Bell said, “I am a private detective, Father, with the Van Dorn Agency. I would like to ask you some questions about people who used to live in your parish.”
“If you want to talk, you must walk. I have my rounds, and you will see that our people live in less bright places than their new church. Come along.” He set off with a surprisingly springy step for a man his age, turned a corner, and plunged into a neighborhood that felt miles, not yards, from his brand-new church.
“You’ve served here long, Father?”
“Since the Draft Riots.”
“That’s forty-five years ago.”
“Some things have changed in the district, most have not. We are still poor.”
The priest entered a tenement with an elaborate carved stone portal and started up a steep flight of rickety stairs. He was breathing hard by the third floor. At the sixth, he paused to catch his breath, and when the wheezing stopped he knocked on a door, and called, “Good morning! It is Father Jack.”
A girl with a baby in her arms opened the door. “Thank you for coming, Father.”
“And how is your mother?”
“Not good, Father, not good at all.”
He left Bell in the front room. A single window that looked onto a yard crisscrossed with clotheslines in the shade admitted the stench of a privy six stories below. Bell folded a wad of dollar bills in his hand and slipped it to the girl as they left.
At the bottom of the stairs, Father Jack caught his breath again. “Who are you inquiring about?”
“Brian O’Shay and Billy Collins.”
“Brian’s long gone from here.”
“Fifteen years, I’ve been told.”
“If God ever blessed this district, it was the day O’Shay disappeared. I would never say such a thing lightly, but Brian O’Shay was Satan’s right-hand man.”
“I’ve heard he’s back.”
“I’ve heard rumors,” the priest said bleakly, and he led Bell back into the street.
“I saw Billy Collins last night.”
Father Jack stopped and looked at the tall detective with sudden respect. “Did you really? Down in the hole?”
“You know he’s there?”
“Billy has, shall we say, hit bottom. Where else would he go?”
“Who is his little girl?”
“His little girl?”
“He kept referring to his little girl. But he claimed he had no children.”
“That’s a dubious claim considering the youth he led. In those years, it was rare I baptized a carroty-topped infant and didn’t wonder if Billy was the father.”
“I wondered if his hair was red. It seemed mostly gray in the dim light.”
“Though I suppose,” Father Jack added with a thin smile, “Billy could claim with a certain degree of truth that he is not aware he had any children. It would have been an unusually brave girl who would have named him the father. Still, I see his point. Whoring and drunk since he was twelve years old, what would he remember?”
“He was adamant he had no children.”
“That would make the little girl his sister.”
“Of course. He weeps for her.”
“I’m sure he does.”
“What happened to her?” Bell asked.
“Wait for me here,” the priest said. “I’ll only be a moment.” He entered a building and came out shortly. As they continued along the block, Father Jack said, “There are wicked men living in this community who live by stealing from poor, ignorant people. They’ll steal their money, and if they have no money they will steal their drink. If they have no drink, they’ll steal their children. Whatever the wicked can sell or use themselves. The child was kidnapped.”
“Billy’s sister?”
“Snatched from the street—no more than five years old—and never seen again. Surely she courses through Billy’s brain when he injects the morphine. Where was he when she was stolen? Where was he ever when the poor babe was needful? He looks back now and loves the idea of that wee child. More than he ever loved the child herself.”
The old priest shook his head in anger and disgust. “When I think of the nights I prayed for that child . . . and all the children like her.”
Bell waited, sensing a natural ebullience in the old man that would rise to the surface. And it did after a while. His expression brightened.
“In truth, it was Brian O’Shay who cared for that little girl.”
“Eyes O’Shay?”
“He looked after her when Billy and his shiftless parents were drunk.” Father Jack lowered his voice. “They say that O’Shay beat her father to death for sins against the child only the Devil could imagine. She was the only soul Brian O’Shay ever loved. It was a blessing that he never knew what happened to her.”
“Could Brian O’Shay have kidnapped her?”
“Never in this life! Even if he weren’t long gone to Hell.”
