The Assassin Read online

  “Happy guys don’t take French leave,” the corporal put it.

  “Big fellow?” Bell asked.

  “Skinny little guy,” said the private.

  “Any guess where he lit out to?”

  “No. No one figured him for lighting out. Kept to himself except for one pal, Nate Wildwood.”

  “Is Nate around?” asked Bell.

  “Nate got killed,” said the private.

  “In the Spanish war?”

  “Never made it to the war,” the corporal answered. “Poor Nate fell under a train. Before Billy lit out.”

  “Really? Tell me something. How short was Billy?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe five-three?”

  “Little guy,” said the private. “Short.”

  “What color was his hair?”

  “Brown.”

  “What color were his eyes?”

  “Green.”

  “Not really green,” said the corporal. “Gray-green.”

  The private reconsidered. “Yeah, you could say gray-green. They got kind of dead colored, sometimes.”

  “Dead?” scoffed the corporal. “What do you mean dead?”

  “I mean dead. I was next to him on the firing line more than once. When he started shooting, his eyes looked dead.” The young soldier turned to Bell and explained earnestly, “What I mean is, after I saw that, I never wondered how Billy Jones could be such a great shot. It was like he could stop every thought in his brain when he pulled the trigger.”

  The private reflected for a long moment. “It was like nothing else mattered. Like he didn’t care about nothing. Except the target.”

  —

  Isaac Bell took the train back to the ferry. Before he got on the boat, he sent another wire to Archie Abbott.

  MAKE ARMY FRIENDS.

  TRACE DESERTER BILLY JONES.

  SLIGHT BUILD, 5’3”.

  BROWN HAIR, GRAY-GREEN EYES.

  18

  When Walter L. Hawley, chief political reporter of the Evening Sun, spotted Isaac Bell striding to his desk, he stopped typing to clasp the detective’s hand hello.

  “You’re looking prosperous.”

  “You’re looking ink-stained.”

  “How’s the big guy?” Hawley and Joseph Van Dorn had met back in the early ’90s when the reporter covered police headquarters and Van Dorn had chased a Chicago arsonist to New York.

  “Fired me,” said Bell. “Or I quit, depending on who shot first.”

  “Welcome to Newspaper Row. Multitudes who have failed in all attempts at every occupation turn to journalism to find a stopgap between mediocrity and professional begging.”

  “Actually, I did come to discuss a job.”

  Hawley looked alarmed.

  “Easy does it,” said Bell, “not for me. What do you make of the situation in Russia?”

  “It resembles the bedlam of unchecked human emotion. My beat is City Hall, so maybe I’m not qualified to predict a gloomy future for the czar. But they’ve had a bad year and it’s only June.

  “It could blow the Baku oil business to Kingdom Come.”

  Hawley said, “I won’t ask a private detective, assuming you are still one, what that has to do with you. But I will ask, what does that have to do with me? When I need oil, I get it from John D. Rockefeller.”

  “E. M. Hock would jump at a freelance assignment to report on the threat to the oil industry in Baku.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Wonderful! . . . Except, I’ve always thought the rumors were true. She’s a woman, isn’t she?”

  “Very much so.”

  Hawley shook his head. “I’ll tell you, Isaac, I would jump at a chance to hire such a good writer. So would my publisher. He’d approve in a flash. But we would be strongly hesitant to send a woman among heathens. Russians and Moslems, and I believe they’ve even got some Persians, they’re next door, aren’t they?”

  Bell said, “When I met Edna Matters in Kansas, she had just driven up from Indian Territory in a buckboard wagon. Her sister was her traveling companion. I imagine Nellie Matters would go along to Russia.”

  “Nellie Matters? The Insufferable Suffragette?”

  “I find Nellie Matters anything but insufferable.”

  “I don’t mean to disparage the lady,” the newspaperman said hastily. “Certainly lovely to look at, and a fiery orator. She’ll really make her mark with that New Woman’s Flyover.”

  “What do you say?” asked Bell. “Will you hire E. M. Hock?”

