The Bootlegger

by Clive Cussler

  Scores of polished autos were lined up to follow the hearse and flower cars to the cemetery. Bronze stars attached to bumpers identified autos that belonged to city department functionaries, and Scudder Smith said from the side of his mouth as Isaac Bell passed by, “Gives the official touch to the ceremonial procession. Look at all those five-thousand-dollar motors. You’d think they were burying the king of England.”

  • • •

  BELL MOVED RESTLESSLY among the crowd, disguised as a workman in plumber’s overalls and a flat cap that covered the bandage on his throbbing head. Fitful bouts of double vision flipped the sidewalk into a funhouse ride.

  Tobin was here, too, as was Dashwood, trying to identify the hoodlums and beer runners and whisky haulers attending the lavish funeral. The newspapers were calling it the Purple Gang’s biggest-ever “send-off.”

  The flower cars behind the hearse carried wreathes with the dead man’s name in gold letters.

  OUR PAL MAX

  OUR BROTHER MAX

  LOVE TO MAXIE FROM UNCLE HANK AND AUNT HELENE

  TO MAX STERN FROM THE BOYS

  Bell was deeply disappointed and thoroughly disgusted by this latest setback. Inside the coffin was a heap of bone and ash discovered by Windsor brewery workers while cleaning a firebox. The bones had been identified by their owner’s prized blackjack. The nickel-stainless grip engraved with his initials MS had survived the flames.

  With the gangster Bell had hoped would lead him to Zolner now dead, Bell could do little but draw on his photographic memory to compare wanted posters and police mug shots to Max Stern’s gangster friends and family lining up their luxurious automobiles. In one of those splendid autos could be the new boss of Detroit’s Purple Gang—the gangster with whom Marat Zolner would join forces.

  Cops on motorcycles and horseback cleared a lane in the middle of Dexter Avenue, and the biggest wreath by far came up the avenue towed on a trailer hung with black crepe. Thousands of red roses depicted a full-size replica of a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. A golden banner ran its length.

  MAXIE’S RIDE TO HEAVEN

  FROM SAM

  “What’s the word on Sam?” Bell asked Scudder, who had been buying liquor lunches, dinners, and breakfasts for Detroit’s newspapermen to get the latest on the gangs.

  “The boys in the pressroom were taking bets whether Sam Rosenthal would show his face, figuring he’s safe with Max dead.”

  “The new boss?”

  “They say he’s smarter than Einstein. And the other contender hasn’t been heard from lately.”

  “Admiral Abe?”

  “Abe Weintraub. With Abe out of the picture, Sam could be Marat’s new pal.”

  Bell focused on a real Rolls-Royce behind the trailer, a slab-sided sky blue Silver Ghost town car agleam with glass and nickel. A window rolled down, and he saw a sun-starved, hatchet-faced figure observing the crowds with a cold smile. Rosenthal looked young, strong, and triumphant.

  “Judging by Mr. Rosenthal’s floral contribution,” said Bell, “you might be right. You and Ed and Dash stay here. I’ll follow that Rolls.”

  The funeral cortege began pulling slowly from the church. Bell followed on the sidewalk, battling through the crowd to pace Sam Rosenthal’s Rolls-Royce. Suddenly, his senses jumped to even higher alert.

  A Pierce-Arrow Limousine Landau slipped out of a side street, and the police blocked the cars behind it so it could join the file three cars ahead of Rosenthal’s. What had drawn Bell’s eye was a glimpse of the passenger, a mourning woman in a black cloche hat with a veil. Max’s wife? No, a wife would not be alone in the car but surrounded by family. His mistress, was more likely. He could not quite see her face behind the veil, but something about the cock of her head was familiar.

  Fern Hawley? But how could a rich society girl be riding in a gangster parade? Yet, he could swear it was her. He had observed the heiress closely when he and Marion had bumped into her and Prince André at Club Deluxe. If it was Fern, he saw no sign of Prince André. Unless he was driving. Not likely. Bell tried to see the driver behind the front window, but reflections in the glass revealed only the silhouette of a chauffeur’s cap.

