The Bootlegger

The next moment, Darbee heard the thunder of ganged Libertys. He looked over his shoulder and saw the blood-red glare of their fiery exhaust. Too late, he realized, the radio signal was a trap and the black boat everyone was talking about was trying to hijack him. A big searchlight burned through the fog, passed over his low gray hull, and swooped back like a hungry sea hawk.

  “Hunker down by the engine before they start shooting.”

  Robin obeyed instantly. “What are you going to do, Grandpa?”

  “I’m going to hope to heck he don’t spot us.”

  He eased his throttle forward and picked up speed, reasoning that they wouldn’t hear him over the roar of their own engines. But suddenly their engines grew quiet. They had either slowed down to listen or shifted their engine exhausts through heavy mufflers, as he had shifted his when he entered the inlet.

  The searchlight blazed back toward him. They were not making a secret of their presence, and Darbee suspected it wasn’t the fog that cleared out the cops but payoffs. Which meant he and the little girl were entirely on their own. He poured on as much speed as the Peerless would give while muffled. The searchlight swung close. He saw the glow touch Robin’s face. She looked frightened, but she was cool—one of the reasons he took her along on these jaunts.

  Now they saw him.

  He opened his cutouts for more speed. The Peerless roared.

  Behind them the Libertys got very loud, and the big boat sprinted after him.

  Robin asked again, “What are we going to do, Grandpa?”

  “We’re going to run him onto Hog Island.”

  “What’s Hog Island?”

  “Summer resort. Dancing pavilion, restaurants, bathhouses, carnival on the boardwalk.”

  She looked ahead into the empty dark, looked back at the Cyclops eye of the searchlight catching up, and looked worriedly at her grandfather. His long hair was streaming in the wind. He had one gnarly hand draped casually on the tiller. The expression on his face was weirdly serene, considering they were being chased by something scarier than cops, and she wondered, with a stab of heartbreak, Had the black boat frightened the old man out of his wits?

  “I don’t see any island, Grandpa.”

  “Neither does he.”

  “But where is it?”

  “Hurricane washed it away.”

  “What hurricane, Grandpa?”

  “I don’t remember—back thirty, forty years ago. Before your mother was born, if I recall.”

  “Where is Hog Island now?”

  “About three feet under us.”

  “Oh!” she burst out in relief. He was O.K. “A sandbar! But, Grandpa, we draw almost three feet.”

  “He draws five.”

  At that moment, behind them, they heard the big engines stop.

  “They found it!” said Darbee. He slowed down and engaged his mufflers. In the near silence, they listened to men shouting in fear and anger.

  “What language is that, Grandpa?”

  “Hell knows, but I can tell you what they’re yelling: We’re hard aground on a sandbar, the tide is going out, and if we don’t get off it right now we’ll be sitting ducks when the sun comes up.”

  Darbee leaned on his tiller. They doubled back and listened from a distance. The black boat’s engines thundered and died, thundered and died, as they repeatedly risked their propellers trying to back her off. An engine suddenly revved so fast, it screamed.

  “Busted a prop,” Darbee said cheerfully. “Or a shaft. Oops, there goes another one. He’s got one to go. Let’s hope he don’t bust that one, too.”

  “Why? Let him bust all three and we’ll get out of here.”

  A single engine churned cautiously, revved a little, and slowed.

  “Hear that?” Darbee exulted. “He got off. Good.”

  “Why good, Grandpa?”

  “You just watch.”

  • • •

  THE BLACK BOAT limped east at ten knots.

  Darbee followed. They passed Jones Inlet, but stayed in the inner passage, as he suspected they would. They did not dare go back out into the ocean with only one propeller, a propeller thumping from a bent shaft.

  “Grandpa, what are we doing?”

  “Gonna find out where he lives.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? What do you mean why? I want that boat.”

  “How are we going to steal a boat from all those gangsters?”

  “Haven’t figured that out yet.”

  They followed for hours as it picked its way carefully through the twisty channel and finally out into South Oyster Bay and across it to Great South Bay. A dim gray dawn began to lighten the east. Soon the old man and his granddaughter could see the faintest hint of the black boat silhouetted against it.

