The Gangster (11 page)

Brewster Claypool was headed for Tammany headquarters, above Tony Pastor’s vaudeville house in an opulent three-story Italianate building on 14th Street, when he heard chorus girls singing Victor Herbert’s latest hit, “I Want What I Want When I Want It.”

He stepped into the theater.

They were rehearsing a spoof with a bandy-legged comedian, who was costumed in a yellow wig and short skirt. Claypool exchanged blown kisses with the girls and got a wave from the comedian, then climbed the stairs with a world-weary smile.

“I Want What I Want When I Want It” summed up with grim precision the job of pulling wires for J. B. Culp.

Boss Fryer—wan, potbellied “Honest Jim” Fryer—greeted Claypool expansively. He would have inquired about his family, if Claypool had one, so asked instead about mutual friends on Wall Street. Claypool reported on their successes and travails, and asked about Honest Jim’s family, who were prospering.

Jim Fryer ran the Tammany Hall political machine that ran New York City. Strict administrator of a party pecking order—district leaders down to election district leaders to block captains
to saloonkeepers and building captains—he got out the vote on Election Day in the majorities required to beat the Reformers and dominated a confederation of police, clergy, streetcar magnates, and construction contractors.

They clinked glasses of seltzer lemonade with the fond respect of friends at the top of their games—men who ran cities had not the luxury to drink like elected officials—and traded gossip that others would pay fortunes to hear. Eventually, Fryer, who had a reception room full of cops, contractors, priests, and franchise grabbers waiting to see him, asked Claypool, with only the merest hint of time’s pressure, “To what do I owe the pleasure of your presence?”

“I would like to meet a fellow who can help arrange something unusual.”

The word “unusual” caused Fryer’s eyes to narrow fractionally.

“Brandon Finn’s your man. Tell him I sent you.”

“It could be too unusual for Finn,” Claypool answered carefully.

Boss Fryer stood up. “Brandon will know who to send you to,” he replied, and both men knew the Boss had washed his hands of work best left to henchmen and heelers.

“Run-a! Run-a, Pasquale!”

They were after him again, and Sante Russo ran for his life, wondering why tramps, who were growing thin as food ran out and the first waves of winter cold oozed down the Wasatch
Mountains, would waste their strength tormenting a single soul as poor as themselves.

He wanted to turn around and say, I won’t eat much. Just leave me alone.

“Run, you dago!”

The out-of-work miner leading the mob had a pick handle. If they caught him, he would die. An awful voice inside said it might hurt less than running. But he ran anyway, praying he didn’t trip and fall on the rough ground, fleeing the hobo camp, fleeing the hobos and the woods and swamps where they hid from the police.

Russo veered toward a distant creek, hoping the bed was dry enough to cross. But it was deep, the water running hard. They had him trapped. He turned hopelessly to his fate. As if things couldn’t get worse, an enormous automobile suddenly careened out of the gloom, headlights and searchlight blazing. Now it was a race. Who would get to him first? The miner with the pick handle? The second mob, scooping up rocks to throw at him? Or the auto, belching blue smoke as the driver accelerated to run him over? Russo, who had dreamed of someday earning enough money to buy an auto, recognized a fifty-horsepower Thomas Flyer. It was heaped with spare tires, outfitted for crossing rough country. Would they use its tow rope to lynch him from a tree?

Russo was turning to jump in the creek when the driver shouted, “Sante Russo!”

Russo gaped. How did he know his name?

The auto skidded alongside in a cloud of dust. “Get in! On the jump!”

The driver grabbed Russo’s hand and yanked him into the seat beside him. A rock whizzed between them, just missing their heads.

A tall man stepped from the mob with another rock in his hand. He wound up like a professional baseball pitcher, slowly coiling strength in his arm, and began to throw. The driver pulled a pistol from his coat. The gun roared. The pitcher fell backwards.

“Mister?” asked Russo. “Who are you?”

“Bell. Van Dorn Agency . . . Hang on!”

Isaac Bell depressed the Flyer’s clutch, shifted the speed-changing lever, and stomped the accelerator pedal. Drive chains clattered, and the rear tires churned sand, fighting for a grip. The Flyer lurched into motion, and Bell zigzagged around brush, rocks, and yawning gullies. The bunch he had shot at was backing off. But the main mob, egged on by the guy with a pick handle, was blocking their escape. Bell raised his voice. “I’ll shoot the first man who throws another rock.”

“There’s twenty of us,” the leader bawled. “Gonna shoot us all?”

“Most
.
Fun’s over. Go home!”

For a moment, Bell thought he had them cowed. Instead, both mobs edged closer. Rocks flew. One grazed his hat. Another bounced off the hood. A third hit the center-mounted searchlight, which exploded, scattering glass. Bell fired inches over their heads, spraying bullets as fast as he could pull the trigger.

