The Bootlegger Read online

  He hugged her close, then let go to shake hands with Joe’s oldest friend who had accompanied Dorothy to the hospital. Captain Dave Novicki, broad and sturdy as a mooring bollard, was a retired ocean mariner. He had taken Joe under his wing years ago when he was a junior officer on the immigrant boat that brought the teenage Van Dorn to America. Bell had met Novicki often at Thanksgiving dinners in the Van Dorns’ Murray Hill town house. Joe credited the crusty old sailor’s steady influence for much of his success, just as Bell credited Van Dorn’s guidance for much of his.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said to Bell.

  Bell motioned Novicki aside to ask in a low voice, “How bad is he?”

  “Touch and go. The chief doc promised a progress report in an hour. Two hours ago.”

  A terrible hour passed. All looked up when a nurse came in. She whispered to Isaac Bell that there was a telephone call for him in the lobby. They handed him a phone at the reception desk. “McKinney?”

  “Right here, Mr. Bell.”

  “What do we have?”

  “Ed Tobin found the boat the Coasties were chasing. Half-sunk near the Chelsea Piers. Not the boat that shot him. The taxi they were chasing.”

  Tobin was a veteran of the New York field office’s Gang Squad and a blood relative of Staten Island families of watermen and coal pirates. As such, Ed Tobin knew the harbor better than the Harbor Squad.

  “Booze mostly gone. Looks like they off-loaded into smaller boats. Ed says the cops claim they caught one in the East River.”

  “Anyone show up shot in any hospitals?”

  “We’re checking every hospital from Bay Shore, Long Island, to Brooklyn, to Staten Island, to Manhattan. Nothing yet.”

  “No gunshot wounds in any?”

  “None that don’t have a good story attached.”

  “Tell me the stories.”

  “Two guys who plugged each other disputing the right to sell beer to Bensonhurst speakeasies. Guy in a Herald Square hooch hole shot by his girlfriend for two-timing her. Guy in Roosevelt Hospital shot on the El. That’s it so far, but the night is young.”

  “Who shot the guy on the El?”

  “Got away. Cops found him alone.”

  “Which El? Ninth Avenue?”

  “Right. Cops took him to the closest hospital.”

  “Cops? Why not ambulance?”

  “He was walking under his own steam. Cops found him stumbling down from the Church stop at Saint Paul’s. You know, at 59th?”

  “I know where it is.”

  The Ninth Avenue Elevated Line, which ran right beside Roosevelt Hospital, started all the way downtown at South Ferry at the edge of the harbor and passed through Chelsea on the way up. A wounded rumrunner could just possibly have come ashore at either of those points and made it to the train.

  McKinney said, “I’ll send the boys back to Roosevelt.”

  “No. I’ll do it.” It was a very slim chance. But it beat hanging around helpless to do anything for Joe Van Dorn.

  “How’s the Boss?” McKinney asked.

  “I don’t know yet. They’re operating.”

  “Of all the crazy things . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That Mr. Van Dorn happened to be there, on that cutter, of all patrols. How many bootleggers go to the trouble of shooting at the Coast Guard? Anyone with half a brain knows it’s safer to surrender and let your lawyers bust you loose.”

  “Good question,” said Bell. He hurried back to the waiting room, thinking that Joe had indeed run into an unlikely piece of bad luck. As McKinney said, most rumrunners knew it was not worth risking their lives in a shoot-out with the Coast Guard.

  Still no word from the surgeons. Bell asked Dorothy, “Are you all right here? There’s something I have to look into.” She was deathly pale, and he could see she was nearing the end of her rope.

  Captain Novicki flung a brawny arm around her shoulders and boomed, “You get the louses who shot him, Isaac. I’ll look after Dorothy and Joe like a mother bear.”

  • • •

  ISAAC BELL flagged a cab and raced across town through light late-night traffic. It was less than fifteen minutes from Bellevue to Roosevelt Hospital, a giant three-hundred-fifty-bed red brick building. The hospital and the fortresslike Roman Catholic church of St. Paul the Apostle stood between the Irish and Negro slums of Hell’s Kitchen to the south and San Juan Hill to the north. “Blind pigs,” windowless illegal drinking parlors, darkened the ground floors of tenements. A train rattled overhead as he ran under the El and into the hospital. He gave the front-desk receptionist a look at his gold Van Dorn chief investigator badge, slipped him five dollars, and asked to speak with the patient admitted earlier with a gunshot wound.

