The Bootlegger Read online

  Detectives stared at Harry in amazement and admiration, wondering how he had wangled a conversation with the closemouthed Lonergan and managed to return from Brooklyn alive.

  Harry acknowledged their esteem with a modest nod. “If the leader of the White Hands doesn’t know about these guys, none of the Irish know these guys.”

  “What about the Italians?” asked Bell.

  Harry, who had changed his name, was known and respected in Little Italy. “Same thing with the Black Handers. Masseria, Cirillo, Yale, Altieri—none of them know.”

  “What about Fats Vetere?”

  “Him neither.”

  “What makes you think they’re telling you the truth?”

  “The bootlegging business is heating up. Gangsters and criminals are pushing out the amateurs. There’s so much money to be made. So if the White Hand or the Black Hand knew about these guys, they’d be wanting to get in touch either to buy from them or hijack them. But when I fished, they never fished back. The fact they didn’t try to pump me says the guys who shot the Boss are strangers to the gangs.”

  Bell kept pacing. “What about the bootleggers?”

  Several men cleared their throats and answered, briefly, one after another.

  “The bootleggers I know don’t know, Isaac.”

  “I went around the warehouses. They swear they don’t know.”

  “Same thing on the piers, Isaac.”

  “And the speakeasies. They’ve got no reason to lie to us, Isaac. It’s not like we’re arresting them.”

  “It’s not like anyone’s arresting them.”

  Bell paced harder, boot heels ringing. “What about the black boat?”

  “Yeah, well, the Coasties say they saw this black boat. No one else did.”

  “Except maybe Mr. Van Dorn. Is he talking yet, Isaac?”

  “Not as much as the first day,” Bell answered, adding, quietly, “In fact, not at all, for the moment.” His surgeons feared an infection had settled into his chest. Dorothy was beside herself, and even Captain Novicki was losing faith.

  “Watermen,” said Bell. He turned to the barrel-chested, broad-bellied Ed Tobin. A brutal beating by the Gopher gang when Tobin was a Van Dorn apprentice had maimed his face with a crushed cheekbone and a drooping eyelid. “Ed, have none of the watermen seen it?”

  “None that will talk to me.”

  “Have you asked Uncle Darbee?” Donald Darbee, Tobin’s great-uncle, was a Staten Island coal pirate with sidelines in salvaging cargo that fell off the docks and ferrying fugitives from New York to New Jersey.

  “I asked him first off. Uncle Donny’s never seen the black boat, never heard of it. Though he did like the idea, and he asked me could I find out whether it’s got Liberty motors and, if so, how many, and are they installed in-line or side by side.”

  Knowing laughter rumbled about the bull pen, and when even Bell cracked a faint smile, Tobin said, “Can I ask you, Mr. Bell, how are you making out with the Coast Guard?”

  Bell’s smile vanished like a shuttered signal lamp. “I will continue trying to interview the cutter crew.” He had had no luck so far. The Coast Guard was keeping CG-9 at sea. When Bell offered to fly out in his plane to interview the crew, his offer was refused.

  “McKinney!” Bell turned to the new chief of the New York field office. Darren McKinney was built short, wiry, and supple as chain mail. “You reported that the cops caught a lighter in the East River that had off-loaded the sinking rummy. What sort of booze were they carrying?”

  “Dewar’s blended Scotch whisky. The real McCoy.”

  “From Arethusa?” Arethusa was the famous McCoy’s schooner that cruised international waters off the coast of Fire Island.

  “McCoy just sailed up a shipload from Nassau. But the guys the cops arrested in the East River swear that they got the stuff from somewhere other than the shot-up rummy—understandable, considering the circumstances.”

  “Did they or didn’t they?” Bell demanded.

  “Harbor Squad claims they followed them from the sinking rummy. These guys saying otherwise are understandably reluctant to be linked to a shooting that might have ki—”

  A flicker of violence in Isaac Bell’s eyes silenced the detective mid-word.

  “—That is to say, led to the wounding of the proprietor of the Van Dorn Detective Agency.”

  Bell said, “I want that reluctance felt by every bootlegger in this city. Find out if they knew the guys on the shot-up rummy.”

