The ground shook. The drag chains thundered. Smoke poured from the cradle. Michigan accelerated out of the shed into the sunlit water, trailing the acrid scent of burning tallow fired by friction and billowing the river into clouds of spray that the sunshine pierced with rainbows.
WHILE EVERY EYE IN CAMDEN locked on the floating ship, Isaac Bell seized the dead German and stuffed him in the wheelbarrow. The detective who had checked the saboteur’s pass came running up, trailed by others. Bell said, “Get this man in the back door of the morgue before anyone sees him. Shipbuilders are superstitious. We don’t want to spoil their party.”
While they covered the body with scrap wood, Bell found his gun and put his hat on his head. A detective handed him his knife, which he sheathed in his boot. “I’m supposed to take my girl to the luncheon. How do I look?”
“Like somebody ironed your suit with a shovel.”
They took out handkerchiefs and brushed his coat and trousers. “You ever consider wearing a darker outfit for days like this?”
Marion took one look when Bell entered the pavilion and asked in a low voice, “Are you all right?”
“Tip-top.”
“You missed the launching.”
“Not entirely,” said Bell. “How did you get along with Yamamoto Kenta?”
“Mr. Yamamoto,” said Marion Morgan, “is a phony.”
25
I LAID A TRAP, AND HE WALKED RIGHT INTO IT-ISAAC! HE did not know about Ashiyuki Utamaro’s Exile Scrolls.”
“You’ve got me there. What are Ashiyuki Utamaro’s Exile Scrolls?”
“Ashiyuki Utamaro was a famous Japanese woodblock printmaker during the later Edo period. Woodblock artists operate large, complex shops where employees and acolytes do much of the work, tracing, carving, and inking after the master draws the image. They don’t do calligraphy scrolls.”
“Why does it matter that Mr. Yamamoto didn’t know about something that doesn’t exist?”
“Because Ashiyuki Utamaro’s Exile Scrolls do exist. But they were made secretly, so only real scholars know about them.”
“And you! No wonder you won the first law degree ever granted a woman at Stanford University.”
“I wouldn’t know either except my father occasionally bought a Japanese scroll, and I remembered a strange story he told me. I wired him in San Francisco for the details. He wired back a very expensive telegram.
“Ashiyuki Utamaro was at the height of his printmaking career when he got in trouble with the Emperor apparently for making eyes or more at the Emperor’s favorite geisha. Only the fact that the Emperor loved Ashiyuki Utamaro’s woodcuts saved his life.
“Instead of chopping his head off, or whatever they do to Japanese Lotharios, he banished him to the northernmost cape of the northernmost island of Japan-Hokkaido. For an artist who needed his workshop and staff, it was worse than prison. Then his mistress smuggled in paper, ink, and a brush. And until he died, alone in his tiny little hut, he drew calligraphy scrolls. But no one could admit they existed. His mistress and everyone who helped her visit him would have been executed. They could not be displayed. They could not be sold. Somehow the prints ended up with a dealer in San Francisco, who sold one to my father.”
“Forgive me my skepticism, but it does sound like an art dealer’s story,” said Bell.
“Except it is true. Yamamoto Kenta does not know about the Exile Scrolls. Therefore he is no scholar and no curator of Japanese art.”
“Which makes him a spy,” Bell said grimly. “And a murderer. Well done, my darling. We’ll hang him with this.”
THE SPEECHES THAT ACCOMPANIED the luncheon’s toasts were mercifully brief, and the rousing one delivered by Captain Lowell Falconer, Special Inspector of Target Practice, was, in the words of Ted Whitmark, “a real stem-winder.”
With crackling language and powerful gestures, the Hero of Santiago praised Camden’s modern yard, lionized the ship workers, thanked the Congress, commended the chief constructor, and acclaimed the naval architect.
During one of the explosions of applause, Bell whispered to Marion, “The only thing he hasn’t praised is the Michigan.”
Marion whispered back, “You should have heard what he said privately about the Michigan. He compared her to a whale. And I don’t believe he meant it as a compliment.”
