The Gangster

The mooring line was less than twenty feet long, and Bell heard Culp laugh. Branco was poised to cut the line. Culp stayed him with a gesture, pointed at a clump of ridged ice, and steered for it.

“Cheese grater coming up, Bell.”

Daphne’s runners rang on the ridges and an instant later Bell was dragged over the rough. He held tight as it banged his ribs and knees.

“Another?”

One more, thought Bell. He could see his boat now. Almost there, and Culp inadvertently steered closer, intent on aiming for an even higher ridge to shake him off when Daphne slammed over it. Bell let go, freely sliding, swinging his legs in front of him to take the impact with his boots, hit hard, sprang to his feet, and staggered to his boat.

* * *

“He’s coming after us,” said Branco.

“Let him.”

Culp slammed his yacht skillfully into a deliberate crash turn. It spun her a hundred eighty degrees and put them on a course up the river, with the west wind abeam, the lightning-quick Daphne’s best point of sail.

“What went wrong back there?”

“I don’t know,” said Branco.

“Is that all you have to say for yourself?”

Branco was eerily calm and entirely in possession of himself. “I’ve lost a battle, not a war.”

“What about me?”

“You’ve lost a dream, not your life.”

“They will come after me,” said Culp.

“Nothing can be pinned to you that would nail you.” Branco reached inside his coat, and a stiletto gleamed in his hand. “But if you are afraid and are thinking of selling me out to save yourself, then you will lose your life. Take the pistol out of your coat by the barrel and hand it to me, butt first.”

Culp was painfully aware that they were only two feet apart in the tiny cockpit and he had one hand encumbered by the tiller. At the speed they were moving, to release the tiller for even one second to try to block the stiletto could cause a catastrophic spinout. “If you kill me, who will outrun Bell?”

“That will be between Bell and me.” He gestured imperiously with the blade.

Culp said, “I’ll want it back if Bell gets closer. I’m sure I’m a better shot than you.”

“I’m sure you are. I never bother with a gun,” said Branco. “Give it to me!”

Culp saw no choice but to relent. Branco shoved it in his coat.

“Tell me where you are taking me.”

“Option three, as I promised, is to sail you to the Albany rail yards. I have a special standing by. Or if you don’t think it’s safe, you can steal a ride on a freight train.”

“How far?”

“At this rate, we’ll make it in two hours.”

Antonio Branco glanced over his shoulder. “Bell is closer.”

“It will be dark soon,” said Culp. “And Isaac Bell does not know this river like I do.”

* * *

Isaac Bell’s ice yacht raced up the Hudson River, vibrating sharply, tearing through patches of fresh snow, flopping hard when the runners banged over ice hummocks, and jumping watery cracks where the tide had lifted the ice. She was heavier than Culp’s boat — built of white ash, instead of aluminum, and carrying lead ballasts Bell had strapped to the outsides of her runner plank to hold her down in the squall winds. Using the extra pounds and her oversize sail to advantage, he veered off course to increase velocity on a favorable beam wind, then glided back on course, with her extra weight sustaining momentum.

Bell thought it was strange that an experienced racer like Culp wasn’t using the same tactic when he saw him catching up. If the magnate was trying to lure him into pistol range, he would get his wish.

By the time the speeding yachts had whipped past the lights of Newburgh, Bell had drawn within a hundred yards. He could see Branco and Culp in the cockpit, their faces white blurs as they looked over their shoulders to gauge his progress in the fading light.

Culp changed course abruptly.

Half a second later, Bell saw a horse right in front of him.

46

It was a tremendous plow horse, plodding in harness, and it reared in terror as Isaac Bell’s sail bore down on it. Appearing so suddenly, at sixty miles an hour, and seen from a cockpit twelve inches above the ice, it looked as big as Culp’s stuffed grizzly.

Isaac Bell yanked his tiller.

Culp had led him into the middle of an ice harvest. Men and horses were plowing grooves in the ice and cutting it into cakes to be stored for next summer. They had sawed open a wide patch of open water that gleamed black as coal.

Bell’s boat skidded violently. Centrifugal force nearly flicked him out of the cockpit. The boat was sliding sideways, out of control, and headed straight at the black water. Ten feet from it, Bell’s runners bit the ice again, his rudder responded, and he skittered the boat along the edge, dodged another horse and plow, and hurled himself back on course, his eyes locked on the tall white triangle of Daphne’s sail.

Another mile flashed by.