The Gangster

In the midst of the tumult, Isaac Bell smelled shoe polish again and this time he knew why. It had nothing to do with an eight-day stupor and everything to do with the memory of smelling an organ grinder’s monkey on Elizabeth Street while he was disguised with black shoe polish in his hair. And he knew now what set off the memory: the zoo smell in Antonio Branco’s room at Raven’s Eyrie.

President Roosevelt dropped Joseph Van Dorn’s coin into the monkey’s hat and reached out to shake the organ grinder’s hand. The bent and grizzled old man sprang to his full height, whipped open a knife, and thrust.

Isaac Bell stepped in front of Theodore Roosevelt.

BOOK IV The Gangster

45

Antonio Branco’s stiletto pierced Isaac Bell’s coat and jacket and vest, ripped through his shirt and stopped with a shrill clink of iron and steel.

“What?” gasped Antonio Branco.

“I borrowed your partner’s chain mail,” said Isaac Bell and hit the gangster with all his might.

* * *

Antonio Branco flew backwards into the crowd.

His arms shot in the air, his knife tumbled from his hand, his eyes glazed. Men pounced on the stunned gangster and wrestled him back on his feet.

“Well held,” shouted Roosevelt. “Bring the scoundrel here.”

They yanked him deeper into the crowd.

Isaac Bell was already plunging in after them, with Van Dorn right behind him.

The Black Hand formed a protective cordon and ran like a football flying wedge, with the heaviest men in the lead and Branco safe within. Laborers scattered out of their way. Those who tried to stop them were steamrollered to the ground.

Four more gorillas blocked Bell and Van Dorn in a maneuver as strategic as the flying wedge. The detectives pounded their way out of the slugfest, but by then Antonio Branco and his rescuers were far down the hill, running toward the railroad tracks.

Bell ran full speed after them. Van Dorn fell behind. He couldn’t keep the younger man’s pace, and Bell shouted over his shoulder that Eddie Edwards was watching Culp’s train. “Cut straight to the yards. I’ll stick with Branco.”

Branco appeared to have recovered from Bell’s punch. He was running under his own steam now, wing-footing, yet drawing ahead of his Black Hand guard. Suddenly, he veered away from the train yards, crossed the railroad tracks, and ran directly to the river.

His men stopped, turned around, and fanned out to face Isaac Bell.

The tall detective pulled his pistol and opened fire, dropped the two closest to him, and charged through the gap in their line. He did not waste ammunition on Branco, who was out of range and running so purposefully that Bell wondered whether J. B. Culp had managed to sneak his Franklin out of the estate right under the Van Dorn noses.

He reached the track embankment and climbed to the rails. From that slight elevation, he saw Branco had planned an emergency escape even faster than an auto or a train. The ice yacht Daphne waited at the riverbank. At the helm, the bulky figure of J. B. Culp urged him to run faster. Antonio Branco hurtled, slipping and sliding, down the final slope, with Isaac Bell drawing close.

The gangster fell, slid, rolled to his feet, and vaulted into the car beside Culp.

Culp flipped the mooring line he had looped around a bankside piling and sheeted in his sail. The tall triangle of canvas shivered. But Daphne did not move. Her iron runners had frozen to the ice.

Bell put on a burst of speed. He still had his gun in hand.

Culp scrambled out of the car and kicked the rudder and the right-hand runners, yelling frantically at Branco to free the runner on his side. Bell was less than fifty feet away when they broke loose.

“Push!” Bell heard Culp shout, and the two men shoved the ice yacht away from the bank. The wind stirred her masthead pennant. Her sail fluttered. One second, Branco and Culp were pushing the ice yacht; the next, they were running for their lives, trying to jump on before she sped away from them.

Bell was on the verge of trying to stop and plant his feet on the ice to take a desperate shot with the pistol before they got away. But as her sail grabbed the wind and she took off in earnest, he saw the mooring line dragging behind her. He ran harder and dived after it with his hand outstretched.

The end of the mooring line was jumping like a cobra. He caught it. A foot of rope burned through his hand before he could clamp around it. Then a gust slammed into the sail, and the rope nearly jerked his arm out of his shoulder, and, in the next instant, the big yacht was dragging him over the ice at thirty miles an hour. He flipped onto his back and stuffed his gun in his coat and then held on with both hands. He had hoped the extra weight would slow the yacht, but as long as the wind blew, she was simply too powerful. Now his only hope was to hang on for another quarter mile. The yacht was racing downriver. So long as Culp didn’t change course, it was dragging Bell toward his own ice yacht, which he had tied up near Cornwall Landing.