The Wrecker

The porter flinched. Senator Kincaid’s face was suddenly wracked with rage, his eyes hot, his mouth twisted with hate. Jonathan was terrified. The Senator could order him fired in a breath. They’d throw him off the train at the next stop. Or right here on top of the Rocky Mountains. “It weren’t no train passing us, suh. It was just a locomotive all by hisself.”

“A single locomotive?”

“Yes, suh! Just him and his tender.”

“So it must have been a chartered special.”

“Must have been, suh. Just like you say, suh. Going lickety-split, suh.”

The Wrecker lay back on the bed, clasped his hands behind his head, and thought hard.

“Will there be anything else, suh?” Jonathan asked warily.

“Coffee.”

BELL’S CHARTERED LOCOMOTIVE RACED through Cheye

“You can’t come in here looking like that.”

“Bell. Van Dorn Agency. Take me to the tailor. And round up a haberdasher, a shoe-shine boy, and a barber.”

“Right this way, sir … Shall I get you a doctor, too?”

“No time.”

The Overland Limited glided into Union Depot forty minutes later.

Isaac Bell was waiting on the platform at the middle of the train, looking far better than he felt. His entire body ached and his ribs hurt with every breath. But he was groomed, shaved, and dressed as well as he had been at the poker game the night before, in crisp black evening clothes, snow-white shirt, silk bow tie and cummerbund, and boots shined like mirrors.

A smile played across his swollen lips. Someone on this train was in for a big surprise. The question was would the Wrecker be so shocked that he gave himself away?

Before the train stopped rolling, Bell stepped aboard the Pullman just ahead of the dining car, pulled himself painfully up the steps, crossed to the dining car, and sauntered in. Forcing himself to stand and walk normally for the benefit of all watching, he asked the steward for a table in the middle, which allowed him to see who entered from either end.

Last night’s thousand-dollar tip in the observation car had not gone u

Bell had watched every man’s face as he had come into the dining car to gauge reactions to his presence. Several, noting his evening attire, remarked with a clubby smile, “Long night?” The Chicago meatpacker gave him a friendly wave, as did the well-dressed drummer he had spoken with in the washroom.

Judge Congdon wandered in, and said, “Forgive me if I don’t join you, Mr. Bell. With the obvious exception of a young lady’s company, I prefer my own in the morning.”

Ke

“Good morning,” said Bell.

“What the hell is good about it … Say, what happened to your face?”

“Cut myself shaving.”

“George! George! Coffee over here before a man dies.”

Bruce Payne, the oil lawyer, hurried up to their table, talking a blue streak about what he had read in the Cheye

“Cut myself shaving.”

“There’s the Senator! Hell, we don’t have room for him. George! George! Rustle up another chair for Senator Kincaid. A man who loses as much money as he did shouldn’t have to eat alone.”

Bell watched Kincaid approach slowly, nodding to acquaintances as he passed through the dining car. Suddenly, he recoiled, his expression startled. The well-dressed drummer had leaped up from his breakfast, reaching out to shake hands. Kincaid gave the salesman a cold stare, brushed past, and proceeded to Bell’s table.

“Good morning, gentlemen. Feeling satisfied, Mr. Bell?”

“Satisfied about what, Senator?”

“About what? About wi

“That’s what I was doing last night,” said Bell, still watching the doors. “I was trying to remember. I knew it was something that caught my attention.”

“It looks like something caught your attention full in the face. What happened? Did you fall off a moving train?”

“Close shave,” said Isaac Bell, still watching the doors. But though he lingered over breakfast until the last table was cleared, he saw no one react as if his presence were a shock. He was not particularly surprised and only mildly disappointed. It had been a long shot. But even if he hadn’t spooked the Wrecker into revealing his identity, from now on the Wrecker would be watching a bit anxiously over his shoulder. Who said a Van Dorn detective couldn’t fly?

20

WONG LEE, OF JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY, WAS A TINY MAN WITH a lopsided face and a blinded eye. Twenty years ago, an Irish hod carrier, thick-armed from lugging bricks, knocked Wong’s hat to the sidewalk, and when Wong asked why he had insulted him, the hod carrier and two companions beat Wong so badly that his friends didn’t recognize him when they came to the hospital. He had been twenty-eight years old when he was attacked and full of hope, improving his English and working in a laundry to save enough money to bring his wife to America from their village in Kowloon.

Now he was nearly fifty. At one point, he had saved enough to buy his own laundry across the Hudson River on Manhattan Island in New York City in hopes of earning her passage faster. His good English drew customers until the Panic of 1893 had put a sudden end to that dream, and Wong Lee’s Fine Hand Wash Laundering joined the tens of thousands of businesses that were bankrupt in the nineties. When prosperity finally returned, the long hard years had left Wong too weary to start a new business. Though ever hopeful, he now was saving money by sleeping on the floor of the laundry where he worked in Jersey City. Much of that money went to get a certificate of residence, which was a new provision included in the Chinese Exclusion Act when it was renewed in 1902. It seems that he had neglected to defend himself from assault charges, the lawyer explained, filed all those years ago while he was still in the hospital. So bribes would have to be paid. Or so the lawyer claimed.

Then that past February, with winter still lingering, a stranger approached Wong when he was alone in his employer’s laundry. He was a white American, so muffled against the river wind that only his eyes showed above the collar of his inverness coat and below the brim of his fedora.

“Wong Lee,” he said. “Our mutual friend, Peter Boa, sends greetings.”

Wong Lee hadn’t see Peter Boa in twenty-five years, not since they’d worked together as immigrant dynamiters blowing cuts in the mountains for the Central Pacific Railroad. Young and daring and hopeful of returning to their villages rich men, they’d scrambled down cliff faces setting charges, competing to blast the most foot-holds for the trains.

Wong said that he was happy to hear that Boa was alive and well. When last Wong had seen him, in the Sierra Nevada, Peter had lost a hand to a sooner-than-expected explosion. Gangrene was creeping up his arm, and he had been too sick to flee California from the mobs attacking Chinese immigrants.

“Peter Boa told me to look you up in Jersey City. He said you could help me, as he was unable.”

“By your clothes,” Wong observed, “I can see that you are too rich to need help from a poor man.”