“It took us a while to catch on,” he told Isaac Bell, who hadn’t slept either, when Bell crouched beside him, pretending to give him a cigarette. It was late at night and the streets were empty.
“This guy who looks exactly like Trucks—Ed Tobin swears it’s him—goes in the stable in this side, then he drives out on Murray Street. The backs of the buildings butt together in the middle of the block. He just went in again. Ed’s watching on Murray.”
“Stay here,” said Bell. “Nail him if he comes out. I’ll cover the other side.”
He ran full speed to the corner, down Greenwich, and turned onto Murray.
Ed Tobin was waiting inside a butcher’s van, eye to a peephole. Tired as he was, he flashed Bell a predatory grin. “I snuck close. He’s got one truck left. Loading booze now.”
“How many helpers?”
“None. He’s clearing the place out all alone.”
Bell said, “Looks like he knew Harry was close.”
“If Harry was getting close, what was he doing on Wall Street?”
“Maybe Harry got too close,” said Bell.
“And Trucks killed him? And put him in the wagon?”
“That’s a stable on Warren Street. Where would you put a wagon while you collected dynamite?”
“The same guys.”
The chief investigator and the Gang Squad chief’s onetime apprentice exchanged a grim look.
“I’ve been asking myself something similar,” said Tobin. “Harry shadowed suspects close as glue. Trucks doesn’t have a mark on him. So Harry couldn’t have been following close when he got blown up. But Harry had no reason to be in front of the Morgan Building. He was supposed to be eleven blocks uptown, here at the stable.”
“What you are speculating,” Bell said, “is that Harry was in the wagon.”
“I didn’t want to say it. It sounds too crazy.”
“It’s not crazy,” said Bell. “It is speculative. And it would be purely wild speculation if we were not tracking possible Comintern agents hell-bent on sowing terror.”
“So what if Harry, looking for Trucks, got the drop on them in the stable? What if they turned the tables and killed him?”
Isaac Bell nodded. “That could be why Trucks is running for it, if he knew that Harry was a Van Dorn. Van Dorns don’t come alone. He’s grabbing what he can of the booze before we catch up with him.”
“You want to bust in the door?”
“Very much so,” said Bell. “But I’d rather see where he goes. If anyone knows who Marat Zolner is, it’s the gangster who came back home on Zolner’s steamer ticket.”
“Door’s opening!”
“Can you trust this thing to keep up?”
“It’s running O.K.”
A heavyset man pulled the doors inward. The streetlight fell on his face. His skin gleamed with perspiration. He had removed his hat, revealing a distinct widow’s peak.
“That’s Trucks,” said Tobin. “No question. See what I said? Not a mark on him.”
Trucks O’Neal stepped back into the warehouse and a moment later drove out in a Dodge delivery van, riding low under the weight of a heavy load.
Bell said, “He didn’t close the door this time. He’s finished. He’s not coming back.”
Tobin jumped behind the steering wheel and stepped on the electric starter.
“Stick close,” said Bell. “I’d rather he spots us than we lose him.”
They followed the Dodge downtown for eight blocks, into the Syrian quarter, and across Rector Street to West Street and down a block. Trucks O’Neal rounded the corner, half a block ahead of Isaac Bell and Ed Tobin. They followed, turning into a dark street that was suddenly ablaze with muzzle flashes.
• • •
A STACCATO ROAR echoed off the buildings like a thunderstorm of chain lightning. A line of bullets stitched holes in a row of parked cars. Tobin slammed on the brakes.
Isaac Bell threw open the passenger door, collared Tobin with his free hand, and dragged him out with him. As they rolled across the cobbles the butcher van resonated like a tin drum, its sides and windshield punctured repeatedly.
“Thompson .45 submachine gun.” Bell rolled to a crouched position behind a bullet-riddled Model T and whipped his Browning from his coat.
“What are they shooting at us for?” Tobin shouted over the roar, which continued at the same deadly pitch.
“They’re not.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“They’re shooting at the guys shooting back.”
