Текст книги "The Bootlegger"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Justin Scott
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

If Marion was right, he’d have to find a way to change Pauline’s mind.

He hurried into the terminal, searching for a coin telephone.

“Mortuary.”

“Dr. Nuland, please… Shep, I saw you retrieve powder samples.”

“Smokeless powder doesn’t leave a lot.”

“Enough to ascertain origin?”

“Possibly.”

“Would you ask your lab boys to trace where it came from?”

The formulas for smokeless powder were constantly refined. The latest included Ballistite, Cordite, Rifleite, French Poudre. Based on his conversation with Pauline, he wondered would the powder recovered in the postmortem be German military powder or Russian powder.

7

Newtown Storms, senior partner of Storms & Storms, a Wall Street brokerage founded by his great-grandfather to sell stock in the Erie Canal and expanded by succeeding generations to fund railroads and telegraph lines, welcomed Fern Hawley to his office effusively. She was a handful, with a perpetual smirk that implied she was privy to secrets unknown by ordinary mortals. But she was beautiful, she was very rich, and her father had allowed Storms & Storms to manage a full third of the Hawley fortune. With her was a tall, lithe Russian in a fine blue suit, whom Miss Hawley introduced as “My friend Prince André. We met years ago in Paris.”

Prince André—“late of Saint Petersburg,” as the Russian put it – was carrying an expensive leather satchel with gold buckles. When he put it down to shake hands, Storms saw that his cuff links were set with large diamonds. But he did not let down his guard. He had seen enough Russian refugees sniffing around Wall Street since their revolution to know that despite appearances, they were usually hard up. So, after sufficient small talk to demonstrate to Miss Hawley that he had not forgotten that she was a valued customer, Storms asked, “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

“Prince André is unable to return to his estates in Russia… at this time,” said Miss Hawley.

Storms looked sympathetic, while congratulating himself on getting the Russian’s number. Dollars to donuts, Miss Hawley had paid for those cuff links. And his suit, too. He made a mental note to have private detectives look, discreetly, into how much the prince was trying to take her for. Why otherwise intelligent, hardworking fathers allowed these foolish women unfettered access to their money was a mystery raised regularly over cocktails at his club.

Storms said, “I understand. If a loan is required, there are people with whom I can arrange introductions.”

Prince André turned to Fern Hawley and laid on the Russian accent with a trowel. “Loan? Vat is ‘loan’?”

Fern laughed. “Mr. Storms. I’m afraid you’re confused. Prince André is looking to invest. Not borrow.”

“Invest?” Storms placed both hands on his desk and sat up in his chair.

“Unable to gain access to his estates,” said Miss Hawley, “Prince André has been forced to sell other assets. Jewels, mostly, and some French properties. Some of them, at least, in hopes of starting a new life in New York. Show him, André.”

Zolner unbuckled the satchel and threw it open.

“Oh?” Storms peered inside at tightly packed banded banknotes. “Oh. How much were you considering?”

“Prince André thought he would open an account with ten thousand dollars to see how you make use of it.”

“I think we could handle that very nicely.”

Then suddenly Prince André was speaking for himself, his accent all but unnoticeable, and his gaze alert, even challenging. “Miss Hawley thinks buying stocks is a good idea. But do not stock prices continue down?”

“The stock market should turn around any day now,” said Miss Hawley.

“But they have been going down for a year and a half,” said the Russian. “Since before Christmas in 1919?”

Newtown Storms hastened to take her side of the argument. “Miss Hawley, who has considerable experience in the market, is correct. They must go up.”

“Why?”

“Abnormally rapid speculative enhancement of prices for existing stocks caused them to go down. Which, frankly, many experts blame on a reckless class of people new to the discipline of investment. Fortunately, President Harding and Treasury Secretary Mellon are purging the rottenness out of the system by cutting taxes and making the government more efficient.”

“Unemployment remains high,” said Prince André. “People wander the streets in rags.”

