The Chase ib-1

by Clive Cussler

  “Well, that was certainly arousing,” Margaret said sarcastically.

  A small band began playing and couples moved onto the dance floor, stepping lively to a dance called the Texas Tommy. Butler and Margaret swirled around the floor with gay abandon as if they were one. Marion felt a self-conscious sense of embarrassment at being held close to her boss. In all the years she had worked for him, this was the first time he had ever asked her out. He was an excellent dancer, and she followed his lead gracefully.

  The band changed tempo at different times so the dancers could move to the steps of the Turkey Trot and the Bunny Hug. Soon the dancers began to sweat in the confined, airless quarters of the basement. The champagne began to make Marion’s head reel and she asked Cromwell if she could sit down for a few minutes.

  “Would you mind if I left you for a little while?” Cromwell asked courteously. “I’d like to go upstairs and play a few hands of faro.”

  Marion was vastly relieved. She was on the verge of exhaustion, and her new shoes were causing discomfort to her feet. “Yes, please do, Mr. Cromwell. I could stand a breather.”

  Cromwell climbed the wooden stairway and walked slowly through the bustling gambling section until he came to a table where there were no players except the dealer. Two burly men stood behind the dealer and discouraged any customer from sitting at the table.

  The dealer looked like he was born from a bull. His head sat like a chiseled rock on top of a neck that was as thick as a tree stump. His black hair was dyed, plastered down with pomade, and parted in the middle. His nose was flattened across his cheeks from being broken numerous times. His limpid eyes looked oddly out of place on a face that had seen more than its share of fists. He had the torso of a beer keg, round and abundant, but hard, without fat. Spider Red Kelly had been a fighter and had once fought James J. Corbett, knocking down the former heavyweight champion twice but getting knocked out himself in the twenty-first round. He looked up at Cromwell’s approach.

  “Good evening, Mr. Cromwell, I’ve been expecting you.”

  Cromwell opened the cover to his watch and glimpsed the hands on the dial. “Forgive me for being eight minutes late, Mr. Kelly. I was unavoidably detained.”

  Red Kelly smiled, showing a mouth full of gold teeth. “Yes, I would have also been detained if I was in the company of such a lovely lady.” He nodded at the table. “Would you care to try your luck?”

  Cromwell took out his wallet and counted out ten fifty-dollar National Bank notes printed by his bank under contract with the federal government. Kelly casually placed the bills in a small stack on the side of the table and pushed a stack of copper tokens advertising the saloon across the table. A typical faro layout of a suit of thirteen cards was painted on the table’s green felt cover. The suit was in spades from ace to king, with the ace on the dealer’s left.

  Cromwell placed a token on the jack and one between the five and six in a bet called splitting. Kelly discarded the top card from the dealer box, displaying the next card, called the losing card. It was a ten. If Cromwell had bet on it, he would have lost, since the house wins any wagers placed on the displayed card. Then Kelly pulled the losing card out of the box, revealing the winning card. It was a five. Cromwell won the full bet, not half.

  “Beginner’s luck,” he said as Kelly pushed the winning tokens across the table.

  “What is your pleasure, Mr. Cromwell?”

  “Nothing, thank you.”

  “You asked to see me,” said Kelly. “What can I do to return the favors you’ve given me over the years, the generous loans and the help in keeping the police out of my place?”

  “I need someone eliminated.” Cromwell spoke as if he was ordering a beer.

  “Here in the city?” asked Kelly as he dealt another hand.

  “No, Denver.”

  “A man, I hope,” said Kelly without looking up from the dealer box. “Place your bet.”

  Cromwell nodded and moved a token between the queen and jack. “Actually, he’s an agent with the Van Dorn Detective Agency.”

  Kelly paused before pulling a card from the box. “Taking out a Van Dorn agent could have serious repercussions.”

  “Not if it’s done right.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Isaac Bell.” Cromwell passed across the picture his sister had given him. “Here’s his photo.”

  Kelly stared at it briefly. “Why do you want him removed?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  Kelly pulled the losing card and revealed the winning card as the queen. Cromwell had won again.

  Kelly gazed across the table at Cromwell. “From what I’ve heard, everyone who’s killed a Van Dorn agent has been tracked down and hung.”

  “They were criminals who stupidly allowed themselves to be run down by detectives from the agency. If done in an efficient manner, Van Dorn will never know who killed Bell or why. Make it look like a random killing or even an accident. Leaving no trace would make it impossible for Van Dorn’s agents to retaliate.”

  Kelly sank slowly back in his chair. “I have to tell you, Cromwell, I don’t like it.” There was no “Mr. Cromwell.”

  Cromwell smiled a grim smile. “Would you like it if I paid you twenty thousand dollars for the job?”

  Kelly sat up and looked at Cromwell as if he was not sure if he believed him. “Twenty thousand dollars, you say?”

  “I want it done by a professional, not some two-bit killer off the street.”

  “Where do you wish the deed to take place?”

