The Bootlegger

by Clive Cussler

  Bell tugged a lever conveniently located in the cockpit. A hatch popped open on the foredeck, and a Lewis gun swiveled up within easy reach. The hijackers raced back to their swamp.

  Bell turned around and sped back past Government Cut and along the white sand of Miami Beach. He cut figure eights for the swimmers. Then he thundered back into Biscayne Bay and, having drawn the attention of half of Florida to Marion, he raced back to the dock.

  A crowd of boatmen, tourists, and hotel guests had gathered. Bell landed in an explosive flurry of reversed engines, propeller wash, and flaming straight pipes.

  “Wonder what you all are going to use that boat for?” drawled an onlooker with a snicker that everyone knew meant rum.

  Isaac Bell said, “I’m going to get rich winning boat races.”

  “That’s a good story for the Dries.”

  “Want to bet? I’m calling out candidates.”

  “Heck, who’d race you? That’s more airplane than boat.”

  Bell said, “I heard about a big black boat whose owner thinks he’s hotter than jazz. We’ll see if he’s got the nerve to put his money where his mouth is.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Lying low,” Bell grinned, “since he heard I’m here. Fact is, I’ll pay a thousand dollars to anybody who tells me where to find him.”

  “A thousand dollars?”

  “Call it a finder’s fee. Call it a reward. I intend to call him out.”

  “Show us the money.”

  Isaac Bell pulled a roll from the pocket of his white duck trousers and flashed a thousand-dollar bill, common currency among top-notch Florida bootleggers. “Tell your friends,” he said. “Share the wealth.”

  He tipped his visored skipper’s cap to the ladies and sauntered up the boardwalk to make a public show of lunch on the veranda while the word got around about the thousand. Before he got ten feet, he was waylaid by a beautiful blonde who was wearing a big hat and dark glasses and a white linen sheath dress that the sea breeze shaped to her trim figure.

  • • •

  MARAT ZOLNER focused binoculars on the McAllister Hotel quay.

  A long gray rum boat was tied alongside, sleek and muscular as a captured shark. Ten stories above Biscayne Bay, in a top-floor suite, he had watched her slice through Government Cut at sixty miles per hour, streak across the bay, and land just below. He had not been surprised to see Van Dorn Chief Investigator Isaac Bell vault out of her cockpit.

  From razor bow to sturdy transom, the gray boat’s powerful lines were first cousin to Black Bird’s, realized by the same Lynch & Harding who had built his boat. And by now he knew that Isaac Bell was relentless.

  The Comintern agent had no time for regrets. But for a moment he indulged in speculating what would have happened if he hadn’t shot Joseph Van Dorn. If not for that chance event—a twist of fate that the machine gunner he had shot on the Coast Guard cutter had not been an ordinary sailor—no one could have discovered his Comintern scheme until it was too late to stop him. Thanks to that twist of fate, Isaac Bell had thrown hurdles in his path, repeatedly, and showed no signs of going away.

  The tall detective tipped the boat boys who tied his lines—lavishly, Zolner guessed by their bows and scrapes—then engaged the people hanging around the dock in banter. Suddenly, a girl took his arm. She was slim and blond but not his wife.

  Zolner recalled that Marion Morgan Bell was taller. This girl was petite. He could not see much of her face under her hat and behind sunglasses, but she carried herself like a woman accustomed to being admired.

  “What has caught your attention?” asked the woman who had summoned Zolner to the suite.

  She was a Comintern courier, a forthright Italian Bolshevik who was sleeping with a man in Lenin’s inner circle and so trusted by Moscow that she could indulge in expensive hotels and speak her mind freely.

  “Only a pretty girl.”

  “I doubt that,” said the courier. “There is fury in your face. You look angry enough to kill.”

  It seemed to Zolner that Bell and the girl were acquainted. Colleagues, he guessed by the familiar manner in which they faced each other. Maybe lovers, although he thought not. She was a colleague. Another Van Dorn detective.

