The Gangster by Clive Cussler (free novels .txt) 📕

“Diamond Jim” Brady and Lillian Russell pair having a ball, with New York at their feet.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Bell. Isaac Bell. My deepest condolences.”

“Oh, Mr. Bell. The things you don’t plan for. Just gone. Suddenly gone.”

“They say the Lord knows what’s right, but it doesn’t seem fair at the time, does it? Were you together at the end?”

“The very night before. We had the most splendid dinner. At Delmonico’s. In a private booth.” Her voice trailed off and her eyes teared up.

“A favorite of his, I presume?”

“Oh, yes, his absolute favorite—not that we went regular. Much too expensive to eat there regular.”

“I’m sure he’s smiling down on us, glad he took you to Delmonico’s his last night. Certainly not a night to save money.”

She brightened. “Brandon’s luck held to the end. Didn’t cost him a penny. A Wall Street swell poked his head in the booth and picked up the check.”

Men were pressing from every direction to catch her attention, and Bell knew he was running out of time. “Was this the swell?” He opened his hand to reveal Helen Mills’ snapshot of Brewster Claypool and watched her face. She knew him.

Before he turned away, he looked directly into her eyes. “Again, Miss Bloom, my condolences. I grieve, too, that you lost your good man.”

Outside on 14th Street, he sent Helen back to the office with orders for Harry Warren to dispatch operators to the Waldorf Hotel and the Cherry Grove. “Tell him I’ve gone to Claypool’s office.”

“It’s after hours, Mr. Bell.”

“Claypool knows he’s next. He reckons he’s safe at his office surrounded by cops.”

“How does he know he’s in trouble?”

“He’s the last link alive between Culp on top and Ghiottone’s choice of a Black Hand assassin.”

To Isaac Bell’s eye, Brewster Claypool’s bodyguards looked like former detectives demoted when Commissioner Bingham overhauled the bureau. They were shabbily dressed, unkempt men, and had not been up to the job of protecting Claypool.

Bell found one in the elevator, one in the hall, and two inside Claypool’s office, all unconscious or slumped on the floor, holding their heads. He smelled gun smoke. Pistol in hand, he crashed into Claypool’s private office. There he found a detective, unconscious on the carpet with a Smith & Wesson in his hand, and the Black Hand gang leader, Charlie Salata, shot dead.

“Claypool!”

Bell looked to see if he was hiding in the closets and the washroom, but Claypool wasn’t there. He went to the windows that faced the Singer Building. He opened one and looked down. The office was twelve stories above Cortlandt Street. There was no balcony Claypool could have escaped to, and nothing to climb up the side of the building to the roof.

Bare light bulbs sparkled across the street inside the cagework of the Singer Building. Work had ceased for the night, and the steel columns, which had risen several tiers since Bell had been here last, were deserted, the derricks still, the hoisting engines silent. He could hear trolleys, a noisy motor truck, and horseshoes clattering in the street. Movement caught his attention. Five stories above the sidewalk, he saw the silhouette of a man climbing open stairs in the Singer frame—a night watchman or fire watch.

Bell hurried back to the closets, recalling that one had been mostly empty. He inspected it carefully this time and found a door concealed in the back, its knob hidden under a winter coat. The door opened on a stairwell.

“Claypool!”

Silence. No answer, no footsteps. It was possible that Claypool had escaped during the battle, his retreat covered, perhaps, by the wounded detective who had shot Salata.

Bell went back to the windows. The man climbing the Singer steelwork stopped and looked down. Immediately, he lunged toward a ladder and scrambled higher. Bell leaned against the glass to see. Two stories below, another man climbed after him. He was limping, slowed by his “winging” gait.

25

Brewster Claypool collapsed into a triangle of cold steel, formed by a column, a crossbeam, and a diagonal wind brace, where he could hide from the monster chasing him. It was hide and pray or simply fall to his death, he was so exhausted. Even a physical culture devotee like J. B. Culp would be hard-pressed to climb as many stairs and ladders as he had—five, before he lost count—and he could not recall the last time he had climbed stairs when an elevator was available.

He had heard the monster’s footsteps when he wedged his trembling legs into the triangle, still climbing down there, somewhere down in the dark. Now he’d lost track of him. Muffled by the wind? Or had he stopped? Was he standing stock-still, listening for his prey? For Claypool was prey. He had no doubt of that, prey in a situation that all the pull on earth could not get him out of. He tried to drag air silently into his storming lungs.

Gradually he caught his breath, gradually he began to hope that the killer had given up. Could he somehow just stay inside this little steel crook in the corner of the skyscraper until dawn filled it with workmen? Would he freeze to death? The wind had begun to gust and it was fierce up here. No wonder the engineers riddled the structure with wind braces.

“Mista Claypool.”

The voice was inches from his ear, and he was so shocked and frightened that he shouted, “Who are you? What do you want from me?”

“Who told you to tell Finn to hire an assassin?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then why did you barricade yourself with bodyguards when Finn died?”

In the shrewd, conniving worlds that Brewster Claypool had dominated his entire career, there was no one smarter than a “railroad lawyer”—except a Wall Street lawyer. But when he heard that question in the dark, Brewster Claypool felt every brainstorm he had ever had drain from his head; every parry, every counterstroke, every rejoinder.

“Why?”

Then, all the gods be praised, his brain began to