The Spy Page 14

  “Tell Tommy I got good news for him.”

  “Tell him yourself. He’s on the third floor.”

  “Figured he’d be.”

  Weeks climbed the stairs, passed the gambling hall, guarded by another guy who looked surprised to see him, and headed for the third floor. One of the steps sagged a little under his foot, and he guessed it was rigged to dim the electric light in Tommy’s room above the gambling hall to warn him someone was coming.

  Weeks waited, bouncing from leg to leg, while they sized him up through the peephole. Tommy himself opened the door. “I guess you did it,” he said. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Are we square now?”

  “Come on in. Have a drink.”

  Tommy was drinking Scotch highballs. Weeks was so excited that the booze went straight to his head. “Wanna hear how I did it?”

  “Sure. Just wait ’til we’re done here. Shut that light.”

  Tommy’s bouncer pushed the switch, plunging the room into near darkness. He hinged open a trapdoor, and Weeks saw that they had cut a square hole in the floor down through the ceiling below and filled it with a smoky pane of glass. “Latest thing,” chuckled Tommy. “One-way mirror. We see down. All they see in the ceiling is their own mugs.”

  Weeks peered down at the gambling floor where six men were seated around a high-stakes poker table. One of them Weeks recognized as the best card mechanic in New York. Another, Willy the Roper, specialized in rounding up players to be fleeced. “Who’s the mark?”

  “The swell in the red necktie.”

  “Rich?”

  “Eyes O’Shay says that necktie means he’s a Harvard.”

  “What’s his line?”

  “Selling food to the Navy.”

  Selling food to the Navy sounded to Iceman Weeks like a way to get rich. The Navy business was booming. That Commodore Tommy was engaged in separating so exalted a dude from his money by rigging a high-stakes poker game sounded like Tommy had moved up several notches from robbing freight cars. “What are you taking this Harvard for?” he asked casually.

  “Eyes said to take him for all he’s got and lend him dough to lose more.”

  “Sounds like Eyes wants to have something on him.”

  “Won’t be hard. Ted Whitmark is a gambling fool.”

  “What do you get out of it?” Weeks asked, pouring himself another highball.

  “Part of our arrangement,” Tommy answered. “Eyes has been mighty generous. If he wants Mr. Whitmark to lose his dough at poker and get in hock to lose some more, it’s a pleasure to help him.”

  As Weeks poured his third drink, it occurred to him that Commodore Tommy Thompson was normally more tight-lipped. He wondered what made him so talkative all of a sudden. Jaysus! Was Tommy inviting him to share in the Gophers?

  “Want to hear how I did Bell?”

  Tommy shut the trapdoor and gestured for his bouncer to turn on the light. “You see that over there on the table? You see what that is?”

  “It’s a telephone,” Weeks answered. It looked brand-new, all shiny, the candlestick type you saw in the best joints. “You’re getting up-to-date, Tommy. Didn’t know you had it in ya.”

  Tommy Thompson grabbed Weeks by his lapels, effortlessly picked the smaller man off the floor, and threw him hard against the wall. Weeks found himself on the carpet, his head ringing, his brain squirming. “What?”

  Tommy kicked him in the face. “You didn’t kill Bell!” he roared. “That telephone tells me that right now Bell is grilling everybody who works in that club.”

  “What?”

  “The telephone says the Van Dorn’s alive. You didn’t kill him.”

  Iceman Weeks pulled the pistol that he had taken from the Cumberland Hotel house dick. Tommy’s bouncer stepped on his hand and took it away from him.

  THE MANAGER OF THE YALE CLUB woke the staff and gathered them in the big kitchen on the top floor. They knew Isaac Bell as a regular who remembered their names and was generous when the club’s no-tipping rule was waived at Christmas. All of them, manager, housekeeper, barman, chambermaids, porters, and front-desk clerk, clearly wanted to be of help when Bell asked, “Where did the trunk outside my door on the third floor come from?”