“Because the extravagant cost of government saps industry with a withering hand. Don’t forget that labor is quiet, and will stay quiet. The steel strike fixed their wagon, as did the sailors’ strike in the spring. I can safely predict that wages will stay down where they should and lower the high cost of living. People will work harder and live a more moral life. Enterprising people will pick up the slack from less competent sorts. Uncertainty is bound to end, and business is about to boom. It will roar, Prince André. Now’s your chance to get in on the ground floor.”

* * *

Marat Zolner kept a straight face even though Fern was teasing him with an arched eyebrow. He said to the stockbroker, “You pose a most convincing-sounding argument.”

“And keep in mind, Your Highness, once you’ve opened an account, you can borrow against it in the event you ever need funds.”

“Why would I need funds when the market roars?”

Storms greeted such naïveté with a kindly chuckle. “I meant, to borrow against your account to buy more stocks to put into it.”

“I am convinced,” said Marat Zolner. He cast Fern Hawley a princely smile and shoved the satchel across Storms’s desk.

“You can take my word for it,” said the broker. “This is the beginning and you’re getting in on it. So if you decide to sell any more jewels, you know where to come.”

“Let us see, first, how you make out with this.”

“Never fear,” said Newtown Storms, who fully expected that President Harding and Secretary Mellon would set a great bull market in full swing before most of Wall Street realized it. “You will get rich quickly.”

“In that case,” said the prince, extending a surprisingly powerful hand. “We will see you again, quickly.”

As Storms rose to usher them out, Fern Hawley said with her knowing smirk, “Next time we stop by your office, you can offer us a drink,” and handed him from Marat Zolner’s satchel a bottle of Haig & Haig.

* * *

Isaac Bell paced the Van Dorn bull pen like a caged lion, flowing across the room in long strides, turning abruptly, flowing smoothly back, wheeling again. His gaze was active, and every detective in the room felt the chief investigator’s hard eyes aimed at him.

“It’s four days since Mr. Van Dorn was shot. Who did it?”

The squad of picked men Bell had drafted to track down the rumrunners who shot Van Dorn had nicknamed themselves the “Boss Boys.” They ran the gamut of Van Dorn operator types from deadly knife fighters who looked like accountants, to cerebral investigators who looked like dock wallopers, to every size and shape in between. Few appeared to have slept recently. There was a collective wince around the room when Isaac Bell repeated, “Four days. This is your city, gents. What is going on?”

The wince dissolved into shamefaced shrugs and sidelong glances in search of someone with something useful to say. Finally, the bravest of the Boss Boys, grizzled Harry Warren, who had headed the New York Gang Squad since the heyday of the Gophers, ventured into the lion’s den.

“Sorry, Isaac. West Side, East Side, Brooklyn, none of the gangs know who these guys are. I spoke with Peg Leg Lonergan and even he doesn’t know.”

Detectives stared at Harry in amazement and admiration, wondering how he had wangled a conversation with the closemouthed Lonergan and managed to return from Brooklyn alive.

Harry acknowledged their esteem with a modest nod. “If the leader of the White Hands doesn’t know about these guys, none of the Irish know these guys.”

“What about the Italians?” asked Bell.

Harry, who had changed his name, was known and respected in Little Italy. “Same thing with the Black Handers. Masseria, Cirillo, Yale, Altieri – none of them know.”

“What about Fats Vetere?”

“Him neither.”

“What makes you think they’re telling you the truth?”

“The bootlegging business is heating up. Gangsters and criminals are pushing out the amateurs. There’s so much money to be made. So if the White Hand or the Black Hand knew about these guys, they’d be wanting to get in touch either to buy from them or hijack them. But when I fished, they never fished back. The fact they didn’t try to pump me says the guys who shot the Boss are strangers to the gangs.”

Bell kept pacing. “What about the bootleggers?”

Several men cleared their throats and answered, briefly, one after another.

“The bootleggers I know don’t know, Isaac.”

“I went around the warehouses. They swear they don’t know.”

“Same thing on the piers, Isaac.”

“And the speakeasies. They’ve got no reason to lie to us, Isaac. It’s not like we’re arresting them.”

“It’s not like anyone’s arresting them.”

