The Wrecker

43

ISAAC BELL RACED ACROSS THE CONTINENT IN FOUR AND A HALF days. He took limited flyers when he could and chartered specials when the trains ran slow. He made the final eighteen-hour dash on the Broadway Limited, proudly named for the broad, four-tracked roadbed between Chicago and New York.

On the ferry to Manhattan, he saw how quickly Jersey City and the railroads were repairing the damage from the Wrecker’s dynamite explosion. The station roof was already replaced, and a new pier was rising where less than three weeks ago he had seen the blackened stumps of pilings submerged by the tide. The wrecked ships were gone, and while many windows were still covered with raw boards many more gleamed with new glass. The sight filled him with hope at first, reminding him that back in the Oregon Cascades Hennessy and Mowery were driving round-the-clock work gangs to save the Cascade Canyon Bridge. But, he admitted soberly, their task was vastly more difficult, if not downright impossible. The bridge’s very foundations were sabotaged. And the Wrecker was still at large, determined to wreak more damage.

Bell disembarked at Liberty Street and walked quickly to nearby Wall Street. On the corner of Broad stood the white marble headquarters of J. P. Morgan amp; Company.

“Isaac Bell to see Mr. Morgan.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

Bell opened his gold watch. “Mr. Joseph Van Dorn arranged our meeting for ten this morning. Your clock is slow.”

“Oh yes, of course, Mr. Bell. Sadly, however, Mr. Morgan had an abrupt change of plans. He is on the boat to England.”

“Who did he leave in his place?”

“Well, no one can take his place, but there is a gentleman who might be able to help you. Mr. Brooks.”

A messenger boy led Bell into the bowels of the building. He sat for nearly an hour in Brooks’s waiting room, which offered a view of a nickel-clad, steel-barred vault guarded by two armed men. He passed the time by working out the details of two foolproof robberies, a day job and a night job. Finally, he was ushered into Brooks’s office.

Brooks was short, compact, and curt. He greeted Bell irritably, without apology for keeping him waiting.

“Your meeting with Mr. Morgan was arranged without my knowledge. I’ve been instructed to answer your queries. I am a very busy man, and I cannot imagine what information I can impart to a detective.”

“I have one simple question,” said Bell. “Who would gain if the Southern Pacific Railroad Company went bankrupt?”

Brooks’s eyes gleamed with predatory interest.

“Do you have information to support that inference?”

“I infer nothing,” Bell retorted sternly before inadvertently injecting a fresh element into the endless battle to consolidate the railroads, and undermining Hennessy’s reputation in the marketplace. “I am asking who would gain if that event were to occur?”

“Let me get this straight, Detective. You have no information that Osgood Hennessy is in a weakened position?”

“Absolutely none.”

The interest slid out of Brooks’s eyes.

“Of course not,” he said sullenly. “Hennessy has been impregnable for thirty years.”

“If he were not-”

“If! If! If! Banking is not a business of ifs, Mr.”-he pretended to glance at Bell’s card as if to jog his memory-“Bell. Banking is a business of facts. Bankers do not speculate. Bankers act upon certainties. Hennessy speculates. Hennessy blunders ahead.”

“And yet,” Bell said mildly, “you say that Hennessy is impregnable.”

“He is crafty.”

Bell saw he was wasting his time. Closemouthed, and angling for profit, bankers like this one would give nothing to a stranger.

Brooks stood up abruptly. He stared down his nose at Bell, and said, “Frankly, I don’t understand why Mr. Morgan would waste his time answering a detective’s questions. I suppose it is another example of his overly kind nature.”

“Mr. Morgan is not kind,” Bell said, containing his anger as he rose to his full height. “Mr. Morgan is intelligent. He knows that he can learn valuable information by listening to another man’s questions. Which is why Mr. Morgan is your boss and you are his flunky.”

“Well! How dare-”

“Good day!”

Bell stalked out of J. P. Morgan’s building and across the street to his next meeting.

