The Bootlegger

  “They must have dredged it deeper since the survey. There’s no channel mentioned.”

  “It hugs the shore,” said Bell. “The dredge would have struck the crown of the tunnel probably, so just beyond the current Wyandotte Channel is where they must have stopped.”

  He improvised calipers with two fingers and compared the distance to the chart’s scale.

  Grady said, “The other reason I telephoned . . .”

  “What?” Bell was distracted. It wasn’t so much the headache—they were tapering off, and the plague of double vision had pretty much ended. He was puzzling some way to drop his improvised depth charge exactly one hundred feet offshore. “What did you say, Grady?”

  “The Research Department is assembling a complete Prohibition file—an up-to-date encyclopedia of bootleggers, gangsters, rumrunners, et cetera, with curriculum vitae, photographs, fingerprints.”

  “Good job. That’ll show the Justice Department what we can do.”

  “I thought I’d pop down to The Bahamas. Get the latest on the Nassau import-export racket. What do you think?”

  “I think you’d get in Pauline’s way.”

  “Oh, that’s right, she’s down there,” Grady said innocently. “Is she all right on her own?”

  “Pauline is quite all right on her own . . . Actually, you raise a good point. She could use a trustworthy runner. Tell you what, send young Somers to Nassau. I’ll cable Pauline.”

  APPRENTICE ASA SOMERS COMING YOUR WAY.

  GO-GETTER SAVED JVD BACON.

  Then Bell called for the Protective Services op, whom he had sent earlier to the library.

  “Go buy a rope.”

  “How long?”

  “One hundred four feet.”

  “One hundred four?”

  “The four’s for a loop. Watch carefully how they measure.”

  • • •

  JACK PAYNE, a Van Dorn detective on loan from the Cleveland field office, had been a combat engineer in the trenches during the war. Working in an empty backwater slip Bell located near the Detroit Yacht Club, Payne rigged the dynamite with waterproof fuses and detonators and screwed twenty pounds of old horseshoes to each of the forty-pound cases so they would sink fast.

  After dark, they tied the cases into one heavy packet perched on the stern of one of the Gar Wood speedboats.

  “Just to review your scheme, Mr. Bell,” said Detective Payne, “keep in mind that that shock wave will go up as well as down. The moment you drop these crates, jam your throttles and get away from there as fast as you can.”

  • • •

  “THE BUREAU CHIEF found the tunnel,” reported Ellis and Clayton, arriving winded at Fort Van Dorn.

  “Sorry, Mr. Bell. They’re dickering the cost of protection right now.”

  Isaac Bell’s response was a fathomless smile.

  “Tell me all about it.”

  “They somehow connected with the mayor of the city of La Salle and—”

  Bell cut him off. “I don’t care how. What can you tell me about the tunnel that you didn’t know before?”

  “It’s got more booze in it than we thought. A lot more.”

  “Guards?”

  “Armies. Tons of them at the ferry terminal, tons in Ecorse. Every building around that boathouse is theirs. Including the second one we raided.”

  “How many guards are in the tunnel?”

  “They don’t let anyone in the tunnel.”

  Isaac Bell said, “Good. I was a little concerned about not-so-innocent innocent bystanders.” He raised his voice so the others could hear. “O.K., gents, we’re doing it now.”

  • • •

  ISAAC BELL let Ed Tobin drive the dynamite boat. In the dark, a son of Staten Island coal pirates would make a shrewder helmsman than a scion of Boston bankers. The black water seemed to swallow distance. Channel lights, shore lights, and boat lights could be confusing. And gauging position required a smuggler’s eye. Bell stood by their improvised depth charge with the hundred-four-foot rope coiled in his hands.

  Shadowed by the guard boat, they raced down the Detroit River. As Ecorse came into view, Tobin lined up the boathouse, shore, and ferry terminal lights. He cut his throttles abruptly and swerved toward the row of boathouses that thrust out from the bank. Guards heard them coming and hurried out on their docks.

  Twenty feet from the red boathouse dock, Tobin engaged his propellers in reverse, spun his helm, and raced his engines. The Gar Wood stopped abruptly, pivoted ninety degrees, and thundered backwards toward the dock pilings.

