THE CHILD WHO WATCHED Isaac Bell enter the jeweler’s shop—a boy who was clean enough not to be chased out of the jewelry district and had a shoeshine box strapped to his back as a disguise—waited to be sure that the Van Dorn had not ducked inside just to give them the slip again. He was the fourth to have trailed their quarry on his circuitous ramble. Eyeing the shadowy silhouettes of Bell and the jeweler through the window, he signaled another boy and passed him the box. “Take over. I gotta report.”

He ran the few short blocks west into the tenement-and-warehouse district that bounded the North River, darted into the pier-side Hudson Saloon, and made for the free lunch.

“Get outta here!” roared a bartender.

“Commodore!” the shoeshine boy growled back, fearlessly stuffing liverwurst between slabs of stale bread. “Make it quick!”

“Sorry, kid. Didn’t recognize you. This way.” The bartender ushered him into the saloon owner’s private office, which had the only telephone in the neighborhood. The owner watched him warily.

“Get out,” said the boy. “This ain’t none of your business.”

The owner locked his desk and left, shaking his head. There was a time when a Hell’s Kitchen Gopher ventured downtown into this neighborhood, he’d end up hanging from a lamppost. But that time had ended fast.

The boy telephoned Commodore Tommy’s Saloon. They said Tommy wasn’t there, but he’d call him right back. That was strange. The boss was always in his saloon. People said Tommy hadn’t been outdoors in daylight in years. He stepped out to the free lunch for another sandwich, and when he returned the phone was ringing. Commodore Tommy was mad as hell that he’d been kept waiting. When he got done yelling, the boy told him about Isaac Bell’s wander around the city starting from the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge.

“Where is he now?”

“Maiden Lane.”

Chapter 27

27

ISAAC BELL RETREATED IN COMPLETE CONFUSION FROM the fourth jewelry store he had entered in an hour. He had time for one or two more before heading uptown to grill Abbington-Westlake at the Knickerbocker.

“Shine, sir? Shoeshine?”

“Not a bad idea.”

He leaned his back against the wall and submitted his left boot to the polish-stained fingers of the skinny kid with the wooden box. His mind was reeling. He had been simultaneously informed that a diamond set in platinum was the “only appropriate stone to make a girl feel properly engaged” and that a large semiprecious gemstone mounted in gold was “considered most fashionable.” Particularly when compared to a small diamond. Although even a small diamond was an “acceptable token of betrothal.”

“Other foot, sir.”

Bell removed his throwing knife, palming it, and let the kid polish his right boot.

“Is it always so busy down here?”