  He was struck by an even more peculiar thought. Prince André, as he remembered Fern’s friend, looked similar to speedboat builder Bill Lynch’s description of the man who bought Black Bird. As with most big ideas, as soon as it coursed through his mind he wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him earlier. The answer was context. It was probably nothing, but there was a simple way to find out. Bell made a mental note to have Research show Lynch a photograph of Prince André from the society pages. He returned his attention to pushing through the spectators packing the sidewalks to keep up with the Rolls-Royce.

  He heard music—strings—piercing the blare of motorcycle and auto engines, and loud voices ohhhing and ahhhing over the limousines and flowers. On a street corner far ahead, he saw a band of violinists in black coats and slouch hats. They were serenading the cortege with a slow and halting arrangement of “O Sole Mio.”

  A Neapolitan love song seemed an odd choice of music to bury an American gangster of Jewish and Irish heritage. Maybe, thought Bell, it was the only tune they knew. They sounded painfully shrill, even at a distance. Maybe it was his headache, but in fact two were wielding their bows like carpenter saws and had their eyes fixed desperately as drowning men on the tall, wraith-thin violinist in the middle, who seemed to be carrying the lead.

  Bell felt his every sense drawn to him. The musician’s face was shrouded by the broad, low-swept brim of his hat, his instrument, and his bowing arm. But Bell had seen his silhouette before, the same supple reptilian grace he had seen on Roosevelt Hospital’s roof, and again—it hit him with electric force—on the dance floor of Club Deluxe.

  The Pierce-Arrow wheeled out of the cortege as suddenly as it had slipped in and disappeared around the corner where the band was playing. No chance for another look at whether it was Fern Hawley in back. But at this moment, what Bell wanted much more was an up close look at the tall violinist.

  He peered over a rippling sea of ladies’ cloches and men’s cloth caps and fedoras. There were hundreds of people between them. The crowd jammed the sidewalk, from the buildings to the police line at the curb, weirdly multiplied by a spasm of double vision. He squinted his eyes to clear the carnival.

  The hearse and the limousines gathered speed.

  Sam Rosenthal’s Silver Ghost passed Bell. It was almost a full block ahead when it reached the musicians. Rosenthal extended his pale white hand to toss them a tip. Gold coins flew through the air, glittering in the sun. The people murmured, acknowledging his gesture: The new king was generous. The music stopped abruptly.

  Isaac Bell saw the musicians duck to the sidewalk to pick up the coins. They popped up in unison. All five were cradling Thompson .45 submachine guns, bracing them against their ribs by their double handgrips.

  The tall, thin violinist triggered his first.

  His henchmen followed his lead with an earsplitting roar.

  Shards of glass flew as hundreds of slugs riddled Sam Rosenthal’s Rolls-Royce. The sight of flame-spitting guns stampeded the people nearest to the car. They turned and ran, the bigger trampling the smaller. Those farther off who heard the shattering blast of gunfire threw themselves to the sidewalk.

  Isaac Bell leaped over prone forms and shoved past people too stunned to duck. He ran toward the gunmen, who continued to rake the Rolls-Royce even after the lifeless bodies of Sam Rosenthal and his bodyguards and driver had spilled onto the avenue. Before he could get halfway there, the car caught fire. The shooting stopped. The gunmen stuffed their Thompsons into instrument cases and ran down the side street.

  Bell reached the pile of violins and violas in time to see the Pierce-Arrow limousine that he thought was Fern Hawley’s speed away from the carnage. A cop ran after it, waving his pistol. A burst of .45 slugs cut him down.

  27

  COLD-EYED MEN who traveled
light arrived from Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh, and jumped to the Michigan Central platforms before their trains stopped rolling. They hurried on their way, across town to a former Wells Fargo Express office that Isaac Bell had rented on Woodbridge Street.

  The building was in the freight district between the Michigan Central and New York Central depots, a block from the Detroit River. Thick walls, small windows, and steel doors made for a fortified headquarters. The out-of-town detectives—valuable men who knew their business whom Bell had summoned from the Midwest field offices—were greeted by the sobering sight of workmen wiring mesh over the barred glass to keep out hand grenades. What even the sharpest-eyed did not see were the snipers James Dashwood had installed atop a water tower that overlooked the approaches.