Bell paced harder, boot heels ringing. “What about the black boat?”

“Yeah, well, the Coasties saythey saw this black boat. No one else did.”

“Except maybe Mr. Van Dorn. Is he talking yet, Isaac?”

“Not as much as the first day,” Bell answered, adding, quietly, “In fact, not at all, for the moment.” His surgeons feared an infection had settled into his chest. Dorothy was beside herself, and even Captain Novicki was losing faith.

“Watermen,” said Bell. He turned to the barrel-chested, broad-bellied Ed Tobin. A brutal beating by the Gopher gang when Tobin was a Van Dorn apprentice had maimed his face with a crushed cheekbone and a drooping eyelid. “Ed, have none of the watermen seen it?”

“None that will talk to me.”

“Have you asked Uncle Darbee?” Donald Darbee, Tobin’s great-uncle, was a Staten Island coal pirate with sidelines in salvaging cargo that fell off the docks and ferrying fugitives from New York to New Jersey.

“I asked him first off. Uncle Donny’s never seen the black boat, never heard of it. Though he did like the idea, and he asked me could I find out whether it’s got Liberty motors and, if so, how many, and are they installed in-line or side by side.”

Knowing laughter rumbled about the bull pen, and when even Bell cracked a faint smile, Tobin said, “Can I ask you, Mr. Bell, how are you making out with the Coast Guard?”

Bell’s smile vanished like a shuttered signal lamp. “I will continue trying to interview the cutter crew.” He had had no luck so far. The Coast Guard was keeping CG-9 at sea. When Bell offered to fly out in his plane to interview the crew, his offer was refused.

“McKinney!” Bell turned to the new chief of the New York field office. Darren McKinney was built short, wiry, and supple as chain mail. “You reported that the cops caught a lighter in the East River that had off-loaded the sinking rummy. What sort of booze were they carrying?”

“Dewar’s blended Scotch whisky. The real McCoy.”

“From Arethusa?” Arethusawas the famous McCoy’s schooner that cruised international waters off the coast of Fire Island.

“McCoy just sailed up a shipload from Nassau. But the guys the cops arrested in the East River swear that they got the stuff from somewhere other than the shot-up rummy – understandable, considering the circumstances.”

“Did they or didn’t they?” Bell demanded.

“Harbor Squad claims they followed them from the sinking rummy. These guys saying otherwise are understandably reluctant to be linked to a shooting that might have ki—”

A flicker of violence in Isaac Bell’s eyes silenced the detective mid-word.

“—That is to say, led to the wounding of the proprietor of the Van Dorn Detective Agency.”

Bell said, “I want that reluctance felt by every bootlegger in this city. Find out if they knew the guys on the shot-up rummy.”

“The rummy guys are in jail.”

“No they’re not,” said a gang unit detective hurrying into the bull pen. “Someone bailed ’em out.”

“Now’s our chance to find out. Run them down.”

“Sorry, Isaac, that won’t be possible.”

“Why not?”

“They just got fished out of the river… That’s why I’m late.”

The Van Dorns met the news of slaughtered witnesses with stunned silence. Criminals fearing the electric chair killed accomplices, not ordinary rumrunners and bootleggers.

Bell turned to Detective Tobin. “Ed, get on a boat. Go out to Arethusaand ask McCoy who he sold to that day. If he didn’t sell it, he might have some idea who did.”

“I’m not so sure he’s interested in helping, Mr. Bell.”

Bell said, “If he insists on protecting the buyer, tell him we’ll buy him a Lewis machine gun – he’ll need one for protection, the way things are going. Tell him what Harry Warren just said, criminals are moving in on bootlegging. If that doesn’t change his mind, make it damned clear to him that Iwill make his life on Rum Row immensely unpleasant by persuading the Coast Guard to assign a cutter to circle his schooner day and night for a month.”

Tobin started for the door.

“Wait,” said Bell. “Take two boys and plenty of firepower. And warn McCoy if he did do business with this roughneck element, he’s in danger. Whoever we’re looking for has a strong aversion to witnesses.”

