Isaac Bell held off reminding the Commander-in-Chief that USS Connecticut’s armor tapered to only four inches in her bow, but he could not resist saying, “Far be it from me to advise a military man, Mr. President, but how do your admirals feel about the Connecticut smashing ice with her propeller blades?”
TR threw up his hands. “O.K., O.K. I’ll take the train. That satisfy you?”
“Only canceling your public appearances until we nail Culp and Branco will satisfy me.”
“Then you’re bound for disappointment. I’m going and that’s all there is to it. Now get out of here. I have a country to run.”
Bell and Van Dorn retreated reluctantly.
“Wait!” Roosevelt called after them, “Detective Bell. Is that true?”
“Is what true, Mr. President?”
“The Hudson River is freezing early.”
“It’s true.”
“Bully!”
“Why ‘bully,’ sir?”
“They’ll be racing when I’m there.”
Van Dorn asked, “What kind of racing?”
“Fastest racing there is. Ice yacht racing.”
“Do you race, sir?” asked Bell.
“Do I race? Cousin John founded the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club. His Icicle cracked one hundred miles per hour and won the Challenge Pennant. Ever been on an ice yacht, Detective?”
“I skippered Helene in the Shrewsbury regattas.”
“So you’re a professional?”
“I was Mr. Morrison’s guest,” said Bell, and added casually, “Culp races ice yachts, you know?”
“Daphne!” shouted the President. “Fast as greased lightning!” He flashed a toothy grin. “Just goes to show you, Bell, the Almighty puts some good in every man—even J. B. Culp.”
The President’s hearty ebullience offered an opening and Bell seized it. “May I ask you one favor, sir?”
“Shoot.”
“Would you make your speech at the Hudson River Siphon your only speech?”
Roosevelt considered the tall detective’s request for such an interim that Bell saw reason to hope that the President was finally thinking of the assassination that had flung him into office.
“O.K.,” he answered abruptly. “Fair enough.”
Joseph Van Dorn was staying on in Washington, but he rode with Isaac Bell on the trolley to the train station. “That was a complete bust,” he said gloomily. “One speech, ten speeches, what’s the difference? Everywhere he stops, the reckless fool will wade into the crowds—knowing full well that McKinley got shot while shaking hands.”
“But his only scheduled appearance will be the speech. Branco will know precisely where and when to find him at the Hudson Siphon—the only place the President will be a sitting duck.”
“That is something,” Van Dorn conceded. “So how do we protect the sitting duck?”
Isaac Bell said, “Clamp a vise around Branco. Squeeze him.”
“To squeeze him, you’ve got to find him.”
“He’s holed up in Culp’s estate.”
“Still?” Van Dorn looked skeptical. “Where’d you get that idea?”
“Culp’s private train,” answered Bell. “I sent Eddie Edwards to nose around the crew. Eddie bribed a brakeman. It seems that ordinarily by November, Culp spends weekdays in town, but the last time he left the property, he took his train to Scranton and came back the same night.”
“I wouldn’t call that definitive proof that Branco’s holed up with him.”
“Eddie’s brakeman is courting a housemaid at Raven’s Eyrie. She tells him, and he tells Eddie, that Culp is sticking unusually close to home. She also says the boxers don’t live there anymore. And we already knew that Culp’s wife decamped for the city. Add it all up and it’s highly likely that Branco’s in the house.”
“Yet Branco’s been to town, and he’s still bossing his gangsters.”
Bell said, “I have your Black Hand Squad working round the clock to find how he gets out and back in.”
The letter was waiting for Joseph Van Dorn when he got to the New Williard.
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
December 1, 1906
Joseph Van Dorn
Van Dorn Detective Agency
Washington, D.C., Office
The New Williard Hotel
Dear Joe,
Your Isaac Bell has a given me a bully idea. I will deliver only one prepared speech whilst inspecting the Catskill Aqueduct. In so doing, I can concentrate all my efforts on a big splash to boom the waterworks enterprise.
So before I go down the Storm King Shaft to fire the hole-through blast, accompanied by the newspaper reporters, I will speak to assembled multitudes on the surface. To this course, I have asked the contractors to gather their workmen at the shaft house and build for me a raised platform so all may see and hear.
“May the angels preserve me,” said Joseph Van Dorn.
Hearty Regards,
Theodore Roosevelt
P.S. Joe, could I prevail upon you to accompany my party on the tour?
Deeply relieved by the unexpected glimmer of common sense in the postscript, Van Dorn telephoned a civil servant, a former Chicagoan who now led the Secret Service protection corps. “The President has asked me to ride along on the Catskills trip. I don’t want to get in your way, so I need your blessing before I accept.”
His old friend gave an exasperated snort, loud enough to hear over the phone. “The Congress still questions who should protect the President and whether he even needs protection. Nor will they pay for it, so I’m juggling salaries from other budgets. And now they’re yammering that one of my boys was arrested for assault for stopping a photographer from lunging at the President and Mrs. Roosevelt with a camera that could have concealed a gun or knife. In other words, thank you, Joe, I am short of qualified hands.”
