The Wrecker Read online

  “I’ll give him something to smile about,” said Sullivan.

  “Got a match?” Bell asked him.

  Sullivan lowered his hands and stared. “What?”

  “A match. A lucifer. I need more light to show you this picture I have in my pocket.”

  “Wlhat? ”

  “You asked, what’s the joke. I’m hunting a killer. The same killer who hired you hydrophobic skunks to kill me. Here’s the joke: you hydrophobic skunks are going to tell me what he looks like.”

  Sullivan rushed at Bell, throwing a vicious right at his face. Bell moved quickly. The fist whizzed over his head like a boulder, and he brought his left down on the Sullivan’s head as he stumbled from the force of missing Bell. It drove Sullivan to the ground like a pile driver. This time when Corbett rushed in from the side, Bell was ready, and he backhanded Corbett with the same left, smashing his nose with a sharp crack.

  Corbett grunted, wheeling gracefully out of a predicament that would have seen an ordinary mortal fall. He whipped his left high to protect his chin from Bell’s right cross and kept his right low to block Bell’s left to the stomach. Conversationally, he said, “Here’s one they didn’t teach you in college,” and hit Bell with a one-two that nearly tore his head off.

  Sullivan slugged Bell as he hurtled past. The full force of the blow struck just above his temple and knocked him flat. The pain was sharp as a needle in his brain. But the fact that he felt pain at all meant he was still alive, and conscious that Sullivan and Corbett were moving in for the kill. His head was spinning, and he had to push with his hands to regain his feet.

  “Gentlemen, this is your last chance. Is this the man who paid you to kill me?”

  Sullivan’s powerful jab knocked the paper from Bell’s hand.

  Bell straightened up as much as he could, given the searing pain in his ribs, and managed to elude the combination Sullivan threw next. “I’ll take you next,” he taunted Sullivan. “Soon as I teach your partner something I learned in college.” Then he turned his scorn on Corbett. “If you were half as good as you think you are, you wouldn’t be hiring yourself out to beat people up in a godforsaken railroad town.”

  It worked. As table talk could smoke out intentions in poker, fight talk provoked recklessness. Corbett shoved Sullivan aside.

  “Get out of my way! I’m going to make this son of a bitch weep before he dies.”

  He charged in a rage, throwing punches like cannon fire.

  Bell knew he had taken too much punishment to count on speed. He had one last chance to gather all his strength into one killing blow. Too tired to slip the punches, he absorbed two, stepped inside the next, and hit Corbett hard on the jaw, which snapped Corbett’s head back. Then Bell unleashed a right with every ounce of his strength and plunged it into Corbett’s body. The breath exploded out of the man, and he collapsed as if his knees had turned to water. Fighting to the last, he lunged for Bell’s throat as he went down but fell short.

  Bell lurched at Sullivan. He was gasping at the exertion, but his face was a mask of grim purpose: Who hiredjou to kill me?

  Sullivan dropped to his knees beside Corbett, reached inside his fallen partner’s coat, yanked out a flick knife. Leaping to his feet, he charged Bell.

  Bell knew that the heavily built brawler was stronger than he was. In his own half-dead state, attempting to take the knife away was too risky. He slipped his own blade from his boot and pitched it overhand, dragging his index finger on the smooth handle to prevent it from rotating. Flickering like a lizard’s tongue, it flew flat and true into Sullivan’s throat. The brawler fell, spewing blood through hands desperately trying to close the wound.

  He would not be answering Bell’s questions.

  The detective knelt beside Corbett. His eyes were staring wide open. Blood was trickling from his mouth. If he wasn’t dying from internal ruptures from Bell’s blow to his stomach, he was close to it, and would not be answering questions tonight either. Without wasting another moment, Isaac Bell staggered along the rails to the Rawlins Depot and burst through the dispatcher’s door.

  The dispatcher stared at the man in ripped evening clothes with blood pouring down his face.

  “What the hell happened to you, mister?”

  Bell said, “The president of the line has authorized me to charter a special.”

  “You bet. And the Pope just gave me a pass for the Pearly Gates.”

