The Spy by Clive;Justin Scott Cussler Page B

he’s dancing. It’s more saloon than dance hall, if you know what I mean.”
    “I’ve encountered similar establishments out west,” Bell said drily.
    “Cut over to King Street. Can’t miss it.”
    Gloucester City was just down the river from Camden, the two cities blending seamlessly. King Street was near the water. Saloons, quick-and-dirties, and boardinghouses hosted workingmen from the shipyards and the bustling river port. Del Rossi’s was as unmissable as MacDonald’s clerk had promised, boasting a false front mocked up to look like a proscenium arch in a Broadway theater.
    Inside was bedlam, with the loudest piano Bell had ever heard, women shrieking with laughter, perspiring bartenders knocking the necks off bottles to pour faster, exhausted bouncers, and wall-to-wall sailors and shipyard hands—five hundred men at least—determined to win the race to get drunk. Bell studied the room over a sea of flushed faces under clouds of blue smoke. The only occupants of the saloon not in shirtsleeves were himself, in his white suit, a handsome silver-haired gent in a red frock coat whom he guessed was the proprietor, and a trio of dandified gangsters tricked out in brown derbies, purple shirts, bright waistcoats, and striped ties. Bell couldn’t see their shoes but suspected they were yellow.
    He plowed through broad shoulders toward the frock coat.
    “Mr. Del Rossi!” he shouted over the din, extending his hand.
    “Good evening, sir. Call me Angelo.”
    “Isaac.”
    They shook hands. Del Rossi’s were soft but bore the long-healed burns and cuts of ship work in his youth.
    “Busy night.”
    “God bless our ‘New Navy.’ It’s like this every night. New York Ship launches the Michigan next month and just laid the keel for a twenty-eight-knot destroyer. Across the river, the Philadelphia Navy Yard is building a new dry dock, Cramp launches South Carolina come summer, plus they’ve already nailed a contract for six 700-ton destroyers—six, count ’em, six . What can I do for you, sir?”
    “I’m looking for a fellow named Alasdair MacDonald.”
    Del Rossi frowned. “The Professor? Follow the sound of fists cracking jaws,” he answered with a nod toward the farthest corner from the door.
    “Excuse me. I better get over there before someone floors him.”
    “That’s not likely,” said Del Rossi. “He was heavyweight champ of the Royal Navy.”
    Bell sized MacDonald up as he worked his way across the room, and he took an immediate shine to the big Scotsman. He looked to be in his forties, tall, with an open countenance and muscles that rippled under a shirt soaked with perspiration. He had several boxing scars over his eyebrows—but not a mark on the rest of his face, Bell noticed—and enormous hands with splayed-out knuckles. He cupped a glass in one, a whiskey bottle in the other, and as Bell drew close he filled the glass and stood the bottle on the bar behind him, his eyes fixed on the crowd. It parted suddenly, explosively, and a three-hundred-pound bruiser lumbered at MacDonald with murder in his eye.
    MacDonald tracked him with a wry smile, as if they were both in on a good joke. He took a swig from his glass and then, without appearing to rush, closed his empty hand into an enormous fist and landed a punch almost too fast for Bell to see.
    The bruiser collapsed to the sawdust-strewn floor. MacDonald looked down at him amiably. He had a thick Scots accent. “Jake, me friend, you are a purrfectly fine laddie ’til the drink riles your noggin.” Of the group around him, he asked, “Would someone see Jake home?”
    Jake’s friends carried him out. Bell introduced himself to Alasdair MacDonald, who, he surmised, was drunker than he looked.
    “Do I know you, laddie?”
    “Isaac Bell,” he repeated. “Dorothy Langner told me that you were a particular friend of her father.”
    “That I was. Poor Artie. When they made the Gunner they broke the mold. Have a drink!”
    He called for a