The Gangster

A far-flung correspondent reports that our country cousins upstate in rural Orange County awakened twice this week to outlandish rumors. First, as our readers in New York and Brooklyn learned, too, the Catskill Aqueduct tunnel under the Hudson River — the so-called Siphon, or Moodna-Hudson-Breakneck Pressure Tunnel and Gauging Chamber, as the waterworks engineers dub it — was breeched by the river, flooding the tunnel and destroying all hopes of completing the aqueduct ahead of the next water famine. Happily, this proved not the case. The plumber was summoned. The leak was small and has already been patched.

New rumors flew hot and heavy this morning. One had the Sheriff of Orange County raiding Raven’s Eyrie, the fabled estate of the Culps, whose many generations have accumulated great fortunes in river commerce, railroad enterprises, and Wall Street dexterity. Locked up were a dozen men found there. Speculation as to why the Sheriff raided Raven’s Eyrie prompted new rumors, the most intriguing of which had the Sheriff hot on the heels of Italian immigrant Black Hand fugitive Antonio Branco.

It was unclear why a gangster (formerly purveyor to the city’s Catskill Aqueduct) who is running from the law would choose to go to ground in a plutocrat’s fortified retreat. It was equally unclear who the men arrested were. Hearsay ran the gamut of imaginings, from immigrant laborers, to private detectives, to Tammany contract grabbers.

The Sheriff of Orange County denies the event ever took place and displayed for our correspondent his empty jail.

Mr. J. B. Culp’s offices in Wall Street report that the magnate is currently steaming across the continent on his private train and therefore unavailable to comment.

The Italian Branco left no forwarding address.

Francesca flung off the terry robe and pulled on her clothing. She knew Branco. Not as a gangster, but as a wealthy grocer who had set her up in a small apartment with a stipend that allowed her to get off the streets. He hadn’t visited it in two years — not since, she realized now, she had been summoned to confession with the Boss. She had lived on tenterhooks, wondering when it would stop, but he had kept sending money and kept paying the rent.

She was stuffing her things into her bag when a shadow fell on the sill.

The lovely room was suddenly a trap. An interior door connected to an adjoining room. She gripped the knob with little hope. Locked, of course. She had only rented the one room, not the suite. She backed up to the window and pulled the drapes with even less hope. No fire escape; the Waldorf was a modern building with indoor fire stairs. No balcony, either. Only the pavement of 33rd Street, six stories down. She carried no knife on this job, no razor, no weapon that would warn Archie Abbott that she was trouble.

Antonio Branco opened the door with a key and swept into the room.

Francesca Kennedy backed against the window. “I was just reading about you.”

“I imagined you were.”