  “Where are we, Grandpa?” Robin whispered.

  “Off Great River, I believe.”

  “Have you figured out how we’re going to steal it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Maybe Mr. Bell could help us.”

  “That goody two-shoes don’t steal boats.”

  “But if we did him a favor . . .”

  Out of the mouths of babes, old Darbee thought. What a smart little girl she was. A chip off the old block.

  “. . . maybe Mr. Bell would do one back.”

  • • •

  “THE METAL IS FLYING,” bellowed Ross Danis.

  The big farrier had a handsome head of hair, an amiable grin, and bright eyes. Sweat glistened on his broad chest and streamed from his massive arms. Asa Somers found it hard to believe that a man could have so many muscles. He bulged like the Jack Dempsey advertisements for Nuxated Iron.

  It was Babies Day at the Monmouth County Fair.

  Following the baby show would be a horse show and then horse racing, which meant Danis was busy at his portable forge. Asa Somers offered to crank his bellows to keep his fire white-hot. This kept both hands free to go at it, in the farrier’s own words, “hammer and tongs,” fitting shoes, driving and clinching nails into hoofs, finishing with his rasp. It had the side advantage of keeping him talkative.

  When Danis finally stopped for a swig of water, and a furtive slug from a flask, Somers showed him the worn Neverslip shoe. “Could you have put this shoe on a horse?”

  “Hope not. Looks like the animal threw it, which would make me look bad.”

  “He didn’t throw it.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Wall Street.”

  “Never worked on Wall Street.”

  “I didn’t mean you did it on Wall Street.”

  “Not only did I never work on Wall Street, I find it hard to imagine a horse I shoed ever being on Wall Street. That’s across the river in New York City. Is it a swell’s carriage horse?”

  “Is this your mark on this wedge?”

  Danis leaned over it to look, dripping sweat on Somers’s arm. “I’ll be darned. Where’d you find this?”

  “The horse was pulling a coal wagon.”

  “Coal wagon? I don’t understand. No teamster’s going to drive his coal wagon all the way to New Jersey to shoe his horse.”

  “What if the horse was sold to a New York coal wagon teamster after you shoed him?”

  “Well, I’ll be,” said Danis, his red face lighting in recognition.

  “What do you mean?”

  “His name was Redman.”

  “Who?”

  “Big, strong quarry horse. Seventeen hands. Strong as a mule. Good-natured, too. Just the sweetest temper.”

  “Who owns him?”

  “Fellow came in all in a rush. He had just bought him, didn’t realize he had a loose shoe. Didn’t know a thing about horses. I wondered how he’d ever hitch up the wagon. I figured I’d lend a hand, but Redman was such a sweet-natured animal they worked it out.”

  “Did you get his name?”

  “Redman.”

  “The man.”

  “No. He was a foreigner. Had a real thick accent, and he was in a heck of a
rush. Gave me two bucks and ran off.”

  “Was that here?”

  “No, no, no. Not at the fair. Up in Jersey City . . . Wall Street? Yeah, that makes sense.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Last I saw, they were heading toward the ferry.”

  Asa Somers reported to Grady Forrer and, a while later, he overheard Mr. Bell on the telephone. “We traced the horseshoe to a New Jersey farrier. I’m sorry, Dick, but it looks like a dead end.”

  • • •

  ISAAC BELL said good-bye to Inspector Condon and hung up the telephone, wondering what next. He was painfully aware that he needed a lucky break or two. But, so far, they weren’t flocking his way.

  He noticed Somers skulking about. “Why the long face, Asa?”

  “The horseshoe didn’t help?”

  “What? No, don’t worry about it. We have to try everything to find what works.”

  “I wish mine had.”

  “I could say the same about Trucks O’Neal and the Black Bird motors. It’s the nature of the game. You just keep plugging away.”

  “Can I have a gun?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I heard a rumor from some of the boys that when you were an apprentice you bought your own derringer.”

  “Like most rumors, that’s not entirely true.”

