The Thief

“No, thank you. Everything is pla

14

“‘Colossal’ is the only word to describe the new steamship terminal of the Chelsea Improvement,” said Archie Abbott, who was as tireless a promoter of his beloved New York as a Chamber of Commerce publicity man. To shelter as many as sixteen express liners as big as the Mauretania, he enthused, the terminal’s piers extended six hundred feet into the Hudson River and burrowed two hundred feet inland for three-quarters of a mile from Little West 12th Street all the way to West 23rd.

“There’s even room for Titanic when she goes into service. And wait till you see the portals on West Street — pink granite! An eyesore of a waterfront is transformed.”

“Not entirely transformed,” said Isaac Bell, studying the pier through field glasses. Crowds of people had stepped out of the second-story waiting room onto the pier’s apron to wave handkerchiefs to friends and relatives on the approaching ship.

Earlier, steaming up the harbor, Isaac and Marion Bell and Archie and Lillian Abbott had stood arm in arm admiring the city from the promenade deck railing. It was a beautiful day. The air was crisp. A stiff northeast wind parted the coal smoke that normally blanketed the harbor. Manhattan’s skyscrapers gleamed in a blue sky.

Now, as music from a ragtime band danced on the water and tugboats battled to land thirty-two thousand tons of Mauretania against the wind pushing her lofty superstructure, the detectives were concentrating on getting their prisoner and Clyde Lynds safely ashore, after which they would meet up with their wives at Archie and Lillian’s town house on East 64th, where the newlyweds were invited to stay.

“What do you mean not entirely?” Archie protested. “We sailed from Hoboken last month. You haven’t seen the Chelsea portals or the magnificent waiting rooms. The elevators are solid bronze. There’s never been a city project like it.”

Bell passed him the field glasses. “They forgot to transform the plug-uglies.”

“You’ll always find a couple of pickpockets when a ship lands,” Archie scoffed.

“I’m not talking about pickpockets. Look closer.”

A thousand people awaited the liner at Pier 54. Longshoremen were poised to work ship, heaving lines and unloading mail and baggage. Treasury Department customs agents swarmed the pier’s lower deck to inspect luggage for dutiable gowns and jewels being smuggled. On coal barges in the slip, trimmers had gathered before the usual time to refill the Mauretania’s bunkers for Captain Turner’s extraordinarily speedy turnaround. And up on the second-story waiting room terrace, the regular contingents of sneak thieves sidled among the passengers’ friends and relatives, crackerjack vendors, newspaper reporters, and moving picture operators. But it was six Hell’s Kitchen gangsters who had caught Bell’s attention.

“Gophers!” said Archie.

The Gophers, pronounced “goofers,” were snappy dressers, favoring tight suits, pearl gray bowler hats, fancy shoes, and colorful hose.

“Who the heck gave them pier passes?”

“It’s possible they know someone in Tammany Hall,” Bell said, drily. In New York, politicians, builders, priests, cops, and gangsters shared the spoils, a system derailed only occasionally by the reformers. “Do you see who they brought with them?”

“Molls,” said Archie, focusing on a cluster of extravagantly coiffed women in towering hats and elaborate dresses.

“Not a good sign.”

The Police Department had been cracking down on firearms lately. Faced with arrest if caught in possession, the gangsters had taken to stashing their pistols in their girlfriends’ hats and bustles.

“Loaded for bear. Who do you suppose they came to meet?”

Bell took back the field glasses. The gangsters were glowering at the back of the ship, where the Second Class passengers would go ashore. In a sight that would be comic if it didn’t mean someone was going to get badly hurt, a burly Gopher raked the Second Class embarkation port with dainty mother-of-pearl opera glasses he had stolen from somewhere.

“Archie, do you recognize the thug with the opera glasses?”

Archie, whose pride in New York extended even to the superior ferocity of its street gangs, took a look. “Might be Blinky Armstrong.”

“Is he a boss?”

“Not yet, that I’ve heard.”

“It looks like he’s ru

“Why?”

“I have an unpleasant feeling.”

The Mauretania’s private-branch telephone system switchboard would plug into the New York City exchanges the moment the ship docked. The Van Dorn New York field office was in the Knickerbocker Hotel on 42nd Street, and while the streets would be clogged with traffic, the magic carpet of the Ninth Avenue Elevated Express could speed Detective Harry Warren and his gang specialists downtown in a flash.

“Harry’ll know if it’s Blinky.”

With the tugboats almost overwhelmed by her to

At last, the bugle blew to a

The First Class gangway was hoisted from the cavernous waiting room. First ashore, stiffly ignoring each other, were Lord Strone and Karl Schultz. The Chimney Baron was greeted by a brace of pretty girls, granddaughters, Bell guessed, by the joyful way they took his hands and spirited him, laughing, through the crowds and out the doors to West Street. Strone stepped off alone and discreetly followed a young man, whom Bell supposed was from the British consulate, to the stairs to the lower deck, where the steam yacht Ringer out of Greenwich — which had trailed the ship from Quarantine — would whisk him to his American estate in Co

Explosions of photographers’ flashlights at the foot of the gangway told Bell that the newspaper reporters had caught sight of Marion and Lillian disembarking, and he could imagine from experience the shouted queries. Had Miss Morgan come back to New York to take new moving pictures? Was it true Miss Morgan had been married to an insurance executive? Had the ceremony actually been performed by the captain of the Mauretania? What did Mrs. Abbott think of the new fashions in London? Was there truth to the rumors that her father had secretly amassed a controlling interest in the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe?

The Second Class gangway would rise as soon as First Class had cleared the ship. Third Class, Marion had told Bell, was doomed to spend the night aboard. Two names on the passenger list couldn’t be found. Miscounts were not uncommon, but everyone in Third Class — immigrants and citizens alike, including the moving picture people — would be held on the ship for officials to tally again. Isaac Bell had to wonder whether those missing had been the Acrobat’s accomplices. The chief officer bamboozled that night in the smoking room was probably wondering, too.

“O.K., Archie. Go telephone Harry Warren. I’ll get Clyde. You grab Block and our PS boy. When things settle down, we’ll go off together from Second Class.”

Bell hurried back toward Second Class. He found Clyde Lynds in the embarkation vestibule and tipped the seamen Captain Turner had assigned to guard him. “I’ll take it from here, gents, thanks.”

Clyde, grip in hand, was anxiously studying the crowds.

“See anyone down there you know?” Bell asked, watching for his reaction.

“I doubt it,” Clyde answered, even as his eye locked on the knot of Gophers staring back in his direction. “Been quite a while since I was in town.”