The Bootlegger

by Clive Cussler

  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 News on 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 bellhop
s.”

  “Our boys?” 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.

  Dashwood drew a pistol from his coat, held it up for all to see, and ducked his head shyly at the cheers.

  When they were alone, walking down Park Avenue, Bell asked, “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m O.K.”

  “I asked for a reason,” said Bell. “How is your health?” Dashwood had been caught in a German gas attack and the chlorine had played havoc with his lungs.

  “I have good days and bad. At the moment I’m doing O.K.”

  “When’s the last time the coughing laid you low?”

  “Last month. I got over it. What’s up, Mr. Bell?”

  “I think you should start calling me Isaac.”

  “O.K., Isaac,” Dashwood answered slowly, working his way around the unaccustomed way of conversing with the boss who had been his teacher, sage, and adviser all in one. “Why do you ask about my condition?”

  “I promised Mr. Van Dorn to look after the agency until he recovers. I need a right hand. And a troubleshooter I can send around the continent.”

  “Why not Archie Abbott?”

  “Archie’s stuck in France.”

  “Isn’t there anyone else?”

  “None I’d prefer.” Bell stopped walking, looked Dashwood in the eye, and thrust out his hand. “Can we shake on it?”

  • • •

  “TELEPHONE, MR. BELL. Dr. Nuland at the morgue.”

  “Hello, Shep. Thanks again for reporting on that powder.”

  “Would you happen to be looking for a Russian?”

  Bell felt a surge of excitement. “It’s likely that neck shot was by a Russian. Why?”

  “I looked a little deeper when I got your note. About your hunch? Turns out in 1914, 1915, and 1916 the Aetna Explosives Company filled huge contracts to supply the Russian government with smokeless powder.”

  After Bell put down the phone, he called someone he knew in the New York Police Department laboratory. He was a bullet expert who was paid well and regularly to do private work for the Van Dorn Detective Agency. “I’m calling about that shell casing they found at Roosevelt where a shooting victim was murdered. The one with the expansion ring from a Mann pistol. Any idea where it was manufactured? . . . What’s that?”

  It sounded to Bell as if the expert was whispering into a mouthpiece muffled by his hand.

  “Like I already told you, Mr. Bell, they got egg on their face, and it’ll cost me my job to speak a word. I’m really sorry, Mr. Bell. But they’ll sack me if I get caught.”

  “No hard feelings,” said Bell and hung up. He was not surprised, but it had been worth a try. He had run into similar resistance with the Coast Guard. Every time he tried to interview the crew of CG-9, he was told she was out of reach, far at sea, or her radio was broken. The truth was, the Coast Guard brass were just as embarrassed about Van Dorn’s shooting as the cop brass were about the bungled police protection at the hospital.

  He had managed to wrangle a glimpse of the report on the slug that Shepherd Nuland fished out of Johnny’s skull. But it had offered no clue to its source of manufacture. Which made the possible Russian source of the smokeless powder the only information as close to a fact that he could get his hands on.

  He composed a Marconigram in Van Dorn cipher. The Radio Corporation of America would transmit it from the former Marconi Wireless Station in New Jersey to the liner Nieuw Amsterdam:

  NECK SHOT POWDER POSSIBLY RUSSIAN.

  It wasn’t much to go on. But it would give Pauline Grandzau something to think about on the boat. And when Pauline put her mind to something, something interesting often came of it.

  11

  HOOKS NEWDELL’S NEW BOSSES, Matt and Jake, thought big, bigger than anyone Hooks had ever met up with—bigger than the Gophers, bigger than the White Hand Gang, even bigger than the Italians who were taking over the docks. Just looking at the huge government building they were going to break into made him nervous.

  Matt and Jake were in the backseat of a Marmon parked on Greenwich Street under the Ninth Avenue El in Greenwich Village two blocks from the piers. Hooks was in front at the wheel. High above the El loomed the government building, a stone-and-brick monster rising ten stories in the night and filling the entire block bordered by Christopher, Greenwich, Barrow, and Washington streets. Hooks had always called it the Customs Building, but it was also known as the Appraisers’ Stores and the Samples Office, a huge storehouse where U.S. Customs took samples of imported goods to appraise how much they could tax the foreign shipments. Built like a fortress, it was also where the government stashed confiscated liquor and smuggled jewels and antiques and anything else valuable they got their paws on, like last week when customs agents intercepted a bunch of submachine guns being shipped to Ireland for the Sinn Féin. It was the kind of place that guys dreamed abou
t busting into.

  Matt and Jake were actually going to do it. A liquor deal to end all liquor deals.

  Matt had bribed a Prohibition agent. The agent had told him when a big booze raid was planned and where the goods that the Dry agents seized would be stored—ground floor, right inside the Christopher Street entrance. This made things easy, Matt had explained. The building had acres of storerooms. There were ten elevators and three miles of hallways. Seven hundred clerks worked in it during the day. Near the front door made it easy, quick and easy in and out. Late at night even better. So Matt said.

  But it made Hooks nervous and he couldn’t stop talking. As they waited for the signal from Matt’s man inside, he tried again to break the silence that they wrapped around themselves like armor.

  “The guys in the car were saying that you mighta shot a detective, Matt.”

  Matt did not answer.

  “Did ya?”

  • • •

  MARAT ZOLNER was assessing whether Hooks Newdell had potential. He needed an American to represent him when he didn’t want his face or accent noticed. But he was beginning to doubt that Hooks was the man. “Did ya what?”

  “What the guys say. That you shot a private dick.”

  “Hooks, did it ever occur to you that whoever said that stands a good chance of getting shot himself?”

  Hooks Newdell backpedaled madly. “They didn’t mean nothin’. They was just guessing. It’s just that we—they—were wondering, are you the guys who shot Joseph Van Dorn?”

  Zolner remained silent, and the nervous Hooks sealed his doom. The fool simply did not know when to shut his mouth.

  “Did you guys go bonkers?” he blurted. “You shot Joe Van Dorn? Do you know who that is?”

  “Only a detective.”

  “It’s bad enough shooting any Van Dorn. Even a house dick. But you guys shot their boss.”

  “It’s not like a cop.”

  “The Van Dorns got a saying: ‘We never give up! Never!’”

  “Words.”

  “Except you never hear word of ’em giving up . . . So you did shoot him?”

  Yuri moved like lightning, and the tip of his dagger was suddenly pressing up against the soft flesh under Ricky Newdell’s chin. “Stop talking!”