a tip Leone’s been holed up in that rooming house since yesterday. We saw him come down to eat breakfast in that lunchroom, then right back inside. Haven’t seen him since.”

Mack said, “He’s a nervous wreck. He may have made us coming out of breakfast.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“Could be waiting for something to be smuggled off a freighter. Engraving plates from Italy, maybe. There’s a boat in from Naples at Pier 75.”

“There he is!”

Bell saw a thin, dark man edge from the building like a rabbit sniffing the wind.

“I’ll take him. You boys hang back.”

Bell turned away and watched the man’s reflection in a window. Leone hesitated. He looked on the verge of running back into the building. He jerked a watch from his pocket, stared at the time, pocketed the watch, looked around again. Shoulders hunched, he set off briskly toward the river.

The sidewalks were crowded with longshoremen and sailors and streetwalkers. Bell had little trouble staying out of sight as he shadowed him. He followed Leone across 40th Street to where it ended at a basin just above the 37th Street Pennsylvania Railroad Freight Station. The counterfeiter worked his way down the bulkheaded shore back up to 39th Street and suddenly darted to the water’s edge.

Bell saw a boat turn into the slip between the finger piers and arrow toward him. It was a fast steam lighter of the type that delivered provisions to the ships. From the freight pier, two men raced after Leone, their dark features at odds with the neighborhood of fair hair and blue eyes. Leone climbed awkwardly onto the timber apron at the water’s edge. The two men followed him and helped him down to the lighter.