  Somers looked at Bell inquiringly.

  “Go on, son. If you’re going to be a detective, you have to ask questions. Ask.”

  “What wasn’t true?”

  “I didn’t buy my derringer. I took a derringer away from somebody. And kept it.”

  Darren McKinney ran into the bull pen. “Mr. Bell!”

  “McKinney.”

  “My Washington fellow came through.”

  • • •

  SHIPMENTS TO the New York region from the War Department director of sales included a dozen surplus Liberty engines, and crates of spare parts, to the Long Island Railroad freight depot in Bayport, sixty miles from the city. Isaac Bell drew a circle on the map, representing the likely distance a truck would drive from a railroad depot, and dispatched detectives to all the South Shore towns within it.

  “Blue Point, Sayville, Patchogue, Great River, Bay Shore, Islip, West Islip.”

  “Needle in a haystack,” said McKinney.

  But Isaac Bell was optimistic. “We were looking in a hundred-mile haystack. Now we’re down to ten.”

  The Van Dorn operator rang. “Long-distance telephone from Texas Walt Hatfield.”

  “Detroit?”

  “Yes, but not on the private line.”

  It was a fairly decent connection. Bell could hear hints of Walt’s drawl. “Ah busted some heads, cleaning up the office. We’re down to two good men.”

  “Are you sure about them?”

  “Plumb sure. Exceptin’ we had a mite of trouble. They’re both in the hospital, owing to a bushwhacker lobbing a hand grenade into the premises.”

  Bell asked how badly they were hurt.

  “They’ll recover, but they’re not tip-top at the moment.”

  “Who threw the grenade?”

  “I’d say the Purple Gang.”

  “The Purple Gang are street kids.”

  “The little tykes are growing by leaps and bounds. Partly on account of their vicious habits. Partly due to the Eye-talians killing each other off leaving the Purples to play the big time. Most of the Detroit big boys are sleeping in the river. There’s been a complete change of gang bosses.”

  “Close the office.”

  “The hand grenade sort of did that already. I’ve got a real estate fellow looking for a new space.”

  “Close it. Permanently.”

  “Now, hold on, Isaac,” Texas Walt drawled. “These hydrophobic skunks will get the wrong idea if we slink out of town with our tails between our legs.”

  “We’ll come back—undercover.”

  “I already told you it won’t do having folks stopping me for my autograph while I’m masquerading as a criminal.”

  Isaac Bell said, “And I told you I’m going to hide you in plain sight—”

  Bell looked up at a sudden commotion. Ed Tobin burst into the office, grinning like a bulldog that had sunk its teeth into a steak.

  “—Hold the wire, Walt.” Bell put down the phone. “What?”

  “Uncle Donny found the black boat.”

  “Where?”

  “Great River.”

  Bell stood up. “Great River?”

  “It’s way out on Long Island.”

  “I know where it is,” said Bell. “Eight miles from the Bayport freight house, where the War Department shipped a dozen surplus Libertys. Where are they keeping it?”

  “Stashed it in a boathouse on a private estate.”

  Bell grabbed the phone. “Walt, I’ll call you back when I can. Meantime, tell your real estate agent to rent a big place out of town for a roadhouse.”

  “Roadhouse?”

  “You heard me. Rent a roadhouse!”

  Bell banged down the phone.

  “How did he find it?”

  “It tried to hijack him. Uncle Donny followed it, hoping to steal it.”

  “What changed his mind?”

  “Too many of them. And he had little Robin with him. So now he’s hoping when we catch it, we’ll give it to him.”

  “Fair enough. But that’s a lot of boat for one old man. Aren’t his nephews in the jailhouse?”

  “Jimmy and Marvyn got set loose for good behavior—actually, a paperwork error in their favor. Wes, and Charlie, and Dave and Eddie, and Blaze are up for parole, eventually.”

  “Wait a minute. How did that oyster scow manage to keep up with a fifty-knot express cruiser?”

  “She ran aground. Busted props and driveshafts.”

