“And load me some cartridges.”
“Where’s the telescope?”
“It wasn’t on it.”
“Why do you suppose he left such a beautiful piece behind?”
“To throw me off the scent.”
“Saving money on the telescope. Good ones don’t come cheap.”
“Or,” said Bell, seeing another way to backtrack the assassin, “maybe the telescope is even rarer than the gun.”
—
“What are your prospects, Mr. Bell?” Bill Matters asked bluntly when Isaac Bell called at Matters’ Gramercy Park town house.
Bell reckoned he should not be surprised by how young, vigorous, and tough Edna and Nellie’s father was. “Hard as adamantine,” Spike Hopewell had dubbed him. “Choirboys don’t last in the oil business.”
Still, he had expected a smoother company man version of Spike Hopewell. Instead, he found a man fifteen years younger than Spike. He had a hard mouth, and harder eyes, and seemed inordinately protective of his accomplished, independent daughters.
“Father,” said Nellie before Bell could answer, “Mr. Bell just walked in the door,” and Edna, who had descended the stairs with Nellie and was now seated beside her on a green silk-covered settee that highlighted the color of their eyes, said, “This role of vigilant father, Father, does not become you.”
Matters did not smile. Nor would he be derailed. “I want to know what his prospects are if he’s calling on my daughters. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
Edna started to protest.
Bell interrupted.
“Thank you, ladies. I will speak for myself. To answer your question, sir, I enjoyed steady advancement in the Van Dorn Detective Agency. Now I’m striking out on my own. I intend to start my own firm, and I will work hard to make a go of it.”
“How much will you earn?”
“Sufficient for my needs.”
“Sufficient to support a family?”
“Pregnancy,” said Nellie, “has not come under discussion. Yet.”
Matters glowered.
Edna said, “I believe that Mr. Bell is a Boston Bell, Father. The bankers. He does not need to ‘marry well.’”
“American States Bank? Is that true, Bell?”
Bell looked from Edna to Nellie and addressed his answer to their father’s questions to both of them. “I would rather marry happily than ‘well.’”
Bill Matters barked a laugh that did nothing to soften his eyes. “Hear! Hear! Well said! O.K., you won’t be a detective for long. Take over the bank when your old man retires.”
“I will remain a detective,” said Bell. He did not elaborate upon the deep contestation with his father on that issue, nor that his grandfather had interceded with a legacy that made him financially independent. Neither was Matters’ business, beautiful daughters notwithstanding.
“Have it your way. Sit down. Girls, let’s give Mr. Bell something to drink.”
Matters’ butler appeared in the doorway. The man wore a tailcoat and white gloves, and his face was remarkably smooth, but Bell pegged his stance and light-footed gait as that of an ex-prizefighter who had retired before he lost a match.
“What is it, Rivers?”
“Telephone, sir.”
Matters hurried off without a word. Edna rose. “I’ll leave you two to it.”
“Where are you going?” asked Nellie.
“Mr. Bell is calling on you, not me.”
“Don’t be absurd. He’s calling on both of us. Aren’t you?”
Isaac Bell said, “Considering we’ve dined together, traveled together, been set upon by drunks and shot at together, I feel less like a caller than an old friend catching up.”
“Do you want me to stay?” asked Edna.
“Of course,” Bell and Nellie chorused.
Edna was still hesitating when Bill Matters returned to the drawing room, his face set in a grave mask.
“What is it?” asked Edna, resuming her seat.
“Old Comstock died.”
“Another bites the dust,” said Nellie. “That’s two in a week.”
“You won’t mourn him, will you?” asked Edna.
“I won’t speak ill of the dead,” said Bill Matters. “But you know I won’t miss his badgering.” To Isaac Bell he explained, “Averell Comstock treated me like some sort of interloper. He made it hard to do business, and hard to advance in the firm.”
“What did he die of?”