Half an hour later, he stalked out of that one, too, and if another banker had rubbed him the wrong way at that exact moment, he would have punched him in the mouth or simply shot him with his derringer. The thought provoked a rueful grin, and he stopped in the middle of the crowded sidewalk to consider if it would even be worth it to keep his next appointment.

“You look perplexed.”

Standing before him-gazing up with a warm, impish smile-was a handsome, dark-haired man in his early forties. He wore an expensive coat with a fur collar and on his head a yarmulka-a small, round disk of a velvet hat that bespoke the Hebrew faith.

“I am perplexed,” said Bell. “Who are you, sir?”

“I am Andrew Rubenoff.” He thrust out his hand. “And you are Isaac Bell.”

Astonished, Bell asked, “How did you know?”

“Sheer coincidence. Not coincidence that I recognize you. Just coincidence that I saw you standing here. Looking perplexed.”

“How did you recognize me?”

“Your photograph.”

Bell made a point of avoiding photographers. As he had reminded Marion, a detective had no use for a famous face.

Rubenoff smiled his understanding. “Not to worry. I have only seen your photograph on your father’s desk.”

“Ah. You’ve done business with my father.”

Rubenoff waggled his hand in a yes-and-no gesture. “On occasion, we consult.”

“You’re a banker?”

“So I am told,” he said. “In truth, when I arrived from Russia, I was not impressed by New York’s Lower East Side, so I took a train across the country. In San Francisco, I opened a saloon. Eventually, I met a pretty girl whose father owned a bank, and the rest is a very pleasant history.”

“Would you have time to join me at lunch?” said Isaac Bell. “I need to talk to a banker.”

“I am already spoken for lunch. But we can have tea in my offices.”

Rubenoff’s offices were around the corner on Rector Street, which the police had blocked off so a grand piano could be hoisted safely from an electric GMC moving van up to the fifth story, where a window had been removed. The open window belonged to Rubenoff, who ignored the commotion as he ushered Bell in. Through the gaping hole in his wall poured first a cold Hudson River wind, then the swaying black piano accompanied by the shouts of the movers. A matronly secretary brought tea in tall glasses.

Bell explained his mission.

“So,” said Rubenoff. “It’s not at all a coincidence. You would have found me eventually after others showed you the door. That I recognized you saves time and trouble.”

“I’m grateful for your help,” said Bell. “I got nowhere at Morgan. The boss was away.”

“Bankers are clannish,” said Rubenoff. “They band together, even though they dislike and distrust one another. The elegant bankers of Boston dislike the brash New Yorkers. The Protestants distrust the German Jews. The German Jews dislike Russian Jews like me. Dislike and distrust make the world go round. But enough philosophy. What precisely do you want to know?”

“Everyone agrees that Osgood Hennessy is impregnable. Is he?”

“Ask your father.”

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“You heard me,” he said sternly. “Don’t ignore the finest advice you could get in New York City. Ask your father. Give him my regards. And that is all you will hear from Andrew Rubenoff on the subject. I don’t know if Hennessy is impregnable. Up until last year, I would have known, but I have gotten out of railroads. I put my money into automobiles and moving pictures. Good day, Isaac.”

He stood up and went to the piano. “I will play you out.”

Bell did not want to travel to Boston to ask his father. He wanted his answers here and now from Rubenoff, whom he suspected knew more than he admitted. He said, “The movers just left. Don’t you need to tune it first?”

In answer, Rubenoff’s hands flew at the keys, and four chords boomed in perfect harmony.

“Mr. Mason and Mr. Hamlin build pianos you can ride over Niagara Falls before you have to tune them… Your father, young Isaac. Go talk to your father.”

Bell caught the subway to Grand Central Terminal, wired his father that he was coming, and boarded the New England Railroad’s famous “White Train” flyer. He remembered it well from his student days, riding it down to New Haven. They had called the gleaming express the Ghost Train.

