The Race ib-4 Page 20

  “As Whiteway told us, they love the underdog.”

  “I’ll grab a train,” said Van Dorn. “I’ll catch up in Chicago. Meantime, Isaac, keep in mind, sabotage or no, our first job is protecting Josephine.”

  “I’m going back to Gary. The weather ought to break soon.”

  Bell rang off with much to ponder. While keeping the clear head he promised, he could not ignore the evidence that more was afoot than Harry Frost’s murderous attacks on Josephine. Something else was going on, something perhaps bigger, more complicated, than one angry man trying to kill his wife. There was a second job to do, another crime to solve, before it wrecked the race. Not only did he have to stop Harry Frost, he had to solve a crime that he did not yet know what it was, or would be.

  24

  ISAAC BELL WIRED DASHWOOD IN SAN FRANCISCO, repeating his earlier order to investigate Di Vecchio’s suicide. In addition, he wanted to know what Marco Celere had done when he first arrived from Italy.

  His telegraph caught Dashwood at a rare moment when the dogged young investigator was not out in the field. Dashwood wired back immediately.

  APOLOGIZE DELAY. DI VECCHIO SUICIDE COMPLICATED.

  MARCO CELERE ARRIVED SAN FRANCISCO. TRANSLATOR FOR

  ROMAN NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT TOURING CALIFORNIA.

  Isaac Bell read the telegram twice.

  “Translator?”

  Josephine told him it had been difficult to communicate with Marco Celere. She couldn’t understand his accent.

  Miss Josephine? Bell smiled to himself. What are you up to? Were you trying to throw off suspicion about cheating on Harry Frost? Were you assuring your new benefactor Preston Whiteway and his censorious mother that your heart was pure? Or were you covering for Marco Celere?

  WHEN DETECTIVE JAMES DASHWOOD heard the opening notes of the opera aria “Celeste Aida” pierce the fog on San Francisco Bay, he told the nuns he had brought with him, “They’re coming.”

  “Why are the fishermen singing Verdi?” asked Mother Superior, gripping tightly the arm of a beautiful young novitiate who spoke Italian.

  Dashwood had led them onto the new Fisherman’s Wharf, where they were surrounded by water they could not see. The cold murk coiled around them, chilling their lungs and wetting their cheeks.

  “The fishermen sing to identify their boats in the fog,” the slim, boyish Dashwood answered. “So I am told, though I personally have a theory that they navigate by listening to their voices echo from the shore.”

  Finding an Italian translator in San Francisco had not been difficult. The city was filled with Italian immigrants fleeing their poor and crowded homeland. But finding one that clannish, frightened old-world fishermen would talk to had thus far been impossible. Schoolteachers, olive oil and cheese importers, even a fellow from the chocolate factory next to the wharf, had encountered a wall of silence. This time would be different, Dashwood hoped. It had taken a warm introduction from the abbot of a wealthy monastery down the coast with whom he had dealings in the course of the Wrecker investigation, plus his own promise of an extortionate contribution to the convent’s poor box, to persuade Mother Superior to bring the girl to Fisherman’s Wharf to translate his questions and the fishermen’s answers.

  The singing grew louder. Ship horns resonated deep bass counterpoint, and tug whistles piped, as unseen vessels made their cautious way about the invisible harbor. The fog thinned and thickened in shifting patches. The long black hull of a four-masted ship materialized suddenly and just as suddenly disappeared. A tall steamer passed, transparent as a ghost, and vanished. A tiny green boat under a lateen sail took form.

  “Here they come,” said Dashwood. “Pietro and Giuseppe.”

  “Which has one arm?” asked Mother Superior.

  “Giuseppe. He lost it to a shark, I was told. Or a devilfish.”

  The beautiful Maria made the sign of the cross. Dashwood said soothingly, “That’s what they call the octopus.”

  Giuseppe scowled when he saw the detective who had visited Fisherman’s Wharf so often, some thought he was buying fish for a wholesaler. But when his sea-crinkled eyes fell on the nuns’ black habits, he crossed himself and nudged Pietro, who was preparing to throw a line around a cleat, and Pietro crossed himself, too.

