The Thief (16 page)

Marion said, “The ‘hero’ who saved the ship is the smuggler who almost sank the ship.”

“In a nutshell,” Harry Warren agreed. He stood up and put on his derby. “Anyway, when the Yorkville boys showed up, the Gophers jumped to the conclusion that they were taking delivery of the film stock they’d bought out from under them. Fighting ensued.”

“In a nutshell…”

“Thanks for the coffee.”

“Who are the Yorkville boys?”

“From the new German district up in Yorkville. Uptown, on the East Side.”

“Germans?”

“Germans are leaving downtown since the
General Slocum
fire. You know, the excursion-boat fire when all their poor children were killed. Tore the heart out of the old neighborhood, and they’ve just kind of been retreating north—lock, stock, and breweries.”

“What’s the gang called?”

“Marzipan Boys.”

“Like the candy?”

“The old gangs mocked ’em with that name. Now they’re proud of it since they’ve been whaling the heck out of everybody. They’re a tough bunch.”

Harry Warren was halfway out the back door when Bell called, “But why did the Marzipan Boys go to Pier 54?”

“What do you mean?”

“The film stock
did
burn in the fire,” Bell said with elaborate patience. “Clyde Lynds didn’t welsh on the deal. The Marzipan Boys didn’t buy it out from underneath the Gophers, therefore they weren’t there to pick up film stock they didn’t even know about.
So why did the Yorkville gang meet the
Mauretania?”

Harry Warren’s blank expression got blanker. “Haven’t found out yet.”

“Find out! Report to me at the office.”

“Isaac,” said Marion. “The doctor said to stay home today.”

“O.K.,” said Bell. “I’ll stay home today. Harry, report to me at the office tonight.”

“C
LYDE,” SAID
I
SAAC
B
ELL, “YOU’RE GOING
to have to return Captain Turner’s medal.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Bell?”

Bell fixed him with an icy stare.

Clyde Lynds hung his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bell. I am so sorry.”

Bell asked, “Sorry for what? Spit it out! What?”

“The film stock. It was mine.”

“Go on.”

Clyde said, “We needed the money to escape from Germany. I mean, I wanted so much to succeed with Talking Pictures. But I was scared crazy for our lives. When the Army issued that phony warrant, I knew my goose was cooked.”

Bell bored into him with his eyes. Then he asked, softly, “Was this smuggling scheme Professor Beiderbecke’s idea?”

“No!”

“Are you sure?”

“The poor old guy didn’t have a clue. It was all my idea. Remember I told you I got lucky? What happened was I bumped into a Gopher I used to know in New York when he was a sceneshifter at the Hammerstein. He had moved up in the Gophers, and they sent him to Germany looking for film stock. He had the dough. I knew an outfit I’d bought from and they steered me to a shipper to pack it and hide it. We worked a deal.” He hung his head again. “I thought, What the heck, everyone smuggles film stock, why not me? I didn’t realize the stuff was so old it was unstable.” He barked a bitter laugh. “I got taken like a rube. Seven crates of garbage.”

“Deadly garbage.”

“I swear, I didn’t know it was old. I think they switched it on me. I mean, I wouldn’t risk hurting all those people.”

“And you are absolutely positive that Beiderbecke had nothing to do with it?”

“I didn’t tell him until it was on the boat… What are you going to do?”

Isaac Bell sighed. “I’m afraid you leave me no choice but to help keep you alive and unkidnapped while you build a new Talking Pictures machine.”

“Help me? Why? It was terrible. All those people could have died.”

“Why? You’re a jackass. But you’re an honest jackass. I just gave you an easy out and you didn’t take it. All you had to do was blame the Professor, but you didn’t. That’s good enough for me.”

“S
OMEBODY PUT THE FEAR OF
G
OD
into these Marzipan Boys,” Harry Warren told Isaac Bell that night at Van Dorn headquarters in the Knickerbocker Hotel, “which ain’t easy to do.”

“How’d they manage that?’

“The guy who led the raid on Pier 54?”

“What about him?”

As the agency’s New York gang specialist, rubbing shoulders with Gophers, Dusters, and Chinatown tongs, Detective Harry Warren had seen his share of evil in the slums. But his hands were shaking as he tugged a flask from his hip pocket, took a long pull on it, then passed it to Isaac Bell.

“They burned him alive in a brewery furnace.” Harry took the flask back, wiped it with his sleeve, and drank again. “The guy’s brother told me.”

“Why’d he tell you?”

“Good question. It was like whoever did this has different stripes than he’s used to. It was like the Gophers and the Marzipans and the Van Dorns and even the cops are on one side of a big hole in the street, like from an earthquake or something, and these folks roasting his brother are on the other.”

