Текст книги "The Bootlegger"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Justin Scott
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

8

Marat Zolner steered Yuri Antipov toward Tenth Avenue.

“Where are we going?”

“I have an auto.”

Antipov’s mouth tightened at the sight of the Packard Twin Six, as Zolner had expected it would. Wait until he saw the place Fern had rented for a hideout.

Zolner drove across the Brooklyn Bridge and east for two hours, over the Brooklyn line into Nassau County, and across Nassau on the Merrick Road to Suffolk and through a dozen villages on the Montauk Highway. The towns were dark, their people sleeping. The farms and forest between the towns were darker, except where roadhouses lit the night, like liners at sea, with colored lights, electric signs, and the headlights of expensive motorcars in parking lots.

Music spilled from the blazing windows.

“A cabaret!” said Antipov, breaking the silence that lay heavily between them.

“They’re called roadhouses in the country, cabarets in the city.”

“In the middle of nowhere.”

“Their patrons own automobiles.”

“And drink alcohol so openly.”

“Americans are avid lawbreakers.”

Zolner turned off the highway onto a narrow, dark, empty road. He drove for a mile until it ended at a substantial stone building with a tall, wide, iron-studded door in the middle. A warm, wet wind reeked of marsh and salt water. Overhead, through breaks in the trees, stars shone softly in a hazy sky.

“You have a big house,” said Antipov.

“This is the gatehouse.”

Zolner turned the lights on in the car and blew the horn. They waited.

“Aren’t you expected?”

“They have orders to make sure that we are not hijackers or Prohibition officers.”

At last, a big man in a leather cap stepped from the shadows with one hand in his pocket. “All clear, boss.”

Zolner said, “This is Yuri. He has the run of the property. Yuri, this is Trucks O’Neal. You can count on him.”

Trucks O’Neal took a close look and said, “I’ll remember you, Yuri.”

The iron-studded door swung open, and Zolner drove the Packard through it.

“Why did you tell him I was ‘Yuri’ instead of ‘Jake’?”

“Trucks is an American Army veteran and war profiteer turned bootlegger. He is loyal.”

“How can you be sure? He’s not a comrade.”

“I saved his skin in Germany, and I am making him wealthy and powerful here. In return, Trucks O’Neal is loyal. Better yet, he’s intelligent enough to stay loyal.”

He steered onto a curving bluestone driveway. The headlights swept hedgerows and gardens, tennis courts and greenhouses.

“Czar Nicholas would enjoy this,” Antipov remarked disapprovingly.

“Czar Nicholas is out of business,” Zolner shot back. He turned off the main drive, which went to the estate house whose roof could be seen darkly against the dim stars, and the tires rumbled over railroad tracks. “This is a private siding that connects to the main line to New York.”

“Is that a railcar?” The starlight reflected on cut-glass windows.

“A private car.”

“Does it belong to Fern?”

“Of course not. We would not risk any connection to Fern. Everything’s rented in cash by agents. In case we have to break camp quickly, none of this can be traced to her.” He stopped the Packard, climbed out, and stretched the kinks from the long ride. Antipov stood beside him. “What is that?” he asked, pointing at the silhouette of a tall spire.

“The hothouse chimney,” said Zolner. “It conceals a radio antenna. The signal guides our boats ashore.”

“What is out there? I see no lights.”

“Great South Bay. Forty miles long, five miles wide. Across it is Fire Island Inlet, and, through the inlet, the Atlantic Ocean.”

“What is around us on the land?”

“Other estates of similar size. All private.”

He walked Antipov to a large garage, led him in a side door, and turned on the lights to reveal a canvas-topped stake truck and six Packard and Pierce-Arrow automobiles. “The autos have strengthened suspensions so they don’t sag when loaded.”

“Why don’t you deliver it by rail? From your siding?”

“Have you forgotten trains are trapped on tracks? Rails are easily choked. The Prohibition agents would love nothing more than the opportunity to seize a railcar full of booze. We scatter it on the highways. If they’re lucky, they catch one auto in ten.”

“But you concentrate it here.”