  There was never doubt that Kelly would do the job. The saloon owner was knee-deep in any number of criminal activities. Coming under Cromwell’s spell for financial gain was a foregone conclusion.

  “In Denver. Bell works out of the Van Dorn office in Denver.”

  “The farther away from San Francisco, the better,” Kelly said quietly. “You got yourself a deal, Mr. Cromwell.”

  The “Mr.” was back, and the transaction agreed upon. Cromwell rose from his chair and nodded toward the tokens on the table. “For the dealer,” he said, grinning. “I’ll have ten thousand in cash delivered to you by noon tomorrow. You’ll get the rest when Bell is deceased.”

  Kelly remained seated. “I understand.”

  He pushed his way downstairs and through the dancers, who had stopped dancing. He saw they were watching his sister perform an undulating and provocative hootchy-kootchy dance on the stage, to the delight of everyone present. She had loosened her corset and let her nicely coiffed hair down. Her hips swiveled and pulsed sensually to the music of the band. At the table, Butler was sprawled in a drunken haze while Marion stared in awe at Margaret’s gyrations.

  Cromwell motioned for one of the managers, who also acted as bouncers.

  “Sir?”

  “Please carry the gentleman to my car.”

  The bouncer nodded, and with one practiced motion lifted the thoroughly intoxicated Butler to a standing position and threw him over his shoulder. Then the bouncer proceeded up the stairs, carrying Butler’s bulk as lightly as if he were a bag of oats.

  Cromwell leaned over Marion. “Can you walk to the car?”

  She glanced up at him as if angry. “Of course I can walk.”

  “Then it’s time to leave.” He took her by the arm and eased her from the chair. Marion, unassisted but wobbly, went up the stairs. Then Cromwell turned his attention to his sister. He was not amused by her scandalous behavior. He grabbed her by the arm hard enough to cause a bruise and hauled her off the stage and out of the saloon to the waiting car at the curb. Butler was passed out in the front seat with Abner while Marion sat glassy-eyed in the back.

  Cromwell roughly shoved Margaret into the backseat and followed her, pushing her into one corner. He sat in the middle between the two women as Abner got behind the wheel, started the car, and drove up the street that was ablaze with multicolored lights.

  Slowly, Cromwell slid his arm around Marion’s shoulders. She looked at
him with a vague, unresponsive expression. The champagne had given her a sense of lethargy, but she was not drunk. Her mind was still clear and sharp. His hand squeezed one shoulder and there was a small pause in her breathing. She could feel his body pressing against hers in the narrow confines of the seat.

  There was a time when Marion had found her boss appealing and felt a deep attraction to him. But in the years she had worked for him, he had made no effort to bridge the gap between them. Now, suddenly, after all this time, he was showing an interest in her. Strangely, there was no emotion or arousal surging within her. She felt as if she were repelled by him and she couldn’t understand why.

  Marion was relieved there were no further moves on his part. The one arm remained snaked around her waist and his hand rested lightly on her shoulder until Abner stopped the Rolls in front of her apartment house. Cromwell stepped to the sidewalk and helped her from the car.

  “Good night, Marion,” he said, holding her hand. “I trust you had an interesting evening.”

  It was as if she saw now something deep within him that she had never seen before and she felt repulsed by his touch. “It will be an evening I’ll long remember,” she said honestly. “I hope Mr. Butler and your sister recover.”

  “They’ll be hungover tomorrow, and justly so,” he said with a tight smile. “I’ll see you Monday morning. There is a pile of correspondence I have to dictate. I want to have a clean desk when I leave on a business trip on Friday.”

  “You’re leaving again so soon?”

  “A bankers’ conference in Denver. I must attend.”

  “Until Monday morning, then,” she said with vast relief as he released her hand.

  Marion climbed the steps to the door but turned and gazed at the Rolls-Royce as it pulled away into the street. Her mind acted without command. Things between her employer and herself would never be the same. There was a coldness about him that she was not aware of before and she cringed as she remembered his touch. All of a sudden, the lingering smell of the dance hall’s smoke and sweat on her clothes sickened her.

  She rushed upstairs to her room, turned on the faucets of her bathtub, frantically removed her clothes, and slipped into the soapy water to remove all memory of the decadent evening.

  “WHAT WAS your little meeting with Red Kelly all about?” asked Margaret after they let off Marion at her apartment.

  “I hired him for a little job.”

  She stared at his face as it was reflected by the light of the passing streetlamps. “What kind of a job?”

  “He’s going to take care of Isaac Bell,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “You can’t murder a Van Dorn agent!” Margaret gasped. “Every peace officer in the country would come after you.”

  Cromwell laughed. “Not to worry, dear sister. I instructed Kelly to administer only enough damage to keep Bell in the hospital for a few months. That’s all. Call it a warning.”

  Cromwell had blatantly lied to his sister. He would act surprised when Bell’s murder was announced and claim the agent’s death had been a mistake, that Kelly had gotten carried away. Inciting his sister’s anger, he decided, was a small price to pay for eradicating the man who had become his worst enemy.

