“Where?”
“Don’t know, mister.”
“One of the new joints.”
Fear and confusion in the gangsters’ tones made Bell look more closely. Now he noticed that the weapons they had dropped were brass knuckles, saps, and knives. No guns. Then it dawned on him. These were mostly old men, missing teeth, hunched, scarred—the weary down-and-out slum dwellers of Hell’s Kitchen where forty was old, fifty ancient.
New joints. That was it. Commodore Tommy Thompson had moved up and left them behind. These sorry devils had been abandoned by their boss and scared out of their wits by an enraged detective blasting open the door and gunning down the only two with the go left in them to fight.
Bell felt a cool calm settle over his mind, and with it an electric clarity.
Change was sweeping the Hell’s Kitchen Gophers, and he had a strong hunch what was causing it. The old men saw the softening in his face. One piped, “Could we put our hands down, mister?”
The tall detective was still too angry to smile, but he came close. “No,” he said. “Leave them where I can see them.”
A taxi horn blared in the street.
Bell shot a glance out the door. The taxi was sliding to a halt. Five grim-faced Van Dorn veterans and an up-and-coming young fellow spilled out bearing firearms. They were trailed at a distance by a squad of New York cops on foot. Harry Warren, the gang specialist, was leading the Van Dorns. He had a sawed-off pressed against his leg and a revolver tucked in his waistband. Passing the youngster a wad of cash, he gestured for him to deal with the cops, and assessed the front of Commodore Tommy’s with an eye to storming it.
Bell stepped out of the saloon. “Evening, boys.”
“Isaac! You O.K.?”
“Tip-top. What are you doing here?”
“Your Yale Club doorman telephoned the Knickerbocker. Sounded real worried, said that you needed a hand.”
“Old Matthew’s like a mother hen.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Just out for a stroll.”
“Stroll?” They looked up and down the dark and grimy street. “Stroll?” They stared at Isaac Bell. “And I suppose a mosquito drilled that hole in your coat sleeve?” one detective remarked.
“Same one that shot the lock off this door?” asked another.
“And made those Gophers inside hold their hands in the air?” said a third.
Harry Warren beckoned the kid who had just returned. “Eddie, go tell the cops they should send an ambulance.”
Isaac Bell grinned. “Might as well call it a night, boys. Thanks for coming out. Harry, if you’d walk me home, I have questions for you.”
Harry handed his shotgun to the boys, shoved his revolver in his coat pocket, and passed Bell a handkerchief. “You’re bleeding.”
Bell stuffed it up his sleeve.
They walked to Ninth Avenue. The cops had cordoned off the area under the El where Weeks was hanging. Firemen were holding ladders for morgue attendants who were trying to cut the body loose.
“So much for connecting the Iceman to Tommy and your foreign spy,” said Harry.
“This connection is precisely what I want to talk to you about,” said Isaac Bell. “It looks to me like Tommy Thompson is moving up in the world.”
Harry nodded. “Yeah, I hear talk in the neighborhoods that the Gophers are throwing their weight around.”
“I want you to find out who his new friends are. Five’ll get you ten, they will be the connection.”
“You could be onto something. I’ll get right to it. Oh, here, they passed me this as we were leaving.” Harry fished in his pockets. “Wire came in for you from the Philadelphia office.”
They had reached the corner of 42nd Street. Bell stopped under a streetlamp to read the wire.
“Bad news?”
“They got a line on a German sneaking around Camden.”
“Wasn’t that a German who did the Bethlehem job?”
“Possibly.”
“What’s in Camden?”
“They’re launching the battleship Michigan.”
22
THE SPY SUMMONED HIS GERMAN AGENT WITH A CRYPTIC note left at his Camden rooming house. They met in Philadelphia in a watchman’s shack on a barge tied to the west bank of the Delaware directly across the busy river from the shipyard. Through an ever-moving scrim of tugboats, lighters, ships, ferries, and coal smoke they could see the stern of the Michigan thrusting her propellers out the back of the shed that covered her ways. The river was only a half mile wide, and they could hear the steady drumbeat of carpenters pounding wooden wedges.
