Now he saw Constable Hook as Nellie saw it. He had dubbed her “heiress” to The Hook saloon, but, in fact, she was also heiress to her father’s dream of building on a hilly cape an ultramodern gravity-fed refinery with access to the sea. The refinery that her father had envisioned and the boomtown that sprang up with it were one in her mind. If Bill Matters couldn’t have the refinery, having lost it to Rockefeller, he would destroy it. Since he was locked in a jail cell, Nellie Matters would destroy it for him. By their way of thinking, the city it had nurtured and ultimately surrounded did not exist.
He swung back in the window and raced down the stairs and across the street to the gates. Wally Kisley was there. “Did you see Nellie?” Bell asked.
“No. I was just looking for you. You O.K.?”
“We forced her hand,” Bell said. “This wasn’t her first choice, setting it off down here.”
“It’s gonna be a record breaker anyway. Good thing the company doubled up on firemen.”
“If we hadn’t blocked the high ground, she’d have attacked from up there. You can’t see from here, but I saw it from the roof. A mammoth crude oil tank above the city.”
Wally nodded. “Number 14. The first of the new crude storage tanks to feed the stills below. One hundred thousand gallons.”
“That’s her goal—a Johnstown Flood of burning oil.”
—
Wally Kisley was incredulous. “Why attack the city?”
“There is a deranged logic to her scheme,” said Bell. “While everyone’s trying to protect the city, she can concentrate on the refinery.”
He borrowed a police sergeant and a squad of local cops from Eddie Edwards’ headquarters at the refinery gates. The cops led him and Wally on a shortcut past twisted ruins of burned-out tanks and through tank yards and stills. Firemen were deluging them with hose water to cool them. They entered the city streets, passing a school from which the children had been sent home and a hospital into which injured firefighters were stumbling.
Bell spotted Edna Matters, somber in black. She had an Evening Sun press card in her hatband and was taking down in shorthand the words of the rail-thin, harried-looking chief of Constable Hook’s volunteer firefighters. “Gossip that we refused to fight Standard Oil’s fire is bunk. We are protecting twenty thousand people in our city—families, friends, and neighbors.”
“Can you speak to the rumor that water is running so low that you won’t have enough pressure to fill your hoses?”
“Bunk! We get our water direct from the Hackensack River and the Hackensack is wet yet.”
Three fire horses galloped past pulling a steamer pump engine and the chief jumped on the back. Edna closed her notebook. “Hello, Isaac. Thank you for letting me see my father the other day.”
“Have you seen Nellie?”
“Of course not. If I had, I would have turned her in. What could make her do . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Whatever made Father do it, I suppose.”
Bell said, “Be careful here, Edna. Don’t let the fire get above you.”
The city streets ended abruptly at a shiny new chain-link fence. It had a gate manned by two cops. On the slope above the gate loomed Tank 14, which was painted white to reflect the heat of the sun.
“How could she miss?” said Wally. “Big as the battleship Maine and twice as explosive.”
Freshly poured concrete footings were laid on both sides of the tank. Sheets of steel were stacked next to them, awaiting assembly.
“I need twenty strong men,” Bell told the sergeant.
“There ain’t a man in The Hook not fighting the fire.”
“O.K. Take four armed men, empty the jail, bring the prisoners here.”
“I don’t think I’m allowed—”
Bell cut him. “A champion sniper with a gun that fires exploding bullets is going to blast a hole in that tank by hitting it repeatedly in the same spot until one of them ignites a crude oil fire that will drown your city in flames. I need your prisoners to erect a barricade. Now!”
The sergeant took off at a dead run. Bell removed his coat and said to the others, “Let’s get to work.”
Wally asked him quietly, “You’re just guessing about those bullets, aren’t you? Who knows if the smith actually made them.”
“I know,” said Bell. “I found one in his shop. It looked like he had set up to run a batch of them. My only guess is that Nellie got the first batch. Knowing her, she probably did.”
“You found one? Where is it?”
“In my rifle.”
—
When night fell, the fires lighted Constable Hook bright as day, from Tank 14 on its highest hill to the Kill Van Kull waterfront, where flames were eating through the piers, consuming the sheds, and burning the pilings down to the waterline. An entire warehouse of case oil was fueling a pillar of flames visible from every point of New York Harbor, and a burning barge of oil barrels glared at Staten Island like vaudeville limelights.
Isaac Bell had still not seen a trace of Nellie Matters. But Tank 14 was shielded on all four sides by a hastily erected barrier of sheet steel. “Now she can’t pierce the tank by hitting it repeatedly in the same spot,” Bell told Joseph Van Dorn. “And since it’s on the top of the hill, there is no vantage point on the Hook—no hill, no building, no tree—high enough to shoot through the roof.”
“She’ll shoot other tanks,” said Van Dorn.
“She’ll start fires. We’ll put them out. Eventually, she’ll run out of ammunition and strength.”
44
Amanda Faire was bitterly disappointed.
