The Gangster (33 page)

“Canada?”

“I have padrone business in Montreal. The railroads are hungry for labor. The Italian colony grows larger every day, and many owe me their place in it. A good place to lay low.”

“What about our deal?”

“I’ll stay here until we’ve finished Roosevelt. After, I’ll run my end from Canada. It’s easy to travel back and forth. The border is wide open.”

“What about your big idea to discredit the city aqueduct? How can you do that in Canada?”

Branco spoke mildly again, but his answer made no sense. “Would you look at your watch?”

“What?”

“Tell me the time.”

“Time to make a new arrangement, like I’ve been telling you all morning.”

“What time is it?”
Branco repeated coldly.

Culp tugged a thick gold chain. “Two minutes to eleven.”

Branco raised two fingers. “Wait.”

“What? Listen here, Branco—”

“Bring your field glasses.”

Branco strode into an alcove framed with tusks and out a door onto a balcony. The day was cold and overcast. Snow dusted the hills. The frozen river was speckled with ice yachts and skate sailors skimming the glassy surface. He gazed expectantly at Breakneck Mountain, three-quarters of a mile opposite his vantage on Storm King.

Culp joined him with binoculars. “What the devil—”

The Italian stilled him with an imperious gesture. “Watch the uptake shaft.”

A heavy fog of steam and coal smoke loomed over the lift machinery at the top of the shaft, the engine house, and the narrow-gauge muck train. Culp raised his field glasses and had just focused on the mouth of the siphon uptake when suddenly laborers scattered and engineers leapt from their machines.

“What’s going on?”

Branco said, “Remember who I am.”

A crimson bolt of fire pierced the smoke and steam and shot to the clouds. The sound of the explosion crossed the river seconds later and reverberated back and forth between Breakneck Mountain and Storm King.

Culp watched men running like ants, then focused on the wreckage of the elevator house. It appeared that the lift cage itself had fallen to the bottom of the thousand-foot shaft, which was gushing black smoke.

“What in blazes was that?”

“Four hundred pounds of dynamite to discredit the
city.”

The New York newspapers arrived on the morning train.

OVERTURNED LANTERN SET OFF AQUEDUCT NITROGLYCERIN FUSE

The overturning of a lantern at the Catskill Aqueduct Hudson River Siphon at Storm King ignited a fuse that set off 400 pounds of dynamite destroying the east siphon uptake engine house and elevator.

“The papers got it wrong. As usual,” Wally Kisley told Isaac Bell. “The contractor runs an up-to-date enterprise. There weren’t any fuses to ignite. They fire the shots electrically.”

“Are you certain it was sabotage?” asked Bell.

“Sabotage with a capital
S
. Very slick timing device. You gotta hand it to these Eye-talians, Isaac. They are masters of dynamite.”

Kisley sat down abruptly. Bell reckoned that the long trek down to the tunnel and back up by makeshift bosun’s chairs and rickety ladders had exhausted him. But to Bell’s astonishment, the tough old bird covered his face with his hands.

“You O.K., Wally?”

Kisley took a breath. “I can’t claim I’m a stranger to carnage.”

Bell nodded. Kisley and Mack Fulton and Joe Van Dorn had worked on the Haymarket Massacre case to determine who had thrown the bomb, and, in the ensuing twenty years, scores more bombing cases. “Goes with the job,” he said softly.

“The men were
hammered
. The tunnel looked like a reefer car leaving the slaughterhouse.”

“The wooden framework of the engine house crumbled and beams crashed downward toward the machinery that operates the elevator. One beam struck a brake handle, releasing the heavy wooden cage, which crashed at full speed downward to the bottom of the shaft. Twisted into a mass of debris, it choked the passage and blotted out the air and light.

“The contractor assures the public that the shaft itself was not damaged.”

J. B. Culp laughed. “No one will believe that.”

“That they had to print the lie,” Branco agreed, “tells us they are in terror.”

“Asked whether the explosion confirmed speculation about Black Hand letters threatening to attack the water system, the contractor answered vehemently, ‘No. This is the Catskill Water Supply, not some poor devil’s pushcart.’

“The Mayor concurred, saying, ‘The Water Supply Board Police have investigated thoroughly and find absolutely not one shred of evidence to support such speculation. It was an accident, pure and simple, a terrible accident, and the faster it is cleaned up and order restored, the sooner the city will receive fresh water from the Catskills.’

“Asked to comment on talk of a strike by terrorized Italian laborers fearing another Black Hand attack, the contractor said, ‘They are paid well and treated well and have no intention of striking.’

“Tunnel work will continue as soon as the ruins are lifted out by means of horses and a windlass. Besides three Americans killed, there were among the dead numerous Italians and Negroes.”

“What were Negroes doing down in the tunnel?” asked Culp.

