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“This Berlin fellow has a knack.”
“Does Singleton Brooks still work for J. P. Morgan?”
“Last I heard. And I would have heard if he had left.”
“Irina Viorets claims that Brooks represents Artists Syndicate, which you said didn’t exist.”
“I never said it would never exist. It did not exist when I inquired. Perhaps it exists now.”
“What the heck is going on?”
“Morgan’s shipping combine is taking a bath. International Mercantile Marine has been sorely used by the British government and the American Congress. Perhaps he sees an opportunity in Imperial Film. However it was financed aside, Imperial is poised to seize a controlling interest in much of independent film manufacturing, distribution, and exhibition. That’s the sort of meat Morgan feasts on.”
“But Krieg and the German Army—”
“Things change, Isaac. Events do not always unfold as first planned.”
* * *
The bookcase in Irina Vioret’s office slid open on silent, ball-bearing tracks. Christian Semmler emerged from his stairwell. “Tomorrow night,” he said, “after the Iron Horse company returns from taking pictures, I want you to ask Mrs. Bell to do you a favor.”
“What sort of favor?”
“I overheard our bloody director upstairs threatening to quit — just when they finished building the ship and pier.”
“Why?”
“He says the scenario won’t work. Something about the searchlights in the dark. I want him fired tomorrow. Then I want you to ask Mrs. Bell to help you by staying late to take pictures for his immigrant arrival scenario so the carpenters can clear the ship and a pier and build her Iron Horse stage set.”
“What if she says no?”
“You know as well as I do that Marion Bell will not say no to anything that would help her production. Nor would she miss an opportunity to take pictures in the dark by the glare of searchlights. She will rise to the challenge. Particularly when you can tell her that the original director quit because he wasn’t up to it.”
Irina Vioret’s dark eyes filled with anxious foreboding. “What are you going to do to her?”
“Nothing! Gott im Himmel, what are you thinking, woman? I promise you I will do nothing to derail the success of The Iron Horse. Just make sure that damned cowboy has gone before you ask her.”
41
Minutes before Isaac Bell went to LA Grande Station to meet Singleton Brooks’s train, Los Angeles field office chief Larry Saunders reported that the city records clerk, who Saunders had hoped would admit to the existence of a secret set of blueprints for the Imperial Building, had been crushed to death under an Angels Flight funicular railway car.
“The cops say he got oiled and tried to walk up the tracks. But being they are so steep, I’d expect that stunt more of a drunken sailor than an overweight, middle-aged file clerk. I’m sorry, Mr. Bell, he was my best shot, but I’ll keep trying.”
Bell thought hard. Then he said, “Larry, I want you to take personal charge of the Van Dorn Protective Service men guarding Clyde Lynds starting right now.”
The dandified Saunders asked why.
Isaac Bell replied in a manner that left no latitude for debate: “Because I have a very strong feeling about tonight.”
Then Bell switched tactics at La Grande Station.
Singleton Brooks’s Limited was due in at nine. Instead of simply walking up to Brooks and challenging him, Bell decided to have the J. P. Morgan executive followed first. Where he went might reveal a lot. He believed that Brooks might lead him to Christian Semmler — or did he merely hope? Regardless, Brooks would likely recognize Bell. Even if Bell disguised himself in his black motorcycle costume, the odds were Irina had alerted him to Bell’s suspicions.
So Bell had ordered Texas Walt Hatfield to do the primary tracking, and Texas Walt was ensconced in a saloon just outside the station’s main entrance. Bell would point out Singleton to him. Bell had another Van Dorn standing by in an Oldsmobile taxicab in the event that Singleton was picked up in an auto, while Balant, the blind newsie, transformed tonight into a gawking tourist, would follow the New York banker if he boarded a streetcar.
* * *
Van Dorn detective Chuck Shipley, a young, eager-to-prove-himself transfer from the Kansas City office, sat inside the blind newsie’s stand wearing a cap rented from a rooming house neighbor who made a living hawking newspapers on the street. Mr. Saunders had encouraged Shipley to get a nickel-plated changemaker to hook over his belt, enhancing his disguise. But Detective Balant had forbidden him to wear dark glasses, explaining, testily, that even if the Germans inside the vice-consul’s mansion were stupid — and there was no evidence they were — they would still wonder why the recently installed newsstand on their corner employed only blind men.