  No one could answer. It had not been there when the day shift ended at six. A night-shift waiter had noticed it when passing by with room service at eight. The freight-elevator operator had not seen it, but he admitted taking a long dinner between six and eight. Then Matthew, who had stayed at the front door after Bell interviewed him privately, suddenly appeared, saying, “The new laundress? Mr. Bell. I found her across the street, weeping.”

  Bell turned to the housekeeper. “Mrs. Pierce, who is the laundress?”

  “The new girl, Jenny Sullivan. She doesn’t live in the house yet.”

  “Matthew, could you bring her in?”

  Jenny Sullivan was small and dark and trembling with fear. Bell said, “Sit down, miss.”

  She stood rigid by the chair. “I didn’t mean no harm.”

  “Don’t be afraid, you’ve-” He reached to comfort her with a gentle hand on her arm. Jenny screamed in pain and shrank back.

  “What?” Bell said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt-Mrs. Pierce, could you look after Jenny?”

  The kindly housekeeper led the girl away, speaking to her softly.

  “I think everyone can go back to bed,” said Bell. “Good night. Thank you for your help.”

  When Mrs. Pierce returned, she had tears in her eyes. “The girl is beaten black-and-blue from her shoulders to her knees.”

  “Did she say who did it?”

  “A man named Weeks.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Pierce. Get her to a hospital-not in the district where she lives but the best in the city. I will pay all expenses. Stint on nothing. Here’s money for immediate needs.” Bell pressed it in the housekeeper’s hand and hurried to his room.

  Swiftly, methodically, he cleaned his Browning and replaced the spent shell. Wondering again whether a heavier gun would have stopped Weeks before he could stab Alasdair MacDonald, he took a Colt.45 automatic from his safe. He checked the loads in his derringer and put on his hat. He stuffed the Colt and spare ammunition for both guns in his coat pockets and went down the stairs three at a time.

  Matthew recoiled from the expression on his face. “Are you all right, Mr. Bell?”

  “Not that you would frequent the joint, Matthew, but do you know the address of Commodore Tommy’s Saloon?”

  “I believe it is way far across West 39th, almost to the river. But if I ever did ‘frequent the joint,’ ” he added bluntly, “I would not go alone.”

  21

  ISAAC BELL CHARGED OUT OF THE YALE CLUB. MEN WHO saw him coming moved aside. He crossed Sixth Avenue and Seventh, ignoring the blare of auto horns, and turned downtown on Eighth Avenue. On the nearly deserted sidewalk Bell increased his pace and yet he could not outpace the thundering anger in his head. At West 39th Street he broke into a run.

  A police officer in his path, a big man patrolling with a twenty-six-inch nightstick and revolver, looked him over and quietly crossed the street. At Ninth Avenue groups of men and a few women, mostly older, shabbily dressed, with the despairing features of the homeless, had gathered on the streetcar tracks under the El. They were staring up into the dark structure of fan-top columns that supported the overhead train tracks. Bell shouldered through them. Then he stopped short. A man in a sack suit was hanging by his neck from a rope tied to a transverse girder.

  An express train on the middle track thundered overhead. As it clattered away and silence descended, someone muttered, “Looks like the Gophers wanted the Iceman should die slow.”

  Bell saw what he meant. They hadn’t bound the dead man’s hands. His fingers had caught under the noose as if he were still tugging at his throat. His eyes were bulging and his mouth was locked in a terrible grimace. But even wearing the mask of death, he was beyond any doubt the man who had killed Alasd
air MacDonald in Camden.

  A drunk snickered, “Maybe the Iceman committed suicide.”

  “Yeah,” answered his companion sarcastically. “And maybe the Pope is dropping by Commodore Tommy’s for a beer.”

  They laughed. A toothless old woman turned on them. “Would you mock the dead?”

  “He deserves what he got. Evil mug.”

  An old man in a slouch hat growled, “No Gopher ever killed another because he was evil, ya silly bastards. They killed the Iceman because he was getting too big for his britches.”

  Isaac Bell shoved past and continued west.

  Both were wrong. The Gophers had killed Weeks to break the chain of evidence that connected his boss to the murder in Camden. It was justice of a sort, rough justice. But it hadn’t been done for justice, only self-protection. What link was left between Alasdair’s killing and the spy who ordered it?

