“YOU WANT TO MAKE A PILE MONEY, you get yourself a bordello—What’s that? No, no, no. Not here! Who’s your customers here? Cows? You go to Chicago! You go over dere by the West Side. You purchase a house for six thousand. You bring a carpenter by to build a buncha walls for a couple hundred bucks. You get ten girls. Twenty visits a night. Dollar a visit—you don’t want no cheap fifty-cent house—and you let the girls keep half. You pay the house off in two months. From then on, you’re making three thousand a month. Profit! ”

“I gotta go do my chores,” said a younger, slower voice.

Bell removed his broad-brimmed hat to venture a quick glance around the corner. The middle-aged talker was sitting on a barrel with his back to him. He had a bottle of beer in his hand and was wearing a city man’s derby, shirtsleeves, and vest. The younger was a farm boy in a straw hat. He was clutching a bucket and a rake.

“And don’t forget your profits selling booze to the visitors. And the girls. The girls always blow their easy money. They want morphine, cocaine, wine, you take your cut. Salesman comes by to sell’em dresses, you take your cut.”

“I gotta go, Mr. Spillane.”

The farmhand shuffled out of sight in the direction of the creamery.

When Bell rounded the corner of the smokehouse, and the man on the barrel whirled to face him, he instantly recognized the grizzled fifty-year-old from the wanted posters.

“Sammy Spillane.”

Spillane stared long and hard, trying to place him. It had been ten years. He pointed at Bell, shaking his finger, nodding his head. “I know you.”

“What are you doing here, Sammy? Was Harry Frost running an old folks’ home for retired bruisers?”

“You’re a goddamned Van Dorn, that’s who you are.”

“How did you get out of Joliet?” Sammy’s pale skin told him he’d been locked up until recently.

“Time off for good behavior. Time to paste your nose into that pretty face.”

“You’re getting a little long in the tooth to mix it up, aren’t you, Sammy?”

“I am,” Sammy conceded. “But me old gal Sadie blessed me with two fine sons. Come out here, boys!” he called loudly. “Say hello to a genuine Van Dorn detective, who forgot to bring his pals with ’im.”

Two younger and bigger versions of Sammy Spillane stepped into the sunlight, yawning and rubbing sleep from their eyes. At the sight of Isaac Bell they darted back inside and returned with pick handles, slapping the heavy bulging ends menacingly in their palms. Bell did not doubt that they had learned their trade as strikebreakers intimidating union marchers. Their father, meanwhile, had drawn a Smith & Wesson revolver, which he pointed at Bell.

“What do you think of my boys, detective?” Spillane chortled. “Chips off the old block?”