“Many miles from the market in a dark and lonely place.”

“How do you get it here?”

“The boats.”

He turned out the garage lights and walked a gravel path to another large building on the bank of a still creek. The boathouse had no windows, so only when Zolner opened the door did Antipov see that it was brightly lit inside. Two large boats were tied in separate bulkheaded slips. One was broad beamed, a forty-foot freight boat with two huge motors.

“She carries a thousand cases at twenty-five knots,” said Zolner. “The price fluctuates according to demand, but in general her cargo will earn us fifty thousand dollars. A lot of money for a night’s work.”

“You have made a success of bootlegging.”

“The boats are the rum-running side of the business. Distributing and selling it is the actual bootlegging. I’ve made a success of that, too.”

“What is that other boat?” It was much longer than the freight boat and much narrower.

“My pride and joy,” said Zolner. “She, too, will carry a thousand cases, but at fiftymiles an hour. And if anyone gets in her way, look out. She’ll gun them down. Her name is Black Bird.”

“Your pride?”

Zolner ignored the mocking note in Antipov’s voice.

“Her sailors are Russian – the best seamen in the world.”

“Why have they disassembled her motors?”

The heads were off all three Liberty engines. Carborundum growled against steel, cascading white sparks as a mechanic ground valves.

“The price of speed,” shrugged Zolner. “These motors burn up their valves on a regular basis.”

“Intake or exhaust?” asked Antipov.

“I forgot, you apprenticed as a mechanic. Exhaust, of course. It’s the heat that builds up. No one’s come up with a good way to cool them, though not for lack of trying every trick in the book, including hollow valves filled with mercury or sodium. Fortunately, the United States built seventeen thousand Liberty engines, most of which were never used in the war. We buy them for pennies on the dollar.”

He gestured at wooden crates stacked against the rear wall. “Believe it or not, it is often more efficient to replace the entire motor than waste time on the valves.”

“I would believe almost anything at this point.”

Antipov spoke softly, but he was seething with anger.

Now was the time, Zolner decided, to get this out in the open.

“What is it?” he asked. “What is troubling you, Yuri?”

“What of the revolution?”

“What ofthe revolution?”

“You are a Comintern agent, Comrade Zolner. You were sent here to spearhead the Bolshevik takeover of America.”

9

“What precisely have you done to spearhead the Bolshevik takeover of America?”

The boathouse mechanic switched off his electric grinder. For a long moment the only sound Marat Zolner heard was the lap of water echoing in the slips.

The Communist International – the “Comintern”—was Soviet Russia’s worldwide espionage network. The Russian Communist Party had launched it as its foreign arm when it seized control of the revolution that brought down Czar Nicholas II. The Comintern’s mission was to repeat that victory everywhere in the world and overthrow the governments of the international bourgeoisie by all available means – spying, sabotage, and armed force.

Marat Zolner was a battle-hardened soldier of the revolution. During the war he had provoked entire regiments to shoot their officers. He led the Soviet unit that captured the czar’s train, fought with the Bolsheviks to subvert the democratic provisional government, and shone in cavalry battles with White Loyalists in the Russian Civil War. Beyond the Russian border, he proved versatile, rallying Berlin street fighters to the barricades. Antipov had fought at his side.

“Go get something to eat!” he called to the valve grinder, a Russian, too. When they were alone, he said to Antipov, “Come here!”

He strode to the wall of spare motors. Sitting on one of the crates was a steel strongbox.

“Open that!”

Antipov flung back the lid. The box was crammed with cash, banded stacks of bills in denominations of one hundred and one thousand dollars.

“Where did you get this?”

“Profits,” said Zolner.

“Profits?”

“Money earned smuggling alcohol from Rum Row to Long Island roadhouses and New York speakeasies.”

“I ask of the revolution and you answer like a banker. Profits?”

“What I am doing costs money.”

“And what precisely are you doing?”

Marat Zolner said, “Masking our Comintern network of assassins and saboteurs as a liquor-bootlegging crime syndicate.”

“You wear your mask too well. You boast of pride and joy. You boast of gangsters, smugglers. Bootleggers. Where are the comrades?”

