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.

“They’re Chinamen,” O’Shay answered. “They’ll do anything for money.”

“You mind me asking how much you can afford?”

“I can afford anything. But if you ever ask me for more than something is worth, I will regard it as an act of war.”

Commodore Tommy changed the subject. “I wonder what the Iceman has up his sleeve.”

DEADLY SNAKE HERE;
SERUM USEFUL IN INSANITY
POISON FROM THE LANCE-HEAD’S BITE WILL KILL
AN OX WITHIN FIVE MINUTES
Lachesis Muta Called “the Sudden Death”
by the Natives of Brazil

The wind plucked the sheet of newspaper out of the Washington Park grandstand just as Brooklyn came to bat in the eighth inning. Iceman Weeks watched it float across the infield, past Wiltse on the mound, past Seymour in center, straight toward where he was holed up—cuffless and collarless in drab flannel, disguised as a sorry-looking plumber’s helper—on the grass behind centerfield, where he wasn’t likely to run into any fans from New York.

If the Iceman were capable of loving anything, it was baseball. But he couldn’t risk being spotted in New York at tomorrow’s home opener at the Polo Grounds, so he was making do in the wilds of Brooklyn where no one knew him. His favorite Giants were lambasting the sorry Superbas. The Giants were hitting hard, and the cold wind blowing cinders, hats, and newspapers had no effect on Hooks Wiltse’s throwing arm. His left-handed twisters had dazzled the Brooklyn batters throughout the game, and by the bottom of the eighth New York was ahead 4 to 1.

Weeks’s ice-blue eyes locked on the juicy headline as the newspaper blew overhead.

POISON FROM THE LANCE-HEAD’S BITE WILL KILL
AN OX WITHIN FIVE MINUTES

He leaped off the grass and caught the paper in both hands.