Harry handed Bell a handkerchief. “You’re bleeding.”
Bell said, “Find out who was mixing it up with the Gophers.”
“What?”
Bell mopped the blood off his face and wadded the cloth against the source, a ragged furrow parting his hair. “I want to know what the devil was going on. We didn’t just happento land in a gang war. The Gophers were waiting for someone on the ship. I want to know who and why. And I want to know why those other boys came along at that moment. On the jump!”
Warren and his boys trooped off. Bell went looking for dry clothes.
Early the next morning, in Archie Abbott’s library, Marion read aloud to Isaac Bell the New York Timesaccount of yesterday’s shootout on Pier 54. Steered by Cunard Line publicists charged with maintaining the steamship company’s reputation for safety, and threatened, Bell presumed, by red-faced police and docks commissioners, the newspaper blamed the gunfire on “disgruntled Italian longshoremen.”
Bell laughed, which made his head hurt.
“‘The Italians all escaped in the confusion,’” Marion concluded her reading. “‘Arrests are imminent,’ vowed the commissioners.”
Archie’s butler appeared and said, “A Mr. Harry Warren to see you at the kitchen door, sir.”
“Bring him in,” said Marion.
“I tried, Mrs. Bell. He won’t come past the kitchen.”
The cook poured Harry coffee and made herself scarce.
Harry stared in some amazement at Bell, who was attired in his customary white linen suit and had combed his thick golden hair to hide a row of surgical stitches. “If you wasn’t white as your duds, no one would know you was recently brained and partly drowned.”
“He looks better than he is,” said Marion. “The doctor said he ought to be in bed.”
“I’m fine,” said Bell.
Harry Warren and Marion Bell traded glances of concern. “You know, boss, Mrs. Bell is right to be worried. So’s the doc. Knocks on the noggin rate respect.”
“Thank you, Harry,” said Marion. “Could you help me walk him upstairs?”
“What have you found?” Bell demanded.
“The Gophers didn’t believe there was a fire on the Mauretania.”
“What business was it of theirs? It so happens there wasa fire. I saw it with my own eyes. It burned up everything in the forward baggage room, including the smuggled film stock that ignited it.”
“That’s what the Gophers didn’t believe.”
Bell looked at Marion. The penny dropped. “You mean the Gopherswere smuggling the film stock?”
“They put up the dough for the shipment. When they heard about the fire, they decided that the guy they paid to smuggle it into New York was welshing on the deal, selling the stock to another buyer for more dough.”
“Where did they get that idea?”
“They’re Gophers! They get ideas like that. They figure that what they would do to somebody, somebody would do to them. Like the Golden Rule. Backwards. So they met the ship to deal with the guy who they thought welshed.”
“Who is he?”
“Clyde Lynds.”
Bell exchanged a second glance with Marion and shook his head in disgust, setting off new jolts of pain. “I was afraid you were going to say that. Clyde smelled the film going bad and knew exactly what it was because it was his stock.”
Marion said, “The ‘hero’ who saved the ship is the smuggler who almost sank the ship.”
“In a nutshell,” Harry Warren agreed. He stood up and put on his derby. “Anyway, when the Yorkville boys showed up, the Gophers jumped to the conclusion that they were taking delivery of the film stock they’d bought out from under them. Fighting ensued.”
“In a nutshell…”
“Thanks for the coffee.”
“Who are the Yorkville boys?”
“From the new German district up in Yorkville. Uptown, on the East Side.”
“Germans?”
“Germans are leaving downtown since the General Slocumfire. You know, the excursion-boat fire when all their poor children were killed. Tore the heart out of the old neighborhood, and they’ve just kind of been retreating north — lock, stock, and breweries.”
“What’s the gang called?”
“Marzipan Boys.”
“Like the candy?”
“The old gangs mocked ’em with that name. Now they’re proud of it since they’ve been whaling the heck out of everybody. They’re a tough bunch.”
Harry Warren was halfway out the back door when Bell called, “But why did the Marzipan Boys go to Pier 54?”
“What do you mean?”
“The film stock didburn in the fire,” Bell said with elaborate patience. “Clyde Lynds didn’t welsh on the deal. The Marzipan Boys didn’t buy it out from underneath the Gophers, therefore they weren’t there to pick up film stock they didn’t even know about. So why did the Yorkville gang meet theMauretania?”
Harry Warren’s blank expression got blanker. “Haven’t found out yet.”
“Find out! Report to me at the office.”
“Isaac,” said Marion. “The doctor said to stay home today.”
“O.K.,” said Bell. “I’ll stay home today. Harry, report to me at the office tonight.”
17
“Clyde,” said Isaac Bell, “you’re going to have to return Captain Turner’s medal.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Bell?”
Bell fixed him with an icy stare.
Clyde Lynds hung his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bell. I am so sorry.”
Bell asked, “Sorry for what? Spit it out! What?”
“The film stock. It was mine.”
“Go on.”
Clyde said, “We needed the money to escape from Germany. I mean, I wanted so much to succeed with Talking Pictures. But I was scared crazy for our lives. When the Army issued that phony warrant, I knew my goose was cooked.”
Bell bored into him with his eyes. Then he asked, softly, “Was this smuggling scheme Professor Beiderbecke’s idea?”
“No!”
“Are you sure?”
“The poor old guy didn’t have a clue. It was all my idea. Remember I told you I got lucky? What happened was I bumped into a Gopher I used to know in New York when he was a sceneshifter at the Hammerstein. He had moved up in the Gophers, and they sent him to Germany looking for film stock. He had the dough. I knew an outfit I’d bought from and they steered me to a shipper to pack it and hide it. We worked a deal.” He hung his head again. “I thought, What the heck, everyone smuggles film stock, why not me? I didn’t realize the stuff was so old it was unstable.” He barked a bitter laugh. “I got taken like a rube. Seven crates of garbage.”
“Deadly garbage.”
“I swear, I didn’t know it was old. I think they switched it on me. I mean, I wouldn’t risk hurting all those people.”
“And you are absolutely positive that Beiderbecke had nothing to do with it?”
“I didn’t tell him until it was on the boat… What are you going to do?”
Isaac Bell sighed. “I’m afraid you leave me no choice but to help keep you alive and unkidnapped while you build a new Talking Pictures machine.”
“Help me? Why? It was terrible. All those people could have died.”
“Why? You’re a jackass. But you’re an honest jackass. I just gave you an easy out and you didn’t take it. All you had to do was blame the Professor, but you didn’t. That’s good enough for me.”