Clive Cussler - The Wrecker

Bell was more intrigued by the second message, which contained new information about Franklin Mowery’s assistant, Eric Soares. Deeper digging revealed that Soares had run away from the Kansas City orphanage that Mowery supported. Soares had surfaced after a couple of years in a reform school. Mowery had taken personal responsibility for him, hired tutors to fill the gaps in his schooling, and then put him through engineering college at Cornell. Which explained, Bell thought, the uncle-and-favorite-nephew relationship they shared.

Bell called on the old man in the afternoon, when Soares was down at the river conducting his daily inspection of the work on the bridge piers. Mowery’s office was a converted stateroom on Hennessy’s special. He was surprised to see Bell.

“I thought you’d be in the hospital. You’re not even wearing a sling.”

“The sling hurt more than no sling.”

“Did they catch the fellow who shot you?”

“Not yet… Mr. Mowery, may I ask you a few questions?”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m sure that you can imagine how wide-ranging our investigation is. So please forgive me if I appear to get personal.”

“Shoot, Mr. Bell. We’re on the same side. I’m building it. You’re making sure that criminal doesn’t knock it down.”

“I am concerned about your assistant’s past,” Bell said bluntly.

Mowery put his pipe in his mouth and glared.

“When I chose to help Eric, the boy was fifteen years old and had been living in the street. Well-meaning folks told me he would pick my pocket and knock me on the head. I told them what I’ll tell you: I don’t believe in the existence of a criminal class.”

“I agree there is no such thing as a criminal class,” said Bell. “But I am familiar with a criminal type.”

“Eric earned his degree,” Mowery retorted. “The times I pulled wires to get him a job, he never disappointed. The folks at Union Pier and Caisson are pleased with his work. In fact, they have already asked him to stay on with their firm after this job is finished. I would say by now the young man is over the hump, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose you’ll miss him if he stays with Union Pier and Caisson . . .”

“I wish him well in his career. As for me, I’m going back to my rockin’ chair. I’m too old to keep Hennessy’s pace. Did him a favor. Glad I did. We built a fine bridge. Osgood Hennessy. Me. And Eric Soares.”

“Funny thing, though,” said Bell. “I heard Jethro Watt, the chief of the railway police, repeat an old saying, recently: ‘Nothing is impossible for the Southern Pacific.”’

“Truer words were never spoken, which is why working for the Southern Pacific is a younger man’s game.”

“Jethro said it meant that the railroad does it all. Builds its own engines and rolling stock and tunnels. And bridges.”

“Famous for it.”

“So why did they hire Union Pier and Caisson to sink the piers for your bridge?”

“River-pier work is a specialized field. Especially when you have tricky conditions like we found here. Union is the best in the business. Cut their teeth on the Mississippi. If you can build piers that stand up to the Mississippi River, you can build them anywhere.”

“Did you recommend hiring the firm?”

Mowery hesitated.

“Now that you mention it,” he finally said, “that is not precisely true. I was originally inclined to let our company do the job. But it was suggested to me that Union might be the wiser course because the geology here proved to be complicated… as I mentioned to you last night. We encountered challenging conditions on the Cascade River bottom, to say the least. Even more shifting than you’d expect in these mountains.”

“Did Eric recommend Union?”

“Of course. I had sent him ahead to conduct the survey. He knew the river bed and he knew Union. Why are you asking all this?”

The tall detective looked the elderly engineer in the eye. “You appeared troubled in Mr. Hennessy’s car last night after the banquet. Earlier, when we were down at the lodge, you were staring long and hard at the bridge piers.”

Mowery looked away. “You don’t miss much, do you, Mr. Bell? … I didn’t like the way the water flowed around them. I could not pin down why-still can‘t-but it just looked different than it should.”

“You have an instinct that something is wrong?”

“Perhaps,” Mowery admitted reluctantly.

“Maybe you’re like me that way.”

“How so?”

“When I’m short on facts, I have to go on instinct. For instance, the fellow who shot me last night could have been a robber who followed Preston Whiteway onto this train intending to knock him on the head and take his wallet. I believe I recognized him as a known assassin. But I have no hard facts to say he wasn’t looking to make easy money. Whiteway was visibly intoxicated and therefore defense-less, and he was dressed like a wealthy gentleman likely to be carrying a big roll in his pocket. Since the ‘robber’ escaped, those are my only facts. But my instinct suggests that he was sent to kill me and mistook Whiteway for me. Sometimes, instinct helps put two and two together . . .”

This time, when Mowery tried to look away, Bell held him with the full force of his compelling gaze.

“It sounds,” Mowery muttered, “like you want to blame Eric for something.”

“Yes, it does,” said Bell.

He sat down, still holding the old man’s gaze.

Mowery started to protest, “Son . . .”

A wintery light in Bell’s blue eyes made him reconsider. The detective was no man’s son but his own father’s.

“Mr. Bell . . .”

Bell spoke in cool, measured tones. “It is curious that when I remarked that we need engineers, you countered that we need to trust engineers. And when I observed that you seemed troubled by the piers, you replied that I sounded as if I want to blame Eric.”

“I believe I had better have a talk with Osgood Hennessy. Excuse me, Mr. Bell.”

“I’ll join you.”

“No,” Mowery said. “An engineering talk. Not a detective talk. Facts, not instincts.”

“I’ll walk you to his car.”

“Suit yourself.”

Mowery grabbed his walking stick and heaved himself painfully to his feet. Bell held the door and led the way up the side corridor, helping Mowery through the vestibule doors between the cars. Hennessy was in his paneled office. Mrs. Comden was with him, reading in her corner chair.

Bell blocked the door for an instant.

“Where is Soares now?” he asked Mowery.

ONE HOUR LATER IN ST. LOUIS, A TELEGRAM ARRIVED AT THE basement hovel of an anarchist who had fled Italy and changed his name to Francis Rizzo. Rizzo closed the door on the Western Union messenger boy’s face before he opened the envelope. A single word was typed on the buff-colored form:

“Now.”

Rizzo threw on his hat and coat, caught a streetcar to a neighborhood where no one knew him, purchased a quart tin of kerosene, and boarded another streetcar, which carried him toward the Mississippi River. He got off and walked quickly through a warehouse district until he found a saloon in the shadow of the levee. He ordered a beer and ate a sausage at the free-lunch counter, eyes locked on the swinging doors. The instant that warehouse workers and carters barreled in, marking the end of the business day, Rizzo left the saloon and hurried along dark streets to the offices of the Union Pier amp; Caisson Company.

A clerk was locking up, the last man out. Rizzo watched from across the street until he was sure the offices were empty. Then, on a route plotted months earlier, he entered an alley that led to a narrow passage between the back of the building and the levee standing between it and the river. He tugged a loose board, pulled out a short crowbar he had stashed behind it, and pried open a window. He climbed in, found the central wooden staircase that led to the top of the three-story building, climbed it, and opened several windows. Then he pierced the kerosene tin with his pocketknife and started back down the stairs, splashing the volatile liquid on the steps. At the bottom, he lit a match, touched it to the kerosene, and watched the flames leap up the dry wood. He waited until he was sure that the wood itself had caught fire. Then he slipped back out the window and left it open to feed the draft.