The Bootlegger

  “Poor Mr. Pete. Horrible way to die. Put him back under!”

  They brought him up sooner than before, but he was gagging out of control. It seemed to take forever to get actual air in his lungs. When he could speak, Abe Weintraub said, “We’re the Purple Gang. We own the river. We own the city. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Doing? I am terrorizing you. What do you think I’m doing?”

  “Why?”

  “To beat you into submission. Do you want to die slowly? Or would you prefer to be beaten into submission?”

  “No one beats Abe Weintraub.”

  “There’s a first time for everything, Mr. Weintraub. You’re looking at yours. You will turn on the phonograph and tell me who’s your boss.”

  “What’s the difference? You’ll kill me either way.”

  “There is a third way. Work for me. Trespasses are forgiven if you’re my man. Would you like that?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Put him back under.”

  24

  AN ELECTRIC SIGN of multicolored bulbs as dazzling as any in Asbury Park glared atop a fresh-painted, veranda-draped hotel on an all-weather highway ten miles outside Detroit:

  TEXAS WALT’S HIGH SOCIETY ROADHOUSE

  The parking lot was full of Pierce-Arrows, Packards, Cadillacs, Rolls-Royces, Marmons, and Minervas, and it looked like a safe bet there were movie stars inside. If they were, then a new kind of lighted sign imported from Paris—neon gas set aglow inside clear tubes shaped like a martini glass—left no doubt they were drinking cocktails. Music gushed from the open windows, a sweet tune from a Broadway hit. It was played by Detroit’s favorite twelve-piece society band, Leroy Smith’s, and the cream of the Motor City’s fast and rich spilled onto the verandas, dancing and singing along with “Kansas Nightingale” Amber Edwards:

  “TILL IT WILTED SHE WORE IT,

  SHE’LL ALWAYS ADORE IT

  HER SWEET LITTLE ALICE BLUE GOWN.”

  A lime green V-8 Cadillac Sport Phaeton pulled up under the porte cochere.

  Texas Walt Hatfield himself strode down the front steps to greet it. The tall western star was wearing his signature J. B. Stetson hat, a turquoise silk shirt, string tie, brocade vest, and ostrich-skin boots. Twin Colts were holstered low on his hips. Strapping doormen flanked him.

  “Good job, Walt,” said Isaac Bell, stepping down from the Phaeton in his bootlegger outfit. “The joint is jumpin’.”

  “Just like you ordered. Music, gambling, pretty gals, and the best booze south of Canada. Now, will you tell me why I’m operating an illegal alcohol establishment?”

  “What do you mean illegal? The cops are directing traffic.”

  “And the town council’s in the bar, toasting the mayor. Dammit to hell, Isaac, why is the Van Dorn Detective Agency running a roadhouse?”

  “Information,” said Bell. “Moneymaking roadhouses attract gangsters offering ‘protection’ for a cut of the profits. We’ll put the question to every shakedown thug who tries to horn in on us.”

  “What question?”

  “The same question Marat Zolner is asking: Who is Detroit’s top dog? He’s looking for a bootleg partner, like the Black Hand in New York.”

  “Detroit’s different. Top dogs get shot, dynamited, and throat-slit on a regular basis. Every time the cops reckon who’s running things, the sidewinder gets ambushed. It’s bootleg war.”

  “I’m betting the Comintern has the muscle and the money to swing the war their way. The boss who Zolner backs will win the war. When we learn who Zolner chooses, we will do the ambushing.”

  “Looking forward to that,” said Texas Walt. “Meantime, we’re making money hand over fist. More than enough to cover the bribes— Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, Judge,” he greeted two plump men in new suits. “Your fair ladies asked me to tell you they’re getting a head start in the bar.”

  “Wouldn’t it be funny,” said Bell, “if the Comintern were up to the same scheme we were?”

  “Ah’d put nothing past Bolsheviks,” said Walt. “But how do you mean?”

  “Bootlegging to pay for the revolution.”

  Walt Hatfield laughed. “Personally, Ah’d say the heck with the revolution, Ah’m getting rich off Prohibition.”

  “Of course, you’re not a Bolshevik.”