Tobin turned to Harry Warren. The head of the Gang Squad assigned two of his hardest cases with a brisk nod, and Tobin led them to the weapons vault.

“We’ll take a new tack,” Bell told the rest. “The rumrunner who got shot at Roosevelt Hospital told the docs that his name was Johnny. Johnny was about twenty-five years old, medium height, strong build, blond hair cut short, bunch of scars. It’s possible he’s not American. He didn’t do much talking at the hospital with a couple of holes in his leg, so no one heard whether he had an accent. Get out there and find his friends.”

The detectives trooped out quickly and in seconds Bell was alone, racking his brain for what else he could do. The front-desk man telephoned.

“Lady to see you, Mr. Bell.”

“What’s her name?”

“Won’t say,” the desk detective whispered. A steady fellow normally, with a pistol under his coat and a sawed-off shotgun clamped beside his knee, he sounded almost giddy. “She’s a knockout.”

Bell went to the reception room.

The most beautiful woman he had ever seen was smiling, facing the door, in a tailored traveling suit with an open jacket and a skirt that hung straight to the middle of exquisite calves. She had straw-blond hair, sea-coral-green eyes, and a musical voice.

“I’m no lady. I’m your wife.”

“Marion!”

Bell swept her into his arms. “I’m so happy to see you.” He held her so close, he could feel her heart racing. “What are you doing here? Of course, you came to see Dorothy. She’s at the hospital.”

“I’ll see Dorothy later. How are you?”

“Working an angle on the gang that shot Joe. Hard to tell how he’s doing, but he’s hanging in there.”

“I meant, how are you getting on?”

“Plugging away,” he answered quickly, uncharacteristically repeating himself. “Staying on top of it. The boys are terrific. Everyone’s pitching in, working at it overtime.”

Marion Morgan Bell had traveled three thousand miles to examine her husband with a clear, cool gaze. She saw a shadow of apprehension in his eyes for the friend who was his mentor. She saw cold resolve to pursue Joe’s attackers. And she sensed that the man she loved with all her heart had somehow managed to brace every muscle in his body with hope.

“Good,” she said, greatly relieved. “I’ll go see Dorothy now.”

She held Bell’s hand as he walked her downstairs to put her in a taxi.

“I didn’t tell you I was coming because I didn’t know for sure when I’d arrive and I knew you’d have your hands full.”

“How did you get here so fast?”

“I caught a lift to Chicago on Preston and Josephine’s special.” Preston Whiteway owned a chain of newspapers. His wife, Josephine, was a famous aviatrix. Their private train, absurdly overpowered by a 4-8-2 ALCO locomotive, had set the latest speed record for Los Angeles to Chicago. “I just missed the Twentieth Century Limited, so I got Josephine to sneak me onto her pilot friend’s mail plane. The new De Havilland? You would have loved it. We averaged one hundred nine miles an hour.”

“I wasn’t aware that airmail planes had room for a passenger.”

“It was a tight squeeze. I was practically in the pilot’s lap, but he was so sweet about it.”

“I’ll bet.”

“We beat the Twentieth Century by four hours!”

“How long can you stay in New York?” Bell asked.

“The Four Marx Brothers asked me to direct a comedy in Fort Lee.”

“Aren’t they a vaudeville act?”

“They’re hoping a two-reeler will get them to Broadway.”

The St. Regis doorman hailed a cab. Bell helped Marion into it. He leaned in and kissed her. She whispered, “I booked a suite upstairs,” and began to kiss him back.

The cabbie cleared his throat, loudly. “Say, mister, why don’t you just ride along with us?”

“Pipe down,” said the doorman. “You got something against love?”

* * *

Below the ferry terminal at West 23rd Street, Marat Zolner lost sight of the Hudson River behind an unbroken wall of warehouses, bulkhead structures, and dock buildings. On the other side of that wall was a Dutch freighter in from Rotterdam. One of her crew was about to jump ship.

Zolner stopped in one of the cheap lunchrooms scattered along West Street that catered to seamen. It was across from a door in the wall beside a guard shack. Every seaman who stepped out had to show his papers to prove he had a job on a ship. Zolner ordered a cup of coffee and watched.