“ Black Bird’s sailors are comrades – loyal Russian Bolshevik comrades of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Fleet. Johannwas a comrade. Youare a comrade.”

“And you?”

“My smugglers and gangsters obey me. I am their bootleggerboss. They don’t know I’m Comintern. They won’t know why I expand to Detroit and Miami – nor why our empire spreads to the South, the Midwest, the Pacific Coast.”

“Are youa comrade?”

“Have you not heard a word I said? Of course Iam a comrade.”

Antipov shook his head.

“What is wrong, Yuri?”

“The Comintern sent you to New York to provoke revolution.”

“Precisely what my empire will achieve.”

“What part did you take in the strikes of Seattle shipyards? How did you aid the Boston police strike? What was your role in the coalfield strikes? Who did you co-opt in the nationwide steel strike? What of the May first seamens’ strike? Are you co-opting the IWW Wobblies? Have you seized control of the American Communist Party?”

Zolner laughed.

“I do not see the joke,” Antipov said heavily.

“The Wobblies and the American Communist Party and the labor unions are all in decline. The Congress, the newspapers, and the American Legion sow panic about ‘Reds.’ But the fact is, as you saw at the roadhouses tonight, Americans of every class are having too much fun defying Prohibition to care about politics, much less class struggle. Gangsters are their heroes. This is why my American Comintern unit fights under the guise of bootlegging.”

“Perhaps you will invest your profits on Wall Street,” Antipov said sarcastically.

“I already have.”

“What?”

“Why shouldn’t I build an empire of activities on Wall Street? It will finance operations. Guns aren’t cheap. Neither are trucks, cars, boats. Not to mention bribes. Money is influence. Money is access to powerful allies. I have a broker steering excellent investments our way.”

“A broker?”

“To buy stocks. To raise money for the scheme.”

“Your scheme is tangential and slow.”

“I will not be rushed.”

“Worse, you veer from the revolution.”

Marat Zolner stared down at Antipov. “Listen to me very carefully, Yuri. I am established here. You just arrived. I will explain to you what is going on here. The United States of America emerged from the World War as the new leader of international capitalism, did it not?”

Antipov conceded that the old German and British empires were laid waste by war.

“Toppling capitalism’s most powerful industrial empire is too important to rush to defeat.”

“You’re not toppling capitalism. You’re joining it.”

“You forget our defeats. We rushed into battle against the international bourgeoisie in Hungary, and lost. We rushed again into the streets of Germany. And lost. Again. Of all the fights I’d fought, I had never seen anything as hopeless as our insurrection in retreat.”

“After we win the war, who cares if we lost a battle?”

“We had no fortress to run to, nowhere to rest, no hospital to doctor wounds, no armory to reload our empty guns. I stopped to help a poor girl whose jaw was shot away. Freikorps thugs came along, shooting the wounded. I played dead. She moaned. They heard. They killed her. I cowered under her body to save my own skin, and I swore that I would find a better way to fight the international bourgeoisie.”

“Joining them?”

“Beating them at their own game,” Zolner retorted.

“You were sent to make war on the state!” Antipov shouted. “Not play games!”

“Prohibition is America’s Achilles’ heel,” Zolner answered quietly and firmly. “Prohibition – this absurd law that people hate – will rot the state and make bootleggers rich.”

He smiled down at Antipov, far too confident in his scheme to raise his voice.

“I have learned to fight in wars that I’ve lost and in wars that I’ve won. There isn’t a bootlegger in America who can stand up to me. I will be the richest. My ‘profits’ that you disdain will finance the Comintern’s attack on the U.S. government. My profits will subvert officials, corrupt police, and destroy the state.”

Yuri shifted tactics. His voice grew soft. “Comrade Zolner – Marat – you know why Moscow sent me. Do I have to remind you, my friend, of the Red Terror? Do I have to remind you that the Cheka annihilates counter-revolutionaries?”

“I am not a counter-revolutionary.”

“The effect of failure is counter-revolutionary.”

“I will not fail.”

“Moscow decides what is failure.”

