The Gangster (Isaac Bell 9)

Branco hesitated. Then he shrugged. “It was long ago.”

“So you did see it.”

“A tramp cut the rail cop and ran away. It did allow me to escape, but I am not the man who cut him. Was the cop badly injured?”

“He survived,” said Bell.

“Then all is well that ends well.”

“He was horribly scarred.”

“Good. I am glad to hear that.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He ‘scarred’ me, too. Nearly broke my leg. You yourself see, I limp to this day. It aches when storms are coming. Which is not supposed to happen to young men like me and you.”

“Who was the man with the knife?”

“The tramp? I never saw him before.”

“The cop said he was Italian.”

“Many hobos were Italian in those days. Still are. I didn’t know him. But I owe him. Thanks to him, I escaped the railroad cop. You owe him, too.”

“How do you reckon that?”

“Thanks to him, you weren’t caught when you ‘borrowed’ your train, which you would have been if he hadn’t slashed the cop. So we have that tramp in common. He saved us both for better things.”

“What better things?”

“The laborer became a business man. The train thief became a detective.”

Isaac Bell laughed. “Only in America.”

The tall detective and the wealthy grocer exchanged a powerful handshake.

Branco returned to his business, and Bell caught the train uptown.

Harry Warren was waiting in the detective bull pen. “Black Hand?”

“I can’t read him yet. But whatever Antonio Branco wants, he’s capable of getting. A formidable man. Angry man, too, though he covers it. Mostly”—Bell considered Branco’s tale of the tramp and the railroad cop and added—“he’s also a first class liar.”

Wally Kisley came in the back entrance, still in the costume of a rag collector with dirty hands and face. “I got something for you.”

From his rag sack he pulled a red tube that looked like a dynamite stick. Detectives nearby edged away. Kisley tossed it to them and they dove for cover. It bounced on the floor with a hollow thunk.

Kisley grinned. “I emptied the nitro.”

Bell asked, “Where’d you find it?”

“Under LaCava’s safe.”

“Why blow the safe? It was open during the day.”

“I think it was part of the bundle that blew the wall. But it misfired. Got blown through the wall and bounced under the safe.”

“What does it do for us?”