Bell asked, “What else did he tell you?”

“Nothing. Clammed up.”

Bell said, “Let’s go see him.”

I
SAAC
B
ELL AND
H
ARRY
W
ARREN
made the rounds of dives in the East Eighties and finally found the dead man’s brother leaning on a saloon front under the Third Avenue El. He was fumbling for money in empty pockets. Hi name was Frank, and he was a tall, handsome, broad-shouldered German-American with a street fighter’s scarred face and fists. He assessed Isaac Bell in a glance and nodded his head as if to say he would fight the tall detective if he had to, but he didn’t want to. Bell read something else in the resigned nod, a confirmation of what Harry Warren had told him. The gangster had seen evil that shook him to the core.

They took Frank into the saloon and bought a bottle.

Bell said, “I’m sorry about your brother.”

“Yeah.”

“Were you and Bruno close?”

“Used to be. When we was kids. Not so much now.”

“Did your brother tell you what the deal was at the pier?”

Frank shrugged. “Grab a fellow who got off the boat.”

“What did this fellow look like?”

“Twenties, five-six, mussed brown hair, blue eyes, pencil mustache.”

Clyde Lynds to a T.

“He say why?”

“No.”

“Did your brother say who you were grabbing the guy for?”

“No.”

“Did you ever see him?”

“How could I see him? Bruno kept him to himself.”

“Did your brother tell you how much the guy was paying?”

Frank shook his head. “Bruno would never tell me. He’d take what it was and pay us what he felt like.”

“Hard man, your brother.”

“Not as a hard as them.”

“No, I suppose not… Mind me asking something?”

“Nothing’s stopped you so far.”

“Nothing’s stopped you from answering, and I do appreciate that, especially at such a hard time.”

“You gunning for those guys?”

“Yes,” said Bell.

Frank nodded. “What was you asking?”

“Did your brother ever work for them before?”

Frank hesitated.

Bell asked, “Was this the first time?”

“I dunno. I mean, I dunno if it was the same or who knew the same. You know what I mean?”

“No.”

“I mean, for when they have a party, sometimes, we sell ’em dust. We sell ’em goils.”

“Who?”

“They might have been who told this guy about my brother.”

“Could have been,” Bell agreed. “Who are they?”

Frank hesitated. “I don’t want to queer things with them. Maybe it wasn’t them who told the guy about us. I don’t want to…”

“You don’t want to mess up a good arrangement,” said Bell. “I don’t blame you.”

“Neither do I,” said Harry Warren.

“Yeah, I mean, steady money is steady money.”

“With your brother out of action, money’s going to be tight,” said Bell. “At least until your crew gets back on its feet. Look, Harry’s standing so no one can see me handing you this. Just a couple of hundred dollars to tide you over.”

“Two hundred bucks? Crissakes, mister. What do you get outta this?”

“I get the guy who killed your brother. If you can tell me who introduced him to your brother. Was it the customers who buy your cocaine and your girls?”

“Yeah.”

“And who are they?”

“They live at the consulate.”

Bell found himself holding his breath. “Which consulate?”

“The German consulate.”

Isaac Bell and Harry Warren walked quickly to the Third Avenue El and rode downtown to the tip of lower Manhattan. They got off at South Ferry and strolled up Broadway. Deep in conversation as they passed the handsome sixteen-story Bowling Green Office Building, they barely glanced at the Hellenic Renaissance granite, white brick, and terra-cotta facade.

Of the thirteen bays of windows from ground floor to roof, all but two were dark this late at night. The White Star and American Line shippers, the naval architects, bankers, and lawyers who conducted business at the prestigious address were home in their beds. Of the lights still burning, both were on the ninth floor, which housed the offices of the German consul general.

“Cover the place,” Isaac Bell ordered. “Try to pick up something more.”

“I
HEARD THAT THE AGENCY HAD A PROTEC
TION contract with the German consul general of New York City back in ’02,” said Isaac Bell, when he strode into Joseph Van Dorn’s walnut-paneled Washington, D.C., headquarters office in the Willard Hotel, two blocks from the White House. The boss spent the majority of his time in Washington these days drumming up business from the Justice Department, Congress, and the Navy, and was intimate with the workings of the capital city.

Van Dorn laughed heartily. “We did indeed, and I’ll never forget it.”

Mirth reddened his face—a grand moon of an affair wreathed in robust red whiskers and splendid burnsides and topped by a shining bald crown—and his hooded eyes almost disappeared as their lids crinkled around them. He was a large, powerfully built man. His affable manner and ready laughter disguised ambition, ferocious intelligence, and an unyielding love of justice that made him the scourge of criminals.