The Cutthroat (Isaac Bell 10)

“I saw her a few weeks later—last week.”

“Where?”

“Over on Broadway. She was strolling with an old swell. You tell me what she’s about.”

“What did he look like?”

“Old.”

“Stooped over? Bent?”

“No. Tall guy like you.”

“What color was his hair?”

“Gray.”

“Beard?”

“No, just a mustache.”

“What color were his eyes?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t that close. Say, maybe I could go now? Maybe you could give me a piece of that hundred?”

“Maybe I could,” said Isaac Bell. “You called him a swell. What was he wearing?”

“Homburg and a cape. Looked like he walked straight out of the operetta. Even had a gold-headed cane.”

“Frock coat under the cape?”

“No. More like a pinchback.”

“Pinchback?” Bell asked. “A bit up-to-date for an operetta.”

“I thought so, too. Maybe the young lady took him shopping.”

Bell passed him a one-hundred-dollar bill. “Here you go. Take a week off, give some poor girl a break.”

“If I don’t get her, some other guy will.”

Four men followed Isaac Bell from Grand Central and paced him on the other side of 44th Street. Snappy dressers—presentable for the neighborhood, if somewhat flashy in two-tone shoes—they might have been out-of-town buyers just off the train, or junior advertising men, except for their socks. The modern breed of Gopher street gangster favored yellow hose. They were still there when he crossed Fifth Avenue. A traffic cop shot them a look, but he had his hands full sorting carriages from motor trucks.

Bell did not expect them to make their move on the block between Fifth and Sixth. Shared by garages and carriage houses, the Yale, New York Yacht, and Harvard clubs, and the Iroquois and Algonquin hotels, there were too many people. At Sixth Avenue, he crossed quickly under the El and stopped suddenly in the shadows of the overhead train trestle with his back to a stanchion.

4

The Gophers cut across traffic and blocked the sidewalk. Up close, scarred faces and missing teeth left no doubt they meant business. For reasons often debated by the Van Dorn Gang Squad, the shortest Gopher always did the talking.

“Friend of the family?”

Isaac Bell said, “Out of my way, boys.”

The others took up the chorus and edged closer.

“Mr. Do-good?”

“Friend of the family.”