35
“Detective Bell is at your back door,” said Archie Abbott. “I’m Detective Abbott. Put that gun down before you get hurt.”
J. B. Culp lowered his pistol and backed into his foyer, a large entryway flanked by twin reception rooms. “Judging by your red hair, I’d have recognized you anywhere, Detective Abbott. Even on my private property.”
Abbott said, “Judging by your ruddy complexion, blond hair, and blue eyes, you are not the fugitive Antonio Branco, but John Butler Culp, the man who is harboring him. Put your gun on the table.”
Culp said, “There are people here anxious to meet you and your”—he looked over the burly detectives crowding in behind Abbott—“gang.” Then he raised his voice.
“Sheriff!”
A big bruiser with an Orange County sheriff’s star on his coat stepped from one of the reception rooms. “You’re under arrest, Detective Abbott.”
“I am not,” said Archie Abbott.
“Boys,” the Sheriff called.
Six deputies entered from the other reception room carrying shotguns.
The Sheriff said, “You’re all under arrest.”
“For what?”
“We’ll start with trespassing.”
“We are not trespassing.”
“Drop your weapons and reach for the sky.”
“We are not trespassing,” Abbott repeated. “We are pursuing a fugitive Black Hand gangster named Antonio Branco.”
The Sheriff turned to Culp, who had a small smile playing on his face.
“Mr. Culp, sir, have you seen any fugitives on your property?”
“No.”
The Sheriff turned his attention back to Archie Abbott. “Do you have permits to carry those guns?”
“Of course. We’re Van Dorns.”
“Orange County permits?”
“Now, hold on, Sheriff.”
“You’re trespassing in Orange County. You’re carrying illegal weapons in Orange County. You are endangering public safety in Orange County. And if you are the Detective Abbott I heard Mr. Culp greet, the Orange County District Attorney has received reports about your radical tendencies.”
“Are you nuts? I’m a Princeton man.”
“Last chance: Raise your hands before we start shooting. My boys’ twelve-gauges don’t leave much for the surgeon.”
Isaac Bell walked into the foyer with his hands in the air, trailed by his squad similarly elevated. He saw Culp smirking ear to ear. Archie looked poleaxed. But the out-of-town Van Dorns were tough customers, and Bell intervened quickly before it turned bloody.
“Guns down, gents. Hands up. We’ll settle this later.”
Archie said, “He says he’s the Sheriff.”
Bell said, “The men at the back door are New York Army National Guard officers. And there’s a fellow eating a sandwich in the kitchen who represents the Governor. We’re skunked.”
“Sheriff!” said J. B. Culp.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Culp?”
“Get these trespassers off my property.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Culp.”
“Lock ’em up. I’ll send someone to the jailhouse to press charges in the morning.”
Nine arrested Van Dorns were crammed into a cell in the county lockup that smelled like it was reserved for drunks. The other three had escaped on the boat.
“I want to know how they knew we were coming,” said Isaac Bell.
“They knew we were coming, didn’t they?” said Archie.
“Unless by amazing coincidence the Sheriff, the Army Guard, and the Governor’s man all dropped in on the same night,” said Isaac Bell.
Bell was seething. The cost of the botched raid was almost incalculable. Culp was in the clear. Branco was still on the loose, deadly as ever and protected by Culp. Culp had demonstrated his power to bring in big guns to defend his secret alliance with the gangster. While they had somehow managed the near impossible—catching wind ahead of time about a secret Van Dorn raid.
Archie repeated, “This is awful. They knew we were coming.”
“We will find out how,” Bell repeated.
Bell was dozing on his feet, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of his squad, when he heard Joseph Van Dorn thunder in full voice. The Boss stood outside the cell in a derby hat and a voluminous overcoat.
“Sorriest bunch of miscreants I’ve ever seen in one lockup. They’re an insult to the criminal classes. But hand them over anyway.”
The Sheriff looked abruptly awakened and very anxious. “Mr. Culp is going to be mighty angry.”
“Tell Mr. Culp to take it up with the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which has federal jurisdiction over Orange County. Show him that letter the U.S. Attorney gave me to give to you. Open up, man! We have a train to catch. Come along, boys. Double-time . . . Lord, that jailhouse stink! Good thing I chartered a cattle car to take you home in.”
A scathing nod in Bell’s direction instructed him to join the Boss for a private word. They stood in the vestibule when the train left the station. Van Dorn’s voice was cold, his eyes colder.
“The U.S. Attorney owed me an enormous favor. Springing your squad cleared the books, and he made it abundantly clear that next time we’re on our own. So let me make it abundantly clear, Isaac: No Van Dorn detective will scale the Raven’s Eyrie wall again without my express permission.”
“Except, of course,” said Bell, “if we’re in hot pursuit of Antonio Branco.”
Van Dorn’s cheeks flared as red as his whiskers and the Boss was suddenly as angry as Bell had ever seen him. “If Antonio Branco is halfway over Culp’s wall and you are hanging by his ankles, wire me on the private telegraph and wait for my specific go-ahead.”
As the train neared the city, Archie Abbott whispered, “Isaac, I have to talk to you.”