  “But now you’re suggesting sending two women among the heathens. If something happened to them in wherever that godforsaken place is—the Caspian Sea?—Joe Pulitzer and Bill Hearst and Preston Whiteway would yellow-journal us into our graves. They would incite mobs to tear us limb from limb. Newsies who tried to sell the Sun would be hung from lampposts.”

  “I’ll arrange for the best private detective in the business to stand watch over them.”

  “That could get expensive.”

  “I’ll pay for the detective, you pay Miss Matters’ fee.”

  “Sounds like you have a wealthy client, Isaac, if you’re not working for Van Dorn anymore.”

  “I will pay for the detective,” Bell repeated.

  Hawley said, “That’s right. You’re rich. I forgot. O.K. It’s a deal! And thanks, Isaac. If she’ll take the job, she’ll set a new standard for our overpaid hacks.”

  They shook on it. Bell said, “But don’t tell her—or anyone—that I have anything to do with this. No one!”

  Walter Hawley winked. “Mind me asking which sister you’re sweet on?”

  Isaac Bell delivered the grin that a married man expected from a bachelor.

  “Let’s just say that with this arrangement, I can keep my eye on both of them.”

  —

  Archie Abbott came through with a wire to the Yale Club. His friends in the State Department reported strong rumors that the Shah of Persia was negotiating a monster loan from the Russian czar. Archie speculated that maybe such a loan would explain Rockefeller’s clandestine visit to the Persian embassy.

  Maybe.

  Bell had packed and was just leaving the club to walk to Grand Central, intending to board the train well ahead of Rockefeller, when the day hall porter said, “There’s a street urchin asking for you.”

  “Where?”

  “He snuck in through the kitchen.”

  “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “He claims he’s a probationary Van Dorn apprentice. I figured if he were, he’d know you don’t work there anymore.”

  Bell hurried downstairs to the kitchen. A boy who looked like a cleaned-up, dressed-up street rat was standing quietly in a corner. Scarcely into his teens, his eyes alert, his manner so diffident, he was almost invisible.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Tobin, sir. Eddie Tobin.”

  “Who do you apprentice under?”

  “Mr. Warren.”

  Of course. The Van Dorn street gang expert. If Eddie Tobin was good enough for Harry Warren, he was good enough for Bell.

  “How old are you?”

  “Not old enough to apprentice. I’m only probationary.”

  “I asked how old?” Bell growled.

  “Fifteen.”

  “How old?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “When I was fourteen, I ran away to the circus. Did Mr. Warren send you?”

  “Mr. Forrer. Mr. Warren said it was O.K.”

  “What do you have there?”

  The kid had an envelope of newspaper clippings.

  Bell had read the top one already:

  Averell Comstock, director of Standard Oil, and at one time president of the corporation, died after a brief illness. Comstock was one of the big oil capitalists of the country who laid the foundations for the Standard Oil Company alongside John D. Rockefeller, Clyde Lapham, and Henry M. Flagler. He served, too, as a director of the Weste
rn Union Telegraph Company, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Pittsburgh National Bank. His wealth was estimated at from $75,000,000 to $100,000,000.

  The second clipping reported that Averell Comstock had left ten thousand dollars to a Mrs. Mary McCloud who had a coffee stand that the oil magnate had frequented on Fulton Street.

  The last clipping reported that a Mrs. Mary McCloud had died in a tenement fire in Chatham Square.

  Forrer had typed a note.

  Same Mrs. McCloud. Tenement short walk from Fulton.

  “Come with me, Tobin.” John D. Rockefeller’s train was leaving in three hours. If Bell didn’t have enough time, the kid could follow up and wait for reinforcements.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Bell!”

  They raced downtown on the Elevated.

  —

  Before descending to the street, Bell scanned the squalid neighborhood from the vantage of the Chatham Square El station. Walt Hawley and the Evening Sun and most of the big New York dailies occupied the clean, modern Newspaper Row section of Park Row less than a half mile downtown. This was the upper section of Park Row, a slum that had been a slum for most of the city’s long history.

  He spotted a burned-out tenement and led Tobin down the stairs, three at a bound.