  Bell pulled Osgood Hennessy’s letter from his wallet and thrust it in the dispatcher’s face.

  “I want your fastest locomotive.”

  The dispatcher read it twice, stood up, and said, “Yes, sir! But I’ve only got one engine, and she’s scheduled to hitch onto the westbound limited, which is due in twenty minutes.”

  “Turn her around, we’re going east.”

  “Where to?”

  “After the Overland Limited.”

  “You’ll never catch her.”

  “If I don‘t, you’ll be hearing from Mr. Hennessy. Get on that telegraph and clear the tracks.”

  The Overland Limited had a fifty-minute head start, but Bell’s locomotive had the advantage of hauling only the weight of her own coal and water while the Limited’s engine was towing eight Pullmans and baggage, dining, and observation cars. Hundred-dollar tips to the fireman and engineer didn’t hurt her speed either. They climbed through the night, encountering snow in the Medicine Bow Mountains, a harbinger of the winter that Osgood Hennessy’s railroad builders were striving to beat even as the Wrecker sowed death and destruction to stop them.

  They left the snow behind as they descended into the Laramie Valley, stormed through it and the town, stopping only for water, and climbed again. They finally caught up with the Overland Limited east of Laramie at Buford Station, where the rising sun was illuminating the pink granite on the crest of Sherman Hill. The Limited was sidetracked on the water siding, her fireman wrestling the spigot down from the tall wooden tank and jerking the chain that caused the water to flow into the locomotive’s tender.

  “Do you have sufficient water to make it to Cheyenne without stopping?” Bell asked his fireman.

  “I believe so, Mr. Bell.”

  “Pass him!” Bell told the engineer. “Take me straight to the Cheyenne Depot. Fast as you can.”

  From Buford Station to Cheyenne, the road descended two thousand feet in thirty miles. With nothing on the eastbound track in front of Bell’s special, they headed for Cheyenne at ninety miles an hour.

  19

  THE WRECKER HAD AWAKENED THE INSTANT THE TRAIN HAD stopped. He parted the shade a crack and saw the sun shining on pink Sherman granite, which the railroad quarried for track ballast. They would be in Cheyenne for breakfast. He closed his eyes, glad for another hour of sleep.

  A locomotive thundered past the sidetracked Limited.

  The Wrecker opened his eyes. He rang for the porter.

  “George,” he said to Jonathan. “Why have we stopped?”

  “Stopped for water, suh.”

  “Why did a train overtake us?”

  “Don’t know, suh.”

  “We are the Limited.”

  “Yes, suh.”

  “What train would be faster than this one, damn you?”

  The porter flinched. Senator Kincaid’s face was suddenly wracked with rage, his eyes hot, his mouth twisted with hate. Jonathan was terrified. The Senator could order him fired in a breath. They’d throw him off the train at the next stop. Or right here on top of the Rocky Mountains. “It weren’t no train passing us, suh. It was just a locomotive all by hisself.”

  “A single locomotive?”

  “Yes, suh! Just him and his tender.”

  “So it must have been a chartered special.”

  “Must have been, suh. Just like you say, suh. Going lickety-split, suh.”

  The Wrecker lay back on the bed, clasped his hands behind his head, and thought hard.

  “Will there be anything else, suh?” Jonathan asked warily.
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  “Coffee.”

  BELL’S CHARTERED LOCOMOTIVE RACED through Cheyenne’s stock-yards and into Union Depot shortly after nine in the morning. He ran directly to the Inter-Ocean Hotel, the best among the three-story establishments he could see from the station. The house detective took one look at the tall man in ripped and torn evening clothes and blood-soaked shirt and crossed the lobby at a dead run to intercept him.

  “You can’t come in here looking like that.”

  “Bell. Van Dorn Agency. Take me to the tailor. And round up a haberdasher, a shoe-shine boy, and a barber.”

  “Right this way, sir ... Shall I get you a doctor, too?”

  “No time.”

  The Overland Limited glided into Union Depot forty minutes later.

