He stepped outside, crossed the New York Central Railroad tracks, and hurried down to the frozen river. His ice yacht waited in a boathouse at the edge of the cove. The runners were frozen to the ice. He kicked them loose and pushed the yacht outside.
The breeze in the shelter of the cove was barely enough to stir the pennant at the masthead. But Isaac Bell had commissioned an exotic doozy from J. B. Culp’s own builder, with fifty extra feet of sail and lead ballast to try to keep from flipping upside down in a squall, and that breath of air started it moving like a restless horse. Abbott climbed hastily onto the car—the cockpit at the back end—and grabbed the tiller just as the yacht bolted onto the open river.
A bitter breeze struck the rigid sail. Abbott sheeted it in tight and concentrated on the tiller to dodge oversize ice hummocks, rocks along the shore, and wind skaters flashing by with sails on their backs. She was a light-footed gazelle. She felt like she was making thirty miles an hour until they overtook a New York Central express. Judging by the locomotive’s flattened smoke, Isaac Bell’s ice yacht was cracking forty-five.
When the sun cleared Breakneck Mountain and cast thin, cold rays on Storm King on the other side of the river, Archie turned the boat toward Raven’s Eyrie. Unlike the other Hudson River estates where lawns rose from the water’s edge, Culp’s place was easily recognized by the fir trees that screened its walls.
He crossed the frozen water in a flash and commenced the first of many cold, cold passes by Culp’s dock. Some Van Dorn had to freeze half to death keeping vigil and Abbott was the one, atoning for his stupidity and staying out of sight of the Boss on the slim chance that Antonio Branco may suddenly embark by ice yacht. At least Isaac hadn’t condemned him to be one of the operatives on hogshead duty—watching from inside the barrel left at the service entrance and spelling each other only in the dark—though he would have if Archie wasn’t too tall to fit.
Other boats started skittering down the river, flying Poughkeepsie and Hudson River Ice Yacht Club burgees and speeding, like his, on the edge of a smashup. Archie joined in impromptu races with them and the sail skaters. Bell had issued strict orders not to draw attention by winning races, for word of a new fast boat would get back to J. B. Culp in a flash. But it was still a welcome change of pace and a natural cover for the Van Dorn watch.
The visiting room in the women’s section of the Tombs was divided by a wall broken with a small mesh-covered window. Francesca Kennedy looked so gaunt that Isaac Bell suspected their steak dinner had been the last she had eaten. Her face was pale, her expression sullen.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came for what you didn’t tell me,” Bell said bluntly.
“Didn’t I give you enough to send me to the gallows? Oh, what am I talking about? I keep forgetting.”
“Forgetting what?”
“It’s not the hangman anymore. It’s the electric chair.”
“I came—”
“Go away, Isaac. Anything I didn’t tell you I didn’t want to tell you.”
She was seated on a stool. Bell indicated the stool on his side. “May I sit down?”
She ignored him.
Bell pulled up the stool and sat face-to-face with her, inches from the mesh. “I came to change your mind.”
“Forget it.”
“I’ve spoken with some men in the prosecutor’s office. It is possible that I can persuade the District Attorney to offer you some kind of a break.”
“You want to give me a break? Get me out of here.”
“I can’t.”
“Let me go home.”
“I can’t.”
“So I can’t remember what I didn’t tell you.”
“I can’t get you out of jail, Francesca. No one can. But maybe I can make it better.”
She glanced about her. “Better than this wouldn’t be hard.”
“I’m thinking of much better. If we can convince a judge that you should be in an asylum.”
“I don’t think the bug house is better.”
“There are still some excellent private sanitariums.”
“Really? How excellent?”
“For wealthy patients. Very wealthy patients.”
“I’m not wealthy, Isaac. And I’m sure as heck not very wealthy.”
“I can arrange it,” said Bell.
“Pay out of your own pocket?”
“The agency will pay at first. At some point after we seize Branco’s assets, we can tap into them.”
“Won’t the government keep them?”
“Not if the Van Dorn Agency deserves a bounty. And certainly not if we, in essence, pay you for your testimony against Branco with Branco’s money.”
“That would be ironic.”
“How so?”
“Is this on the square?” she asked, and for the first time she let Bell see that she was scared.
“Yes.”
“You’ll really do it?”
“You have my word you will get a square deal.”
Francesca Kennedy nodded. “I’ll take your word . . . Shake on it.” She slipped her fingers through the mesh. Bell squeezed them before the matron interrupted with a sharp “No hands!”
Francesca flashed her a pleasant smile and said, “Sorry.” To Bell she whispered, “It’s ironic, because Branco used to be a regular customer.”
“You knew Branco? You said you didn’t.”