  • • •

  HAVING HOUSED an express company, the new Detroit headquarters, which the detectives nicknamed Fort Van Dorn, was wired for a variety of telephone and telegraph lines. Within hours of taking possession, Bell had local and long-distance telephone connections, private telephone and telegraph lines to the rest of the field offices, a Morkrum telegraph printer, and an overseas cable link.

  “I underestimated Marat Zolner,” he reported to Joseph Van Dorn at Bellevue Hospital by long distance. “And I overestimated the effect of what I thought was a body blow we gave them in New York. The Comintern did not flee from New York. Zolner expanded to Detroit.”

  “Interesting hunch,” said Van Dorn.

  “It’s more than a hunch.”

  “But you could just as easily conclude that Zolner machine-gunned the boss of the Purple Gang out of desperation.” Van Dorn’s voice was stronger, and Dorothy told Bell when she answered the telephone that he was sitting up in a chair. “You drove him from New York and he’s desperate to start over in Detroit.”

  “No,” said Bell. “Zolner is fighting from strength, not weakness. We bloodied his nose in New York, but we did not break up his alliances. The profits from his New York bootlegger partners are funding the expansion.”

  “If bootlegging made him that rich, why didn’t he buy his way into Detroit? Why’d he pounce with all four feet?”

  “No one can buy Detroit. It’s too volatile. He has to beat the gangs to control the bootlegging.”

  “That has a greater ring of fact than your expanding from New York theory for which you have no evidence.”

  Yes, thought Bell. The Boss is sounding a little more like himself. He was marshaling his arguments when the Morkrum printer clattered. James Dashwood ripped a message off the paper roll and handed him the curly sheet.

  “Hold the wire, Joe.”

  The New York office had forwarded a long overseas cable from Germany. Bell decoded the familiar Van Dorn cipher in his head.

  Pauline Grandzau had discovered that Comintern agents had chartered the twelve-thousand-ton tanker Sandra T. Congdon and loaded it with two-hundred-proof pure grain alcohol. The tanker had sailed from Bremerhaven bound for Nassau, The Bahamas.

  Bell whistled in amazement.

  “What?” Van Dorn growled into his phone.

  “Proof,” said Bell. “A shipload of two hundred proof.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Proof that Marat Zolner is not only still operating in New York but expanding. The Comintern is gearing up to supply Rum Row on a whole new scale.”

  He read Pauline’s cable aloud to Van Dorn.

  They discussed its ramifications. Possession of grain alcohol was a not to be missed opportunity to dilute genuine liquor. Such a big ship could carry well over a hundred thousand barrels—five hundred railroad tank cars—easily stretched to fifty million bottles.

  “Enough liquor,” said Van Dorn, “to plaster the adult population of the East Coast through the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.”

  “And pour a hundred million dollars into the Comintern’s treasury.”

  “That is fifty times the federal budget for enforcement of Prohibition,” said Van Dorn. “Good for Pauline. Will you send her to Nassau as she asked?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Even long-distance, I can hear a gleam in your eye, Isaac. Just don’t forget that Zolner has proved himself a mastermind. And he’s got the entire Comintern on his side.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” said Bell. “I have a hunch he’s a one-man show.”

  “They’re making a great success of getting away with every crime in the book,” Van Dorn countered drily.

  “But nothing that he’s built so far can last without him. When we stop Zolner, we stop the Comintern.”

  “Nothing’s stopped him yet.”

  “The way to stop him is to use against him the one thing I admire about him,” said Bell.

  “Admire?” Van Dorn’s explosion of indignation spiraled into a coughing fit.

  Bell listened to the wracking cough, praying for it to ease, but it knocked Joe breathless. Bell waited, gripping the phone. The doctors had warned there’d be setbacks, and he’d just set one off.

  A woman spoke into the phone. “Mr. Van Dorn will telephone you back when he is able.”

  “Marion?”

  “Isaac!”

  “Is he O.K.?”

  “I don’t know. I just walked in. Here’s a nurse . . . And a doctor . . . They’ve got him . . .” She lowered her voice. “Oh, the poor man. It breaks your heart. He’s better one moment, then falls back. They’ve got him now, Isaac. Don’t worry. How are you?”

  “Tip-top,” Bell lied, gingerly rubbing his itching stitches. He pictured her lighting up Joe’s room in a smart suit and hat. “And how are you?”

