C. C. Gustafson—editor of the Humble Clarion, who’d been making a career of criticizing Standard Oil practices in Texas and provoking the legislature to expel the trust from the state—was standing behind the window setting type.
Big Pete aimed at the blood-red dot of his bow tie.
“Don’t try to hit him,” whispered the assassin.
“I know,” said Straub. “Just break the glass.” How had the assassin known where he was aiming? The guy missed nothing. Straub shifted the rifle and sighted dead center in the window. He heard the assassin take a shallow breath and hold it.
“Now!”
Big Pete squeezed his trigger.
The Springfield boomed.
Glass flew.
The editor looked up, wasted a half breath staring, then tried to dive behind the press.
The assassin’s Savage gave a sharp crack. The editor tumbled backward. Then, to Straub’s surprise, the assassin fired again. Next second, they were running, crouched, across the roof, then down the ladder to the alley behind the saloon.
“Good shot!” Straub exulted.
“Missed,” said the assassin, his voice emotionless.
A man stepped around the corner. He had unbuttoned his fly as if about to urinate on the wall. Squinting around for the source of the gunshots, he saw two men running toward him with rifles.
“Kill him,” said the assassin.
Straub broke his neck.
The assassin gestured.
Straub slung the body over his shoulder and they ran, following the escape route they had rehearsed. After they had put distance between them and the saloon, the assassin gestured to drop the dead man beside a rain barrel on top of Straub’s Springfield.
—
Grady Forrer of Van Dorn Research sent Isaac Bell a telegram to alert him to a shooting in far-off Texas that might possibly pertain to his investigation. Bell had known Forrer since Joseph Van Dorn had hired him to establish the Research Department and trusted his judgment. He immediately wired Texas Walt Hatfield, the formidable Van Dorn detective—a former Ranger, raised by the Comanche—who operated as a one-man field office for the biggest state in the Union.
REPORT EDITOR SHOOTING HUMBLE
OIL?
8
Bill Matters read and reread a dozen newspaper reports about a transatlantic cable John D. Rockefeller had sent from Cannes, France, to his Fifth Avenue Baptist Church Sunday school class. The New York and Cleveland papers had published the cable back in January when he was abroad, and it had been printed and reprinted through the spring as paper after paper used the great man’s wisdom to inspire the devout and fill space.
“Delightful breezes. I enjoy watching the fishermen with their nets on the beach, and gazing upon the sun rising over the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. The days pass pleasantly and profitably.”
It was an open secret at Standard Oil headquarters that publicists scheming to furbish up Rockefeller’s reputation planted stories in the newspapers. But Matters suspected there was much more to this cable than polishing the public image of a greedy tycoon into a glowing example of the pleasant old age everyone looked forward to. A deep feeling gnawed his gut that Rockefeller had transmitted coded messages to his elderly partners about a secret deal he was negotiating overseas under the cloak of a retiree traveling around Europe.
Whatever the pirate was up to, Matters wanted in on it.
Matters himself was no stranger to coded messages. He communicated with his assassin with cryptic instructions in the want ads of daily newspapers. He felt so strongly that this cable was big—something huge, the sort of deal the supposedly retired president had time to pursue thanks to underlings like him taking over day-to-day operations—that he decided to risk consulting a clandestine partner he had cultivated among his fellow managers.
Old Clyde Lapham, an early Standard Oil partner, was losing his grip to dementia. When the others realized he was no longer striking a high batting average, they had begun excluding him from private deals. Lapham knew, or sensed enough of what was happening to accept, warily, the kindness and respect that the much-younger, vigorous Matters pretended to offer.
Lapham said he suspected a secret deal, too, when Matters broached the subject. Stung that he had not been invited to partake, he translated the basics of the message over a supper Matters invited him to at Mcdonald’s Oyster House up by Bleecker on the Bowery, where no one would recognize them. Matters ordered wine to loosen him up. Lapham’s vague eyes kept locking on the empty littleneck clamshells as if they held some secret. He had a thin voice.
“‘Delightful breezes’ means big changes are under way,” he reported matter-of-factly. “‘I enjoy watching the fishermen with their nets on the beach’ means that Mr. Rockefeller is spying on competitors.”
But the old man was baffled by “gazing upon the sun rising over the beautiful Mediterranean Sea.” Pawing purposefully across the table, he picked up an empty clamshell and examined it closely.
“Sir Marcus Samuel’s father got his start selling these.”
“Selling what?”
“Seashells. Old Marcus Senior imported oriental seashells, sold them to people decorating their houses. Where did you think Junior got the money to invent his goddamned oil tankers?”
Sir Marcus Samuel, who had pioneered a fleet of bulk-oil-carrying steamers, commanded their powerful English competitor, Shell Transport and Trading. The richest distributor of refined oil, in cans packed in wooden cases, to India and China, Samuel had run circles around the mighty Standard for more than a decade and had recently increased his sales force by forming the Asiatic Petroleum Company with the Royal Dutch Company.
Matters regained Lapham’s attention, with some effort, and coaxed him to concentrate on “The days pass pleasantly and profitably.”
Lapham finally said that he believed that “The days pass pleasantly and profitably” meant that Rockefeller was laying groundwork for his next move. He picked up another shell.
“What move?” Matters asked.
Lapham shrugged. “The sun rising over the beautiful Mediterranean Sea rises in the east.”
Of course! The rich Baku oil fields on the Caspian Sea that pumped half the world’s oil