  Isaac Bell headed for the door. “We’ll get there before they fix her. Where’s Dashwood? James, round up the boys! And get ahold of some Prohibition agents you can trust.”

  “Trust? How much?”

  “More than the rest. But don’t tell them where we’re going.”

  • • •

  OUTSIDE THE ST. REGIS HOTEL, grim-visaged detectives piled clanking golf bags from the Van Dorn weapons vault into town cars. The lead motor was an elegant Pierce-Arrow packed with folding ladders and grappling hooks to scale walls and axes and sledgehammers to breach them.

  Bell gave the order to move out. Then he took Ed Tobin, Uncle Donny, and two detectives who were strong swimmers to the 31st Street Air Service Terminal. The mechanics at the Loening factory next door had his flying boat warmed up and ready to take off. Coiled in the passenger cabin were several hundred yards of light manila line and wire rope.

  22

  GREAT RIVER opened into the bay between a golf course under construction on one side and marshland on the other. The channel moved inland on a northerly route through flat shores that were speckled intermittently by the lights of mansions. A mile or so in, the river narrowed to a width of five hundred feet. Tall trees grew close to the shore. A small tributary entered from the west. Its dredged channel led from the main river to an enormous boathouse that showed no lights when night fell.

  Isaac Bell had seen this water route from the air in the last of the daylight. After Uncle Donny pinpointed the boathouse, he got a good look at a huge mansion behind it, the road in, which was blocked by a substantial gatehouse, and a spur that connected a mile inland to the Long Island Railroad.

  As soon as it was dark, he set detectives to work in strict silence. The swimmers crossed the tributary with a manila rope. Climbing out on the other side, they used it as a messenger line to pull the heavier wire rope after them and clamped the wire around thick trees. In the event the black boat had been repaired already and tried to make a run for it, the channel was blocked.

  Bell ordered a pair of the heaviest town cars to be parked nose to nose across the road a short distance from the gatehouse. He had invited Prohibition officers on the raid—partly to process arrest
s, mostly to stay on friendly terms with government agencies that might contract with Van Dorn. They stayed in the blockade cars under James Dashwood’s watchful eye. The Dry agents were impatient, fiddling with their guns and whispering bad jokes. Bell had not told them yet who they were raiding, nor would he until he had every bootlegger on the property in handcuffs.

  “Ready when you are, Mr. Bell,” said Ed Tobin.

  “Now,” said Bell. Before a night owl neighbor telephoned the police about the roadblock.

  The stone gatehouse was dark, with no sign of sentries. But nothing short of dynamite would budge its massive iron-studded door, so they left the battering ram in the Pierce-Arrow and scaled the walls with knotted line and grappling hooks. The first men up—Bell in the lead, followed by Tobin—carried folds of heavy canvas slung over their shoulders. The wall was topped with strands of barbed wire, reminding veterans of the trenches, minus artillery and machine guns. The masonry under the wire was impregnated with broken glass. They clipped the wire, covered the glass with the canvas, and left the ropes and canvas in place for the next men.

  Eight detectives cleared the wall. Bell sent two to open the gatehouse door from inside for Dashwood and the Dry agents. The rest followed him to the boathouse on a route he had sketched from the air. They skirted the tennis courts and removed a stone pillar from under a birdbath in the formal gardens. Stumbling in the dark on the railroad siding, they followed the rails to the boathouse.

  Bell signaled with whispers and shoulder taps to hold up at the door, which he could see dimly by the thin light of the stars. There were a few lit windows in the mansion, which loomed in the distance, but no lights shone in the boathouse. It seemed a miracle, but, so far, no one had heard them.

  That was about to change.

  “Break it down.”

  The birdbath pillar made an excellent battering ram, and the door flew inward with the third thunderous blow. They spilled through, Bell in the lead. It was darker inside than out and eerily quiet, but for the lapping of water.

  “Where is everybody?”

  “Find the lights.”

  Flashlight beams poked the dark until they found a big electrical box. They threw its knife switches and lights shone down from the rafters on two slips. One held a fair-size booze taxi with twin engines. The other was empty.

  The black boat had vanished.