The Striker ib-6 Page 16

  Hand over hand, Laurence Rosania went down a drainpipe as agilely as a spider. Ducking low, he crossed the lawn and onto the dock and knelt to untie the little sailboat’s bowline. Suddenly, he froze, his eyes locking on the front deck where he had lowered the foresail. The sail was gone.

  Before the safecracker could stand, darkness closed in on him. Wet, mildewed canvas covered his head and wrapped his arms and legs, pinning them. The next thing he knew, a very strong man was picking him up and carrying him somewhere.

  * * *

  Despite fifteen years away in New York, Henry Clay had Chicago roots that still ran deep. Friendly with corrupt cops and gangsters who had moved up the ranks, and generous with Judge Congdon’s money, he had kept tabs on Isaac Bell since Joe Van Dorn’s favorite stepped off the train at Union Depot. The seasoned men working for him recognized trouble in the formidable Wish Clarke and operated with appropriate caution. So far, at least, neither Van Dorn had spotted them.

  Clay had expected Bell would visit Jim Higgins’s union hall, if only as an excuse to call on Mary. But the reports of Clarke and Bell standing drinks for express car messengers was a puzzle. Train robbers were known to try that gambit, but the detectives’ motives were not as obvious.

  Clay had paid a savvy plainclothes police detective to nose around Little’s Exchange, where Wish Clarke spent much of the day. The police dick coaxed one messenger into revealing that Clarke had been inquiring about jewelry purchases in New York. Clay racked his brain.

  What in hell? Were the Van Dorns looking to steal jewels? Of course not. That was ludicrous. Were they tracing contraband? No. United States Customs had their own investigators, and, besides, Isaac Bell was still working on his coalfield case.

  Clay had still been pondering the jewel connection when a shadow he had set on Bell and Clarke reported that they had driven an auto up to the North Shore and parked outside Rose Stambaugh’s new mansion. A moment later it had struck him: Newport. The Van Dorns were even sharper than he gave them credit for and he was suddenly at risk of being exposed.

  He had summoned the highest-ranking policeman in his pay.

  27

  Unwrapped from the sail, Laurence Rosania had recovered his equilibrium quickly, brushed off his dinner jacket and straightened his collar. He looked about the windowless room Bell and Wish Clarke had taken him to and concluded there was no escape until they were ready to let him go. That the Van Dorns wanted something from him was very good news, and he had high hopes of getting out of this mess without going to prison. That Wish Clarke was one of them meant he would be treated fairly as long as he did not make the mistake of underestimating Clarke’s intelligence. The handsome young fellow with him who explained what they wanted conducted himself like a gentleman, and soon all three were on a first-name basis.

  “Thank you for that clear explanation, Isaac. And thank you, Aloysius. Always a treat to run into you. Now, here’s the deal as I understand it. I will tell you what you need to know and you let me go.”

  “No,” said Isaac Bell. “You will tell us what we need to know. We will return what’s in your pockets to the lady who owns it and let you go.”

  “Or,” said Wish Clarke, “you won’t tell us what we want to know. We return what’s in your pockets to the lady who owns it and give you to the cops. Take a moment to think on it.”

  “I’ve reached a decision,” said Rosania. “What do you need to know?”

  “Everyone you know who’s experimenting with shaped charges.”

  Rosania had dark brown eyes. They opened wide. “Are you asking me to betray every thief I know who’s experimenting with shaped charges?”

  “There can’t be that many,” said Wish.

  “It’s rather an exclusive club,” Rosania agreed. “And the membership has been reduced drastically by experiments that went Poof! before they cleared the room. In fact, believe it or not, I’m the last man standing. Hollow charges are more complicated than anyone imagined.”

  Isaac Bell’s face grew wintry. “Laurence. You are trying our patience.”

  “And putting unwarranted faith in our good nature,” Wish added.

  “What if I tell you what you need to know and I keep half the contents of my pockets and give you half and we go our separate ways?”

  Bell tugged the thick gold chain draped across his vest and pulled out his watch. “Ten seconds.”