A scattering of pistol fire confirmed that the Van Dorns had driven into the middle of someone else’s gunfight. Tobin drew a short-barreled belly gun, which would be of even less use against the Thompson than Bell’s automatic.
Another storm of bullets raked the street. This time no one shot back. When it stopped, Bell raised his head to look for O’Neal. He saw the Dodge with its tires flattened and its driver’s door open, but no sign of the gangster. A Locomobile burst from a warehouse, careened past the Dodge, and raced around the corner on squealing tires.
And suddenly it was quiet.
Bell knew he had the briefest of moments to find whether Trucks O’Neal had survived before the cops came and took charge. Trailed closely by Tobin, who watched their backs, the tall detective approached the Dodge. It had been riddled, like the Van Dorn van and most of the vehicles in sight. It reeked of spilled alcohol from hundreds of broken bottles. There was no one inside.
Bell heard a groan. They followed the sound into the warehouse from where the automobile had just raced. Cases of whisky were stacked around the walls.
“Glen Urquhart Genuine,” said Tobin. “Same stuff Trucks had at Murray Street. Looks like he got hijacked.”
“But where is Trucks?”
Deeper into the warehouse they found a flashy-looking man in a gaudy suit who had been creased in the shoulder by a bullet. He was struggling to sit up and reach for a pistol that had fallen beside him.
Bell kicked the gun away and knelt by him.
“Who shot you?”
“Who shot me? What are you, a cop?”
“Van Dorn.”
“Same thing.”
“Who shot you?” Isaac Bell repeated coldly.
“No one.”
“What happened here?”
“Beats me.”
“Where’s Trucks O’Neal?”
The gangster surprised Bell. He laughed. “Trucks? Trucks went for a ride.”
“Where?”
“I don’t talk to cops.”
“You’ll wish we were cops,” Tobin growled over Bell’s shoulder. To Bell he said, “This guy I recognize is Johnny Quinn, who sells hooch for Lonergan. Isn’t that right, Johnny?”
Quinn nodded. “I need a doctor.”
“You’ll need an undertaker if you don’t give us O’Neal,” said Tobin, and then he spoke to Bell as if the gangster was not sprawled on concrete between them. “The way I read it, Trucks is selling the stuff to this guy. Hijacker with the Thompson tries to take the stuff. Mr. Quinn and his friends hold them off. Quinn’s shot, friends run for it. Hijackers get some but not all of O’Neal’s product.”
“No,” said Bell. “I see no truck to take it in. And they shot up the Dodge. They didn’t hijack the booze. If they hijacked anything, they hijacked O’Neal.”
Bell turned his attention back to the gangster. “Where did they take him?”
“Nowhere.”
An electric police siren howled nearby. Bell’s hand flickered toward his boot. He held his throwing knife in front of the gangster’s face, then threw a headlock around his neck and slipped the knifepoint inside his ear. “I asked, where did they take him?”
“You’re not a cop?”
“We already established that. Which way?”
The gangster wet his lips. “Listen, this is between Trucks and them.”
“You know who grabbed him, don’t you?”
“Yeah, and I ain’t tell
ing you because whatever you do to me they’ll do worse.”
“You want to bet?” asked Bell.
The gangster twisted his head to look imploringly at Ed Tobin. “Listen, buddy. You know who I’m talking about? The guys taking over the docks. Pushing out Lonergan and the rest.”
“Black Hand,” said Tobin.
“The Black Hand set Trucks up. They was waiting for him.”
Isaac Bell and Ed Tobin exchanged a glance. That the Italians, who were shoving the Irish out of the lucrative control of longshore labor, were gunning for Trucks O’Neal was a wrinkle unconnected to the Comintern and Marat Zolner.
Or was it unconnected? Bell wondered. What if Zolner was teaming up with partners? What if he had teamed up New York’s new top dogs? If he had formed a working alliance, then it was very possible that those new partners were doing Zolner a service eliminating a witness who knew enough to threaten their joint schemes.
“Where did the Black Hand take Trucks?” Bell asked.
Tobin leaned closer to whisper. “You better tell us. I have no control over what this guy does to you.”