“But what if he was not killed when he vanished? What if he came back? Could he have kidnapped her?”
“He would never hurt her,” said the priest.
“Evil men do evil, Father. You’ve told me how wicked he was.”
“Even the most wicked man has a streak of God in him.” The priest took Bell’s arm. “If you remember that, you will be a better detective. And a better man. That wee child was Brian O’Shay’s streak of God.”
“Was her name Katherine?”
Father Jack looked at him curiously.
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t really know. But I’m asking you, was it?”
Father Jack started to answer. A pistol shot cracked from a tenement roof. The priest tumbled to the pavement. A second shot drilled the space Bell had occupied an instant before. He was already rolling across the sidewalk, drawing his Browning, snapping to his knees, raising his weapon to fire.
But all he could see were women and children screaming from their windows that their priest was murdered.
“I WANT A DIRECT telephone connection to the chief of the Baltimore office now!” Isaac Bell shouted as he stalked into Van Dorn headquarters. “Tell him to have his Katherine Dee file on his desk.”
It took an hour for Baltimore to telephone back. “Bell? Sorry I took so long. Raining like hell again, half the city’s flooded. You’ll get yours, it’s another nor’easter.”
“I want to know exactly who Katherine Dee is and I want to know now.”
“Well, as we reported, her father went back to Ireland with a boat-load of dough he made building schools for the diocese and took her with him.”
“I know that already. And when he died, she went to a convent school in Switzerland. What school?”
“Let me go through this while we’re talking. I’ve got it right here in front of me. The boys have brought it up-to-date since we sent our last report to New York . . . Takes so long back and forth to Dublin . . . Let’s see here . . . Well, I’ll be. No, no, no, that can’t be.”
“What?”
“Some damned fool got confused. Says the daughter died, too. That can’t be. We’ve got records of her at the school. Mr. Bell, let me get back to you on this.”
“Immediately,” said Bell, and hung up.
Archie walked in, still ruddy-faced with Indian war paint. “You look like death, Isaac.”
“Where’s Marion?”
“Upstairs.” Bell had rented a suite for the days she was in New York. “We got rained out again. Are you O.K.? What happened to you?”
“A priest was gunned down in front of my eyes. For talking to me.”
“The spy?”
“Who else? The block was swarming with cops, but he got clean away.”
An apprentice approached the grim-faced detectives warily. “Messenger left this at Reception, Mr. Bell.”
Bell tore it open. On Waldorf-Astoria stationery Erhard Riker had written:
FOUND IT!
PERFECTION FOR THE PERFECT FIANCÉE!!
I’ll be at Solomon Barl
owe’s Jewelry Shop around three o’clock with a brilliant emerald, if this finds you in New York.
Best wishes,
Erhard Riker
49
BELL THREW RIKER’S NOTE ON THE DESK.
Archie picked it up and read it. “The ring for fair Marion?”
“It’ll keep.”
“Go.”
“I’m waiting to hear from Baltimore.”
Archie said, “Take an hour. Cool off. I’ll talk to Baltimore if they call before you’re back. Say, why don’t you take Marion with you? All this rain is making her stir-crazy. She’s raving about going to California to shoot movies in the sunshine. Neglecting to explain where she’d find the actors. Go! Let some steam off. You found Collins. You’ve got two hundred men looking for O’Shay. And the Navy and Harbor Squad hunting torpedoes. I’ll cover for you.”
Bell stood up. “Just an hour. Back soon.”
“If she likes it, steal an extra ten minutes to buy her a glass of champagne.”
THEY TOOK THE SUBWAY downtown and walked rain-swept streets to Maiden Lane. Barlowe’s shop cast a warm glow into the dreary afternoon. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Marion asked as they neared the door.
“What do you mean?”
“Once you slip a ring on a girl’s finger, it’s pretty hard to get out of it.”
They were holding hands. Bell pulled her close. Her eyes were bright with laughter. Rain and mist gilded the wisps of hair that escaped her hat. “Houdini couldn’t get out of this one,” he said, and kissed her on the mouth. “Not that he’d want to.”