The redheaded keynote speaker for the Staten Island Suffragette Convocation at the Cunard estate on Grymes Hill had expected her usual packed house rapturously chanting her catchy watchword “Women’s votes are only Faire.” But despite her appearance being advertised in all the New York newspapers, and her arrival heralded by a magnificent scarlet balloon tethered on the lawn, half the chairs in the lecture tent were empty.
“I’m afraid we lost some of our gentlemen to the firebug tourists,” apologized her mortified hostess. She gestured helplessly at the smoke-stained western sky. “New York, Jersey City, Newark, and the Oranges are all flocking to see the conflagration.”
“Well,” Amanda said, bravely, “those who took the trouble to come deserve to hear me.”
“I’ll introduce you.”
“I’ll make my own introduction, thank you.” That was all she needed, a windbag driving the rest of the audience to the fire.
Amanda, who had positioned her podium so that her balloon created a striking backdrop directly behind her, stood to thin applause. As she opened her mouth to begin her speech, she could not help but notice a restive stir in the seats. Now what?
They were staring at her. Past her. Mouths were dropping open.
A woman cried, “There goes your balloon.”
—
Nellie Matters never doubted the wind would be in her favor. Things always worked out that way. Just when she needed it, it had shifted south, blowing the red balloon north the short two miles from the Grymes Hill estate to Tank 14. From a thousand feet in the air, she could see what had burned in Constable Hook and what remained to burn. She was dismayed. The fires were going out. There was so much left untouched.
On the bright side, the Savage’s magazine indicator read “5.” Five of Beitel’s exploding bullets. Her exploding bullets. She had thought them up. She was their creator. The gunsmith had only made them.
Tank 14 would finish the job.
She spotted it easily, a huge white circle on the top of the highest hill on Constable Hook at the point where the cape met the mainland, smack in the middle of Isaac Bell’s shield. Clever Isaac. But the thin roof of the tank was hers. She aimed dead center, adjusted for the balloon’s swaying, and fired. Through the telescope sh
e saw the bullet explode in a red flash. It didn’t pierce the roof, but it must have weakened it. One or two more shots striking that precise spot should do the trick, and the little red flash would detonate the flammable gas in the top of the tank, which would ignite the ocean of oil below.
She fired again.
Bull’s-eye! It hit the scar from her first shot. The powerful telescope showed a crack emanating from the scar. The next would do it. Isaac, where are you?
She looked about.
There you are!
He was leaning on the shield and pointing a rifle at her. Poor Isaac. I can’t shoot you. But you can’t shoot me either. What a pair we make. You better get away from the tank because it is about to explode.
As if he had heard her thoughts, he suddenly ran, crouched low, clutching his rifle. No, he hadn’t heard her. The balloon was moving and he had to shift his field of fire.
“What’s the use?” she whispered as she lined up her final shot. “We could never shoot each other.”
—
Isaac Bell had one exploding bullet. He doubted that the impact of striking the balloon’s thin fabric skin would detonate the gas. Nor would passing through the gas and the fabric as it flew out. If the shell could be set off that lightly, what would have kept it from exploding in his fingers when he loaded the rifle?
The only solid object on the balloon was the steel load ring at its mouth.
He found it in the telescope. It was almost too easy. The telescope was so powerful and the rifle was so finely balanced and the balloon so steady in the light breeze. He could not miss even if he wanted to.
He saw a red flash where the bullet exploded. In the next instant, thousands of cubic feet of gas billowed into flames above Nellie’s head. The balloon’s skin melted, but it did not fall, as if the heat of the burning gas somehow pinned it to the sky.
Nellie looked up. Bell saw her whole body stiffen with terror.
The burning gas snaked tentacles of flame down into the basket.
He would not let her die that way.
He found her beautiful face in the telescope. He exhaled lightly to steady his hand.
He caressed the trigger.
45
ONE MONTH LATER
THE EMPIRE STATE EXPRESS
Archie Abbott barely made the train, running like crazy to answer a last-minute invitation from Isaac Bell:
“I’ll buy you breakfast on the Empire.”
When he entered the diner, Bell was already seated next to an exquisitely dressed gent about their age. Bell jumped up and intercepted him before he reached the table. “Thanks for coming.”
“Of course I came. I’ve been worried. It’s been a while. Since . . . well, you know what since. How are you, Isaac?”
“Keeping busy,” said Bell. “Best thing when you have a lot on your mind.”
“Where’ve you been all month?”
“Back and forth to Chicago. Practically living on the 20th Century. Would you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“I’m stopping at Croton—appointment at Pocantico Hills. Would you help that gentleman onto the Ossining train?”
“What’s wrong with him? He looks fit.”
Bell handed Archie a key. “You’ll have to unlock him from the table.”
“Oh. Ossining. Sing Sing. Who are you taking to jail?”
“Laurence Rosania.”
“Rosania?”
Upon hearing his name shouted the length of the car, the Chicago jewel thief tossed Archie Abbott an elegant salute.
“Come on,” said Bell, “I’ll introduce you. High time you met.”
“Isaac! He was mine. I almost had him.”
“I just couldn’t think of a better way to keep busy than to catch a jewel thief.”
