The Wrecker (Isaac Bell 2)

“Broken?”

“No, no, no … Just cracked.”

“What happened?”

“Bumped into a couple of prizefighters in Wyoming.”

“How do you have time to pick fights when you’re hunting the Wrecker?”

“He paid them.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. Then she smiled. “A bloody nose? Doesn’t that mean you’re getting close?”

“You remember. Yes, it was the best news I’d had in a week … Mr. Van Dorn thinks we’ve got him on the run.”

“But you don’t?”

“We’ve got Hennessy’s lines heavily guarded. We’ve got that sketch. We’ve got good men on the case. Something’s bound to break our way. Question is, does it break before he strikes again.”

“Have you been practicing your dueling?” she asked only half jesting.

“I got a session in every day in New York,” Bell told her. “My old fencing master hooked me up with a naval officer who was very good. Brilliant fencer. Trained in France.”

“Did you beat him?”

Bell smiled and poured more champagne into her glass. “Let’s just say that Lieutenant Ash brought out the best in me.”

JAMES DASHWOOD FILLED HIS notebook with a list of the blacksmiths, stables, auto garages, and machine shops he visited with the lumberjack sketch. The list had just topped a hundred. Discouraged, and weary of hearing about Broncho Billy Anderson, he telegraphed Mr. Bell to report that he had canvassed every town, village, and hamlet in Los Angeles County, from Glendale in the north to Mon tebello in the east to Huntington Park in the south. No blacksmith, mechanic, or machinist had recognized the picture, much less admitted to fashioning a hook out of an anchor.

“Go west, young man,” Isaac Bell wired back. “Don’t stop ‘til your hat floats.”

Which brought him late the next afternoon by Red Train trolley to Santa Monica on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. He wasted a few minutes, uncharacteristically, walking out on the Venice Pier to smell the salt water and watch girls bathing in the low surf. Two in bright costumes had their legs bared almost to their knees. They ran to a blanket they had spread next to a lifeboat that was on the beach ready to be rolled from the sand to the water. Dashwood noticed another lifeboat a half mile down the beach poised in the distant haze. Each surely had an anchor under its canvas. He berated himself for not thinking of Santa Monica sooner, squared his scrawny shoulders, and hurried into town.

The first place he walked into was typical of the many livery stables he had visited. It was a sprawling wooden structure big enough to shelter a variety of buggies and wagons for rent, with stalls for numerous horses, and a new mechanic’s section with wrenches, grease guns, and a chain hoist for motor repairs. A bunch of men were sitting around jawing: stablemen, grooms, auto mechanics, and a brawny blacksmith. By now, he had seen enough to know all these types and was no longer intimidated.

“Horse or car, kid?” one of them yelled.

“Horseshoes,” said James.

“There’s the blacksmith. You’re up, Jim.”

“Good afternoon, sir,” said James, thinking that the blacksmith looked morose. Big as the man was, his cheeks were hollow. His eyes were red, as if he didn’t sleep well.

“What can I do for you, young fella?”

By now, Dashwood had learned to ask his questions privately. Later, he would show the sketch to the whole group. But if he started off in front of all of them, it would turn into a debate that resembled a saloon brawl.

“Can we step outside? I want to show you something.”

The blacksmith shrugged his sloping shoulders, got up from the milk crate he was sitting on, and followed James Dashwood outside next to a newly installed gasoline pump.

“Where’s your horse?” the blacksmith asked.

Dashwood offered his hand. “I’m a Jim, too. James. James Dashwood.”

“I thought you wanted horseshoes.”

“Do you recognize this man?” Dashwood asked, holding up the sketch with the mustache. He watched the blacksmith’s face and, to his astonished delight, he saw him recoil. The man’s unhappy face flushed darkly.