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“Is there no other way?”
Culp repeated, “Theodore Roosevelt will destroy us if we don’t get rid of him.”
9
“Look out, Mr. Bell!” the Van Dorn front desk man telephoned Isaac Bell in the detective bull pen. “Opera singer coming at you! I had to release the electric lock before she broke down the door.”
Coloratura soprano Luisa Tetrazzini, the “Florentine Nightingale,” burst into the bull pen and embraced Bell. Despite the Knickerbocker’s steam heat, she was bundled in a coat, and her throat was swathed in an immensely long red scarf that trailed behind her. Her eyes were wild.
“Isaac!” she cried in a voice trained to carry to the back of a five-hundred-seat house. “Where is Joseph?” Knickerbocker permanent residents like her and Caruso, several theater impresarios, and the Van Dorns, shared a sort of small-town neighborliness. People dropped in to visit, lingered in hallways, and addressed each other by first name.
She was thirty-five years old, a shapely, Rubenesque dark-haired beauty with an expressive face, a love of drama, and a will of iron. She had made her American debut last year in San Francisco, before the earthquake. Caruso himself praised her voice and her acting. “Not yet a star,” he had told Bell when Bell described hearing her sing in San Francisco. “But soon! Mark my words. The world will kiss her feet.”
“Joseph,” Bell answered, “is in Washington.”
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“But I am desperate. Look what they do.” She thrust a letter at him. “Open!”
Bell recognized the paper. He unfolded it and saw what he expected, the now-familiar skull and dagger and the black hand. Mano Nera was stepping up in the world, first the helpless, then the well-off, now the famous.
Bella Tetrazzini,
Were our need not great, we never trouble such artist. But we have no choice. Four thousand dollars must fall in our hands and so we turn to you singing for great success at Hammerstein. Please, Bella Tetrazzini, prepare the money and wait for instruction. Must have before Thursday.
With great respect,
Your friends in need
“Don’t be afraid,” said Bell, “we’ll—”
“I’m not afraid! I’m angry.”
“When did you get this?”
“Twenty minutes ago. In the afternoon mail.”
“Is this the first you’ve received?”
“Two last week. I thought it make joke.”
“Do you have them?”
“I burned them in the fire. Isaac, I need guard. I’m going to sing in San Francisco again. For the earthquake victims.”
“When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow. I think maybe I should not be alone with only my maid. I need Van Dorn guard.”
Bell thought fast. His Black Hand Squad was up and running, though with no clients, the White Hand Society having terminated their contract. The hunt for Russo, the blaster, had shifted west from St. Louis. The Van Dorn Denver field office was looking for him in the mining camps. Russo could well be heading for San Francisco, which had a large Italian colony.
He fingered the letter. Definitely the same paper.
“Helen?” he called out. “Where’s Helen Mills? There you are. This is for the Secret Service. Take it to Agent Lynch. Wait a minute. Helen? . . . Excuse me, Luisa, I will be right back.” He led his intern away from the desk, out of earshot. “What’s that bulge?”
“What bulge?”
Bell pointed. “That.”