—
“Of all the terrible accusations voiced against you,” Isaac Bell told John D. Rockefeller, “I have never heard it said that you don’t pay your debts.”
“You’re implying I owe you something?” the old man said coldly.
“You owe me your life. Twice. Bill Matters in Germany and his daughter in Westchester. Not to mention most of your refinery.”
“I am disappointed in you,” said Rockefeller. “You never struck me as the sort of man who would try to cash in on saving my life.”
“I’m saving another life.”
“What will this ‘debt’ cost me?”
“You will pay me in full by granting Edna Matters an exclusive interview.”
“I never submit to interviews.”
“Speak to her openly and freely for as long as it takes and you and I will be even.”
Rockefeller sat silently for a time.
When he spoke he said, “I’m told Miss Matters is in bad shape.”
“Very bad shape,” said Bell. “She lost her father and she lost her sister. She loved them both.”
“A bitter man and a lunatic.”
“But still her father and still her sister. She is beside herself with grief and guilt and confusion.”
“Is interviewing me supposed to be some sort of rest cure?”
“It is my last hope.”
“That’s all you ask?”
“That’s all I demand.”
“I never submit to interviews,” Rockefeller repeated. “You are demanding a lot.”
“She is worth it,” said Isaac Bell.
—
Isaac Bell drove Edna Matters to Rockefeller’s Westchester estate.
They were building a fence around Pocantico. The man at the gatehouse said that a six-foot-high iron barrier twenty miles long would surround the entire property. There was talk of moving the railroad. Gunfire echoed in the woods. The gamekeepers had orders to shoot stray dogs.
The fence caught Edna’s attention. “What happened?” she asked Bell. “Has JDR gone mad?”
“He’s afraid.”
“He should be afraid. He should hide in terror. He drove my poor father mad.”
The house where Rockefeller was living while work continued on the main mansion came into view.
“Stop your auto!” Edna cried.
Bell stopped the Locomobile. She was deeply upset.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Edna said. “In fact, I know I can’t. Take me back to New York.”
Bell held her hands in his and looked her in the eye. “Why not?”
“I never suspected my father. I never suspected my sister. My own blood. Some ‘woman newspaperman’ I am. How can I trust my judgment?”
“The richest, most powerful business man in the history of the world is offering a unique opportunity to a wonderful writer. No one else can do it but you. You owe it to history.”
“How did you talk him into it?”
Isaac Bell took Edna in his arms. He held her close for a long time. Then he whispered, “I told Mr. Rockefeller that he would never get a better chance to leave an honest account of himself.”
EPILOGUE
THIRTY-FIVE YEARS LATER, 1940
POCANTICO HILLS, WESTCHESTER
Isaac Bell swept through the front gates of Pocantico Hills in a midnight-blue Bugatti Type 57C drophead coupe and raced up the long driveway. Silvered hair lent dignity to his natural elegance, but he still looked too rugged to be diminished by his years. If that threat hovered on time’s horizon, it did not seem to trouble him.
The Bugatti, a roadster with sculpted lines as smooth as oil, rounded the final bend, holding the road as tightly as if on rails, and Bell stopped in front of a mansion. Well-proportioned and solidly built, the house looked like it had stood overlooking the Hudson River forever, although he recalled passing by in his Locomobile when the stone masons were laying its foundations.
“Daddy!”
A flaxen-haired coed bounded out the door, juggling a portable typewriter, a bulging briefcase, and an overnight bag. The estate librarian followed with an armload of books. “Come back anytime, Amber.”
“How did it go?” Bell asked in the car. “Still want to be a newspaperwoman?”
“More than ever. The interview was amazing. I can’t thank you enough for getting me in. I read every day and stayed awake half the nights typing up my shorthand notes. Rockefeller told E. M. Hock stories no one’s ever read anywhere. No wonder they locked it up until he died.”
“Edna could get a rhinoceros to confess its life history,” said Bell. “She’d have made a great detective . . . As would you.”
“I don’t want to be a detective. I want to be a reporter like her. Did you know that when JDR was almost seventy years old, he personally negotiated a right-of-way for a pipe line across Persia right under the nose of the Czar of Russia?”
“I always wondered,” said Bell. “Very little of it made the papers at the time. They were all worried about a revolution.”
“Did you know that he traveled to Baku with Van Dorn detectives for bodyguards?”
“That’s an old Van Dorn legend . . . Did he happen to mention which detectives?”
“He told E. M. Hock he could not reveal their names in case they had to operate clandestinely on another case . . . Daddy, do you think Rockefeller deserved to be the most hated man in America?”
“What do the interviews tell you?” Bell countered.
“E. M. Hock wrote in her introduction that she had a personal prejudice because of JDR’s business dealings with her father. Having admitted that, she then said that she thought he deserved to be the most hated man in America. But he kept saying everything he did was right. And he really seemed to believe it. What do you think?”
Bell said, “He brought kerosene light to ordinary people, which allowed them to read and learn at night after work. He did it by imposing order on chaos. He thought he was smarter than most people, which he was. But he was not smart enough to know when to stop.”