  Isaac Bell was waiting on the platform at the middle of the train, looking far better than he felt. His entire body ached and his ribs hurt with every breath. But he was groomed, shaved, and dressed as well as he had been at the poker game the night before, in crisp black evening clothes, snow-white shirt, silk bow tie and cummerbund, and boots shined like mirrors.

  A smile played across his swollen lips. Someone on this train was in for a big surprise. The question was would the Wrecker be so shocked that he gave himself away?

  Before the train stopped rolling, Bell stepped aboard the Pullman just ahead of the dining car, pulled himself painfully up the steps, crossed to the dining car, and sauntered in. Forcing himself to stand and walk normally for the benefit of all watching, he asked the steward for a table in the middle, which allowed him to see who entered from either end.

  Last night’s thousand-dollar tip in the observation car had not gone unnoticed by the train crew. He was seated immediately and brought hot coffee, steaming breakfast rolls, and a warm recommendation to order the freshly caught Wyoming cutthroat trout.

  Bell had watched every man’s face as he had come into the dining car to gauge reactions to his presence. Several, noting his evening attire, remarked with a clubby smile, “Long night?” The Chicago meatpacker gave him a friendly wave, as did the well-dressed drummer he had spoken with in the washroom.

  Judge Congdon wandered in, and said, “Forgive me if I don’t join you, Mr. Bell. With the obvious exception of a young lady’s company, I prefer my own in the morning.”

  Kenny Bloom staggered into the diner with a hangover clouding his eyes and sat beside Bell.

  “Good morning,” said Bell.

  “What the hell is good about it ... Say, what happened to your face?”

  “Cut myself shaving.”

  “George! George! Coffee over here before a man dies.”

  Bruce Payne, the oil lawyer, hurried up to their table, talking a blue streak about what he had read in the Cheyenne newspapers. Kenny Bloom covered his eyes. Jack Thomas sat down at the last empty chair, and said, “That’s a heck of a shiner.”

  “Cut myself shaving.”

  “There’s the Senator! Hell, we don’t have room for him. George! George! Rustle up another chair for Senator Kincaid. A man who loses as much money as he did shouldn’t have to eat alone.”

  Bell watched Kincaid approach slowly, nodding to acquaintances as he passed through the dining car. Suddenly, he recoiled, his expression startled. The well-dressed drummer had leaped up from his breakfast, reaching out to shake hands. Kincaid gave the salesman a cold stare, brushed past, and proceeded to Bell’s table.

  “Good morning, gentlemen. Feeling satisfied, Mr. Bell?”

  “Satisfied about what, Senator?”

  “About what? About winning nearly a million dollars last night. A fair piece of which was mine.”

  “That’s what I was doing last night,” said Bell, still watching the doors. “I was trying to remember. I knew it was something that caught my attention.”

  “It looks like something caught your attention full in the face. What happened? Did you fall off a moving train?”

  “Close shave,” said Isaac Bell, still watching the doors. But though he lingered over breakfast until the last table was cleared, he saw no one react as if his presence were a shock. He was not particularly surprised and only mildly disappointed. It had been a long shot. But even if he hadn’t spooked the Wrecker into revealing his identity, from now on the Wrecker would be watching a bit anxiously over his shoulder. Who said a Van Dorn detective couldn’t fly?

  20

  WONG LEE, OF JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY, WAS A TINY MAN WITH a lopsided face and a blinded eye. Twenty years ago, an Irish hod carrier, thick-armed from lugging bricks, knocked Wong’s hat to the sidewalk, and when Wong asked why he had insulted him, the hod carrier and two companions beat Wong so badly that his friends didn’t recognize him when they came to the hospital. He had been twenty-eight years old when he was attacked and full of hope, improving his English and working in a laundry to save enough money to bring his wife to America from their village in Kowloon.

  Now he was nearly fifty. At one point, he had saved enough to buy his own laundry across the Hudson River on Manhattan Island in New York City in hopes of earning her passage faster. His good English drew customers until the Panic of 1893 had put a sudden end to that dream, and Wong Lee’s Fine Hand Wash Laundering joined the tens of thousands of businesses that were bankrupt in the nineties. When prosperity finally returned, the long hard years had left Wong too weary to start a new business. Though ever hopeful, he now was saving money by sleeping on the floor of the laundry where he worked in Jersey City. Much of that money went to get a certificate of residence, which was a new provision included in the Chinese Exclusion Act when it was renewed in 1902. It seems that he had neglected to defend himself from assault charges, the lawyer explained, filed all those years ago while he was still in the hospital. So bribes would have to be paid. Or so the lawyer claimed.

