The Assassin

“The Boss and I have been burning up the wires. All hell’s broken loose on the Corporations Commission case.”

“I just read the Lapham story. Do we know for sure he killed himself?”

“No. All we know is what Archie Abbott learned when he wormed his way into the official investigation. Mr. Van Dorn was impressed, which he isn’t always with Archie.”

“What did Archie learn?”

“Someone—if not Lapham, then presumably our assassin—pulled an elaborate fast one on the Army, who operate the monument. So elaborate that it can only be characterized as baroque.”

“‘Baroque’? What do you mean, baroque? Complicated?”

“More than complicated. Bizarre. Whimsical as an elaborate prank, except a man died. It’s hard to imagine they pulled it off. Harder to reckon why they went to such trouble to kill one old man.”

“How could he fit out the window?” asked Bell. “They barred them up after that lunatic Anti-Saloon Leaguer tried to jump with a ba

“The bars were forced open with a barn jack.”

“It takes time to crank a barn jack. Why didn’t anyone stop him?”

“No one saw. The window on the west had been cordoned off from the observation area with canvas drapes to ensure the privacy of an artist painting the view.”

“Where was the artist?”

“No one is exactly sure they ever saw the artist. He left behind his paint box and his easel but no painting. According to Archie, it’s not clear he did more than set up his easel. And before you ask his name, it was very likely a false name.”

“What was it?”

“This is where things turn complicated. I’ll get to his name in a moment.”

“I’ve had a very long day, Grady. What is going on?”

“I don’t know. Other than to say that the Army—or at least the U.S. Army colonel in command of the Washington Monument, whom Archie interviewed—gave the artist permission to paint the view privately behind canvas curtains because permission was requested as a personal favor by a famous Army sharpshooter.”

15

He won the President’s Medal in 1902.”

Isaac Bell sank in his armchair to ponder that. “In other words, he’s the best.”

“The most accurate marksman in 1902.”

“They shoot up to a thousand yards,” said Bell. “What’s his name?”

“Private Billy Jones.”

“People who are legitimately named Jones and Smith should be issued special identifying cards to prove they didn’t make it up.”

“Private Billy ‘Jones’ deserted the First Regiment of Newark, New Jersey National Guard, shortly after he won his medal.”

“Why did the Army give permission to paint in the monument? Why didn’t they just arrest him?”

“He didn’t ask the entire Army. He asked the idiot colonel in command of the monument. Mailed him a letter. The damned fool had not heard the news that their champion sharpshooter deserted. It happened three years ago and it’s likely the Army covered it up, being embarrassed.”

“Not to mention terrified to tell TR,” said Bell.

A smile lit Forrer’s solemn expression. “Grim thought, Isaac. Teddy is not a president that a career officer would want to disappoint.”

“So no one saw the bars jacked open behind the canvas erected for an artist no one saw. Therefore, no one saw whether old Lapham jumped or was thrown.”

“Two men brought him there. Doctors.”

“Then we’ll start with the doctors.”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Now what?” asked Bell.

“The Army hasn’t informed the police yet, so the news reporters don’t know, but Archie’s friend the half-wit colonel admitted the doctors vanished, and no one knows if they really were doctors or merely carrying medical bags.”

“Further suggesting it was murder,” said Bell.

Forrer repeated a saying Bell had heard from him often: “The job of the chief of Van Dorn Research is to sort fact from assumption.”

“You are provoking me toward sarcasm, Grady. If it wasn’t murder, then the men pretending to be doctors who delivered Lapham to the top of the monument carried a barn jack in their medical bag and left it with Lapham, who used it to jack open the bars so he could jump out the window.”

“Seen that way, it does suggest murder,” Forrer admitted.

“But like you just said, why go to so much trouble to kill one old guy? You could pop him on the head and say he fell off his chair . . . In fact, it’s less complicated than showy.”

“Did our assassin use the name of a famous sharpshooter, gambling that the colonel didn’t know he was a deserter?”

“Or is our assassin the deserter himself? He’s proven himself a champion marksman.” Bell shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would he draw such attention to himself if he’s been safely disappeared for three years?”

It struck Isaac Bell that the assassin’s remarkable shooting was merely a means. He had been thinking about him as a sniper. Now he had to think about him as a murderer who would use various means to kill.

“You were going to tell me the supposed artist’s name.”

Forrer nodded. “At this point, it moves into the realm of the bizarre. The artist called himself Isaac Bell.”

“What?”

“He knows you’re working up the case, Isaac.”

Isaac Bell stood out of his chair and stalked through the empty lounge to the tall windows that overlooked West 44th Street. A thin smile formed on his lips.

“He’s calling you out!” said Forrer, who had grown up in the Deep South where calling a man out meant parking yourself on his front lawn with a gun in your hand until he came out shooting.

“Sounds that way.” Bell stared down at 44th Street. Carriages and motor limousines were returning for the night to the many stables and garages on the block.

Suddenly he stared unseeing out the window. “At last.”

“At last what?” Forrer asked.

“At last he’s made a mistake.”

“Thinking he can take you?”

“That, too.”

The tall detective turned abruptly and crossed the big room in several strides, his face alight with energy. “We’re finally getting something. Let’s find out who this champion really is.”

Forrer climbed out of his chair and rose to his full height. “I’ll go back to the office.” He kept a cot there, and Bell knew that after a short nap he would dive into his files. Assistants and apprentices arriving for work early would find their boss deep in newspapers and magazines and telegrams from the agency’s private wires.

Bell walked him down to the front door.

“There’s something else I want you to look into.”

“What’s that?”

“Edna Matters has an interesting theory.” He told him Edna’s theory about John D. Rockefeller’s newspaper code.

Forrer was intrigued by the idea of far-flung Rockefeller operatives reading the newspapers for his instructions. “Not to mention those hundreds of ‘correspondents’ spying for Standard Oil around the world, reading the papers and realizing what he wants information on.”

“Can you crack it?”

“It isn’t only what he says,” Forrer explained, “but when he says it. He’s referring to things they already know, telling them now we wait, now we get ready, now we move.”

“Check your files back to January when Rockefeller was in Ca

“I’ll start earlier.”

“The phrase about watching children digging in the sand appears only in recent weeks.”

“I’ll pay particular attention to it. What do you want me to tell Mr. Van Dorn?”

“Tell him the assassin is not quite as professional as he thinks he is.”

“He’s going to ask me what you mean. I’d like to have an answer ready.”

“Tell him the assassin is a show-off.”