The Gangster (21 page)

Bell had already swept the clubs up and back to a horizontal position at head height. Gathering his strength in one last effort, he carried them forward simultaneously.

Isaac Bell strolled into the Raven’s Eyrie dining room dressed for dinner in a midnight blue tuxedo. John Butler Culp was seated at the head of the table, Daphne Culp at some distance to his right,
and a place setting across from her to Culp’s left. The Saint George, his horse, and dragon cellar had been moved close to curtain off the rest of the long, long mahogany table, creating a cozy space for their small party.

“Good evening, Mrs. Culp,” he said to the beautiful Daphne. “I’m so sorry I’m late. Evening, J.B. Say, where’d you get the black eye?”

Culp glowered.

Mrs. Culp said, “Jenkins, don’t just stand there. Bring Mr. Bell a plate . . . Mr. Bell, are you quite all right? Your face is bruised. Butler, did you do that to Mr. Bell?”

Bell leapt to defend his host. “Of course he didn’t. He wouldn’t, even if he could . . . Oh, I almost forgot, J.B. The gentlemen who work for you in the gymnasium asked would it be possible for the cook to send soup or broth to their room. Something they can eat through a straw.”

“O.K.,” said Culp. “You won this round.”

“I have indeed,” said Bell. But he knew, and so did Culp, that he had won a hollow victory. One look at the tycoon, angry as he was, showed a man still absolutely secure in his belief that regardless of Bell’s suspicions, John Butler Culp was still insulated from the dirty work, still set so high above the law that he could plot the death of the President. The crime would proceed.

That thought chilled Bell to the marrow: wheels were in motion, gathering speed like a locomotive fresh from the roundhouse, oiled, coaled, and watered, switched to the main line, tracks cleared, and nothing could stop it, not even Culp himself . . . Not quite no one, he thought on reflection. The one
aspect that even Culp couldn’t control was that Bell knew. He couldn’t prove it yet. But he knew and he could stop it or die trying.

“Detective Bell,” Culp said, “you’re smiling as if very pleased with yourself.”

Bell put down his knife and fork and leveled his gaze at the statue of Saint George, his horse, and the dragon. “Please pass the salt.”

Mrs. Culp laughed out loud. “Mr. Bell, you’re the first guest who’s had the nerve to say that to him—Butler, at least smile, for gosh sakes.”

“I’m smiling,” said Culp.

“It doesn’t look that way.”

“It will.”

“You look like you’ve been pounding rivets with your face,” Harry Warren greeted Isaac Bell at the office.

“Slipped in the bathtub . . . I read Finn’s obituary on the train; hard to tell, between the lines, who he really was.”

“A first-rate heeler. Old-school, hard-drinking, hail-fellow-well-met. But not one to cross. Strictly backroom, and connected direct to Boss Fryer. Except you won’t find a witness in the world to testify to that.”

“Probably our direct connection to Claypool. If he weren’t dead.”

“By the way, Claypool doesn’t need our protection. The boys spotted a pack of off-duty police detectives camping at his office round the clock.”

“That cinches it. Claypool knows he’s next.”

“With his pull, he’ll have the best protection. O.K. I shook Branco’s hand. Now what?”

“Right hand?”

“Of course.”

“Notice anything about it?”

Warren thought a moment. “Yeah. He’s got a couple of weird calluses on his fingers.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Inside his index and middle fingers. Nearly an inch long.”

“That’s what I noticed the other night in Little Italy. Sort of recalled them the first time we shook hands. What do you suppose they’re from?”

Harry Warren shrugged. “You tell me.”

Isaac Bell took out his pocket knife. “Watch my fingers.”

“I’m watching.”

He opened the blade. “These fingers, index and middle.”

Harry’s eyes gleamed. “From opening it again and again and again.”

“Practice.”

“Cute way around the weapon laws.”

“Branco told me about them. Though he left out the practicing.”

Warren stared. “Wait a minute. Wrong hand. That’s your left hand pulling the blade. I shook his right hand.”

“He’s
left-handed
. I saw him catch an orange that went flying. Snapped it out of the air faster than a rattlesnake.” Bell folded his knife closed, then opened it again. “Of course, no matter how fast you whip it out, you still only have a short blade.”

“Not necessarily,” said Harry Warren. “I’ve seen Sicilian pen knives with handles so thin, you could shove it into the slit the blade makes.”

“A legal stiletto?”

“Until you stick it in somebody.”

His friends at Tammany Hall took over Tony Pastor’s vaudeville house for Brandon Finn’s wake.

Isaac Bell brought Helen Mills with him. “Keep your eyes peeled for Brewster Claypool. Question is, is he next? Assuming Finn was at the top link of a chain down to ‘Kid Kelly’ Ghiottone, did Finn get his orders from Claypool?”

Bell’s theory that doorkeepers and floor managers did not question the presence of a man with a good-looking young girl on his arm proved correct and they mingled in the crush of politicians, cops, contractors, priests, and swells, eavesdropping and asking questions carefully.

Two things were obvious: Brandon Finn had been loved. And the rumors that he may have been murdered baffled his friends. Who, Bell heard asked again and again, would want to hurt him?

As the drinking went on, tongues loosened and—as at any good wake for a loved man—tales of Finn’s exploits began to spawn heartfelt laughter that rippled and rolled around the theater. Helen, who had a gift for getting men to talk, reported twice to Bell that Finn—dubbed admiringly as the “last of the big spenders”—had been spending even more freely than usual the night before he died.

