The Gangster

Bell recognized the stationery even before he read the address.

Signora Marion Morgan

The Fiancée of Isaac Bell

Knickerbocker Hotel

Flushed with fury, Bell plunged his hand into his boot.

“People,” Marion warned with a significant glance at the full restaurant. She passed him an oyster fork, and with a grateful nod Bell used its wide tine to slit the envelope.

The silhouettes of a black hand, a revolver, and a skull pierced by a dagger were drawn with exceptional skill, the work of an artist. The wording of the threat was densely baroque, the threat itself, grotesque.

Dearest Signora Marion Morgan,

You have in your feminine power to persuade Isaac Bell to convince the highest authorities to act in accordance with listening to reason. Only you, beautiful lady, can make Bell entreat the powers that are to act for the goodness of all.

Bombing Catskill Aqueduct must be prevented.

This will require one million dollars to be gathered for necessary payments to prevent attack. Radicals and agitators and criminals are banded together. The City cannot protect the aqueduct. Water Supply Board helpless.

The Black Hand stands beside you. Together we stop tragedy before it befalls. Pay part day after next hundred thousand dollar at Storm King Siphon Shaft.

* * *

Fully aware that “Dearest Signora” and “in your feminine power” and “beautiful lady” were phrases deliberately calculated to set him off half cocked, Isaac Bell still had to fight hard to douse his rage. The intent of Antonio Branco’s poisonous message was the same as a threat to bomb a Little Italy pushcart — sow panic. At least, thought Bell, it was exactly what he had predicted: a Black Hand letter to rival all Black Hand letters.

Did it mean that President Roosevelt was in the clear? Was the assassination plot that Brewster Claypool had set in motion for J. B. Culp no longer active? Just the opposite. Antonio Branco had landed on his feet. All four feet, as the saying went.

“Why are you smiling?” asked Marion.

“Am I?”

“Like a timber wolf. Why?”

“Only in America.”

“What do you mean?”

“An immigrant gangster shakes hands with a blue-blood tycoon.”

“Antonio Branco and J. B. Culp?”

Bell tossed the letter on the tablecloth. “This pretty much confirms what Vito Rizzo ‘confessed.’ The man he helped at Storm King was Branco himself. He’s probably in Culp’s mansion by now, warming his feet on the hearth.”

“Why would a man as rich and powerful as Culp shelter a criminal?”

“Each offers what the other wants. Branco wants power. Culp wants the President dead.”

Marion picked up the letter and read it.

“What is this about?” she asked, and quoted: “‘The City cannot protect the aqueduct.’”

“Branco is reminding us that it is nearly impossible to guard anything a hundred miles long.”

“What about this? ‘Water Supply Board helpless’?”

“Same thing… Except, funny you ask… Grady in Research said that initially there was a huge battle in New York whether to make the aqueduct a City-operated public project or a privately owned enterprise that charged the City for the water. The City won, but it was close-fought. You can bet the losers hate the Water Supply Board.”

“Was Culp the loser?”

“It was fought by proxies. Shell companies. Could have been. Who knows?”

“I wonder why Branco wants the money delivered at the Storm King Shaft. Where is that?”

“Fifty miles up the river at Cornwall Landing.”

“Do you suppose that the ‘powers that are’ received their own letters like this?”

“I’m sure the Water Supply Board and the Mayor both got them. Ours was probably an afterthought to get my goat.”

“Will they pay?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“But Branco dynamited Giuseppe Vella’s church job, and he bombed Banco LaCava. If he follows his pattern, he will attack.”

“The only question is where,” Bell agreed.

Marion said, “Storm King Shaft.”

“How do you reckon that?”

“An explosion or sabotage anywhere else could be deemed an accident. But a bomb at the same place he names in the letter would leave no doubt that he means business.”

Bell looked at his fiancée with deeper admiration than ever. “You’d be a crackersjack extortionist.”

“It has the ring of truth, doesn’t it?”

“It does indeed.”

Bell signaled a waiter.