“He did mention that it is barely half the size of Hull 44.” With a courtly bow in Dorothy’s direction, Falconer wound his toast up with a stirring testimonial to Arthur Langner. “The hero who built Michigan’s guns. Finest 12s in the world today. And a harbinger of even better to come. Every man jack in the Navy will miss him.”
Bell glanced at Dorothy. Her face was alight with joy that even a maverick officer like Falconer had said for all to hear that her father was a hero.
“May Arthur Langner rest in peace,” Captain Falconer concluded, “knowing that his nation sleeps in peace secured by his mighty guns.”
The last bit of business was the presentation by the chairman of New York Ship of a jeweled pendant to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy’s quick-moving daughter, who had cracked the champagne over Michigan’s bow before the ship got away. Heading for the podium, the savvy industrialist shook hands warmly with a man in an elegant European frock coat, who handed him the pendant. And before he draped it around the young lady’s neck, he used the occasion to plug the booming jewelry industry in Camden’s sister city of Newark.
ANTICIPATING THE CRUSH heading home to New York, Bell had bribed Camden detective Barney George to arrange for a police launch to run him and Marion across the river to Philadelphia, where a police car sped them to the Broad Street Station. They boarded the New York express and settled into the lounge car with a bottle of champagne to celebrate the safe launching, the thwarting of a saboteur, and the imminent capture of a Japanese spy.
Bell knew that he had been too visible today to take a chance trailing Yamamoto back to Washington. Instead, he put the Japanese under close surveillance by the best shadows Van Dorn could field on short notice, and they were very good indeed.
“What do you think of Falconer?” Bell asked Marion.
“Lowell is a fascinating man,” she answered, adding enigmatically, “He’s torn by what he wants, what he fears, and what he sees.”
“That’s mysterious. What does he want?”
“Dreadnoughts.”
“Obviously. What does he fear?”
“Japan.”
“No surprises there. What does he see?”
“The future. The torpedoes and submarines that will put his dreadnoughts out of business.”
“For a man torn, he’s mighty sure of himself.”
“He’s not that sure. He talked a blue streak about his dreadnoughts. Then suddenly his whole face changed, and he said, ‘There came a time in the age of chivalry when armor had grown so heavy that knights had to be hoisted onto their horses with cranes. Just about then, along came the crossbow, shooting bolts that pierced armor. An ignorant peasant could be taught how to kill a knight in a single afternoon. And that,’ he said-patting my knee for emphasis-‘in our time could be the torpedo or the submarine.’ ”
“Did he happen to mention the airplane flights at Kitty Hawk?”
“Oh, yes. He’s been following them closely. The Navy sees their potential for scouting. I asked what if instead of a passenger the airplane carried a torpedo? Lowell turned pale.”
“There was nothing pale about his speech. Did you see those senators beaming?”
“I met your Miss Langner.”
Bell returned her suddenly intense gaze. “What did you think of her?”
“She’s set her cap for you.”
“I applaud her good taste in men. What else did you think of her?”
“I think she’s fragile under all that beauty and in need of rescue.”
“That’s Ted Whitmark’s job. If he’s up to it.”
TWO CARS AHEAD on the same Pennsylvania Railroad express, the spy, too, he
aded for New York. What some would call revenge he regarded as a necessary counterattack. Until today the Van Dorn Detective Agency had been more irritant than threat. Until today he had been content to monitor it. But today’s defeat of a well-laid plan to destroy the Michigan meant that it had to be dealt with. Nothing could be allowed to derail his attack on the Great White Fleet.
When the train arrived in Jersey City, he followed Bell and his fiancée out of the Exchange Place Terminal and watched them drive off in the red Locomobile that a garage attendant had waiting for them with the motor running. He went back inside the terminal, hurried to the ferry house, rode the Pennsylvania Railroad’s St. Louis across the river to Cortlandt Street, walked a few steps to Greenwich, and boarded the Ninth Avenue El. He got off in Hell’s Kitchen and went to Commodore Tommy’s Saloon, where Tommy tended to hang out instead of his fancy new joints uptown.
“Brian O’Shay!” The gang boss greeted him effusively. “Highball?”
“What leads have you got on the Van Dorns?”
“That louse Harry Warren and his boys are nosing around like I told you they would.”