Bell himself heard the phrase “came into big money” several times.

He speculated that the money had come from outside the Tammany chain, which would pay him in patronage rather than cash. He told Helen that an outsider had tapped Finn to send a request down the line to “Kid Kelly.”

“What,” she asked, “did he want from Ghiottone?”

“Keep in mind he did not want it specifically from Ghiottone—the whole point was not to know any names—but wanted someone who could deliver like Ghiottone.”

“A murderer.”

“Only the guy who paid Finn knows for sure. But since we know what was said at the Cherry Grove, we have to presume they want a murderer.” Bell pointed. “There’s Mike Coligney. I’ll introduce you. He’ll look out for you while I pay my respects to Mr. Finn’s companion.”

“I don’t need looking out for.”

“Mourners are eyeing you cheerfully.”

Bell maneuvered close to Rose Bloom, Finn’s paramour’s stage name, and spoke loudly enough for her to hear over the roar of a thousand mourners. “Brandon Finn cuts a finer figure laid out in his coffin than the rest of us do standing up.”

“Doesn’t he?” she cried, whirling from a clutch of men vying for her ear to take in the speaker of the compliment.

Bell was not exaggerating. The dead man’s checked suit was tailored like a glove. A diamond stickpin glittered in his necktie. Three perfectly aligned cigars thrust from his breast pocket like a battleship turret, and his derby was cocked triumphantly over one eye. Even the Mayor McClellan campaign button in his lapel proclaimed a winner.

Rose Bloom had red eyes from weeping and a big brassy voice. “He was always the handsomest devil.”

“I am so sorry for your loss,” Bell said, extending his hand and bowing over hers. It was not hard to imagine what a couple they had made, a “Diamond Jim” Brady and Lillian Russell pair having a ball, with New York at their feet.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Bell. Isaac Bell. My deepest condolences.”

“Oh, Mr. Bell. The things you don’t plan for. Just gone. Suddenly gone.”

“They say the Lord knows what’s right, but it doesn’t seem fair at the time, does it? Were you together at the end?”

“The very night before. We had the most splendid dinner. At Delmonico’s. In a private booth.” Her voice trailed off and her eyes teared up.

“A favorite of his, I presume?”

“Oh, yes, his absolute favorite—not that we went regular. Much too expensive to eat there regular.”

“I’m sure he’s smiling down on us, glad he took you to Delmonico’s his last night. Certainly not a night to save money.”

She brightened. “Brandon’s luck held to the end. Didn’t cost him a penny. A Wall Street swell poked his head in the booth and picked up the check.”

Men were pressing from every direction to catch her attention, and Bell knew he was running out of time. “Was this the swell?” He opened his hand to reveal Helen Mills’ snapshot of Brewster Claypool and watched her face. She knew him.

Before he turned away, he looked directly into her eyes. “Again, Miss Bloom, my condolences. I grieve, too, that you lost your good man.”

Outside on 14th Street, he sent Helen back to the office with
orders for Harry Warren to dispatch operators to the Waldorf Hotel and the Cherry Grove. “Tell him I’ve gone to Claypool’s office.”

“It’s after hours, Mr. Bell.”

“Claypool knows he’s next. He reckons he’s safe at his office surrounded by cops.”

“How does he know he’s in trouble?”

“He’s the last link alive between Culp on top and Ghiottone’s choice of a Black Hand assassin.”

To Isaac Bell’s eye, Brewster Claypool’s bodyguards looked like former detectives demoted when Commissioner Bingham overhauled the bureau. They were shabbily dressed, unkempt men, and had not been up to the job of protecting Claypool.

Bell found one in the elevator, one in the hall, and two inside Claypool’s office, all unconscious or slumped on the floor, holding their heads. He smelled gun smoke. Pistol in hand, he crashed into Claypool’s private office. There he found a detective, unconscious on the carpet with a Smith & Wesson in his hand, and the Black Hand gang leader, Charlie Salata, shot dead.

“Claypool!”

Bell looked to see if he was hiding in the closets and the washroom, but Claypool wasn’t there. He went to the windows that faced the Singer Building. He opened one and looked down. The office was twelve stories above Cortlandt Street. There was no balcony Claypool could have escaped to, and nothing to climb up the side of the building to the roof.

Bare light bulbs sparkled across the street inside the cagework of the Singer Building. Work had ceased for the night, and the steel columns, which had risen several tiers since Bell had been here last, were deserted, the derricks still, the hoisting engines silent. He could hear trolleys, a noisy motor truck, and horseshoes clattering in the street. Movement caught his attention. Five stories above the sidewalk, he saw the silhouette of a man climbing open stairs in the Singer frame—a night watchman or fire watch.

Bell hurried back to the closets, recalling that one had been mostly empty. He inspected it carefully this time and found a door concealed in the back, its knob hidden under a winter coat. The door opened on a stairwell.

“Claypool!”

Silence. No answer, no footsteps. It was possible that Claypool had escaped during the battle, his retreat covered, perhaps, by the wounded detective who had shot Salata.

Bell went back to the windows. The man climbing the Singer steelwork stopped and looked down. Immediately, he lunged toward a ladder and scrambled higher. Bell leaned against the glass to see. Two stories below, another man climbed after him. He was limping, slowed by his “winging” gait.