  Better, thought Dashwood. At least they weren’t throwing fish heads at him, which was how his previous visit had ended.

  “What do you want Maria to inquire of them?” Mother Superior asked.

  “First, is it true they overheard an argument in the street outside their rooming house between two inventors of flying machines?”

  “And if they did?”

  “Oh, they did, for sure. The trick will be to convince them that I mean no harm and am merely trying to right a wrong, and that it has nothing to do with them nor will it cause them any trouble.”

  Mother Superior – a straight-talking Irishwoman who had led her convent through the recent earthquake and fires and taken in refugees like Maria from displaced orders whose motherhouses had tumbled down – said, “Maria will have her hands full convincing them of half that, Detective Dashwood.”

  AFTER WAITING OUT THREE DAYS of wind and rain in a muddy Gary, Indiana, fairground, the Whiteway Atlantic-to-Pacific Cross-Country Air Race took to the air in hopes of reaching Chicago’s Illinois National Guard Armory ahead of another storm. In the bleachers erected along the broad avenue that served as the armory’s parade ground, the impatient spectators were read a telegraph message that said thunder and lightning had driven the aviators back to the ground at Hammond.

  The National Guard’s fifty-piece brass marching band played to soothe the crowd. Then local aviators took to the air in early-model Wright Fliers to entertain them by attempting to drop plaster “bombs” on a “battleship” drawn in chalk in the middle of the avenue. The cobblestones were splotched with broken plaster when, finally, another message echoed from the megaphone.

  The sky over Hammond had cleared. The racers were off the ground again.

  An hour later, a shout went up.

  “They’re here!”

  All eyes fixed on the sky.

  One by one, the flying machines straggled in. Steve Stevens’s white biplane was in the lead. It circled the parapet of the fortress-like armory, descended to the broad avenue, and bounced along the cobbles, its twin propellers blowing clouds of plaster dust. A company of soldiers in dress uniforms saluted, and an honor guard presented arms.

  TWO VAN DORN PROTECTIVE SERVICES operators guarding the roof of the armory were leaning in the notches of the parapet, gazing at the sky. Behind them, a broad-shouldered, heavyset figure emerged silently from the penthouse that covered the stairs, circled a skylight and another penthouse that enclosed the elevator machinery, and crept close.

  “If I were Harry Frost coming up the stairs I just climbed,” his voice grated like a coal chute, “you boyos would be dead men.”

  The PS operators whirled around to see “Himself,” the grim-visaged Mr. Joseph Van Dorn.

  “And the murdering swine would be free to kill the lady birdman the agency is being paid good money to protect.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Van Dorn.” Milago ducked his head contritely.

  Lewis had an excuse. “We thought the National Guard soldiers guarded their own stairs.”

  “The Sunday soldiers of the National Guard,” the livid Van Dorn growled sarcastically, “emerge from their mamas’ homes to defend the city of Chicago against rioting labor strikers and foreign invaders from Canada. They wouldn’t recognize Harry Frost if they met him in an alley. Nor would they know how to conduct their business in an alley. That’s why you’re here.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Van Dorn,” they chorused.

  “Do you have your posters?”

  They whipped out Harry Frost wanted posters, with and without a beard.

  “Do you have your pistols?”

  They opened their coats to show holstered revolvers.

  “Stay sharp. Watch the stairs
.”

  DOWN ON THE PARADE GROUND, Marco Celere – disguised as Dmitri Platov – stood shoulder to shoulder with the mechanicians who had come ahead on their support trains. The mechanicians were anxiously scanning the sky for signs of more bad weather.

  Celere clapped enthusiastically when Steve Stevens landed first – the least Platov would be expected to do. But all the while that he was smiling and clapping, he imagined fleets of flying machines mowing down the soldiers with machine guns and demolishing their red brick armory by raining dynamite from the sky.

  25

  THE SLAUGHTER FROM THE HEAVENS that Marco Celere dreamed of would demand flying machines not yet built. Such warships of the sky would have two or three, even four, motors on enormous wings and carry many bombs for long distances. Smaller, nimble escort machines would protect them from counterattack.

