“What? What the hell are go-phers?”
“The men who robbed me. Gophers? Like gangsters.”
“Go-phers? Oh, Goofers!” She laughed. “Mother of Mary, where did you come from?”
“Well, were they?”
“Could be,” she said. “They’ve been drifting down from Hell’s Kitchen for a couple of months now.”
Scully had heard rumors of this strange news from others. “What do you mean, a couple of months? Is that unusual?”
“Used to be the Five Pointers would bust their heads. Or they’d be chopped by the Hip Sing. Now they’re walking around like they own the place.”
“What is Hip Sing?” Scully asked innocently.
26
ISAAC,” JOSEPH VAN DORN PROTESTED EXASPERATEDLY. “You’ve got Japs and Germans darned-near red-handed, the French spying on the Great White Fleet, and a Russian practically living in Farley Kent’s design loft. Why are you launching a frontal attack on the British Empire? From where I sit, they appear to be the only innocents in this whole tangled spiderweb.”
“Apparently innocent,” Isaac Bell retorted.
With Washington, D.C., Van Dorn Detective Agency operatives shadowing Yamamoto Kenta to determine the extent of the Japanese spy’s organization and Harry Warren’s boys trawling Hell’s Kitchen to get a line on the upward-bound Commodore Tommy Thompson’s new connections, Bell decided it was time to confront the Royal Navy.
“The British didn’t build the most powerful Navy in the world without keeping a close eye on their rivals. Based on Abbington-Westlake’s successes against the French, I’m willing to bet that they’re probably pretty good it.”
“But you’ve got the Jap dead to rights. Have you considered picking up Yamamoto right now?”
“Before he gets away or does more damage? Of course! But then how do we determine who else he’s tied up with?”
“Partners?”
“Maybe partners. Maybe underlings. Maybe a boss.” Bell shook his head. “It’s what we don’t know that concerns me. Assume that Yamamoto is the spy we think he is. How did he persuade that German to attack the Michigan? How did he get him or some other German to attack at Bethlehem Steel? We know, according to the Smithsonian, that he was in Washington the day that poor kid fell off the cliff. Who did Yamamoto get to push him? Who did he send to Newport that almost got Wheeler in his cottage?”
“I presume Wheeler is sleeping safe in the torpedo barracks now?”
“Reluctantly. And his girlfriends are hopping mad. The list goes on and on, Joe. We have to find the connections. How did Yamamoto tie up with a gangster like Weeks in Hell’s Kitchen?”
“Borrowed him from Commodore Tommy Thompson.”
“If so, how did a Japanese spy team up with the boss of the Gophers? We don’t know.”
“Apparently you knew enough to shoot up his saloon,” Van Dorn observed.
“I was provoked,” Bell replied blandly. “But you see my point. Who else do we not even know about yet?”
“I see it. I don’t like it. But I see it.” Van Dorn shook his big head, stroked his red whiskers, and rubbed his Roman nose. Finally, the founder of the agency granted his chief investigator a small smile. “So now you want to brace the British Empire?”
“Not their whole empire,” Bell grinned back. “I’m starting with the Royal Navy.”
“What are you looking for?”
“A leg up.”
Joseph Van Dorn’s hooded eyes gleamed with sudden interest. “Leverage?”
“Yamamoto and his mob may call themselves spies, Joe. But they act like criminals. And we know how to nail criminals.”
“All right. Get to it!”
Isaac Bell went directly to the Brooklyn Bridge and joined Scudder Smith on the pedestrian walkway. It was a bright, sunny morning. Smith had chosen for his watch the comparative darkness of the shade of the bridge’s Manhattan pier. Smith was one of the best Van Dorn shadows in New York. A former newspaperman, fired-depending upon who told the story-either for writing the truth or overembroidering it, or for being drunk before noon, he was intimate with every district in the city. He passed Bell his field glasses.
“They’ve been walking back and forth across the bridge pretending to be tourist snapshot fiends. But somehow their Brownies are always pointed down at the navy yard. And I don’t think those are real Brownies inside those Brownie boxes but something with a special lens. The large, round fellow is Abbington-Westlake. The terrific-looking woman is his wife, Lady Fiona.”
“I’ve seen her. Who’s the little guy?”
“Peter Sutherland, retired British Army major. Claims he’s traveling to Canada to look over the oil fields.”
The strangely cold spring had persisted into May, and the chilly wind blew hard high over the East River. All three wore topcoats. The woman’s had a sable collar that matched her hat, which she was anchoring with one hand against the gusts.
“Looking the oil fields over for what?”
“Last night at dinner Sutherland said, ‘Oil is the coming fuel for water transportation.’ Abbington-Westlake being Naval Attaché, you can bet water transportation means dreadnoughts.”
“How’d you happen to overhear it?”
“They thought I was the waiter.”
“I’ll take over before they order more pheasant.”
“Want the glasses?”
“No, I’m going to make my move.”
Scudder Smith vanished among the pedestrians crossing to Manhattan.
Bell headed for the make-believe tourists.
Nearing the middle of the span, he gained a clear view of the Brooklyn Navy Yard immediately north of the bridge. He could see all the shipways, even a section of the northernmost that cradled the beginnings of Hull 44. All were open to the weather, markedly different from the closed sheds at New York Ship in Camden. Cantilevered bridge cranes trundled along elevated rails that allowed them to hover directly over the ships under construction. Switch engines moved freight cars laden with steel plate around the yard.
Away from the building area, horse-drawn wagons and auto trucks were delivering daily rations to the warships moored in slips beside the river. Long strings of sailors in white were carrying sacks up gangways. Bell saw a dry dock nearly eight hundred feet long and over a hundred wide. In the middle of the bay was an artificial island containing docks and ways and slips. A ferry shuttled between it and the mainland, and fishing boats and steam lighters moved slowly up and down a crowded channel that ran between the artificial island and a market on the shore.