“Let Moscow tend to Russia. Let me tend to the United States. I will give America to the Comintern on a silver platter.”

“They would be just as happy to have it on base metal.”

Staring hard at each other, suddenly both men laughed, acknowledging their surprise that Antipov had made a joke.

“And happy to forgive me, too?” Zolner asked.

They laughed again.

But it was the laughter of deception. Both men knew the truth: The Comintern never forgave freethinking.

Zolner suspected another even grimmer truth: His once bold comrade, his blood brother of the street battles, had grown weary. Yuri Antipov had slipped into the role of functionary, an apparatchikobsessed with meaningless details instead of grand schemes. How many like Yuri would seize control of the revolution before they killed the revolution?

“Fern is waiting to see you,” he said.

Antipov brightened. “She’s here?”

“In the house.” He picked up a telephone. “I’ll call her. I’ll tell her you’re here.”

* * *

The estate house was a limestone mansion built by a railroad magnate thirty years ago in the Gilded Age. Zolner led Antipov through the sculpted entry into a great hall with painted ceilings depicting a history of land transportation that linked Egyptian chariots to crack express trains thundering across the Rocky Mountains. Antipov stared up at the mural. His jaw set like steel.

But when Fern Hawley swept down the vast curving staircase, Antipov melted as he always did in her presence. A big grin lit his stern face, and he extended both hands and shouted, “Midgets!”

Fern took his hands and laughed. “You will never let me forget that, will you?”

“Never.”

To greet her with “Midgets!” was to remind her of her conversion on a beautiful summer day in Paris. Victorious Allied regiments were marching down the Champs-Élysées. Bands were playing, crowds cheered, and the sun shone bright. Suddenly, she had cried out in astonishment, “Midgets!”

“What do you mean?” asked Zolner, who was holding her hand.

An English regiment was marching in strict order – rifles aligned perfectly on their shoulders, uniforms immaculate – but the soldiers were tiny miniature men, not one taller than five feet.

“They’re so little,” she said. “Little tiny midgets.”

“So they are,” said Zolner. “Still, they beat the Germans.”

But Yuri Antipov gave her a look of withering disdain.

“What is it?” she asked. “What did I say?”

“Don’t you know why they are small?”

“No. What do you mean?”

“It’s a Lancashire Regiment. From the English coalfields.”

“Yuri, what are you talking about?”

“They have mined coal for four generations. They are paid a pittance. Neither they nor their fathers nor their grandfathers nor their great-grandfathers have ever eaten enough food to grow tall.”

Even tonight, separated from that moment by three years and three thousand miles, Fern Hawley winced at the memory of such ignorance and such callousness. “They’re hungry,” she had whispered, and Antipov had reached around Zolner to grip her arm and say, “They will stay hungry until the revolution.”

Thanks to Antipov, she believed with all her heart that the international revolution of the proletariat should abolish government. Thanks to Antipov, she passionately supported the Russian proletariat’s struggling new state – the Socialist Republic of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers.

“Have you eaten?” she asked.

She pulled a bell cord. A butler appeared.

“What would you like, Yuri? Champagne? A cold bird?”

“Bread and sausage.”

* * *

Later, upstairs, alone in their palatial bedroom, she asked Zolner, “Why didn’t you tell me Yuri was coming?”

Marat Zolner had seen Fern Hawley in action and he admired her bravery and her coolness under fire. She did not panic when police charged with pistols and rubber truncheons. When they bombed the barricades with mine throwers, she could retreat without losing purpose, a rare gift. The revolution needed her sort to fight battles. But she was a naïve romantic. If the Comintern ran to pattern, when the war was finally won brave naïve romantics would be shot in the interest of stability. For romantics would be seen as dangerous as freethinkers.

Until then, he saw great advantage to teaming up with her.

She already helped him escape execution in Europe, staring down cops as she had the private detective at Roosevelt Hospital. In America she had shown him the ropes and provided extraordinary cover. Together, they had worked up disguises that allowed him to move freely. He had learned to ape the pretensions of the elegant White Russian émigrés fleeing to New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Or, wearing laborer’s duds, he could pass as just another of the faceless foreigners who toiled in the docks, mines, and mills. And to mingle with their bosses, he had only to stroll into the opera or a high-class speakeasy with Fern Hawley on his arm.

