The Bootlegger Read online

  “Where would I find Mr. Danis when he’s working?”

  “Seeing as he just bought himself a spanking new Boss leather apron and a fresh set of Disston rasps, he’s probably shoeing horses at the Monmouth County Fair—unless Mr. Dodge is in attendance.”

  • • •

  “BUT WHAT of the revolution?” asked Fern Hawley.

  She was staring sullenly at an untouched glass of genuine champagne that had been poured for her by former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, the owner of Harlem’s Club Deluxe.

  Marat Zolner had hoped a late-night outing would take her mind off Yuri.

  “Bootlegging,” he reminded her again, “is our path to revolution.”

  “Yuri didn’t think so.”

  The famous black prizefighter’s Lenox Avenue speakeasy was Fern’s favorite cabaret. A hot jazz band drew the cream of the Park Avenue crowd. They came uptown in limousines and taxis, dressed to the nines, after private dinner parties, theater, and the opera. Zolner enjoyed it, too, especially while playing the part of an aristocratic Russian émigré out on the town with his American benefactress. It was great fun to be rich, fun to slum with movie stars and gangsters and young flappers in short hair and shorter skirts.

  “Yuri did not understand,” he said gently. “But he was coming around to seeing America the way it is going.”

  “But where are we going?” asked Fern. She had been impatient for results before Yuri was killed. Now she was obsessed.

  “We are going to a city where a narrow river, which a speedboat can cross in minutes, is all that separates a legally wet nation from a legally dry nation.”

  “Detroit,” said Fern, who had kept up to date on every aspect of Prohibition since Zolner first hatched his scheme.

  “Detroit. Three of every four drinks poured in the United States come from Detroit. Detroit sells to Saint Louis, New Orleans, Kansas City, and Denver, the West, Midwest, and South.”

  “But the Purple Gang and the River Gang are fighting to control it. They own the police. They own the politicians.”

  Marat Zolner reached under the table and took her knee in a firm grip. “That is why we are going to Detroit.”

  “But what of the revolution?” Fern repeated defiantly. She looked away, refusing to meet Zolner’s eye. Her own eyes fell on the smiling Jack Johnson, who was greeting a striking couple at the door.

  “Look! There’s Isaac Bell.”

  20

  “WELCOME BACK, ISAAC. And Mrs. Bell, what a pleasure to see you again.”

  Former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson—a remarkably fit-looking forty-three-year-old black man—cut a splendid figure in a dark suit with chalk-white stripes. He bowed low over Marion’s hand.

  “Would it be too much to hope that you are making a new picture in New York?”

  “From now on, I’m shooting all my movies in New York. Nothing in Hollywood can hold a candle to Club Deluxe.”

  Johnson accepted the compliment with a hearty laugh.

  “By the way, Isaac, thank you for the cigars.”

  “You thanked me already, Jack. They were the least I could do.”

  Johnson had served a stretch at Leavenworth—railroaded into the penitentiary on a false Mann Act charge—and Isaac Bell, like many of the great prizefighter’s admirers, had sent boxes of the finest La Aroma de Cubas to help him through the year. “I see you’re looking to fight Dempsey. Or is that just newspaper talk?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re a mighty fit forty-three and Jack Dempsey’s twenty-six.”

  “I believe I could lick him. I’m feeling tip-top, in better condition than ever.”

  “You look it,” said Bell.

  “I don’t want to fight any second-raters and neither does Dempsey. It’ll be a heck of a battle. I’ll tell you this, though.” Jack Johnson lowered his voice. “I better win. The hoodlums are moving in on me here. I won’t own this joint much longer.”

  “Who?” asked Bell.

  “Some bootlegger gangster they’re about to set loose from Sing Sing. I’m told he’s planning to buy me out cheap and redecorate with ‘jungle’ stuff, palm trees and all that. I won’t have much say in it unless I want to go to war with guns and knives, and that I am too old for.”

  “Which gangster?”