The ship workers had built a gigantic wooden cradle big enough to carry the 16,000-ton ship down greased rails from her building place on land to her home in the water. Now they were raising the cradle up to her by driving wedges under it. When the wedges pressed the cradle tightly against the hull, they would continue hammering them until the cradle lifted the ship off her building blocks.
The German was glum.
The spy said, “Listen. What do you hear?”
“They’re hammering the wedges.”
The spy had earlier passed close by in a steam launch to observe the scene under the hull, which was painted with a dull red undercoat. The “hammers” were actually rams, long poles tipped with heavy heads.
“The wedges are thin,” he said. “How much does each blow raise the cradle?”
“You’d need a micrometer to measure.”
“How many wedges?”
“Gott in Himmel, who knows. Hundreds.”
“A thousand?”
“Could be.”
“Could any one wedge raise the cradle under the ship?”
“Impossible.”
“Could any one wedge lift the cradle and the ship off her blocks.”
“Impossible.”
“Every German must do his part, Hans. If one fails, we all fail.”
Hans stared at him with a strange look of detachment. “I am not a simpleton, mein Herr. I understand the principle. It is not the doing that troubles me, but the consequences.”
The spy said, “I know you’re not a simpleton. I am merely trying to help.”
“Thank you, mein Herr.”
“Do the detectives frighten you?” he asked, even though he doubted they did.
“No. I can avoid them until the last moment. The pass you had made for me will throw them off. By the time any realize what I am up to, it will be too late to stop me.”
“Do you fear that you will not escape with your life?”
“I would be amazed if I did. Fortunately, I have settled that question in my own mind. That is not what troubles me.”
“Then we are back to the same basic question, Hans. Would you have American warships sink German warships?”
“Maybe it is the waiting that is killing me. No matter where I go I hear them hitting the wedges. Like the ticking clock. Ticktock. Ticktock. Ticking for innocent men who don’t know yet that they will die. It’s driving me crazy—What is this?”
The spy was pushing money into his hand. He tried to jerk back. “I don’t want money.”
The spy seized his wrist in an astonishingly powerful grip. “Recreation. Find a girl. She’ll make the night go faster.” He stood up abruptly.
“Are you leaving?” Suddenly Hans did look afraid—afraid to be alone with his conscience.
“I’ll be nearby. I’ll be watching.” The spy smiled reassuringly and slapped him on the shoulder.
“Go find that girl. Enjoy the night. It will be morning before you know it.”
23
WAITERS SPORTING RED, WHITE, AND BLUE BOW TIES spread watercress sandwiches and iced wine in the dignitaries’ pavilion. Bartenders, who had been issued similarly patriotic garters for their sleeves, rolled kegs of beer and carts of hard-boiled eggs into the ship workers’ tents on the riverbank. A warm breeze drifted through the enormous shed that covered the shipway, sunlight filtered do
wn from glass panels in the roof, and it appeared that half the population of Camden, New Jersey, had turned out to celebrate launching the battleship Michigan, whose 16,000 tons were balanced at the high end of a track of greased rails that slanted into the river.
The shed still resounded with steel banging on wood, but the pace of the hammering had slowed. The wedges had lifted the battleship off nearly all her building blocks. But for a last few under her keel and bilges, she rested on the cradle she would ride down the ways.
The ceremonial launching platform surrounding the ship’s steel bow was draped with red, white, and blue bunting. A champagne bottle, wrapped in crocheted mesh to keep glass from flying and beribboned in the colors of the flag, waited in a bowl of roses.
The battleship’s sponsor, the pretty, dark-haired girl who would christen her, stood by in a striped flannel walking dress and a wide-brimmed Merry Widow hat heaped with silk peonies. She was ignoring the fevered instructions of an Assistant Secretary of the Navy—her father—who was warning her not to hold back at the crucial moment but to “Whack her with all you’ve got the instant the ship starts to move or it’ll be too late.”
Her gaze was fixed on a tall, golden-haired detective in a white suit, whose restless eyes were looking everywhere but at her.