  “They gave me another movie. I’m having fun filming all day and missing you at dinner.”

  “How about after dinner?”

  “Worse. The New York papers said there was a shooting in Detroit.”

  “It’s the national pastime out here. Bigger than baseball.”

  “This one sounded like a war.”

  “I will tell you all about it when I see you.”

  “Can’t wait. Here’s Joe . . . He claims he’s ‘tip-top.’ Where do you suppose he learned that expression? Good-bye, darling. So lovely to hear your voice.”

  Van Dorn did not sound much recovered. He took a few shallow breaths and wheezed, “How could you possibly admire a murdering, thieving, treacherous, bomb-throwing, godless Bolshevik who slaughters innocents?”

  “He leads from the front. In the thick of the fight. He is no coward.”

  “Neither is Satan.”

  “It’s his Achilles’ heel. I’ll find him where the lead is flying. And that’s where I’ll finish him.”

  Van Dorn fell silent.

  Had the long-distance connection broken? Or something worse? “Are you O.K., Joe?”

  “I was just wondering if a villain weren’t a villain, would he be a hero’s best friend?”

  Isaac Bell was in no mood for philosophy. “I would not be one bit surprised that Marat Zolner manned the Lewis gun that shot you. And I have absolutely no doubt he was there when Harry Warren was killed and personally loaded his body—dead or dying—into that wagon.”

  “All right,” Van Dorn whispered. “I know what you’re saying. What’s your next move?”

  “Drive Zolner out of Detroit.”

  “How?”

  “Find out who Zolner installed in place of Rosenthal. Question his girlfriend, Fern Hawley. Send Pauline to Nassau to throw a monkey wrench in whatever he’s up to with that tanker. And find that whisky tunnel, because if the Comintern doesn’t own it already, it will soon. When they do, they will be so rich it could be impossible to stop them.”

  • • •

  PAULINE’S CABLE HAD ENDED:

  REQUEST ASSIGNMENT NASSAU.

  LIQUOR IMPORT-EXPORT GUISE,

  WHISKY AGENT FOR GLASGOW DISTILLERY.

  EAR TO GROUND.

  During the war, Bell recalled, she had smuggled a downed Scottish flier out
of Germany. The pilot’s grandfather had founded a distillery. Bell cabled back.

  GO NASSAU SOONEST.

  The reply he received was not from Germany but from France, where Archie Abbott remained in temporary command of the Van Dorn field office.

  YOUR CABLE FORWARDED PARIS.

  I’M COVERING FOR BERLIN.

  PAULINE SAILED YESTERDAY,

  SS AQUITANIA,

  CONNECTING NASSAU.

  Isaac Bell laughed. So much for “request.”

  “Fräulein Moxie” was off to the races—Cunard express liner Aquitania from Le Havre to New York; Havana Special, overnight train to Miami, Florida; and the new flying-boat service to Nassau. Pauline would be across the Atlantic and in The Bahamas in seven or eight days. While a war-weary, ten-knot tanker was still on the high seas, she would have time before it landed to establish a business front in Nassau with a Market Street import-export office under a shingle that read:

  PAULINE GRANDZAU

  LICENSED TO SELL

  WHOLESALE SPIRITS & LIQUORS

  • • •

  THE WOLVERINE, the express train that connected with the 20th Century in Buffalo, brought photographs of Fern Hawley that Van Dorn Research had clipped from the New York society pages. That the one shot of the heiress gallivanting included Prince André doubled Bell’s suspicion that the Russian and Marat Zolner were the same man. His picture was out of focus, blurred by motion. It looked to Bell as if, caught by surprise climbing out of a limousine, he was trying to turn his face from the camera.

  Bell wired Grady Forrer.

  PRINCE ANDRE CAMERA SHY.

  SHOW PICTURE TO LYNCH & HARDING MARINE.

  Bell armed his detectives with Fern’s photographs and sent them to query desk clerks and managers at Detroit’s top hotels. In none of the fancier places where he would expect her to stay was the Connecticut heiress recognized. Nor was Prince André. They polled second-rate hotels, and garages that rented limousines, with no results.

  The society reporters wrote, repeatedly, that she had served as a volunteer war nurse in France. Bell cabled Archie Abbott to inquire about her and Prince André.