The Gangster (Isaac Bell #9)(41)

He ran down the first at the Grolier, a club for bibliophiles. He borrowed a police horse to catch up with another cantering in Central Park. Allowing a close-fought victory in a late-autumn race for New York “Thirties,” he and Archie Abbott accepted drinks at the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club. He lunched at the Union League, and he met with a banker at the Chase National headquarters on Cedar Street, who declined to lend Bell money to buy a two-hundred-foot steam yacht. Of the seven, only one proved elusive, and Bell found him back where everything started, at the brothel.

All were easily maneuvered into admitting knowing Claypool. Two praised him for doing them the favor of getting them out of “sticky situations.” The Chase banker dropped, casually, “Everyone knows that ‘Brew’ Claypool is Culp’s man.” But he was the only one who made the connection. Of the bunch, two struck Bell as possible presidential assassins of the type who would hire a killer—J. B. Culp and Warren D. Nichols.

Culp made no secret of disliking Roosevelt. The affable Nichols had a wintery eye; a valuable quality in a banker, perhaps, but something about him made Bell wonder whether the wintery eye might mask a hunter’s heart.

“Thin, thin stuff,” he reported to Joseph Van Dorn. “A tycoon who hates the President and a banker with a cold eye.”

The Boss agreed. “We’ve said all along that the threats overheard could be nothing more than angry talk. Maybe that’s all it is.”

Two hours later, Bell sent to Van Dorn on the private wire.

RESEARCH LEARNED NICHOLS WILL DONATE HUNDRED THOUSAND ACRES PRIME TIMBER LAND ADIRONDACK FOREST PRESERVE IN THEODORE ROOSEVELT NAME.

Van Dorn wired back.

CONCENTRATE CULP.

Culp’s industries and mines and timber operations were protected by brutal strikebreakers. Culp’s stock holdings were enriched by the best manipulators on Wall Street. His Washington lobbyists had bribed legislators to change the site of the inter-ocean ship canal from Nicaragua to the Isthmus of Panama. His agents in France and Panama helped him gain control of lucrative canal stock.

Many fixers worked for Culp behind the scenes, but Bell developed the strong impression that Claypool hired the fixers. All of them. Except Claypool was not about to personally hire murderers, much less presidential assassins. He would hire an agent, who would hire another agent, and on down the line. When the job finally reached the man with the gun, Claypool and Culp would be miles away.



“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” said Francesca Kennedy.

Her scarf concealed her face, but the hunch of her shoulders and her fingers anxiously working her rosary and the stricken tone of her voice were a convincing image of a woman desperate to save her soul. Had life been kinder to her, thought Branco, she would have been a great actress on Broadway.

“What sin did you commit, my child?”

“I lured a man to his death.”

Branco laughed. “Relax. Tommy McBean’s as alive as you.”

“Do I still get paid?”

A woman who was good for killing was a rare and valuable resource and should be treated as such. She loved money, so money she would have.

Branco shoved a rolled hundred-dollar bill through the grille. “Of course you get paid. You earned it. It took some doing to wake him up.”

“You know something?” she whispered. She turned to face the grille. “I think I’d rather do it with them when I know I’m the one that’s going to do them after—instead of just setting them up.”

“It takes all kinds.”

“And you know—”

“Enough confession,” Branco interrupted before she got wound up in a talking spree.

Though she had never seen his face, Branco had known of her since she was an ordinary streetwalker the night of her first murder—a customer who brutalized her. Her cool deliberation had so impressed him that he ordered Charlie Salata to rescue her from the cops. Francesca was a survivor who could turn on a nickel and give you the change. The instant he interrupted her, she went straight back to business.

“What’s my next job?”

Branco passed another fortune through the grille. “Confess here on schedule. You’ll know it soon.”

“I get antsy sitting around.”

“Put your impatience into preparation.” He pushed more money through the grid. “Buy clothes to drink tea at the Knickerbocker Hotel. A suitable outfit to get past the house dicks. You must look like you belong there.”

“That’s easy.”

“For you it is. You are an unusual woman.”



Branco returned to his store through the tunnels under the graveyard and the tenements.

He filled a pitcher with clean, cold water and brought it and a glass to the underground room where he had locked Ghiottone.





20





“Kid Kelly” Ghiottone heard a flood. A street main had burst, some hundreds-year-old pipe laid by the Dutchmen who used to run the city, rusting, rotting, thinner and thinner, and suddenly exploding from the pressure. Water was everywhere, spouting out of the cobblestones, flooding basements. He would drown, locked in the cell, deep in Branco’s cellar. But before he drowned, he would drink.

“Wake up, my friend.”

He woke to the same smell he had fallen asleep to—mouldering sausage and the stink of his own sweat and despair. There was no broken main, no flood. Not a drop of water. He was dreaming. But he heard water. Opening his eyes and looking about blearily, he saw Branco standing outside the cell again. He was pouring water from a pitcher into a glass. Again.