Bell led him into the vestibule where Van Dorn had expressed his displeasure. “What’s up?”
“It was my fault, Isaac.”
“Everyone did their job. We hit, front and back, right on the nose. It’s not your fault they were waiting.”
“I’m afraid it was,” said Archie.
“What are you talking about?”
Abbott hung his head. He looked mortified, and it began to dawn on Isaac Bell that his old friend Archie Abbott was more deeply downcast than even the Raven’s Eyrie fiasco would warrant.
“What are you saying, Archie?”
“I think I was played for a sucker.”
“Who played you—the girl you’ve been seeing?”
“Francesca.”
“You told Marion you were ‘besotted.’”
“Totally.”
“What did you tell Francesca?”
“Only that I was going on a raid. I had to break a date. I said I’d be away overnight, up the river.”
“Archie . . .” Bell felt his head swimming. Culp was in the clear. Culp protected Branco.
“I just didn’t think.”
“Did you tell her we were after Culp?”
“No! . . . Well, I mean, not really.”
“What the devil does ‘not really’ mean?” Bell exploded. “You either told her it was Culp or you didn’t.”
“I said it was Culp’s house. I didn’t say we were after Culp. It could have been anyone on the estate. I was sure that was the impression I left. Until—”
“Until Culp had the Sheriff and the Army Guard ambush us . . . What the devil were you thinking, Archie? . . . Sounds like you weren’t thinking.”
“Not clearly. What do you want me to do, Isaac? Should I resign?”
Isaac Bell looked him in the face. Not only were they the closest friends but Bell felt responsible for him because he had talked Archie into joining the Van Dorns. He said, “I have to think about it. And I h
ave to talk to Mr. Van Dorn, of course.”
“He’ll fire me in a second.”
“He’s the Boss. I have no choice.”
“I should save him the trouble and quit.”
Archie should resign, thought Bell. He knew the Boss well enough to know that Van Dorn was in no mood to forgive. But he was getting the glimmer of an idea how he might turn the tables on Branco.
“You know, Archie, you’re still not thinking clearly.”
“What do you mean?”
“Pray this doesn’t get in the papers. Because if it does and your Francesca reads it, she will put two and two together and realize that the boss she ‘confessed’ to in that church is Branco. And she will also know that when Branco reads it, he will know that she knows. Branco went to great lengths to ensure that the criminals who carried out his orders could never implicate him, much less testify against him.”
“What are you saying?”
“How long will he let Francesca live?”
“I have to get to her first,” said Archie.
“We have to get to her first. She’ll know a lot about Branco’s crimes and, with any luck, what he plans next.”
“Wait a minute, Isaac. What does Branco care if Francesca exposes him? He’s exposed already.”
“When we catch him, he will stand trial, defended by the best lawyers money can buy. The prosecutor will need every break he can get. He will trade years off Francesca’s prison sentence for her testimony.”
“Prison?”
“Archie, you weren’t the first job she did for him. Just the easiest.”
36
“Where does Francesca live?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? How could you not know where a woman you were seeing lives?”
“She never let me take her home. She was very proper.”
“‘Proper’?” Isaac Bell echoed sharply. As good as this plan was, he was still angry enough to throw Archie Abbott off the speeding train.
“Ladylike. I mean . . . modest . . . Well, you know what I mean.”
“Where would you meet up?”
“The Waldorf-Astoria.”
“How’d you manage that?” Bell asked. Archie was a socially prominent New Yorker, welcome in any Blue Book drawing room, but the Abbotts had lost their money in the Panic of ’93 and he had to live on his detective salary.
“Francesca’s quite well-off, and her husband had business at the hotel, so she has a good arrangement with the management.”
“You said you don’t know where she lives. Now you’re saying she lives at the Waldorf?”
“No, no, no. She just books us a room.”
“When were you supposed to see her next?”
“Tomorrow afternoon, actually.”
“Will she show up?”
“I have no idea.”
“I think she will,” said Bell.
“How do you know?”
“She will be curious about what you’ll tell her next.”
Again, Abbott hung his head. “How long are you going to rub salt in the wound?”
“Until I am absolutely sure that I can override a powerful impulse to knock your block off.”
Archie was late.
Francesca Kennedy had already luxuriated with a hot soak in the porcelain tub. Now, wrapped in a Turkish robe, she curled up in an armchair and let her eyes feast on the beautiful hotel room. It had a fine bureau with an etched-glass mirror, a marquetry headboard that matched the bureau, and French wallpaper. She peeked through the drapes; it was snowing again. Warm and cosy, she settled in with the afternoon newspaper.
Standing in the rocky cavern 1,100 feet under the bed of the Hudson River a week after he returns from Panama, President Theodore Roosevelt will press a key and electrically fire the blast to “hole through” the Hudson River Siphon Tunnel of the Catskill Aqueduct . . .
Footsteps were muffled in the Waldorf’s carpeted halls, and she lowered the paper repeatedly to glance at the crack under the door, waiting for Archie’s shadow to fall across the sill.
“Are you an opera singer, sir?”