  “Not when last Ah looked. Hold on! There’s trouble. Be right back, Isaac, gotta bust a head.”

  “Need help?”

  “There’s only three of them.”

  The tall Texan bounded up the steps and inside where a bootlegger in a flash suit was pummeling a waiter held by a pair of husky bodyguards. Walt’s anvil fists flew. Within moments Walt Hatfield was walking the bootlegger, who now had a bloody nose, and a limping bodyguard to the parking lot. Ed Tobin, dressed as a floor manager in a tuxedo, followed him with an unconscious thug over his shoulder.

  Bell headed inside, asking himself how odd was the idea of bootlegging whisky to fund the revolution. Invading armies fed off the land, foraging as they marched. Grady Forrer had chronicled Communist holdup gangs robbing czarist banks: “Stick ’em up in the name of the revolution!” Sinn Féin had paid to smuggle Thompson .45 submachine guns by robbing banks. Bell’s own father, a Union intelligence officer in the Civil War, had hunted down Confederate raiders robbing express cars. Why wouldn’t a Russian Comintern espionage agent plotting to overthrow the United States mask his Bolshevik assassins and saboteurs as a bootlegging crime syndicate?

  The bar was seventy feet long and lined three deep.

  Bell ordered a napkin and a glass of ice.

  Scudder Smith sidled up with a Brooklyn Eagle press card in his hatband and dark tea in a highball glass. Most in the bar were too drunk to notice they knew each other, but, just in case, it paid to keep things private and appear to have just met.

  “Brooklyn Eagle?” asked Bell. “You’re out of your territory.”

  “The paper sent me to write a feature story on Prohibition in Detroit.”

  “Have you found any?”

  “I haven’t seen evidence of Prohibition, but I’ve heard rumors about a hooch tunnel under the river. Have you heard about the tunnel?”

  “This is the first I’ve heard.”

  “Sounds loony, except they all say the Polish gang dug it, which makes sense. The Poles emigrated from Silesia, where they mine coal. So they’re good at digging.”

  Bell lowered his voice. “Scudder, find me that black boat. Pretend you’re writing about speedboats. Detroit’s famous for hydroplanes. There’s a guy named Gar Wood who builds the fastest.”

  Walt joined them. “Ain’t had so much fun since Ah rode with Pancho Villa. That’s the fourth ruckus tonight and it ain’t hardly dark. Same thing last night.”

  The bartender passed him a dampened handkerchief to wipe the blood from his knuckles.

  Scudder asked, “Since when did you ride with Pancho Villa?”

  “Back when Isaac was in short pants at Yale. Where you going, Isaac?”

  “Have a chat with your sparring partners.”

  He found the three in the parking lot, slumped against a Marmon, under the watchful eye of a Van Dorn. The unconscious bodyguard was still out cold. Bell hauled the bootlegger to his feet, walked him out of earshot, and handed him the glass of ice and the napkin. The bootlegger wiped the blood off his face and pressed ice to his nose.

  “Thanks, buddy.”

  “Would you answer some questions for me?”

  “Are you a cop?”

  The TEXAS WALT’S sign lit the parking lot bright as day. Isaac Bell gestured at his expensive suit, his handmade boots, and his rabbit-felt Borsalino. Then he shot a cuff, revealing diamond links and his gold Tank watch.

  “Do I look like a cop?”

  “You buddies with that damned cowboy who punched my nose?”

  “I just got into town. Trying to get the lay of the land. But I’m hearing strange rumors.”

  “Like what?”


  “Rumor has it,” said Isaac Bell, “there’s a casino out in the middle of Lake Erie on a big ship.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Ever hear that?”

  The bootlegger shrugged. “I heard they got a speakeasy in a dirigible.”

  “Like the Germans bombed London with?” asked Bell. He had heard it, too. It was one of the crazier Prohibition tales floating around the Motor City. No one was clear how the giant airship remained invisible in daylight or how the customers got from the ground to the hovering casino.

  “How do they get up to it?”

  “They must have figured out how to land an airplane on it.”

  Bell said, “I think I’ll stick to roadhouses. What’s your name, by the way? I’m Joe.”