Antipov stepped through the door with three others. He was dressed like they were in a tight peacoat and flat cap, but his wire-thin silhouette and steel-frame eyeglasses were unmistakable. They showed their papers and crossed West Street. The three entered a blind pig. Antipov waited outside. He removed his glasses, polished them with a bandanna he pulled from his peacoat, then tied the bandanna around his neck.

Zolner joined him and they walked inland on a side street past unlit garages and shuttered warehouses.

Antipov spoke English with a heavy accent. “Where is Johann?”

“Dead. I’m glad you’ve come. I counted on him.”

“How did he die?”

“He was wounded by the Coast Guard. Police took him to the hospital. He knew too much.”

“Pity,” said Antipov.

“Needless to say, Fern believes he was shot by a detective.”

“Of course. Who are those men following us?”

At no point had either Russian appeared to look back.

“Neighborhood thugs,” answered Zolner. “They rob immigrants who sneak off the ships.”

Antipov stopped where the shadows were thickest. “Do you have a cigarette?”

“Of course.” Zolner shook a Lucky Strike out of the pack. Antipov struck a match, let the wind blow it out, and struck another and lit the cigarette, shielding the flame this time expertly. The charade gave the thugs time to catch up. Three Irish, Zolner noted, two of them half drunk, but not enough to slow them down. The third floated with a boxer’s smooth gait. They attacked without a word.

Zolner retreated to his right, Antipov to his left. To the thugs, they looked like frightened men stumbling into each other, but their paths crossed as smoothly as parts of a machine, and when they finished exchanging places in a dance as precise as it was confusing, the thug charging Zolner was suddenly facing Antipov, and the thug lunging at Antipov was facing Zolner. Zolner dropped his man with a blackjack. Antipov stabbed his with a long, thin dagger.

The boxer scrambled backwards. Zolner and Antipov blocked any hope of running back to West Street or ahead to Tenth Avenue. He opened his hands in the air to show he was not armed.

Antipov spoke as if he were not standing five feet away. “Would it not be ironic to fall at the hands of common criminals?”

“Not likely,” said Zolner.

The boxer, seeing that flight was hopeless, closed his big hands into ham-size fists and went up on the balls of his feet.

“He is brave,” said Antipov.

“And handles himself well,” said Zolner. “What is your name?”

“What’s it to you?”

“We are deciding whether to kill you. Or pay you.”

“Pay me? Pay me for what?”

“Whatever we require. Tell me where you hang out and I will pay you when there’s a job to be done. Easy money.”

“Are you nuts?”

“We are bootleggers. We pay easy money for muscle. What is your name?”

“Ricky Newdell.”

“What do your pals call you?”

“They call me Hooks. ’Counta my left hook.”

Marat Zolner stared at him.

“My best punch,” Ricky Newdell explained.

“Where do you hang out?”

“Lunchroom at 18th and Tenth.”

“O.K., Hooks. You’ll hear from us. I’m Matt. He’s Jake. Turn around and walk back to West Street.”

“What about these guys?” The man Zolner had blackjacked was out cold. The man Antipov stabbed had not moved since he fell.

Zolner and Antipov wiped the blood off their weapons on the men’s coats.

Ricky Newdell said, “These guys are Gophers.”

Antipov looked at Zolner. “Goofer?” he asked, pronouncing the gang name as Hooks had. “What is Goofer?”

“Neighborhood gangsters. Used to rule the Hell’s Kitchen slum. Leaders dead and in prison.”

Antipov shrugged. “What do we care?”

“The Gophers ain’t gonna take this lying down,” warned Newdell.

“Hooks,” said Zolner. “This is your last chance. If you want easy money, turn around and walk away.”

Hooks Newdell turned around and walked toward West Street. Behind him he heard laughter, and the knife guy with the thick accent saying, “‘Goofers’? Like ‘goofy’?” Hooks did not look back. Something told him with these guys moving into the neighborhood, the Gophers’ days were numbered.