The Gangster (Isaac Bell #9)(77)
“Unloading your barrels.”
“We didn’t order any barrels.”
The teamster produced an invoice. “Says here you did.”
“What’s in ’em?”
“Big one is flour and the smaller one is sugar. Looks like you’ll be baking cookies.”
The gatekeeper called for the cook to come down from the kitchen. The cook, shivering in a cardigan pulled over her whites, looked over the flour barrel, which was as tall as she was. “This is a hogshead. There’s enough in it to feed an army.”
“Did you order it?”
“Why would I order a hogshead of flour and a full barrel of sugar at the end of the season?” she asked rhetorically. “Maybe they’re meant to go to 50th Street. That’s their winter palace in New York City,” she added for the benefit of the teamster and hurried back to her kitchen.
“You heard her,” said the gatekeeper. “Get ’em out of here.”
The teamster climbed back on his rig.
“Hey, where you going?”
“To find a crane to lift ’em back on the wagon.”
The gatekeeper called the estate manager. By the time he arrived, the wagon had disappeared down the road. The estate manager gave the hogshead an experimental tug. It felt like it weighed six hundred pounds.
“Leave it there ’til he comes back with his crane.”
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
December 3, 1906
Joseph Van Dorn
Van Dorn Detective Agency
Washington, D.C., Office
The New Williard Hotel
Dear Joe,
Further the booming of the aqueduct enterprise, a White Steamer automobile will be carried on the special train to deliver me to the various inspection stops, and particularly the Hudson River Siphon Shaft, so the workmen at the shaft house may see me arrive.
“Good Lord,” said Joseph Van Dorn.
Hearty Regards,
Theodore Roosevelt
PS: I’m back on my battleship, but only as far as the icebreaker can open a channel. The train can meet us there.
VAN DORN DETECTIVE AGENCY
KNICKERBOCKER HOTEL
NEW YORK CITY
Dear Mr. President,
I do hope I may accompany you in the auto. May I presume you will wear a topper?
Sincerely,
Joseph Van Dorn
Whether the President wore a top hat, a fedora, or even a Rough Rider slouch hat, Van Dorn would wear the same—and wire-framed spectacles—to confuse a sniper. He would even have to shave the splendiferous sideburns he had cultivated for twenty years.
Ten men and women dressed in shabby workers’ clothes got off the day coach train from Jersey City and marched out of Cornwall Landing and up the steep road to Raven’s Eyrie. When they were stopped at the front gate, they unfurled banners and began to walk in a noisy circle. The banners demanded: HONEST WAGES FOR AN HONEST DAY’S WORK
and accused the Philadelphia Streetcar Company, owned by the United Railways Trust, of unfair treatment of its track workers.
The workers chanted:
“Wall Street feasts. Workers starve.”
The Sheriff was called. He arrived with a heavyset deputy, who climbed out of the auto armed with a pick handle. Two more autos pulled up, with newspaper reporters from Poughkeepsie, Albany, and New York City.
“How’d you boys get here so fast?” asked the Sheriff, who had a bad feeling that he was about to get caught between the Hudson Valley aristocracy and the voting public.
“Got a tip from the workers’ lawyers,” explained the man from the Poughkeepsie Journal.
“Did J. B. Culp instruct you to disperse this picket line?” asked the Morning Times.
The progressive Evening Sun’s reporter was beside himself with excitement. Ordinarily, the biggest news he covered in the Hudson Valley was the state of the winter ice harvest. He had already wired that the intense cold meant harvesting would start so early that the greedy Ice Trust would not be able to jack up prices when the city sweltered next August.
Now, outside the Wall Street tycoon’s gates, he put the screws to privilege: “Sheriff, has J. B. Culp instructed you to permit or deny these American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to free assembly?”
“There’s an inch of ice on the river, Isaac. They’ve hauled all their boats out of the water at Raven’s Eyrie, and I just saw that the signboard at the passenger pier says the steamers are stopping service for the winter.”
“I sent Archie to Poughkeepsie to buy an ice yacht.”
“I’m amazed that Joe Van Dorn authorized such an expense.”
“This one’s on me,” said Bell. “I want a special design. Fortunately, my kindly grandfather left me the means to pay for it.”
Isaac Bell found New York Police Department Detective Sergeant Petrosino’s Italian Squad in a small, dimly lit room over a saloon on Centre Street. Exhausted plainclothes operatives were slumped in chairs and sleeping on tables. Joe Petrosino, a tough, middle-aged cop built short and wide as a mooring bollard, was writing furiously at a makeshift desk.
“I’ve heard of you, Bell. Welcome to the highlife.”