The Wrecker

25

MARION MORGAN STOOD OUTSIDE ON THE OPEN DECK OF THE Jersey Central Ferry. She pressed against the railing, ignoring the rain. Her heart was pounding with joy and excitement. She had not seen New York City since her father had taken her on a trip back East when she was a little girl. Now dozens of skyscrapers with lighted windows soared just across the river. And somewhere on that fabled island was her beloved Isaac Bell.

She had debated whether to wire ahead or surprise him. She had settled on surprise. Her trip had been on again and off again and on again as Preston Whiteway juggled his busy schedule. He had decided at the last minute to stay in California and send her to meet with his bankers in New York to present his proposal for financing the Picture World moving picture newsreels. The brash young newspaper publisher must have been impressed enough by her banking experience to give her such an important assignment. But the real reason he would send a woman, she suspected, was that he hoped to woo her and thought that the way to her heart was to respect her independence. She had invented a phrase to emphasize to the persistent Whiteway her commitment to Isaac.

My heart is spoken for.

She had already had to use it twice. But it said it all, and she would use it ten times if she had to.

The rain was thinning and the city lights were bright. As soon as she got to her hotel, she would telephone Isaac at the Yale Club. Respectable hotels like the Astor frowned upon unmarried women receiving gentleman visitors. But there wasn’t a house dick in the country who would not turn a blind eye to a Van Dorn operative. Professional courtesy, Isaac would smile.

The ferry tooted its whistle. She felt the propellers shudder beneath her feet. As they pulled away from the New Jersey shore, she saw the sails of an old-fashioned schooner silhouetted by a brightly lighted pier.

IT HAD TAKEN FOUR men a full ten minutes to lift the heavy automatic machine gun atop the boxcar. And as Isaac Bell had predicted, the railroad police manning the water-cooled, tripod-mounted, belt-fed Vickers on top of the dynamite train stayed wide awake. But Eddie Edwards, the forty-year-old Van Dorn investigator with a startling shock of prematurely white hair, kept climbing up the boxcar’s ladder to check on them anyway.

Their weapon was equally reliable, adapted from the Maxim gun which had proved itself mowing down African armies. One of the rail bulls was a transplanted Englishman who told tales of slaughtering “natives” with a Maxim in the previous decade’s colonial wars. Edwards had instructed him to leave the natives of Jersey City alone. Unless they tried something. The old gangs there weren’t as tough as they had been when Edwards had led the Van Dorn fight to clear the rail yards, but they were still ornery.

Standing on top of the railcar, turning slowly on his heel and surveying the machine gun’s field of fire, which now encompassed a full circle, Edwards was reminded of the old days guarding bullion shipments. Of course the Lava Bed Gang’s weapons in those days were mostly lead pipes, brass knuckles, and the occasional sawed-off shotgun. He watched a brightly lit ferry leaving Communipaw Terminal. He turned back toward the gate, blocked by three coal tenders and manned by cinder dicks with rifles, and saw that the freight yards looked as calm as a freight yard ever looked. Switch engines were scuttling about making up trains. But in each cab rode an armed detective. He looked back at the river. The rain was lifting. He could see the lights of New York City clearly now.

“Is that schooner going to run into that steam lighter?”

“No. They were close, but they’re moving apart. See? He’s sailing off, and the lighter’s turning this way.”

“I see,” said Edwards, his jaw tightening. “Where the hell is he going?”

“Coming our way.”

Edwards watched, liking the situation less and less.

“How far is that red buoy?” he asked.

“The red light? I’d say a quarter mile.”

“If he passes that buoy, give him four rounds ahead of his bow.”

“You mean that?” the rail cop asked dubiously.

“Dammit, yes, I mean it. Get set to fire.”

“He’s passing it, Mr. Edwards.”

“Shoot! Now!”

The water-cooled Vickers made an oddly muffled pop-pop-pop-pop noise. Where the bullets hit was too far off in the dark to see. The steam lighter kept coming straight at the powder pier.

“Give him ten rounds across the roof of his wheelhouse.”

“That’ll be a wake-up call,” said the Englishman. “Those slugs sound like thunder overhead.”

“Just make sure you’re clear behind him. I don’t want to rake some poor tugboat.”

“Clear.”

“Fire! Now! Don’t wait!”

The canvas cartridge belt twitched. Ten rounds spit from the barrel. A wisp of steam rose from the water cooler.

The boat kept coming.

Eddie Edwards wet his lips. God knew who was on it. A drunk? A frightened boy at the helm while his captain slept? A terrified old man who had no clue where the shooting was coming from?

“Get up there in the light. Wave them off… Not you! You stay on the gun.”

The belt feeder and the water bearer jumped up and down on the roof of the boxcar, frantically waving their arms. The boat kept coming.

“Get out of the way!” Edwards told them. “Shoot the wheelhouse.” He grabbed the belt and began feeding as the gun opened up in a continuous roar.

Two hundred rounds spewed from its barrel, crossed a quarter mile of water, and tore through the steam lighter’s wheelhouse, scattering wood and glass. Two rounds smashed the top spoke of the helm. Another cut the rope looped around the helm and it was suddenly free to turn. But water passing over the rudder held it steady on course to the powder pier. Then the frame of the wheelhouse collapsed. The roof fell on the helm, pushing the spokes down, turning the wheel and the rudder to which it was attached.

THE SECOND ACT OF the Follies started off big and got bigger. The “Ju-Jitsu Waltz,” featuring Prince Tokio “straight from Japan,” was followed by a comic song “I Think I Oughtn’t Auto Any More”:… happened to be smoking when I got beneath her car, gasoline was leaking and fell on my cigar, blew that chorus girl so high I thought she was a star…

When the song was over, a solitary snare drum began to rattle. A single chorus girl in a blue blouse, a short white skirt, and red tights marched across the empty stage. A second snare drum joined in. A second chorus girl fell in with the first. Then another drum and another girl. Then six drums were rattling and six chorus girls marching to and fro. Then another and another. Bass drums took up the beat with a thumping that shook the seats. Suddenly, all fifty of the most beautiful chorus girls on Broadway broke off their dance on stage, snatched up fifty drums from stacks beside the wings, ran down the stairs on either side, and stormed the aisles pounding their drums and kicking their red-clad legs.

“Aren’t you glad we came?” shouted Abbott.

Bell looked up. A flash through the skylight caught his eye, as if the theater were training lights down from the roof in addition to those already blazing on the stage. It looked as if the night sky were on fire. He felt a harsh thump shake the building and thought for a moment it was the rolling shock wave of an earthquake. Then he heard a thunderous explosion.