The Striker (Isaac Bell 6)

She was staring straight ahead at the show on the screen. The wife stalked into the restaurant. Crockery flew. Tables were overturned. The woman scorned procured a horsewhip from somewhere and flailed away, and the audience roared as she chased her husband and his girlfriend around the restaurant. Henry Clay feasted on Mary’s compelling profile, waiting, thinking, She’s got to laugh. She’s not made of stone.

* * *

Mary Higgins had been troubled from the first by the money. It seemed that whatever Claggart needed, he had access to limitl

ess funds. But she found it difficult to believe that the bank robbers, who had inspired all sorts of lurid reporting in the newspapers, were nobler than common criminals. Albeit skillful ones who had managed enough successful robberies to inflame so much attention. With the Spanish War long gone from the headlines, and a reluctance on the part of many newspapers to lend the mine strike credence by writing about it, their editors were probably getting desperate.

But none of that guaranteed the robbers were supporting the strike.

She felt as she had since she first met Claggart in New York. She could not entirely trust the man. Despite his radical talk, his underlying motive was a mystery. But she hadn’t thought through how much money it would take to accomplish blocking the river, and she had little choice but to subscribe to the old saying Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. What if it was a trick by the owners? What kind of trick, she had no idea.

All she knew for sure was that she had thrown her lot in with someone she knew nothing about. She had seen a man of action when he saved her from the cops. And now she had just observed a vicious streak, brutalizing the masher, who would think twice about molesting other women. And she had to admit that Claggart’s reaction could have been inflamed by the fact that he was falling for her.

She wondered what she would think and what she would do if the bank robbers were suddenly caught by the police. If they turned out to be ordinary criminals, then Mr. Claggart would have a lot of explaining to do. Until then, she resolved to keep her wits about her and watch him closely.

26

Isaac Bell found Wish Clarke drunk in little’s exchange. He walked him out of the saloon, heaved him into a hansom cab, and gave the driver an enormous five-dollar tip to deliver him to the inexpensive hotel around the corner from the Palmer House, where Van Dorns rented rooms in Chicago.

Wish grabbed his arm as Bell tried to shut the cab’s door. “No jewels of note aboard the Pennshulvania Speshule.”

“I’ll check the Twentieth Century messengers at Black’s.”

“Shorry I let you down, Ishick. It cashes up wish me now and again.”

“Make me a promise, Aloysius.”

“Anythin’.”

“Go straight to bed. I’ll need you in the morning.”

The driver flicked his reins and the cab clattered off.

Bell hurried on foot down Clarke, over the rail yards on Harrison Street, and waited for a tall-masted schooner to pass before he could cross the South Branch of the Chicago River on an ancient cast-iron jackknife bridge. It took a long time to creak back down, and he recalled that when he apprenticed in Chicago there were cries to replace it with a modern bascule bridge. But Chicago’s corrupt aldermen could not agree who would do the work and who would pay for it.

Black’s Social, like Little’s Exchange, was a cut above the ordinary workingman’s saloon, being near the LaSalle Street terminus for New York Central passenger trains. Drinks were not cheap, and the free lunch was correspondingly lavish, served by a chef in white who presided over the newest of innovations, a stainless steel steam table. The customers were businessmen, clerks, and drummers dressed in sack suits and sporting vests, watch chains, and a variety of head- and neckwear.

The express messengers were easy to spot if you knew what to look for. While dressed like businessmen or clerks or drummers, they had the steadier gaze of men who worked at a profession with a high mortality rate. Protecting gold, cash, bearer bonds, and jewels locked in their fortified express cars, they routinely encountered masked robbers whose methods of attack ranged from derailing trains to blasting open cars with dynamite and shooting the survivors. They were famous for shooting back.

Bell, like every Van Dorn, often caught free train rides in their express cars as the messengers enjoyed the company of gun-toting detectives who knew their business. He greeted some he knew, bought drinks, and established who was currently working on the 20th Century Limited, the New York Central train most likely patronized by passengers who could afford fifteen-carat diamonds.

Bell had been at it several hours when Wish walked in in a clean suit and went straight to the coffee urn at the lunch table. He downed a cup black, poured another, and wandered over to join Bell. “How are we doing?”

“The Twentieth Century is running five consists,” Bell answered, meaning that five separate trains carried the 20th drumhead to accommodate demand. “I found messengers from four of them, no luck. The fifth is coming in any minute. How are you doing?”

“Tip-top,” said Wish, observing the crowded saloon through slitted eyes. He was swaying slightly on his feet but looked otherwise indestructible. “There’s your fellow walking in now. Ben Lent. I’ve ridden with him. He’s all right.”

Ben Lent was short and powerfully built. The scars on his cheeks looked more likely from bullets than fists. He greeted Wish warmly, kidded him about the coffee cup, “Where a glass ought to be,” and shook hands hello with Bell. And with Ben Lent, just off the last train of the day, they hit the jackpot. Bell described the necklace that Laurence Rosania was supposedly intending to steal.

“Mrs. Stambaugh.”

Isaac Bell and Wish Clarke exchanged glances.

“Mrs. Stambaugh?”

“Rose Stambaugh?”

“The lady herself. And still quite a looker, I don’t mind saying. She stopped personally in the car to ask me to keep a special eye on it.”