“Best rock drillers in the business. And the contractor keeps some around in case Italians get any ideas of striking for higher wages.”

“What about this strike they’re talking about? Labor striking would make the city look like they lost control of the job. Will they strike?”

“They’ll strike when I tell them to strike,” said Antonio Branco.

“What are you waiting for?”

“Would President Roosevelt come here to make a speech if they were on strike?”

“Good question,” Culp conceded. “He might take a strike as a challenge . . . No, he’s too damnedly unpredictable.”

“That reminds me,” said Branco. “Can you pull wires to have the Italian Consul General invited to the ceremony?”

“Of course. I can’t promise you he’ll accept.”

“He’ll accept. He’s got his hands full with immigration complaints. He will make friends anywhere he can. And to be invited to hear the President’s speech will be an honor for all Italians.”

Signora Marion Morgan
The Fiancée of Isaac Bell
Knickerbocker Hotel

Why you no believe us? Catskill Aqueduct bomb could have been prevented.

City no protect aqueduct. Water Supply Board helpless.

Black Hand stands by you. Together we stop tragedy.

Pay.

Or.

Next attack break hearts.

“This is beginning to annoy me,” said Marion Morgan.

She was feeling prison crazy, locked up in the Knickerbocker. Helen Mills was fine company, but she missed her job, the outdoors, the city streets, and, most of all, Isaac, who was working round the clock at Storm King. He had his detectives covering every base, but no matter how he tried, he could not find Antonio Branco.

“What do you want to do about them?” asked Helen.

“I wonder if Grady Forrer can help Isaac find how Branco gets in and out of Raven’s Eyrie.”

The women marched to the back of the Van Dorn offices, into the shabby rooms that housed Grady Forrer’s Research section. Scholars looked up from heaped desks. Researchers poked heads from crammed library stacks. Interviewers whispered, “I’ll call you back,” and hastily cradled their telephones.

“Welcome, ladies,” boomed Forrer, adding, sotto voce, over his shoulder, “Back to work, gents. I’ll take care of this.”

“Thank you, Grady,” said Marion Morgan. “But, in fact, we’re going to need
everyone
who has a few free moments to lend a hand.”

“What do you need?”

“The architects’ plans for Raven’s Eyrie.”

Twelve hours later, a deflated Grady Forrer apologized.

“The problem is the estate has been under almost continuous reconstruction for nearly a hundred years, starting shortly after Robert Fulton invented the steamboat and the first Culp destroyed his rivals in river commerce. The builders of J.B.’s New York mansion would have filed plans with various city departments, but apparently that was not the practice in the wilds of the Hudson Valley, at least in the face of bred-in-the-bone Culp hatred of government interference.”

Six hours later, when Grady had collapsed face-first on a cot and most of his young assistants had stumbled home, Marion suddenly whispered, “I’ll be darned.”

“What?” asked Helen.

Marion looked up from a folder of ancient yellowed newspapers. “Grandfather Culp had an affair with a Quaker woman from Poughkeepsie.”

“They printed that in the newspaper?”

“Well, they don’t come out and say it, but it’s pretty clear reading between the lines . . .” She checked the date on the top of the page. “This didn’t come out until after the Civil War. Raven’s Eyrie was a ‘station’ on the Underground Railroad.”

“The Culp’s were
Abolitionists
? That doesn’t sound like the Culp we know and love.”

“Her name was Julia Reidhead. She was a member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. But according to this, the Hudson Valley was not Abolitionist. They still kept slaves into the
early nineteenth century. Only a few Quaker strongholds were against slavery.”

“Grandpa Culp must have been a brave man to be a station master.”

“It doesn’t quite say that. According to this, Julia Reidhead talked him into building a secret entrance through the wall so they could help runaway slaves on their way to Canada. Sounds to me like he did it for love.”

“Was she J. B. Culp’s grandmother?” Helen asked.

“No. She ended up marrying a missionary. They served in India.”

Helen read the story over Marion’s shoulder. “I hadn’t realized the wall was that old.”

“First thing they built. It seems the Culps have never liked other people.”

Antonio Branco walked into J. B. Culp’s trophy room and calmly announced, “The Italian Squad just arrested my assassin.”

“
What?
Can you bail him out?”

“The Carabinieri confirmed he’s an anarchist. He will stay locked up until your government deports him.”

“How could they confirm it so fast?”

“The Italian Consul General keeps a Carabinieri officer on his staff for just such occasions,” Branco answered drily.

“What a mess! . . . Wait a minute. How did the police know he was yours?”

“They don’t. He was one of many caught in Petrosino’s dragnet.”

“Bloody Isaac Bell put Petrosino up to it.”

“Of course he did,” said Branco. “I would be surprised if he hadn’t. Thanks to Bell, there isn’t an Italian radical who isn’t behind bars or in hiding this morning.”