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“Good-bye.”
Bell took his hand and threw him overboard. The tide was pulling the boat from the dock. Bell engaged the propeller and steered around the sailor, who sputtered indignantly, “What did you do that for? Let me help you.”
The last thing Bell wanted was the Navy’s help. The Navy would arrest Louis and hold him in the brig. “My prisoner,” he said. “My case.”
The tide swept Louis downstream. Bell followed closely in the launch, ready to rescue him from drowning. But he was a strong swimmer, cutting through the water with a modern front crawl.
In the last hundred yards, Bell drove the launch ashore at a pier and was waiting on the bank, dangling handcuffs, when Louis staggered out of water. The Chinese stood, breathing hard, staring in disbelief at the tall detective, who said, “Stick out your hands.”
Louis pulled a knife and lunged with surprising speed for a soaking-wet man who had just swum across a racing tide. Bell parried with the cuffs and punched him hard. Louis went down, sufficiently stunned for Bell to cuff his hands behind his back. Bell hauled him to his feet, surprised by how slight he was. Louis couldn’t weigh more than one-twenty.
Bell marched him toward the pier where he had tied the launch. It was only four or five miles down the Carquinez Strait from Vallejo to Benicia Point, where, with any luck, he could board a train before the Navy got wise.
But before he could reach the pier, a Mare Island Ferry pulled in and disgorged a mob of ship workers.
“There he is!”
“Get him!”
The workmen had heard the explosion and seen the barrels flying and put two and two together. As they ran toward Bell and Louis Loh, a second group who’d been repairing a trolley siding came running with sledgehammers and iron bars and joined the first. They became a solid mass, blocking the Van Dorn detective and his prisoner from the launch.
The track gang lit an oxyacetylene torch. “Burn the Jap. To hell with a trial.”
Isaac Bell told the lynch mob, “You can’t burn him, boys.” “Yeah, why not?”
“He’s not a Jap. He’s Chinese.”
“They’re all Mongolians-Asiatic coolies-they’re all in it together.”
“You still can’t burn him. He belongs to me.”
“You?” the mob erupted in angry chorus.
“Who the hell are you?”
“There’s one of you and a hundred of us!”
“A hundred?” Bell snapped his derringer from his hat and his Browning from his coat and swept the crowd with the muzzles. “Two shots in my left hand. Seven in my right. You don’t have a hundred. You have ninety-one.”
Some in front backed up, slipping between the men behind them, but others replaced them. The new front row edged closer, exchanging glances, seeking a leader. Face unyielding as granite, eyes cold, Bell looked from man to man, watching their eyes.
It would only take one to get brave.
“Who’s first? How about you fellows in front?”
“Get him!” yelled a tall man in the second row.
Bell fired the Browning. The man screamed and fell to his knees, clapping both hands to a bloody ear.
41
NINETY-NINE,” SAID ISAAC BELL.
The mob backed away, mumbling sullenly.
A trolley glided up, clanging its bell to chase men off the tracks. Bell dragged Louis Loh onto it.
“You can’t get on here,” the operator protested. “That Jap’s all wet!”