Isaac Bell had not slept in a bed since he arrived in Camden two days ago. He had originally intended to come down with Marion the night before the ceremony and dine in Philadelphia. But that was before the Philadelphia office had sent the urgent wire to New York. Disquieting rumors had begun to drift in concerning a mysterious German bent on disrupting the launch. Detectives assigned to the German immigrant community heard of a recent arrival who claimed to be from Bremen but spoke with a Rostock accent. He kept asking about finding work at New York Ship but had never applied to the company. Several hands had unaccountably lost the gate badges that identified them as employees.
This morning at dawn, Angelo Del Rossi, the frock-coated proprietor of the King Street dance hall where Alasdair MacDonald had been murdered, sought Bell out. He reported that a woman had come to him, distraught and frightened. A German who met the description of the man from Rostock—tall and fair, with troubled eyes—had confessed to the woman, who in turn had confessed to Del Rossi.
“She’s a part-time working girl, Isaac, if you know what I mean.”
“I’ve heard of such arrangements,” Bell assured him. “What exactly did she say?”
“This German she was with suddenly blurted out something to the effect that the innocent should not die. She asked what he meant. They had been drinking. He fell silent, then blurted some more, as drinkers will, saying that the cause was just, but the methods wrong. Again she asked what he meant. And he broke down and began to weep, and said—and this she claimed to quote exactly—‘The dreadnought will fall, but men will die.’ ”
“Do you believe her?”
“She had nothing to gain coming to me, except a clear conscience. She knows men who work in the yard. She doesn’t want them to be hurt. She was brave enough to confide in me.”
“I must speak with her,” said Bell.
“She won’t talk to you. She doesn’t see any difference between private detectives and cops, and she doesn’t like cops.”
Bell pulled a gold piece from inside his belt and handed it to the saloonkeeper. “No cop ever paid her twenty dollars to talk. Give this to her. Tell her I admire her bravery and that I will do nothing to endanger her.” He turned his gaze sharply on Del Rossi. “You do believe me, Angelo. Do you not?”
“Why do you think I came to you?” said Del Rossi. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Is it enough money?”
“More than she clears in a week.”
Bell tossed him more gold. “Here’s another week. This is vitally important, Angelo. Thank you.”
Her name was Rose. She had offered no last name when Del Rossi arranged for them to meet in the back of his dance hall, and Bell asked for none. Bold and self-possessed, she repeated everything she had told Del Rossi. Bell kept her talking, probing gently, and she finally added that the German’s parting words, as he staggered from the private booth they had rented in a waterfront bar, were, “It will be done.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“I should think so.”
“How would you like to become a temporary employee of the Van Dorn Detective Agency?”
NOW SHE WAS CRUISING the shipyard in a summery white dress and a flowered hat, pretending to be the kid sister of two burly Van Dorn operatives disguised as celebrating steamfitters. A dozen more detectives were prowling the shipyard checking and rechecking the identities of all who were working near the Michigan, particularly the carpenters driving the wedges directly under the hull. These men were required to carry special red passes issued by Van Dorn—instead of New York Ship—in case spies had infiltrated the offices of the shipbuilding firm.
The runners who reported to Bell on the platform were chosen for their youthful appearance. Bell had ordered them to be attired like innocuous college boys, in boaters, summer suits, rounded collars, and neckties, so as not to unnecessarily frighten the throng that had come out to greet the new ship.
He had argued strongly for a postponement, but there was no question of calling the ceremony off. Too much was riding on the launch, Captain Falconer had explained, and every party involved would protest. New York Ship was proud to put Michigan in the water just ahead of Cramp’s Shipyard’s South Carolina, which was only weeks behind. The Navy wanted the hull immediately afloat to finish fitting her out. And no one in his cabinet dared inform President Roosevelt of any delay.
The ceremony was scheduled to start exactly at eleven. Captain Falconer had warned Bell that they would launch on time. In less than an hour the dreadnought would either slide uneventfully down the ways or the German saboteur would attack, wreaking a terrible toll on the innocent.
