The Gangster

“Shall I ride back to New York with you, Mr. Culp? I can catch a Washington express from there.”

Culp’s conductor rousted the lawyer off his train.

His engineer blew the ahead signal.

His locomotive steamed from the private platform, maneuvered out of the yards onto a cleared track, and began to labor up the steep grade into the Pocono Mountains. Culp got to work, dictating mental notes into a graphophone. Suddenly, the front vestibule door flew open, admitting the full thunder of the straining locomotive. He looked up. As swarthy a complexioned Italian as ever had sneaked past immigration officials pushed into his car.

29

“Where the devil did you come from?”

Culp did not wait for the intruder to answer but instead grabbed his pistol from his desk drawer and leveled it at the swarthy man’s head. The only reason not to put a bullet through it was that he might be a stupid track worker who had been somehow swept along when the train left Scranton, in which case sorting it out with the local authorities would end any hope of getting to the Cherry Grove in time for a late supper. But he wasn’t a track worker; he was wearing a rucksack like a hobo.

“Do you understand English?” he roared. “Who the hell are you?”

The man did speak English, in a rolling manner that reminded Culp of Claypool at his most convoluted.

“I am a stranger with an irresistible offer to become well known to you.”

“That’ll be the day. Raise your hands.”

The man raised his hands. Culp saw that he was holding a length of cord that stretched behind him and out the vestibule door. “What’s that string?”

“The trigger.”

“What? Trigger? What trigger?”

“To trigger the detonator.”

“Deton—”

“I should lower my hand,” the intruder interrupted. “I’m stretching the slack. If the train lurches, I might tug it by mistake. If that were to happen, a stick of dynamite would blow up the coupler that holds your private car to your private locomotive.”

“Are you a lunatic? We’ll roll back down into Scranton and both die.”

“Chissà,” said the man.

“Kiss-a? What the blazes is kiss-a dago for?”

“Chissà means ‘who knows’ if I live or die? Or should I say we.”

Culp cocked the .45. “You’re dead anyhow, no ‘kiss-a’ about it.”

“If you shoot me, you will die, too.”

“No greasy immigrant is dictating to me.”

Antonio Branco looked calmly down the gun barrel. “I am impressed, Mr. Culp. I was told that you are more interesting than a coddled child of the rich. Strong as stone.”

“Who told you that?”

“Brewster Claypool.”

“What? When?”

“When he died.”

Culp turned red with rage. He stood up and extended the pistol with a hand that shook convulsively. “You’re the one who killed Claypool.”

“No, I did not kill him. I tried to save him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“A fool I brought to help me acted like a fool.”

“You were there. You killed him.”

“No, I wanted him alive as much as you. I needed Claypool. He would be my go-between. Now I have no choice but to entreat you face-to-face. I’ve lost everything. My business ruined. My reputation. The Van Dorns are after me. And now, without Claypool to represent me, I stand alone with your pistol in my face.”

“You killed Claypool.”

“No, I did not kill him,” Branco repeated. “He was my only hope.”

“I don’t understand… Lower your hands!”

Branco lowered his hands but stepped forward so the cord stayed taut. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“I don’t care who you are.”

“The gas explosion.”

“What gas explosion?”

“On Prince Street. It destroyed tenements. You must have read it in the paper.”

“Why would I read about explosions in Italian colony tenements?”

“To know what happened to Isaac Bell.”

The man had caught him flat-footed.

J. B. Culp could not hide his surprise. “Bell? Is that what put Bell in the hospital? What is Bell’s condition?”

“Tu sogni accarezzévole.”

“What’s that dago for?”

“Sweet dreams.”

Culp laughed. “O.K. So you lost everything. What do you want from me? Money?”

“I have plenty of money.” Still holding the string, he shrugged the rucksack off his shoulder and lobbed it onto Culp’s desk. “Look inside.”

Culp unbuckled the flap. The canvas bulged with banded stacks of fifty- and hundred-dollar notes. “Looks like you robbed a bank.”

“I lost only my ‘public’ business. I have my private business.”

“What’s your private business?”

“Mano Nero.”

“Black Hand?… In other words, you used to hide your gangster business behind a legitimate business and now you are nothing but a gangster.”

“I am much more than a gangster.”

“How do you reckon that?”

“I am a gangster with a friend in high places.”

“Not me, sport.” Culp tossed the rucksack at the man’s feet. “Get off my train.”

“A friend so high that he is higher than the President.”

* * *

Culp had been enjoying crossing swords with the intruder, despite the very real threat of a dynamited coupler. But the conversation had taken a vicious twist. The man was acting as if he had him over a worse barrel than crashing down the mountain at eighty miles per hour.

“Where,” he asked, “did you get that idea?”