“God knows. Even a simple cold will kill at his age . . . The upshot is, Mr. Bell, we’ll be seeing a lot of each other in weeks to come.”
“How is that, sir?”
“That was Mr. Rockefeller on the telephone. With Comstock gone, the president has asked me to accompany him in his travels. He mentioned you will be his bodyguard.”
“You poor things,” said Nellie. “I would rather die than be stuck all summer in Cleveland. The heat! The humidity! The neighbors!”
“Mr. Rockefeller summers at his estate in Cleveland,” Edna explained to Bell.
Matters gave Bell a significant look. “I suspect we’ll create the impression he’s in Cleveland than range farther afield. Wouldn’t you say, Mr. Bell?”
“I cannot say, sir,” Bell replied stiffly. “As his bodyguard, if Mr. Rockefeller confided our destination, it would be indiscreet, not to mention reckless, to repeat to anyone where we are going.”
—
The First Regiment of Newark was billeted in a sturdy National Guard armory, four stories of slab-sided brick walls, relieved only slightly by rounded turrets, and crowned with a parapet. The sentries guarding the arched Jay Street portal remembered Billy Jones warmly but expressed bafflement when Isaac Bell asked why the champion marksman had deserted right after winning the President’s Medal.
“Happy guys don’t take French leave,” the corporal put it.
“Big fellow?” Bell asked.
“Skinny little guy,” said the private.
“Any guess where he lit out to?”
“No. No one figured him for lighting out. Kept to himself except for one pal, Nate Wildwood.”
“Is Nate around?” asked Bell.
“Nate got killed,” said the private.
“In the Spanish war?”
“Never made it to the war,” the corporal answered. “Poor Nate fell under a train. Before Billy lit out.”
“Really? Tell me something. How short was Billy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe five-three?”
“Little guy,” said the private. “Short.”
“What color was his hair?”
“Brown.”
“What color were his eyes?”
“Green.”
“Not really green,” said the corporal. “Gray-green.”
The private reconsidered. “Yeah, you could say gray-green. They got kind of dead colored, sometimes.”
“Dead?” scoffed the corporal. “What do you mean dead?”
“I mean dead. I was next to him on the firing line more than once. When he started shooting, his eyes looked dead.” The young soldier turned to Bell and explained earnestly, “What I mean is, after I saw that, I never wondered how Billy Jones could be such a great shot. It was like he could stop every thought in his brain when he pulled the trigger.”
The private reflected for a long moment. “It was like nothing else mattered. Like he didn’t care about nothing. Except the target.”
—
Isaac Bell took the train back to the ferry. Before he got on the boat, he sent another wire to Archie Abbott.
MAKE ARMY FRIENDS.
TRACE DESERTER BILLY JONES.
SLIGHT BUILD, 5’3”.
BROWN HAIR, GRAY-GREEN EYES.
18
When Walt
er L. Hawley, chief political reporter of the Evening Sun, spotted Isaac Bell striding to his desk, he stopped typing to clasp the detective’s hand hello.
“You’re looking prosperous.”
“You’re looking ink-stained.”
“How’s the big guy?” Hawley and Joseph Van Dorn had met back in the early ’90s when the reporter covered police headquarters and Van Dorn had chased a Chicago arsonist to New York.
“Fired me,” said Bell. “Or I quit, depending on who shot first.”
“Welcome to Newspaper Row. Multitudes who have failed in all attempts at every occupation turn to journalism to find a stopgap between mediocrity and professional begging.”
“Actually, I did come to discuss a job.”
Hawley looked alarmed.
“Easy does it,” said Bell, “not for me. What do you make of the situation in Russia?”
“It resembles the bedlam of unchecked human emotion. My beat is City Hall, so maybe I’m not qualified to predict a gloomy future for the czar. But they’ve had a bad year and it’s only June.
“It could blow the Baku oil business to Kingdom Come.”
Hawley said, “I won’t ask a private detective, assuming you are still one, what that has to do with you. But I will ask, what does that have to do with me? When I need oil, I get it from John D. Rockefeller.”