  Isaac Bell jumped up on the stern and braced a boot on the dynamite. Ed switched his propellers forward again and rammed his throttles. The boat stopped six inches from a piling. Bell looped the rope around it and knotted the fastest bowline he had ever tied.

  “Go!”

  Ed Tobin eased forward, slowly paying out the rope. Bell let it slide loosely through his hands and watched for the bitter end. He heard men on the docks shouting for lights.

  “Stop!” he called to Tobin.

  They were precisely one hundred feet from the dock, over the joint between the two tunnels. Suddenly, searchlights glared down from boathouse roofs. Isaac Bell cut the ropes holding the dynamite. They started shooting.

  Bell flicked a flame from an Austrian cigarette lighter made of a rifle cartridge that Pauline Grandzau had given him. Thompson submachine guns sprayed their once seen, never forgotten red flashes. Bullets whipped past, fanning his face and splintering the wooden crates. A bullet blew out the flame.

  Bell heard the guard boat’s engines and the measured crack of a rifle as Dashwood coolly returned the submachine-gun fire. Bell flicked the lighter again and again, got it going, and touched the blue apex of the flame to the waterproof fuse. The fuse caught with a dazzling burst of sparks. He planted both feet and heaved his shoulder against the crates.

  One hundred sixty pounds of dynamite slid off the back of the boat and sank like a stone.

  “Go!” he shouted to Ed Tobin.

  Ed Tobin rammed his throttles full ahead. The Gar Wood leaped forward. It had traveled barely fifty feet when the dynamite exploded with a muffled, violent thud. A geyser of water shot in the air beside the boat. A shock wave blasted after it, a tremendous eruption that splintered the hull and hurled the Van Dorn detectives into the river.

  • • •

  INSIDE THE TUNNEL, a half-mile rail line had been converted to an immensely long warehouse. Two endless rows of twelve-bottle crates of whisky were stacked from the rails to the curving crown of the tunnel’s ceiling. Between the stacks, which stretched from Fighting Island almost to Ecorse, was a narrow corridor. It was twenty feet high but only three feet wide, barely wide enough for one man at time.

  River water rammed into this corridor like a rectangular piston. The water filled the space between the crates on either side, the ceiling above, and the wooden railroad ties below. Marat Zolner and Abe Weintraub ran for their lives.

  Weintraub was in the lead.

  Zolner was catching up fast, his long legs propelling him twice the length of the shorter man’s steps. The lights—bare bulbs hanging overhead and powered by the dynamo on Fighting Island—flickered, and the animal fear that made him flee exploded into human terror. As horrific as the fate thundering after him was, it would be a million times worse in the dark.

  A noise louder than the water chased them, the high-pitched clangor of breaking glass. The river was splintering crates and smashing bottles by the tens of thousands. The water stank of whisky.

  Ahead, high in the flickering lights, Zolner saw the walls of crates begin to move. The river had overtaken and flanked them. Squeezed between the tunnel walls and the stacks, the water toppled the highest crates. They fell from both sides into the narrow corridor, strewn like boulders by a mountain landslide, and blocked the corridor. Weintraub scampered up the shifting pile of wood and glass like an ape, racing desperately for the top of the heap, where a sliver of light sho
ne in the last three-foot-wide, two-foot-high opening.

  Zolner scrambled after him. The river caught up. Water slammed into his back and hurled him toward the ceiling. Weintraub reached the opening and started to squirm through. Zolner was suddenly in water up to his neck. Weintraub’s thick torso was blocking the space. Zolner grabbed his foot. He braced his own feet on the tumbled stack, pulled with all his might, yanked the gangster out of the opening, and dived through it himself.

  Weintraub tried to follow. He got stuck and let out a terrified roar: “Help me!”

  He was stopping the water like a cork in a bottle, and if Zolner managed to pull him out, they would both drown. He ran to the shaft ladder, which was fixed to the cast-iron wall at the end of the tunnel. Mounting the iron rungs, he looked back.

  The river smashed through the barrier. Abe Weintraub flew to the end of the tunnel, hurled on a crest of water and broken crates that dashed him against the cast-iron wall. The water rose to Zolner’s chest. He kicked loose from it and climbed up the shaft into the night. Across the river, he saw a motorboat’s searchlight probing the dark like a desperate finger.

