“Thanks to Mr. Whiteway’s kindness and generosity. He bought it from Marco’s creditors, you know.” She glanced sidelong at Bell. “It puts me deep in his debt.”
“I imagine you’ll more than pay it back by making a strong pull for the Whiteway Cup.”
“I have to make more than a strong pull. I have to win the Whiteway Cup. I have no money of my own. I was completely dependent on Harry, and now I’m dependent on Mr. Whiteway.”
“I’m sure he will be grateful if you win the race.”
“Not if, Mr. Bell.” Her gaze fixed on the sky where a parchment-colored Blériot was rising, and when she looked back at Bell her eyes had turned opaque. “I will win, Mr. Bell. But not to make him grateful. I will win because I will do my best, and because Marco built the best flying machine in the race.”
Later, when Isaac spoke with Archie, he told his friend, “If I were a betting man, I’d lay money on her.”
“You are a betting man!” Archie reminded him.
“So I am.”
“Belmont Park is swarming with unemployed gamblers who would be delighted to relieve you of your money. The New York reformers just passed a law banning horse-race betting. The Atlantic – Pacific race is the bookies’ godsend.”
“What odds are they offering on Josephine?”
“Twenty-to-one.”
“Twenty? You’re joking. There’s a fortune to be won.”
“The bookies reckon she’s up against the top birdmen in America. And they’re betting we’ll get our pants beat off by the Europeans, who hold all the records in cross-country flying.”
Isaac Bell went looking for a bookmaker who could handle a thousand-dollar bet on Josephine. Only one accepted bets that large, he was told, and was directed to Johnny Musto, a short, wide middle-aged fellow in a checkerboard suit who reeked of an expensive cologne Bell had last smelled in the Plaza Hotel barbershop. The old betting ring under the stands had been replaced, since the Legislature banned horse gambling, with an exhibit hall, showing motors and accessories for aircraft, race cars, and motorboats. Musto was lurking just outside it in the forest of steel pillars that supported the grandstand. He had as thick a Brooklyn accent as Bell had ever heard outside a vaudeville theater.
“Youse sure youse wanna do dis?” asked the bookie, who knew a private detective when he saw one.
“I am absolutely positive,” said Isaac Bell. “In fact, now that you ask, let’s make it two thousand.”
“It’s your funeral, mister. But would it be O.K. if I ask youse a little somethin’ first?”
“What?”
“Is de fix in?”
“Fix? It’s not a horse race.”
“I know it ain’t no horse race. But it’s still a race. Is de fix in?”
“Absolutely not. There’s no fix,” said Isaac Bell. “The race is sanctioned by the American Aeronautical Society. It’s honest as the day is long.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, only dis girl is Harry Frost’s wife.”
“She has nothing to do with Harry Frost anymore.”
“Oh yeah?”
Bell caught a mocking note in the man’s voice. A suggestion that Musto was in on a joke that Bell hadn’t heard yet. “What do you mean by that, Johnny?”
“She ain’t with Harry no more? Den why’s he hangin’ ’round?”
“What?” Bell gripped Musto’s arm so hard, the bookie winced.
“I saw dis fellow yesterday looked just like him.”
Bell loosened his grip but fixed him just as sternly with his eye. “How well do you know Frost?” All the evidence he’d gathered thus far pointed to a man who’d not been seen in public in years.