“I didn’t tell you that Yuri was coming because information that you do not need to know endangers both you and our mission. What if you were forced to reveal what you knew?”

“What are you talking about? This isn’t Russia or Germany. We’re in the United States.”

“You think there is no torture in the United States?”

Fern Hawley laughed. “They’d know what torture was when my lawyers got through with them.”

Marat Zolner said, “I’m sorry. Old habits die hard.”

“I am only asking you to trust me. You should have told me. Yuri is my friend.”

“Yuri Antipov is no one’s friend.”

“He’s yourfriend.”

“We fought together. We are brothers in blood. But he is not my friend. He is Comintern from the soles of his feet to the hair on his skull.”

“I know that. That’s why he likes me. He knows that I’m as devoted as he is to the proletariat.”

“He is Comintern,” Zolner repeated. “If Moscow ordered him to throw you in a fire, he would without a second thought.”

“So are you Comintern.”

“I use my brain to think. They hate thinking that they can’t control.”

“Would Yuri throw you in that fire?”

Zolner gave her a thin smile and turned out the light. “Only if they told him to.”

“Marat,” she whispered in the dark. “I am grateful to Yuri Antipov and I admire Yuri Antipov. But I could never love him the way I love you.”

“Why are you grateful to him?”

She sat up in the canopied bed and hugged her arms around her knees. The sky had cleared, and through the French windows she saw a sliver of moon hanging over the bay. “Yuri helps me understand a world I never knew until I met you two. He’s like a wise uncle. But you are my muse. Yuri was my guide. But you are my comrade-in-arms.”

“Wait until they force you to chose,” Zolner said bleakly.

“I will fight at your side.”

10

The first mail delivery of the morning brought a letter from the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office to the Van Dorn field office.

Dear Isaac,

The powder on Johnny’s bullet wound was manufactured by the Aetna Explosives Company of Mt. Union, Pennsylvania.

Hope it helps.

Sincerely,

(Signed) Shep

Bell was familiar with the powder plant, a sprawling factory he had often seen from the Broadway Limited on the Pennsylvania Railroad’s main line between Altoona and Harrisburg.

“Dear Shep,” he wrote back,

So much for hunches. That Russian neck shot gave me a feeling the powder was from Germany or Russia. Next time you’re on Fifth Avenue, let me buy you a drink of strong tea.

Warm regards,

(Signed) Isaac

* * *

Isaac Bell hurried from the Sayville train station to a one-story white clapboard building that had Ionic columns supporting a wide triangular pediment in the Greek Revival style. Lettering carved in relief and painted black read:

THE SUFFOLK COUNTY NEWS

Under his arm were several recent editions of the Long Island weekly he had ordered up from Van Dorn Research. He went inside and spotted his quarry, a retired private detective named Scudder Smith. Smith was wearing shirtsleeves, banded at the elbow, and a red bow tie. He was behind his desk, reading a long yellow galley that reeked of wet ink.

Bell said, “The Research boys found me your stories about rumrunners. Spellbinding.”

Smith looked up, dropped the galley, and jumped to his feet. “Isaac! How in the heck are you?”

“Scudder.” Bell shook his hand. “It’s been too long.”

The two men cast keen eyes on each others’ faces.

Bell, Smith thought, looked as youthful and robust as ever despite the years and the war that had marked so many. Smith, Bell thought, looked like he hadn’t had a drink in years and consequently was much less gnarly than when last he had seen him.

“What are you doing out here?” Scudder asked. “On a job?… Wait a second. How did you know I was here? Newsies don’t hawk the Suffolk County Newson the sidewalks of New York.”

“Mr. Van Dorn’s wife showed me the note you sent to the hospital.”

“How is he doing?”

“He’s hanging on. Left me in charge, and I’ve got my hands full trying to keep the agency afloat. But I do know that he hopes there are no hard feelings.”