Six hours later, he disembarked at Boston’s new South Station, a gigantic, pink-hued stone temple to railroad power. He took an elevator five stories to the station’s top floor and checked in with Van Dorn’s Boston office. His father had wired back: “I hope you can stay with me.” By the time he made his way to his father’s Greek Revival town house on Louisburg Square, it was after nine.

Padraic Riley, the elderly butler who had managed the Bell home since before Isaac was born, opened the polished front door. They greeted each other warmly.

“Your father is at table,” said Riley. “He thought you might enjoy a late supper.”

“I’m famished,” Bell admitted. “How is he?”

“Very much himself,” said Riley, discreet as ever.

Bell paused in the drawing room.

“Wish me luck,” he muttered to his mother’s portrait. Then he squared his shoulders and went through to the dining room, where the tall, spare figure of his father unfolded storklike from his chair at the head of the table.

They searched each other’s faces.

Riley, hovering at the door, held his breath. Ebenezer Bell, he thought with a twinge of envy, seemed ageless. His hair had gone gray, of course, but he had kept it all, unlike him. And his Civil War veteran’s beard was nearly white. But he still possessed the lean frame and erect stance of the Union Army officer who had fought the bloody conflict four decades ago.

In the butler’s opinion, the man that his master’s son had grown into should make any father proud. Isaac’s steady blue-eyed gaze mirrored his father‘s, tinged with the violet bequeathed by his mother. So much alike, thought Riley. Maybe too much alike.

“How can I help you, Isaac?” Ebenezer asked stiffly.

“I’m not sure why Andrew Rubenoff sent me here,” Isaac replied just as stiffly.

Riley shifted his attention to the older man. If there was to be reconciliation, it was up to Ebenezer to make it stick. But all he said was a terse, “Rubenoff is a family man.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He was doing me a kindness… It’s in his nature.”

“Thank you for inviting me to stay the night,” Isaac replied.

“You are welcome here,” the father said. And then, to Riley’s great relief, Ebenezer rose gallantly to the opportunity his son had presented him by agreeing to stay, which he had not in times past. In fact, thought the butler, the stern old Protestant sounded almost effusive. “You look well, son. I believe that your work agrees with you.”

Both men extended their hands.

“Dinner,” said Riley, “is served.”

OVER A WELSH RAREBIT and a cold poached salmon, Isaac Bell’s father confirmed what Marion suggested and he suspected. “Railroad magnates are not as all-powerful as they appear. They control their lines by wielding small minority interests of stock. But if their bankers lose faith, if investors demand their money, they find themselves suddenly on a lee shore.” A smile twitched Ebenezer Bell’s lips. “Forgive my mixing shipping metaphors, but they get in trouble when they must raise capital to prevent rivals from taking them over just as their stock plummets. The New England Railroad you rode here today is about to be swallowed whole by the New York, New Haven and Hartford. And not a moment too soon-little wonder the NE is known as the ‘Narrow Escape.’ Point is, the New England suddenly has no say in the matter.”

“I know that,” Bell protested. “But Osgood Hennessy has gobbled up every railroad that ever crossed his path. He is too intelligent and too well established to be overstretched. He admits that he will run out of credit for the Cascades expansion if the Wrecker stalls it. That would be a terrible loss, but he claims that he has plenty of credit to operate the rest of his lines.”

“Consider how many lines Hennessy has combined, how many more he is allied with . . .”

“Exactly. He owns the mightiest combine in the country.”

“Or a house of cards.”

“But everyone agrees that Osgood Hennessy is secure. Morgan’s man used the word impregnable.”

“Not according to my sources.” Ebenezer Bell smiled.

In that moment, Isaac Bell saw his father in a different light. He knew, of course, that as a young officer Ebenezer had distinguished himself in U.S. Army intelligence. He had the medals to prove it. But a strange idea stuck Isaac. It was one that he had never thought of before. Had his father too once longed to be more than a banker?

“Father. Are you saying that if the Wrecker were in a position to buy, if the Southern Pacific Company tottered under the weight of its failed Cascades expansion, he could end up owning it?”

“Not only the Southern Pacific, Isaac.”