“Clyde Lapham.”
“But hardly a singular event if you consider his shooting-duck trick and the killings of Reed Riggs and the poor fellow who fell in the oil vat.”
“Albert Hill.”
“Not to mention that woman who burned to death.”
“Mary McCloud.”
“And still we haven’t caught him. Either he is the luckiest devil alive or we are the sorriest detectives alive.”
“There’s another possibility,” said Bell.
“What’s that?”
“He’s not afraid of getting caught.”
“If he believes that,” said Van Dorn, “he is crack-brained and we should have hanged him long ago. There is no ‘perfect crime.’ And certainly no string of perfect crimes. No matter how craftily they plan, things go wrong and criminals get caught.”
“This killer is not afraid. He’s like the drunk who falls down but doesn’t get hurt; never tightens up, just lands soft in a heap.”
“Maybe he’s not afraid because he’s nuts.”
Bell said, “If he’s nuts, he’s a very slick nuts. Nothing fazes him. He never panics. Just changes course and slides away like mercury.”
“He would not be the first murderer without a conscience. Could it simply be that he’s not afraid because he doesn’t feel guilty?”
“Or can’t imagine getting caught.”
“Delusions of grandeur?”
“It’s almost as if he’s enjoying himself.”
Van Dorn’s eyes narrowed at the sight of a well-dressed gentleman who pushed through the swinging doors. He shot a glance across the busy barroom at the floor manager. The floor manager followed Van Dorn’s warning nod, belatedly recognized the new arrival for the type of grifter who preyed on out-of-town customers, and guided him out to the sidewalk.
Van Dorn said, “I want to know why the assassin takes such chances. Among others, he left his rifle — a unique weapon. Any progress tracing it?”
“I’m about to interview a gunsmith the boys found in Bridgeport.”
“Took them long enough.”
Bell leaped to his people’s defense. “They investigated eighty-four gunsmiths across the continent.”
“I was not aware there were so many. I’ve been stuck in Washington.”
Bell said, “If the assassin is not afraid, maybe he wants to get caught.”
Van Dorn snorted like a walrus. “Subconsciously? You’ve been reading that Viennese blather… You know,” he added after a moment of reflection, “there is such a thing as luck. Luck is real. For a while. So far, he’s been lucky.”
“He’s pushed his luck every kill.”
“You’ve been lucky. This man who had hit a dime at seven hundred yards has missed you three times. Why does he miss you?”
Isaac Bell grinned. “Maybe he likes me.”
Van Dorn did not laugh but answered soberly, “He won’t miss if you ever manage to put his back to the wall.”
“When I do, I won’t miss either.”
The underage probationary apprentice Eddie Tobin slipped quietly through the saloon doors. Van Dorn gave a brisk nod and the boy approached. “Message from Mr. Warren for Mr. Bell.”
Bell slit open the sealed envelope and read quickly.
“Tell Mr. Warren I said good work and thank you.”
Tobin left as unobtrusively as he had arrived.
Bell said to Van Dorn, “Bill Matters made it back to New York.”
“What? How’d he get here as fast as you did?”
“The Kaiser Wilhelm holds the Blue Riband.”
“He was on your ship?”
“According to Harry Warren,” Bell answered, face grim.
“You never saw him? Where was he hiding? Steerage?”
“I had Rockefeller persuade the purser to show me the manifests. I walked the ship night and day. I checked every man in First Class, Second, and double-checked Steerage.”
“Did he stow away?”
“He did better than that, according to Harry Warren. He wrangled a job on the black gang. Sneaked across the ocean shoveling coal in the ship’s boilers five decks under my nose.”
“Resourceful.”
Suspicion caromed through Bell’s mind. Had Edna and Nellie brought him decent food or visited him or let him rest in their cabin? Not likely on a strictly run German liner. They allowed no mingling of the classes, much less passengers and crew.
“I gather from your expression,” said Van Dorn, “that Harry Warren didn’t arrest Mr. Matters.”
“Matters brained a customs guard who spotted him sneaking off the ship. Harry Warren caught wind of it, traced him to the black gang, where he got a description from the engineers, and put two and two together.”
“So he’s somewhere in New York.”
“Or boarding a train going anywhere in the country.” Bell stood from the table. “I better warn Wish just in case he’s headed to Cleveland.”
“Do you think he’ll take another shot at Rockefeller?”
“He’s had a week to stew while shoveling coal in a hundred-ten-degree stokehold. And he knows we’ll catch him in the end. He’ll want to wreak more damage than killing one man.”
“Wanting and doing are two different things. Like I said, Matters is a business man on the run. Even if he’s a mastermind, being on the run makes him a fish out of water.”
“Until he joins up again with his personal assassin.”
33
Isaac Bell knew the great industrial city of Bridgeport well, having gone down to college in nearby New Haven. Bridgeport had provided Yale students carousing grounds beyond the long arm of the chaplain. More recently, he had bought his Locomobile at the company’s Bridgeport factory.
He parked the big red auto in front of the Zimmerman & Brassard gun shop. The partners Zimmerman and Brassard had long since retired on fortunes made from the Civil War, leaving the shop to a talented apprentice with the business acumen to retain the famous name that was set above the door in gunmetal letters. He was middle-aged by now, a slight, precise man with a pencil-thin mustache and wire-rimmed spectacles.
“Mr. Beitel?” asked Bell.
Beitel turned from the electric lathe, where he was working, and nodded. He was wearing arm garters to keep his shirtsleeves above his wrists and a four-in-hand necktie snugged under a shop apron. Physically, he appeared the opposite of the powerful Dave McCoart, with one exception: like McCoart, the casually able manner in which he hefted a cutoff tool said he was an artist, a man who could already see the shape of what he would fashion from the length of metal stock that was turning on his lathe.
His workshop was as neat and precise as he. It had a sturdy bench with drawers and a lip around the top to keep things from rolling off, several vises, a chest for small tools and parts, and a converted bedroom bureau with large drawers. He had just opened one, and Bell saw pistols waiting to be repaired, sandpaper, abrasive cloth, and steel wool. There was a power grinder with stones and a wire brush, a drill press, and an all-angle drilling vise for mounting telescope sights, a motor sander, and the long bench lathe where he was turning a rifle barrel.
“Good morning,” said Bell. “I was at the Locomobile factory — ran into a little trouble on my way to Hartford — and they told me you were a particularly fine gunsmith, so I figured I’d stop on my way. My card. Jethro Smith.”
“Hartford?”
“Head office. My territory is in Oregon.”
“Who told you I was a fine gunsmith?”
“One of the mechanicians.”
“Really. Do you mind me asking which one?”
“The factory was a madhouse. They’re all excited about the Number 7 auto they’re entering in the Vanderbilt Cup. It’s next month, coming up soon.”