Two bullets had perforated the flesh. The examiner measured them as an inch and a half apart. He glanced at Bell. “Tight pattern.”
“Lewis gun.”
Bell wrote rapidly in a clear hand as Nuland went on to describe numerous healed bullet and knife wounds that scarred limbs and trunk, a broken nose, and missing teeth. The examiner noted that some of the scars were quite old, acquired in childhood.
“Your classic street-gang kid . . . All right, let’s see what finally caught up with him.”
Nuland noted the absence of an exit wound in the throat, mouth, and face, then wrestled the body onto its belly. There were more healed scars on the back of the torso and a single large hole in the posterior thigh where the Lewis gun slugs had exited jointly. Finally, he addressed the tiny, half-a-dime-size wound that Bell had seen just under the hairline in the nape of the neck.
“Point-blank range, small bore . . . Twenty-five caliber, probably . . . Powder tattooing around the flame zone . . . Powder grains embedded in the corneum . . . Powder grains in the mucosum . . .”
He scraped the grains from the skin’s outer and inner layers onto glass slides.
“Denser pattern of powder tattooing below the wound . . .” He looked up at Bell. “This Frenchman during the war worked out a system to gauge whether a bullet wound was courtesy of the Germans or self-inflicted . . . The Army wanted proof to prosecute malingerers who tried to get out of the trenches by shooting themselves in the leg. If we can believe Monsieur Chavigny, the heavier concentration under this wound indicates the bullet entered on an upward slant. Hand me that saw—let’s go find it . . . How you holding up, Isaac, need a bucket?”
“Getting hungry . . . Shall I run and get us sandwiches?”
“Corned beef . . . But let’s find the bullet first.”
Bell handed him a hammer and a chisel.
“Thanks . . . Where . . . ? Oh, thanks.” He took the forceps from Bell. “Aha! That’s why it didn’t come out his mouth. It’s in his brain! . . . Here we are. A little .25, just like I told you.”
Isaac Bell stared at the mangled remains of the man who had either been the thug who machine-gunned Joe Van Dorn or an accomplice.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why what?” said Nuland, holding the slug to the light.
“Why didn’t it exit from his mouth?”
“Good question . . . Looks to me like the guy’s head was bent forward—sharply—chin to chest.” Nuland demonstrated by tucking his own chin to his chest. “Bullet angles into the nape, under or through the occipital bone—through, in this instance—and up into the skull. Easy on the victim. Dead in a flash, no pain.”
“Easy on the killer, too,” said Isaac Bell.
“How do you mean?”
“No death struggle, no blood.”
• • •
“DO YOU HAVE TIME to see me off, Isaac?” asked Pauline Grandzau.
The doctors allowed no one but Dorothy, Captain Novicki, and Isaac Bell in Joseph Van Dorn’s room, which didn’t stop detectives from rushing to Bellevue to offer condolences to his wife and wish the Boss well and donate blood in the event of additional operations. The most striking visitor, by far, was Fräulein Privatdetektive Pauline Grandzau, chief of the Berlin field office.
The beautiful young German had won her detective spurs before the war when she was a teenage library student who helped Isaac Bell solve the Thief case.
“Are you going back already?” Bell asked. He was rushing off to the police laboratory, where, he had just learned, they were examining a pistol shell found in the murdered rumrunner’s hospital room. “Seems like you just got here.”
“I’m afraid so. Nieuw Amsterdam sails this afternoon.”
He reached automatically for his pocket watch, then shot his cuff instead to check the time. Strapped to his wrist was the perfect substitute for a man who had his hands on the controls of an airplane, racing boat, or motorcar—a Cartier “Tank,” which Marion, his wife, had given him for their anniversary.
“I’ll do my best to get to the boat,” he promised. Pauline, after all, had risked her life to help him behind German lines.
• • •
HOLLAND AMERICA LINERS sailed from a Hoboken pier.
Bell made it with only minutes to spare, and when he boarded the Rotterdam-bound Nieuw Amsterdam, an aging seventeen-thousand-tonner, he found two Van Dorn detectives already crowded into Pauline’s little cabin. Research Department chief Grady Forrer—a scholarly giant of bull-like proportions—and young, pale-skinned, bantamweight James Dashwood—the finest pistol shot in the agency—who had brought her flowers. The giant and the rail-thin youth gripped their bouquets like clubs.
Pauline appeared oblivious to her dazzling effect on either of them.
“Isaac! I’m so glad you could make it.” She turned to Dashwood and Forrer. “Boys, thank you so much for coming. And thank you for the beautiful roses, Grady, and the lovely peonies, James. I’ll see you when I’m back in the autumn. Good-bye. Thank you. Good-bye.”
