The Wrecker

17

“MR. PAYNE,” ASKED ISAAC BELL. “HOW MUCH MONEY IS IN the pot?”

“Well, let me see … The pot now contains two hundred thirty-seven thousand six hundred dollars.”

Bell mentally counted steelworkers. Four hundred men together could earn that pot in a good year. Ten men, if they were fortunate enough to survive long working lives uninterrupted by injury and lay-off, might together earn that amount between boyhood and old age.

Congdon asked innocently, “Mr. Payne, what will the pot contain if Mr. Bell continues to believe that his two-card draw improved him sufficiently to call?”

“Umm, the pot would contain four hundred seventy-five thousand two hundred dollars.”

“Nearly half a million dollars,” said the judge. “This is turning into real money.”

Bell decided that Congdon was talking too much. The hard old steel baron actually sounded nervous. Like a man holding a straight, which, in pat-hand terms, was at the bottom of the barrel. “May I presume, sir, that you will accept my check on the American States Bank of Boston?”

“Of course, son. We’re all gentlemen here.”

“I call, and I raise four hundred seventy-five thousand two hundred dollars.”

“I’m skunked,” said Congdon, throwing his cards on the table.

Kincaid smiled, obviously relieved that Congdon was out of the hand.

“How many cards did you take, Mr. Bell?”

“Two.”

Kincaid stared for a long time at the cards Bell cupped in his hand. When Bell looked up, he let his mind stray, which made it easier to appear unconcerned whether Kincaid called or folded.

The Pullman car was swaying due to an increase in speed. The muffling effect of the rugs and furniture in the palatial stateroom tended to mask the fact that they had accelerated to eighty miles an hour on the flats of Wyoming’s Great Divide Basin. Bell knew this arid, windblown high country well, having spent months on horseback tracking the Wild Bunch.

Kincaid’s fingers strayed toward the vest pocket where he kept his calling cards. The man had large hands, Bell noticed. And powerful wrists.

“That is a lot of money,” the Senator said.

“A lot for a public servant,” Congdon agreed. Annoyed that he had been forced out of the hand, he added another unpleasant reference to the Senator’s railroad stocks. “Even one with ‘interests’ on the side.”

Payne repeated Congdon’s estimate. “Nearly half a million dollars.”

“Serious money in these days of panic, with the markets falling,” Congdon added.

“Mr. Bell,” asked Kincaid, “what does a detective hanging off the side of a train do when a criminal starts hammering on his fingers?”

“Depends,” said Bell.

“On what?”

“On whether he’s been trained to fly.”

Kenny Bloom laughed.

Kincaid’s eyes never left Bell’s face. “Have you been trained to fly?”

“Not yet.”

“So what do you do?”

“I hammer back,” said Bell.

“I believe you do,” said Kincaid. “I fold.”

Still expressionless, Bell laid his cards facedown on the table and raked in nine hundred fifty thousand four hundred dollars in gold, markers, and checks, including his own. Kincaid reached for Bell’s cards. Bell placed his hand firmly on top of them.

“Curious what you had under there,” said Kincaid.

“So am I,” said Congdon. “Surely you weren’t bluffing against two pat hands.”

“It crossed my mind that the pat hands were bluffing, Judge.”

“Both? I don’t think so.”

“I sure as hell wasn’t bluffing,” said Kincaid. “I had a very pretty heart flush.”

He turned his cards over and spread them faceup so all could see.

“God Almighty, Senator!” said Payne, “Eight, nine, ten, jack, king. Just one short of a straight flush. You’d sure as hell have raised back with that.”

“Short being the key word,” observed Bloom. “And a reminder that straight flushes are scarcer than hens’ teeth.”

“I would very much like to see your cards, Mr. Bell,” said Kincaid.

“You didn’t pay to see them,” said Bell.

Congdon said, “I’ll pay.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“It’s worth one hundred thousand dollars to me to prove that you had a high three of a kind and then drew a pair to make a full house. Which would beat the Senator’s flush and my miserable straight.”

“No bet,” said Bell. “An old friend of mine used to say a bluff should keep them guessing.”

“Just as I thought,” said Congdon. “You won’t take the bet because I’m right. You got lucky and caught another pair.”

“If that is what you would like to believe, Judge, we’ll both go home happy.”

“Dammit!” said the steel magnate. “I’ll make it two hundred thousand. Just show me your hand.”

Bell turned them over. “That fellow also said to show them now and then to make them wonder. You were right about the high three of a kind.”

