Wild-eyed gangsters ran to their women cheering on the sidelines, snatched their revolvers, and raked the pier with gunfire. Bullets banged on corrugated-iron doors and shattered glass. Citizens nearby flattened themselves on the asphalt, and Bell saw the way suddenly clear as if a swaying field of wheat had been mowed by a giant McCormick reaper. He saw Blinky Armstrong and two of his Gophers sprint toward the West Street portal, trampling cowering citizens and knocking down those too terrified to move.

Isaac Bell tore after them.

Halfway to West Street, they ducked into a stairwell.

Bell followed, pounding down steel steps that led to the baggage deck below. The Gophers were racing alongside the Mauretania toward the rows of doors that led off the pier onto West Street. Before they could get out the doors, squads of cops arrived on the run, reserves from nearby station houses, and the Gophers and the rivals who had attacked them were suddenly in a mad rush to avoid arrest.

Instead of trying to escape directly toward West Street, where they could melt into the neighborhoods, they turned back toward the water to get rid of their weapons. Revolvers, pocket pistols, and sleeve guns clanged against Mauretania’s black hull and splashed into the slip.

Isaac Bell cut the corner of the dogleg the gangsters had turned to the slip and caught up with them. He was close enough to see the seams in Armstrong’s coat and was just about to launch a diving tackle at the big man’s ankles when he passed the Mauretania’s bow and could suddenly see two hundred feet across the slip to the next pier. Lighters were moored there to shuttle sheets, towels, napkins, and tablecloths to the city’s laundries. Chandlers’ boats waited to deliver fresh supplies. Tugboats maneuvered coal barges with shovel-wielding trimmers to replenish Mauretania’s bunkers.

Oblivious to the tumult on the pier—or capitalizing on the distraction of fleeing gangsters and pursuing cops—two bill posters steered a little steam launch under the flare of Mauretania’s bow, took up long-handled brushes, and began to plaster advertisements on the express liner’s hull as if she were a billboard.

THE ELECTRIC THEATER

323 West 14th Street

Finest

MOVING PICTURE PALACE

in

New York City

“NEW SHOWS DAILY”

TWENTY MORE COPS STORMED IN the West Street doors.

The Gophers jinked abruptly to the right.

Isaac Bell veered after them.