  “Top floor,” the receptionist told him. “Last room at the end of the hall. Private room, with a police guard.”

  “How badly is he wounded?”

  “He made it under his own steam.”

  In the elevator, Bell folded a sawbuck for the cop.

  The elevator opened on the soapy odor of a freshly mopped floor. The hall was empty, the tiles glistening.

  Bell hurried down the long corridor. The elevator scissored shut behind him.

  Ahead, he heard the sharp bang of a small-caliber pistol.

  He ran toward the sound, pulling his Browning from his shoulder holster, and rounded the corner. He saw a stairwell door to his left. The door to the room to his right was half open. He heard a loud groan and saw on the floor blue-uniformed trouser legs and scuffed black brogans. Cop shoes. He pushed inside. A New York Police Department officer lay on his back, holding his head, eyes squeezed shut. He groaned again, “It hoits awful.”

  On the bed, a blond-haired man in hospital garb lay on his side, curled like a fetus, his chin tucked tightly to his chest. The gunshot Bell had heard had been fired point-blank. A tiny red hole half the diameter of a dime pierced the back of his neck, with a ring of blood seared around the rim.

  3

  THE WINDOW WAS OPEN.

  Bell thrust his head out. The square top of St. Paul’s south tower stood at eye level across the street. Beneath the window, the hospital’s sheer façade dropped twelve stories to the pavement.

  He ran to the stairwell, opened the fire door, and listened for footsteps. Silence. Had the killer stopped some floors down? He couldn’t have reached the ground floor yet. Had he bolted out of the stairwell into a lower corridor? Had he climbed the stairs to the roof?

  Pistol in hand, Bell raced up the flight, pushed through a door onto the tar-surfaced roof. A smoky sky reflected the dim lights of the neighborhood. Elevator-machine penthouses, stairwell penthouses, and chimneys loomed in the dark. Skylights cast up electric light from the rooms under them. He listened. Far below, another El rattled past. A shadow flickered behind the glow of a skylight, and Bell sprang after it.

  He ran in silence, footfalls light on the soft tar, saw the shadow pass another skylight, and put on a burst of speed. He was twenty feet behind when the figure ahead stopped abruptly and whirled around.

  Bell dived through the air, tucked his shoulder, clasped his gun to his torso, and rolled as he hit the tar. Two shots cracked in rapid succession, and lead flew through the space he had occupied an instant before.

  The killer ducked behind an elevator house.

  Bell ran around the other side. He saw a flash of light. A stairwell door opened just wide enough for a man. Bell pegged a shot at the strong, supple, reptilian silhouette, but it slipped away with fluid grace.

  He ran to the door, ducked low, and yanked it open. He heard the running man’s boots pounding the stairs and plunged after him down two switchback flights. A foot-long brass nozzle flew at his head, swung from a canvas fire hose. Bell ducked under it. It clanged on the steel banister and bounced back at his face. He twisted aside, but in avoiding the heavy nozzle, he lost his footing and fell to one knee. Disoriented for a second, he sensed the man brush him. Two shots exploded loudly in
the confined space, echoed to the roof and down to the cellar. Two slugs buried themselves in plaster beside his head.

  Bell jumped to his feet and tore after the killer.

  Suddenly, he had a clear shot. For a precious instant he was looking straight down at the crown of the man’s flat cap. He aimed his Browning, the modified No. 2 that he had carried for years. At this range he could not miss. He turned smoothly to keep the running killer in his line of sight. Gently, he started to squeeze the trigger. As he did, still moving to line up the shot, something bright as snow intruded on his field of fire.

  It was a tall white cap of folded linen, the woman wearing it a nurse in a spotless white dress and pinafore apron. He jerked the gun aside and let go the trigger, a hairsbreath between the life and death of an innocent. Two innocents, he realized as he thundered down the stairs: the nurse, and the doctor who had been embracing her in the privacy of the stairwell and now was shielding her with his body.