The steel magnate stared. “I’ll be damned. Three lonely ladies. You were bluffing. You only had trips. I’d have beat you with my straight. Though your flush would have beaten me, Charlie. If Mr. Bell hadn’t forced us both out.”

Charles Kincaid exploded, “You bet half a million dollars on three lousy queens?”

“I’m partial to the ladies,” said Isaac Bell. “Always have been.”

KINCAID REACHED ACROSS AND touched the queens as if not quite believing his eyes. “I will have to arrange to transfer funds when I get to Washington,” he said stiffly.

“No rush,” Bell said graciously. “I’d have had to ask the same.”

“Where should I mail my check?”

“I’ll be at the Yale Club of New York City.”

“Son,” said Congdon, writing a check for which he did nothave to transfer funds to cover, “you sure paid for your train ticket.”

“Train ticket, hell,” said Bloom. “He could buy the train.”

“Sold!” Bell laughed. “Come back to my observation car and drinks are on me, and maybe a bite of late supper. All this bluffing makes me hungry.”

As Bell led them to the rear of the train, he wondered why Senator Kincaid had folded. It had been a strictly correct move, he supposed, but after Congdon had folded it was a lot more cautious than Kincaid had been all night, which was puzzling. It was almost if Kincaid had been acting a bit more the fool earlier than he really was. And what was all that blather about Osgood Hennessy taking enormous risks? He certainly hadn’t improved his benefactor’s standing with the bankers.

Bell ordered champagne for all in the observation car and asked the stewards to serve up a late-night supper. Kincaid said he could stay for only one quick glass. He was tired, he said. But he let Bell pour him a second glass of champagne and then ate some steak and eggs and seemed to get over his disappointment at the card table. The players mingled with one another and some other travelers who were passing the night drinking. Groups formed fluidly, broke up, and formed again. The tale of the three queens was told over and over. As the crowd thinned, Isaac Bell found himself alone with Ken Bloom, Judge Congdon, and Senator Kincaid, who remarked, “I understand you’ve been showing the train crew a wanted poster.”

“A sketch of a man we’re investigating,” Bell answered.

“Show us!” said Bloom. “Maybe we’ve seen him.”

Bell took one from his coat, pushed plates aside, and spread it on the table.

Bloom took one look. “That’s the actor! In The Great Train Robbery. ”

“Is it really the actor?” asked Kincaid.

“No. But there is a similarity to Broncho Billy Anderson.”

Kincaid trailed his fingers across the sketch. “I think he looks like me.”

“Arrest this man!” laughed Ken Bloom.

“He does,” said Congdon. “Sort of. This fellow has chiseled features. So does the Senator. Look at the cleft in the chin. You’ve got one of those too, Charles. I heard a bunch of damned fool women in Washington squawking like hens that you look like a matinee idol.”

“My ears aren’t that big, are they?”

“ No.”

“That’s a relief,” said Kincaid. “I can’t be a matinee idol with big ears.”

Bell laughed. “My boss warned us, ‘Don’t arrest any ugly mugs.”’

Curiously, he looked from the sketch to the Senator and back to the sketch. There was a similarity in the high brow. The ears were definitely different. Both the suspect in the sketch and the Senator had intelligent faces with strong features. So did a lot of men, as Joseph Van Dorn had pointed out. Where the Senator and the suspect diverged, in addition to ear size, was the penetrating gaze. The man who had struck the lumberjack with a crowbar looked harder and filled with purpose. It was hardly surprising that he had looked intense to the man he was attacking. But Kincaid did not seem driven by purpose. Even at the height of their betting duel, Kincaid had struck him as essentially self-satisfied and self-indulgent, more the servant of the powerful than powerful himself. Although, Bell reminded himself, he had wondered earlier whether Kincaid playing the fool was an act.

“Well,” said Kincaid, “if we see this fellow, we’ll nab him for you.

“If you do, stay out of his way and call for reinforcements,” Bell said soberly. “He is poison.”

“All right, I’m off to bed. Long day. Good night, Mr. Bell,” Kincaid said cordially. “Interesting playing cards with you.”

“Expensive, too,” said Judge Congdon. “What are you going to do with all those winnings, Mr. Bell?”

“I’m going to buy my fiancee a mansion.”

“Where?”

“San Francisco. Up on Nob Hill.”

“How many survived the earthquake?”

