Roundsman O’Riordan’s eyes suddenly narrowed warily. Donald Darbee’s square-nosed oyster scow was closing on his pier. “Our ride,” Bell explained, slipping the cop a couple of bucks. “Good to see you again, Roundsman. Say hello to the captain.”
Six months of regular hours, square meals, and no booze had done Uncle Donny a world of good. “You look ten years younger, sir,” Bell greeted the scraggly old waterman. “I’ll bet the girls are chasing you with a net.”
“Where you want to go?” Donald Darbee growled.
It was fourteen miles down the Upper Bay, through the Narrows, and down the Lower Bay. Hugging the Staten Island shore, passing string after string of tugboat-drawn barges — southbound empties riding high, full ones with decks awash northbound — they rounded Ward Point below Tottenville, crossed the Arthur Kill, and landed in an immense, windswept coal yard where Lehigh Valley hopper trains from the Pennsylvania mines unloaded into the barges that supplied the steamship piers.
A black coal dumper made of steel girders towered over the water and dominated the sky, and Isaac Bell saw that, unlike the backbreaking process of bunkering the ships and stoking their furnaces by hand, here the coal was moved by modern machines. A sloping pier rose to the dumper. On the pier were tracks for the hopper cars. A cable-driven “pig” between the rails clanked tight to a car’s coupler and pushed it up the incline onto a platform on top of the dumper. Positioned beside a gigantic funnel, the entire railroad car was then tilted on its side. Tons of coal spilled out of the car and thundered into the funnel, which directed it through a huge nozzle into a waiting barge. As soon as the barge was full, tugboats whisked it away and nudged an empty into its place. The only handwork was performed by the barge’s trimmers, who leveled the load, spreading the coal with shovels and rakes.
A trimmer suddenly fell off a barge and splashed into the water.
Ropes were thrown and ladders lowered, and within minutes the worker was hauled out, soaking wet and retching on the dock.
The foreman showing Bell and Eddie Tobin around groaned, “They’re usually drunk, but not this drunk. But Pete Lampack suddenly struck it rich. He’s been buying drinks for the house for two days.”
Bell and Eddie Tobin exchanged a glance. “Who is Lampack?”
“Damned fool trimmer on the boats.”
“How did he strike it rich?” asked Bell.
“Who knows? Picked the right horse, aunt died, or some undeserved thing.”
Eddie asked, “Where’s Lampack? Still at the saloon?”
“Naw, he finally ran out of dough. It’s back to work for him. He ought to be on one of those empties.” The foreman indicated the barges lined along the pier awaiting fresh loads.
“I want to speak with this fellow,” said Bell.
Money had already passed between the Van Dorns and the coal yard foreman. From a grimy sheet of paper pulled from inside his derby, the foreman determined that the barge being trimmed by Pete Lampack was next in line to be refilled. “Just back from our best customer. She burns a thousand tons a day.”
“We love the
“Is Lampack’s barge going back to the
“Nope, she’s full up. Ought to be sailing just about now.”
Bell nudged Eddie Tobin, and the two detectives ran out on the coaling pier, climbed the incline under the shadows of the dumper, and looked down. “I don’t see no trimmer,” said Eddie.
“What’s that in the corner?”
“Just some coal stuck there.”
Bell ran to the steel ladder affixed to the girders
“Look out, you idiot!” yelled the workman who manipulated the levers that tipped the cars and aimed the dumper nozzle.
“Tell him to wait,” Bell shouted.
Eddie jumped to the controller’s shack. “Hold on a sec.”
“I got fifty barges waiting. I’m not stopping for that fool.”
Eddie opened his coat. The operator saw the checkered grip of a Smith & Wesson and said, “Think I’ll go have a smoke.”
Bell slid thirty feet down the ladder and landed on the pier beside the barge. Eddie was right. It was a heap of coal jammed in the corner of the barge. The breeze swooped down and blew grit. Cloth shimmied. Bell dropped into the barge and scattered coal with his hands. The trimmer lay under it, with the red ring of Semmler’s garrote around his throat.
Bell looked up. Eddie Tobin had climbed to the top of the dumper, where he could see over the low buildings of Tottenville that blocked their view of the harbor.
“
48
The thunder of the liner’s whistle — a stentorian warning that she would stop for nothing — carried for miles. Isaac Bell heard it as he ran to the dock where Darbee had tied his oyster boat.
Seeing him coming, the old man fired up his engine and cast off his lines.
“Who’s chasing you?”
“Can you catch up with the
The oyster boat soared away, trailing white smoke. They rounded the point and there she was, the largest and fastest ship in the world, emerging from the Narrows, six miles away, steaming down the Lower Bay, billowing smoke from the forward three of her four tall red-and-black stacks. Darbee steered a course to intercept the giant at the mouth of the harbor where the channel passed close to Sandy Hook.
“Is little Eddie O.K?” he asked over the roar of his motor.
“He’s fine. No time to wait. Can you catch the ship?”
“I can probably catch her, but what do I do with her when I do?”
“Put me aboard.”
“Can’t. Pilot door’s much higher than you can reach from my deck.”
“I’ll throw a line.”
“They ain’t gonna catch it.”
“Do you have any grappling hooks?”
“Cops took ’em. But even if you threw a grappling hook, they’d just cut the rope and yell down, ‘Next time, buy a ticket.’”
Isaac Bell saw a black steam launch trailing the Cunard liner. Its masts were draped with signal flags. “Is that the pilot boat?”
“If it ain’t, that New York pilot is going to Europe.”
“Can you put me aboard it?”
“I’ll let you do the talking.”
Darbee altered course slightly. After fifteen minutes of pounding across the Lower Bay, they passed under the immense overhanging stern of the
“Now,” Bell shouted.
Darbee steered alongside the lowest part of the afterdeck. Even the pilot boat was considerably higher than the oyster boat. Bell jumped, got his arms over the gunnel, and pulled himself in. “Van Dorn!” he shouted. “Boarding
