The Spy (Isaac Bell 3)
“That wasn’t for China! That was for him.”
“ ‘Him’? Who are you talking about?”
With a fearful glance at the New Hampshire, Loh said, “There is a man-a spy-who pays. Not in money but in valuable information about other nations’ dreadnoughts. We, Harold Wing and me, pass it along to Chinese naval architects.”
“And you pay for it by doing his bidding.”
“Exactly, sir. Can we go down now?”
Bell knew this was a major breakthrough in the case. This was the freelance whom Yamamoto had tried to betray in exchange for a clean escape. Louis had gotten him close again.
“You are working for three masters. The Chinese Navy. Your Tongmenghui resistance movement. And the spy who paid you to attack the magazine at Mare Island. Who is he?”
Another freight train of a shell roared by. The structure trembled. “I don’t know who he is.”
“Who is your intermediary? How does he give you orders and information?”
“Mailboxes. He sent information, orders, and money for expenses in mailboxes.” Loh ducked another shell. “Please, let us go down.”
Across the water, sparkling in the first rays of sunlight, all the New Hampshire’s guns traversed toward the cage mast. “Here comes a broadside,” said Bell.
“You must believe me.”
Bell said, “I feel a certain affection for you, Louis. You held off shooting me until I jumped from the train.”
Louis Loh stared at the battleship. “I was not sparing your life. I didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger.”
“I’m tempted to let you down, Louis. But you haven’t told me all you know. I don’t believe that everything came in the mail.”
Louis Loh cast another fearful gaze at the white battleship and broke down completely. “It was Commodore Tommy Thompson who told us to attack the magazine at Mare Island.”
“How did you hook up with the Gopher Gang?”
“The spy bribed the Hip Sing to allow us to approach Commodore Tommy Thompson in their name, pretending we were tong.”
Bell handed Louis Loh a snowy white handkerchief. “Wave this.” He led Loh down the mast. When they reached the barge, apoplectic Test Range officers raced up in a boat. “How did you-”
“Thought you’d never stop shooting. We were getting hungry up there.”
“I DON’T BELIEVE for a moment that Commodore Tommy is the spy,” Isaac Bell told Joseph Van Dorn. “But I’m willing to bet Tommy’s got a good idea who he is.”
“He better,” said Van Dorn. “Raiding his territory is costing a carload of money for the cops and some very expensive favors to keep Tammany Hall from protesting.” The tall detective and his broadchested boss were overseeing preparations for the raid from inside a Marmon parked across from Commodore Tommy’s Saloon on West 39th Street.
“But the railroads will love us,” said Bell, and the boss conceded that several rail tycoons had already thanked him personally for cutting back the worst depredations of the Gopher Gang. “Looking at the bright side, after this the spy’s ring will be a lot smaller.”
“I’m not counting on that,” said Isaac Bell, mindful of learning about the explosion at the Newport Torpedo Factory while on the train to San Francisco.
A dozen railroad cops led the attack, battering down the saloon door, breaking up the furniture, smashing bottles, and staving in beer kegs. Shots rang within. Harry Warren’s boys, standing by with handcuffs, marched a dozen Gophers into a Police Department paddy wagon.
“Tommy’s holed up in the cellar with a bullet hole in his arm,” Harry reported to Bell and Van Dorn. “He’s all alone. He may listen to reason.”
Bell went first, down wooden steps into a damp cellar. Tommy Thompson was slumped in a chair like a mountain brought low by an earthquake. He had a pistol in his hand. He opened his eyes, looked up blearily at Bell’s weapon pointed at his head, and let his pistol fall to the earthen floor.
“I’m Isaac Bell.”
“What’s wrong with the Van Dorns?” Tommy was indignant. “It’s always been live and let live. Pay the cops, stay out of each other’s business. We got a whole system at work here, and a bunch of private dicks screw it up.”
“Is that why you put one of my boys in the hospital?” Bell asked coldly.