  Sawhorses blocked the sidewalk. The buildings that flanked it had burned, too. Rain had fallen since, and the odor of wet charred wood hung heavily in the air. Settlement House workers were helping families who lost their homes load bedclothes and furniture that had survived the fire.

  “Maybe this will help,” said Bell. He pressed two twenty-dollar gold pieces, two months’ sweatshop earnings, into the hands of the startled woman in charge.

  “God bless you, sir.”

  “Did anyone here know Mrs. McCloud?” he asked.

  None did, but one said she thought Mrs. McCloud had worked on Fulton Street. Bell and Tobin hurried downtown and across Fulton toward the East River. At the waterfront, carts and temporary stalls had set up business selling refreshments.

  “I hope those aren’t Jamaica Bay oysters,” said Tobin.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Jamaica Bay’s polluted with the typhoid.”

  “We’re looking for coffee stands,” said Bell. They found a row of them selling coffee and cake and pastries. One space was empty. Bell paid for coffee and cake for the apprentice. The kid tore into it hungrily but paid close attention as Bell questioned the woman who poured.

  “Where is Mrs. McCloud?”

  “Gone.”

  “When did she leave?”

  “She didn’t leave. She died. She was killed in a fire.”

  “That is terrible,” said Bell. “Did you know her well?”

  “Not as well as Mrs. Campbell. The shop on the other side. Kate!” she called across the empty stand. “Gentleman here is asking about Mrs. McCloud.”

  Bell crossed over and ordered a slab of pound cake. “Mrs. Campbell? I’m Jethro Smith. I just heard. I had no idea. I didn’t know her well, but I stop by when I’m downtown. What happened?”

  “Poor Mrs. McCloud. Widowed young. All she had was her boy and he died. Now this. Are you a newspaperman?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m in the insurance line. Why do you ask?”

  “Newspapermen came around. They said that Mary inherited ten thousand dollars. And never knew it! Died without knowing it.”

  “Did you say her son died, too?” Bell asked.

  “Drowned in the river.”

  “When?”

  “The same time as the fire—not that anybody was surprised. Anthony ran with the Five Points Gang. I pray she never knew he drowned.”

  “Let us hope,” said Bell. “Ten thousand! That is a lot of money. Who left her the ten thousand?”

  “An old man. He used to come every day. I teased her. He was sweet on her. Every day like clockwork. First he’d eat his oysters on the pier, then he’d come round the corner and drink Mary’s coffee. I used to say don’t give him so much sugar in his coffee. You’ll kill his appetite. He won’t order cake. I guess I was wrong about that. Ten thousand!”

  Bell checked his watch, motioned to Tobin, and passed him the cake. “I have to catch a train. Have a look-see at whichever oyster stand the old man frequented.”

  “Yes, Mr. Bell. Is there anything special you want me to look for?”

  Bell paused for a moment. It was a smart question from a kid just starting out. No wonder Harry Warren had tapped him. Tobin just might be a natural.

  “Start with where that stand gets its oysters. Let’s make sure Mr. Comstock didn’t die of that Jamaica Bay typhus you mentioned. Soon as you sort that out, report to Mr. Forrer. Then tell Mr. Warren I asked would he give you a hand to look into a Five Pointer named Anthony McCloud drowning in the East River.”

  BOOK THREE

  GAS

  JUNE–SEPTEMBER 1905

  THE BLACK CITY

  19

  Thank you for seeing me off,” John D. Rockefeller told the New York reporters who mobbed the Lake Shore Limited platform at Grand Central. “I’d expect you’d have more profitable ways to pass your time, but it is very kind of you.”

  He wore an old man’s overcoat and held tight to the burly Bill Matters’ arm while Isaac Bell stood guard just out of camera range. “What will I do in Cleveland? Warm these old bones and try my hand knocking golf balls.”

  The Cleveland newspapers sent reporters to meet his train at Union Depot, and posted more reporters at the front gate of Forest Hill, Rockefeller’s summer residence on the edge of town. A week later, the newspapermen returned when the city’s Italian Boys Band came to serenade him. Rockefeller gave them a show, seizing a baton to conduct “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It would be his last public appearance until October.