  Then that past February, with winter still lingering, a stranger approached Wong when he was alone in his employer’s laundry. He was a white American, so muffled against the river wind that only his eyes showed above the collar of his inverness coat and below the brim of his fedora.

  “Wong Lee,” he said. “Our mutual friend, Peter Boa, sends greetings.”

  Wong Lee hadn’t see Peter Boa in twenty-five years, not since they’d worked together as immigrant dynamiters blowing cuts in the mountains for the Central Pacific Railroad. Young and daring and hopeful of returning to their villages rich men, they’d scrambled down cliff faces setting charges, competing to blast the most foot-holds for the trains.

  Wong said that he was happy to hear that Boa was alive and well. When last Wong had seen him, in the Sierra Nevada, Peter had lost a hand to a sooner-than-expected explosion. Gangrene was creeping up his arm, and he had been too sick to flee California from the mobs attacking Chinese immigrants.

  “Peter Boa told me to look you up in Jersey City. He said you could help me, as he was unable.”

  “By your clothes,” Wong observed, “I can see that you are too rich to need help from a poor man.”

  “Rich indeed,” said the stranger, sliding a wad of banknotes across the wooden counter. “An advance,” he called it, “until I return,” adding, “Rich enough to pay you whatever you need.”

  “What do you need?” Wong countered.

  “Peter Boa told me that you had a special gift for demolition. He said that you used one stick of dynamite when most men needed five. They called you Dragon Wong. And when you protested that only emperors could be dragons, they proclaimed you Emperor of Dynamite.”

  Flattered, Wong Lee knew it was true. He had had an intuitive understanding of dynamite back when no one knew that much about the new explosive. He still had the gift. He had kept up with all the modern advances in demolition, including how electricity made explosives safer and more powerful, in the unlikely hope that one day quarries and construction contractors would deign to hire the Chinese they used to hire but now shunned.

  Wong immediately used the money to buy a half interest in his boss’s business. But one month l
ater, that past March, a Panic swept Wall Street again. Jersey City factories closed, as did factories all over the nation. The trains had less freight to carry, so the car floats had fewer boxcars to ferry across the river. Jobs grew scarce on the piers, and fewer people could afford to have their clothing laundered. All spring and summer, the Panic deepened. By autumn, Wong had little hope of ever seeing his wife again.

  Now it was November, bitterly cold today, with another winter looming.

  And the stranger came back to Jersey City, muffled against the Hudson wind.

  He reminded Wong that accepting an advance was a promise to deliver.

  Wong reminded the stranger that he had promised to pay whatever he needed.

  “Five thousand dollars when the job is done. Will that do you?”

  “Very good, sir.” Then, feeling unusually bold because the stranger truly needed him, Wong asked, “Are you an anarchist?”

  “Why do you ask?” the stranger asked coldly.

  “Anarchists like dynamite,” Wong answered.

  “So do labor strikers,” the stranger answered patiently, proving that he truly needed Wong Lee and only Wong Lee. “You know the expression ‘the proletariat’s artillery’?”

  “But you do not wear workman’s clothes.”

  The Wrecker studied the Chinaman’s battered face for a long minute, as if memorizing every scar.

  Even though the laundry counter separated them, Wong suddenly felt they were standing too close.

  “I don’t care,” he tried to explain. “Just curious,” he added nervously.

  “Ask me again,” said the stranger, “and I will remove your other eye.”

  Wong Lee backed up a step. The stranger asked a question, watching Wong’s battered face as if testing his skills.

  “What will you need to make the biggest bang possible out of twenty-five tons?”

  “Twenty-five tons of dynamite? Twenty-five tons is a lot of dynamite.”

  “A full boxcar load. What will you need to make the biggest explosion?”