Bell emphasized Tobin’s warning by sliding his blade deeper into the gangster’s ear. The point grazed his eardrum. Quinn went limp. Bell said, “You already told us they took Trucks for a ‘ride.’ Where?”
“I don’t know for sure. They usually take guys to Brooklyn.”
“Brooklyn’s a big place.”
“Fulton Street.”
“Fulton Street’s a big street.”
“Come on, mister, you’re going to get me in all kinds of trouble.”
“You’re in all kinds of trouble.”
Ed Tobin interceded again, in a manner now less kindly than fatalistic. “Think of this guy as your priest. God’s the only one he’ll tell your confession to and God probably doesn’t care. Where on Fulton?”
“Down by the ferry. Under the bridge.”
• • •
IT WAS LESS THAN A MILE across Lower Manhattan to the Brooklyn Bridge, even skirting the barricades in the Wall Street area where the police were still investigating the explosion. On the bridge, with the sky turning pink and the wind whistling through the bullet holes in the butcher van’s windshield, Ed Tobin asked, “Comintern and Black Hand? Funny combination.”
“Five’ll get you ten the Black Hand doesn’t know that Zolner is Comintern. Just a top-notch bootlegger smart enough to make friends. We can ask Trucks, but you have to step on the gas before they kill him. Go! On the jump!”
They careened through the snakes’ nest of exit ramps on squealing tires and down, down, down to the derelict ferry-landing neighborhood where Fulton Street petered out under the bridge in a slum of flophouses, blind pigs, and greasy spoons. Vagrants slept in doorways. Bell saw no cops anywhere.
The sun had yet to light the Gothic towers of the bridge, but it was reddening the top girders of the skyscrapers under construction across the river on Wall Street. The ferry to Manhattan, which few rode since the bridge had effectively put it out of business long ago, no longer ran at night. Along the waterfront, the shacks and docks and piers appeared abandoned, with peeling paint and splintery decks.
“There’s their Locomobile.”
They pulled up behind the auto they had seen race from the warehouse on Murray Street. It was parked beside a truck in the shadows at the foot of a pier under a broken streetlamp.
“Out on the pier,” said Bell, breaking into a run.
Far away, at the end of the long wooden structure that thrust into the river, a gang of six or seven surrounded a man they were half carrying, half dragging toward the water. Bell pulled his gun, stopped running, and took aim. Careful not to hit Trucks, he fired twice, close, over their heads. A hat flew. A gangster ducked and threw himself flat. The rest held tight, reached the end, and threw Trucks O’Neal into the river.
• • •
ISAAC BELL ran full tilt. The gangsters peeled away and scattered, running back toward their auto, watching Bell carefully and making room for him to run past them. The river was at slack tide, the serene surface disturbed by a single round dimple. Trucks had plunged into the water like an anvil and sank straight to the bottom.
Bell tore off his coat, kicked out of his boots, and dived after him.
Piercing the center of the dimple that marked O’Neal’s entry, he drove straight down, stroking and kicking and reaching into the dark. Descending fifteen or twenty feet, he hit bottom, felt mud, banged into something hard—the foot of a piling. He felt around frantically and something soft closed around his outstretched hand and held on tight.
Bell could hardly believe it. It was a near miracle. But in diving straight down, he landed on the bottom next to O’Neal, who was clinging to his hand with all his might. Bell planted his feet in the mud and kicked off to pull him to the surface.
Bell could not lift him.
He tugged harder on the man’s hand as if to shout Push off! Help me lift you! Where was his natural buoyancy? Even a man who couldn’t swim would float partway to the surface, but Bell could not budge him from the mud.
He was running out of air.
He pulled himself down by the gangster’s hand, braced again in the soft mud, and tried to push off. But again he could not lift the man. Now he was out of air. He could hear his heart pounding. There was a roaring in his head. He had no choice but to swim to the surface, fill his lungs, and dive down to help him again. O’Neal’s hand tightened around his with the superhuman strength of desperation.
Isaac Bell pried his fingers loose, one by one.
