the Wrecker be so shocked that he gave himself away?
Before the train stopped rolling, Bell stepped aboard the Pullman just ahead of the dining car, pulled himself painfully up the steps, crossed to the dining car, and sauntered in. Forcing himself to stand and walk normally for the benefit of all watching, he asked the steward for a table in the middle, which allowed him to see who entered from either end.
Last night’s thousand-dollar tip in the observation car had not gone unnoticed by the train crew. He was seated immediately and brought hot coffee, steaming breakfast rolls, and a warm recommendation to order the freshly caught Wyoming cutthroat trout.
Bell had watched every man’s face as he had come into the dining car to gauge reactions to his presence. Several, noting his evening attire, remarked with a clubby smile, “Long night?” The Chicago meatpacker gave him a friendly wave, as did the well-dressed drummer he had spoken with in the washroom.
Judge Congdon wandered in, and said, “Forgive me if I don’t join you, Mr. Bell. With the obvious exception of a young lady’s company, I prefer my own in the morning.”
Kenny Bloom staggered into the diner with a hangover clouding his eyes and sat beside Bell.
“Good morning,” said Bell.
“What the hell is good about it … Say, what happened to your face?”
“Cut myself shaving.”
“George! George! Coffee over here before a man dies.”
Bruce Payne, the oil lawyer, hurried up to their table, talking a blue streak about what he had read in the Cheyenne newspapers. Kenny Bloom covered his eyes. Jack Thomas sat down at the last empty chair, and said, “That’s a heck of a shiner.”
“Cut myself shaving.”
“There’s the Senator! Hell, we don’t have room for him. George! George! Rustle up another chair for Senator Kincaid. A man who loses as much money as he did shouldn’t have to eat alone.”
Bell watched Kincaid approach slowly, nodding to acquaintances as he passed through the dining car. Suddenly, he recoiled, his expression startled. The well-dressed drummer had leaped up from his breakfast, reaching out to shake hands. Kincaid gave the salesman a cold stare, brushed past, and proceeded to Bell’s table.
“Good morning, gentlemen. Feeling satisfied, Mr. Bell?”
“Satisfied about what, Senator?”
“About what? About winning nearly a million dollars last night. A fair piece of which was mine.”
“It looks like something caught your attention full in the face. What happened? Did you fall off a moving train?”
“Close shave,” said Isaac Bell, still watching the doors. But though he lingered over breakfast until the last table was cleared, he saw no one react as if his presence were a shock. He was not particularly surprised and only mildly disappointed. It had been a long shot. But even if he hadn’t spooked the Wrecker into revealing his identity, from now on the Wrecker would be watching a bit anxiously over his shoulder. Who said a Van Dorn detective couldn’t fly?
20
WONG LEE, OF JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY, WAS A TINY MAN WITH a lopsided face and a blinded eye. Twenty years ago, an Irish hod carrier, thick-armed from lugging bricks, knocked Wong’s hat to the sidewalk, and when Wong asked why he had insulted him, the hod carrier and two companions beat Wong so badly that his friends didn’t recognize him when they came to the hospital. He had been twenty-eight years old when he was attacked and full of hope, improving his English and working in a laundry to save enough money to bring his wife to America from their village in Kowloon.
Now he was nearly fifty. At one point, he had saved enough to buy his own laundry across the Hudson River on Manhattan Island in New York City in hopes of earning her passage faster. His good English drew customers until the Panic of 1893 had put a sudden end to that dream, and Wong Lee’s Fine Hand Wash Laundering joined the tens of thousands of businesses that were bankrupt in the nineties. When prosperity finally returned, the long hard years had left Wong too weary to start a new business. Though ever hopeful, he now was saving money by sleeping on the floor of the laundry where he worked in Jersey City. Much of that money went to get a certificate of residence, which was a new provision included in the Chinese Exclusion Act when it was renewed in 1902. It seems that he had neglected to defend himself from assault charges, the lawyer explained, filed all those years ago while he was still in the hospital. So bribes would have to be paid. Or so the lawyer claimed.
Then that past February, with winter still lingering, a stranger approached Wong when he was alone in his employer’s laundry. He was a white American, so muffled against the river wind that only his eyes showed above the collar of his inverness coat and below the brim of his fedora.
“Wong Lee,” he said. “Our mutual friend, Peter Boa, sends greetings.”
Wong Lee hadn’t see Peter Boa in twenty-five years, not since they’d worked together as immigrant dynamiters blowing cuts in the mountains for the Central Pacific Railroad. Young and daring and hopeful of returning to their villages rich men, they’d scrambled down cliff faces setting charges, competing to blast the most foot-holds for the trains.
Wong said that he was happy to hear that Boa was alive and well. When last Wong had seen him, in the Sierra Nevada, Peter had lost a hand to a sooner-than-expected explosion. Gangrene was creeping up his arm, and he had been too sick to flee California from the mobs attacking Chinese immigrants.
“Peter Boa told me to look you up in Jersey City. He said you could help me, as he was unable.”
“By your clothes,” Wong observed, “I can see that you are too rich to need help from a poor man.”
“Rich indeed,” said the stranger, sliding a wad of banknotes across the wooden counter. “An advance,” he called it, “until I return,” adding, “Rich enough to pay you whatever you need.”
“What do
“Peter Boa told me that you had a special gift for demolition. He said that you used one stick of dynamite when most men needed five. They called you Dragon Wong. And when you protested that only emperors could be dragons, they proclaimed you Emperor of Dynamite.”
Flattered, Wong Lee knew it was true. He had had an intuitive understanding of dynamite back when no one knew that much about the new explosive. He still had the gift. He had kept up with all the modern advances in demolition, including how electricity made explosives safer and more powerful, in the unlikely hope that one day quarries and construction contractors would deign to hire the Chinese they used to hire but now shunned.
Wong immediately used the money to buy a half interest in his boss’s business. But one month later, that past March, a Panic swept Wall Street again. Jersey City factories closed, as did factories all over the nation. The trains had less freight to carry, so the car floats had fewer boxcars to ferry across the river. Jobs grew scarce on the piers, and fewer people could afford to have their clothing laundered. All spring and summer, the Panic deepened. By autumn, Wong had little hope of ever seeing his wife again.
Now it was November, bitterly cold today, with another winter looming.
And the stranger came back to Jersey City, muffled against the Hudson wind.
He reminded Wong that accepting an advance was a promise to deliver.
Wong reminded the stranger that he had promised to pay whatever he needed.
“Five thousand dollars when the job is done. Will that do you?”
“Very good, sir.” Then, feeling unusually bold because the stranger truly needed him, Wong asked, “Are you an anarchist?”
“Why do you ask?” the stranger asked coldly.
“Anarchists like dynamite,” Wong answered.
“So do labor strikers,” the stranger answered patiently, proving that he truly needed Wong Lee and only Wong Lee. “You know the expression ‘the proletariat’s artillery’?”
“But you do not wear workman’s clothes.”
