ARMORED COFFINS

15

THE SPY SUMMONED THE GERMAN HANS TO NEW YORK, to a cellar under a Biergarten restaurant at Second Avenue and 50th Street. Barrels of Rhine wine were half submerged in a cold underground stream that flowed through the cellar. The stone walls echoed the musical sound of tumbling water. They sat face-to-face over a round wooden table illuminated by a single lightbulb.

“We plot the future beside a buried remnant of pastoral Manhattan,” the spy remarked, gauging Hans’s response.

The German, who appeared to have put a dent in the Rhine wine supply, seemed moodier than ever. The question was, had Hans’s brain become too congested by wine and remorse to make him useful?

“Mein Freund!” The spy fixed Hans with a commanding gaze. “Will you continue to serve the Fatherland?”

The German straightened visibly. “Of course!”

The spy concealed a relieved smile. Listen closely, and you could still hear Hans’s heels click like a marionette’s. “I believe your many experiences include working in a shipyard?”

“Neptun Schiffswerft und Maschinenfabrik,” Hans answered proudly, obviously flattered that the spy remembered. “In Rostock. A most modern yard.”

“The Americans’ ‘most modern yard’ is in Camden, New Jersey. I think that you should go to Camden. I think you should establish yourself quickly in the city. You can draw on me for whatever you need, be it operating funds, explosives, false identification, forged shipyard passes.”

“To what end, mein Herr?”

“To send a message to the United States Congress. To make them wonder whether their Navy is incompetent.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Americans are about to launch their first all-big-guns battleship.”

“Michigan. Yes, I read in the papers.”

“With your experience, you know that the successful launch of a 16,000-ton hull from land into water demands balancing three powerful forces: gravity, drag on the slipway, and the upthrust of the stern’s buoyancy. Correct?”

“Yes, mein Herr.”

“For a few fraught seconds as the launch begins-when the final keel and bilge blocks are removed and the tumbler shores fall away-the hull is supported by nothing but the cradle.”

“This is correct.”

“I ask you, could strategically placed sticks of dynamite, exquisitely timed to detonate the instant she starts to slide down the ways, derail her cradle and tumble Michigan onto dry land instead of the river?”

Hans’s eyes lighted with the possibility.

The spy let the German fix his imagination upon the avalanchine crash of a 16,000-ton steel vessel falling on its side. Then he said, “The sight of a five-hundred-foot-long dreadnought hull sprawled on the ground would make a laughingstock of the United States’ ‘New Navy.’ And surely destroy the Navy’s reputation with a Congress already reluctant to appropriate the money to build more ships.”

“Yes, mein Herr.”

“Make it so.”

COMMODORE TOMMY THOMPSON was listening, calculatingly, to Brian “Eyes” O’Shay’s scheme to send his Hip Sing partners to San Francisco, when a boy ran into his 39th Street saloon with a note from Iceman Weeks.

The Commodore read it. “He’s offering to kill the Van Dorn.” “Happen to say how?”

“Probably still thinking it through,” Tommy laughed, and passed the note to Eyes.

In a strange way, he thought, they had picked up their old partnership. Not that Eyes dropped in regular. This was only his third visit since the five thousand dollars. Nor did Eyes want in on the take, which was a big surprise. Just the opposite. Eyes had lent him money to open a new gambling joint under the El Connector on 53rd, which was raking in dough already. Add that to his deal with the Hip Sing, and he was sitting pretty. Besides, when he and Eyes talked, Tommy found he trusted him. Not with his life, Jaysus knew. Not even with his dough. But he trusted Eyes’ good sense, just like when they were kids.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Should we take him up on it?” O’Shay smoothed the tip of his narrow mustache. He hooked his thumb in his vest pocket. Then he sat still as stone, legs stretched out, heels in the sawdust, and when he finally spoke he stared at his feet as if addressing his fine boots. “Weeks is tired of lying low. He wants to come home from wherever he’s hiding, which is probably Brooklyn. But he’s afraid you’ll kill him.”

“He’s afraid I will kill him on your say-so,” Tommy corrected acidly. “And you will say so.”

“I already have,” Eyes O’Shay answered. “Your so-called Iceman-”

“My so-called Iceman!” Commodore Tommy erupted in tones of wrathful indignation.

“Your so-called Iceman, who you sent to Camden when I paid you five thousand dollars, allowed the only credible witness in that dance hall-a Van Dorn Agency detective, for the love of Mary-to witness him committing murder. When the Van Dorns catch up with him-and we know they will-or the cops nail him for some other transgression, the Van Dorns will ask, ‘Who’d you do murder for?’ And Weeks will answer, ‘Tommy Thompson and his old pal Eyes O’Shay, who we thought was dead but ain’t.’ ”

O’Shay looked up from his boots, expression noncommittal, and added, “Frankly, if I didn’t insist, you’d be screwy not to kill him on your own. You’ve got more to fear than I do. I can disappear, just like I done before. You’re stuck here. Everyone knows where to find the Commodore-on 39th in Commodore Tommy’s Saloon-and pretty soon the word will get around on your new joint on 53rd. Don’t forget, Van Dorns aren’t like cops. You can’t pay Van Dorns to look any other way than at you. Down a gun barrel.”

“So what do you think about Weeks offering to kill the witness?”

Eyes O’Shay pretended to ponder the question.

“I think Weeks is brave. Sensible. Practical. Maybe he has something up his sleeve. If not, then he’s firmly possessed by delusions of grandeur.”

The Gopher Gang boss blinked. “What does that mean?”

“ ‘Delusions of grandeur’? It means Weeks will have to get damned lucky to pull it off. But if he does kill the Van Dorn, your troubles are over.”

“The Iceman is tough,” Tommy said hopefully. “And he’s smart.”

O’Shay shrugged. “With a little luck, who knows?”

“With a little luck, the Van Dorn will kill him, and that it’ll be it for witnesses.”

“Either way, how can you lose? Tell him to give it a whirl.”

Thompson scrawled a cryptic reply on the back of Weeks’s note and shouted for the kid. “Get in here, you little bastard! Take this to wherever that scumbucket is hiding.”

Brian O’Shay marveled at the sheer depths of Tommy’s stupidity. If Weeks did manage to kill the Van Dorn-who was not just any Van Dorn but the famously deadly Chief Investigator Isaac Bell-Iceman Weeks would be the Hero of Hell’s Kitchen, which would make him a prime candidate to take over the Gophers. How surprised Tommy would be by Weeks’s shiv in his ribs.

Tommy’s brand of stupidity reminded O’Shay of the Russian Navy in the Russo-Jap war. Clueless as the Baltic Fleet, when old-fashioned warships and ancient thinking bumped into the modern Japanese Navy. Ahoy, bottom of the Tsushima Strait, here we come!

“Now, could we get back to the business at hand, Tommy-the journey of your Chinamen to San Francisco?”

“They’re not exactly my Chinamen. They’re Hip Sing.”

“Find out how much money they will require to make them your Chinamen.”

“What makes you think they want to go to San Francisco?” Tommy asked. The Gopher Gang boss could not figure out what O’Shay was up to.