  16

  “GIVE IT ANOTHER COAT,” CROMWELL ORDERED THE two men painting his boxcar. The color had been the earth brown that most freight cars had been painted since the early days of the railroad. But Tuscan red was the newer color used by Southern Pacific to standardize their vast fleet of freight cargo haulers. Cromwell wanted a second coat because the O’BRIAN FURNITURE COMPANY, DENVER still bled through the freshly dried first coat.

  Margaret, dressed in a woolen dress and short jacket to keep her warm against the cool breeze blowing in from the ocean through the Golden Gate, held a parasol against a light early-morning mist that fell in the city. They stood watching the painters on the loading dock of an empty warehouse her brother had leased under a pseudonym.

  “Can you trust them?” she asked.

  “The painters?” He stared at the four men busy brushing paint on the boxcar. “To them, it’s just another job, another boxcar that needs to be tidied up. As long as they’re well paid, they don’t ask questions.”

  “About time you changed the name,” she said. “Some sheriff or a Van Dorn detective is bound to discover that an O’Brian Furniture freight car was present in five of the towns that were robbed.”

  “The same thought crossed my mind,” he said.

  “What are you going to call it this time?”

  “Nothing,” answered Cromwell. “It will look just like another freight car belonging to the Southern Pacific Railroad.”

  “You could buy and decorate a new one. Why keep this old relic?”

  “Because it looks like an old relic,” he said with a slight laugh. “Built in 1890. The railroad is still using this model. I prefer it to look tired and worn from many years and thousands of miles of hauling freight. And because its outward appearance is so ordinary, no one would suspect its true purpose. Even your Mr. Hotshot Bell could never begin to guess its real purpose.”

  “Don’t underestimate Bell. He’s smart enough to get wise to your traveling hotel suite.”

  He gave her a sour look. “Not that smart. And even if he smells a rat, it’s too late. The O’Brian Furniture car no longer exists.”

  Cromwell was proud of his aged boxcar. It was thirty-four feet long, with a capacity of forty thousand pounds. Empty, it weighed twelve thousand. Once the second coat was dry, the car would be finished off with the proper signage on its wooden sides, which would include a serial number under the letters SP, for Southern Pacific. The capacity and unloaded weight also would be lettered on one side, while the SP insignia sunrise—a white circle with SOUTHERN arched across the top, PACIFIC arched across the bottom, and LINES across the middle—would be painted on the opposite side. When finished, the boxcar would look like any one of thousands of cars belonging to the Southern Pacific.

  Even the serial number, 16173, was correct. Cromwell had arranged for the number to be lifted from a car in the middle of a railyard, scrapped, and then transferred to his rolling suite.

  Nothing was ever left to chance. Every move was carefully thought out, then rehearsed and rehearsed again and again. All possible contingencies were considered and dealt with. Nothing escaped Cromwell’s attention, down to the last detail. No bandit in the history of the United States, including Jesse James and Butch Cassidy put together, came close to matching him in the number of successful robberies he pulled off and the amount of loot he collected. Or the number of people killed.

  At the mention of Bell’s name, Margaret’s mind traveled back to when they danced together at the Brown Palace Hotel. She cursed herself for wanting to reach out and touch him. The mere thought of it sent a shiver down her spine. She had known many men, a great number of them intimately. But none had affected her as much as when she was in Bell’s arms. It was a wave of yearning she could neither understand nor control. She began to wonder if she would ever see him again, knowing deep inside it would be extremely dangerous. If they ever did meet, he surely would learn her true identity and find a path to her brother Jacob.

  “Let’s leave,” she said, angry at herself for allowing her emotions to lose control.

  Cromwell saw the faraway look in her eyes but chose to ignore it. “As you wish. I’ll return tomorrow to oversee the finished results.”

  They turned and walked through a door into the warehouse. Cromwell paused to lock the door and set a bar in place so no one could enter. Their footsteps echoed throughout the deserted interior of the building. The only furnishings were in one corner, two desks, and a counter that looked like the tellers’ windows at a bank.

  “A pity you can’t lease this space out and put it to good use,” said Margaret, fussing with her hat that had tilted to one side of her head when the pin slipped out.

  “I must have a place to park the boxcar,” Cromwell replied. “S
o long as it sits unnoticed on a siding, next to the loading dock of an empty warehouse whose owner cannot be traced, so much the better.”

  She gave her brother a suspicious glance and said, “You have that look on again.”

  “What look?”

  “The one that means you’re planning another robbery.”

  “I can’t fool my own sister,” he said with a grin.

  “I suppose it’s a waste of time trying to talk you into retiring from the robbery business.”

  He took her hand and patted it. “A man can’t bear to give up a pursuit in which he excels.”

  She sighed in defeat. “All right, where this time?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. The first step is to make discreet inquiries in banking circles about payrolls. Then I have to select towns that have railroads and sidings for freight trains. The getaway is the most important part of the operation. Next is a study of the streets and location of the bank. Finally, I have to carefully plan the actual robbery itself, the timing and my disguises.”