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

The doctor said, “Do you remember why it happened?”

“Because Antonio Branco pulled another fast one—about the fastest fast one I’ve ever run into.” He turned to Marion. “Did the boys catch him?”

“He got away from Detective Edwards last week in the Jersey City yards.”

“A week? He could steal rides anywhere in the country in a week.”

“Or charter a special,” said Marion. “Detective Edwards told me Branco swindled a banker and a wine broker out of fifty thousand before he left.”

The bed shifted again. Bell had a feeling it would do this for a while, in fits and starts. The doctors were staring at him like a monkey in a bell jar.

“Events,” Bell told them, “are coming back in a rush. I want you to move me to a quiet, semi-dark room where I can talk them out with my fiancée, Miss Morgan.”

Marion leaned closer and whispered in his ear. “Are you really all right?”

Bell whispered back, “See if you can get them to send up a cold bird and a bottle of bubbly . . . Wait!”

“What is it, Isaac?”

“I just realized . . . Marion, get me out of here! Wire Joe Van Dorn. I don’t care if he has to spring me at gunpoint . . . I just realized, Branco wouldn’t have shoved a knife in Claypool’s chest if Claypool hadn’t already admitted his boss was Culp.”

Snow pelted the glass at Raven’s Eyrie, where Antonio Branco luxuriated under a fur counterpane in a princely guest room attached to the gymnasium. It was far from the main house. Culp’s wife had moved to their New York mansion for the winter season. The servants who had brought him supper the night they returned from Scranton, and breakfast the morning after, were a pair of bruised and battered prizefighters. Culp said they could be trusted.

“Mr. Culp is waiting for you in the trophy room,” one of them told him after breakfast.

A nailhead-studded, Gothic-arched, medieval fortress door guarded the trophy room, which was as big as a barn—two stories high and windowless—and lighted by electric chandeliers. Mounted heads of elk, moose, and bison loomed from the walls. Life-size elephant, rhino, Cape buffalo, and a nine-foot grizzly bear crowded the floor. Tiger skins lay as carpet. Doors and alcoves were framed with ivory tusks.

J. B. Culp stood at a giant rosewood desk that was flanked by suits of medieval armor. Mounted on the wall behind him were hunting rifles and sidearms. He indicated a large, comfortable-looking leather armchair that faced his desk. Antonio Branco stayed on his feet.

“Sleep well?”

“I thank you for your hospitality.”

“You didn’t give me any choice.”

“A dead president can’t prosecute you.”

“So you said on my train.”

Branco said, “And the private aqueduct will be yours.”

“The pot sweetener,” Culp said sarcastically. But he was, in fact, deeply intrigued. The blackmailing Italian had a doozy of a scheme to take control of the Catskill Aqueduct—dams, reservoirs, tunnels, and all—that just might work. A second shot at the Ramapo Grab.

“You’ve had the night to think about your opportunity,” said Branco. “What is your answer?”

“The same,” Culp said coldly. “No one dictates terms to me.”

“You can continue your wonderful life,” said Branco. “And I can make it even more wonderful for you. The aqueduct will be only the beginning. I will help you in all your businesses.”

Culp said, “You can count on the fingers of one hand the men in this country richer than I am, and none are as young. I don’t need your help.”

Branco said, “I will eliminate labor problems. I will eliminate your rivals. I will eliminate your enemies. They will disappear as if you wave a fairy’s wand. A coal strike in Colorado? Sabotage in Pittsburgh? Reformers in San Francisco? Radicals in Los Angeles? Anywhere you are plagued in the nation, I will un-plague you.”

“Just out of curiosity, what will all this ‘un-plaguing’ cost me?”

“Half.”

Culp pretended to consider it. “Half of everything you help me make? Not bad.”

“Half of everything.”

“Everything? Listen to me, you greasy little dago. I don’t need you to get things I already own.”

“You need me to continue enjoying the things you own.”

Culp’s face darkened. “You’re offering to be partners and you are blackmailing me.”

“You are correct.”

Culp laughed.

“You laugh at me?” said Branco. “Why? In this arrangement, I take all the risks. The police can’t walk into your mansion with guns blazing. They’ll shoot the ‘greasy dago.’ They will never shoot Mr. John Butler Culp.”

“I’m laughing at your nerve.”

Branco stared at the man lounging behind his desk. Was Culp so insulated, so isolated from the world, that he was ignorant of the danger, the threat, Branco posed? A strange thought struck him: Or was Culp a man above ordinary men?

“Wouldn’t you do exactly the same if our positions were turned upside down?”

“I sure as hell would,” said Culp. “Exactly the same.”

“Malvivente.”

“What’s that dago for?”

“Gangster.”

J. B. Culp beamed. He suddenly felt as free as a hoodlum stepping out on Saturday night, with brilliantined hair, a dime cigar, and a pistol in his pocket. Anything could happen. He thrust out his hand.

“O.K., partner. Shake on it.”

Branco said, “I would very much like to shake your hand. But I can’t.”

“Why not? I thought you wanted a partner.”

“You put us at risk.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your prizefighters know too much.”

Culp raised his voice. “Lee! Barry! Get in here.”

They entered quickly. Too quickly.

“Were you listening at the door?”

They exchanged looks. Barry tried to bull through it. “Sure we was listening. You’re alone in here with this guy. We gotta make sure you’re O.K.”

John Butler Culp reached back and took a Colt Bisley .32-20 target pistol from the wall of guns. He fired once at Barry. The heavyweight sagged to the floor with a hole the diameter of a cigarette between his eyes.

Lee gaped in disbelief.

Culp fired again.

Then he said to Branco, “Get rid of the bodies, partner.”

31

Skeletons were scattered like pick-up sticks. The half of the graveyard nearest the church was still a timeless patch of headstones poking out