The Striker

“Dicks, cops, bulls, strikebreakers, you’re all the same to me. Back away, mister.”

“I’m asking you civilly,” said Bell. “Where are you from?”

“Don’t try and stop me.”

“I met you somewhere. I want to know where.”

The man moved fast, feinting like a heavyweight, with his left hand to jab and set Bell up for a knockout right. Isaac Bell was equally quick. His left flew to block the right, and his right cocked to counterpunch. But instead of swinging his fist, the amber-eyed man plunged his right hand into his coat and whipped out a revolver. The cold click of a hammer thumbed back to fire told the young detective he had been duped by a master.

“You look surprised.”

Bell peered past the gun into his eyes. Grady Forrer was right. In this dim light, they were gold. Equally odd was a tone of pride in the voice. Almost as if he expected Bell to express admiration for getting the drop on him. But what in blazes was going on? They had not ended up in this cellar by accident. The man had laid a trap, and Bell had obligingly walked right into it. He felt like a fool. But at least this proved that his dream in the mine had been no dream.

“Remove your pistol from your shoulder holster. Thumb and forefinger on the butt. If I don’t see your other three fingers, you’re dead.”

Bell reached slowly, opening his coat, gripping the butt of his single-action Colt Army with his thumb and forefinger and slowly pulling the revolver from his holster. The man reached for it. Bell placed it in his palm and he slipped it into his shoulder holster.

“Now your sleeve gun.”

Bell shook his two-shot derringer from his sleeve and handed it over.

“And your other one.”

“I don’t have another sleeve gun.”

“It’s in your coat pocket.” He snapped his fingers.

Bell pulled a single-shot derringer from his coat pocket. It was small and unusually lightweight — a “graduation” gift from Joe Van Dorn — and he had thought after repeated inspections that it did not bulge the pocket or tug the cloth.

“Sharp eyes,” he said.

“I’ve seen it before, so

Bell heard the pride he had hoped to elicit. Not a world-weary I’ve seen it before but a boast. Again the man seemed to be expecting applause. Bell was impressed. The man knew his business. But he was not about to clap. Not yet. Instead he said, “Seen it before? Or tracking me? Who are you?”

“The knife in your boot.”

He pointed the derringer he had taken from Bell in Bell’s face and swiveled his revolver down at Bell’s feet. It looked like a Colt, thought Bell, but the hammer was unusually wide, the frame’s top strap was flat, and the front sight had been removed, undoubtedly to smooth his fast draw.

“Which boot?”

“I can shoot a hole in one of them. Or you can show me — slowly!”

Bell pulled a throwing knife from his right boot. “Your hands are full. Where do you want it?”

“Stick it in that doorjamb, if you think you can hit it.”

The doorjamb, all that remained of the cellar woodwork not yet demolished, was twenty feet away. Bell raised his arm. The gun stayed pointed at his head. His blade flew across the cellar and stuck in the narrow strip of wood a quarter inch off dead center.

The man with amber eyes shrugged dismissively. “Your overhand throw wastes time.”

He dropped the derringer in his pocket, reached down under his trouser leg, and pulled out a flat sliver of steel identical to Bell’s.

“Here’s a better way.”

His hand flipped outward, with an underhand twist of his wrist. The knife hissed through the air and thudded beside Bell’s, dead center, in the jamb.

Bell was betting the man would repeat that self-congratulatory lapse of attention, and it happened. He gazed proudly, as if inviting Bell to express awe. It lasted only a fraction of a second but long enough to kick, Bell sinking the point of his boot into the man’s wrist.

His hand convulsed, his fingers splayed open.

Bell was already reaching to catch the gun when it dropped.

Too late. Moving with speed Bell would not have believed if he didn’t see it, the man caught the falling gun in his left hand, sidestepped Bell’s rush, and swung hard, raking Bell’s temple with the barrel. The young detective saw stars, pinwheeled across the cellar, and slammed into a wall.

He sprang to his feet and was trying to shake sense into his head and launch a counterattack when a trio of workmen thundered down the stairs to resume demolition of the cellar.

“What in hell—”

The man in the long coat brushed past them and bounded up the steps with his gun and all three of Bell’s.

Bell, scattering the trio with a bellowed “Gangway!” yanked both throwing knives from the doorjamb and tore after him.

23

The rain had intensified to a deluge, and Isaac Bell could not see a full block. But the downpour had cleared the streets and sidewalks surrounding the Tombs of cops and pedestrians, and across that empty expanse he thought he saw on the farthest edge of his vision a single figure. The man’s long, loose coat was flapping as he headed west toward Elm Street.

Bell ran after him. Tall and long-legged, Bell halved the distance, when suddenly the man disappeared into a hole in the sidewalk. Isaac Bell jumped into the same hole and landed on a wooden scaffolding a few feet below grade. He saw a wooden ladder and climbed down it into a seemingly endless tu

It resembled an orderly and much larger coal mine. It was ten times as wide as a mine and five times as high, and brightly lighted. Instead of rickety timber props, ranks of steel columns marched into the distance, holding up massive girders that spa

Bell looked downtown, where the lights were brightest, then uptown, where they faded. Far, far ahead in the uptown direction, he saw the man in the long coat weaving through the construction site, dodging workmen, steam hoists, and wheelbarrows. He stopped suddenly, handed something to a man pushing a wheelbarrow on a plank track, and broke into a run again. Bell raced after him. When he reached the point where he had seen him, the man with the barrow, and another burly workman who had dropped his barrow, blocked his path. Clutched in their fists were the dollars the man had given them.

“No cops allowed.”

“Don’t believe what he told you,” Bell shouted. “Get out of my way.”

“Why should we believe you?”

Bell hit the first high and low, kicked the legs out from under the second, and ran after the man in the long coat. He had a two-block lead. The concrete floor stopped abruptly. Ahead, they were digging through raw earth. Rainwater muddied the floor of the ditch. The space narrowed and grew crowded with workers with picks and shovels. Where steel columns had held the city above, here were temporary wooden beams, a rough-plank roof, and openings to the sky through which poured the rain and fading daylight.

Bell ran for what felt like miles, city block after city block, until he thought he could not run another step, nor lift his boots once more from the grasping mud. And still the man kept ru

Bell heard thunder, and the ground shook. Streetcars rumbled overhead, high above, on temporary timbers. Lights flickered. The water pipes swayed in their chains. On he ran, ignoring shaken fists and shouts of foremen, air storming through his lungs. The tu