Instead of trying to escape directly toward West Street, where they could melt into the neighborhoods, they turned back toward the water to get rid of their weapons. Revolvers, pocket pistols, and sleeve guns clanged against Mauretania’s black hull and splashed into the slip.
Isaac Bell cut the corner of the dogleg the gangsters had turned to the slip and caught up with them. He was close enough to see the seams in Armstrong’s coat and was just about to launch a diving tackle at the big man’s ankles when he passed the Mauretania’s bow and could suddenly see two hundred feet across the slip to the next pier. Lighters were moored there to shuttle sheets, towels, napkins, and tablecloths to the city’s laundries. Chandlers’ boats waited to deliver fresh supplies. Tugboats maneuvered coal barges with shovel-wielding trimmers to replenish Mauretania’s bunkers.
Oblivious to the tumult on the pier—or capitalizing on the distraction of fleeing gangsters and pursuing cops—two bill posters steered a little steam launch under the flare of Mauretania’s bow, took up long-handled brushes, and began to plaster advertisements on the express liner’s hull as if she were a billboard.
THE ELECTRIC THEATER
323 West 14th Street
Finest
MOVING PICTURE PALACE
in
New York City
“NEW SHOWS DAILY”
TWENTY MORE COPS STORMED IN the West Street doors.
The Gophers jinked abruptly to the right.
Isaac Bell veered after them.
The Gopher ahead of Armstrong leaped from the pier toward the landward edge of the slip, missed his footing, and fell into the water. Armstrong jumped next, made it, and ran past Mauretania’s bow. Bell leaped the same watery corner and landed running full tilt. He put on a burst of speed to dive for Armstrong. But just as he was about to launch himself in the air, he sensed as much as saw in the corner of his eye an eerie flicker of a familiar grim silhouette moving down the side of the ship with sure-footed grace.
ISAAC BELL SKIDDED TO A STOP, HARDLY BElieving his eyes. Coal chutes gaped open along the middle of the hull, fifteen feet above the barges. Beneath each hung staging, wooden platforms suspended by ropes for the trimmers to stand on. On the farthest stage, halfway back along the Mauretania’s hull, four hundred feet toward the river—and nearly obscured by shadows and work gangs hoisting buckets from the barges into the chutes—crouched the long-armed, almost simian silhouette of the kidnapper Bell had seen jump from the boat deck the night they sailed from Liverpool.
Bell looked for the fastest route out there. It would take too long to go back through the ship. He had to get across the water. He spotted the enterprising bill posters slathering the Mauretania with advertisements from the bobbing perch of their steam launch.
“Bill posters! You men, there! Bill posters!”
They heard him, he saw by the way they ducked their heads, but their only response was to glue faster. Accustomed to being chased off private property, they were trying to slap on as many ads as they could until they had to run from shipowners and pier officials. Before Isaac Bell could get their attention, the man that Professor Beiderbecke had dubbed the Akrobat glided down a rope holding a stage. He dropped lightly onto a barge riding high in the water that the trimmers had unloaded. A tug was already approaching, deckhands poised with lines, to back the empty away and make room for a fresh load.
The Acrobat, Bell realized, had timed his drop to coincide with the barge’s removal. Dispensing fat bribes to the boatmen, he would ride the empty barge ashore in the guise of an American trimmer and step onto dry land in a distant coal yard, neatly dodging the customs agents and immigration officials guarding the Mauretania’s pier.
Bell cupped his hands. “Fifty dollars for a boat ride.”
The bill posters’ eyes swiveled at him like searchlights.
Bell yanked his wallet from his coat and waved the money.
A poster that proclaimed
DREAMLAND THEATER
9 West 9th Street
NEW “MOVIES” EVERY DAY
was abandoned in a flash.
One man used his brush like a barge pole to shove off the Mauretania as if the ship were on fire while the other seized the helm and shoved the steam quadrant full ahead. The launch shot toward the pier. Bell jumped eight feet to the deck, nearly capsizing the narrow craft, and pointed at the tug hipped alongside the empty coal barge. “Follow that barge.”
“Gimme the dough!” cried the man with the brush.
Bell smacked it into his hand.
“On the jump!”
The steam engine chugged. The propeller spun, and the sharp-bowed little boat turned around and gathered way alongside the Mauretania. They passed the last of the open coal chutes, where Bell had first spotted the Acrobat, and pulled into the wake of the tugboat propelling the empty barge.
Bell heard a sharp two-finger whistle, an urgent warning.
The Acrobat was signaling someone on the ship.
Bell turned to see who his accomplice was.
He saw a blur of movement in one of the chutes and glimpsed a chunk of coal with sharp, gleaming facets fly at his head. He ducked, turning his face, but it came too fast—no man could throw so hard, it had to have been hurled from a sling. Turning saved his face, but nothing could stop the jagged shard from smashing his hat into the water and slicing his skull.
Isaac Bell heard a hollow explosion like a firecracker dropped in a barrel. A sharp pain shot down his spine. He felt his knees buckle, and he sensed that he was tumbling. He heard the bill poster who was steering the launch shout, “Catch him!” He saw the brush extended for him to grab hold. But the hand he reached with was too heavy to lift.
Bell gathered all his strength for a massive last-ditch effort. He raised his leaden hand higher. He felt the brush in his