  “If you insist, there are two safecrackers I can name who’ve not only survived but are getting quite good at it.” He named them.

  Bell looked at Wish.

  Wish shook his head. “Those guys are like you, Laurence, professionals happy in their work and not about to go to the trouble of wrecking coal mines.”

  “Coal mines?” echoed Rosania. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Everyone,” said Isaac Bell. “Not only thieves. Everyone experimenting with shaped explosives.”

  For the first time since they waylaid Rosania, the jewel thief looked worried. “How would I know someone not a thief?”

  “For your sake, you better.”

  “You’re not going to love my answer.”

  Wish nodded to Bell that it was his turn to be unpleasant, and Bell said, “In which case, you’re not going to love our reaction.”

  “No, I’m serious. I can tell you something about him, but I can’t tell you his name because I don’t know his name.”

  “Tell us what you know.”

  “He’s a big fellow — as tall as you, Isaac, and wider than you, Wish. He is very intelligent. He is very quick on his feet and quick with his hands. He talks like he’s from Chicago, but I’ve never seen him around. So I think he’s probably a bit older than me and left town before I took up my calling. He wears a slouch hat that covers his hair, and he pulls it down low over his eyes. He’s clean-shaven. The bit of hair that shows below his hat is brown.”

  So far, thought Bell, Rosania could be describing the man he had confronted in the Tombs and chased through the subway.

  “What color are his eyes?”

  “Hard to tell, the light was poor.”

  Wish Clarke said, “Laurence, you are usually more observant than that, knowing that the alert safecracker is the free safecracker. Poor light would have prompted you to redouble your efforts to inspect his eyes.”

  “You’re forgetting that I was attempting to learn the finer points of blowing holes in safes — not identify strangers.”

  “Blue?”

  “No, not blue. Some shade of brown.”

  “Amber?”

  “Amber is rare,” said Rosania. “But they could be amber.”

  “How do you know he’s not a thief?” asked Wish.

  “Good question. There’s something about him that’s more like a cop.”

  “What about him was like a cop?”

  “It’s hard to say. He had something of the authoritative air about him. Like you gentlemen. I mean, you could pretend to be police.”

  “How?” asked Bell.

  “I wouldn’t want you to take this the wrong way,” said Rosania, “but words like convincing, confident, cocksure, swaggering, and arrogant spring to mind.”

  “I’m working hard at not taking it the wrong way,” said Wish Clarke.

  Bell asked, “And you’re saying he came all the way to Chicago to study shaped explosives?”

  “No, no, no. I didn’t say that. I met him in Newport.”

  “Rhode Island, Virginia, or California?” asked Wish.

  “Rhode Island,” said Bell. “The Naval Torpedo Station.”

  “Where else? The fellow I’m talking about was standing drinks in the nearest bar and so was I. We both ended up talking to the same torpedo scientist. One of these big brains who doesn’t know anything except one thing. Of the three of us, he was the only one who didn’t know why we were asking all our questions. Good thing we weren’t foreign spies.”

  “Are you sure the other fellow wasn’t a spy?”

  “He was a s
afecracker through and through. Knew all the right questions. In fact, it went through my mind to exchange business cards. Team up for a big job.”

  “But you said earlier he wasn’t a thief.”

  “Did I? I suppose what I am trying to tell you is, he asked all the questions a safecracker would ask but he conducted himself more like a policeman.”

  “A cop with amber eyes,” said Bell.

  “Possibly amber. Very likely a cop.”

  “Was he armed?” asked Bell.

  “Brother, was he! Big revolver in his coat, and his wrist banged on the table like he had a cannon in his sleeve.”

  “Any knives?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Curiosity.”

  “He had a blade in his boot.”

  “How’d you happen to see that?” asked Wish Clarke.

  “He cut a cigar he gave to Wheeler.”

  “Who’s Wheeler?”

  “The big brain. And, by the way, his arsenal was another reason I figured he was not a thief. No self-respecting thief packs weapons. He was armed like you two.”

