The Race (Isaac Bell 4)

Young Spillane froze, rigid as a statue. He stood with his arms locked high in the air. The pick handle began slipping from his paralyzed fingers. Before it hit the ground, an inch from Bell’s head, he tumbled backwards, screaming.

Isaac Bell stood up, brushed off his suit, and stepped on Sammy’s hand when he reached for his fallen Smith amp; Wesson.

“Behave yourself. It’s over.”

He checked that the brother he had shot was not bleeding from an artery and would survive. The man he had kicked caught his breath in deep gasps. He glowered at his father and brother on the ground beside him and up at the tall detective standing over them. Sucking air into his lungs, he groaned, “You got lucky.”

Isaac Bell opened his coat to reveal the Browning pistol in his shoulder holster. “No, sonny, you got lucky.”

“You had another gun? Why didn’t you use it?”

“Mr. Van Dorn’s a skinflint.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“The agency has strict rules about wasting lead on stumblebum skunks. We also make a practice of leaving at least one skunk conscious to answer our questions. Where’s Harry Frost?”

“Why the hell would I tell you?”

“Because if you tell me, I won’t turn you in. But if you don’t tell me, your daddy is going back to Joliet for assaulting me with a firearm, and you two are going down to Elmira for assaulting me with pick handles. And I’ll bet those New York cons doing their bit don’t like Chicago fellows.”

“The boys don’t know where Harry is,” Sammy Spillane groaned.

“But you do.”

“Harry went on the lam. Why would he tell me where he’s running?”

“He would tell you,” Bell answered with elaborate patience, “so that you would know where to go to help him, Sammy, with money, weapons, and your crook colleagues. Where is he?”

“Harry Frost don’t need no money from me. And he don’t need no ‘crook colleagues,’ neither.”

“A man can’t run without help.”

“You don’t get it, Mr. Detective. Harry has dough stashed in every bank in the country. You track him in New York, he’ll get dough in Ohio. You follow him to Ohio, he’ll be shaking hands with a bank manager in California.”

Bell watched the wounded gangster through narrowed eyes. Spillane was describing a fugitive who thoroughly understood how big and fragmented America was, the kind of modern criminal that even a continental outfit like the Van Dorn Detective Agency found difficult to track across state lines and through myriad jurisdictions. He made a mental note to have the Van Dorn field offices circulate wanted posters to every bank manager in their territory. Admittedly a long shot, as banks numbered in the tens of thousands.

“I suppose he has pals everywhere, too?”

“Not ‘pals’ you’d call friends. But guys he helped so they’d help him back. How do you think I got here after Joliet? Harry looked out for people who could help when he needed it. Always. From the first newsie I beat – from the first time I worked in his sales department – Harry Frost was always there for me.”

“If he knows you’ll help him, he must have told you where he was headed. Where is he?”

“Daddy don’t know, mister,” chorused Sammy’s sons.

“Mr. Frost was scared they’d throw him back in the bughouse.”

“He wouldn’t tell nobody.”

Isaac Bell saw that this was going nowhere. “How did Frost make his getaway?”

“Hopped a freight.”

The railroad tracks through the village of North River ran north and south. North to Canada. South to Saratoga and Albany, and from there Boston, Chicago, or New York Any direction he chose. “Northbound freight?” Bell asked. “Or southbound?”

“North.”

South, thought Bell. And with Whiteway’s publicists “booming” Josephine’s participation in the race, locating the aviatrix would be as simple as buying a newspaper.