A Marine brass band started playing a Sousa medley, and the launching stand got crowded with hundreds of special guests invited to stand close enough to actually see the champagne bottle crack on the bow. Bell spotted the Secretary of the Interior, three senators, the governor of Michigan, and several members of President Roosevelt’s vigorous “Tennis Cabinet.”
The top bosses of New York Ship trooped up the steps in close company with Admiral Capps, the chief naval constructor. Capps seemed less interested in talking to shipbuilders than to Lady Fiona Abbington-Westlake, the wife of the British Naval Attaché, a beautiful woman with a shiny mane of chestnut hair. Isaac Bell observed her discreetly. The Van Dorn researchers assigned to the Hull 44 spy case had reported that Lady Fiona spent beyond her husband’s means. Worse, she was paying blackmail to a Frenchman named Raymond Colbert. No one knew what Colbert had on her, or whether it involved her husband’s purloining of French naval secrets.
The German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, was represented by a saber-scarred military attaché, Lieutenant Julian Von Stroem, recently returned from German East Africa, who was married to an American friend of Dorothy Langner. Suddenly Dorothy herself parted the crowd in her dark mourning clothes. The bright-eyed redheaded girl he had noticed at the Willard Hotel was at her elbow. Katherine Dee, Research had reported, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who had moved back to Ireland after making his fortune building Catholic schools in Baltimore. Orphaned soon after, Katherine had been convent-educated in Switzerland.
The handsome Ted Whitmark trailed behind them, shaking hands and slapping backs and declaring in a voice that carried to the glass roof, “Michigan is going to be one of Uncle Sam’s best fighting units.” While Whitmark occasionally played the fool in his private life, gambling and drinking, at least before he met Dorothy, Research had made it clear that he was extremely adept at the business of snagging government contracts.
Typical of the incestuous relationships in the crowd of industrialists, politicians, and diplomats that swirled around the “New Navy,
” he and Dorothy Langner had met at a clambake hosted by Captain Falconer. As Grady Forrer of Van Dorn Research had remarked cynically, “The easy part was discovering who’s in bed with whom; the hard part is calculating why, seeing as how ‘why’ can run the gamut from profit to promotion to espionage to just plain raising hell.”
Bell saw a small smile part Dorothy’s lips. He glanced in the direction she was looking and saw the naval architect Farley Kent nod back. Then Kent threw an arm around his guest—Lieutenant Yourkevitch, the Czar’s dreadnought architect—and plunged into the crowd as if to get out of the path of Ted and Dorothy. Oblivious, Ted seized an elderly admiral’s hand and bellowed, “Great day for the Navy, sir. Great day for the Navy.”
Dorothy’s eyes wheeled Bell’s way and locked with his. Bell returned her gaze appraisingly. He had not seen her since the day he had called on her in Washington, though he had, at Van Dorn’s urging, reported to her by long-distance telephone that there was strong reason to hope that her father’s name would soon be cleared. She had thanked him warmly and said that she hoped she would see him in Camden at the luncheon that would follow the launching. It occurred to Bell that neither Ted Whitmark nor Farley Kent would be pleased by the look she was giving him now.
A warm breath whispered in his ear. “That’s quite a smile for a lady dressed in mourning black.”
Marion Morgan glided behind him and made a beeline for Captain Falconer. He looked heroically splendid in his full-dress white uniform, she thought, or splendidly heroic, his handsome head erect in a high-standing collar, medals arrayed across his broad chest, sword at his trim waist.
“GOOD MORNING, MISS MORGAN,” Lowell Falconer greeted Marion Morgan heartily. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
She and Isaac had dined aboard Falconer’s yacht the night before. When Bell promised him that Arthur Langner would be completely vindicated of accepting bribes, her pride in her fiancé had spoken legions for her love. Still, Falconer admitted ruefully, he had not been disappointed when Bell had to excuse himself early to oversee another inspection of the ways beneath the ship. After the detective left, their conversation had flowed seamlessly from dreadnought design to moving pictures to naval warfare to the paintings of Henry Reutendahl to Washington politics and Falconer’s career. He realized in retrospect that he had told her more about himself than he had intended to.