  He could feel the cold breath of the river now, and he heard ship horns and the piping of tugs. With Weeks dead, he was no closer to the spy who plotted to kill the minds that imagined Hull 44.

  He quickened his pace, then stopped abruptly under a signboard above the first floor of a crumbling red brick tenement so old that it had no fire escapes. Faded white letters on a gray field read “Commodore Tommy’s Saloon.”

  The building looked more like a fort than a saloon. Dim light shone through the barred windows. He heard voices inside. But when he tried the front door, it was locked. Bell jerked the.45 out of his coat, fired four shots in a circle around the knob, and kicked the door open.

  He went through it fast, slewed sideways into a dimly lit barroom, and slammed his back hard against the wall. A dozen Gophers scattered, upending tables and crouching behind them.

  “I’ll shoot the first man with a gun,” said Isaac Bell.

  They gaped, staring at him. Eyes flickered at the door, back at him, again at the door. Exchanging surprised glances, the Gopher gangsters registered that Bell was alone and rose menacingly to their feet.

  Bell switched the.45 to his left hand and pulled his Browning with his right.

  “Everyone’s hands where I can see them. Now!”

  At the sight of the enraged detective standing against the wall with two guns sweeping the barroom, most dropped weapons and displayed empty hands. Bell aimed at two who didn’t. “Now!” he repeated. “Or I’ll clean out the place.”

  Up came an ancient horse pistol, barrel yawning. Bell shot it out of the gangster’s hand. The man cried out in pain and astonishment. The other was swinging a heavy coach gun at him, a wide-gauge, double-barreled sawed-off that could cut him in half. Bell threw himself sideways as he triggered the Browning again. Buckshot screeched through the air he had vacated. An errant slug burned a furrow across his left arm with a mule-kick impact that nearly knocked the.45 out of his fist. He rolled across the floor and sprang up, guns ready, but the gangster who had fired the coach gun was sprawled on his back, clutching his shoulder.

  “Which one of you skunks is Tommy Thompson?”

  “He ain’t here, mister.”

  Bell had a vague idea that the same rage twisting his face into the expression that cowed them might also be keeping him from thinking straight. He didn’t care.

  “Where is he?” he shouted.

  “At one of his new joints.”

  “Where?”

  Far beneath the surface of Isaac Bell’s conscience, a voice cautioned that he would get himself killed like this. But Bell’s fighting voice, always nearest the surface, retorted that no one in the dimly lit barroom could kill him. In a flash, he assessed the contradiction: the fighter saw something the worrier did not. This was too easy. Twelve Gophers, and only two had pulled weapons. By rights, the rest of the gang should still be slinging lead at him. Instead, they were gaping openmouthed and wide-eyed.

  “Where?”

  “Don’t know, mister.”

  “One of the new joints.”

  Fear and confusion in the gangsters’ tones made Bell look more closely. Now he noticed that the weapons they had dropped were brass knuckles, saps, and knives. No guns. Then it dawned on him. These were mostly old men, missing teeth, hunched, scarred-the weary down-and-out slum dwellers of Hell’s Kitchen where forty was old, fifty ancient.

  New joints. That was it. Commodore Tommy Thompson had moved up and left them behind. These sorry devils had been abandoned by their boss and scared out of their wits by an enraged detective blasting open the door and gunning down the only two with the go left in them to fight.

  Bell felt a cool calm settle over his mind, and with it an electric clarity.

  Change was sweeping the Hell’s Kitchen Gophers, and he had a strong hunch what was causing it. The old men saw the softening in his face. One piped, “Could we put our hands down, mister?”

  The tall detective was still too angry to smile, but he came close. “No,” he said. “Leave them where I can see them.”

  A taxi horn blared in the street.

  Bell shot a glance out the door. The taxi was sliding to a halt. Five grim-faced Van Dorn veterans and an up-and-coming young fellow spilled out bearing firearms. They were trailed at a distance by a squad of New York cops on foot. Harry Warren, the gang specialist, was leading the Van Dorns. He had a sawed-off pressed against his leg and a revolver tucked in his waistband. Passing the youngster a wad of cash, he gestured for him to deal with the cops, and assessed the front of Commodore Tommy’s with an eye to storming it.