Grady and Dashwood shuffled out, reluctantly, and Bell had to hide a smile. The skinny little German student with yellow braids, freckles, bright blue eyes, and the moxie of a Berlin street fighter had grown up. A stylish bob replaced her braids. Her enormous eyes were deep as oceans. God alone knew where the freckles had gone. But the moxie was still there, hidden like a sleeve gun, ready when needed.
For a long moment, they stood looking at each other.
Bell broke the silence, speaking German—partly because people were shuffling by in the corridor and partly for old times’ sake—the college German she had helped him hone to stay alive.
“I attended the rumrunner’s autopsy.”
“What did you learn?”
“There was something a little odd about the way the killer shot him. He was shot point-blank. Not between the eyes or in the temple, where you’d expect, but in the back of his neck.”
Pauline’s eyes settled on him curiously. “Where in the back of his neck?”
“Just at the hairline.”
“The nape?”
“Exactly.”
“Next, you will tell me that the bullet did not exit.”
“How did you know?”
“It didn’t?”
“No. Straight up in his brain.”
“Was he American?”
“I assume so. He told the doctors his name was Johnny. Why?”
“Could he have come from abroad?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You just described a Genickschuss.”
“Genickschuss? What is that? Neck shot?”
“A bullet in the nape of the neck.”
“There’s a German word for everything,” Bell marveled.
“Actually, it’s Russian. The word is German, but the Russians coined it for the favored method of execution of the Russian Communist Cheka.”
“Soviet secret police?” asked Bell, equal parts intrigued and surprised. Cheka was short for the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage.
“A long and fancy name for the engineers of the Red Terror,” said Pauline. “Genickschuss is how they kill. Quickly, cleanly, efficiently.”
“The coroner thought it was efficient,” said Bell. “How did a Russian method of killing get a German name?”
Pauline reminded him that millions of Germans lived in Russia before the war. “There was plenty of mixing. And many a German worked for the Russian Revolution. Starting, if you will, with Karl Marx.”
“Funny way for a rumrunner to get shot . . . What would the Cheka be doing in New York?”
“Strictly speaking, they would not be Cheka but Comintern, the Russian Communists’ foreign attack force. The Comintern would be in New York for the same reason they’re in Germany. To lead revolution.”
Bell shook his head. “They call it revolution, but what they really want is to replace the old empires the war destroyed with new ones.”
Bell looked at her curiously. “The boys at the police laboratory are pretty sure it was a Mann pocket pistol.”
“German. Why do they think it’s a Mann?”
“The cops found a shell that had expansion marks from the chamber groove.”
“That could only come from the new model. The 1920. Or the ’21.”
“That’s what the cops said. Apparently the 1920 model has a circular groove to permit an ultralight slide. I’ve not seen one yet.”
“You will love it,” said Pauline.
She reached under her skirt. Bell caught a flicker of a shapely white thigh encircled by black lace. She pressed a tiny semiautomatic pistol into his hand. It was smaller than a deck of cards, finely machined, and amazingly thin—less than three-quarters of an inch. It was too little for his hand, perfect for hers.
“Five shots,” she said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
The aluminum grips were warm from her skin, and Bell wondered, not for the first time, why such a beautiful girl had neither married nor kept a steady boyfriend.
“She is secretly in love with you,” Marion had told him.
“She knows my heart is spoken for,” had been Bell’s reply. He admired Pauline’s courage and her razor-sharp mind, and there was no denying she was wonderful to look at. But he, as he told Marion, was already in love.
“Is it accurate?”
“I trust it to twenty feet.”
Bell handed it back.
Pauline slipped it in its holster. She looked up with a smile. “Doesn’t it seem that our murdered rumrunner has experienced a more complicated death than an ordinary Prohibition gangster?”
“It might,” said Bell. “Except Prohibition’s get-rich-quick promises tempt all sorts.”
The liner’s whistle thundered overhead.
Pauline walked him to the gangway, where officers were urging visitors to disembark. “Auf Wiedersehen, Isaac. It was lovely to see you. Thanks for coming.”
“Glad I did. Your Genickschuss was worth the ride to Hoboken. Not to mention meeting your little Mann.”
She stood on tiptoe, kissed his cheek, and switched to English. “Please, give my warm regards to your wife.”
“I will as soon as I see her. She’s making a picture in Los Angeles.”
Deep in thought, Bell stood out on deck as the Hoboken Ferry steamed across the Hudson River. He looked back when it landed at 23rd Street. The tugs were turning Nieuw Amsterdam into the stream. For an instant, his keen eyes picked out Pauline among the passengers lining the rails, her hair a fleck of shining gold.
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.”
<
br /> “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.”
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