  That night Isaac Bell slipped him and Matters into a private car coupled to the New York Central’s eastbound Lake Shore Limited. Ten hours later, the train was divided at Albany. Some cars continued east to Boston, most headed south to New York City. Bill Matters joined the New York section to board the four-funnel German ocean liner SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. Isaac Bell and John D. Rockefeller continued on the eastbound section.

  Waiting with steam up in Boston Harbor was the three-hundred-foot Sandra, a handsome yacht with a lofty raked stack and the lines of a greyhound that Rockefeller had borrowed when Bell pointed out that the newspapers ensured there were no secrets on an ocean liner. Judge James Congdon had lent Sandra in a flash, leaving Bell to speculate whether the legendary Wall Street potentate, a founder of U.S. Steel, was in on Rockefeller’s deal. Whatever the deal was. So far, Bell had made no progress in getting Rockefeller to confide in his bodyguard.

  Sandra’s triple-expansion engines drove them across the Atlantic Ocean in twelve days. They landed at Cherbourg and rode in a private car coupled to the boat train to Paris. A French actress whom Bell had known in San Francisco recruited her favorite theatrical costumer and wigmaker from the Comédie-Française. They called on John D. Rockefeller in the privacy of his hotel.

  Bell booked train tickets to Constantinople. Then he visited a director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, whose wife’s sapphire necklace Van Dorn detectives had ransomed from the thief Rosania when she visited Chicago. The grateful director of the sleeping car company gave Bell a copy of the passenger manifest. Bell showed it to Rockefeller to ensure that the oil magnate would not bump into fellow tycoons on the Express d’Orient.

  The tawny yellow all-stateroom train offered its pampered customers the unique benefit of not being rousted from their beds for passport checks at the border crossings as they steamed through Munich, Strasbourg, Vienna, and Budapest. Sixty-four hours after leaving Paris, they awakened to the balmy air and dazzling sunshine of Constantinople, a vast and ancient cosmopolitan city of mosques and minarets, a sprawling bazaar, mangy dogs, and a bustling harbor on a deep blue sea.

  A mail steamer carried them up the Bosporus Strait and four hundred miles across the
Black Sea to Batum, the world’s biggest oil port, where the snow-covered Caucasus Mountains loomed over the harbor, and the six-hundred-mile pipe line from Baku terminated.

  Dozens of steam tankers rode at anchor, queuing to load at the kerosene docks. But the city’s streets were deserted and buildings shuttered.

  “Muslims and Christians are shooting each other,” Bill Matters reported when he met them at the steamer in a Rolls-Royce. “It’s a pogromy, Tatars attacking Armenians.”

  “Where do the Russians stand?” asked Bell.

  “The cops and Army turn a blind eye.”

  They drove five miles out of the city to Manziadjani. The American vice consul, a prosperous and well-connected ship broker whom Rockefeller had arranged to meet, had his country place there. Shots were fired from the woods as they pulled in through the front gate. Bell had his pistol out and was opening his carpetbag when Vice Consul Abrams staggered up to the car with blood pouring from his mouth.

  They rushed him to a nearby Russian Army fort, where he died within moments of arriving. Isaac Bell raced Rockefeller and Matters back to Batum and onto the train to Baku. At Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, halfway to the Caspian Sea, there were reports of riots. A bomb exploded outside the station. Bell kept his party on the train and they slept the night sitting up on hard benches.

  Next morning, the authorities dithered. It was midday before the train pulled out, proceeded by a pilot engine, in case wreckers taking advantage of the collapse of law and order had mined the tracks to rob the passengers. They steamed slowly across an endless, ever-more-desolate dry valley between snowy mountains to the north and indistinct highlands to the south.

  An hour before nightfall, still fifty miles from Baku, the pilot engine hit a mine.

  The explosion blew it off the rails and into a ravine, taking with it the riflemen guarding the train. Horsemen in black cloaks gathered on a ridge that loomed above the tracks.

  Isaac Bell opened his carpetbag and joined the Savage 99’s barrel to its chamber with a practiced twist. Another explosion blocked the rails behind them, and a wild-eyed conductor ran through the car yelling, “Wreckers!”