The Striker

Bell gri

“Want some more?”

“What?”

“Next time you shave, why not leave off the region encompassed by your lip and nose?”

“Grow a mustache?”

“You’ll look a mite older with a mustache. Make the opposition take you seriously.”

Bell gri

“Indeed they did,” said Wish, draining his glass. “Although it could be argued that what they took seriously was a brace of double-barreled twelve-gauges.”

“You always told me, the sure way to win a knife fight is bring a gun. They had so many pistols, I reckoned I needed scatterguns.”

“You reckoned correctly, no doubt about it, Isaac. But speaking for the group, I can assure you that we’re all mightily pleased we didn’t end up with hides full of buckshot, which is always a possibility with so much firepower on the property… Mr. Reilly probably feels the same about his piano… At any rate, it’s worth considering whether a thick old mustache might obviate the need for brandishing artillery in the first place.”

He signaled the barkeep for another bottle.

“Thirsty today?” asked Bell.

Wish Clarke smiled, amiably. “How observant you are, Isaac. You’d make a good detective.”

“Hey, mister? Mister?”

A boy was whispering from the door.

“Get out of here!” bellowed Reilly. “No kids in my saloon.”

Isaac Bell recognized the doorboy he’d given a coin to. “It’s O.K., Reilly. I’ll look out for him. Come in, son. What’s going on?”

The boy glanced fearfully behind him and slunk inside. He had a cloth sack clutched to his chest. The sight of four Van Dorns glowering at their supper plates stopped him in his tracks. Bell shepherded him to a corner table. “Reilly, would you have a sarsaparilla back there?”

“The only thing I got that ain’t booze is coffee.”

“Do you like coffee?”

The boy nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“O.K., we’ll take coffee. Lots of sugar. Make it two. What’s your name, son?”

“Luke.”

“I’m Isaac, Luke.” He offered his hand and the boy took it politely. “What can I do for you?”

“Are you really a Van Dorn?”

“Yes, I am. So are those gents at the table.”

“All of ’em?”

“Any particular reason you ask, Luke?”

The boy nodded. “I didn’t tell you the truth about my father.”

“You said you don’t have a father.”

“I do have a father.”

“Good. Where is he?”

Luke looked around and whispered, “Hiding from the cops.”

“Why’s that?”

“The union sent more organizers from Pe

Bell nodded, recalling, again, Jim Higgins’s promise that union men would replace him.

“The cops caught one and beat names out of him.” Luke’s lips started trembling, and Bell saw him stare at the table as if imagining his father smashed to his knees in a hail of fists and blackjacks.

“Whose names, Luke? Your father’s?”

“Somebody warned him. He got away.”

“What’s that smell?” called Wally Kisley.

“That’s your supper,” said Mack Fulton.

“Not these buffalo chips. I smell something good. Hey, boy, what’s in that sack?”

Luke clutched his bag tighter.

Bell whispered, “Is that for your dad?”

“Yes, sir,” Luke whispered back. “From my mother.”

“Why’d you come here?”

“I thought if you’re private detectives, maybe…”

His voice trailed off.

“Maybe what, Luke?”

“Maybe I could hire you to protect him from the cops. Or at least help him get away?”

“Detectives cost a lot of money,” Bell said gently.

“I don’t have any money — excepting what you gave me. But I’m wondering if maybe I could trade something.”

“Like what?”

“Like things I heard.”

“Things you heard where?”

“Jake’s Saloon, where the cops hang out…”

“Does Jake allow boys in his saloon?”

“We climb up from the river, under the cellar, and we can hear ’em yelling upstairs.”

Wally called, “What do you have in that sack, boy?”

“Fatback and biscuits and baked taters, sir.”

The Van Dorns looked at their plates, then at Luke’s sack.

“I have an idea,” said Wally Kisley.

“No,” said Isaac Bell. “Luke’s got a job to do, delivering supper. And we’re going to help him.”

Truculent expressions on the faces of his men told Bell that he had a rebellion on his hands if he didn’t think quick. “Gents: Wally and Mack and Archie are going to the company store to buy fatback and flour and lard and coffee and sugar and milk and butter and potatoes, which they will carry to Luke’s mother and pay her five dollars to rustle up a couple of days’ worth of fatback, biscuits, and baked taters.”

“What are you and Wish doing while all that shopping and cooking and waiting is going on? Eating the kid’s?”

“Wish and I will provide Luke with an escort.”

James Congdon’s secretary carried a single sheet of paper into his office and laid it on his desk. “I’m sorry for the delay, sir. Detective Clay’s code is complicated.”

Congdon read it, twice.

“Are you sure you deciphered it correctly?”

“Absolutely, sir. It is complicated but consistent.”

Congdon read it again.

“Shall I take down your reply, sir?”

“No reply.”

“Yes, Judge Congdon. Is there anything else?”

“Yes.” Congdon named three stockbrokers who regularly bid for him in secret. “Tell them to buy up every share of Gleason Consolidated as they become available.”

The secretary, a sly co-conspirator with an encyclopedic knowledge of Wall Street, had been privy to Judge Congdon’s schemes long before the financier hammered together U.S. Steel. “I was not aware that Black Jack is selling.”

“His heirs are building mansions and buying yachts and private cars. They’re deep in debt, greedy, and impatient.”

“But are they in a position to sell? Gleason keeps a tight rein on his stock.”

Congdon read Henry Clay’s wire, again to be absolutely sure what the private detective was promising in veiled language. He said, “His heirs will be in a position to sell. What do we know about Gleason’s lawyers?”

As they were discussing heirs and inheritance, Congdon’s secretary said, “There was the incident concerning the probate engrossment of the Widow O’Leary’s supposed will — yet to be resolved — which weighs heavily on their firm.”

“To be resolved by whom?”

“It is still in probate court.”

“Perfect. Resolve it for them.”

“That should make the lawyers grateful,” said Congdon’s secretary — understanding in a flash that they were discussing the expeditious execution of Black Jack Gleason’s will when he finally shuffled off to that heavenly coalfield in the sky. Understanding, too, that that voyage to the other side might commence sooner than Gleason expected, the secretary calculated to the pe

“Is there anything else, Judge Congdon?”

“Transfer all Gleason stock to a holding company with no traceable co

“What do you want done with Gleason’s managers?”

“They can keep their jobs so long as every last bushel of Gleason coal is barged to my Amalgamated Coal Terminal.”

15

“Hold on, Isaac,” said Wish. “Are you sure you want to be taking sides in this dustup?”

The cave where Luke’s father was hiding in the woods up the mountain had been chosen for its view of the approach up the logged slopes, and when Bell asked whether his father was armed, Luke said he had a squirrel rifle, so he had sent the boy ahead to alert him that they were coming.

“We’re not taking sides,” he told Wish. “Mr. Van Dorn stressed that point when we spoke. But he also warned me not to get caught in the middle, and the best way to do that is stay ahead of both sides. Wouldn’t you say?”