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“He’ll build again.”
“He’ll be too late. I invested in refineries at Philadelphia and Delaware and Boston and Texas. When I’ve blown Constable Hook off the map, I’ll control seaboard production. I want him to see that, too.”
This was startling information. It was also deeply disconcerting, for to be surprised was to admit a severe lapse in the sharp awareness that made a hunter a hunter instead of prey. Bill Matters was reinventing himself. But this hadn’t happened yesterday; he’d been reinventing all along.
“You’re like Rockefeller,” the assassin marveled.
Bill Matters laughed. “Master of the unexpected.”
“Then you’ll disappear?”
“To Europe . . . in style.”
“May I come with you?”
“Of course,” Matters said without hesitation. “I’ll keep you busy. I’m not retiring, only starting over.”
—
Movement in the street below caught the assassin’s eye. A strong man in overalls was rolling a wooden spool of copper cable. He disappeared below the overhang of the roof as he rolled it into the alley that led to the back of the saloon.
Matters asked, “What the devil is that?”
“Copper wire.”
“I can see that. Where’s he taking it?”
“The cellar.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s for me.”
Bill Matters looked hard at his assassin. “Now what game are you playing?”
“The unexpected. Just like Rockefeller. Or should I say, just like you.”
“What game?”
“Fast and loose.”
“With whom?”
“Isaac Bell.”
—
Heat lightning flickered repeatedly under a sullen midnight sky.
Gun in hand, Isaac Bell approached Bill Matters’ private railcar on foot. It was parked on a remote Saw Mill River valley siding of the Putnam Division twenty miles from New York City and less than ten from John D. Rockefeller’s Pocantico Hills estate.
Bell ignored the sweat burning his eyes and mosquitos whining around his ears. He walked on the wooden crossties so as not to crunch on the railbed ballast. But the flashes from distant storms threatened to give him away.
Van Dorn Research had traced the telephone number Bell had found at the assassin’s gunsmith to the private car platform at Pittsburgh’s Union Station. The Pittsburgh field office had learned that the telephone in Bill Matters’ car had been connected twice in the past six months to that platform. Wally Kisley and Mack Fulton had known which New York Central Railroad dispatchers to bribe to nail down its current location in Westchester County.
The detectives assigned to stand watch from a distance thought they had seen one figure enter the car hours ago just after dark. They had seen no one leave. Research procured Pullman Palace Car Company blueprints of the car’s floor plan. Bell memorized them, ordered the detectives out of sight, and went in alone.
He saw a sliver of light shine through the curtains as he drew close. A chimney stack broke the smooth roof line silhouette marking the galley and dining room in the front of the car. Those windows were dark, as were the windows in the rear.