“Hell no. Getting fired for over-imbibing was the best thing that ever happened to me. Sobered up. Married the girl of my dreams. Helen promptly inherited the paper. So I’m back in my original business, writing news. Beats mixing it up with thugs half my age. And I don’t have to hang out, drinking burnt coffee, in the criminal court pressroom. I walk home for lunch with my beautiful wife, write what I please. I’m even a pillar of the community. You’ll love this, Isaac. They made me an Odd Fellow, a Moose, and a Mason, and the fellows starting a Lions Club asked me to join them, too.”

“Doesn’t it get a little quiet?” Bell asked. As a reporter turned detective, Scudder Smith had been famous at the Van Dorn Agency for knowing every street in the city, every saloon, and every brothel. And there was no better guide to a Chinatown opium den.

Scudder said, “Quiet? Not since Prohibition.”

Bell nodded. “I got the impression sniffing the air it’s been greeted with open arms. I smelled more booze on the sea breeze than salt.”

“Half the town has fired-up home stills. The only ones who don’t smell booze cooking are the cops.” He picked up the galley. “This is my editorial about cops seen treating chorus girls to supper in expensive roadhouses. I don’t know who’ll read it. The entire South Shore is having a ball.”

“Does your wife work on the paper?”

“She can. Practically ran it for her dad for years.”

“So I heard.”

“You heard? What do you mean?”

“Could she take over for a while?”

“Why?”

“So you could come back to New York and lend a hand ’til I get things straightened out.”

* * *

“Isaac, old son,” drawled Texas Walt Hatfield. “Shore Ah’d love to help you out, but Hollywood’s got me tangled tighter than a roped calf.”

Texas Walt Hatfield, another former Van Dorn detective, had become a matinee idol who starred in scores of western movies. His drawl had grown thicker and his choice of words more cowboy-ish, but he was still as lean and lethal-looking as a Comanche scalping knife. Bell had run him down in the Plaza Hotel’s Palm Court. Patrons at other tables were gaping, and several people had stopped by to ask for Walt’s autograph, which he supplied with a powerful handshake for the men and an I’ll-meet-you-later smile for the ladies.

“Ah mean, if Ah could get out of my contract, Ah’d be with you lickety-split.”

“Are you sure about that?” asked Bell.

“Heck yes. Ah hanker to get in a gunfight with real bullets.”

Bell nodded discreetly to the maître d’ who was awaiting his signal.

Walt changed the subject. “Ah’m mighty relieved the Boss is hanging on. How you doing running down the varmints who shot him?”

“The Coast Guard’s stonewalling, won’t let me near the crew, so I haven’t had a word from the witnesses, and the cops are stonewalling, being embarrassed they let a killer in the hospital room with a witness they were guarding. But the fellow’s postmortem examination was interesting…” He filled Walt in on the Genickschuss.

“You wouldn’t want to try that with a .45,” drawled Hatfield. “You’d have to rustle up the swampers to mop the walls… And how’s the fair Marion? Forgive my not asking sooner.”

“She’s shooting a comedy over in Fort Lee.”

“So you got your gal with you! That’s plumb perfect.”

The maître d’ reappeared leading a waiter, who was carrying a stick phone with an immensely long cord.

“Excuse me, gentlemen. There is a long-distance telephone call from Los Angeles, California, for Mr. Texas Walt Hatfield.”

“Excuse me a sec, Isaac. Like Ah say, they’re jest all over me like paint.”

He took the phone, held it to his mouth and ear. “Yup. This is Texas Walt. Who’s there?”

He sat up straight, covered the mouthpiece, and muttered to Bell, “It’s Mr. Andrew Rubenoff. He owns the moving picture studio – Yes, suh, Mr. Rubenoff. Yes, suh. Yes, suh… You don’t say… Ah see. O.K. Thank you… What’s that? Hang on, he’s right here.”

Texas Walt passed the telephone to Isaac Bell. “Damnedest thing. Just let me out of my contract temporarily. Now he wants to talk to you. His name’s Rubenoff. Andrew Rubenoff.”