Some ran. Others surged forward. He saw a flicker of motion and fired in that direction. A rusty pistol went flying. He sent
two more quick shots whistling close to their ears, and his hammer clicked on an empty shell. The mobs were closer, twenty feet away. With no time to reload, Bell shouted for Russo to hold tight and shifted up to third gear.

Two and a half thousand pounds of Thomas Flyer thundered at the mob. All but one man ran. He threw himself at the auto and grabbed at the steering wheel. Isaac Bell flattened him with his gun barrel.

He pressed the accelerator, speeding over rough ground for a quarter mile, and turned onto a dirt track that led toward Ogden. Russo sagged with relief. But when the town hove into view, the Italian asked, “What you want from me?”

“Help with my investigation,” Bell answered and said nothing more until he pulled up in front of a hotel on 25th Street that had a haberdashery on the ground floor. The fact was, he had no idea whether Russo had run from New York because the overcharge that blew up the water mains was an accident, or was sabotage by the Black Hand, or had been laid by Russo himself for the Black Hand.

He led him into the hotel.

The front desk clerk said, “We don’t rent rooms to dagos.”

Bell put a ten-dollar gold piece on the counter and laid his Colt next to it. The gun reeked of burnt gunpowder. “This gentleman is not a dago. He is
Mr
. Sante Russo, a friend of the Van Dorn Detective Agency. Mister Russo will occupy a room with a bath. And you will send that haberdasher up with a suit of clothes, hose, drawers, and a shirt and necktie.”

“I’m calling the house detective.”

Winter stole into the tall detective’s eyes. The violet shade that sometimes accompanied a smile or a pleasant thought had vanished, and the blue that remained was as dark and unforgiving as a mountain blizzard.

“Don’t if you don’t want him hurt.”

The clerk pocketed the gold piece, the better part of a week’s pay, and extended the register. Bell signed it.

MR. SANTE RUSSO C/O VAN DORN DETECTIVE AGENCY
KNICKERBOCKER HOTEL, NEW YORK CITY

“Tell the haberdasher not to forget to bring a belt. And some shoes. And a handkerchief.”

Bell sat in an armchair while Russo bathed. It had been a long day and night since he left Marion in San Francisco. His wounded neck ached, as did his knees, elbows, shoulder, and hands, from the fight under the train. A knock at the door awakened him. The haberdasher had brought a tailor and a stock boy. They had Russo decked out in an hour.

The blaster marveled at the mirror.

“I am thank-a you very much, Signore Bell. I never look such.”

“You can thank me by taking a close look at this.”

Bell tossed the hollow red tube. Russo caught it on the fly, took one glance, and sat down hard on the bed. “Where you find this?”

“You tell me.”

“Not atta church. Not possible. Nothing left.”

“What do you mean?”

“Big-a bang.
Big-a
bang ever.”

“Are you saying that this stick could not possibly have been blown clear of that explosion?”

“Not possible.”

Which led Bell to the bigger question. “The sticks you disconnected . . . were they like this one?”

“Same stick. Where you get?”

“What do you mean the same? You just said it wasn’t possible.”

“Not same, same. Same-a . . .
marca
.
Marca!
” He pointed at the Stevens name printed on the tube. “Where you get?”

“Same brand?”

“Uhhh?”

“Label?”

Russo shrugged.

“Mark?”

“
Si. Marca.
Where you get?”

“Mano Nero,”
said Isaac Bell.

“Same. Yes.
Si.
Mano Nero
make-a overcharge. Like I say.”

On his way to the Ogden train depot Isaac Bell stopped at Van Dorn’s field office. A wire had come in for him on the private telegraph line, Helen Mills reporting triumphantly, in Van Dorn cipher,

ALMOST PROMOTABLE
LYNCH ARRESTS PENNSYLVANIA GREEN GOODSER
SAME PAPER

Bell wired Mack Fulton and Wally Kisley,

FIND WHO BOUGHT PAPER AND INK
PRINTER’S ROW BRING HELEN
STAY OUT OF AGENT LYNCH WAY

and ran for his train.

He had three days to New York to ponder how the Black Hand case had grown both larger and oddly interconnected. Sante Russo identifying the same dynamite and the Black Handers’ penchant for the same stationery had pretty much confirmed that four separate crimes—kidnapping little Maria Vella, the dynamite overcharge that wrecked her father’s business, bombing Banco LaCava, and the Black Hand attack on Luisa Tetrazzini were engineered by the same gang. And now counterfeiting? A gang of all-rounders? he wondered.

Except that all-rounders did not exist. Criminals were inclined to repeat themselves. Like most people, they stuck with what they knew best and trusted that what had worked before would work again. Strong-arm men intimidated, confidence men tricked, safecrackers blew vaults, thieves stole, kidnappers snatched, bank robbers robbed banks.

Changing trains in Chicago, Bell found a wire from Harry Warren waiting for him on the 20th Century Limited. Harry, too, found all-rounders unusual and said as much in the telegram.

PENNSYLVANIA GREEN GOODSER SALATA THUG
ODD
I’LL MEET YOUR TRAIN