The Gangster (Isaac Bell 9)

A cold wind and a crisp sky promised an early winter in the Catskill Mountains. But the morning sun was strong, and the city men stood with coats open, side by side, on a scaffold atop the first stage of a gigantic dam high above a creek. Laborers swarmed the site, but roaring steam shovels and power hoists guaranteed that no one would overhear their private bargains.

The superintendent stuck his thumbs in his vest. “Wholesome water for seven million people.” He puffed his chest and belly and beamed in the direction of far-off New York City as if he were tunneling a hundred miles of Catskill Aqueduct with his own hands. “Catskills water will shoot out a tap in a fifth floor kitchen—just by gravity.”

“A mighty enterprise,” said Branco.

“We gotta build it before the water famine. Immigrants are packing the city, drinking dry the Croton.”

The valley behind them was a swirling dust bowl, mile after mile of flattened farms and villages, churches, barns, houses, and uprooted trees that when dammed and filled would become the Ashokan Reservoir, the biggest in the world. Below, Esopus Creek rushed through eight-foot conduits, allowed to run free until the dam was finished. Ahead lay the route of the Catskill Aqueduct—one hundred miles of tunnels bigger around than train tunnels—that they would bury in trenches, drive under rivers, and blast through mountains.

“Twice as long as the great aqueducts of the Roman Empire.”

Antonio Branco had mastered English as a child. But he could pretend to be imperfect when it served him. “Big-a hole in ground,” he answered in the vaudeville-comic Italian accent the American expected from a stupid immigrant to be fleeced.

He had already paid a hefty bribe for the privilege of traveling up here to meet the superintendent. Having paid, again, in dignity, he pictured slitting the cloth half an inch above the man’s watch chain. Glide in, glide out. The body falls sixty feet and is tumbled in rapids, too mangled for a country undertaker to notice a microscopic puncture. Heart attack.

But not this morning. The stakes were high, the opportunity not to be wasted. Slaves had built Rome’s aqueducts. New Yorkers used steam shovels, dynamite, and compressed air—and thousands of Italian laborers. Thousands of bellies to feed.

“You gotta understand, Branco, you bid too late. The contracts to provision the company stores were already awarded.”

“I hear there was difficulty, last minute.”

“Difficulty? I’ll say there was difficulty! Damned fool got his throat slit in a whorehouse.”

Branco made the sign of the cross. “I offer my services, again, to feed Italian laborers their kind-a food.”

“If you was to land the contract, how would you deliver? New York’s a long way off.”

“I ship-a by Hudson River. Albany Night Line steamer to Kingston. Ulster & Delaware Railroad at Kingston to Brown’s Station labor camp.”

“Hmm . . . Yup, I suppose that’s a way you could try. But why not ship it on a freighter direct from New York straight to the Ulster & Delaware dock?”

“A freighter is possible,” Branco said noncommittally.

“That’s how the guy who got killed was going to do it. He figured a freighter could stop at Storm King on the way and drop macaroni for the siphon squads. Plenty Eye-talian pick and shovel men digging under the river. Plenty more digging the siphon on the other side. At night, you can hear ’em playing their mandolins and accordions.”

“Stop-a, too, for Breakneck Mountain,” said Branco. “Is-a good idea.”

“I know a fellow with a freighter,” Davidson said casually.

Antonio Branco’s pulse quickened. Their negotiation to provision the biggest construction job in America had begun.

A cobblestone crashed through the window and scattered glass on Maria Vella’s bedspread. Her mother burst into her room, screaming. Her father was right behind her, whisking her out of the bed and trying to calm her mother. Maria joined eyes with him. Then she pointed, mute and trembling, at the stone on the carpet wrapped in a piece of paper tied with string. Giuseppe Vella untied it and smoothed the paper. On it was a crude drawing of a dagger in a skull and the silhouette of a black hand.

He read it, trembling as much with anger as fear. The pigs dared address his poor child:

“Dear you will tell father ransom must be paid. You are home safe like promised. Tell father be man of honor.”

The rest of the threat was aimed at him:

“Beware Father of Dear. Do not think we are dead. We mean business. Under Brooklyn Bridge by South Street. Ten thousand. PLUS extra one thousand for trouble you make us suffer. Keep your mouth shut. Your Dear is home safe. If you fail to bring money we ruin work you build.”

“They still want the ransom,” he told his wife.

“Pay it,” she sobbed. “Pay or they will never stop.”

“No!”

His wife became hysterical. Giuseppe Vella looked helplessly at his daughter.