  Jack Johnson looked out at his busy cabaret. He smiled at the sight of the packed tables, rushing waiters, and crowded dance floor. “Don’t know yet, though I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got some scouts in here watching me right now. Like I say, it’s time for me to go back in the ring.”

  • • •

  MARAT ZOLNER recognized the man talking to Jack Johnson as the Van Dorn detective who pursued him the night he executed Johann Kozlov.

  “Are you sure he never saw your face?” Fern asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “But you were close enough to see him shoot Johann.”

  “I said I heard the shot. I didn’t see it.”

  “So it could have been someone else who killed Johann?”

  “I saw no one but Bell.” And then, to steer Fern off the subject of the shooting, he asked, “Who’s the gorgeous creature on his arm?”

  “His wife. Marion Morgan Bell. The movie director.”

  “Director? Such a beauty should be the star.”

  “Would you like me to ask Mr. Bell to introduce her to you?” Fern asked icily.

  “I meant nothing to get sore about, only that at a distance, at least, she appears to be extraordinarily beautiful.”

  “Such a handsome man,” Fern shot back, “deserves at least one beauty.”

  She watched Isaac Bell rake the speakeasy with a probing gaze that missed nothing. His violet blue eyes settled on her and darkened in recognition even as he smiled hello.

  Fern waved.

  “What are you doing?” asked Zolner.

  “Here’s your chance for a close-up.”

  • • •

  BELL AND MARION made their way slowly across the crowded speakeasy, stopped repeatedly by fans jumping up to tell Marion how much they liked her moving pictures. Few directors would ever be recognized by the general public, but when Marion appeared in a movie magazine, her face was remembered.

  “I’d like to stop at Fern Hawley’s table,” Bell told her.

  “Who’s the man with her?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  The society woman’s companion rose politely when they stopped at the table. He stood with poise and grace, a trim and elegant man as tall as Bell and slightly thinner. He had an easy manner but a sharp gaze. Fern introduced him. “My old friend Prince André, late of Saint Petersburg.”

  Bell and Prince André shook hands firmly. Bell introduced Marion. Pleasantries were exchanged. They agreed to sit for a moment.

  Prince André engaged Marion in a technical conversation about film, drawing on the Russian model. Marion told him that she was shooting a comedy about a Russian ballet company stranded in New York.

  “What will you title it?”

  “Jump to New York.”

  “What could be better? We should all ‘jump to New York,’ should we not, my dear?”

  Fern Hawley said to Bell, “My friend is laying on the charm for your wife.”

  “I’m used to it,” said Bell.

  “How often does it end in fisticuffs?”

  “No more than half the time.”

  Fern’s grin made her eyes even more opaque. She pursed her Cupid’s bow lips to ask, “And the outcome when it does?”

  “They don’t do it again. Is Prince André a recent arrival?”

  “I knew him in Paris.”

  “Was he a refugee then?”

  “Far from it. His family had estates in France.”

  “And also in America?”

  “None I know of,” Fern said. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Of course,” said Bell with a glance at Prince André and a private smile for Marion.
>
  “A blunt question,” Fern said.

  “Blunt away,” said Bell. “What’s on your mind?”

  “When we met the first time, when you were chasing . . . whoever you were chasing?”

  “Yes?”

  “I had the impression that you could, under the right circumstances, like me very much.”

  “I’ve always liked characters,” said Bell.

  “Good characters or bad characters?”

  “I mean, different types—nonconformists, bohemians.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve been complimented.”

  Bell grinned. “You’re positive you’re complimented. You love standing out.”

  “So you could like me?” Fern smiled. Her almond eyes slid toward Marion. “Under the right circumstances.”

  “They don’t exist,” said Bell. He turned to Prince André. “We’ve entertained you far too long, sir. Forgive the interruption.”

  Marion slipped her hand into his arm and they continued across the speakeasy. “I’ve yet to meet a Russian refugee who wasn’t a prince or at least a count.”