“I will see you on the train,” said Van Dorn. And yet, in his heart of hearts he knew that when some bigwig persuaded the President to let him stand beside him, the founder of the Van Dorn Detective Agency would end up too far away to intercept an attacker.
Between the Raven’s Eyrie wall and the foot of Storm King Mountain, the estate’s telegraph and telephone wires passed through a stand of hemlock trees. Isaac Bell and a Van Dorn operative, who had been recently hired away from the Hudson River Bell Telephone Company, pitched a tent in the densest clump of the dark green conifers.
Bell strapped climbing spikes to his boots and mounted a telegraph pole. He scraped insulation from the telephone wires and attached two lengths of his own wire, which he let uncoil to the ground. He repeated this with the telegraph wires and climbed back down, where the operative had already hooked them up to a telephone receiver and a telegraph key.
An eight-mule team hauled a heavy freight wagon up to the Raven’s Eyrie service gate. A burly teamster and his helper wrestled enormous barrels down a ramp and stood them at the shoulder of the driveway. They were interrupted by a gatekeeper who demanded to know what they thought they were doing.
“Unloading your barrels.”
“We didn’t order any barrels.”
The teamster produced an invoice. “Says here you did.”
“What’s in ’em?”
“Big one is flour and the smaller one is sugar. Looks like you’ll be baking cookies.”
The gatekeeper called for the cook to come down from the kitchen. The cook, shivering in a cardigan pulled over her whites, looked over the flour barrel, which was as tall as she was. “This is a hogshead. There’s enough in it to feed an army.”
“Did you order it?”
“Why would I order a hogshead of flour and a full barrel of sugar at the end of the season?” she asked rhetorically. “Maybe they’re meant to go to 50th Street. That’s their winter palace in New Yor
k City,” she added for the benefit of the teamster and hurried back to her kitchen.
“You heard her,” said the gatekeeper. “Get ’em out of here.”
The teamster climbed back on his rig.
“Hey, where you going?”
“To find a crane to lift ’em back on the wagon.”
The gatekeeper called the estate manager. By the time he arrived, the wagon had disappeared down the road. The estate manager gave the hogshead an experimental tug. It felt like it weighed six hundred pounds.
“Leave it there ’til he comes back with his crane.”
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
December 3, 1906
Joseph Van Dorn
Van Dorn Detective Agency
Washington, D.C., Office
The New Williard Hotel
Dear Joe,
Further the booming of the aqueduct enterprise, a White Steamer automobile will be carried on the special train to deliver me to the various inspection stops, and particularly the Hudson River Siphon Shaft, so the workmen at the shaft house may see me arrive.
“Good Lord,” said Joseph Van Dorn.
Hearty Regards,
Theodore Roosevelt
PS: I’m back on my battleship, but only as far as the icebreaker can open a channel. The train can meet us there.
VAN DORN DETECTIVE AGENCY
KNICKERBOCKER HOTEL
NEW YORK CITY
Dear Mr. President,
I do hope I may accompany you in the auto. May I presume you will wear a topper?
Sincerely,
Joseph Van Dorn
Whether the President wore a top hat, a fedora, or even a Rough Rider slouch hat, Van Dorn would wear the same—and wire-framed spectacles—to confuse a sniper. He would even have to shave the splendiferous sideburns he had cultivated for twenty years.
Ten men and women dressed in shabby workers’ clothes got off the day coach train from Jersey City and marched out of Cornwall Landing and up the steep road to Raven’s Eyrie. When they were stopped at the front gate, they unfurled banners and began to walk in a noisy circle. The banners demanded:
HONEST WAGES FOR AN HONEST DAY’S WORK
and accused the Philadelphia Streetcar Company, owned by the United Railways Trust, of unfair treatment of its track workers.
The workers chanted:
“Wall Street feasts. Workers starve.”
The Sheriff was called. He arrived with a heavyset deputy, who climbed out of the auto armed with a pick handle. Two more autos pulled up, with newspaper reporters from Poughkeepsie, Albany, and New York City.
“How’d you boys get here so fast?” asked the Sheriff, who had a bad feeling that he was about to get caught between the Hudson Valley aristocracy and the voting public.
“Got a tip from the workers’ lawyers,” explained the man from the Poughkeepsie Journal.
“Did J. B. Culp instruct you to disperse this picket line?” asked the Morning Times.
The progressive Evening Sun’s reporter was beside himself with excitement. Ordinarily, the biggest news he covered in the Hudson Valley was the state of the winter ice harvest. He had already wired that the intense cold meant harvesting would start so early that the greedy Ice Trust would not be able to jack up prices when the city sweltered next August.
Now, outside the Wall Street tycoon’s gates, he put the screws to privilege: “Sheriff, has J. B. Culp instructed you to permit or deny these American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to free assembly?”
“There’s an inch of ice on the river, Isaac. They’ve hauled all their boats out of the water at Raven’s Eyrie, and I just saw that the signboard at the passenger pier says the steamers are stopping service for the winter.”
“I sent Archie to Poughkeepsie to buy an ice yacht.”
“I’m amazed that Joe Van Dorn authorized such an expense.”
“This one’s on me,” said Bell. “I want a special design. Fortunately, my kindly grandfather left me the means to pay for it.”
