“The Italian Consul General keeps a Carabinieri officer on his staff for just such occasions,” Branco answered drily.
“What a mess! . . . Wait a minute. How did the police know he was yours?”
“They don’t. He was one of many caught in Petrosino’s dragnet.”
“Bloody Isaac Bell put Petrosino up to it.”
“Of course he did,” said Branco. “I would be surprised if he hadn’t. Thanks to Bell, there isn’t an Italian radical who isn’t behind bars or in hiding this morning.”
“We’re running out of time. Roosevelt’s going to be here in two days.”
Branco tugged his watch chain. “Two days and six hours.”
“Well, dammit, you’ll just have to give the job to your ‘gorillas.’”
“No.”
“Why not? They’re killers, aren’t they? All your talk about ‘un-plaguing’ me. Strikebreaking, getting rid of reformers, making enemies disappear?”
“Gorillas are not the tool for this job.”
“Why not?”
“They would bungle it.”
“Then you’ll have to kill him yourself.”
Branco shrugged his broad shoulders as if monumentally unconcerned. “I suspected it would come to this.”
Culp shook his head in disgust. “You sound mighty cool about it. How will you do it?”
“I’ve planned for it.”
“You’ll only get one chance. If you muddle it, you’ll force Roosevelt to hide, and we’ll never get a second shot at him.”
“I planned for it.”
“Do you mean you planned to pull the trigger all along?”
“I never planned to pull a trigger” was Branco’s enigmatic reply, and Culp knew him well enough by now to know he had heard all that Branco would spill on the subject. Instead, he said, “Did you get the Italian Consul General invited to the President’s speech?”
Culp nodded. “Why do you want him there?”
“He will provide a distraction.”
“You don’t know yet how you’re going to do the job.”
“I have ideas,” said Branco.
Marion Morgan and Helen Mills’ report on the Underground Railroad entrance to Raven’s Eyrie emphasized the strong pro-slavery sentiments in the pre–Civil War Hudson Valley. So while the Black Hand Squad watched gates and boat landings, and undercover operatives kept an eye on the siphon tunnel, Isaac Bell and Archie Abbott climbed down from the top of Storm King Mountain. In theory, the Abolitionists’ passage for fugitive slaves would have been more safely hidden in the uphill side of the estate wall rather than in view of the busy river.
Slipping and sliding on a thin coat of ice-crusted snow, the Van Dorns descended within yards of the wall, then scrambled alongside, just above it, clinging from tree to tree on the steep wooded slope. Culp’s estate workers had kept a mown path clear of brush, but the stones were laced with ancient vines of grape and bittersweet that in summertime would have blocked any hope of spotting a break in the eighty-year-old masonry. Now that the leaves had fallen, they had a marginal chance of spotting a long-abandoned opening put back in use by Antonio Branco.
“Cunningly concealed,” Archie noted. “Seeing as how the neighbors would have loved to turn in Grandpa and his Quaker. Not to mention collecting the bounty on the poor slaves.”
Isaac Bell was optimistic. “Nice thing about a wall—if we can’t see in, they can’t see us poking around outside.” He was right. The two-mile wall lacked the regularly spaced turrets of a true fortress. And while the main gatehouse overlooked some of the front section—and the service entrance tower and some of the south side—neither was close enough to observe the back side.
“Are you forgetting that Mr. Van Dorn said don’t set foot on Culp’s estate?”