  Celere was fully aware that his was not a new idea. Visionary artists and cold-blooded soldiers had long imagined speedy airships capable of carrying many passengers, or many bombs. But other men’s ideas were his lifeblood. He was a sponge, as Danielle Di Vecchio had screamed at him. A thief and a sponge.

  So what if Dmitri Platov, the fictional Russian aeroplane mechanician, machinist, and thermo engine designer, was his only original invention? An Italian proverb said it all: Necessity is the mother of invention. Marco Celere needed to destroy his competitors’ flying machines to guarantee that Josephine won the race with his machine. Who better to sabotage them than helpful, kindly “Platov”?

  Celere was truly an expert toolmaker, with a peculiar talent for picturing the finished product at the outset. The gift had set him above common machinists and mechanicians when he apprenticed at age twelve in a Birmingham machine shop – a position that his father, an immigrant restaurant waiter, had procured by seducing the owner’s wife. When metal stock was put on a lathe to be turned into parts, the other boys saw a solid block of metal. But Marco could visualize the finished part even before the stock started spinning. It was as if he could see what waited inside. Releasing the part waiting inside was a simple matter of chiseling away the excess.

  It worked in life, too. He had seen inside Di Vecchio’s first monoplane a vision of Marco Celere himself winning contracts to build warplanes to defeat Italy’s archenemy, Turkey, and seize the Turkish Ottoman Empire’s colonies in North Africa.

  Soon after the machine he copied had smashed, he saw vindication “waiting inside” a luxurious special train that rolled into San Francisco’s First California Aerial Meet. Off stepped Harry Frost and his child bride. The fabulously wealthy couple – the heavy bomber and the nimble escort – richer by far than the King of Italy – had given him a second chance to sell futuritial war machines.

  Josephine, desperate to fly aeroplanes and starved for affection, was seduced without difficulty. Remarkably observant, decisive, and brave in the air, she was easily led down on earth, where decisiveness turned impulsive, and where she seemed curiously unable to predict the consequences of her actions.

  Along had come the Whiteway Cup Cross-Country Air Race to prove his aeroplanes were the best. They had to be. He had copied only the best. He had no doubt that Josephine would win with her flying skill and with him sabotaging the competition. Winning would vindicate him in the eyes of the Italian Army. Past smashes would be forgotten when his warplanes vanquished Turkey, and Italy took Turkey’s colonies in North Africa.

  Two yellow specks appeared in the distance: Josephine, with Isaac Bell right behind and above, following like a shepherd. The crowd began cheering “Josephine! Josephine!” Whiteway was a genius, Celere thought. They truly loved their Sweetheart of the Air. When she won the cup, everyone in the world would know her name. And every general in the world would know whose flying machine had carried her to victory.

  If Steve Stevens managed to finish, all the better – Celere would sell the Army heavy bombers as well as nimble escorts. But that was a very big if. Uncontrollable vibration, due to a failure to synchronize the twin engines, was shaking it to pieces. If Stevens smashed before he finished, Celere could blame it on the farmer’s weight and poor flying. He had to admit that, by now, young Igor Sikorsky would have solved the vibration problem, but it was beyond Celere’s talents. And it was too late in the game to steal those ideas even if Sikorsky were here instead of in Russia. If only the thermo engine he had bought in Paris had worked out, but that, too, had been beyond his talents.

  THE VAN DORN PROTECTIVE SERVICES operators guarding the roof of the armory had kept a sharp eye on the door from the stairs, as instructed by Joseph Van Dorn, though every cheer that went up had drawn their attention to the parade ground and bleachers below and the next machine descending from the sky.

  Now they lay unconscious at Harry Frost’s feet, surprised by hammer blows of his fists after he sprang not from the stairs’ penthouse but from the elevator’s, where he had hidden since dawn.

  Frost steadied a Marlin rifle on a square stone between two notches in the parapet and waited patiently for Josephine’s head to completely fill the circle of his telescopic sight. She was coming straight at him, preparing to circle the armory as required by the rules, and he could see her through the blur of her propeller. This might not be as satisfying a kill as strangling her, but the Van Dorns had left him no opportunity to get close. And there were times a man did best to take what he could get. Besides, the telescope made it seem as if they were facing each other across the dinner table.