  “It’s not what you think,” cried the doctor.

  Bell heard glass shatter below and pounded past them.

  Three flights down, the stairs were dark. His boots crunched on broken glass. The killer had smashed the lights. Bell charged down the stairs into the dark. He stumbled, tripped up by a fire hose draped shin-high between the banisters. He snagged a banister with one hand, righted himself, and kept going.

  Forced to go slowly in the dark, he heard a door slam. He climbed down two more flights. There was light again, marking where the killer had stopped breaking bulbs and exited the stairwell. He pushed through a door and found himself abruptly outside, bursting into an alley between the hospital and a stable—one of the many on Manhattan Island’s West Side that had not yet been converted to an auto garage. There was a tang of manure in the air and a sweet smell of straw.

  The alley led to 58th Street, a long block of tenements. The sidewalks were deserted at this hour, the buildings’ windows mostly dark. The killer could have run into any of a score of doorways or ducked into a blind pig on Ninth Avenue to the east or Tenth Avenue to the west. The stable door was wide open. He ran inside. A night watchman and a groom were seated on beer kegs, playing checkers on a whisky barrel. The killer would have had to run past them to hide in the stable.

  Bell wasted no time in plunking down the folded sawbuck meant for the cop. “You boys see a man with a gun run by?”

  “Nope,” said the groom.

  “Didn’t even see a man without a gun,” said the watchman. He looked pointedly at Bell’s pistol and asked, “Friend of yours?”

  “Get out of his way and give a shout if you see him coming.”

  Over on Ninth Avenue, another El screeched into the Church station. If the killer was already vaulting up the steps to take the train, Bell knew he could never catch up before it left the station. He backed onto the side way, stymied, and looked around. Fifty feet down the block he saw an incongruous sight, a Packard Twin Six town car. The chauffeur was just closing the front hood. He stepped back into the car and started the motor.

  Bell holstered his weapon and hurried toward the car, straightening his coat.

  As he approached, a side window in the passenger cabin lowered.

  Expecting at this hour and in this neighborhood a wealthy old man calling on his mistress or visiting a brothel, Bell was surprised to see a beautiful young woman in a sleeveless sheath dress. She had strings of Baltic amber beads around her neck, a long cigarette holder perched in her fingers, and a cloche hat on her bobbed chestnut hair.

  He reached automatically to sweep his hat off his head. He had lost it in the chase.

  She had almond eyes, a mischievous smile, and a lovely contralto voice. The gin on her breath was the good stuff, not bathtub. “You look like a gentleman who can’t find a taxi.”

  “Did you see a man run past moments ago?”

  “No.”

  “No one? Either side of the street?”

  “Let me ask my driver. He was fiddling with the motor.” She swiveled a voice tube to her Cupid’s bow lips. “Did you see a man run past moments ago?”

  She held the tube to her ear, then she turned back to Bell. “I’m sorry. He didn’t either. I wish I could help you. Although . . .” Another smile. “The car’s running again. If you truly need a taxi, I can offer you a ride.”

  Bell looked up and down the street. He hadn’t a hope of finding him. His best bet was to go back to the hospital on the chance the cop had caught a close look at who banged him on his head.

  “If I see him, should I—”

  “Don’t go near him.”

  “I won’t,” she promised. “I meant, if I should see him, I can report him to you. You should give me your card.”

  Bell gave her his Van Dorn Detective Agency business card and introduced himself. “Isaac Bell.”

  “A detective? I suppose that makes him a criminal.”

  “He just shot a man.”

  “You don’t say!” She fished her own card from a tiny clutch and extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Bell. I’m Fern Hawley.”

  Bell knew her name from the society columns, and her family’s name as well, having attended college in the city of New Haven. She was the sole heir of a Connecticut hardware-and-firearms magnate. And he was familiar with her sort, having been in France in the latter days of the war when independent, adventurous American heiresses indulged by their fathers—or left their own fortunes by their mothers and were therefore under the thumb of no man—flocked to Paris. Many came to do good, nursing the wounded or feeding starving refugees. Many had come to have a good time, run around with European aristocrats, and pay the rent for bohemian painters and writers.

