“You poor things,” said Nellie. “I would rather die than be stuck all summer in Cleveland. The heat! The humidity! The neighbors!”
“Mr. Rockefeller summers at his estate in Cleveland,” Edna explained to Bell.
Matters gave Bell a significant look. “I suspect we’ll create the impression he’s in Cleveland than range farther afield. Wouldn’t you say, Mr. Bell?”
“I cannot say, sir,” Bell replied stiffly. “As his bodyguard, if Mr. Rockefeller confided our destination, it would be indiscreet, not to mention reckless, to repeat to anyone where we are going.”
—
The First Regiment of Newark was billeted in a sturdy National Guard armory, four stories of slab-sided brick walls, relieved only slightly by rounded turrets, and crowned with a parapet. The sentries guarding the arched Jay Street portal remembered Billy Jones warmly but expressed bafflement when Isaac Bell asked why the champion marksman had deserted right after winning the President’s Medal.
“Happy guys don’t take French leave,” the corporal put it.
“Big fellow?” Bell asked.
“Skinny little guy,” said the private.
“Any guess where he lit out to?”
“No. No one figured him for lighting out. Kept to himself except for one pal, Nate Wildwood.”
“Is Nate around?” asked Bell.
“Nate got killed,” said the private.
“In the Spanish war?”
“Never made it to the war,” the corporal answered. “Poor Nate fell under a train. Before Billy lit out.”
“Really? Tell me something. How short was Billy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe five-three?”
“Little guy,” said the private. “Short.”
“What color was his hair?”
“Brown.”
“What color were his eyes?”
“Green.”
“Not really green,” said the corporal. “Gray-green.”
The private reconsidered. “Yeah, you could say gray-green. They got kind of dead colored, sometimes.”
“Dead?” scoffed the corporal. “What do you mean dead?”
“I mean dead. I was next to him on the firing line more than once. When he started shooting, his eyes looked dead.” The young soldier turned to Bell and explained earnestly, “What I mean is, after I saw that, I never wondered how Billy Jones could be such a great shot. It was like he could stop every thought in his brain when he pulled the trigger.”
The private reflected for a long moment. “It was like nothing else mattered. Like he didn’t care about nothing. Except the target.”
—
Isaac Bell took the train back to the ferry. Before he got on the boat, he sent another wire to Archie Abbott.
MAKE ARMY FRIENDS.
TRACE DESERTER BILLY JONES.
SLIGHT BUILD, 5’3”.
BROWN HAIR, GRAY-GREEN EYES.
18
When Walter L. Hawley, chief political reporter of the Evening Sun, spotted Isaac Bell striding to his desk, he stopped typing to clasp the detective’s hand hello.
“You’re looking prosperous.”
“You’re looking ink-stained.”
“How’s the big guy?” Hawley and Joseph Van Dorn had met back in the early ’90s when the reporter covered police headquarters and Van Dorn had chased a Chicago arsonist to New York.
“Fired me,” said Bell. “Or I quit, depending on who shot first.”
“Welcome to Newspaper Row. Multitudes who have failed in all attempts at every occupation turn to journalism to find a stopgap between mediocrity and professional begging.”
“Actually, I did come to discuss a job.”
Hawley looked alarmed.
“Easy does it,” said Bell, “not for me. What do you make of the situation in Russia?”
“It resembles the bedlam of unchecked human emotion. My beat is City Hall, so maybe I’m not qualified to predict a gloomy future for the czar. But they’ve had a bad year and it’s only June.
“It could blow the Baku oil business to Kingdom Come.”
Hawley said, “I won’t ask a private detective, assuming you are still one, what that has to do with you. But I will ask, what does that have to do with me? When I need oil, I get it from John D. Rockefeller.”
“E. M. Hock would jump at a freelance assignment to report on the threat to the oil industry in Baku.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“Wonderful! . . . Except, I’ve always thought the rumors were true. She’s a woman, isn’t she?”
“Very much so.”
Hawley shook his head. “I’ll tell you, Isaac, I would jump at a chance to hire such a good writer. So would my publisher. He’d approve in a flash. But we would be strongly hesitant to send a woman among heathens. Russians and Moslems, and I believe they’ve even got some Persians, they’re next door, aren’t they?”
Bell said, “When I met Edna Matters in Kansas, she had just driven up from Indian Territory in a buckboard wagon. Her sister was her traveling companion. I imagine Nellie Matters would go along to Russia.”
“Nellie Matters? The Insufferable Suffragette?”
“I find Nellie Matters anything but insufferable.”
“I don’t mean to disparage the lady,” the newspaperman said hastily. “Certainly lovely to look at, and a fiery orator. She’ll really make her mark with that New Woman’s Flyover.”
“What do you say?” asked Bell. “Will you hire E. M. Hock?”
“But now you’re suggesting sending two women among the heathens. If something happened to them in wherever that godforsaken place is—the Caspian Sea?—Joe Pulitzer and Bill Hearst and Preston Whiteway would yellow-journal us into our graves. They would incite mobs to tear us limb from limb. Newsies who tried to sell the Sun would be hung from lampposts.”
“I’ll arrange for the best private detective in the business to stand watch over them.”
“That could get expensive.”
“I’ll pay for the detective, you pay Miss Matters’ fee.”
“Sounds like you have a wealthy client, Isaac, if you’re not working for Van Dorn anymore.”
“I will pay for the detective,” Bell repeated.
Hawley said, “That’s right. You’re rich. I forgot. O.K. It’s a deal! And thanks, Isaac. If she’ll take the job, she’ll set a new standard for our overpaid hacks.”
They shook on it. Bell said, “But don’t tell her—or anyone—that I have anything to do with this. No one!”
Walter Hawley winked. “Mind me asking which sister you’re sweet on?”
Isaac Bell delivered the grin that a married man expected from a bachelor.
“Let’s just say that with this arrangement, I can keep my eye on both of them.”
—
Archie Abbott came through with a wire to the Yale Club. His friends in the State Department reported strong rumors that the Shah of Persia