Bell took the telephone, said, “Thank you, Uncle Andy,” and hung up.

Texas Walt stared. A slow grin creased his craggy face. “Isaac. You son of a gun.”

“I thought you were itching to get in a real gunfight.”

“Is he really your uncle?”

“I just call him that to razz him. He’s an old banking friend of my father’s.”

“Well, you got me. What are you going to do with me?”

“Put you to work.”

They were interrupted again, by ladies wanting Walt’s autograph. He signed their books and dazzled them with a smile. When they had gone, he said to Bell, “Ah hope you aren’t fixing to have me do any masquerading. This old face has gotten too famous to operate incognito.”

“I’m going to hide you in plain sight.”

“How?”

“Ever been to Detroit?”

“Detroit? What the deuce is in Detroit, except a bunch of automobiles?”

“Bootleggers,” said Bell. “The place is crawling with them.”

“Shore. Because it’s one mile from Canada. What’s that got to do with me?”

Bell looked Hatfield in the eye and said, “Walt, I just got word they’ve corrupted our Detroit field office from top to bottom. Our boys are taking payoffs to ride shotgun on liquor runs and shaking down the bellhops.”

“ Ourboys?” the Texan asked with a wintery scowl. “Are you sure, Isaac?”

“I don’t know who’s still on the square. I want you to pay them a visit.”

Walt strode directly to the hatcheck, threw down a quarter, and clapped his J. B. Stetson on his head. Bell intercepted him at the front door.

“Here’s your train ticket. I booked a stateroom on the Detroiter.”

“Ah can afford my own stateroom ticket.”

“Not on a detective’s salary, you can’t. Wire me tomorrow.”

* * *

A cable was waiting for Isaac Bell in the New York field office, which was three blocks down Fifth Avenue from the Plaza, on the second floor of the St. Regis Hotel.

PARIS CHIEF WOUNDED.

PRIVATE MATTER.

WIFE NOT HIS.

COVERING.

ARCHIE

Bell crumpled it in his fist. He had been counting on his best friend, Archibald Angell Abbott IV, to come back from Europe, where Van Dorn had sent him to reinvigorate the Paris, Rome, and London offices. This meant he had to find another right-hand man to help him straighten out the agency. McKinney was busy ramrodding the New York office. Harry Warren was busy with the Gang Squad, and, even if he weren’t, a detective who knew every gangster in New York hadn’t the national knowledge Bell needed. Nor did Scudder Smith. Tim Holian, out in Los Angeles, and Horace Bronson, back from Paris to his old post in San Francisco, were needed there to hold down the western states.

“Where’s Dashwood?”

“He’s at the rifle range, Mr. Bell.”

Bell walked quickly up Park Avenue to the Seventh Regiment Armory and down into the basement. The sharpshooters and marksmen of the regiment’s crack shooting team were practicing for a match in the double-decked rifle range. He waited behind the firing line, breathing in the lively scent of smokeless powder, until the clatter of .22s ceased. Targets were snaked in. The riflemen inspected them, then passed them to the range captain.

The range captain compared them for the tightest patterns around the bull’s-eyes and held up the winner’s target. In the center of the black eye was a hole so clean it might have been cut by folding the paper in two and cutting a tiny half-moon with scissors. “Number 14? Number 14? Where are you, sir?”

Detective James Dashwood descended from the upper deck. He looked paler than ever, Bell thought. His skin was dead white, and he was thin to the point of gaunt. His suit hung loosely on his frame.

“Of course,” said the range captain. “I should have guessed. Gentlemen, meet former lieutenant James Dashwood.”

The name drew respectful murmurs from the marksmen and sharpshooters. His service as an American Expeditionary Forces sniper in the trenches was legend.

“James,” the captain asked with a knowing smile. “Would you please show them your ‘rifle.’”

Dashwood gave a diffident shrug. He had a boyish voice. “That’s O.K., Captain.”

“Please, James. Your ‘rifle.’”

Dashwood looked around, clearly unhappy to be the center of attention. He saw Bell watching from the back. A pleased grin lit his face. Bell gave his former apprentice a proud thumbs-up.