  • • •

  “ISAAC!”

  “Mr. Bell!”

  “Ed! Ed Tobin. Where are you?”

  In the searchlight glare, the Van Dorns on the guard boat saw the shattered speedboat half sunk on its side. It was turning, slowly spinning, picking up speed, spinning faster and faster, as it was sucked into a huge whirlpool. A crater was spinning in the river, a gigantic hole left by a million tons of water plunging into the tunnel.

  “Isaac!”

  “Here!” Bell shouted. “Behind you!” The river current had helped him and Tobin swim away from the wreckage. Now the vortex was drawing them back.

  The guard boat roared alongside them. Strong arms hauled them out of the water, drenched but unhurt, just as the last of the speedboat was sucked under.

  Isaac Bell was grinning ear to ear.

  “They’ll never invite me back to that yacht club.”

  31

  PALM TREES RUSTLED, the sea was green, and the sky a fine blue. Iced daiquiris frosted their glasses, the finishing touch, like painter’s varnish, on a portrait of a dreamy afternoon in tropical Nassau.

  Out of nowhere, the dream melted into a detective’s nightmare.

  Pauline Grandzau had seen to every detail to disguise herself as a plucky businesswoman subtly battling the “no skirts” prejudice of the men in the liquor trade: She was awaiting a consignment of rye from the Glasgow company she represented; the market for Scotch was glutted, and Americans loved their rye; she had to make a deal with a buyer.

  “Meantime, I’m talking up a storm to convince the buyers it’s coming soon and it will be the real McCoy, so they’ll bid up the price.”

  “Are the buyers the rumrunners?”

  “Exactly! They sail it up to the Row.”

  Fern Hawley, seated across their little round cocktail table, seemed to swallow her story hook, line, and sinker. The Van Dorn detective, who was pretending to be a liquor agent, and Marat Zolner’s girlfriend, who was pretending to be a carefree American tourist, were going to be, in Fern’s own words, “great pals.”

  They had climbed the lookout tower on the hotel’s roof, where liquor agents were watching the deep-blue sea for their ships, and admired Fern’s steam yacht, the biggest anchored in the turquoise harbor. Now on the patio under the royal palms, sharpers and hucksters, bankers and gangsters were bustling about overtime, and the daiquiris were flowing.

  But, all of a sudden, just as Pauline eased Fern into a discussion of the liquor traffic—legal in the British colony, legal on the high seas, legal on Rum Row, illegal on the wrong side of the U.S. border—who should wander into the all-day, all-night party that Prohibition had made of the Lucerne Hotel than the only human being in all the British Bahamas who knew that she was a Van Dorn detective.

  Joseph Van Dorn’s oldest friend, whom Isaac Bell had introduced her to at Bellevue Hospital, spotted her instantly and waved.

  “Captain Novicki,” she blurted, jumping to her feet and trying to send signals with her eyes.

  Dave Novicki churned toward their table, robust as a barrel of beer and guileless as a manatee.

  She greeted him in a rush of words, hoping to contain him. “I’m so surprised to see you here, I thought you set sail already, may I introduce my new friend, Miss Fern Hawley of New York? She just landed in her yacht, you must have seen it in the harbor from your ship.” She took a breath and turned to Fern. “Captain Novicki commands a schooner that brings my import-export firm’s rum from, uhhm, Hispaniola, is it, Captain? Or will it be Jamaica next shipment?”

  Novicki looked puzzled and about to speak, which could not possibly help.

  Pauline stuck out her hand. Novicki took it, and she squeezed his horny paw as hard as she could, saying with a laugh she could only hope did not sound hysterical, “Or will you sail all the way to England to bring me some gin?”

  Novicki looked down at her hand. Then he looked into her eyes.

  Sea captains must be alert, she thought. And unusually observant. Surely—

  He spoke at last.

  “I’m not certain the old girl could sail as far as England, but I would risk it for you, my dear, if you’re hard-up for gin. In fact,” he added, warming to the fiction, “I would gladly sail her around the Horn to fetch you the wines of Chile or cross the Pacific for Japanese sake.”