“It’s time you broke some heads.”
“Wait a minute. Things are going great. Who needs a war with the Van Dorns?”
“Great?” O’Shay asked sarcastically. “How great? Like waiting around for the railroads to run you off Eleventh Avenue?”
“I seen that coming,” Tommy retorted, hooking his thumbs in his vest and looking proud as a shopkeeper. “That’s why I hooked up with the Hip Sing.”
Brian O’Shay hid a smile. Who did Tommy Thompson think had sent him the Hip Sing?
“I don’t recall the Hip Sing being famous for loving detectives. How long will your Chinamen put up with Van Dorns acting like they own your territory?”
“Why you got to do this, Brian?”
“I’m sending a message.”
“Send a telegram,” Tommy shot back. He laughed. “Say, that’s funny, ‘Send a telegram.’ I like that.”
O’Shay took his eye gouge from his vest pocket. Tommy’s laughter died in his mouth.
“The purpose of a message, Tommy, is to make the other man think about what you can do to him.” O’Shay held the gouge to the light, watched it glint on the sharp edges, and slipped it over his thumb. He glanced at Tommy. The gang boss looked away.
“Thinking what you can do, it makes him wonder. Wondering slows him down. The power of wondering, Tommy-make him wonder and you’ll come out on top.”
“All right, all right. We’ll bust some heads, but I’m not killing any detectives. I don’t want no war.”
“Who else do they have poking around other than Harry Warren’s boys?”
“The Hip Sing spotted a new Van Dorn poking around Chinatown.”
“New? What do you mean, new. Young?”
“No, no, he’s no kid. Out-of-town hard case.”
“New to New York? Why would they bring an out-of-town guy into the city? Doesn’t make sense.”
“He’s a pal of that son of a bitch Bell.”
“How do you know that?”
“One of the boys saw them working together at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He’s not from New York. It looks like Bell brought him in special.”
“He’s the one. Tommy, I want him watched real close.”
“What for?”
“I’m going to send Bell a message. Give him something to wonder about.”
“I’ll not have my Gophers kill any Van Dorns,” Tommy repeated stubbornly.
“You let Weeks take a shot at Bell,” O’Shay pointed out.
“The Iceman was different. The Van Dorns would have seen it was personal between Weeks and Bell.”
Brian “Eyes” O’Shay regarded Tommy Thompson with scorn. “Don’t worry-I’ll leave a note on the body saying, ‘Don’t blame Tommy Thompson.’ ”
“Aw, come on, Brian.”
“I’m asking you to watch him.”
Tommy Thompson took another swig from his glass. He glanced at O’Shay’s thumb gouge and quickly looked away. “I don’t suppose,” he said petulantly, “I get any say in this.”
“Follow him. But don’t tip your hand.”
“All right. If that’s what you want, that’s what you get. I’ll use the best shadows I got. Kids and cops. No one notices kids and cops. They’re always there, like empty beer barrels on the sidewalk.”
“And tell your cops and kids to keep an eye on Bell, too.”
JOHN SCULLY CRUISED UP the Bowery and into the narrow, twisting streets of Chinatown. Staring at the men’s long pigtails and gawking up at the overhead tangle of fire escapes and clotheslines and signs for Chinese restaurants and teahouses, he was disguised as a “blue jay”-an out-of-town hayseed who was wandering the big city for a good time. He had just appeared to find it in the arms of a skinny streetwalker who had also ventured over from the Bowery when a pair of corner loafers visiting from that same neighborhood flashed a rusty knife and a blackjack and demanded his money.
Scully turned out his pockets. A roll of cash fell to the pavement. They snatched it and ran, never knowing how lucky they were that the ice-blooded detective had not felt sufficiently threatened to spoil his disguise by opening fire with the Browning Vest Pocket tucked in the small of his back.
The woman who had observed the robbery said, “Don’t expect nothin’ from me with your empty pockets.”
Scully tugged open some stitches of his coat lining and pulled out an envelope. Peering into it, he said, “Looky here. Enough left to make both our nights.”
She brightened at the sight of the dough.