“The one I’m thinking of was built to stand for a thousand years. The only trouble is, it might hold ghosts for my fiancee. It belonged to her former employer, who turned out to be a depraved bank robber and murderer.”

“In my experience,” Congdon chuckled, “the best way to make a woman comfortable in a previous woman’s house is to hand her a stick of dynamite and instruct her to enjoy the process of redecorating. I’ve done it repeatedly. Works like a charm. That might apply to former employers, too.”

Charles Kincaid rose and said good night all around. Then he asked, casually, almost mockingly, “Whatever happened to the depraved bank robber and murderer?”

Isaac Bell looked the Senator in the eye until the Senator dropped his gaze. Only then did the tall detective say, “I ran him to ground, Senator. He won’t hurt anyone ever again.”

Kincaid responded with a hearty laugh. “The famous Van Dorn motto: ‘We never give up.”’

“Never,” said Bell.

Senator Kincaid, Judge Congdon, and the others drifted off to bed, leaving Bell and Kenny Bloom alone in the observation car. Half an hour later, the train began to slow. Here and there, a light shone in the black night. The outskirts of the town of Rawlins took shape. The Overland Limited trundled through dimly lit streets.

THE WRECKER GAUGED THE train’s speed from the platform at the end of the Pullman car that housed his stateroom. Bell’s sketch had shaken him far more than his enormous losses at poker. The money meant nothing in the long run, because he would soon be richer than Congdon, Bloom, and Moser combined. But the sketch represented a rare piece of bad luck. Someone had seen his face and described him to an artist. Fortunately, they’d got his ears wrong. And thank God for the resemblance to the movie star. But he could not count on those lucky breaks confusing Isaac Bell for much longer.

He jumped from the slowing train, and set out to explore the dark streets. He had to work fast. The stop was scheduled for only thirty minutes, and he didn’t know Rawlins. But there was a pattern to railroad towns, and he believed the flow of luck that had moved against him tonight was shifting his way. For one thing, Isaac Bell’s guard was down. The detective was exhilarated by his great fortune at the card table. And it was likely that among the telegraph messages waiting at the depot would be tragic news from Ogden that would throw him for a loop.

He found what he was looking for within minutes, tracing the sound of a piano to a saloon, which was still going strong even though it was well past midnight. He didn’t push through the swinging doors but instead filled his hand with a fat wad of money and circled the saloon by plunging fearlessly down side and back alleys. Bright lights from the second story revealed the dance hall and gambling casino, duller lights the cribs of the attached brothel. The sheriff, bribed to ignore the illegal operations, wouldn’t venture near their doors. Bouncers were hired, therefore, to keep the peace and discourage robbers. And there they were.

Two broken-nosed, bare-knuckle boxers of the type that competed at rodeos and Elk halls were smoking cigarettes on the plank steps that led upstairs. They eyed him with increasing interest as he approached unsteadily. Twenty feet from the steps, he stumbled and reached out to the wall to catch his balance. His hand touched the rough wood precisely where a shaft of light spilled down from above and illuminated the cash he was holding. The two stood up, exchanged glances, and flicked out their cigarettes.

The Wrecker reeled drunkenly away, lurching into the dark toward the open door of a livery stable. He saw another gleam of exchanged glances, as the bouncers’ luck seemed to get better and better. The drunk with the roll of dinero was making it easy for them to relieve him of it in private.

He got inside the stable ahead of them and swiftly chose a spot where light from next door spilled through a window. They came after him, the lead bouncer pulling a sap from his pocket. The Wrecker kicked his feet out from under him. The surprise was complete, and he fell to the hoof-beaten straw. His partner, comprehending that the Wrecker was not as drunk as they had supposed, raised his powerful fists.

The Wrecker went down on one knee, drew his knife from his boot, flicked his wrist. The blade leaped to its full length, the tip touching the bouncer’s throat. With his other hand, the Wrecker pressed his derringer to the temple of the man fallen in the straw. For a moment, the only sound was the piano in the distance and the bouncers’ hard, startled breath.

“Relax, gentlemen,” said the Wrecker. “It’s a business proposition. I will pay you ten thousand dollars to kill a passenger on the Overland Limited. You have twenty minutes before it leaves the station.”

The bouncers had no objection to killing a man for ten thousand dollars. The Wrecker could have bought them for five. But they were practical men.

“How do we get him off the train?”

“He is a protector of the innocent,” said the Wrecker. “He will come to the rescue of someone in danger-a damsel in distress, for example. Would such be available?”

