The Wrecker

38

“WHEN IT COMES TO POLITICS,” OSGOOD HENNESSY SNORTED IN answer to Isaac Bell’s question, “I’ll believe anything that happens.”

Isaac Bell said, “I’m serious, sir. Do you believe that Kincaid is making an earnest run for the office of president?”

“Politicians can delude themselves into anything that suits their fancy. Could he get elected? I suppose. Voters do the damnedest things. Thank God, women don’t vote. He’d get elected on his pretty-boy looks alone.”

“But could he get nominated?” Bell pressed.

“That’s the real issue.”

“He’s got Preston Whiteway behind him. Whiteway must think there’s a chance.”

“That rabble-rouser will stop at nothing to sell newspapers. Don’t forget, win or lose, Kincaid for President still makes for a story right up to the last night of the convention.”

Bell named several of the California businessmen in Whiteway’s group. “Do they really believe they could bull Kincaid past the party regulars?”

Osgood Hennessy chuckled cynically. “Successful businessmen believe they succeed because they’re intelligent. Fact is, most businessmen are birdbrains except for that one small thing each was clever at in order to make money. But I don’t understand why they wouldn’t be perfectly happy with William Howard Taft. Surely they know that if they split the party, they would hand the election to the Democrats and William Jennings Bryan, that populist fiend. Hell, maybe they’re just soaking up a free holiday at Whiteway’s expense.”

“Maybe,” said Bell.

“Why do you ask?” said Hennessy, probing him with shrewd eyes.

Bell probed back. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“You wouldn’t by any chance be undermining your friend’s rival for my daughter’s hand?”

Bell stood up. “I’m not sly. Nor furtive. I’ll tell you here and now, to your face, that your daughter deserves better than Charles Kincaid. Good night, sir.”

“Wait,” said Hennessy. “Wait . . . Wait… I apologize. That was uncalled for and obviously not true. You’re a straight shooter. I do apologize. Sit down. Keep an old man company for a moment. Emma will be back from her walk any minute.”

CHARLES KINCAID SAW EMMA COMDEN to the door of the double stateroom she shared with Osgood Hennessy. They heard Bell and Hennessy still talking in the parlor at the front of the car.

“Thank you for walking me to see the stars, Senator.”

“A pleasure as always. Good night, Mrs. Comden.”

They shook hands chastely. Then Kincaid headed to his own stateroom several cars back in the special. His knees were shaking, the usual effect Emma Comden had on him, his head still reeling, and he had unlocked his door and closed it behind him before he realized that someone was sitting in the easy chair. Dow? Escaping pursuit? Never. By the killer’s strict code, he would shoot himself in the head before he would risk betraying a friend. Kincaid pulled his derringer from his pocket and turned up the light.

Eric Soares said, “Surprise, Senator.”

“How did you get in here?” Kincaid asked the engineer.

“Jimmied the lock,” he answered nonchalantly.

“What the dickens for?”

Soares removed his wire-rimmed glasses and made a show of polishing them with his handkerchief. Finally, he put them back on, smoothed the tips of his handlebar mustache, and answered, “Blackmail.”

“Blackmail?” Kincaid echoed, thinking furiously.

As Senator Kincaid, he knew that Eric Soares was engineer Franklin Mowery’s assistant. Only as the Wrecker did he know that Soares falsified inspection reports to Mowery about the state of the stone piers supporting the Cascade Canyon Bridge.

He pressed the derringer to the young engineer’s head. Soares didn’t flinch.

“You can’t shoot me in your own stateroom. Which is mighty fancy compared to my miserable little upper Pullman berth. It’s even posher than Mr. Mowery’s.”

“I can shoot you and will,” Kincaid said coldly. “It was dark. I didn’t realize it was poor Mr. Soares startling me. I thought it was a radical assassin and defended myself.”

“That might satisfy the law. But shooting an orphan who is practically the adopted son of the most famous bridge builder on the continent will not exactly boost your presidential hopes.”

Kincaid pocketed his gun, poured himself a brandy from the crystal decanter provided by the Southern Pacific Railroad, and sipped it while leaning on the paneled wall and staring down at the intruder. He was greatly relieved. Soares, like everyone else, believed his Kincaid for President sham. That probably meant Soares did not know that he was the Wrecker. But what did he know that he thought was worth blackmail?

“I’d like a drink, too.”

Kincaid ignored the request. While it might be helpful to get him intoxicated, it would be more helpful to remind the little weasel of his place.

“You’re absolutely right about my political aspirations,” he said. “So let’s stop playing games. You’ve broken in here for a purpose. What is it? What do you want?”

“I told you. Money.”

“Why would I give you money? For what?”

“Don’t be dense, Senator. For not revealing that you hold a controlling interest in the Union Pier and Caisson Company of St. Louis, Missouri.”

