The Race (Isaac Bell 4)

“Are you crazy? That’s no detective.”

Harry Frost’s fist shot fifteen inches with the concentrated power of a forge hammer. The man he hit fell over, clutching his side in pain and disbelief. One second he’d been crouched beside the boss, the next he was on the floor, trying to breathe as splintered bone pierced his lung. “You busted my ribs,” he gasped.

Frost’s face was red. His own breath raced with anger. “I am not crazy.”

“You don’t know your own strength, Mr. Frost,” protested the other boxer. “You could have killed him.”

“If I meant to kill him, I would have hit him harder. Get rid of that drunk!”

The boxer scrambled out of the back of the wagon, closed the door behind him, and shoved through the sleepy newsboys lined up to buy their papers.

“Hey, you!” he yelled after the drunk, who didn’t hear him but did him the favor of stepping into the alley under his own steam, saving him the trouble of dragging him, kicking and screaming. He plunged in after him, tugging a lead sap from his coat. It was a narrow alley, with blank walls on either side, barely wide enough for a wheelbarrow. The drunk was stumbling toward a doorway at the far end, lit by a hanging lantern.

“Hey, you!”

The drunk turned around. His golden hair shone in kerosene light. A tentative smile crossed his handsome face.

“Have we met, sir?” he asked, as if suddenly hopeful of arranging a loan.

“We’re gonna meet.”

The boxer swung his sap underhanded. It was a brutal weapon, a leather bag filled with buckshot. The buckshot made it pliable so that it would mold to its target, pulverize flesh and bone, and pound the young man’s fine, strong profile flat as beefsteak. To the boxer’s surprise, the drunk moved quickly. He stepped inside the arc of the sap and knocked the boxer off his feet with a right cross as expert as it was powerful.

The door sprang open.

“Nice going, kid.”

Two middle-aged Van Dorn private detectives – ice-eyed Mack Fulton and Walter Kisley in a checkerboard drummer’s suit – grabbed the fallen man’s arms and dragged him inside. “Is Harry Frost hiding in that morgue wagon?”

But the boxer could not answer.

“Down for the count,” said Fulton, slapping him hard and getting no response. “Young Isaac, you don’t know your own strength.”

“So much for our fledgling investigator’s first lesson in interrogating criminals,” said Kisley.

“And what is that first lesson?” Fulton echoed. They were nicknamed Weber and Fields at the Van Dorn Detective Agency, for the vaudeville comics.

“Permit your suspect to remain conscious,” answered Kisley.

“So,” they chorused, “he may answer your questions.”

Apprentice detective Isaac Bell hung his head.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kisley. Mr. Fulton. I didn’t mean to hit him so hard.”

“Live and learn, kid. That’s why Mr. Van Dorn teamed a college man like you with such wise old ignoramuses as we.”

“By our grizzled example, the boss hopes, even a rich kid from the right side of the tracks might flourish into brilliant detectivehood.”

“Meantime, what do you say we go knock on that morgue wagon and see if Harry Frost is home?”

The partners drew heavy revolvers as they headed up the alley.

“Stay back, Isaac. You do not want to brace Harry Frost without a gun in your hand.”

“Which, being an apprentice, you are not allowed to carry.”

“I bought a derringer,” Bell said.