“What do say we get something to drink first?” said Scully, offering a kindness to which she was unaccustomed.
After they were settled in a booth in the back of Mike Callahan’s, a dive around the corner on Chatham Square, with a round of whiskey in her and another on the way, he asked casually, “Say, do you suppose those fellers was Gophers?”
“What? What the hell are go-phers?”
“The men who robbed me. Gophers? Like gangsters.”
“Go-phers? Oh, Goofers!” She laughed. “Mother of Mary, where did you come from?”
“Well, were they?”
“Could be,” she said. “They’ve been drifting down from Hell’s Kitchen for a couple of months now.”
Scully had heard rumors of this strange news from others. “What do you mean, a couple of months? Is that unusual?”
“Used to be the Five Pointers would bust their heads. Or they’d be chopped by the Hip Sing. Now they’re walking around like they own the place.”
“What is Hip Sing?” Scully asked innocently.
26
ISAAC,” JOSEPH VAN DORN PROTESTED EXASPERATEDLY. “You’ve got Japs and Germans darned-near red-handed, the French spying on the Great White Fleet, and a Russian practically living in Farley Kent’s design loft. Why are you launching a frontal attack on the British Empire? From where I sit, they appear to be the only innocents in this whole tangled spiderweb.”
“Apparently innocent,” Isaac Bell retorted.
With Washington, D.C., Van Dorn Detective Agency operatives shadowing Yamamoto Kenta to determine the extent of the Japanese spy’s organization and Harry Warren’s boys trawling Hell’s Kitchen to get a line on the upward-bound Commodore Tommy Thompson’s new connections, Bell decided it was time to confront the Royal Navy.
“The British didn’t build the most powerful Navy in the world without keeping a close eye on their rivals. Based on Abbington-Westlake’s successes against the French, I’m willing to bet that they’re probably pretty good it.”
“But you’ve got the Jap dead to rights. Have you considered picking up Yamamoto right now?”
“Before he gets away or does more damage? Of course! But then how do we determine who else he’s tied up with?”
“Partners?”
“Maybe partners. Maybe underlings. Maybe a boss.” Bell shook his head. “It’s what we don�
�t know that concerns me. Assume that Yamamoto is the spy we think he is. How did he persuade that German to attack the Michigan? How did he get him or some other German to attack at Bethlehem Steel? We know, according to the Smithsonian, that he was in Washington the day that poor kid fell off the cliff. Who did Yamamoto get to push him? Who did he send to Newport that almost got Wheeler in his cottage?”
“I presume Wheeler is sleeping safe in the torpedo barracks now?”
“Reluctantly. And his girlfriends are hopping mad. The list goes on and on, Joe. We have to find the connections. How did Yamamoto tie up with a gangster like Weeks in Hell’s Kitchen?”
“Borrowed him from Commodore Tommy Thompson.”
“If so, how did a Japanese spy team up with the boss of the Gophers? We don’t know.”
“Apparently you knew enough to shoot up his saloon,” Van Dorn observed.
“I was provoked,” Bell replied blandly. “But you see my point. Who else do we not even know about yet?”
“I see it. I don’t like it. But I see it.” Van Dorn shook his big head, stroked his red whiskers, and rubbed his Roman nose. Finally, the founder of the agency granted his chief investigator a small smile. “So now you want to brace the British Empire?”
“Not their whole empire,” Bell grinned back. “I’m starting with the Royal Navy.”
“What are you looking for?”
“A leg up.”
Joseph Van Dorn’s hooded eyes gleamed with sudden interest. “Leverage?”
“Yamamoto and his mob may call themselves spies, Joe. But they act like criminals. And we know how to nail criminals.”
“All right. Get to it!”
Isaac Bell went directly to the Brooklyn Bridge and joined Scudder Smith on the pedestrian walkway. It was a bright, sunny morning. Smith had chosen for his watch the comparative darkness of the shade of the bridge’s Manhattan pier. Smith was one of the best Van Dorn shadows in New York. A former newspaperman, fired-depending upon who told the story-either for writing the truth or overembroidering it, or for being drunk before noon, he was intimate with every district in the city. He passed Bell his field glasses.
The Spy Page 17