  “You misread my expression,” he told the courier. “I am happy enough to kill.”

  “First things first, comrade. Your report.”

  Couriers did not demand reports. Moscow had moved more quickly to replace Yuri Antipov than Zolner had predicted. The Italian woman with long black maiden’s hair and executioner’s eyes was his new overseer.

  “One moment,” he said, snatching up her telephone without her permission. He gave the hotel operator the number of a speakeasy in a hotel on East Flagler and issued cryptic orders to the gangster who answered. Then he put down the telephone and asked Moscow’s woman, “Are you ready for my report?”

  • • •

  ISAAC BELL was very surprised to see Pauline in Miami. She must have landed in the flying boat he had run beside.

  “You made quite a spectacle of yourself,” she greeted him.

  He said, “I don’t expect Marat Zolner to accept a challenge to race Black Bird. But a thousand-dollar finder’s fee ought to turn up someone who’s seen where he keeps her.”

  “I hope you’ll take me for a ride.”

  “We should not be seen together, Pauline. Zolner’s comrades could be watching.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have cabled my report. It was foolish of me . . .” Her almost negligible German accent was suddenly evident. “But I just vanted to come. Last minute. An impulse . . .”

  Bell had never seen her flustered before, even as a young girl. Nor had he ever seen her so beautiful. He realized, belatedly, that she had dressed with unusual care, even for her, applying lipstick with an artist’s hand. And she had changed her hair from the boyish bob he’d seen in New York to stylish marcel waves.

  “How’d you make out with Fern?”

  “Fern Hawley is deeply unhappy,” said Pauline. “It seems that Zolner has somehow disappointed her.”

  “That’s what Marion said. A man had disappointed her.”

  “Well, good for Marion.”

  “Any clue as to how?”

  “No. Whenever I approach that question, she closes the iron door.”

  “What are our chances of turning her against him?”

  “Mine are nil. You would have a better chance.”

  “How do you reckon that?”

  “She likes men. She likes good-looking men. And she likes men who stand out from the crowd. In fact, she thinks such men are her due.”

  “I gather you don’t like her.”

  Pauline recovered her smooth demeanor. “I didn’t say that. And I don’t mean to give that impression. She is a woman who has never had to do anything in her life. If circumstances ever forced her to, she might shine. She certainly wants to.”

  “Go back to Nassau,” said Bell. “I’ll get out there as soon as I can.”

  “She’s on her yacht. She could leave any minute.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Having wrecked, or at least slowed, Zolner’s Detroit operation, Isaac Bell knew that the clock was running. It was vital not to give the Comintern agent time to set up in Florida as he had in New York.

  “All right,” Pauline said, briskly. “I’m off.”

  “How are things working out with young Somers?”

  “He’s a bright boy. I was comfortable leaving him in charge of the office.”

  “Glad to hear it,” said Bell. “I thought you’d like him.”

  • • •

  MARAT ZOLNER knew that Moscow would never accept the death of their new overseer so soon after Yuri’s. He could not kill her yet. He had no choice but to pretend to accept her authority. He said, “I can report that things are going swimmingly. Matters are in hand.”

  “It does not look that way, to my eye. Nor to Moscow’s.”

&n
bsp; “I will tell you what I told Yuri Antipov before he died. My scheme is the best strategy—the only strategy—to infiltrate the United States and subvert the government.”

  “Moscow has come to understand that. Moscow agrees that America is a unique situation that requires a unique strategy.”

  “Do they?” Zolner was amazed. “It sounds to me that certain comrades have been replaced.”

  “That is not important. What is important is your failure to execute your strategy in Detroit.”

  “A minor setback.”

  “Minor? The loss of a liquor stockpile worth millions of dollars?”

  His Canadian comrades had betrayed him.

  “A regrettable loss,” Zolner admitted, “but replaceable.”

  “And the drowning of your staunchest ally?”

  There were no secrets.