  “The rummy guys are in jail.”

  “No they’re not,” said a gang unit detective hurrying into the bull pen. “Someone bailed ’em out.”

  “Now’s our chance to find out. Run them down.”

  “Sorry, Isaac, that won’t be possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “They just got fished out of the river . . . That’s why I’m late.”

  The Van Dorns met the news of slaughtered witnesses with stunned silence. Criminals fearing the electric chair killed accomplices, not ordinary rumrunners and bootleggers.

  Bell turned to Detective Tobin. “Ed, get on a boat. Go out to Arethusa and ask McCoy who he sold to that day. If he didn’t sell it, he might have some idea who did.”

  “I’m not so sure he’s interested in helping, Mr. Bell.”

  Bell said, “If he insists on protecting the buyer, tell him we’ll buy him a Lewis machine gun—he’ll need one for protection, the way things are going. Tell him what Harry Warren just said, criminals are moving in on bootlegging. If that doesn’t change his mind, make it damned clear to him that I will make his life on Rum Row immensely unpleasant by persuading the Coast Guard to assign a cutter to circle his schooner day and night for a month.”

  Tobin started for the door.

  “Wait,” said Bell. “Take two boys and plenty of firepower. And warn McCoy if he did do business with this roughneck element, he’s in danger. Whoever we’re looking for has a strong aversion to witnesses.”

  Tobin turned to Harry Warren. The head of the Gang Squad assigned two of his hardest cases with a brisk nod, and Tobin led them to the weapons vault.

  “We’ll take a new tack,” Bell told the rest. “The rumrunner who got shot at Roosevelt Hospital told the docs that his name was Johnny. Johnny was about twenty-five years old, medium height, strong build, blond hair cut short, bunch of scars. It’s possible he’s not American. He didn’t do much talking at the hospital with a couple of holes in his leg, so no one heard whether he had an accent. Get out there and find his friends.”

  The detectives trooped out quickly and in seconds Bell was alone, racking his brain for what else he could do. The front-desk man telephoned.

  “Lady to see you, Mr. Bell.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Won’t say,” the desk detective whispered. A steady fellow normally, with a pistol under his coat and a sawed-off shotgun clamped beside his knee, he sounded almost giddy. “She’s a knockout.”

  Bell went to the reception room.

  The most beautiful woman he had ever seen was smiling, facing the door, in a tailored traveling suit with an open jacket and a skirt that hung straight to the middle of exquisite calves. She had straw-blond hair, sea-coral-green eyes, and a musical voice.

  “I’m no lady. I’m your wife.”

  “Marion!”

  Bell swept her into his arms. “I’m so happy to see you.” He held her so close, he could feel her heart racing. “What are you doing here? Of course, you came to see Dorothy. She’s at the hospital.”

  “I’ll see Dorothy later. How are you?”

  “Working an angle on the gang that shot Joe. Hard to tell how he’s doing, but he’s hanging in there.”

  “I meant, how are you getting on?”

  “Plugging away,” he answered quickly, uncharacteristically repeating himself. “Staying on top of it. The boys are terrific. Everyone’s pitching in, working at it overtime.”

  Marion Morgan Bell had traveled three thous
and miles to examine her husband with a clear, cool gaze. She saw a shadow of apprehension in his eyes for the friend who was his mentor. She saw cold resolve to pursue Joe’s attackers. And she sensed that the man she loved with all her heart had somehow managed to brace every muscle in his body with hope.

  “Good,” she said, greatly relieved. “I’ll go see Dorothy now.”

  She held Bell’s hand as he walked her downstairs to put her in a taxi.

  “I didn’t tell you I was coming because I didn’t know for sure when I’d arrive and I knew you’d have your hands full.”

  “How did you get here so fast?”

  “I caught a lift to Chicago on Preston and Josephine’s special.” Preston Whiteway owned a chain of newspapers. His wife, Josephine, was a famous aviatrix. Their private train, absurdly overpowered by a 4-8-2 ALCO locomotive, had set the latest speed record for Los Angeles to Chicago. “I just missed the Twentieth Century Limited, so I got Josephine to sneak me onto her pilot friend’s mail plane. The new De Havilland? You would have loved it. We averaged one hundred nine miles an hour.”

