“Harry went on the lam. Why would he tell me where he’s running?”

“He would tell you,” Bell answered with elaborate patience, “so that you would know where to go to help him, Sammy, with money, weapons, and your crook colleagues. Where is he?”

“Harry Frost don’t need no money from me. And he don’t need no ‘crook colleagues,’ neither.”

“A man can’t run without help.”

“You don’t get it, Mr. Detective. Harry has dough stashed in every bank in the country. You track him in New York, he’ll get dough in Ohio. You follow him to Ohio, he’ll be shaking hands with a bank manager in California.”

Bell watched the wounded gangster through narrowed eyes. Spillane was describing a fugitive who thoroughly understood how big and fragmented America was, the kind of modern criminal that even a continental outfit like the Van Dorn Detective Agency found difficult to track across state lines and through myriad jurisdictions. He made a mental note to have the Van Dorn field offices circulate wanted posters to every bank manager in their territory. Admittedly a long shot, as banks numbered in the tens of thousands.

“I suppose he has pals everywhere, too?”

“Not ‘pals’ you’d call friends. But guys he helped so they’d help him back. How do you think I got here after Joliet? Harry looked out for people who could help when he needed it. Always. From the first newsie I beat—from the first time I worked in his sales department—Harry Frost was always there for me.”

“If he knows you’ll help him, he must have told you where he was headed. Where is he?”

“Daddy don’t know, mister,” chorused Sammy’s sons.

“Mr. Frost was scared they’d throw him back in the bughouse.”

“He wouldn’t tell nobody.”

Isaac Bell saw that this was going nowhere. “How did Frost make his getaway?”

“Hopped a freight.”

The railroad tracks through the village of North River ran north and south. North to Canada. South to Saratoga and Albany, and from there Boston, Chicago, or New York Any direction he chose. “Northbound freight?” Bell asked. “Or southbound?”

“North.”

South, thought Bell. And with Whiteway’s publicists “booming” Josephine’s participation in the race, locating the aviatrix would be as simple as buying a newspaper.

“I have one more question,” said Isaac Bell. “If you lie again, I’ll put all three of you back in prison. Where is Marco Celere?”

Sammy Spillane and his sons exchanged baffled glances.

“The Italian? What do you mean, where?”

“Where is he?”

“Dead.”

“Are you sure?”

“What the hell do you think Harry’s running from?”