“I am,” Sammy conceded. “But me old gal Sadie blessed me with two fine sons. Come out here, boys!” he called loudly. “Say hello to a genuine Van Dorn detective, who forgot to bring his pals with ’im.”
Two younger and bigger versions of Sammy Spillane stepped into the sunlight, yawning and rubbing sleep from their eyes. At the sight of Isaac Bell they darted back inside and returned with pick handles, slapping the heavy bulging ends menacingly in their palms. Bell did not doubt that they had learned their trade as strikebreakers intimidating union marchers. Their father, meanwhile, had drawn a Smith amp; Wesson revolver, which he pointed at Bell.
“What do you think of my boys, detective?” Spillane chortled. “Chips off the old block?”
“I’d have recognized them anywhere,” said Isaac Bell, looking the big young men up and down. “The resemblance is strongest in the squinty pig eyes. Though I do see a bit of their mother in those sloping foreheads. Say, Sammy, did you ever get around to marrying Sadie?”
The insult provoked them to charge simultaneously.
They came at the tall detective from both sides. They raised the pick handles expertly, tucking their elbows close to their torsos so they didn’t expose themselves and trusting in wrist action to swing the thick hickory shafts with sufficient power to smash bone.
Their attack momentarily blocked Sammy’s field of fire.
Bell kept it blocked by slewing sideways. When Sammy Spillane could see him again, Isaac Bell’s white hat was falling to the grass and the two-shot.44 derringer the detective had drawn from inside the crown was aimed squarely at his face. Sammy swung his revolver toward Bell. Bell fired first, and the Chicago gangster dropped his gun and fell off the barrel.
His sons halted their rush, surprised by the crack of gunfire and the sight of their father curled up on the ground, clutching his right arm and moaning in pain.
“Boys,” Bell told them, “your old man has decided to sit this one out. Why don’t you drop the lumber before you get hurt?”
They separated, flaring to either side. They stood twelve feet apart, each only six feet from Bell, an easy reach with the pick handles.
“You got one shot left, Mr. Detective,” said the bigger of the two. “What are you going do with it?”
Bell scooped his hat off the ground, clapped it on his head, and aimed at a spot between them. “I was fixing to shoot your brother in the knee, figuring he could use that pick handle as a cane for the rest of his life. Now I’m reassessing the situation. Wondering if you’re the one.” The gun barrel yawned from one to the other, then settled between them, rock steady.
“You shoot him, you’ve gotta deal with me,” the smaller warned.
“Same here,” said the bigger, adding with a harsh laugh, “Mexican standoff. ’Cept you’re short a Mexican – Daddy, you all right?”
“No, dammit,” Sammy groaned. “I’m shot in the arm. Kill him before he blows your fool head off! Get him, both of you. Stick and slug! Now!”
Sammy Spillane’s sons charged.
Bell dropped the big one with his last bullet and shifted abruptly to let his brother’s pick handle whiz an inch from his face. Young Spillane’s momentum threw him off balance, and Bell raked the back of his neck with the derringer as he tumbled past.
He sensed movement behind him.
Too late. Sammy Spillane had retrieved the pick handle dropped by the son Bell had shot. Still on the ground, he swung it hard with his unwounded arm.
The hardwood shaft slammed into the back of Bell’s knee. It hardly hurt at all, but his leg buckled as if his tendons had turned to macaroni. He went down backwards, falling so hard that it knocked the wind out of his lungs.
For what felt like an eternity, Isaac Bell could neither see, breathe, nor move. A shadow enveloped him. He blinked his eyes, trying to see. When he could, he saw Spillane’s smaller son was standing astride him, lifting his pick handle over his head with both hands. Bell could see the thick bulge of wood blot out a chunk of the sky. He saw the man’s entire body tighten to put every ounce of his strength into the downward blow.
Bell knew that his only hope was to draw his automatic from the shoulder holster under his coat, but he still couldn’t move. The pick handle was about to descend on his skull.
Suddenly fueled by a rush of adrenaline, Bell found the strength to reach into his coat. Realizing he could move again, he immediately changed tactics, and instead of drawing his pistol, he kicked up between the man’s legs. He connected solidly with the hard toe of his boot.
Young Spillane froze, rigid as a statue. He stood with his arms locked high in the air. The pick handle began slipping from his paralyzed fingers. Before it hit the ground, an inch from Bell’s head, he tumbled backwards, screaming.
Isaac Bell stood up, brushed off his suit, and stepped on Sammy’s hand when he reached for his fallen Smith amp; Wesson.
“Behave yourself. It’s over.”
He checked that the brother he had shot was not bleeding from an artery and would survive. The man he had kicked caught his breath in deep gasps. He glowered at his father and brother on the ground beside him and up at the tall detective standing over them. Sucking air into his lungs, he groaned, “You got lucky.”
Isaac Bell opened his coat to reveal the Browning pistol in his shoulder holster. “No, sonny, you got lucky.”
“You had another gun? Why didn’t you use it?”
“Mr. Van Dorn’s a skinflint.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The agency has strict rules about wasting lead on stumblebum skunks. We also make a practice of leaving at least one skunk conscious to answer our questions. Where’s Harry Frost?”
“Why the hell would I tell you?”
“Because if you tell me, I won’t turn you in. But if you don’t tell me, your daddy is going back to Joliet for assaulting me with a firearm, and you two are going down to Elmira for assaulting me with pick handles. And I’ll bet those New York cons doing their bit don’t like Chicago fellows.”
“The boys don’t know where Harry is,” Sammy Spillane groaned.
“But you do.”
“Harry went on the lam. Why would he tell me where he’s running?”
“He would tell you,” Bell answered with elaborate patience, “so that you would know where to go to help him, Sammy, with money, weapons, and your crook colleagues. Where is he?”
“Harry Frost don’t need no money from me. And he don’t need no ‘crook colleagues,’ neither.”
“A man can’t run without help.”
“You don’t get it, Mr. Detective. Harry has dough stashed in every bank in the country. You track him in New York, he’ll get dough in Ohio. You follow him to Ohio, he’ll be shaking hands with a bank manager in California.”
Bell watched the wounded gangster through narrowed eyes. Spillane was describing a fugitive who thoroughly understood how big and fragmented America was, the kind of modern criminal that even a continental outfit like the Van Dorn Detective Agency found difficult to track across state lines and through myriad jurisdictions. He made a mental note to have the Van Dorn field offices circulate wanted posters to every bank manager in their territory. Admittedly a long shot, as banks numbered in the tens of thousands.
“I suppose he has pals everywhere, too?”
“Not ‘pals’ you’d call friends. But guys he helped so they’d help him back. How do you think I got here after Joliet? Harry looked out for people who could help when he needed it. Always. From the first newsie I beat – from the first time I worked in his sales department – Harry Frost was always there for me.”
“If he knows you’ll help him, he must have told you where he was headed. Where is he?”