They entered the shop.
Erhard Riker and Solomon Barlowe were bent over the counter, each with a jeweler’s loupe screwed in his eye. Riker looked up, smiling. He extended his hand to Bell, and said to Marion, “I am afraid that you taxed your fiancé’s powers of observation. Try as he might—and I assure you he tried mightily—he was hard put to convey the fullness of your beauty.”
Marion said, “You tax my power of speech. Thank you.”
Riker bowed over Marion’s hand, kissed it, and stepped back, smoothing his mustache and slipping his thumb into his vest pocket. Barlowe whispered to Bell, “It is most unusual, sir, for a gentleman to show the ring to his fiancée before he has purchased it.”
“Miss Morgan is a most unusual fiancée.”
Something ticked against the window. On the sidewalk, ignoring the rain, laughing young men in black derbies were batting a badminton shuttlecock with their hands.
“You should call a constable before they break the glass,” said Riker.
Solomon Barlowe shrugged. “College boys. This summer, they’ll meet girls. Next spring, they’ll be buying engagement rings.”
“Here is the making of yours, Miss Morgan,” said Riker. He drew a slim leather case from his pocket, opened it, and removed a folded sheet of white paper. Opening the paper, he let slide onto a demonstration panel of white velvet an emerald—flawless, fiery, and filled with life.
The jeweler Solomon Barlowe gasped.
Isaac Bell thought it shimmered like a green flame.
Marion Morgan said, “It is certainly very bright.”
“Mr. Barlowe proposes setting it in a simple Art Nouveau ring,” said Erhard Riker.
“I have prepared some sketches,” said Barlowe.
Isaac Bell watched Marion study the emerald. He said, “I have the impression you do not love it.”
“My dear, I will wear anything you like.”
“But you would prefer something else.”
“It’s very beautiful. But since you ask, I would prefer a softer green—rich yet quiet, like the loden green of Mr. Riker’s coat. Is there such a gem, Mr. Riker?”
“There is a blue-gray shade of tourmaline found in Brazil. It is very rare. And extremely difficult to cut.”
Marion grinned at Bell. “It would be less expensive to buy me a nice loden coat like Mr. Riker’s . . .” Her voice trailed off. She was about to ask, Isaac, what’s the matter? Instead, she moved instinctively closer to him.
Bell was staring at Riker’s coat. “A rich green coat,” he said softly. “An old man in a rich green coat with rings on his fingers.” He fixed a cold gaze on Riker’s gem-studded cane.
“I’ve always admired that cane of yours, Herr Riker.”
“It was a gift from my father.”
“May I see it?”
Riker tossed it to Bell. Bell weighed it in his hands, testing its balance and heft. He closed one hand around the gold-and-gem head, twisted it with a flick of his wrists, and drew out a gleaming sword.
Erhard Riker shrugged. “One cannot be too careful in my business.”
Bell held the blade to the light. It was honed so sharply that no light gleamed on the edge. He hefted the cane, the scabbard that had held it. “Heavy. You wouldn’t even need the sword. You could floor a man with this.”
Bell watched Riker eye him warily as if he were wondering whether he had heard Bell correctly or was just taking his measure. Wondering, Do I have to fight? At last Riker spoke. “Two men, if you were faster than you looked.”
“And if the men were drunk.” Bell said, moving swiftly to shield Marion. It was suddenly clear to both men that they were discussing the night that Eyes O’Shay and Billy Collins had tried to rob the senior Mr. Riker.
Riker answered in a conversational voice, although his eyes were focused as hard on Bell’s as Bell’s were on his.
“I awakened,” he said, “in a first-class cabin on the high seas. The old man was tough as nails. But kind to me. Anything I wanted was mine for the asking. The food on that ship was like what I had heard people say that Diamond Jim Brady ate. Beefsteaks, oysters, roast ducks, wine from crystal glasses. I felt like I had arrived in Heaven. Of course, I wondered what did he want back for all that? But all he ever asked was that I go to school and learn to be a gentleman. He sent me to public school in England, and the finest universities in Germany.”