  The bootlegger gave him a long look and decided to play it safe. “I’m Joe, too. Pleased to meet you, Joe.”

  They shook hands. Bell said, “I also heard about hijackers with a black boat.”

  “There’s a lot of black boats on the river.”

  “This one’s got a Lewis gun.”

  Joe nodded sagely. “You can’t go wrong with Lewis guns.”

  “Ever hear about a tunnel under the river?”

  “Sure. They got a train tunnel.”

  “For hauling whisky?”

  “Yeah, you grease a brakeman and slip some on a freight car.”

  “But you never heard about a tunnel just for booze?”

  Joe looked Isaac Bell in the eye. “A tunnel would be a surefire way to haul hooch. If I had heard it, it would be my tunnel and I sure as hell wouldn’t tell anybody about it.”

  • • •

  ISAAC BELL went back to the bar. Another fight broke out. It looked to Bell to be a staged battle intended to intimidate the paying customers and impress upon the owners the wisdom of paying for protection.

  “Tarnation!” said Texas Walt. “Here we go again.”

  Hatfield waded in. Ed Tobin joined him, trading his silver cocktail tray for a blackjack, and laid two men on the floor. The thug directing the theatrics pulled a gun.

  Bell and Scudder moved swiftly to help. They needn’t have bothered. Light glinted on Hatfield’s scalping knife, and the gun fell from a hand flayed to the bone. Van Dorn waiters wrapped it in napkins and marched the gunman through the kitchen door. A woman stepped up for Walt’s autograph and the movie star obliged.

  “Pay dirt!” he grinned when he got back to the bar. “We have finally attracted a higher grade of extortionist. He threatened to sell me protection ‘insurance.’ A step up from plain old ‘protection.’”

  Bell said, “I’ll see if you put him in a talking mood.”

  He found the gunman propped up on a keg outside the kitchen door, clutching his hand and guarded by an enormous Protective Services man. The napkins reeked of whisky that the Van Dorns had doused it with to prevent infection. He was white-faced with shock. But he retained the in-charge demeanor of a racket boss used to running the show.

  Bell drew up another keg. “Hurt much?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you pulled a gun on the wrong guy.”

  “No kidding. Where’d a movie star learn to use a knife like that? I thought they was all mamma’s boys. I never seen it coming.”

  “In Hollywood,” Bell said, maintaining a serious expression, “they teach the actors the fighting that goes with the kind of movies they’re in.”

  He passed his flask. The gunman pulled hard on it.

  “Who are you working for?”

  “You a cop?”

  Isaac Bell took back his flask. “Do I look like a cop?”

  “Then who are you?”

  “I’m Gus,” said Bell, using the other standard name for the speakeasy doorman. “What should I call you?”

  “I’m Gus, too,” said the gangster. “But it happens to be my real name. Who are you really?”

  “I’m a guy who won’t pay for a shakedown but will pay for information.”

  “Where’d you come from?”

  “Chicago,” said Bell, a city he knew intimately, having apprenticed there under Joseph Van Dorn.

  “Where in Chicago?”

  “Grew up on the West Side.”

  “You know the Spillane brothers?”

  “I put them out of business.”

  This was true, although sending them to Joliet Penitentiary was not the way Gus interpreted it, judging by a look of respect and a knowing assessment of Bell’s high-priced duds.

  “What are you doing in Detroit?”

  Bell skipped his black boat rumors gambit and went straight to the heart of his scheme. “I’m looking for introductions.”

  “To who?”

  “Potential partners.”

  The gangster perked up. “I thought Texas Walt owned the joint.”

  “I have an interest in it. We’re looking for guys who know their business. So far, you are not a shining example of knowing your business, but maybe you’re just having a slow night.”

  “Partners? That’s what I offered that son-of-a-bitch movie star.”

  “You offered him protection insurance.”

  “Any fool knows that means partners. You can’t run a business in Detroit without protection.”

  “He doesn’t seem to need protection.”

  “What kind of partners?”

  “Supply partners. Partners we can count on for steady liquor. Do your bosses happen to be in the hauling business?”

  “What makes you think I have a boss?”

  “Bosses don’t barge into a joint waving a gun.”