“E. M. Hock would jump at a freelance assignment to report on the threat to the oil industry in Baku.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“Wonderful! . . . Except, I’ve always thought the rumors were true. She’s a woman, isn’t she?”
“Very much so.”
Hawley shook his head. “I’ll tell you, Isaac, I would jump at a chance to hire such a good writer. So would my publisher. He’d approve in a flash. But we would be strongly hesitant to send a woman among heathens. Russians and Moslems, and I believe they’ve even got some Persians, they’re next door, aren’t they?”
Bell said, “When I met Edna Matters in Kansas, she had just driven up from Indian Territory in a buckboard wagon. Her sister was her traveling companion. I imagine Nellie Matters would go along to Russia.”
“Nellie Matters? The Insufferable Suffragette?”
“I find Nellie Matters anything but insufferable.”
“I don’t mean to disparage the lady,” the newspaperman said hastily. “Certainly lovely to look at, and a fiery orator. She’ll really make her mark with that New Woman’s Flyover.”
“What do you say?” asked Bell. “Will you hire E. M. Hock?”
“But now you’re suggesting sending two women among the heathens. If something happened to them in wherever that godforsaken place is—the Caspian Sea?—Joe Pulitzer and Bill Hearst and Preston Whiteway would yellow-journal us into our graves. They would incite mobs to tear us limb from limb. Newsies who tried to sell the Sun would be hung from lampposts.”
“I’ll arrange for the best private detective in the business to stand watch over them.”
“That could get expensive.”
“I’ll pay for the detective, you pay Miss Matters’ fee.”
“Sounds like you have a wealthy client, Isaac, if you’re not working for Van Dorn anymore.”
“I will pay for the detective,” Bell repeated.
Hawley said, “That’s right. You’re rich. I forgot. O.K. It’s a deal! And thanks, Isaac. If she’ll take the job, she’ll set a new standard for our overpaid hacks.”
They shook on it. Bell said, “But don’t tell her—or anyone—that I have anything to do with this. No one!”
Walter Hawley winked. “Mind me asking which sister you’re sweet on?”
Isaac Bell delivered the grin that a married man expected from a bachelor.
“Let’s just say that with this arrangement, I can keep my eye on both of them.”
—
Archie Abbott came through with a wire to the Yale Club. His friends in the State Department reported strong rumors that the Shah of Persia was negotiating a monster loan from the Russian czar. Archie speculated that maybe such a loan would explain Rockefeller’s clandestine visit to the Persian embassy.
Maybe.
Bell had packed and was just leaving the club to walk to Grand Central, intending to board the train well ahead of Rockefeller, when the day hall porter said, “There’s a street urchin asking for you.”
“Where?”
“He snuck in through the kitchen.”
“Did he say what he wanted?”
“He claims he’s a probationary Van Dorn apprentice. I figured if he were, he’d know you don’t work there anymore.”
Bell hurried downstairs to the kitchen. A boy who looked like a cleaned-up, dressed-up street rat was standing quietly in a corner. Scarcely into his teens, his eyes alert, his manner so diffident, he was almost invisible.
“What’s your name, son?”
“Tobin, sir. Eddie Tobin.”
“Who do you apprentice under?”
“Mr. Warren.”
Of course. The Van Dorn street gang expert. If Eddie Tobin was good enough for Harry Warren, he was good enough for Bell.
“How old are you?”
“Not old enough to apprentice. I’m only probationary.”
“I asked how old?” Bell growled.
“Fifteen.”
“How old?”
“Fourteen.”
“When I was fourteen, I ran away to the circus. Did Mr. Warren send you?”
“Mr. Forrer. Mr. Warren said it was O.K.”
“What do you have there?”
The kid had an envelope of newspaper clippings.
