“Surely after he reappeared out of nowhere and paid you all that money, you had him followed.”

“I sent Paddy the Rat after him. Little bastard came back short one eye.”

Bell looked at one of the detectives, who was nodding agreement. “Yeah, I seen Paddy wearing a patch.”

“Disappeared, just like when we was kids. Vanished into thin air that time, too. Never thought we’d see him again. Thought he got thrown in the river.”

“By whom?” asked Bell.

The gang leader shrugged.

Harry Warren said, “A lot of people thought you were the one who threw him in the river, Tommy.”

“Yeah, well a lot of people thought wrong. I used to think Billy Collins done it. ’Til Eyes came back.”

Bell glanced at Harry Warren.

“Dope addict,” Harry said. “Haven’t heard his name in years. Billy Collins ran with Eyes and Tommy. They made quite the trio. Remember, Tommy? Rolling drunks, robbing pushcarts, selling dope, beatin’ up anybody got in their way. O’Shay was the worst, worse than the Commodore here, even worse than Billy Collins. Tommy was sweetness and light compared to those two. The last anybody expected was Tommy taking over the Gophers. Except you got lucky, Tommy, didn’t you? Eyes disappeared, and Billy got the habit.”

Isaac Bell asked, “Tommy, why did you think Billy Collins threw Eyes in the river?”

“Because the last night I ever saw Eyes, they was drinking together.”

“And today you have no idea where O’Shay is?”

“Just like always. He vanished into thin air.”

“Where is Billy Collins?”

The wounded gang leader shrugged, winced, and took another pull on a flask. “Where do hop fiends go? Under a rock. In a sewer.”

Chapter 43

43

TEN MILES OFF FIRE ISLAND, A BARRIER BEACH BETWEEN Long Island and the Atlantic Ocean, fifty miles from New York, three vessels converged. The light of day started to slip over the western horizon, and stars took shape in the east. Atlantic Ocean swells were bunching up on the shallow continental shelf. Neither captain of the larger vessels—a 4,000-ton steam freighter with a tall funnel and two king posts, and an oceangoing tugboat hipped up to a three-track railcar barge—was pleased with the prospect of getting close enough to transfer cargo in such choppy seas, particularly with the wind shifting fitfully from sea to shore. When they saw that the third vessel, a broad-beamed little catboat powered only by sail, was steered by a petite redheaded girl, they began snarling at their helmsmen.

It looked like the rendezvous would end before it started. Then the girl took advantage of a shifty gust to bring her craft about so smartly that the steamer’s mate said, “She’s a seaman,” and Eyes O’Shay said to the tugboat captain, “Don’t lose your nerve. We can always throw you overboard and run the boat ourselves.”

He spotted Rafe Engels waving from the steamer’s bridge wing.