Isaac Bell touched water to his lips.

Kenny Bloom, in line to inherit half the anthracite coal in Pennsylvania from his mother, and control of the Reading Railroad and vast bituminous fields from his father, winked at Bell. “We shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” he muttered. “But, if we did, the things we could say.” He drank deeply. “I’m so glad you came, Isaac. These dinners get mighty grim.”

“Thank you for inviting me.”

Kenny grinned, “Didn’t give me much choice, did you, Mr. Make-Believe Insurance Man?”

“I do appreciate it.”

Halfway up the table, Pennsylvania’s attorney general raised his voice. “The union will pay for this outrage. Steamboats dynamited. Innocent workingmen, attempting to travel to Gleasonburg to get an honest job, injured. River blocked. Coal traffic at a standstill.”

“And Gleason murdered.”

“That, too. Yes, sir, the rabid dogs will pay.”

Kenny said to Bell, “They should, and they will, but he’s talking through his hat because West Virginia’s attorney general gets first crack, seeing as how they killed Black Jack in their state.”

“I’m not convinced,” said Bell, “that the union had anything to do with it.”

The military precision of back-to-back dynamitings simultaneous with the barge tow set adrift seemed to him far beyond the capability of the union organizers, who were scrambling to keep one step ahead of the Pinkertons. Inspections of the steamboat boiler rooms had increased his skepticism.

But Kenny, who had been hitting the whiskey before dinner, didn’t hear him. He was boasting instead to everyone at their end of the table about events in the anthracite fields. “So we mounted a Gatling gun on the back of a Mercedes Simplex and welded on steel plates to protect the driver.”

“Did it work?”

“Did it work? I’ll say it worked,” Kenny snickered. “The strikers call it the Death Special.”

At the top of the table, Bloom Sr. was addressing the strikers’ demands.

“The eight-hour workday will be the ruination of the coal business.”

“Hear! Hear!”

“And I’ve heard more than enough nonsense about safety. The miner has only himself to blame if he doesn’t keep his workplace in safe condition.”

Another baron agreed. “It’s not my fault if he refuses to mine his coal properly, scrape down dangerous slate, and install proper timbering.”

“Risk is naturally attached to the trade. Fact is, with prices tumbling, we’ll be lucky to stay in business.”

Bell noticed a perplexed expression on the face of an older mine operator, who called up table, “The iniquitous price we’re paying to ship coal isn’t helping either.”

Bloom Sr. returned a tight smile. “The railroad’s hands are tied, Mr. Morrison.”

“By whom, sir? Surely not the government?”

“Them, too, but it’s not like we don’t report to our investors.”