  He said, “There are plenty more where Weintraub came from. Detroit has no shortage of ambitious gangsters. He, too, is replaceable.”

  Her next question came like a silken thrust of Yuri’s dagger. “And will you replace your stockbroker in New York?”

  Zolner concealed his shock. He had underestimated the Comintern’s reach. It appeared that while he and Yuri had bombed Wall Street, some obscure branch of the Comintern had managed to infiltrate the stock exchange. Through an underpaid, envious clerk, was his first thought. But it could be higher up, inside a bank or brokerage house, through some privileged romantic “serving the cause” like Fern Hawley. Not Newtown Storms; there was not a romantic bone in the broker’s body. But someone with access to inside knowledge, in the finest Wall Street tradition.

  He pretended he was bewildered.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You have incurred enormous losses in the American stock market.”

  “I salute you, comrade. I have no idea how you discovered it but your information is golden, if not a little out-of-date. The situation is temporary. Gains follow losses in the market. It is the nature of capitalism to—”

  She cut him off.

  “The loss of millions in liquor. The death of your staunchest ally in Detroit. Your stock market holdings all but wiped out. Please, comrade. Do you take us for fools? Nothing you’ve attempted has worked. How long before you’re beating on our door, begging for funding?”

  Now it was relief, deep relief, that Zolner concealed. They did not know the truth behind the stock market losses. He said, “I don’t need a kopeck. I won’t ask for a kopeck.”

  “I find that hard to believe. How will you save this situation?”

  “Clear the decks and start over.”

  “‘Decks’? What are these ‘decks’?”

  “It’s an expression, comrade. It means that I will continue building our network as soon as I have cleared an obstacle out of my way.”

  “Euphemisms are wasted on me, comrade. Who are you going to kill?”

  “The one man making the obstacles.”

  “Isaac Bell?”

  Zolner laid on fulsome praise. “Your intelligence is golden, comrade.”

  She was an idiot. Who else but Isaac Bell?

  She said, “You have twenty-four hours.”

  Zolner shook his head. “Absolutely not. I will not risk our mission by accepting an artificial deadline.”

  “It’s not your deadline, comrade. It is the deadline Moscow has imposed on me.”

  “For what?”

  “To escort you home.”

  “Home?”

  “You’ve been recalled.”

  33

  WHEN MARAT ZOLNER drew himself up to his full height, the Italian courier thought to herself that the rumors about the ballet must be true. It was evident in the elegance of his stature that when he was a child somewhere in some benighted province of czarist Russia, Marat Zolner had indeed trained to be a dancer. Haughty as the aristocrats they both disdained and despised, he looked down his handsome nose at her and said, “Comrade, I know that the Comintern demands obedience.”

  “It is well you remember.”

  “Absolute and instant obedience makes us strong. Whether we obey out of faith in the revolution or out of loyalty to Russia—knowing that when we carry the fight abroad we keep the international bourgeoisie from invading while the Soviet is still recovering from the civil war—or out of fear.”

  She said, “You may keep your motives to yourself.”

  His shoulders sagged very slightly, and she fancied that she saw the spirit drain out of him. He turned to the window and stared out at the bay and the blue ocean beyond. He opened the window, lifting the sash with the grace that ornamented his every move, and she had the strangest feeling that he would rather step into the sky and fall ten stories to the beach than return to Moscow.

  She said, “Surely you are not considering suicide.”

  Marat Zolner turned back to her, thinking, Suicide? Why would I commit suicide? I have wealth, I have power, and I have enormous plans. These setbacks are temporary. The future is mine.

  He said, “I am not coming with you.”

  She raised her voice: “Gregor!”

  • • •

  A HEAVYSET RUSSIAN almost as tall as Zolner pushed through the door from the adjoining suite. He held a Nagant revolver as if he knew how to use it. He pointed at Zolner’s shoulder and said in Russian, “Put your gun on the table, comrade.”