  Isaac Bell exchanged glances with Wish Clarke, who looked like he agreed that they had gotten all they were going to. “Thank you, Mr. Rosania. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “My pleasure. And with that, I will bid you gentlemen good evening.”

  Rosania started for the door. He stopped abruptly at the sound of two Van Dorns cocking firearms.

  “Don’t forgot to empty your pockets.”

  * * *

  “Like cops?” asked Wish as the detectives exited the Stambaugh mansion, having returned the lady’s necklace and been rewarded with snifters of forty-year-old brandy, memorable embraces, and an invitation to come back anytime they were in the neighborhood.

  Wish drove. Bell was silent all the way into Chicago. They returned the auto to the stable where they had rented it and walked toward Black’s Social to get some late-night breakfast.

  “Did you ever pretend to be a cop?” asked Bell, aware that Van Dorn regulations forbid it.

  Wish shrugged. “Only when necessary.”

  “What’s the trick?”

  “In the words of the safecracker, act cocksure, swaggering, and arrogant.”

  “Did you find it difficult?”

  Wish grinned. “Would I be immodest to claim that arrogance did not come natural?”

  “Otherwise you acted yourself?”

  “I focused on cocksure. Any cop, good, bad, or indifferent, has to be cocksure to be taken seriously.”

  “Like us,” said Bell.

  “Except when we disguise ourselves as someone with a lower profile than a cop.”

  “A detective,” said Bell.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Ten-to-one, our provocateur is a private detective.”

  “Why not a cop?”

  “What cop could operate days apart in Gleasonburg, New York, and Chicago? Policemen can’t travel. They’re locked in their jurisdiction. But we can go anywhere in the country. That’s why Joe Van Dorn is opening field offices. Cops are stuck at home. We’re not, and neither is this guy. He’s a private detective.”

  * * *

  Wish Clarke nodded thoughtfully. “Son, I keep saying you’re getting the hang of this detecting line and you keep proving me right. He could most certainly be a detective. In fact, I’d bet on it.”

  Bell asked, “Have you noticed we have three fellows sticking close behind us?”

  “If you’re referring to the short, fat, and tall gents in bowler hats, they latched onto us where we left the auto.”

  “The short ugly one was hanging around Black’s.”

  They started across the Harrison Street jackknife bridge. Wish pretended to admire the elaborate ironwork of the lift towers and glanced back. “The fat ugly one was stuffing his face at Little’s lunch.”

  “Do you happen to have your coach gun in your bag?” Bell asked.

  “Right on top.”

  “How about you stop to tie your shoelace?”

  Wish knelt and opened his carpetbag. “Move a hair behind me, Isaac. She spreads wide.”

  “Cops,” said Bell.

  Three in blue coats and tall helmets coming up behind the men following them. The tallest had a handlebar mustache.

  Wish Clarke had worked Chicago long enough to ask, “Whose team?”

  Bell said, “That’s Officer ‘Muldoon’ in the middle. Looks like they were freelancing earlier.”

  “And finishing the job here.”

  Wish counted heads. “Six of them, two of us. We have to pull off a couple of triple plays, Isaac. Or is that Harry O’Hagan I hear galloping to our rescue?”

  The answer came in the thunder of iron-shod hooves, and it was not the first baseman but two gigantic horses dragging a paddy wagon around the corner on the far side of the bridge.

  28

  The men in bowlers followed Isaac Bell and Wish Clarke onto the bridge. Moving in unison like a drill team, they drew press-button knives and released the blades with a simultaneous click that the detectives heard twenty feet away.

  The cops led by Muldoon stopped under the lift towers, blocking that side.

  The paddy wagon driver wheeled his horses across Harrison Street, barricading the other side.

  Wish left his coach gun in his bag.

  “It appears that the forces of the law have come to watch a knife fight.”

  “Neutral observers,” said Bell.

  “Unless we introduce firearms.”

  “In which case,” said Bell, “the cops will shoot us.”

  “How you fixed for knives?”

  “A little throwing steel in my boot.”

