Clive Cussler - The Wrecker

“I’d like a drink, too.”

Kincaid ignored the request. While it might be helpful to get him intoxicated, it would be more helpful to remind the little weasel of his place.

“You’re absolutely right about my political aspirations,” he said. “So let’s stop playing games. You’ve broken in here for a purpose. What is it? What do you want?”

“I told you. Money.”

“Why would I give you money? For what?”

“Don’t be dense, Senator. For not revealing that you hold a controlling interest in the Union Pier and Caisson Company of St. Louis, Missouri.”

The Wrecker concealed his astonishment, but only just. He felt the legs knocked out from under him, and this time he couldn’t blame Emma Comden.

“What gave you that idea?” he asked.

“I got curious about who was paying me to lie about the piers. Reckoned sabotaging the biggest bridge in the West ought to be worth a few bucks more if I knew who my bribes came from. So I went to my old bunkie from the orphanage. He took up banking when I took up engineering. He explored a maze of holding companies. The maze turned into a jungle, but my old bunkie is really good. He finally traced them back to you. You bought enough shares secretly, a controlling interest, in the company building the piers for the Cascade Canyon Bridge.”

It had to happen sometime, Kincaid thought bleakly. But it never occurred to him that disaster would come at him like a bad joke: tripped up by an orphan whom a kindhearted bridge builder took under his wing.

Kincaid surveyed his options. Kill Soares, if not tonight, tomorrow or the next day. Wring the name of his confederate out of him before he died and kill bunkie, too. Unfortunately, he needed Eric Soares, to continue concealing the truth about the piers. Mowery would immediately replace him if he disappeared. Upon close inspection, and a thorough review of Eric’s doctored reports, any competent engineer who took over his position would see that the piers were not strong enough to support the bridge when the river rose.

Soares said, “You’re working for the Wrecker just like me.”

“I suppose I should be grateful that you’re not accusing me of being the Wrecker himself.”

“Don’t make me laugh. You’ve got too big a future as a senator. Even president, if I don’t turn you in.”

Home free, thought Kincaid. In the clear.

“How much do you want?”

“Triple what your Union Pier and Caisson Company pays me to look the other way.”

Kincaid reached for his wallet. “I think I can arrange that,” he said, not at all surprised by how small Soares’s dreams were.

ISAAC BELL FINALLY TORE himself loose from Osgood Hennessy and hurried back to the stateroom cars. As he passed through Hennessy’s Nancy No. 2 car, Lillian Hennessy lurched out of her stateroom and blocked the way with a bottle of Mumm. She had changed out of her gown into a clinging robe and had removed her pearl-and-diamond choker, revealing the smooth skin of her throat. Her hair was down, draping her shoulders, and her pale blue eyes were warm. The bottle was dripping from the ice bucket, the foil torn off. But the wire muzzle still held the cork firmly in place.

“I eavesdropped,” she whispered. “Thank you for saying what you did about Archie.”

“I only told the truth.”

She thrust the bottle into Bell’s hand.

“For Marion. Tell her, Sweet dreams.”

Bell leaned down and kissed her cheek.

“Good night.”

He paused in the baggage car and spoke with the sleepy telegrapher. No urgent telegrams. He pulled open the rear baggage car door and crossed the vestibule, reaching for the door to the first car of staterooms. A smile lit his face. He felt like a kid. His mouth was dry just thinking of Marion. Good thing they had Lillian’s champagne.

He pushed through the door into the side corridor that was lined with night-blackened windows on the right side and the polished-walnut stateroom doors on the left. A man was hurrying along the far end of the corridor. There was something furtive in his movement, and Bell paused to observe him. Small to medium build, wearing a black sack suit. Dark hair. As the man turned the slight jog to exit into the vestibule, Bell glimpsed his pencil-thin handlebar mustache and wire-rimmed glasses.

Eric Soares, Mowery’s assistant, apparently just leaving the old man’s stateroom and heading back to his berth in the Pullman cars. Thinking that the hour was awfully late for a meeting, particularly after the old man had been up late at the long banquet, Bell gave Soares plenty of time to pass through the next car rather than get delayed by a conversation.

Finally, Bell walked the length of Car 3, pushed into its rear vestibule, and crossed the coupling into the vestibule of Car 4.

PHILIP D ow HEARD SOMEONE coming, pressed deeper into the porter’s closet, and peered through a crack in the curtain. His ears told him it was not Isaac Bell, but a smaller man, unless the detective was exceptionally light on his feet. He did not slow as he passed the curtain, but hurried along as if passing through the stateroom car on his way farther back in the train. Dow’s ears were accurate. A slim man in a black suit whisked past Marion Morgan’s stateroom and pushed through the rear door that led to the Pullman cars.

A minute later, he heard heavier footfalls. He waited until the man passed before he parted the curtain. Sure enough. Taller than Kincaid, a yellow-haired man in fancy duds from the banquet was making a beeline for Marion Morgan’s door. He was carrying a bottle of champagne and humming a tune, “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”

Dow heard the words of the song’s Chicago version in his head as he ran silently, swinging the sap:

Old Mrs. Leary left the lantern in the shed

and when the cow kicked it over,

she winked her eye and said

it’ll be a hot time, in the old town, tonight!

FIRE FIRE FIRE!

BEFORE PHILIP DOW REACHED HIS VICTIM, THE STATEROOM flew open. The woman must have been standing there, gripping the knob, listening for Bell. Bell waved the champagne bottle. Her eager smile went out like a light and her eyes flashed angrily.

“Preston! What are you-”

“Look out!” a voice roared behind Dow.

The man whose skull Dow was about to crush with his sap whirled around, and Dow saw no yellow mustache above the mouth that dropped open in drunk confusion. The champagne bottle he raised instinctively deflected Dow’s blow. The heavy sap whizzed a quarter inch from Marion Morgan’s face and smashed into the stateroom door, denting the hard walnut.

No yellow mustache! thought Dow. It wasn’t Isaac Bell. That put Bell behind him; it was he who had shouted the warning. Dow shoved past the cringing drunk he had almost killed to use him for a shield.

Dow saw the detective running at him full steam. He jerked his revolver from his waistband. Bell was a third of the way down the eighty-foot corridor, drawing a Browning No. 2 semiautomatic pistol from his tuxedo with liquid ease. Dow whipped up his heavy .45, willing to bet that a Van Dorn operative who favored a light Browning could hit a gnat in the eye at twenty paces.

Isaac Bell saw a man whose features he remembered from a Mine Owners’ Association wanted poster. Philip Dow, assassin. Preston Whiteway lurched into Bell’s way. Bell held his fire. “Down!” he shouted.

Dow pulled his trigger as fast as he could. He couldn’t miss. Bell filled the narrow corridor like a locomotive speeding through a single-tracked tunnel.

“Marion, don‘t!” Bell cried.

Dow felt the beautiful woman in the red dress grab his arm with both hands.