Isaac Bell found New York Police Department Detective Sergeant Petrosino’s Italian Squad in a small, dimly lit room over a saloon on Centre Street. Exhausted plainclothes operatives were slumped in chairs and sleeping on tables. Joe Petrosino, a tough, middle-aged cop built short and wide as a mooring bollard, was writing furiously at a makeshift desk.
“I’ve heard of you, Bell. Welcome to the highlife.”
“Do you have time to talk?” said Bell with a glance at those detectives who were awake and watching curiously.
“My men and I have no secrets.”
“Nor do I and mine,” said Bell. “But I am sitting on dynamite and I’m obliged to keep it private.”
“When a high class private investigator offers me dynamite, I have to ask why.”
“Because Harry Warren thinks the world of you. So does Mike Coligney.”
“Mike and I have Commissioner Bingham in common. He’s been . . . helpful to us both.”
Bell answered carefully. “I do not believe that Captain Coligney reckons that this particular dynamite is up the Commissioner’s alley.”
Petrosino clapped a derby to his head and led Bell downstairs.
They walked the narrow old streets of downtown. Bell laid out the threat.
“Have you informed the President?”
“Mr. Van Dorn and I went down to Washington and told him face-to-face.”
“What did he say?”
“He refused to believe it.”
Petrosino shook his head with a bitter chuckle. “Do you remember when King Umberto was assassinated by Gaetano Bresci?”
“Summer of 1900,” said Bell. “Bresci was an anarchist.”
“Since he had lived in New Jersey, the Secret Service asked me to infiltrate Italian anarchist cells to investigate whether they were plotting against President McKinley. It was soon clear to me they were. I warned McKinley they would shoot him first chance they got. McKinley wouldn’t listen. He took no precautions—ignored Secret Service advice and let crowds of strangers close enough to shake his hand. Can you explain such nonsense to me?”
“They think they’re bulletproof.”
“After McKinley died, they said to me, ‘You were wrong, Lieutenant Petrosino. The anarchist wasn’t Italian. He was Polish.’”
“I know what you mean,” Bell commiserated. “I’m pretty much in the same boat you were.”
“How do these fools get elected?”
“People seem to want them.”
Petrosino gave another weary chuckle. “That’s cop work in a nutshell: Protect fools in spite of themselves.”
Isaac Bell asked, “Who do you think Antonio Branco will hire to kill the President?”
“If he doesn’t do the job himself?”
“He may well,” said Bell. “But for the sake of covering all bases, who would he hire?”
“He’s got a choice of Black Hand gorillas or radical Italian anarchists,” said Petrosino. “Pray it’s gorillas.”
“Why’s that?”
“Criminals trip themselves up worrying about getting away. The crazy anarchists don’t mind dying in the act. They don’t even think about getting away, which makes them so dangerous.”
“Do you have a line on Italian anarchists?” Bell asked.
“Most of them.”
“Could you take them out of commission when the President goes to Storm King?”
“The lawyers will howl. The newspapers will howl. The Progressives will howl.”
“How loudly?”
Petrosino grinned. “I been a cop so long, so many gunfights, my ears are deaf.”
“Thank you,” said Bell. “I hope the Van Dorn Agency can return the favor one day. What about the gorillas?”
“Too many.
I’ll never find them all. But like I say, they’re not as dangerous as anarchists.”
“Well done on the anarchists!” Joseph Van Dorn said when Bell reported. “But the assurance that ‘gorillas’ are not as dangerous as radicals doesn’t exactly make me rest easy. Particularly as the President has decided to make your ‘one speech only’ open to all. He wired me this morning that he’s going to lead the workmen in a parade.”
“A parade,” said Bell with a sinking heart. What if he was wrong about Branco killing in close? A parade was an invitation to a sniper, and a criminal as freewheeling as Branco could change tactics in an instant.
Van Dorn echoed his thoughts. “The parade is madness. He intends to lead it in the Steamer. I asked, would he at least put up the automobile’s top? Look what he wired back.”
Van Dorn thrust a telegram across his desk.
SNOW ON LABOR
SNOW ON PRESIDENT
Bell asked, “Who’s marching in the parade?”
“Everyone.”
“Even the Italians?”
“Especially the Italians. Last we spoke in Washington, he had a bee in his bonnet about immigrants learning English to facilitate fair dealings between classes of citizens. He was tickled pink when I told him that the Italian White Hand Society is our client and what fine English Vella and LaCava speak.”
“Why don’t you invite Vella and LaCava to the parade?”
“Excellent idea! I’ll bet TR shakes their hands.”
“Invite Caruso and Tetrazzini, while you’re at it.”
“I wouldn’t call either sterling pronunciators of the King’s English.”
“Any hand the President shakes that is not a stranger’s hand will make me happy,” said Bell. “Along with a snowstorm to blind the snipers.”
Van Dorn turned grave. “But in the event that a providential snowstorm doesn’t blind a sniper, how else are you closing the vise around Branco?”
“My operators are watching Culp’s gates and his boat landing round the clock.”
“I thought you told the President the river was frozen.”
“I put a man on an ice yacht.”
The Gangster Page 24