The Race (Isaac Bell 4)

He had consulted lawyers secretly. Every single one warned that if it ever went to trial, a conviction for a second murder charge would be a catastrophe. His wealth would not help a second time around. His political connections, the best money could buy, would disappear when the newspapers whipped his “day in court” into a Roman circus. When he cornered a New York Court of Appeals judge in his mistress’s Park Avenue apartment, the man had told Frost flat out that his only hope of escaping the hangman would be to rot the rest of his life in the insane asylum.

But capturing him would not be easy, they would discover. He had lived like a hermit since he was released from Matawan. Even before, his face had never been well known to the public. That “Newsstand King” stuff was confined to the business. Average citizens, like those leading the rush out of the terminal toward the Belmont grandstand, had never seen his picture.

Besides, he smiled, stroking the full beard and mustache he had grown, now he himself saw a stranger in the mirror. The beard had made him look twenty years older by growing in surprisingly gray compared to his heavy crown of black hair, which had barely begun to be salt-and-peppered. Eyeglasses with the lenses tinted in the European way made him look a little like a German professor. Although wearing his flat sportsman’s cap, he might even pass himself off as an Irish writer.

His only fear was that his bulk would give him away. The middle-aged professor in the beard and tinted glasses filled as much space as the Newsstand King. More, even, because his dark sack suit was a veritable tent of loosely cut wool, deliberately chosen to conceal his weapons and “bulletproof” vest. He had no intention of being stopped from killing Josephine, much less locked up for murdering a woman who deserved it. His firearms included a highly accurate Browning pistol for covering his escape, a pocket pistol and derringer for emergencies, and a powerful Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver. He had sawed four inches off the barrel to hide it in his pocket and loaded it with the “man-stopper” hollow-point expanding bullets.

A Chicago priest had manufactured the bulletproof vest of multiple layers of silk specially woven in Austria. Frost had invested secretly in the enterprise and owned shares in the company formed to market the inch-thick garment. The Army had rejected it for being too heavy and too hot. Frost’s weighed thirty-six pounds, a negligible burden for a man of his size and strength. But it was undeniably hot. On the short walk from the train he was wiping his brow with a handkerchief. But it was worth the discomfort, as it would stop modern high-velocity, smokeless-powder slugs fired from revolvers and pistols.

He had been disappointed when he shot at Marco Celere long-range. He had missed seeing the betrayer’s fear as he died. Didn’t even get to see the body. He’d do it up close, this time, and squeeze the life out of Josephine with his bare hands.

He stayed within the crowd lining up to buy tickets, then shuffled among them toward the grandstand. He knew she was here because the incessantly buzzing, droning motors overhead told him they were practicing today. The wind was light, so a dozen machines were up in the sky. Josephine would be either flying or in the infield adjusting and tuning the machine that Preston Whiteway had bought for her.

He had to hand it to the race organizers, they knew their business. With weeks to go before the starting day, they had convinced fifty thousand people to ride out to Nassau County and pay twenty-five cents each to watch the birdmen practice. The aviators weren’t racing around pylons or trying to set altitude records – none of the usual exhibitions of soaring, diving, and altitude climbing expected at flying fairs – just buzzing about in the air when they felt like it. But the stands were noisy with men and women cheering their heads off, and Frost could tell by the awe on their faces and their ceaseless “ooohhhs” and “aaahhhs” why they paid their quarters. The sight of enormous machines held up by invisible forces took the breath away. They weren’t as fast as locomotives and racing cars, but it didn’t matter. Big as they were, they hung in the blue like they belonged there.

Suddenly he saw her!

Josephine came streaking down from the sky like a yellow sword. There was no mistaking her machine. It was painted that same damned Whiteway Yellow that the born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth sissy boy had trademarked.

Harry Frost had accompanied his wife to many an air meet to buy her aeroplanes, and he watched this one with a knowledgeable eye. He was impressed. The Italian’s final invention was a hell of a machine, as different from the last aeroplane Frost had bought for Josephine as a hawk was from a pigeon. The previous, the one from which Josephine had seen him shoot the bastard, had been a sturdy biplane. This was a mono, with a single wing, and even after it stopped rolling across the infield it still looked fast and nimble just sitting there.

His jaw tightened as he focused his horse-racing field glasses. There she was, jumping off, with the b

ig grin she got on her face when she really liked an aeroplane. She didn’t look like she was mourning her boyfriend, and she didn’t look like she was missing her husband, either. He felt the blood flush hot under his beard. He mopped his brow. Time to do the deed.

He started down from the grandstand. The guard at the gate stopped him. He showed the infield entry badge he had bought the night before from a drunken track official in a Hempstead saloon, and the guard let him pass. He walked across the horse track and stopped dead, rocked by the sight of his own face on a poster nailed to the inside rail.

WANTED

Murder Suspect

HARRY FROST

REWARD

*** $5,000 ***

(Armed and Dangerous-Do Not Approach!!!)

Wire or Telephone

VAN DORN DETECTIVE AGENCY

“We Never Give Up. Never.”

Frost’s brain started racing. Why were Van Dorns hunting him with wanted posters? What did Van Dorns care about him killing Marco Celere? What the hell was going on?

His printed face glared back at him.

It was the standard Van Dorn poster. Frost remembered it well from his Chicago days, when the private detectives were careening around the city trying to stop him by arresting the people who worked for him. When that failed, they had tried to get people to inform on him. A few dead informants put a stop to that, he recalled, grunting a laugh.

We Never Give Up?

Never?

Oh yeah? You gave up on me, pal.

He laughed again because the drawing they had mocked up of his face looked pretty much like he used to before he grew his beard. Frost was only vaguely aware that laughing to himself out loud drew the attention of others heading to the infield. None, however, connected his bearded face to the beardless poster.