  “I wasn’t aware that airmail planes had room for a passenger.”

  “It was a tight squeeze. I was practically in the pilot’s lap, but he was so sweet about it.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “We beat the Twentieth Century by four hours!”

  “How long can you stay in New York?” Bell asked.

  “The Four Marx Brothers asked me to direct a comedy in Fort Lee.”

  “Aren’t they a vaudeville act?”

  “They’re hoping a two-reeler will get them to Broadway.”

  The St. Regis doorman hailed a cab. Bell helped Marion into it. He leaned in and kissed her. She whispered, “I booked a suite upstairs,” and began to kiss him back.

  The cabbie cleared his throat, loudly. “Say, mister, why don’t you just ride along with us?”

  “Pipe down,” said the doorman. “You got something against love?”

  • • •

  BELOW THE FERRY TERMINAL at West 23rd Street, Marat Zolner lost sight of the Hudson River behind an unbroken wall of warehouses, bulkhead structures, and dock buildings. On the other side of that wall was a Dutch freighter in from Rotterdam. One of her crew was about to jump ship.

  Zolner stopped in one of the cheap lunchrooms scattered along West Street that catered to seamen. It was across from a door in the wall beside a guard shack. Every seaman who stepped out had to show his papers to prove he had a job on a ship. Zolner ordered a cup of coffee and watched.

  Antipov stepped through the door with three others. He was dressed like they were in a tight peacoat and flat cap, but his wire-thin silhouette and steel-frame eyeglasses were unmistakable. They showed their papers and crossed West Street. The three entered a blind pig. Antipov waited outside. He removed his glasses, polished them with a bandanna he pulled from his peacoat, then tied the bandanna around his neck.

  Zolner joined him and they walked inland on a side street past unlit garages and shuttered warehouses.

  Antipov spoke English with a heavy accent. “Where is Johann?”

  “Dead. I’m glad you’ve come. I counted on him.”

  “How did he die?”

  “He was wounded by the Coast Guard. Police took him to the hospital. He knew too much.”

  “Pity,” said Antipov.

  “Needless to say, Fern believes he was shot by a detective.”

  “Of course. Who are those men following us?”

  At no point had either Russian appeared to look back.

  “Neighborhood thugs,” answered Zolner. “They rob immigrants who sneak off the ships.”

  Antipov stopped where the shadows were thickest. “Do you have a cigarette?”

  “Of course.” Zolner shook a Lucky Strike out of the pack. Antipov struck a match, let the wind blow it out, and struck another and lit the cigarette, shielding the flame this time expertly. The charade gave the thugs time to catch up. Three Irish, Zolner noted, two of them half drunk, but not enough to slow them down. The third floated with a boxer’s smooth gait. They attacked without a word.

  Zolner retreated to his right, Antipov to his left. To the thugs, they looked like frightened men stumbling into each other, but their paths crossed as smoothly as parts of a machine, and when they finished exchanging places in a dance as precise as it was confusing, the thug charging Zolner was suddenly facing Antipov, and the thug lunging at Antipov was facing Zolner. Zolner dropped his man with a blackjack. Antipov stabbed his with a long, thin dagger.

  The boxer scrambled backwards. Zolner and Antipov blocked any hope of running back to West Street or ahead to Tenth Avenue. He opened his hands in the air to show he was not armed.

  Antipov spoke as if he were not standing five feet away. “Would it not be ironic to fall at the hands of common criminals?”

  “Not likely,” said Zolner.

  The boxer, seeing that flight was hopeless, closed his big hands into ham-size fists and went up on the balls of his feet.

  “He is brave,” said Antipov.

  “And handles himself well,” said Zolner. “What is your name?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “We are deciding whether to kill you. Or pay you.”

  “Pay me? Pay me for what?”

  “Whatever we require. Tell me where you hang out and I will pay you when there’s a job to be done. Easy money.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  “We are bootleggers. We pay easy money for muscle. What is your name?”

  “Ricky Newdell.”

  “What do your pals call you?”