He heard a sudden hollow rush. Bubbles of air rubbed past his face. O’Neal was drowning. His grip slackened. Bell yanked free and kicked with his last strength toward the light overhead. He held his breath until he could wait no longer and when he opened his mouth and inhaled, he was amazed to discover he had made it to the air.
“Get a rope!” he yelled. “Ed get a rope!”
The resourceful Tobin was already sprinting back from the ferry landing. He threw a long rope. Bell filled his lungs and dragged it under. Unhindered by the slack water, he dived directly to the drowning gangster, looped the rope under his arms and tied it around his chest and shot to the surface.
“Pull!”
Twelve feet above him on the pier, Tobin had been joined by a couple of vagrants, who shouted for others to help, and they heaved on the rope like men who worked on boats and slowly lifted Trucks O’Neal out of the water. His head broke surface. He was, Bell feared, dead, but he shouted for them to hoist him up to the pier. They did, then dropped the rope for Bell. He climbed out and discovered that the gangsters who had thrown Trucks in the river had tied concrete cinder blocks to his ankles.
Ed was laboring over Trucks’s prone body, pressing on his back and raising his arms, attempting artificial respiration, expelling water and making his lungs draw fresh air. But it was hopeless. O’Neal was dead.
Cops arrived.
“Well, that’s a new one. Cement overshoes.”
“Who was he?”
“He was,” said Isaac Bell, “the Van Dorn Detective Agency’s best lead.”
• • •
“CAN I GET A GUN from the weapons’ vault, Mr. Forrer?”
“Apprentice Van Dorns don’t carry guns.”
“I learned how to shoot in the Coast Guard.”
“Nix. I am sending you to Newark to interview a jobber of farrier supplies. It is highly unlikely that a man who makes his living selling horse nails and anvils will engage you in a shoot-out.”
Somers looked so disappointed that Forrer elaborated.
“Mr. Van Dorn believes that a young man with a gun is less observant than he should be, imagining that he can shoot his way out of difficulty. But a young man dependent upon his wits to survive learns to be more observant . . . A necessary detective skill, wouldn’t you agree, young man?”
Somers took the train to Newark.
In the Ironbound District, near the f
reight station, he found the warehouse that belonged to the New Jersey horseshoe jobber that he and Mr. Forrer had settled on as the likely purveyor of the horseshoe Mr. Bell had retrieved on Wall Street.
The jobber told him that the rubber scrap stuck to the horseshoe could have been either a Revere Rubber Company Air Cushion Pad or a Dryden Hoof Pad.
“How about Neverslip Manufacturing from New Brunswick?” asked Somers.
“Coulda been.”
“Do you have any idea which farrier might have bought it from you?”
“No. It could have been anyone.”
“What if that same farrier also bought this Neverslip shoe?”
The jobber turned the worn shoe over in his hands. “Coulda.”
Somers showed him the mark stamped in the wedge. “How would this get marked like this?”
“The farrier has his initials on a punch. Smacks it with a hammer to make his mark. He signs it. Like a trademark.”
“Do you recognize the initials RD?”
“Sonny, why are you asking all these questions?”
Asa Somers straightened his skinny shoulders and stood tall. “I am an apprentice Van Dorn private detective. We are investigating the bombing on Wall Street.”
“I thought the government does that. And the cops.”
“Could he be one of your customers?”
“Could be.”
“Do you remember the farrier’s name?”
The jobber shrugged, as if deciding that Somers was an earnest lad who posed no threat to his customer. “His name is Ross. Ross Danis.”
“Where can I find him?”
“I don’t know where he sleeps these days. He used to be farrier and blacksmith on Mrs. Dodge’s estate ’til they let him go.”
“For what?” asked Somers, whose own firing by the Coast Guard still stung despite his wonderful new job with the Van Dorns.
“They say Mr. Dodge,” snickered the jobber, “was getting green-eyed, if you’re old enough to know what I mean.”
“Do you mean that Mr. Dodge was jealous of Mr. Danis’s attentions to Mrs. Dodge?”
“The lady was smiling like she hadn’t in years.”
The Bootlegger Page 16