“Why didn’t Mr. Riker leave you in the gutter with Billy Collins?”
“You’ve spoken with Billy? Of course. How is he?”
“Still in the gutter. Why didn’t Riker leave you there?”
“He was grieving for his son who had died of influenza. He wanted another.”
“And you were available.”
“I was garbage. I could barely read. But he saw something in me no one else could see.”
“And you repaid him by becoming a murderer and a spy.”
“I repaid him,” Riker said, his shoulders squared, his head held high.
“You’re proud of being a murderer and a spy?” Isaac Bell asked scornfully.
“You’re a privileged child, Isaac Bell. There are things you can never know. I repaid him. I say it with pride.”
“I say with equal pride that I arrest you for murder, Brian O’Shay.”
Katherine Dee darted through the curtain that screened the back room, slid her arm around Marion’s throat, and pressed her thumb to Marion’s eye.
50
BRIAN TAUGHT ME THIS TRICK FOR MY TWELFTH BIRTHDAY. He even gave me my own gouge. It’s made of pure gold, see?” The sharpened metal fit her thumb like a claw.
“Stay perfectly still,” Bell told Marion. “Do not struggle. Mr. O’Shay has the upper hand.”
“Obey your fiancé,” said Katherine Dee.
Eyes O’Shay said, “To answer your question, Bell, one of the ways I repaid the old man’s kindness was by rescuing Katherine as he had rescued me. Katherine is educated, accomplished, and free. No one can hurt her.”
“Educated, accomplished, free, and lethal,” said Bell.
With her other hand Katherine drew a pistol.
“Another birthday present?”
“Give Brian his sword, Mr. Bell, before your fiancée is blinded and I shoot you.”
Bell flicked the sword haft at O’Shay. As he expected, the spy was too sharp to fall for that trick. O’Shay caught it coolly without his eye
s leaving Bell’s. But when he started to sheathe it, he glanced down to make sure the tip went into the sheath instead of piercing his hand. Bell was waiting for that split second of distraction. He kicked with lightning speed.
The sharp toe of his boot struck Katherine Dee’s ulnar nerve, which was drawn tightly over her flexed elbow. She cried out in startled pain and could not prevent her hand from opening convulsively. Her thumb splayed away from Marion’s eye.
But the gouge remained attached.
Marion tried to pull away from the smaller woman. Katherine whipped the gouge back at her face. Bell had his derringer in his hand by then and was squeezing the trigger. O’Shay screamed a piercing “No!” and smashed his cane down on Bell’s arm. The gunshot was deafening in the confined space. Solomon Barlowe dove to the floor. Marion cried out, and Bell thought he had shot her. But it was Katherine Dee who fell.
O’Shay grabbed the girl under one powerful arm and flung the door open. Bell lunged for them. He tripped over Solomon Barlowe. By the time he had hurled himself through the door, he saw O’Shay pushing Katherine into a Packard driven by a uniformed chauffeur. Gunmen in black derbies stepped from behind the car and from doorways, aiming pistols.
“Marion, get down!” Bell roared. The pretty-boy bruisers of Riker & Riker’s private protection agency unleashed a scathing hail of gunfire. Wild ricochets smashed glass and blasted stone dust from the walls and diamonds from the window display. Pedestrians dropped to the sidewalk. Bell fired back as fast as he could pull the trigger. He heard the Packard roar away. He fired again, emptying his Browning. The big car screeched around a corner and crashed into something. But when the lead stopped flying and he galloped after it, the Packard was smoldering against a lamppost, and O’Shay, Katherine Dee, and their gunmen had gotten away. Bell ran back into the jewelry shop, his heart in his throat. Solomon Barlowe was groaning and holding his leg. Marion was on the floor behind the counter, eyes wide open.
Alive!
He knelt beside her. “Are you hit?”
She ran a hand over her face. Her skin was dead white. “I don’t think so,” she said in a small voice.
The Spy Page 33