  Zolner slowly opened his coat, pulled his automatic out of its holster by the butt, and laid it on the table. He feigned dismay, but surrendering the gun did not trouble him. He carried it mostly for show, preferring to fight in close.

  The courier said, “He carries his blackjack in his left-hand hip pocket.”

  “Put it on the table.”

  He had no choice but to produce his blackjack and lay it beside the gun.

  “Come closer,” said Gregor.

  Marat Zolner knew the drill. He had cowed many a prisoner. Gregor would grab his arm in a powerful grip and smash his nose with the Nagant’s barrel. He stepped slowly closer, staring at the pistol as if mesmerized, right foot forward, left foot forward. Gregor drew the Nagant back slightly, winding up to strike. Right foot forward, left foot kicking toward the ceiling—a symphony of weight, momentum, balance—kicking higher, smashing Gregor’s jaw.

  He caught the gun as it dropped, pressed it to the staggered man’s chest, and jerked the stiff trigger. The Nagant’s sealed cylinder made it much quieter than an ordinary revolver, and Gregor’s bulk further muffled the report.

  The courier was as fearless as he. “Now what are you going to do?” she asked contemptuously.

  “If I return home,” he answered, “I will return a hero.”

  “Hero? You’ll spend the rest of your short life running from us and the American police.”

  “They will blame his murder on you.”

  “Who will believe that?”

  “You shot your secret lover and committed suicide,” he said.

  She tried to run.

  Zolner bounded after her and caught her easily and threw her out the window he had opened.

  • • •

  ISAAC BELL heard a woman shriek.

  She was in the crowd on the dock gawking at his boat, and she was pointing a rigid arm up at the hotel. Bell saw a figure in the air beside the building, a woman streaming long black hair as she plummeted past the windows. Others were screaming before she landed on a third-floor balcony with a thud Bell could hear at the end of the dock. She bounced off a railing onto the veranda roof, tumbled the final two floors in a flurry of arms and legs, and flopped on the sand.

  The wooden dock shook as thirty people ran to see the body.

  Bell watched from the boat. A top-floor window was open, ten stories off the ground, seven above the balcony where the body first struck. No human being could have survived that fall.

  “She came out backwards,” said a male voice from the water.

  Bell looked down at a skiff with a big motor that had just tied up behind h
is transom. A middle-aged Floridian, browned and puckered by the powerful sun, was squinting up at him.

  “You saw?”

  “Yup. I just happened to be looking up at that moment and out she came. Backwards.”

  “You should tell the police,” said Bell.

  “Well, the police and I are not on speaking terms.”

  “If you have evidence of foul play, you should report it.”

  “There’s no law against falling backwards. Anyway, I don’t have time to talk to the cops. It’s you I come talking to.”

  “About what?”

  “My thousand dollars that I hear you’re paying to find that big black boat.”

  34

  THREE DAYS IN FLORIDA had convinced Isaac Bell that Miami was a boomtown of braggarts, boosters, and liars.

  At least the fellow holding his hand up for the reward money was not among the majority of citizens who were new arrivals selling tales about imaginary pasts. His weathered face, canvas hat, ragged shirt, and his over-powered little skiff signified a lifelong fisherman and crabber who had a new career running Bimini whisky up the Florida rivers and bayous that he knew as well as the Darbees and Tobins knew New York Harbor.

  “Did you see it?” asked Bell.

  “Yup.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “It’s black.”

  “What else?”

  “It’s big.”

  “So far, you haven’t said a thing I didn’t tell that crowd of folks on the dock.”

  “It’s faster than greased lightning.”

  “That’s a safe guess, since I told everyone I want to race it in this one.”

  “It’s got a big old searchlight on front. Almost as big as yours.”

  “Searchlights tend to go on this kind of boat. Does it have another one in back like mine?”

  “Nope,” he said, and Bell got interested.

  “What else?”

  “Got a lot of motors.”

  “How many?”

  “Couldn’t quite tell. I knew it was three, but there could be another one. Like a spare, maybe. There’s something back there that could be a motor.”