Rizzo jumped to his feet. “Get out of here,” he shouted at his gorillas. “All of ya.” He slammed the door behind them. Then he tugged off his hat and stared at his boots, making a point of not looking at Branco’s face—demonstrating that he could never identify this man who held over him the power of life and death.
He spoke humbly, and he made no effort to hide his fear.
“May I please help you, Dominatore?”
“I need a place to clean up and eat while you get me fresh clothes, a length of bell cord, a blasting cap, and a stick of dynamite.”
The moon hovered inside a silver halo.
Full and perfectly round.
The dark returned.
The doctors had never met anyone like the extraordinarily beautiful young woman, dressed in traveling tweeds and wearied by days on the train. She fixed them with a sharp, clear-eyed gaze that brooked no equivocation and no platitudes. Each found himself struggling to answer as straightforwardly as their professors had demanded at medical school.
“We are reasonably certain he suffered no lacerations of the brain. There are no indications of even slight capillary hemorrhage.”
“Nor lesions in either h
emisphere.”
“The only marks on his head were old scars, long healed. There are no wounds to his torso or his limbs. It was quite miraculous—almost as if a giant hand had closed around him when the building caved in.”
She said, “But still he sleeps.”
“It is possible this confirms a diagnosis that his stupor, or coma, resulted from asphyxia caused by inhalation of poisonous gas.”
“When will he awaken?”
“We don’t know.”
“Will he awaken?”
“Well . . . there is hope in that he was a strong man.”
She rounded on them, fiercely. “He is a strong man.”
28
In the immortal words of Brewster Claypool: Money is made when the smart money acts on their smart ideas—bless their smart little hearts.
Dead only five days, and already Culp missed him.
The conductor called, “Engineer’s ready when you are, sir.”
“One more,” said Culp.
His man from eastern Pennsylvania was pacing the private train platform. Culp lowered his window. “Send in that bloody lawyer.”
In came the bloody lawyer. He was one of a bunch that had reported to Claypool—sparing Culp the tedium—and he was everything that Culp’s old “partner in crime” had not been: colorless, humorless, and duller than dishwater.
“The Department of Justice is widening the investigation of the Ramapo Water Company.”
Culp’s face darkened. The Ramapo Grab—a dodge he and Claypool had cooked up to take over New York’s water supply—would have milked the city of $5,000,000 a year every year for forty years.
“I thought you had spent a lot of my money encouraging them not to investigate.”
“It would appear that the Progressives want to make an example.”