“Have it your way. Sit down. Girls, let’s give Mr. Bell something to drink.”
Matters’ butler appeared in the doorway. The man wore a tailcoat and white gloves, and his face was remarkably smooth, but Bell pegged his stance and light-footed gait as that of an ex-prizefighter who had retired before he lost a match.
“What is it, Rivers?”
“Telephone, sir.”
Matters hurried off without a word. Edna rose. “I’ll leave you two to it.”
“Where are you going?” asked Nellie.
“Mr. Bell is calling on you, not me.”
“Don’t be absurd. He’s calling on both of us. Aren’t you?”
Isaac Bell said, “Considering we’ve dined together, traveled together, been set upon by drunks and shot at together, I feel less like a caller than an old friend catching up.”
“Do you want me to stay?” asked Edna.
“Of course,” Bell and Nellie chorused.
Edna was still hesitating when Bill Matters returned to the drawing room, his face set in a grave mask.
“What is it?” asked Edna, resuming her seat.
“Old Comstock died.”
“Another bites the dust,” said Nellie. “That’s two in a week.”
“You won’t mourn him, will you?” asked Edna.
“I won’t speak ill of the dead,” said Bill Matters. “But you know I won’t miss his badgering.” To Isaac Bell he explained, “Averell Comstock treated me like some sort of interloper. He made it hard to do business, and hard to advance in the firm.”
“What did he die of?”
“God knows. Even a simple cold will kill at his age… The upshot is, Mr. Bell, we’ll be seeing a lot of each other in weeks to come.”
“How is that, sir?”
“That was Mr. Rockefeller on the telephone. With Comstock gone, the president has asked me to accompany him in his travels. He mentioned you will be his bodyguard.”
“You poor things,” said Nellie. “I would rather die than be stuck all summer in Cleveland. The heat! The humidity! The neighbors!”
“Mr. Rockefeller summers at his estate in Cleveland,” Edna explained to Bell.
Matters gave Bell a significant look. “I suspect we’ll create the impression he’s in Cleveland than range farther afield. Wouldn’t you say, Mr. Bell?”
“I cannot say, sir,” Bell replied stiffly. “As his bodyguard, if Mr. Rockefeller confided our destination, it would be indiscreet, not to mention reckless, to repeat to anyone where we are going.”
The First Regiment of Newark was billeted in a sturdy National Guard armory, four stories of slab-sided brick walls, relieved only slightly by rounded turrets, and crowned with a parapet. The sentries guarding the arched Jay Street portal remembered Billy Jones warmly but expressed bafflement when Isaac Bell asked why the champion marksman had deserted right after winning the President’s Medal.
“Happy guys don’t take French leave,” the corporal put it.
“Big fellow?” Bell asked.
“Skinny little guy,” said the private.
“Any guess where he lit out to?”
“No. No one figured him for lighting out. Kept to himself except for one pal, Nate Wildwood.”
“Is Nate around?” asked Bell.
“Nate got killed,” said the private.
“In the Spanish war?”
“Never made it to the war,” the corporal answered. “Poor Nate fell under a train. Before Billy lit out.”
“Really? Tell me something. How short was Billy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe five-three?”
“Little guy,” said the private. “Short.”
“What color was his hair?”
“Brown.”
“What color were his eyes?”
“Green.”
“Not really green,” said the corporal. “Gray-green.”
The private reconsidered. “Yeah, you could say gray-green. They got kind of dead colored, sometimes.”
“Dead?” scoffed the corporal. “What do you mean dead?”
“I mean dead. I was next to him on the firing line more than once. When he started shooting, his eyes looked dead.” The young soldier turned to Bell and explained earnestly, “What I mean is, after I saw that, I never wondered how Billy Jones could be such a great shot. It was like he could stop every thought in his brain when he pulled the trigger.”
The private reflected for a long moment. “It was like nothing else mattered. Like he didn’t care about nothing. Except the target.”
Isaac Bell took the train back to the ferry. Before he got on the boat, he sent another wire to Archie Abbott.
MAKE ARMY FRIENDS.
TRACE DESERTER BILLY JONES.
SLIGHT BUILD, 5’3”.
BROWN HAIR, GRAY-GREEN EYES.
18
When Walter L. Hawley, chief political reporter of the Evening Sun, spotted Isaac Bell striding to his desk, he stopped typing to clasp the detective’s hand hello.
“You’re looking prosperous.”
“You’re looking ink-stained.”
“How’s the big guy?” Hawley and Joseph Van Dorn had met back in the early ’90s when the reporter covered police headquarters and Van Dorn had chased a Chicago arsonist to New York.
“Fired me,” said Bell. “Or I quit, depending on who shot first.”
“Welcome to Newspaper Row. Multitudes who have failed in all attempts at every occupation turn to journalism to find a stopgap between mediocrity and professional begging.”
“Actually, I did come to discuss a job.”
Hawley looked alarmed.
“Easy does it,” said Bell, “not for me. What do you make of the situation in Russia?”
“It resembles the bedlam of unchecked human emotion. My beat is City Hall, so maybe I’m not qualified to predict a gloomy future for the czar. But they’ve had a bad year and it’s only June.
“It could blow the Baku oil business to Kingdom Come.”
Hawley said, “I won’t ask a private detective, assuming you are still one, what that has to do with you. But I will ask, what does that have to do with me? When I need oil, I get it from John D. Rockefeller.”
“E. M. Hock would jump at a freelance assignment to report on the threat to the oil industry in Baku.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“Wonderful!.. Except, I’ve always thought the rumors were true. She’s a woman, isn’t she?”
“Very much so.”
Hawley shook his head. “I’ll tell you, Isaac, I would jump at a chance to hire such a good writer. So would my publisher. He’d approve in a flash. But we would be strongly hesitant to send a woman among heathens. Russians and Moslems, and I believe they’ve even got some Persians, they’re next door, aren’t they?”
Bell said, “When I met Edna Matters in Kansas, she had just driven up from Indian Territory in a buckboard wagon. Her sister was her traveling companion. I imagine Nellie Matters would go along to Russia.”
“Nellie Matters? The Insufferable Suffragette?”
“I find Nellie Matters anything but insufferable.”
“I don’t mean to disparage the lady,” the newspaperman said hastily. “Certainly lovely to look at, and a fiery orator. She’ll really make her mark with that New Woman’s Flyover.”
“What do you say?” asked Bell. “Will you hire E. M. Hock?”
“But now you’re suggesting sending two women among the heathens. If something happened to them in wherever that godforsaken place is — the Caspian Sea? — Joe Pulitzer and Bill Hearst and Preston Whiteway would yellow-journal us into our graves. They would incite mobs to tear us limb from limb. Newsies who tried to sell the Sun would be hung from lampposts.”