Bell had read the top one already:
Averell Comstock, director of Standard Oil, and at one time president of the corporation, died after a brief illness. Comstock was one of the big oil capitalists of the country who laid the foundations for the Standard Oil Company alongside John D. Rockefeller, Clyde Lapham, and Henry M. Flagler. He served, too, as a director of the Western Union Telegraph Company, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Pittsburgh National Bank. His wealth was estimated at from $75,000,000 to $100,000,000.
The second clipping reported that Averell Comstock had left ten thousand dollars to a Mrs. Mary McCloud who had a coffee stand that the oil magnate had frequented on Fulton Street.
The last clipping reported that a Mrs. Mary McCloud had died in a tenement fire in Chatham Square.
Forrer had typed a note.
Same Mrs. McCloud. Tenement short walk from Fulton.
“Come with me, Tobin.” John D. Rockefeller’s train was leaving in three hours. If Bell didn’t have enough time, the kid could follow up and wait for reinforcements.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Bell!”
They raced downtown on the Elevated.
—
Before descending to the street, Bell scanned the squalid neighborhood from the vantage of the Chatham Square El station. Walt Hawley and the Evening Sun and most of the big New York dailies occupied the clean, modern Newspaper Row section of Park Row less than a half mile downtown. This was the upper section of Park Row, a slum that had been a slum for most of the city’s long history.
He spotted a burned-out tenement and led Tobin down the stairs, three at a bound.
Sawhorses blocked the sidewalk. The buildings that flanked it had burned, too. Rain had fallen since, and the odor of wet charred wood hung heavily in the air. Settlement House workers were helping families who lost their homes load bedclothes and furniture that had survived the fire.
“Maybe this will help,” said Bell. He pressed two twenty-dollar gold pieces, two months’ sweatshop earnings, into the hands of the startled woman in charge.
“God bless you, sir.”
“Did anyone here know Mrs. McCloud?” he a
sked.
None did, but one said she thought Mrs. McCloud had worked on Fulton Street. Bell and Tobin hurried downtown and across Fulton toward the East River. At the waterfront, carts and temporary stalls had set up business selling refreshments.
“I hope those aren’t Jamaica Bay oysters,” said Tobin.
“Why’s that?”
“Jamaica Bay’s polluted with the typhoid.”
“We’re looking for coffee stands,” said Bell. They found a row of them selling coffee and cake and pastries. One space was empty. Bell paid for coffee and cake for the apprentice. The kid tore into it hungrily but paid close attention as Bell questioned the woman who poured.
“Where is Mrs. McCloud?”
“Gone.”
“When did she leave?”
“She didn’t leave. She died. She was killed in a fire.”
“That is terrible,” said Bell. “Did you know her well?”
“Not as well as Mrs. Campbell. The shop on the other side. Kate!” she called across the empty stand. “Gentleman here is asking about Mrs. McCloud.”
Bell crossed over and ordered a slab of pound cake. “Mrs. Campbell? I’m Jethro Smith. I just heard. I had no idea. I didn’t know her well, but I stop by when I’m downtown. What happened?”
“Poor Mrs. McCloud. Widowed young. All she had was her boy and he died. Now this. Are you a newspaperman?”
“No, ma’am. I’m in the insurance line. Why do you ask?”
“Newspapermen came around. They said that Mary inherited ten thousand dollars. And never knew it! Died without knowing it.”
“Did you say her son died, too?” Bell asked.
“Drowned in the river.”
“When?”
“The same time as the fire—not that anybody was surprised. Anthony ran with the Five Points Gang. I pray she never knew he drowned.”
“Let us hope,” said Bell. “Ten thousand! That is a lot of money. Who left her the ten thousand?”
“An old man. He used to come every day. I teased her. He was sweet on her. Every day like clockwork. First he’d eat his oysters on the pier, then he’d come round the corner and drink Mary’s coffee. I used to say don’t give him so much sugar in his coffee. You’ll kill his appetite. He won’t order cake. I guess I was wrong about that. Ten thousand!”