  “They call me Hooks. ’Counta my left hook.”

  Marat Zolner stared at him.

  “My best punch,” Ricky Newdell explained.

  “Where do you hang out?”

  “Lunchroom at 18th and Tenth.”

  “O.K., Hooks. You’ll hear from us. I’m Matt. He’s Jake. Turn around and walk back to West Street.”

  “What about these guys?” The man Zolner had blackjacked was out cold. The man Antipov stabbed had not moved since he fell.

  Zolner and Antipov wiped the blood off their weapons on the men’s coats.

  Ricky Newdell said, “These guys are Gophers.”

  Antipov looked at Zolner. “Goofer?” he asked, pronouncing the gang name as Hooks had. “What is Goofer?”

  “Neighborhood gangsters. Used to rule the Hell’s Kitchen slum. Leaders dead and in prison.”

  Antipov shrugged. “What do we care?”

  “The Gophers ain’t gonna take this lying down,” warned Newdell.

  “Hooks,” said Zolner. “This is your last chance. If you want easy money, turn around and walk away.”

  Hooks Newdell turned around and walked toward West Street. Behind him he heard laughter, and the knife guy with the thick accent saying, “‘Goofers’? Like ‘goofy’?” Hooks did not look back. Something told him with these guys moving into the neighborhood, the Gophers’ days were numbered.

  8

  MARAT ZOLNER steered Yuri Antipov toward Tenth Avenue.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I have an auto.”

  Antipov’s mouth tightened at the sight of the Packard Twin Six, as Zolner had expected it would. Wait until he saw the place Fern had rented for a hideout.

  Zolner drove across the Brooklyn Bridge and east for two hours, over the Brooklyn line into Nassau County, and across Nassau on the Merrick Road to Suffolk and through a dozen villages on the Montauk Highway. The towns were dark, their people sleeping. The farms and forest between the towns were darker, except where roadhouses lit the night, like liners at sea, with colored lights, electric signs, and the headlights of expensive motorcars in parking lots.

  Music spilled from the blazing windows.

  “A cabaret!” said Antipov, breaking the silence that lay heavily between them.

  “They’re called roadhouses in the country, cabarets in the city.”


  “In the middle of nowhere.”

  “Their patrons own automobiles.”

  “And drink alcohol so openly.”

  “Americans are avid lawbreakers.”

  Zolner turned off the highway onto a narrow, dark, empty road. He drove for a mile until it ended at a substantial stone building with a tall, wide, iron-studded door in the middle. A warm, wet wind reeked of marsh and salt water. Overhead, through breaks in the trees, stars shone softly in a hazy sky.

  “You have a big house,” said Antipov.

  “This is the gatehouse.”

  Zolner turned the lights on in the car and blew the horn. They waited.

  “Aren’t you expected?”

  “They have orders to make sure that we are not hijackers or Prohibition officers.”

  At last, a big man in a leather cap stepped from the shadows with one hand in his pocket. “All clear, boss.”

  Zolner said, “This is Yuri. He has the run of the property. Yuri, this is Trucks O’Neal. You can count on him.”

  Trucks O’Neal took a close look and said, “I’ll remember you, Yuri.”

  The iron-studded door swung open, and Zolner drove the Packard through it.

  “Why did you tell him I was ‘Yuri’ instead of ‘Jake’?”

  “Trucks is an American Army veteran and war profiteer turned bootlegger. He is loyal.”

  “How can you be sure? He’s not a comrade.”

  “I saved his skin in Germany, and I am making him wealthy and powerful here. In return, Trucks O’Neal is loyal. Better yet, he’s intelligent enough to stay loyal.”

  He steered onto a curving bluestone driveway. The headlights swept hedgerows and gardens, tennis courts and greenhouses.

  “Czar Nicholas would enjoy this,” Antipov remarked disapprovingly.

  “Czar Nicholas is out of business,” Zolner shot back. He turned off the main drive, which went to the estate house whose roof could be seen darkly against the dim stars, and the tires rumbled over railroad tracks. “This is a private siding that connects to the main line to New York.”

  “Is that a railcar?” The starlight reflected on cut-glass windows.

  “A private car.”