  “They do in Detroit.”

  Bell regarded him thoughtfully. “Is that a fact?”

  The gunman stood up. “Here’s another fact: You can go to hell.”

  Isaac Bell drew his Browning and aimed it at the gangster’s as yet unwounded hand. “You want another crippled paw? Sit down!”

  Flummoxed, the gangster gripped the blood-soaked napkins, sat back down on the keg, and cradled his hand in his lap. “What is going on?” he protested. “Where are all you guys coming from?”

  “What do you mean, what’s going on? What guys?”

  “Always in Detroit we fight each other. Now we got outsiders, torpedoes shoving into our operations. Hijackers.”

  “What hijackers? Boats on the river?”

  “You take your life in your hands on the river.”

  “Have you run into a big black boat? Machine gun? Armor plate?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever run up against the Jewish Navy?”

  “Once.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing I’d want to happen again.”

  Bell said, “It sounds like they put you out of business.”

  “I’m waiting for winter. Drive across the ice.”

  “It’s summer. How are you making a living in the meantime?”

  “Snatch racket.”

  “Who are you kidnapping?”

  “Guys that can’t go to the cops.”

  Isaac Bell indicated familiarity with the kidnapping business by raising a pertinent objection. “Guys who can’t go to the cops can be a handful.”

  “Sure can. You gotta be careful who you snatch. You wouldn’t want to kidnap a Jewish Navy guy. You want guys with dough from bookmaking, whisky hauling, and girls; you want payroll bandits, loan sharks, auto thieves—except if they’re Purples. Purples would chase you all the way to Mexico.”

  If Marat Zolner intended to make a criminal alliance in Detroit, as he had with the Black Hand in New York, the leader of the rising Purple Gang would be high on his list. The difficulty would be identifying him. As Walt had noted, Detroit bosses were killed right and left by the warring gangs, and even the cops were never sure who was on top.

  “Who’s the Purple’s boss?”

  “You have a lot of questions, mister.”

  “I have a lot of curiosity,” said Bell. “What’s his name?”

  “Forget
it.”

  “Would you like to go for a ride?”

  “Where?”

  Gus followed Bell’s gaze, past the kitchen and across the lot to a black Stutz sedan parked in the shadows, and his meaning sunk in. Leaning against it were Harry Warren’s toughest Gang Squad detectives. Grieving for the murdered Harry, they had no difficulty looking like gangsters who would kill without hesitation and enjoy it. Gus shook his head. “Look, mister . . .”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Saying it could get me killed.”

  “Not saying it will get you killed. What’s his name?”

  Gus looked around, ducked his head like a turtle, and whispered, “Stern.”

  “First name?”

  “Max.”

  “Where do I find Max Stern?”

  “I ain’t that high up, mister. You gotta believe me.”

  “Where do you guess he hangs out?”

  “The big guys don’t hang out. Too dangerous.”

  Bell believed him. At least he had a name of the boss Zolner might go to. He switched tactics. “I keep hearing stories about that black boat.”

  “Boats are old hat.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Driving whisky sixes across the ice will be old hat, too.”

  Bell said, “What are you talking about?”

  “When they get the tunnel.”

  “What tunnel?”

  The gangster backpedaled. He was either reconsidering the truth of the rumor or the wisdom of talking about it. He said, “If you ask me, it’s talk. Like the dirigible. Like the floating casino.”

  “What’s the talk?”

  “They’re almost done digging it. Just talk.”

  “Where?”

  Gus repeated almost word for word what “Joe” had told Bell in the parking lot. “If I knew where, I’d own it, which I don’t. If I did, I wouldn’t need the money for shaking down your roadhouse. Or if I knew and I didn’t own it, I’d be dead.”

  “Why dead?”

  “You can’t move a tunnel. Only two ways to hide it: pay off or kill off everybody who knows about it.”

  Bell said, “If that were true, wouldn’t you hear about workmen—masons, bricklayers, maybe even sandhogs—floating facedown in the river?”

  “The river’s full of bodies. Everyone thinks they’re hijacked whisky haulers. Could be some other reason. Could be guys digging tunnels.” The gangster hunched over his wounded hand and fell silent.