  With that, Novicki gave her hand a little squeeze, let go of it, and seized Fern’s. His sharp eyes roamed her beautiful face appreciatively, and when a surprised intake of breath from her revealed that he had her attention, he said, “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Hawley. What yacht did you arrive in?”

  “Maya.”

  “Yes, I saw her come in. Handsome steamer. Beats the newfangled diesels hands down. But may I caution you, if you’re discussing business deals with this young lady”—he clapped Pauline on the back—“hold tight to your fillings and count the spoons!”

  “We’re only drinking daiquiris,” said Pauline. “This isn’t business. We just ran into each other down at the harbor.”

  “I’m only a tourist,” said Fern. “Would you join us?”

  Novicki looked like a man who very much wanted to while away the afternoon drinking daiquiris with two beautiful woman. Pauline shot him an eyeful of No, no, absolutely not!

  “Thank you, Miss Hawley . . . Pauline. Nothing would delight me more. But I don’t like the look of that sky. I want deep water under my bottom, the sooner the better.”

  He made his good-byes, choosing an instant when Fern turned to signal the waiter for refills to give Pauline a solemn grin.

  Fern watched him churn away. “Did you notice what was going on with him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was flirting with me.”

  “Do you want me to call him back?”

  Fern burst out laughing. “No! He’s way too old.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “O.K., I wouldn’t kick him out of bed. But, no, too late. He’s gone to his ship.”

  Pauline shrugged. “All I know is, he’s the nicest rumrunner I’ve ever met. Most of them are pretty rough.” She took a sip from her glass.

  Fern looked up through the palm fronds. “I don’t see what’s wrong with the sky, do you?”

  “It looks wonderful,” said Pauline, “though it could be the daiquiris. Oh, mine’s getting empty again.”

  “I already called the waiter. Here they come . . . What shall we drink to? New friends? I can’t believe how we just bumped into each other and, all of a sudden, we’re telling each other things like we’ve been friends forever.”

  “To new friends and old friends,” said Pauline, clinking her glass against Fern’s. “And nice rumrunners.”

  “I’ll leave the rumrunners to you. Bootleggers are more my style.”

  “They’re rough, too, aren’t they?”

>   “Sometimes . . . Sometimes they’re real louses. Sometimes they’re the cat’s whiskers.”

  “How do you tell them apart?”

  Fern put down her drink and looked up at the sky. “You don’t. Until it’s too late.”

  32

  ISAAC BELL inhaled the intoxicating mix of fresh paint, clean oil, and gasoline of a just launched, brand-new express cruiser. New she was, and beautiful, a sleek, ghostly gray that seemed to hover more than float on Biscayne Bay. He nudged her throttles and she got lively. He engaged the mufflers and she was suddenly silent.

  A fast Prohibition Bureau boat pulled alongside and signaled him to stop. Bell waved good-bye. He cut out the mufflers and hit the throttles and left the revenuers bouncing on his thunderous wake.

  He tore around Biscayne Bay, twirling her spoked wheel to cut figure eights past the hydroplane landings, the towering McAllister Hotel, draped in striped awnings, the Boat Club, and the Biscayne Boulevard finger piers, where the fleets of lumber schooners that supplied the building boom were unloading cypress and yellow pine. In the middle of the bay, off the Miami River, floated the pylons that marked the Motor Boat Race Course. Isaac Bell set an unofficial record around the three-mile circuit at sixty miles an hour.

  Lynch & Harding had done themselves proud. She handled like a dream.

  He circled a long passenger freighter from Baltimore that was transferring people to a harbor launch. A flying boat approached from the east. Bell raced alongside it as it landed. Then he opened her up and headed for the ocean, tearing under the causeway that linked downtown Miami to Miami Beach and pointing her razor-sharp bow at Government Cut at the south end of the bay. He blasted through the shipping channel at top speed and roared down the Atlantic Coast.

  In the ocean swells, she felt big and fast and sturdy. Beyond the settlements, along shores thick with jungle broken repeatedly by the raw scars of clearance and construction, a dark boat shot from a mangrove swamp and chased after him. Bell slowed down and let the boat pull alongside. Three men wearing revolvers on their hips looked him over. Any doubts they were hijackers vanished when they reached for their weapons.