He pushed so hard out the door that it banged against the wall of the detectives’ bull pen, knocking street maps and wanted posters askew. When he shoved through the hall door, frosted glass shattered. Then he was gone, storming down the hotel’s grand stairs, barreling across the lobby, and shouting on Broadway, “Cab! You there. Stop now!”

He leaped aboard, next to the driver.

“Wall Street!”

By the time Bell reached the sidewalk, the cab careened around the corner on one wheel, and the horse broke into a gallop.

•   •   •

“WALL STREET!” the hotel doormen told Isaac Bell Mr. Van Dorn had bellowed at the cabbie.

Bell ran full tilt to Sixth Avenue, climbed the steep covered stairs to the Elevated three at a time, and reached the platform just as a downtown train pulled away. The next seemed like it would never come.

Chapter 31

31

ISAAC BELL JUMPED OFF THE EL AT THE RECTOR STREET stop, pounded down the stairs and across Rector, cut through Trinity Church’s cemetery, and bolted across Broadway, dodging six lanes of streetcars, wagons, autos, freight vans, and carriages. He stopped at the head of Wall Street, praying he had gotten there before Joe Van Dorn. He had never seen the Boss so disturbed and knew his rage would make him reckless, which was a dangerous state in which to confront the provocateur.

But now that he was here, how to find him?

Wall Street stretched nearly half a mile between the soot-blackened graves in Trinity’s cemetery to the East River docks and was lined on both sides by innumerable buildings. The cab Van Dorn had hailed was one of thousands of identical black horse-drawn two-wheelers, and all that Bell had seen of the driver was a wizened man in a black coat and a flat cap.

Many cabbies wore a tall black stovepipe. He could eliminate them as he ran down Wall Street. But his best clue would be an exhausted horse with its coat lathered from galloping top speed from Forty-third Street. He found one in the second block, forelegs spread wide, head down, flanks heaving.

“Ready in a jiff, sir,” the driver called. “He’s not so bad as he looks. Just catching his breath.” He jerked the reins to pull its head up.

Bell kept running. The driver was wearing a top hat.

A block down, a crowd had gathered in the street, blocking traffic. Bell pushed through it. He saw a hansom cab with its traces empty. A horse was in the street, down on the cobblestones. A wizened man in a flat cap knelt beside it, stroking its face.

Bell pushed beside him and pressed ten dollars into his hand. “For the vet. Where did your fare go?”

The cabbie pointed mutely at a small, well-kept office building.

Bell ran to it, shouted to the doorman, “Big fellow, red hair and beard?”

“Blew past me like a maddened grizzly.”