Harry Frost had accompanied his wife to many an air meet to buy her aeroplanes, and he watched this one with a knowledgeable eye. He was impressed. The Italian’s final invention was a hell of a machine, as different from the last aeroplane Frost had bought for Josephine as a hawk was from a pigeon. The previous, the one from which Josephine had seen him shoot the bastard, had been a sturdy biplane. This was a mono, with a single wing, and even after it stopped rolling across the infield it still looked fast and nimble just sitting there.
His jaw tightened as he focused his horse-racing field glasses. There she was, jumping off, with the big grin she got on her face when she really liked an aeroplane. She didn’t look like she was mourning her boyfriend, and she didn’t look like she was missing her husband, either. He felt the blood flush hot under his beard. He mopped his brow. Time to do the deed.
He started down from the grandstand. The guard at the gate stopped him. He showed the infield entry badge he had bought the night before from a drunken track official in a Hempstead saloon, and the guard let him pass. He walked across the horse track and stopped dead, rocked by the sight of his own face on a poster nailed to the inside rail.
WANTED
Murder Suspect
HARRY FROST
REWARD
*** $5,000 ***
(Armed and Dangerous- Do Not Approach!!!)
Wire or Telephone
VAN DORN DETECTIVE AGENCY
“We Never Give Up. Never.”
Frost’s brain started racing. Why were Van Dorns hunting him with wanted posters? What did Van Dorns care about him killing Marco Celere? What the hell was going on?
His printed face glared back at him.
It was the standard Van Dorn poster. Frost remembered it well from his Chicago days, when the private detectives were careening around the city trying to stop him by arresting the people who worked for him. When that failed, they had tried to get people to inform on him. A few dead informants put a stop to that, he recalled, grunting a laugh.
We Never Give Up?
Never?
Oh yeah? You gave up on me, pal.
He laughed again because the drawing they had mocked up of his face looked pretty much like he used to beforehe grew his beard. Frost was only vaguely aware that laughing to himself out loud drew the attention of others heading to the infield. None, however, connected his bearded face to the beardless poster.
Suddenly the laughter turned sour on his tongue.
Another wanted poster blared from the rail – same as the first-“WANTED / Murder Suspect / HARRY FROST / REWARD / *** $5,000 *** / (Armed and Dangerous- Do Not Approach!!!) / Wire or Telephone / VAN DORN DETECTIVE AGENCY / ‘We Never Give Up. Never’”-except this one had a picture that showed what they guessed he would look like if he had grown a beard.
A cold shiver traveled up his spine. The artist had come damned close. It wasn’t quite like looking in the mirror, and it didn’t show his glasses, but the face looked familiar. He stopped to study the poster, angrily shrugging off people who bumped into him, ignoring their complaints, which died on their lips when they took in the size of him. Finally, he stood taller, and strolled slowly on, deciding that it was unlikely that people would link even the bearded face on the poster to his. Not in these crowds. Besides, anyone who knew his name would not dare turn him in.
To hell with the Van Dorns. He beat them ten years ago, and he would beat them again.
He walked among the flying machines, inhaling the familiar smells of gasoline and oil, rubber and canvas, and doping varnish, and worked his way circuitously toward her yellow machine. When he got within fifty feet, he plunged his hands into his pockets, caressing the sawed-off Webley with his right while his left gripped the haft of a spring-loaded dagger, which offered the option of dispatching a protector quietly.
Josephine had her back to him. She was standing on a soapbox, with her head buried in the motor. Frost closed in on her. His heart was pounding with anticipation. His face felt hot, his hands were sweating. He gripped his weapons harder.
Abruptly, he stopped.
He didn’t like the look of Josephine’s mechanicians. He hid beside a Wright Model A biplane and observed them through the front rudders. It did not take long to confirm his suspicions.
They wore the right clothes, the typical vests, bow ties, shirtsleeves, and flat caps. And they were a younger bunch, as he expected of men who tinkered with flying machines. But they were watching the crowds more than they were watching Josephine’s machine. Van Dorns! The mechanicians were detectives.
His brain raced again. Not only were Van Dorns hunting him with wanted posters, they were guarding Josephine. Why?
Whiteway!It had to be Whiteway. Buying the Italian’s flying machine out of hock would have cost a pretty penny. So would that yellow support train. But it would pay in spades by using Josephine to boom the race and sell newspapers. Preston Whiteway had hired the detectives to protect his investment in Josephine.
Or was it more than protecting his investment?
Frost’s skull suddenly felt like it would explode.
Was Whiteway sweet on her?
Machines were roaring on the ground and buzzing in the air. Everywhere he looked, everything was moving – loud machines, drivers, Van Dorns. He had to get a grip on himself. Deal with Whiteway later. First, Josephine.
But the Van Dorns guarding Josephine would carry those wanted posters in their memories. Her guards would stop anyone who looked even slightly like either picture.
He noticed that their eyes kept shifting toward a tall redheaded man standing nearby in a sack suit and bowler. A suspect? Did they think that Harry Frost had dyed his hair red, lost seventy pounds, and gained two inches? The fellow looked like a Fifth Avenue swell. But he had thin white lines of a boxer’s scarring on his brow. And his eyes were busy, looking everywhere even as he pretended not to.
Not a suspect, Frost surmised. Another goddamned Van Dorn – the chief of their squad, from the way the others were looking to him. Suddenly Frost realized who the swell was – Archibald Angel Abbott IV. No wonder they hadn’t bothered disguising him as a mechanician.
Archibald Angel Abbott IV was too well known to work covertly. He had always been a big deal in the blue-blooded society set – New York’s most eligible bachelor. Then the newspapers had made him famous when he married the daughter of the railroad tycoon Osgood Hennessy. She stood to inherit it all. Frost wondered why the hell Abbott hadn’t traded his guns in for golf clubs.
That question pierced Harry Frost’s seething skull like a lightning bolt.
Archibald Abbott had the right idea, continuing to work for the Van Dorn Detective Agency for a measly few bucks after he married rich. Retiring was a mug’s game. Harry Frost had learned that too late. He had lost his edge. From the time he was eight years old, Harry Frost had dreamed of not having to work to survive. He had achieved his dream. And what did it get him? Being made a monkey of. That was how he had been taken by Josephine and Marco – bunco artists he would have smoked in a flash in the old days.
Frost fingered his weapons. Josephine still had her head in the motor. He could seize her by the throat, let her see that it was him, then cut her heart out. But the awful truth was that he could not get near her. There were too many Van Dorns masquerading as mechanicians. He couldn’t kill them all. They would gun him down first. He was not afraid to die. But he was damned if he would die in vain.