Was it the guy with his hat cocked like a newspaperman? Reporters were trained in research. But, no, he did not appear to be meeting anyone as he went straight to the lunch bar. Was it the stern academic with a waxed mustache? No, he clapped a salesman on the back and was greeted like an old friend. Nor was it the long-haired fellow who looked like a scientist.
Suddenly, the bar grew quiet, conversations ceasing, as an immense shadow filled the door. It was certainly not this guy, large of shoulder and substantial of belly. As young as Bell, he had his hair slicked down and parted in the middle like a high-class floor manager who could keep a saloon orderly with a glance. He churned across the room, parting the crowd like a steamboat, straight at Bell. Then he placed wire-rimmed glasses on his nose and inspected the young detective closely.
His voice rumbled from deep in his chest. “I’m Grady Forrer, Mr. Bell. Your note described a fair-haired gent with a mustache. I’m going to venture that it’s a mustache you have just begun to encourage.”
“I’m hoping it will be worth the wait,” said Bell, thrusting out his hand. “Thanks for coming.”
“Glad to. It’s a madhouse up there. More business than you can shake a stick at.”
“Flimflammed buyers?”
“Flimflammed buyers by the gross, yard, bolt, ream, karat, bale, peck, dram, grain, pennyweight, each according to his measure. So many beating at the door that Mr. Van Dorn stripped my office of assistants to interview victims. Let’s have a drink.”
Bell hailed a waiter, and when the waiter ran with their order, he asked, “Do you have experts in Wall Street?”
“I have access to experts. And a certain rudimentary knowledge as I apprenticed down there before I became interested in this library work, and I’ve maintained friendships. What do you need to know?”
Bell told him about the sudden purchase of a controlling interest in Gleason Consolidated. “I’ve pored through newspapers and buttonholed a banker at a dinner in Pittsburgh, but I got no further than the name of a trust that no one’s heard of.”
“How quickly did they buy it up?” asked Forrer.
“Days.”
“Astonishing. Buying up a controlling interest takes time, particularly when trying to mask your intention. And buying from grieving heirs who are battling each other for the spoils takes even longer. Even if the deceased’s will was rammed through probate. Which is not impossible. If there is a more corrupt breed of judge than probate, I’ve never heard of them. Interesting, though, unless it was already in the works. Has it occurred to you that whoever bought Gleason had advance notice the shares would come to market?”
“I wondered if you would ask,” said Bell. “Fact is, whoever blew up Gleason’s yacht would know precisely when.”
After an hour, during which time Isaac Bell concluded that the Boss had made a brilliant decision to invest in a research department, and doubly brilliant to hire Grady Forrer, a weedy young man sidled into the Normandie Bar and spoke urgently to Forrer.
“Himself has gone to supper and won’t return ’til morning. Our boys are back at work.”
“Come on, Isaac! Now’s our chance.”
Forrer’s office was a collection of shabby rooms that connected by a narrow hall to the lavish Van Dorn suite. It was a windowless warren, unlike the agency’s big open front office. Cabinets, chairs, and tables were stacked with newspapers from towns and cities around the country, and, as Bell and Grady entered, a mailman staggered in under a canvas sack, which contained, he announced, three hundred subscription newspapers, none more than a week old. Clattering ceaselessly in one corner was the research division’s own telegraph key, presided over by an operator sending and receiving the Morse alphabet with a lightning-fast fist. A telephonist with a listening piece pressed to his ear was taking notes in another corner. A typewriter banged away, printing catalog cards, and the rooms echoed with shouts of “Boy!” as file boys were sent scampering to the ever-growing stacks.
Forrer explained that at this early stage he was devoting all his energy to collecting a library of information. He had hired students part-time from Columbia College and the seminaries to clip stories from the thousands of newspapers published around the country.
Bell asked, “How will you keep track?”
“I’m adapting the Dewey decimal system to Van Dorn requirements,” Grady explained. “All the information in the world is worth nothing if we can’t find it.”
Isaac Bell worked at a desk deep in clippings of newspaper headlines, features, cartoons, and pen-and-ink sketches about coal interests in Wall Street. The railroads had a powerful hand in the mineral, as he had seen in Pittsburgh. But Kenny’s father was only one of several line presidents depicted as grasping for controlling interests in the transport and sale of coal.
The western railroad builder Osgood Hennessy had attracted far more cartoonists’ ire than Mr. Bloom. Bell found the titan drawn in the images of an anaconda, an octopus, and a spider, all with more teeth than such creatures possessed in their natural state. Wall Street financiers — especially Judge James Congdon, founder of U.S. Steel; John Pierpont Morgan, consolidator of General Electric and lender of gold to the U.S. Treasury; and the lamp oil magnate John D. Rockefeller — received similar treatment, portrayed as sharks and alligators and rampaging grizzly bears.
In contrast on the Society pages, Congdon and Hennessy and Rockefeller assumed human form in staff-artist sketches, Congdon with young brides on his arm, Rockefeller attending his Fifth Avenue church, the widowed Hennessy escorting a pretty daughter of thirteen. Much attention was paid to Congdon’s art collection, much more to Hennessy’s private train.
Black Jack Gleason’s obituaries touted the coal combine he had put together, mansions he had built in West Virginia, and the shooting estate he had bought in Ireland. Bell read an editorial written before his death that lauded Gleason’s oft-stated opinion that labor organizers were “vampires that fatten on the honest labor of the coal miners of the country.”
The New York World charged Gleason with exacting tribute from the people by illegally banding the Coal Trust into “the most powerful, grasping and grinding trusts in existence, beyond any question, not even second to J. P. Morgan’s Great Fuel Octopus that limits supply and fixes prices.” A Nebraska paper excoriated Gleason as “a coal baron who got fat on the honest labor of the coal miners, and rich through overcharging the coal consumers of the country.”
Grady Forrer arrived with a pot of coffee.
“You’ve been here all night.”
“Grady, you know many things.”
“I know how to find many things.”
“Have you ever seen amber-colored eyes?”
“They are unusual,” said Grady. “Very rare. And amber is something of a misnomer. I would describe them as solid yellow or gold. Except in sunlight they will likely appear coppery, even orange. Why do you ask?”
“My provocateur might have them. Or might not.”
Grady looked troubled. “Based on the enmity already existing between labor and owners, you wouldn’t necessarily need a provocateur to provoke a war in the coalfields.”
“I would only agree that you would not need a provocateur to merely foment violence in the coalfields. There’s plenty of bitterness for that. But you would need a provocateur to set off a real, ongoing war.”
“To what purpose?!” roared a voice in Bell’s ear.