  He wondered why she had been on this slum street when her limousine broke down, but the fact was, New York’s wealthy young went where they pleased. Possibly headed to West 54th, where Park Avenue society “rubbernecked” at the drunks and brawlers marched through Men’s Night Court. Or exiting a side door from a private visit with a hospital patient.

  “Are you sure I can’t offer you a ride, Mr. Bell?”

  “Thank you, Miss Hawley, but not tonight.” He glanced up and down the street again. Back to the hospital to interview the cop before his sergeant arrived.

  “Good night.” Fern Hawley tapped the chauffeur’s partition with her cigarette holder. The Packard Twin Six glided from the curb and turned uptown on Tenth Avenue.

  • • •

  FERN HAWLEY opened the chauffeur’s partition and said, “I tried. The man just would not get in the car.”

  “Have you lost your touch?”

  “Don’t make me laugh . . . Is Johann all right?”

  “Dead.”

  “Dead? How can Johann be dead? He walked into the hospital on his own two legs.”

  Marat Zolner pulled off his visored chauffeur hat and dropped it beside his pistol. His hair was soaked with perspiration and he was breathing hard from running.

  “The detective shot him,” he told her.

  4

  THE COP GUARDING the murdered rumrunner had not seen the man who knocked him for a loop. That was all that Bell could learn from the angry police detectives swarming the hospital. A uniformed officer gave him his hat, which he had found in the stairwell. His derringer was still in it. Bell thanked him with a double sawbuck and raced back to Bellevue Hospital.

  Joe Van Dorn was finally out of surgery.

  The exhausted surgeons made no promises. “If he makes it through the next hour, he’ll have a chance in the hour after that. At least he’s strong. I can’t recall a man his age so fit.”

  “Heart like a cathedral bell!” boomed Captain Novicki with a reassuring glance at Dorothy Van Dorn.

  Dorothy asked, “How many bullets?”

  “Madam,” said the surgeon. “This is hardly the time nor place, nor a topic to discuss with a woman.”

  “My father was a scientist and an engineer. We discussed his work daily. I am asking you how many bullets struck my
husband, where the bullets hit, and their effect on his condition.”

  The chief surgeon looked at Isaac Bell.

  Bell said, “Answer her.”

  “All right. He was struck three times. One creased his skull and almost certainly produced a concussion. Two more passed through him. One pierced his upper arm, fortunately missed the bone, but severed the artery. The other punctured his chest. They were small bore rounds with a hard covering to take the grooves in the rifled barrel, which increased their penetrating power, so neither lodged in his body . . . Shall I go on?”

  “How did he survive a severed artery?”

  “The petty officer on the Coast Guard cutter arrested the hemorrhage by tourniquet.”

  “And the bullet through his chest?”

  The surgeon shook his head. “We did what we could. To some extent, the bullet pushed blood vessels, tendons, and ligaments aside. Immersion in salt water reduces the probability of septic infection. And the petty officer poured iodine over and around the wounds. We are of the impression that the cold seawater had the effect of slowing his heartbeat and lowering his blood pressure at that critical moment, which might possibly explain the miracle that he is alive.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. May I see him now?”

  “You may sit with him. I doubt he’ll speak yet. If he does, don’t tax him.”

  Dorothy went into the room. A disapproving nurse moved from the chair beside the bed to a chair in the corner.

  Bell and Novicki waited outside.

  “Doctor?” Bell called as the surgeon was leaving. “You mentioned he was in the water. Any idea how he got out?”

  “They said a Coast Guardsman dived in after him.”

  Captain Novicki watched the surgeon shamble away. “There’s a man who needs a stiff drink and a good night’s sleep. Did you have any luck?”

  “Caught up with one of the crew from the rum boat they were chasing. He died.”

  “Good.”

  Not at all good, thought Bell. The dead man could shed no light on his gang. He said, “We found the boat shot up. That’s about it. I’ll try to interview the Coast Guard people in the morning.”