  Bell stepped out of the saloon. “Evening, boys.”

  “Isaac! You O.K.?”

  “Tip-top. What are you doing here?”

  “Your Yale Club doorman telephoned the Knickerbocker. Sounded real worried, said that you needed a hand.”

  “Old Matthew’s like a mother hen.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Just out for a stroll.”

  “Stroll?” They looked up and down the dark and grimy street. “Stroll?” They stared at Isaac Bell. “And I suppose a mosquito drilled that hole in your coat sleeve?” one detective remarked.

  “Same one that shot the lock off this door?” asked another.

  “And made those Gophers inside hold their hands in the air?” said a third.

  Harry Warren beckoned the kid who had just returned. “Eddie, go tell the cops they should send an ambulance.”

  Isaac Bell grinned. “Might as well call it a night, boys. Thanks for coming out. Harry, if you’d walk me home, I have questions for you.”

  Harry handed his shotgun to the boys, shoved his revolver in his coat pocket, and passed Bell a handkerchief. “You’re bleeding.”

  Bell stuffed it up his sleeve.

  They walked to Ninth Avenue. The cops had cordoned off the area under the El where Weeks was hanging. Firemen were holding ladders for morgue attendants who were trying to cut the body loose.

  “So much for connecting the Iceman to Tommy and your foreign spy,” said Harry.

  “This connection is precisely what I want to talk to you about,” said Isaac Bell. “It looks to me like Tommy Thompson is moving up in the world.”

  Harry nodded. “Yeah, I hear talk in the neighborhoods that the Gophers are throwing their weight around.”

  “I want you to find out who his new friends are. Five’ll get you ten, they will be the connection.”

  “You could be onto something. I’ll get right to it. Oh, here, they passed me this as we were leaving.” Harry fished in his pockets. “Wire came in for you from the Philadelphia office.”

  They had reached the corner of 42nd Street. Bell stopped under a streetlamp to read the wire.

  “Bad news?”

  “They got a line on a German sneaking around Camden.”

  “Wasn’t that a German who did the Bethlehem job?”

  “Possibly.”

  “What’s in Camden?”

  “They’re launching the battleship Michigan.”

  22

  THE SPY SUMMONED HIS GERMAN AG
ENT WITH A CRYPTIC note left at his Camden rooming house. They met in Philadelphia in a watchman’s shack on a barge tied to the west bank of the Delaware directly across the busy river from the shipyard. Through an ever-moving scrim of tugboats, lighters, ships, ferries, and coal smoke they could see the stern of the Michigan thrusting her propellers out the back of the shed that covered her ways. The river was only a half mile wide, and they could hear the steady drumbeat of carpenters pounding wooden wedges.

  The ship workers had built a gigantic wooden cradle big enough to carry the 16,000-ton ship down greased rails from her building place on land to her home in the water. Now they were raising the cradle up to her by driving wedges under it. When the wedges pressed the cradle tightly against the hull, they would continue hammering them until the cradle lifted the ship off her building blocks.

  The German was glum.

  The spy said, “Listen. What do you hear?”

  “They’re hammering the wedges.”

  The spy had earlier passed close by in a steam launch to observe the scene under the hull, which was painted with a dull red undercoat. The “hammers” were actually rams, long poles tipped with heavy heads.

  “The wedges are thin,” he said. “How much does each blow raise the cradle?”

  “You’d need a micrometer to measure.”

  “How many wedges?”

  “Gott in Himmel, who knows. Hundreds.”

  “A thousand?”

  “Could be.”

  “Could any one wedge raise the cradle under the ship?”

  “Impossible.”

  “Could any one wedge lift the cradle and the ship off her blocks.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Every German must do his part, Hans. If one fails, we all fail.”

  Hans stared at him with a strange look of detachment. “I am not a simpleton, mein Herr. I understand the principle. It is not the doing that troubles me, but the consequences.”