  “He’s a tough-looking prince,” said Bell.

  “I thought so, too. Did you see his hands?”

  “Powerful. His shake felt more American than European.”

  “He told me he fought in the cavalry.”

  “I hope Miss Hawley knows what she’s doing.”

  Marion said, “Miss Hawley strikes me as a woman who has known what she was doing since the day she broke every heart in kindergarten. Do you find her attractive?”

  “I certainly would,” said Bell, “if I weren’t with the loveliest woman in the world.”

  “How would you feel if I bobbed my hair like hers?”

  “I like your hair the way it is. But I’d take you bald, if it made you happy. Where do you suppose Fern Hawley found Prince André?”

  “If broke aristocrats find rich American heiresses in New York the way they do in Hollywood, he would have wrangled introductions so he could show up in some place she was comfortable—a country club or an expensive restaurant.”

  “She told me they met in Paris.”

  “I’m sure Miss Hawley was comfortable in Paris.”

  “May I have this fox-trot?”

  They danced to a jazzed-up “Melancholy Baby,” Bell sweeping Marion around other couples in order to pass repeatedly close to Fern and Prince André’s table. The heiress and the Russian refugee were deep in conversation.

  When Bell and Marion returned to their table, Marion said, “Despite her stick-it-in-your-eye smirk, Miss Hawley is not happy.”

  “Why?”

  “I think she’s disappointed.”

  “Could the bloom be off the rose?”

  “No, that rose is still blooming. It’s something else.”

  Bell noticed a broad-shouldered man in evening clothes watching Fern’s table from the bar, his highball glass untouched. When Prince André looked toward him, he straightened up slightly, as an employee might, confirming Bell’s strong impression he was a bodyguard. The Russian’s active gaze wheeled his way. Before he could see Bell watching, Bell turned to Marion.

  “Speaking of blooming roses, I forgot to tell you Pauline sends her warm regards.”

  Across the room, Prince André rose to his feet and extended his hand to Fern Hawley. He guided her onto the dance floor and took her in his arms.

  Marion said, “You see what I mean about the rose? These two enjoy each other. Isn’t he a wonderful dancer?”

  Bell agreed. “He looks like he trained in the ballet.”

  “He’s tall, for the ballet.”

  “Maybe he was a short boy. At any rate, I’m shopping around for the right fellow for Pauline.”

  “Who?”

  “Dashwood is nuts for her.”

  Marion looked skeptical. “I’ve always thought that Dashwood is uncommonly close to his mother.”

  “She starred in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and taught Dashwood how to shoot.”

  “Mr. Freud would have a ball with that one. On the other hand, if anyone could wean Dashwood, it would be Fräulein Grandzau.”

  Bell glanced through the crowds again. “Do you suppose you could get Fern Hawley to open up to you?”

  “I’ll try. How can we get the prince out of the way?”

  “I’ll ask the waiter to tell him he’s wanted on the telephone.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know how Miss Hawley happened to be sitting in her limousine on a slum street outside the back door of Roosevelt Hospital the night the killer who shot Johann Kozlov got away from me. I wondered then, and I wonder more now. It had to be a coincidence. But . . .”

  “But you hate coincidences. I’ll try and work my way around to it . . . Too late, there they go!”

  Bell watched closely as Fern and Prince André left straight from the dance floor. A waiter ran after them with the feathered boa she had left on her chair.

  “You’re right,” said Bell. “She is disappointed in him. There’s something in the angle she holds her head.”

  “You should be a detective . . . Where are you going?”

  Bell’s reply was a terse, “Don’t follow me.”

  The man he had observed at the bar moved quickly to escort Fern and Prince André out of the speakeasy. Bell followed. A thug in a topcoat, who Bell had noticed lounging under the electric canopy earlier, blocked a newspaper photographer trying to snap a picture of Fern and the prince. Moving to stop Bell, he put a hand on his arm.

  “Save yourself trouble, mister. Go back inside while you have teeth.”

  The tall detective knocked him to the pavement.

