The Wrecker by Clive Cussler (book club reads .TXT) 📕

he stumbled and reached out to the wall to catch his balance. His hand touched the rough wood precisely where a shaft of light spilled down from above and illuminated the cash he was holding. The two stood up, exchanged glances, and flicked out their cigarettes.

The Wrecker reeled drunkenly away, lurching into the dark toward the open door of a livery stable. He saw another gleam of exchanged glances, as the bouncers’ luck seemed to get better and better. The drunk with the roll of dinero was making it easy for them to relieve him of it in private.

He got inside the stable ahead of them and swiftly chose a spot where light from next door spilled through a window. They came after him, the lead bouncer pulling a sap from his pocket. The Wrecker kicked his feet out from under him. The surprise was complete, and he fell to the hoof-beaten straw. His partner, comprehending that the Wrecker was not as drunk as they had supposed, raised his powerful fists.

The Wrecker went down on one knee, drew his knife from his boot, flicked his wrist. The blade leaped to its full length, the tip touching the bouncer’s throat. With his other hand, the Wrecker pressed his derringer to the temple of the man fallen in the straw. For a moment, the only sound was the piano in the distance and the bouncers’ hard, startled breath.

“Relax, gentlemen,” said the Wrecker. “It’s a business proposition. I will pay you ten thousand dollars to kill a passenger on the Overland Limited. You have twenty minutes before it leaves the station.”

The bouncers had no objection to killing a man for ten thousand dollars. The Wrecker could have bought them for five. But they were practical men.

“How do we get him off the train?”

“He is a protector of the innocent,” said the Wrecker. “He will come to the rescue of someone in danger—a damsel in distress, for example. Would such be available?”

They looked across the alley. A red brakeman’s lantern hung in a window. “For two dollars, she’ll be available.”

THE OVERLAND LIMITED had come to a stop with a metallic shriek of brake shoes and the clank of couplings in the narrow pool of electric light beside the low brick Rawlins Depot. Most of her passengers were asleep in their beds. The few who were not stepped onto the platform to stretch their legs only to retreat from the stink of alkali springs mingled with coal smoke. The train crew changed engines while provisions, newspapers, and telegrams came aboard.

The porter, the former slave Jonathan, approached Isaac Bell in the deserted observation car, where the detective was contentedly sprawled on a couch reminiscing with Kenneth Bloom about their days in the circus.

“Telegram from Ogden, Mr. Bell.”

Bell tipped the old man a thousand dollars.

“That’s all right, Jonathan,” he said, laughing. “I got lucky tonight. The least I can do is share the wealth. Excuse me a moment, Ken.” He turned away to read the wire.

His face turned cold even as hot tears burned his eyes.

“You all right, Isaac?” asked Ken.

“No,” he choked out, and stepped onto the rear platform to try to fill his lungs with the acrid-smelling air. Though it was the middle of the night, a shunt engine was moving freight cars about the yards. Bloom followed him out.

“What happened?”

“Weber and Fields ...”

“Vaudeville? What are you talking about?”

All Isaac Bell could say was, “My old friends.” He crumpled the telegram in his fist, and whispered to himself, “Last thing I told them was to watch their step. I told them the Wrecker is poison.”

“Who?” asked Bloom.

Bell turned terrible eyes on him, and Bloom retreated hastily into the observation car.

Bell smoothed the telegraph flat and read it again. Their bodies had been found in an alley, two blocks from the office. They must have spotted the Wrecker and tailed him. It was hard to believe that a single man could have taken both veteran detectives down. But Wally had not been well. Maybe it had slowed him. As chief investigator, as the man responsible for the safety of his operatives, he should have replaced him—should have taken a vulnerable man out of danger.

Bell’s head felt like it would explode, it was so filled with pain and fury. For what felt like a very long time, he could not think. Then, gradually, it struck him that Wally and Mack had left him a dying legacy. The man they had tailed must have looked enough like the man in the lumberjack’s sketch to raise their suspicions. Otherwise, why would they have followed him into an alley? That he had turned on them and killed them proved that the sketch of the Wrecker was accurate, no matter how much it reminded people of a matinee idol.

The fresh locomotive hooted the go-ahead signal. Bell, gripping the platform handrail, tears streaming down his face, was so lost in his heartsick thoughts that he barely heard the whistle. When the train started moving, he grew vaguely aware that the crossties appeared to slide behind the observation car as it rolled out of the station and passed under the last electric light in the station yard.

A woman screamed.

Bell looked up. He saw her running down the tracks like she was trying to catch the accelerating train. Her white dress seemed to glow in the night, backlit as it was by the distance light. A man was lumbering after her, a hulking shape, who caught her in his arms and cut off her scream with a hand clapped over her mouth and forced her to the roadbed under the weight of his body.

Bell exploded into motion. He leaped over the railing and hit the ties running, pumping his legs as fast as he could. But the train was moving too fast, and he lost his balance. He tucked into a tight ball, shielded his face with his hands, hit the ties, and rolled between the rails as the