  “I’d hold on to that as a last resort,” said Wish, rummaging in his bag. “Well, look here. Would you like a Bowie knife?” He pulled a twelve-inch blade sharpened on both sides from its fancy worked-leather sheath.

  “How many do you have?”

  “Just the one. Flip a coin?”

  “Keep it,” said Isaac Bell. “I’ll borrow one of theirs.”

  He went straight at them at full speed, eyes locked like binoculars on the tall man in the middle. Five feet away, Bell feinted a kick at the fat man on the right, launched off his left foot and pivoted a half circle away from him. His right boot grazed the nose of the man in the middle and smashed the face of the short man on the left, who dropped as if poleaxed.

  Isaac Bell snatched his knife off the deck. “Thank you.”

  Wish was beside him in a rush, Bowie knife slashing the air like a saber. “Run for it, boys, while you still have faces.”

  Fat & Ugly lunged with startling speed and skill. His blade plunged into the space where Wish Clarke had been an instant earlier. The razor edge of the Bowie knife parted his coat sleeve and tore the flesh of his forearm from his elbow to his hand. He dropped his knife, screamed, clutched his arm, and ran.

  That left the tall man in the middle. His eyes flicked from Bell’s slim blade to the blood dripping from Wish’s Bowie. He shoved his blade at Wish. Isaac Bell chopped down with all his strength. The knife he had taken pierced the attacker’s hand and stuck there as the man reeled away.

  Wish Clarke gave a harsh laugh. “Now all we have is to reason with the police— Look out, Isaac!”

  29

  The blade came out of nowhere.

  The first man down, the man on the left whom Isaac Bell had kicked unconscious, awakened in a flash and lurched to his feet, gripping the knife that had fallen beside him and driving it toward the young detective’s ribs.

  Bell tried to twist aside, but the blade kept coming and there was nothing he could do to avoid it. Just as suddenly as it had blazed at him, it disappeared, blocked by Wish Clarke, who grunted and staggered back, clutching his side.

  Isaac Bell slammed a fist that started at his knees up against the attacker’s jaw, tumbling him over the side of the bridge and into the river. He caught his friend as he fell. “Wish!”

&
nbsp; “I’m O.K. I’m O.K.”

  But he was not, Bell could feel his big body go slack.

  He made sure no arteries were cut. Thank God, there was no blood pumping from the wounded side. Then he slung Wish over his shoulder, picked up his carpetbag, and stalked to the paddy wagon blocking the bridge.

  The driver and the officer riding shotgun stared down at him.

  Isaac Bell said, “Odds are, your precinct captain is an old pal of our boss, Joe Van Dorn. You sure as hell don’t want him to hear you’re freelancing tonight.”

  The driver looked across the bridge. Muldoon and company were shuffling their feet but not coming to help. “You’re right about that.”

  “Drive us direct to the hospital and we’ll be square.”

  “Jake,” the driver told his shotgun, “hop down and make the gentlemen comfortable in back.”

  Bell laid Wish on a long bench and knelt beside it to keep him from rolling off. The driver whipped up his team, and the paddy wagon lurched through the city.

  “Stop trying to talk,” Bell told Wish.

  Wish beckoned him closer.

  “I said, that mustache is working like I said it would.”

  * * *

  Aloysius Clarke woke up at dawn and looked around the private room Isaac Bell had paid for. “What are you doing here?” he asked Bell.

  “Wish, what do you mean what am I doing here? You saved my life.”

  “Heck, you did the same for me in New Orleans.”

  “I didn’t step in front of a knife.”

  Wish shrugged, which made him wince. “You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.” Then he winked. “Fact is, I enjoy the occasional wound. Nobody complains when I take a little something for the pain.”

  Bell passed him his flask.

  “How bad am I?”

  “Doc says a couple of weeks in bed ought to do you.”

  “Sorry, Isaac. I’ll catch up as soon as I can. You going to Pittsburgh?”

  “Just stopping at Union Station to see Mack and Wally and Archie on my way to New York.”