“We are, all of us, taking risks, Dutch. But the payoff—as you would say—will be well worth it.”
As he rose, he pointed a finger at the other man who remained sitting. “It better be.” Shultz left.
Outside, the night air bracing him was cool. At the curb one of his men leaned against the gangster’s spotless Packard Phaeton. Vincent “Vin” O’Hara was ruggedly handsome with high cheekbones, hazel eyes and a half moon scar on the side of one eye. He wore a straw hat over his brown hair. Several cigarettes littered the sidewalk near his square toe Oxfords.
“Let’s get out of here, Vin,” Schultz said.
“Sure, boss,” said the other, opening the rear door for the bootlegger. The Packard’s eight-cylinder engine caught on the second turn of the crankshaft and headlights springing on, off they went.
Upstairs, Davis stood at the window of his corner office watching the other one drive away. He let the drape he’d pushed aside fall back into place, blowing cigar smoke toward the ceiling, thoughtfully watching the vapor trail filter upward. He’d told the gangster only what he needed to motivate him to do his bidding. But it wouldn’t do for him to enact his vendetta against Matthew Henson—at least not yet. He needed the first man to reach the North Pole alive a little longer.
CHAPTER THREE
Matthew Henson awoke early despite having been up past midnight. He lay under a sheet in his flannel long johns, but his chest was bare. As was usual, he’d left his bedroom window wide open for the bracing night air, just as he’d done since he was young. This adoration for the cold hadn’t begun on his Arctic expeditions. It was from years of seagoing in rugged climes and often having to sleep in the open on the deck.
Finishing the sixth grade in Washington D.C., and yearning for he didn’t know what then, he’d signed on as a cabin boy off the docks of Baltimore. This was a merchant ship, Katie Hines, bound for China under the command of Captain Childs. That would be his first time experiencing a foreign land but not his last. Over the course of his time as a seaman, he would travel back to China, go to Japan, Manila, North Africa, France, Nicaragua, the Black Sea and on into southern Russia and the northwest Murmansk area.
Though he only had a grade school education, it turned out Henson had a facility for languages. While not proficient in many tongues, his Spanish and Mandarin were more than passable. Later, when in northwest Greenland, that facility was helpful in learning more than one of the Inuit dialects. He was the only member of the eight Arctic expeditions to do so.
Various masks, items and totems sprinkled about the spacious apartment attested to his journeys and sometimes stays in these foreign lands. Several of his artifacts—an original Kiyonaga wood block print and a Yoruba orisha sculpture—would be the envy of a museum curator. But the monetary value of his possessions was always far from his mind.
Getting dressed, Henson reviewed the matters at hand. Like being able to sense the difference between a patch of ice he could step on and one that only looked solid, he was of the mind that Daddy Paradise and Miriam McNair hadn’t been completely leveling with him.
It was no secret that Dutch Schultz was seeking to take over the lucrative Harlem numbers trade. Certainly to that end what with his volatile nature, he’d use kidnapping, gun play and any and all other forms of intimidation to get what he wanted. And presumably the opportunity had presented itself when Toliver came to town for this talk as he wasn’t headquartered in Manhattan but Chicago. But Henson had also known the Daughter lived in town, had been here for more than four years running a music shop. It was only recently Toliver publicly admitted she was blood, having been raised by the mother. Could be Schultz waited until Toliver was in the vicinity. Could be he had been planning this for some time. But two and two weren’t quite adding up in his head.
“Breakfast first,” he determined, traipsing into the kitchenette to brew a pot of coffee and fix up some bacon and eggs. Many a Harlemite assumed he only ate whale blubber or sled dog—and he’d gladly eaten both with relish in the past. Mostly, in those days, Peary’s crew would eat as the Eskimos did, fish and pemmican, with tea, condensed milk and biscuits the American additions to such a diet. His apartment had come furnished, but in addition to his keepsakes, he’d added things like the 19th century Mongolian area rug he walked bare-footed across and a slim Russian Empire era bureau made of mahogany and brass.
After dinner, he put several tools and devices on a round table near a window overlooking the street below. All on top of a letter he’d started that began with, “My Dear Anaukaq.”
It was a letter he was having a hard time writing.
He paused momentarily, his fingers touching the paper then he put the sheet aside so as not to get it soiled. He took a deep breath and resumed the maintenance of his devices.
He’d rigged up a metal apparatus that clamped around his lower arm holding the shuriken in place by hinged steel fingers. By twisting his forearm, the star would release and drop down into his waiting hand. But he had to be careful, as more than once, the tension would be off and the star would shake loose and cut into his palm or drop to the ground. He adjusted the tension in the fingers, hoping that this time it would work. Using a stone, he sharpened the edges of his ice axes and checked
