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“Otherwise you acted yourself?”
“I focused on cocksure. Any cop, good, bad, or indifferent, has to be cocksure to be taken seriously.”
“Like us,” said Bell.
“Except when we disguise ourselves as someone with a lower profile than a cop.”
“A detective,” said Bell.
“Beg pardon?”
“Ten-to-one, our provocateur is a private detective.”
“Why not a cop?”
“What cop could operate days apart in Gleasonburg, New York, and Chicago? Policemen can’t travel. They’re locked in their jurisdiction. But we can go anywhere in the country. That’s why Joe Van Dorn is opening field offices. Cops are stuck at home. We’re not, and neither is this guy. He’s a private detective.”
* * *
Wish Clarke nodded thoughtfully. “Son, I keep saying you’re getting the hang of this detecting line and you keep proving me right. He could most certainly be a detective. In fact, I’d bet on it.”
Bell asked, “Have you noticed we have three fellows sticking close behind us?”
“If you’re referring to the short, fat, and tall gents in bowler hats, they latched onto us where we left the auto.”
“The short ugly one was hanging around Black’s.”
They started across the Harrison Street jackknife bridge. Wish pretended to admire the elaborate ironwork of the lift towers and glanced back. “The fat ugly one was stuffing his face at Little’s lunch.”
“Do you happen to have your coach gun in your bag?” Bell asked.
“Right on top.”
“How about you stop to tie your shoelace?”
Wish knelt and opened his carpetbag. “Move a hair behind me, Isaac. She spreads wide.”
“Cops,” said Bell.
Three in blue coats and tall helmets coming up behind the men following them. The tallest had a handlebar mustache.
Wish Clarke had worked Chicago long enough to ask, “Whose team?”
Bell said, “That’s Officer ‘Muldoon’ in the middle. Looks like they were freelancing earlier.”
“And finishing the job here.”
Wish counted heads. “Six of them, two of us. We have to pull off a couple of triple plays, Isaac. Or is that Harry O’Hagan I hear galloping to our rescue?”
The answer came in the thunder of iron-shod hooves, and it was not the first baseman but two gigantic horses dragging a paddy wagon around the corner on the far side of the bridge.
28
The men in bowlers followed Isaac Bell and Wish Clarke onto the bridge. Moving in unison like a drill team, they drew press-button knives and released the blades with a simultaneous click that the detectives heard twenty feet away.
The cops led by Muldoon stopped under the lift towers, blocking that side.
The paddy wagon driver wheeled his horses across Harrison Street, barricading the other side.