The Wrecker concealed his astonishment, but only just. He felt the legs knocked out from under him, and this time he couldn’t blame Emma Comden.

“What gave you that idea?” he asked.

“I got curious about who was paying me to lie about the piers. Reckoned sabotaging the biggest bridge in the West ought to be worth a few bucks more if I knew who my bribes came from. So I went to my old bunkie from the orphanage. He took up banking when I took up engineering. He explored a maze of holding companies. The maze turned into a jungle, but my old bunkie is really good. He finally traced them back to you. You bought enough shares secretly, a controlling interest, in the company building the piers for the Cascade Canyon Bridge.”

It had to happen sometime, Kincaid thought bleakly. But it never occurred to him that disaster would come at him like a bad joke: tripped up by an orphan whom a kindhearted bridge builder took under his wing.

Kincaid surveyed his options. Kill Soares, if not tonight, tomorrow or the next day. Wring the name of his confederate out of him before he died and kill bunkie, too. Unfortunately, he needed Eric Soares, to continue concealing the truth about the piers. Mowery would immediately replace him if he disappeared. Upon close inspection, and a thorough review of Eric’s doctored reports, any competent engineer who took over his position would see that the piers were not strong enough to support the bridge when the river rose.

Soares said, “You’re working for the Wrecker just like me.”

“I suppose I should be grateful that you’re not accusing me of being the Wrecker himself.”

“Don’t make me laugh. You’ve got too big a future as a senator. Even president, if I don’t turn you in.”

Home free, thought Kincaid. In the clear.

“How much do you want?”

“Triple what your Union Pier and Caisson Company pays me to look the other way.”

Kincaid reached for his wallet. “I think I can arrange that,” he said, not at all surprised by how small Soares’s dreams were.

ISAAC BELL FINALLY TORE himself loose from Osgood Hennessy and hurried back to the stateroom cars. As he passed through Hennessy’s Nancy No. 2 car, Lillian Hennessy lurched out of her stateroom and blocked the way with a bottle of Mumm. She had changed out of her gown into a clinging robe and had removed her pearl-and-diamond choker, revealing the smooth skin of her throat. Her hair was down, draping her shoulders, and her pale blue eyes were warm. The bottle was dripping from the ice bucket, the foil torn off. But the wire muzzle still held the cork firmly in place.

“I eavesdropped,” she whispered. “Thank you for saying what you did about Archie.”

“I only told the truth.”

She thrust the bottle into Bell’s hand.

“For Marion. Tell her, Sweet dreams.”

Bell leaned down and kissed her cheek.

“Good night.”

He paused in the baggage car and spoke with the sleepy telegrapher. No urgent telegrams. He pulled open the rear baggage car door and crossed the vestibule, reaching for the door to the first car of staterooms. A smile lit his face. He felt like a kid. His mouth was dry just thinking of Marion. Good thing they had Lillian’s champagne.

He pushed through the door into the side corridor that was lined with night-blackened windows on the right side and the polished-walnut stateroom doors on the left. A man was hurrying along the far end of the corridor. There was something furtive in his movement, and Bell paused to observe him. Small to medium build, wearing a black sack suit. Dark hair. As the man turned the slight jog to exit into the vestibule, Bell glimpsed his pencil-thin handlebar mustache and wire-rimmed glasses.

Eric Soares, Mowery’s assistant, apparently just leaving the old man’s stateroom and heading back to his berth in the Pullman cars. Thinking that the hour was awfully late for a meeting, particularly after the old man had been up late at the long banquet, Bell gave Soares plenty of time to pass through the next car rather than get delayed by a conversation.

Finally, Bell walked the length of Car 3, pushed into its rear vestibule, and crossed the coupling into the vestibule of Car 4.

PHILIP D ow HEARD SOMEONE coming, pressed deeper into the porter’s closet, and peered through a crack in the curtain. His ears told him it was not Isaac Bell, but a smaller man, unless the detective was exceptionally light on his feet. He did not slow as he passed the curtain, but hurried along as if passing through the stateroom car on his way farther back in the train. Dow’s ears were accurate. A slim man in a black suit whisked past Marion Morgan’s stateroom and pushed through the rear door that led to the Pullman cars.

A minute later, he heard heavier footfalls. He waited until the man passed before he parted the curtain. Sure enough. Taller than Kincaid, a yellow-haired man in fancy duds from the banquet was making a beeline for Marion Morgan’s door. He was carrying a bottle of champagne and humming a tune, “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”

Dow heard the words of the song’s Chicago version in his head as he ran silently, swinging the sap:

Old Mrs. Leary left the lantern in the shed

and when the cow kicked it over,

she winked her eye and said

it’ll be a hot time, in the old town, tonight!

FIRE FIRE FIRE!