“Looks like they spotted Harry Frost at Saint George.”
St. George, on Staten Island, was a resort town where the Kill Van Kull met the Upper Bay. It was home to grand hotels with beautiful views of New York’s harbor. The busy waterfront served ferries, tugs, coal barges, steam yachts, fishing boats, and oyster scows.
“How sure are you it was Frost?”
“You know some of my folks are in the oyster business.”
“I do,” said Bell without further comment.
For certain Staten Island families, the oyster business extended into realms of activity that the New York Police Department’s Harbor Patrol dubbed piracy. Little Eddie was straight as they came, and Bell would trust the kid with his life. But blood was thick, which made Eddie Tobin an unusually well-informed private detective when it came to the dark side of maritime traffic in the Port of New York.
“A feller who looked a lot like Harry Frost—big, red-faced, gray beard—was flashing money to hire a boat.”
“What kind of boat?”
“He said it had to be steady—wide like an oyster scow. And fast. Faster than the Harbor Patrol.”
“Did he find one?”
“A couple of really fast ones kinda disappeared since then. Both run by fellers who’ll do it for the dough. Frost—if it was Frost—was flashing plenty.”
Isaac Bell slapped his shoulder. “Good work, Eddie.”
The apprentice detective’s face, branded by a brutal gang beating that had nearly killed him, shifted into a lopsided smile. His eyes had survived, though one was partly shaded by a drooping lid, and they glowed with pride at the chief investigator’s compliment.
“Can I ask you what do you think it means, Mr. Bell?”
“If it was Frost—and not some crook trying to smuggle something off a ship or bust his pal out of jail and spirit him off to a friendlier jurisdiction—it means Harry Frost wants a stable gun platform and a fast getaway.”
Bell extracted his long legs from the Eagle’s driving nacelle and leaped out, landing on the grass like an acrobat. “Andy! On the jump!”
“Hold on!” the Aero Club certifier cried. “Where are you going, Mr. Bell? We haven’t even started the test.”
“Sorry,” said Bell. “We’ll have to complete this another time.”
“But you must hold your certificate to enter the race. It’s in the rules.”
“I’m not in the race. Andy! Paint her yellow.”
“Yellow?”
“Whiteway Yellow. The same yellow as Josephine’s. Tell her boys I said to give you as much dope as you need and to lend a hand with the brushes. I want my machine yellow by morning.”
“How are people going to tell you apart? Your machines look near the same already. It’s going to be very confusing.”
“That’s the idea.” said Isaac Bell. “I’m not making this easy for Harry Frost.”
“Yeah, but what if he shoots at you thinking you’re her?”
“If he shoots, he’ll reveal his position. Then he’s all mine.”
“What if he hits you?”
Isaac Bell didn’t answer. He was already beckoning his detectives and addressing them urgently. “Young Eddie’s turned up a heck of a clue. Station riflemen on boats on the East River and the Upper Bay and up the Hudson all the way to Yonkers. We’ve got Harry Frost where we want him.”
BOOK THREE
“up, up, a little bit higher”
17
ISAAC BELL DROVE HIS American Eagle monoplane a thousand feet above Belmont Park to watch for trouble when the race began. The winds were tricky this afternoon—the firing of the start cannon was twice delayed by strong gusts—and novice though he was, the tall detective took to heart the expert birdmen’s love of high flying. Josephine Josephs, Joe Mudd, Lt. Chet Bass, race-car driver Billy Thomas, cotton farmer Steve Stevens, and “Frenchie” Renee Chevalier all favored altitude for reasons put succinctly by Baronet Eddison-Sydney-Martin: “Falling from high, you can try to stop in time. Falling from low, you encounter the ground too soon.”
The altitude gave Bell a spectacular view of the Belmont Park Race Track. The bright green infield was speckled with aeroplanes of every color. Gangs of mechanicians, distinguished by their vests and white shirtsleeves, milled about them, adjusting wire stays, tuning motors, topping off gasoline tanks and radiators. Fifty thousand spectators waving white handkerchiefs packed the grandstand.
Good thing he had planned for traffic jams. Clouds of coal smoke were billowing over the rail yard. Support trains were backed up already, trying to depart Belmont Park for the Empire City Race Track in Yonkers. The tracks heading out were one long line of crawling trains, locomotive to caboose, slow and ponderous as a procession of circus elephants. Locomotives jockeyed for position at the switches, engineers yanked shrieking whistles, brakemen scurried, dispatchers shouted, and conductors tore their hair in a noisy, smoky ballet that would be danced every morning the aviators took off for the next field. Bell’s American Eagle hangar-car special was already in Yonkers, sent ahead at midnight with two Thomas Flyer touring autos.
The roofs of each and every boxcar and Pullman were painted with the racers’ colors and names. A racer could tell at a glance whether a locomotive and cars below him was his support train, a competitor’s, or merely an ordinary freight going about its business.
Josephine’s jaunty yellow string was pulled by a fast, high-wheeled Atlantic 4-4-2. Preston Whiteway’s palatial private car was coupled to the back, separated from her private sleeping car by the hangar car, diner, dormitory Pullmans for mechanicians, newspapermen, and detectives, and the roadster car with Whiteway’s Rolls-Royce. It was well in the lead. Bell had seen to that, ordering it to depart before dawn, leaving behind an electric GMC moving van with a second set of tools. If all went as planned, the Josephine Special would be waiting in Yonkers when she alighted. Hopefully in the lead, thought Bell, having rashly pressed another thousand dollars into Johnny Musto’s scented palm.
Ahead of the crawling trains he could see
