The Gangster (37 page)

The
Gangster

Antonio Branco’s stiletto pierced Isaac Bell’s coat and jacket and vest, ripped through his shirt and stopped with a shrill clink of iron and steel.

“What?” gasped Antonio Branco.

“I borrowed your partner’s chain mail,” said Isaac Bell and hit the gangster with all his might.

Antonio Branco flew backwards into the crowd.

His arms shot in the air, his knife tumbled from his hand, his eyes glazed. Men pounced on the stunned gangster and wrestled him back on his feet.

“Well held,” shouted Roosevelt. “Bring the scoundrel here.”

They yanked him deeper into the crowd.

Isaac Bell was already plunging in after them, with Van Dorn right behind him.

The Black Hand formed a protective cordon and ran like a football flying wedge, with the heaviest men in the lead and
Branco safe within. Laborers scattered out of their way. Those who tried to stop them were steamrollered to the ground.

Four more gorillas blocked Bell and Van Dorn in a maneuver as strategic as the flying wedge. The detectives pounded their way out of the slugfest, but by then Antonio Branco and his rescuers were far down the hill, running toward the railroad tracks.

Bell ran full speed after them. Van Dorn fell behind. He couldn’t keep the younger man’s pace, and Bell shouted over his shoulder that Eddie Edwards was watching Culp’s train. “Cut straight to the yards. I’ll stick with Branco.”

Branco appeared to have recovered from Bell’s punch. He was running under his own steam now, wing-footing, yet drawing ahead of his Black Hand guard. Suddenly, he veered away from the train yards, crossed the railroad tracks, and ran directly to the river.

His men stopped, turned around, and fanned out to face Isaac Bell.

The tall detective pulled his pistol and opened fire, dropped the two closest to him, and charged through the gap in their line. He did not waste ammunition on Branco, who was out of range and running so purposefully that Bell wondered whether J. B. Culp had managed to sneak his Franklin out of the estate right under the Van Dorn noses.

He reached the track embankment and climbed to the rails. From that slight elevation, he saw Branco had planned an emergency escape even faster than an auto or a train. The ice yacht
Daphne
waited at the riverbank. At the helm, the bulky figure of J. B. Culp urged him to run faster. Antonio Branco hurtled, slipping and sliding, down the final slope, with Isaac Bell drawing close.

The gangster fell, slid, rolled to his feet, and vaulted into the car beside Culp.

Culp flipped the mooring line he had looped around a bankside piling and sheeted in his sail. The tall triangle of canvas shivered. But
Daphne
did not move. Her iron runners had frozen to the ice.

Bell put on a burst of speed. He still had his gun in hand.

Culp scrambled out of the car and kicked the rudder and the right-hand runners, yelling frantically at Branco to free the runner on his side. Bell was less than fifty feet away when they broke loose.

“Push!” Bell heard Culp shout, and the two men shoved the ice yacht away from the bank. The wind stirred her masthead pennant. Her sail fluttered. One second, Branco and Culp were pushing the ice yacht; the next, they were running for their lives, trying to jump on before she sped away from them.

Bell was on the verge of trying to stop and plant his feet on the ice to take a desperate shot with the pistol before they got away. But as her sail grabbed the wind and she took off in earnest, he saw the mooring line dragging behind her. He ran harder and dived after it with his hand outstretched.

The end of the mooring line was jumping like a cobra. He caught it. A foot of rope burned through his hand before he could clamp around it. Then a gust slammed into the sail, and the rope nearly jerked his arm out of his shoulder, and, in the next instant, the big yacht was dragging him over the ice at thirty miles an hour. He flipped onto his back and stuffed his gun in his coat and then held on with both hands. He had hoped the extra weight would slow the yacht, but as long as the wind blew, she
was simply too powerful. Now his only hope was to hang on for another quarter mile. The yacht was racing downriver. So long as Culp didn’t change course, it was dragging Bell toward his own ice yacht, which he had tied up near Cornwall Landing.

The mooring line was less than twenty feet long, and Bell heard Culp laugh. Branco was poised to cut the line. Culp stayed him with a gesture, pointed at a clump of ridged ice, and steered for it.

“Cheese grater coming up, Bell.”

Daphne
’s runners rang on the ridges and an instant later Bell was dragged over the rough. He held tight as it banged his ribs and knees.

“Another?”

One more, thought Bell. He could see his boat now. Almost there, and Culp inadvertently steered closer, intent on aiming for an even higher ridge to shake him off when
Daphne
slammed over it. Bell let go, freely sliding, swinging his legs in front of him to take the impact with his boots, hit hard, sprang to his feet, and staggered to his boat.

“He’s coming after us,” said Branco.

“Let him.”

Culp slammed his yacht skillfully into a deliberate crash turn. It spun her a hundred eighty degrees and put them on a course up the river, with the west wind abeam, the lightning-quick
Daphne
’s best point of sail.

“What went wrong back there?”

“I don’t know,” said Branco.

“Is that all you have to say for yourself?”

Branco was eerily calm and entirely in possession of himself. “I’ve lost a battle, not a war.”

“What about me?”

“You’ve lost a dream, not your life.”

“They will come after me,” said Culp.

“Nothing can be pinned to you that would nail you.” Branco reached inside his coat, and a stiletto gleamed in his hand. “But if you are afraid and are thinking of selling me out to save yourself, then you
will
lose your life. Take the pistol out of your coat by the barrel and hand it to me, butt first.”

Culp was painfully aware that they were only two feet apart in the tiny cockpit and he had one hand encumbered by the tiller. At the speed they were moving, to release the tiller for even one second to try to block the stiletto could cause a catastrophic spinout. “If you kill me, who will outrun Bell?”

“That will be between Bell and me.” He gestured imperiously with the blade.

Culp said, “I’ll want it back if Bell gets closer. I’m sure I’m a better shot than you.”

“I’m sure you are. I never bother with a gun,” said Branco.
“Give it to me!”

Culp saw no choice but to relent. Branco shoved it in his coat.

“Tell me where you are taking me.”

“Option three, as I promised, is to sail you to the Albany rail yards. I have a special standing by. Or if you don’t think it’s safe, you can steal a ride on a freight train.”

“How far?”

“At this rate, we’ll make it in two hours.”

Antonio Branco glanced over his shoulder. “Bell is closer.”

“It will be dark soon,” said Culp. “And Isaac Bell does not know this river like I do.”

Isaac Bell’s ice yacht raced up the Hudson River, vibrating sharply, tearing through patches of fresh snow, flopping hard when the runners banged over ice hummocks, and jumping watery cracks where the tide had lifted the ice. She was heavier than Culp’s boat—built of white ash, instead of aluminum, and carrying lead ballasts Bell had strapped to the outsides of her runner plank to hold her down in the squall winds. Using the extra pounds and her oversize sail to advantage, he veered off course to increase velocity on a favorable beam wind, then glided back on course, with her extra weight sustaining momentum.

Bell thought it was strange that an experienced racer like Culp wasn’t using the same tactic when he saw him catching up. If the magnate was trying to lure him into pistol range, he would get his wish.

By the time the speeding yachts had whipped past the lights of Newburgh, Bell had drawn within a hundred yards. He could see Branco and Culp in the cockpit, their faces white blurs as they looked over their shoulders to gauge his progress in the fading light.

Culp changed course abruptly.

Half a second later, Bell saw a horse right in front of him.