Antonio Branco gave the elevator runner a dazzling smile. “If I-a to sing-a, you will-a run holding ears. No, young fellow, I only look-a like one.”
Americans scorned and despised Italian immigrants, but they were amused by well-off Italians who dressed with style. A cream-colored cape, a matching wide-brimmed Borsalino, an ivory walking stick, and a waxed mustache did the job. His masquerade wouldn’t fool a Van Dorn detective, or anyone who had met him face-to-face, but it drew salutes from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel doormen and bows from house detectives. Across the lobby and into the gilded elevator, he was questioned only by the starstruck boy running it.
“Floor, sir?”
“Sesto! That means floor seeze. Pronto!”
Francesca had worked her way to the back pages, where features were tongue-in-cheek.
A far-flung correspondent reports that our country cousins upstate in rural Orange County awakened twice this week to outlandish rumors. First, as our readers in New York and Brooklyn learned, too, the Catskill Aqueduct tunnel under the Hudson River—the so-called Siphon, or Moodna-Hudson-Breakneck Pressure Tunnel and Gauging Chamber, as the waterworks engineers dub it—was breeched by the river, flooding the tunnel and destroying all hopes of completing the aqueduct ahead of the next water famine. Happily, this proved not the case. The plumber was summoned. The leak was small and has already been patched.
New rumors flew hot and heavy this morning. One had the Sheriff of Orange County raiding Raven’s Eyrie, the fabled estate of the Culps, whose many generations have accumulated great fortunes in river commerce, railroad enterprises, and Wall Street dexterity. Locked up were a dozen men found there. Speculation as to why the Sheriff raided Raven’s Eyrie prompted new rumors, the most intriguing of which had the Sheriff hot on the heels of Italian immigrant Black Hand fugitive Antonio Branco.
It was unclear why a gangster (formerly purveyor to the city’s Catskill Aqueduct) who is running from the law would choose to go to ground in a plutocrat’s fortified retreat. It was equally unclear who the men arrested were. Hearsay ran the gamut of imaginings, from immigrant laborers, to private detectives, to Tammany contract grabbers.
The Sheriff of Orange County denies the event ever took place and displayed for our correspondent his empty jail.
Mr. J. B. Culp’s offices in Wall Street report that the magnate is currently steaming across the continent on his private train and therefore unavailable to comment.
The Italian Branco left no forwarding address.
Francesca flung off the terry robe and pulled on her clothing. She knew Branco. Not as a gangster, but as a wealthy grocer who had set her up in a small apartment with a stipend that allowed her to get off the streets. He hadn’t visited it in two years—not since, she realized now, she had been summoned to confession with the Boss. She had lived on tenterhooks, wondering when it would stop, but he had kept sending money and kept paying the rent.
She was stuffing her things into her bag when a shadow fell on the sill.
The lovely room was suddenly a trap. An interior door connected to an adjoining room. She gripped the knob with little hope. Locked, of course. She had only rented the one room, not the suite. She backed up to the window and pulled the drapes with even less hope. No fire escape; the Waldorf was a modern building with indoor fire stairs. No balcony, either. Only the pavement of 33rd Street, six stories down. She carried no knife on this job, no razor, no weapon that would warn Archie Abbott that she was trouble.
Antonio Branco opened the door with a key and swept into the room.
Francesca Kennedy backed against the window. “I was just reading about you.”
“I imagined you were.”
Though her mind w
as racing, nearly overwhelmed with fear, she was struck, as always, by how handsome a man he was. There was a sharpness to him she had not seen before, an alertness he had hidden, which made him even more vital. But when his expression hardened, he looked suddenly so familiar that she glanced at her own face in the bureau mirror, then back at his.
37
His eyes were as dead as hers when she did a job.
Branco’s flickered at the window, and she realized instantly how he would do her. Francesca Kennedy wouldn’t be the first young and beautiful suicide to jump to her death from an expensive hotel room. Fell for the wrong man?
He turned around to lock the door and was reaching for the latch, when it flew inward with explosive force, smashing into his face and hurling him across the room. The armchair in which Francesca had been reading stopped his fall and he kept his feet, blood pouring from his nose.
Archie Abbott burst through the door he had kicked open.
The tall, golden-haired Isaac Bell was right behind him.
The detectives bounded at Branco like wolves.
Branco had lightning reflexes. The Italian had retained his grip on his walking stick and managed to twist it around as Archie charged. He rammed the tip into Archie’s gut. Archie doubled over. Isaac Bell knocked the stick out of Branco’s hand. It flew into the drapes and dropped at Francesca’s feet. When she picked it up, she was shocked by the heavy weight of its steel core.
Bell and Branco traded punches, grappled and fell against the chair with Bell on top. Branco clamped his arms around the tall detective in a crushing grip. He surged to his feet. His bloodied face contorted with herculean effort, he lifted Bell’s hundred seventy-five pounds off the floor. Bell broke his grip and pounded Branco’s ribs. They tumbled past the bed. Bell crashed into the bureau, shattering the mirror. Branco whirled to the door. But Archie was up again, throwing a hard, expert punch that drove the gangster to his knees.
The Gangster Page 22