  But by then the bodyguard—Bell had no doubt anymore he was that—had shut Fern and the prince’s car door. The chauffeur stepped on the gas and sped into busy Lenox Avenue. The bodyguard faced Bell, took in his partner on the sidewalk with a swift glance, and opened his coat to show his pistol. “Want something, mister?”

  Bell opened his own coat, closed a big hand around his Browning, and started toward him. But late-night revelers were swarming the sidewalk, and loaded taxis were hauling up to the curb.

  The Packard carrying Fern Hawley and Prince André cut in front of a trolley and disappeared. The bodyguard helped his partner stand and they left in a taxi, leaving Isaac Bell to wonder whether they were guarding the wealthy young woman or her pampered gigolo who looked thoroughly capable of guarding himself.

  • • •

  IN THE LIMOUSINE, Marat put his arm around Fern.

  She turned her face away. “The bank’s closed.”

  “Bank? What bank?”

  “It’s an expression. It’s the way a girl says she’s not in the mood.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since . . . I have the heebie-jeebies about Yuri.”

  “The bank did not appear to be closed to Isaac Bell.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Marat. He’s a detective. That’s all we need.”

  “You were falling all over him.”

  “He’s married.”

  “Do you ask me to believe that would stop you?”

  “It would stop him—don’t you know anything?”

  They rode in silence until the car stopped in front of her town house. The driver jumped out. Marat Zolner signaled through the glass not to open the door.

  “Now what?” said Fern.

  “How long will this bank be closed?” he asked.

  “Not forever. I just need a little time.” She patted his hand. “Don’t worry, it’ll be O.K.”

  “We have much to do. You keep asking about the revolution. The revolution requires intense focus. Nothing should distract from it. Therefore, we will do the following: You will stay here while I’m away. Use the time to think. I’ll send for you once I’m established. If you want to come, you’ll come.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I told you. I am expanding our operation. I am ready to
take Detroit.”

  “Who is ‘I’? Who do you mean? I the bootlegger? I the Comintern officer?”

  “We are one,” said Marat Zolner. “I. The bootlegger. And the Comintern. This is the plan. This has always been the plan.”

  “What of the revolution?”

  “We are the revolution.”

  “Yuri was the revolution. Johann was the revolution. Look what happened to them.”

  “Yuri lost his way. He lost his focus. Dynamite does not forgive mistakes. Johann had the bad luck to run into the wrong detective.”

  “You won’t escape the Van Dorns in Detroit.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “They have field offices everywhere, including Detroit.”

  Zolner reached out and squeezed her leg hard.

  “Stop!”

  Zolner squeezed harder and said, “The Van Dorn Detroit field office is going out of business.”

  21

  THIRTY MILES TO THE EAST, that same night, Uncle Donny Darbee was running an oyster boat full of Scotch from Rum Row toward Far Rockaway Inlet. Progress, he was thinking, was a wonderful thing. The modern world worked better than the one he had been born in. Fog lay thick on the water, but a radio signal kept him on course like magic. The big Peerless V-8 his nephews had lifted out of someone’s new automobile made his boat faster than an old-fashioned twenty-horsepower Ford and beat the pants off sails and steam engines. And Prohibition, God bless the politicians who passed it, made running rum far more bankable than pirating coal and easier on an old man’s back.

  It looked like the fog had scared off the marine police and the Coast Guard.

  Guided by the crash of breakers, he slipped in near silence through the stone breakwaters of the inlet. He continued with his heavily muffled engine throttled way back into Reynolds Channel, a sheltered strait that paralleled the ocean between Long Beach Island and Long Island. Listening for other boats, so as not to collide in the dark, and paying close attention to the changing currents, which indicated his position in the narrow channel, he headed on the course indicated by Robin’s radio. They had two more miles of waters he knew well to a boathouse owned by a Long Beach hotel that would buy his booze.

  “Grandpa!”

  “What?”

  “The radio’s going haywire.”