They looked across the alley. A red brakeman’s lantern hung in a window. “For two dollars, she’ll be available.”

THE OVERLAND LIMITED had come to a stop with a metallic shriek of brake shoes and the clank of couplings in the narrow pool of electric light beside the low brick Rawlins Depot. Most of her passengers were asleep in their beds. The few who were not stepped onto the platform to stretch their legs only to retreat from the stink of alkali springs mingled with coal smoke. The train crew changed engines while provisions, newspapers, and telegrams came aboard.

The porter, the former slave Jonathan, approached Isaac Bell in the deserted observation car, where the detective was contentedly sprawled on a couch reminiscing with Kenneth Bloom about their days in the circus.

“Telegram from Ogden, Mr. Bell.”

Bell tipped the old man a thousand dollars.

“That’s all right, Jonathan,” he said, laughing. “I got lucky tonight. The least I can do is share the wealth. Excuse me a moment, Ken.” He turned away to read the wire.

His face turned cold even as hot tears burned his eyes.

“You all right, Isaac?” asked Ken.

“No,” he choked out, and stepped onto the rear platform to try to fill his lungs with the acrid-smelling air. Though it was the middle of the night, a shunt engine was moving freight cars about the yards. Bloom followed him out.

“What happened?”

“Weber and Fields …”

“Vaudeville? What are you talking about?”

All Isaac Bell could say was, “My old friends.” He crumpled the telegram in his fist, and whispered to himself, “Last thing I told them was to watch their step. I told them the Wrecker is poison.”

“Who?” asked Bloom.

Bell turned terrible eyes on him, and Bloom retreated hastily into the observation car.

Bell smoothed the telegraph flat and read it again. Their bodies had been found in an alley, two blocks from the office. They must have spotted the Wrecker and tailed him. It was hard to believe that a single man could have taken both veteran detectives down. But Wally had not been well. Maybe it had slowed him. As chief investigator, as the man responsible for the safety of his operatives, he should have replaced him-should have taken a vulnerable man out of danger.

Bell’s head felt like it would explode, it was so filled with pain and fury. For what felt like a very long time, he could not think. Then, gradually, it struck him that Wally and Mack had left him a dying legacy. The man they had tailed must have looked enough like the man in the lumberjack’s sketch to raise their suspicions. Otherwise, why would they have followed him into an alley? That he had turned on them and killed them proved that the sketch of the Wrecker was accurate, no matter how much it reminded people of a matinee idol.

The fresh locomotive hooted the go-ahead signal. Bell, gripping the platform handrail, tears streaming down his face, was so lost in his heartsick thoughts that he barely heard the whistle. When the train started moving, he grew vaguely aware that the crossties appeared to slide behind the observation car as it rolled out of the station and passed under the last electric light in the station yard.

A woman screamed.

Bell looked up. He saw her running down the tracks like she was trying to catch the accelerating train. Her white dress seemed to glow in the night, backlit as it was by the distance light. A man was lumbering after her, a hulking shape, who caught her in his arms and cut off her scream with a hand clapped over her mouth and forced her to the roadbed under the weight of his body.

Bell exploded into motion. He leaped over the railing and hit the ties running, pumping his legs as fast as he could. But the train was moving too fast, and he lost his balance. He tucked into a tight ball, shielded his face with his hands, hit the ties, and rolled between the rails as the train raced away at thirty miles an hour.

Bell rolled over a switch and stopped suddenly against a signal post. He jumped to his feet and ran to help the woman. The man had one hand around her throat and was ramming at her dress with the other.

“Let her go!” Bell shouted.

The man sprang to his feet.

“Get lost,” he told the woman.

“Pay me!” she demanded, thrusting out her hand. He slapped money in it. She cast Bell a blank look and walked back toward the distant depot. The man pretending to attack her turned on Bell, hurling punches like a prizefighter.

Staring in disbelief at the red light on the back of the Overland Limited disappearing into the night, Bell automatically ducked the man’s heavy blows and they passed harmlessly over his shoulder. Then a rock-hard fist slammed into the back of his head.

THE WRECKER WATCHED FROM the rear platform of the Overland Limited as the train picked up speed. The red light on the back of the observation car shone on the rails. Three stick figures growing smaller by the moment were silhouetted against the glow of the Rawlins rail yards. Two appeared stationary. The third bounced back and forth between them.

“Good-bye, Mr. Bell. Don’t forget to ‘hammer back.”’