The Race by Clive Cussler (red white royal blue .txt) 📗

the one from which Josephine had seen him shoot the bastard, had been a sturdy biplane. This was a mono, with a single wing, and even after it stopped rolling across the infield it still looked fast and nimble just sitting there.

His jaw tightened as he focused his horse-racing field glasses. There she was, jumping off, with the big grin she got on her face when she really liked an aeroplane. She didn’t look like she was mourning her boyfriend, and she didn’t look like she was missing her husband, either. He felt the blood flush hot under his beard. He mopped his brow. Time to do the deed.

He started down from the grandstand. The guard at the gate stopped him. He showed the infield entry badge he had bought the night before from a drunken track official in a Hempstead saloon, and the guard let him pass. He walked across the horse track and stopped dead, rocked by the sight of his own face on a poster nailed to the inside rail.

WANTED

Murder Suspect

HARRY FROST

REWARD

*** $5,000 ***

(Armed and Dangerous—Do Not Approach!!! )

Wire or Telephone

VAN DORN DETECTIVE AGENCY

“We Never Give Up. Never.”

Frost’s brain started racing. Why were Van Dorns hunting him with wanted posters? What did Van Dorns care about him killing Marco Celere? What the hell was going on?

His printed face glared back at him.

It was the standard Van Dorn poster. Frost remembered it well from his Chicago days, when the private detectives were careening around the city trying to stop him by arresting the people who worked for him. When that failed, they had tried to get people to inform on him. A few dead informants put a stop to that, he recalled, grunting a laugh.

We Never Give Up?

Never?

Oh yeah? You gave up on me, pal.

He laughed again because the drawing they had mocked up of his face looked pretty much like he used to before he grew his beard. Frost was only vaguely aware that laughing to himself out loud drew the attention of others heading to the infield. None, however, connected his bearded face to the beardless poster.

Suddenly the laughter turned sour on his tongue.

Another wanted poster blared from the rail—same as the first—“WANTED / Murder Suspect / HARRY FROST / REWARD / *** $5,000 *** / (Armed and Dangerous—Do Not Approach!!! ) / Wire or Telephone / VAN DORN DETECTIVE AGENCY / ‘We Never Give Up. Never’”—except this one had a picture that showed what they guessed he would look like if he had grown a beard.

A cold shiver traveled up his spine. The artist had come damned close. It wasn’t quite like looking in the mirror, and it didn’t show his glasses, but the face looked familiar. He stopped to study the poster, angrily shrugging off people who bumped into him, ignoring their complaints, which died on their lips when they took in the size of him. Finally, he stood taller, and strolled slowly on, deciding that it was unlikely that people would link even the bearded face on the poster to his. Not in these crowds. Besides, anyone who knew his name would not dare turn him in.

To hell with the Van Dorns. He beat them ten years ago, and he would beat them again.

He walked among the flying machines, inhaling the familiar smells of gasoline and oil, rubber and canvas, and doping varnish, and worked his way circuitously toward her yellow machine. When he got within fifty feet, he plunged his hands into his pockets, caressing the sawed-off Webley with his right while his left gripped the haft of a spring-loaded dagger, which offered the option of dispatching a protector quietly.

Josephine had her back to him. She was standing on a soapbox, with her head buried in the motor. Frost closed in on her. His heart was pounding with anticipation. His face felt hot, his hands were sweating. He gripped his weapons harder.

Abruptly, he stopped.

He didn’t like the look of Josephine’s mechanicians. He hid beside a Wright Model A biplane and observed them through the front rudders. It did not take long to confirm his suspicions.

They wore the right clothes, the typical vests, bow ties, shirtsleeves, and flat caps. And they were a younger bunch, as he expected of men who tinkered with flying machines. But they were watching the crowds more than they were watching Josephine’s machine. Van Dorns! The mechanicians were detectives.

His brain raced again. Not only were Van Dorns hunting him with wanted posters, they were guarding Josephine. Why?

Whiteway! It had to be Whiteway. Buying the Italian’s flying machine out of hock would have cost a pretty penny. So would that yellow support train. But it would pay in spades by using Josephine to boom the race and sell newspapers. Preston Whiteway had hired the detectives to protect his investment in Josephine.

Or was it more than protecting his investment?

Frost’s skull suddenly felt like it would explode.

Was Whiteway sweet on her?

Machines were roaring on the ground and buzzing in the air. Everywhere he looked, everything was moving—loud machines, drivers, Van Dorns. He had to get a grip on himself. Deal with Whiteway later. First, Josephine.

But the Van Dorns guarding Josephine would carry those wanted posters in their memories. Her guards would stop anyone who looked even slightly like either picture.

He noticed that their eyes kept shifting toward a tall redheaded man standing nearby in a sack suit and bowler. A suspect? Did they think that Harry Frost had dyed his hair red, lost seventy pounds, and gained two inches? The fellow looked like a Fifth Avenue swell. But he had thin white lines of a boxer’s scarring on his brow. And his eyes were busy, looking everywhere even as he pretended not to.

Not a suspect, Frost surmised. Another goddamned Van Dorn—the chief of their squad, from the way the others were looking to him. Suddenly Frost realized who the swell was—Archibald Angel Abbott IV. No wonder they