The Assassin

“That’ll take forever.”

“Before Matters makes it back from Europe.”

Bell put on his hat, pulled the brim low over his eyes, and headed out the door. “Anyone needs me, I’ll be at the Normandie.” It was time to tap the deep well of the Boss’s experience with criminals and their crimes.

—

The Normandie Hotel’s ground-floor bar at Broadway and 38th catered to out-of-town salesmen and the wholesalers whose warehouse lofts occupied the West 30s side streets off the hotel district. Joseph Van Dorn’s corner table commanded the room, the long bar, and the steadily swinging saloon doors. On the table stood a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Operating in affable-businessman mode, peering about benignly, the founder of the detective agency could be mistaken for a top salesman, a “commission man” who paid his own expenses.

“If Riggs was blackmailing Matters, and if Spike’s so-called trick up his sleeve was to blackmail Matters, does throwing John D. Rockefeller off the Orient Express make him our assassin?” he asked Bell.

“Matters was sitting in the same auto, three feet away, when the assassin shot me in Baku.”

“He could have staged it. Paid a rifleman to shoot, pretending he was the assassin.”

“That could explain why he missed an easy shot,” Bell said. “But no, they’re not the same man. Matters is the mastermind, not the assassin.”

“If I were you,” said Van Dorn, “I would worry less about Matters than the assassin.”

“Bill Matters was gripped by a killing rage,” said Isaac Bell. “I guarantee he will make his way home from Europe and attack again.”

Van Dorn shook his head. “Matters is a business man on the run, not exactly his strength. The assassin is operating in a world he’s chosen.” He splashed Bushmills in both their glasses. “Don’t you find it curious we haven’t caught him?”

“Yet,” said Bell.

“This killer has taken every chance in the book,” said Van Dorn. “Shooting his victims in broad daylight. Shooting in public places. Staging elaborate scenarios—the Washington Monument monkeyshine was positively byzantine.”

“Clyde Lapham.”

“But hardly a singular event if you consider his shooting-duck trick and the killings of Reed Riggs and the poor fellow who fell in the oil vat.”

“Albert Hill.”

“Not to mention that woman who burned to death.”

“Mary McCloud.”

“And still we haven’t caught him. Either he is the luckiest devil alive or we are the sorriest detectives alive.”

“There’s another possibility,” said Bell.

“What’s that?”

“He’s not afraid of getting caught.”

“If he believes that,” said Van Dorn, “he is crack-brained and we should have hanged him long ago. There is no ‘perfect crime.’ And certainly no string of perfect crimes. No matter how craftily they plan, things go wrong and criminals get caught.”

“This killer is not afraid. He’s like the drunk who falls down but doesn’t get hurt; never tightens up, just lands soft in a heap.”

“Maybe he’s not afraid because he’s nuts.”

Bell said, “If he’s nuts, he’s a very slick nuts. Nothing fazes him. He never panics. Just changes course and slides away like mercury.”

“He would not be the first murderer without a conscience. Could it simply be that he’s not afraid because he doesn’t feel guilty?”

“Or can’t imagine getting caught.”

“Delusions of grandeur?”

“It’s almost as if he’s enjoying himself.”

Van Dorn’s eyes narrowed at the sight of a well-dressed gentleman who pushed through the swinging doors. He shot a glance across the busy barroom at the floor manager. The floor manager followed Van Dorn’s warning nod, belatedly recognized the new arrival for the type of grifter who preyed on out-of-town customers, and guided him out to the sidewalk.

Van Dorn said, “I want to know why the assassin takes such chances. Among others, he left his rifle—a unique weapon. Any progress tracing it?”

“I’m about to interview a gunsmith the boys found in Bridgeport.”

“Took them long enough.”

Bell leaped to his people’s defense. “They investigated eighty-four gunsmiths across the continent.”

“I was not aware there were so many. I’ve been stuck in Washington.”

Bell said, “If the assassin is not afraid, maybe he wants to get caught.”

Van Dorn snorted like a walrus. “Subconsciously? You’ve been reading that Vie

“He’s pushed his luck every kill.”

“You’ve been lucky. This man who had hit a dime at seven hundred yards has missed you three times. Why does he miss you?”

Isaac Bell gri

Van Dorn did not laugh but answered soberly, “He won’t miss if you ever manage to put his back to the wall.”

“When I do, I won’t miss either.”

The underage probationary apprentice Eddie Tobin slipped quietly through the saloon doors. Van Dorn gave a brisk nod and the boy approached. “Message from Mr. Warren for Mr. Bell.”

Bell slit open the sealed envelope and read quickly.

“Tell Mr. Warren I said good work and thank you.”

Tobin left as unobtrusively as he had arrived.

Bell said to Van Dorn, “Bill Matters made it back to New York.”

“What? How’d he get here as fast as you did?”

“The Kaiser Wilhelm holds the Blue Riband.”

“He was on your ship?”

“According to Harry Warren,” Bell answered, face grim.

“You never saw him? Where was he hiding? Steerage?”

“I had Rockefeller persuade the purser to show me the manifests. I walked the ship night and day. I checked every man in First Class, Second, and double-checked Steerage.”

“Did he stow away?”

“He did better than that, according to Harry Warren. He wrangled a job on the black gang. Sneaked across the ocean shoveling coal in the ship’s boilers five decks under my nose.”

“Resourceful.”

Suspicion caromed through Bell’s mind. Had Edna and Nellie brought him decent food or visited him or let him rest in their cabin? Not likely on a strictly run German liner. They allowed no mingling of the classes, much less passengers and crew.

“I gather from your expression,” said Van Dorn, “that Harry Warren didn’t arrest Mr. Matters.”

“Matters brained a customs guard who spotted him sneaking off the ship. Harry Warren caught wind of it, traced him to the black gang, where he got a description from the engineers, and put two and two together.”

“So he’s somewhere in New York.”

“Or boarding a train going anywhere in the country.” Bell stood from the table. “I better warn Wish just in case he’s headed to Cleveland.”

“Do you think he’ll take another shot at Rockefeller?”

“He’s had a week to stew while shoveling coal in a hundred-ten-degree stokehold. And he knows we’ll catch him in the end. He’ll want to wreak more damage than killing one man.”

“Wanting and doing are two different things. Like I said, Matters is a business man on the run. Even if he’s a mastermind, being on the run makes him a fish out of water.”

“Until he joins up again with his personal assassin.”

33

Isaac Bell knew the great industrial city of Bridgeport well, having gone down to college in nearby New Haven. Bridgeport had provided Yale students carousing grounds beyond the long arm of the chaplain. More recently, he had bought his Locomobile at the company’s Bridgeport factory.

He parked the big red auto in front of the Zimmerman & Brassard gun shop. The partners Zimmerman and Brassard had long since retired on fortunes made from the Civil War, leaving the shop to a talented apprentice with the business acumen to retain the famous name that was set above the door in gunmetal letters. He was middle-aged by now, a slight, precise man with a pencil-thin mustache and wire-rimmed spectacles.