Clive Cussler - The Assassin

Grady Forrer, directing head of the gunsmith hunt, was watching Van Dorn as if the Boss were a rotund cobra.

Wally and Mack typically were not intimidated; the old guys had known Van Dorn too long and the self-satisfied Weber & Fields grins on their gnarly faces gave Bell hope. They looked more confident than their grasping-at-straws cable report about Spike Hopewell’s so-called tricks up his sleeve. Maybe good news.

Bell glanced at Van Dorn and stepped out the door. The Boss lumbered after him.

“What’s up?”

“You’re spooking my boys.”

“Your boys aren’t delivering.”

“Why don’t you let me buy you a drink at the Normandie after I straighten them out?”

Bell returned to the bull pen alone.

“When I left for Baku, you were pursuing various leads on the Army sharpshooter, the gunsmith who improved the assassin’s Savage 99, the exhumation of Averell Comstock’s body, and the tricks that Spike Hopewell claimed to have up his sleeve. That no news awaited me in Constantinople or Berlin or Bremerhaven on my way home suggests unfruitful pursuits. Did the situation improve while I steamed across the Atlantic?”

Wally and Mack grinned. The rest were silent.

“Archie. How’d you make out with the general’s daughter?”

“No dice.”

“Who gave you the shiner?”

“She took a swing at me.”

“Why?”

Wally Kisley laughed. “The young lady took insult, misled that Princeton, here, was romancing her. Just when the spooning should commence, Princeton says he has business with her father.”

Archie hung his head. “I misinterpreted her motive for inviting me to visit when he was out of the house.”

“Boom!” said Wally. “Smack in the eye.”

“When I went back to try again, the butler said she was ‘not at home.’ So what I’m thinking, Isaac, is maybe it’s time for me to get back to work in Chicago. Rosania is—”

Bell said, “Write down her name and address for me.”

He turned to the head of Van Dorn Research. “Grady. How did you do with Dave McCoart?”

“We’ve eliminated every gunsmith in the country except for two in Hartford and one in Bridgeport. But none of those fellows have panned out yet.”

“None of them ever worked on a 99?”

“None that admit it. I’m fairly convinced that the Hartford gunsmiths are in the clear. Fairly convinced. But the detective I sent to Bridgeport — a pretty good contract man we’ve used in Connecticut — was suspicious. But he could not shake the guy’s story, and he was smart enough to back off before he tipped his hand. It will be worth sending a regular man.”

“I’ll go,” said Bell. “How did we do with the New York coroner?”

“He won’t exhume Mr. Comstock without a court order. The court refused on legalistic grounds that essentially came down to the judge’s belief that an eighty-three-year-old should have been dead anyway.”

“But what about Mrs. McCloud in the fire and her son in the river?”

“The judge expressed no faith in the likeliness of connections joining the Five Points Gang, the West Side Gophers, and the Standard Oil Trust.”

“Sounds like we need another judge.”

“The next judge concurred with the former’s incredulity.”

Bell turned to Weber & Fields. “Wally and Mack, you look pleased with yourselves.”

“Always, Isaac, always,” said Wally.

“It’s hard not to be,” said Mack, and the two broke into Weber & Fields mode. “A very pretty girl who was promised by refiner Reed Riggs that he…”

“… and therefore she…”

“… by extension…”

Bell said, “Gents, I’m losing patience with your antics. What did you find? ”

“… would be rich soon.”

“Riggs was an independent oil man,” said Bell. “They all think they’ll be rich soon.”

“Not like this. He told the girl that a certain party highly placed at Standard Oil was going to, quote, ‘Pungle up big.’ Not only would he get a bunch of money, his refinery would be bought with Standard Oil stock.”

“What certain party?” Bell asked.

“She wouldn’t say.”

“Wouldn’t or couldn’t?”

“Wouldn’t.”

“Why would this party shell out big money?”

“Blackmail. The girl said Riggs had something big on him.”

“Why would he tell a girl? Who was this girl? Where did they meet?”

“Miss Dee’s on North Wichita Street, Wichita, Kansas,” said Mack.

“Arguably the finest ‘female boardinghouse’ in the state,” said Wally.

“Which is saying a lot for a state that’s home to Topeka and Kansas City,” said Mack.

“Not the sort of ‘ten-dollar parlor house’ the likes of me and Mack could afford without Mr. Van Dorn covering our expenses,” said Wally. “But you of the silver spoon could be familiar with it.”

Grady Forrer rumbled deep and dangerously in his barrel chest, “You are reporting that Riggs got drunk and bragged to a pretty girl in a brothel? A girl whose income depends on keeping you two happy?”

Mack Fulton returned a look of ice. “Listen closely, young fellow, and one day you’ll grow up to be a detective, too.” He turned back to Bell. “The lady didn’t think Riggs was bragging. She thought he felt guilty. Like blackmail wasn’t something Riggs would do if he weren’t pressed to the wall. He was having second thoughts when he fell under the train.”

“Are you sure about her?”

“Positive. She did not want to talk.”

“She was kind of sweet on Riggs,” said Mack.

“How’d you get her to talk?”

“We had to spend a full week at Miss Dee’s,” said Mack.

“Never gave up,” said Wally.

Archie Abbott rolled his eyes. Grady Forrer furrowed his brow. Isaac Bell said, “But after a week she still wouldn’t tell you the name at Standard Oil?”

“That would be a job for younger men than we are,” said Mack.

“Archie,” said Bell. “Go to Wichita.”

“Wichita? Sure you don’t want to go, Isaac?”

“Get on the fastest mail train. Wire me the second you know whether Reed Riggs was blackmailing Bill Matters… Wally and Mack! Go find Matters’ private railcar.”

“That’ll take forever.”

“ Before Matters makes it back from Europe.”

Bell put on his hat, pulled the brim low over his eyes, and headed out the door. “Anyone needs me, I’ll be at the Normandie.” It was time to tap the deep well of the Boss’s experience with criminals and their crimes.

The Normandie Hotel’s ground-floor bar at Broadway and 38th catered to out-of-town salesmen and the wholesalers whose warehouse lofts occupied the West 30s side streets off the hotel district. Joseph Van Dorn’s corner table commanded the room, the long bar, and the steadily swinging saloon doors. On the table stood a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Operating in affable-businessman mode, peering about benignly, the founder of the detective agency could be mistaken for a top salesman, a “commission man” who paid his own expenses.

“If Riggs was blackmailing Matters, and if Spike’s so-called trick up his sleeve was to blackmail Matters, does throwing John D. Rockefeller off the Orient Express make him our assassin?” he asked Bell.

“Matters was sitting in the same auto, three feet away, when the assassin shot me in Baku.”

“He could have staged it. Paid a rifleman to shoot, pretending he was the assassin.”

“That could explain why he missed an easy shot,” Bell said. “But no, they’re not the same man. Matters is the mastermind, not the assassin.”

“If I were you,” said Van Dorn, “I would worry less about Matters than the assassin.”