The Gangster (Isaac Bell #9)(67)

“You drew it like a church.”

“The power plant looks like a church. The steeple masks the smokestack. Now we’ve confirmed that Mrs. Culp is here in New York in their mansion on 50th Street, which makes things easier.”

“Screaming wives,” said a grizzled veteran from the Boston field office, “take all the fun out of busting down a door.”

“Worse than kids,” said another.

“There are no kids. But there are plenty of staff. Mrs. Culp has taken her majordomo with her, but there is everything else, from footmen, to cooks, to housemaids, to groundskeepers.”

“How about bodyguards?”

“Culp keeps a couple prizefighters in the gymnasium. They’ve got a room downstairs. So we’ll need a couple of boys to get them into manacles.”

“O.K. to shoot ’em in the leg if they resist?”

“Use your judgment.”

“Where do we take Culp and Branco?”

“Culp’s a big wheel in the Hudson Valley, so Mr. Van Dorn strongly suggests we avoid the local constabulary. We’ll have a boat here”—Bell pointed at the boathouse pier—“to run us across the river. Then hightail it to a New York Central special standing by at Cold Spring and straight to Grand Central. NYPD Captain Mike Coligney will come aboard at Yonkers and make the arrests the second we cross the city line.”

“What charge?”

“Harboring a fugitive for Culp. With more to come.”

“How about trying to kill the President?”

“If we can pin it on him,” said Bell. “The primary goal is to knock Culp out of commission so he can’t kill him.”

“What do we charge Branco with?”

“We’ll start with the murder of Brewster Claypool. That should give the DA time to establish a Black Hand case. Same goal, though: Take him out of action before he can do more damage.”

“How solid is the Claypool murder charge? Keeping in mind what the Italians do to witnesses.”

“Solid,” said Bell. “I’m the witness.”



“I have an idea,” said J. B. Culp.

The magnate was on his feet, looming over his desk in the trophy room, fists planted on the rosewood. Antonio Branco was pacing restlessly among the life-size kills. Culp waited for him to ask what his idea was, but the self-contained Italian never rose to the bait.

Culp tried again to engage him. “We kill two birds with one stone . . . Can you guess how, Branco?”

Branco stopped beside a suit of armor and ran his fingers across the chain mail. “We kill Roosevelt,” he said, “when he makes his speech at the aqueduct.”

Culp did not conceal his admiration. Branco was as sharp as Brew Claypool, as cynical, and as efficient. Lee’s and Barry’s corpses had disappeared as if they had never existed, along with their possessions and every sign they had ever occupied the rooms under the gym. The difference between Claypool and Branco was that Branco also had teeth, razor-sharp teeth.

“Good guess,” said Culp.

“Easy guess,” said Branco. “What better proof that the city can’t manage its water system than to drown the President in the aqueduct?”

“Drown? Is that how you’re going to do it?”

Branco said, “I promised not to saddle you with things you shouldn’t know,” and walked between the elephant tusks that framed the fortress door.

“Where are you going?”

“As I promised, you will not be saddled,” said Branco and walked out.

Culp lumbered after him. “Hold on, Branco. I want to know when you’re coming back.”

“Later.”



Branco followed a winding path through a forest of ancient fir trees and down the slope between the outside entrance to his rooms and the estate wall. Near the wall, he slid through a low break in a rock outcropping that opened into a small cave under the wall.

Only an experienced pick and shovel man would recognize the cave as a man-made construction of hidden mortar and uncut stone artfully laid to look like natural rubble cast off by a glacier. It had been built sixty years ago by Culp’s grandfather, a “station master” on the Underground Railroad, helping escaped slaves flee to Canada.

“Why?” Branco had asked, mystified. He had studied the family; none were known to be what Americans called do-gooders.

“He fell for a Quaker woman. She talked him into it.”

“Your grandmother?”

“Not bloody likely.”

Branco emerged outside the wall and hurried through another fir stand. The mule wagon full of barrels was waiting. The elderly Sicilian groom holding the reins obeyed Vito Rizzo’s last orders before his arrest as unquestioningly as, back at Prince Street, he had obeyed Branco’s to dump a sugar barrel in the river. The old man stared straight ahead and pretended he heard no one climb into a barrel behind him until Branco said, “Muoversi!”



Francesca Kennedy’s “confession” two weeks ago in the Prince Street church had been her last. The Boss had ordered a complete change of their routine. From then on, she reported by telephone from a public booth in Grand Central Terminal at three o’clock in the afternoon on odd-numbered days. On even days, she checked a box at the nearby post office. The letters contained instructions and money. The instructions included the number she would tell the telephone operator to give her. But for two weeks, whatever number she asked for rang and rang but was not answered.