The Gangster (Isaac Bell 9)

“Would you go downtown and find a way to shake hands with Antonio Branco?”

Harry Warren exchanged mystified glances with Mack Fulton and Wally Kisley. “Sure thing, Isaac. Care to tell me why I’m going to shake hands with Antonio Branco?”

“Do it and I’ll tell you why,” said Isaac Bell. “Just make sure he’s not wearing gloves.”

Alderman James Martin shielded his face from the newspaper artists with a hand clutching a half-s

moked cigar while an assistant district attorney told the magistrate that he should be jailed in the West 54th Street Police Court Prison unless he put up a bond of $15,000. The DA’s sleuth who had arrested him on the Queensboro Bridge after he left the Long Island City stone mason’s yard, where he had received the money, stood smirking in the doorway. Thankfully, thought Martin, the DA had set the bribe trap in a stone yard, where he had legitimate reason to be. He was a building contractor, after all, wasn’t he, like many a New York City alderman. He prayed the magistrate would buy that defense at least enough to reduce his bail to an amount low enough to borrow.

“Twelve five-hundred-dollar bills,” the assistant DA raved on. “One for each of his fellow aldermen he would pay off to shift their votes on an issue critical to the health and well-being of every man, woman, and child in New York.”

Alderman Martin’s lawyer asked that his client be admitted to a more reasonable bail. Martin waited to hear his fate. Home for supper or weeks in jail.

The magistrate fixed bond at $10,000. The DA’s assistant protested that it was too low, that Martin would run away, but it was, in fact, far more than he could raise, and the alderman pleaded with the magistrate, with little hope.

“Your Honor, I’m not able to furnish a bond of ten thousand.”

“The charge constitutes a felony. If convicted, your sentence could be ten years and a five-thousand-dollar fine. Ten thousand dollars bail is reasonable. I can reduce it no further.”

“I don’t have ten thousand—I had six thousand, but the DA sleuths took it.”

The magistrate’s eyes flashed. “The District Attorney’s detectives did not ‘take’ the money. They confiscated evidence, which happened to be in bills marked ahead of time to ascertain whether you would accept a bribe.”

“That money was given to me in connection with a business deal.”

“The nature of that business deal led to your arraignment.”

“I’m a contractor. It was an ordinary business consideration involving the supply of stone. I am not in the bribe line of business.”

“You will have opportunity to assert that at your trial. Bail is fixed at ten thousand dollars.”

There was a sudden commotion at the back of the small courtroom and the alderman turned hopefully toward it. He had been telephoning friends all afternoon, begging for bail money. Maybe one of them had had a change of heart.

A message was passed to Martin’s attorney, who addressed the magistrate. “Your Honor, I have a bondsman present. He will offer properties at 31 and 32 Mulberry Street as security for Alderman Martin’s ten-thousand-dollar bail.”

Isaac Bell bounded up the stairs to the bond room in the Criminal Courts Building and told the clerk, “I presume the court will accept my check on the American States Bank as bond for Alderman Martin.”

“We’ll accept an American States Bank check. But Alderman Martin is already free on bond.”

“Where’d he go?”

The clerk shrugged. “Somebody sprung ’im.”

Bell palmed a ten-dollar bill and slipped it to the clerk. “I was informed that Alderman Martin was running out of the kind of friends who would put up ten thousand.”

“You were informed correctly,” said the clerk.

“Any idea who paid the bond?”

“Fellow put up a couple of houses on Mulberry Street.”

“Mulberry? That’s in the Italian colony, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Isn’t Martin’s district in Queens?”

“Until they lock him up in Sing Sing.”