Bell marched him toward the pier where he had tied the launch. It was only four or five miles down the Carquinez Strait from Vallejo to Benicia Point, where, with any luck, he could board a train before the Navy got wise.
But before he could reach the pier, a Mare Island Ferry pulled in and disgorged a mob of ship workers.
“There he is!”
“Get him!”
The workmen had heard the explosion and seen the barrels flying and put two and two together. As they ran toward Bell and Louis Loh, a second group who’d been repairing a trolley siding came running with sledgehammers and iron bars and joined the first. They became a solid mass, blocking the Van Dorn detective and his prisoner from the launch.
The track gang lit an oxyacetylene torch. “Burn the Jap. To hell with a trial.”
Isaac Bell told the lynch mob, “You can’t burn him, boys.” “Yeah, why not?”
“He’s not a Jap. He’s Chinese.”
“They’re all Mongolians-Asiatic coolies-they’re all in it together.”
“You still can’t burn him. He belongs to me.”
“You?” the mob erupted in angry chorus.
“Who the hell are you?”
“There’s one of you and a hundred of us!”
“A hundred?” Bell snapped his derringer from his hat and his Browning from his coat and swept the crowd with the muzzles. “Two shots in my left hand. Seven in my right. You don’t have a hundred. You have ninety-one.”
Some in front backed up, slipping between the men behind them, but others replaced them. The new front row edged closer, exchanging glances, seeking a leader. Face unyielding as granite, eyes cold, Bell looked from man to man, watching their eyes.
It would only take one to get brave.
“Who’s first? How about you fellows in front?”
“Get him!” yelled a tall man in the second row.
Bell fired the Browning. The man screamed and fell to his knees, clapping both hands to a bloody ear.
41
NINETY-NINE,” SAID ISAAC BELL.
The mob backed away, mumbling sullenly.
A trolley glided up, clanging its bell to chase men off the tracks. Bell dragged Louis Loh onto it.
“You can’t get on here,” the operator protested. “That Jap’s all wet!”
Bell shoved the wide mouth of the double-barreled derringer in the trolley driver’s face. “No stops. Straight through to Benicia Terminal.”
Speeding past waiting passengers at the many stops along the way, they pulled up to the Southern Pacific Ferry Slip in ten minutes. Across the mile-wide strait at Port Costa, Bell saw the Solano, the largest railway ferryboat in the world, loading a locomotive and a consist of eastbound Overland Limited Pullmans. He dragged Loh to the stationmaster’s office, identified himself, purchased stateroom tickets to cross the continent, and sent telegrams. The ferry crossed in nine minutes, tied up, and locked to the tracks. The locomotive pulled the front half of the train onto the apron. A switch engine pushed the rear four cars off the boat. In ten minutes the train was whole again and steaming out of Benicia Terminal.
Bell found his stateroom and handcuffed Louis to the plumbing. As the transcontinental train sped up the Sacramento River Valley, Louis Loh finally spoke. “Where are you taking me?”
“Louis, to which tong do you belong?”
“I am not tong.”
“Why were you trying to make it look like the Japanese blew up the magazine?”
“I will not talk to you.”
“Of course you will. You will tell me everything I want to know about what you were trying to do, why, and who gave you your orders.”
“You do not understand a man like me. I will not talk. Even if you torture me.”
“ ‘That ain’t my style,’ ” Bell quoted from a popular poem.
“ ‘ “Strike One,” the umpire said,’ ” Louis Loh shot back smugly, “I read your ‘Casey at the Bat.’ ”
“You’ve told me something already,” Bell replied. “You just don’t know it.”
“What?”
The tall detective fell silent. In fact, Louis Loh had confirmed his suspicion that he was more complicated than a run-of-the-mill tong gangster. He did not believe that the Chinese was the spy himself, but there was more to Loh than today’s attempt at Mare Island had revealed.
“You give me a great advantage,” said Loh.
“How is that?”
“By admitting you are not man enough to torture me.”
“Is that the Hip Sing definition of a man?”
“What is Hip Sing?”
“You will tell me.”
“When the tables are turned,” said Louis Loh, “when you are my prisoner, I will torture you.”
Bell stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes. His head hurt, and sheep were still turning somersaults.
“I will use a chopper, at first,” Loh began. “A cleaver. Razor-sharp. I will start with your nose…” Louis Loh continued to recite lurid descriptions of the horrors he would inflict on Bell until Bell began to snore.
The detective opened his eyes when the train stopped in Sacramento. There was a knock at the stateroom door. Bell admitted two burly Protection Services agents from the Sacramento office. “Take him to the baggage car, manacle him hand and foot. One of you stays with him at all times. The other sleeps. I’ve got a Pullman berth for you. You will never let him out of your sight. You will not distract yourself talking to the train crew. If there is a cut or a bruise on him, you will answer to me. I will look in on you regularly. We will be particularly vigilant whenever the train stops.”
“All the way to New York?”
“We have to change trains at Chicago.”
“Do you think his friends will try to bust him out?”
Bell watched Loh for a reaction and saw none. “Did you bring shotguns?”
“Autoloads, like you said. And one for you, too.”
“Let them try. All right, Louis. Off you go. Hope you enjoy being luggage for the next five days.”
“You will never make me talk.”
“We’ll find a way,” Bell promised.