  THE INSTANT ISAAC BELL saw the stone notches in the armory’s crenellated parapet, he rammed his control wheel forward as hard as he could and made the Eagle dive. That roof was precisely where he would lay an ambush. The rules of the race guaranteed that Frost’s victim would have to fly so close, he could hit her with a rock.

  Driving with his right hand, he swiveled his Remington autoload rifle with his left. He saw a startled expression on Josephine’s face as he hurtled past her. Ahead, among the stone notches, he saw the sun glint on steel. Behind the flash, half hidden in shadow, the bulky silhouette of Harry Frost was drawing a bead on Josephine’s yellow machine.

  Then Frost saw the American Eagle plummeting toward him.

  He swung his barrel in Bell’s direction and opened fire. Braced on the solid roof of the armory, he was even more accurate than he had been from the oyster boat. Two slugs stitched through the fuselage directly behind the controls, and Bell knew that only the extraordinary speed of his dive had saved him when Frost underestimated how swiftly he would pass.

  Now it was his turn. Waiting until his spinning propeller was clear of the field of fire, the tall detective triggered his Remington. Stone chips flew in Frost’s face, and he dropped his rifle and fell backwards.

  Isaac Bell turned the Eagle sharply – too sharply – felt it start to spin, corrected before he lost control, and swept back at the armory. Frost was scrambling across the roof, leaping over the bodies of two fallen detectives. He had left his rifle where he had dropped it and was holding a hand to his eye. Bell fired twice. One shot shattered glass in the structure that housed the elevator machinery. The other nicked the heel of Frost’s boot. The impact of the powerful centerfire.35 caliber slug knocked the big man off his feet.

  Bell wrenched the Eagle around again, ignoring the protesting shriek of wind in the stays and an ominous grinding sound that vibrated through the controls, and raced back at the red brick building to finish him off. Across the roof, the door of the stair house flew open. Soldiers with long, clumsy rifles tumbled through it and fanned out, forcing Bell to hold his fire to avoid hitting them. Frost ducked behind the elevator house. As Bell roared past, he saw the killer open a door and slip inside.

  He looked down at the avenue in front of the building, saw that Josephine had alighted and that there was space for him. Down he went, blipping his motor. He hit the cobblestones hard, spun half around, recovered, and, when the tail skid had slowed him nearly to a stop, jumped down and ran up the front steps of the armory, drawing his
pistol.

  An honor guard of soldiers in dress uniforms holding rifles at port arms blocked his way.

  “Van Dorn!” Bell addressed their sergeant, a decorated man of action whose chestful of battle ribbons included the blue-and-yellow Spanish-American War Marine Corps Spanish Campaign Service Medal. “There’s a murderer in the elevator house. Follow me!”

  The old veteran sprang into action, running after the tall detective and calling upon his men. The inside of the armory was an enormous cathedral-like drill space as wide as the building and half as deep. The coffered ceiling rose as high as the roof. Bell raced to the elevator and stair shafts. The elevator doors were closed, and the brass arrow that indicated its location showed that the car was at the top of the shaft.

  “Two men here!” he ordered. “Don’t let him out if the car descends. The rest, follow me.”

  He bounded up four flights of stairs, with the soldiers clattering behind, reached the roof, and stepped outside just as Joe Mudd’s red Liberator roared around the building, yards ahead of Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin’s blue Curtiss Pusher.

  Bell ran to the elevator house. The door was locked.

  “Shoot it open.”

  The soldiers looked to their sergeant.

  “Do it!” he ordered. Six men pumped three rounds of rifle fire into the door, bursting it open. Bell bounded in first, pistol in hand. The machine room was empty. He looked through the steel grate floor. He could see into the open, unroofed car, which was still at the top of the shaft immediately under him. It, too, was empty. Harry Frost had disappeared.

  “Where is he?” shouted the sergeant. “I don’t see anyone. Are you sure you saw him in here?”