“I wouldn’t know,” said Bell. “What do you think?”
“I wouldn’t call it satisfying. I’d call it, like, finishing. Completing. Like, ‘That’s over,’ if you know what I mean. Anyway, then he told me how he killed a padrone who robbed him.”
“How does he kill?”
“He plans and he hides.”
“What do you mean?”
“He gets close to kill. To get close, you have to plan. Study the situation. Learn it cold. Then make a plan.”
“He told you that?”
“He taught me: Plan what to pretend. Pretend you’re reading a newspaper. Pretend you’re busy working. Or pretend you need help. To throw ’em off. You know what I mean, Isaac? He makes an art of it.”
“Of killing.”
“Yes, if you want to call it that.”
“So Branco was your teacher?”
“He taught me how to do it and not get killed. I owe him a lot, you could say. But what’s the difference now?”
“What else did he tell you?”
“You’re not listening, Isaac. He didn’t tell me that; he taught me.”
“Get so close that they can’t be afraid?”
“Plan to get so close that they let their guard down.”
“Thanks for the advice,” said Bell.
“What advice?”
Bell whipped the automatic from his shoulder holster and pressed the muzzle to her forehead.
“What are doing?”
“Francesca, reach into your blouse with two fingers.”
“What are you talking about, Isaac?”
“Lift out of your corset the steak knife you palmed at dinner.”
“What if I don’t?”
“I will blow your brains out,” said Bell.
“You’d be doing me a favor. Quicker than hanging. And a lot quicker than being locked in the bug house.”
Bell slid the muzzle down her nose and chin and neck and touched it to her shoulder. “This won’t kill you, but wherever you end up—bug house, prison, even escape—you’ll never use this arm again.”
The knife rang on the concrete.
“You look like a wreck,” said Archie Abbott when Isaac Bell finally stumbled into the Van Dorn field office.
Bell shook sleet off his coat and hat and warmed his hands over a radiator. “I feel like I’ve been up a week with that woman. She would not shut up.”
“Did she tell you anything useful?”
“How Branco will attempt to kill TR.”
“How does she know?”
“She was his apprentice. She knows how he operates. It won’t be a sniper or a bomb. It will be up close.”
38
They reported to the White House early in the morning. The President was exercising on a rowing machine. Van Dorn did the talking. When he had laid out the threat in succinct detail, he concluded, “For your own safety, Mr. President, and the good of the nation, I recommend curtailing your public appearances. And avoid al together any in the vicinity of the Catskill Aqueduct.”
“The aqueduct is the great enterprise of our age,” said President Roosevelt, “and I worked like a nailer to start it up when I was Governor. The very least I can do as President is lend my name and presence to the good men who took over the job. They’ll be at it for years, so celebrating the Storm King Siphon Tunnel is vital for morale.”
“Would you have the history books forever link the Catskill Aqueduct to your assassination?”
“Better than the history books saying, ‘TR turned tail and ran.’”
“I seem to have failed,” said Van Dorn, “in my effort to explain the danger.”
President Roosevelt hopped off his machine. “I grant you that J. B. Culp’s tendencies toward evil are indisputable. Culp is the greatest practitioner of rampant greed in the nation. His underhanded deals rend a terrible gulf between the wealthy few and the millions who struggle to put a meal on the table. Unchecked, his abuses will drive labor to revolution. He is as dangerous as the beast in the jungle and as sly as the serpent. But you have not a shred of evidence that he would attempt to assassinate me.”
“Nor do I have any doubt,” said Van Dorn.
“You have hearsay. The man is not a killer.”
“Culp won’t pull the trigger himself,” said Isaac Bell.
The President glanced at Van Dorn, who confirmed it with a grave nod.
“Of course,” said Roosevelt. “A hired hand. If any of this were true.”
“Antonio Branco is no hired hand,” said Bell. “He is personally committed to killing you. He’ll call in a huge marker that Culp will be happy to pay.”
“Poppycock!”
Van Dorn started to answer. Isaac Bell interrupted again.
“We would not be taking up your valuable time this morning if the threat were ‘poppycock,’ Mr. President. You say you worry about revolution? If the atmosphere is so volatile, couldn’t a second presidential assassination, so soon after the last, trigger that revolution?”
“I repeat,” Roosevelt barked. “Poppycock! I’m going to the Catskill Mountains. If your lurid fancies have any basis in truth, I’ll be safe as can be on the Navy’s newest battleship.”