The Bootlegger by Clive Cussler (novels in english TXT) 📗

“I’ll get it out of him,” said Bell.

“He won’t talk to a detective. He thinks we’re the same as cops. Can’t blame him, if he’s hoping to make a living running booze— Hey, where’re you going, Isaac?”

“Tell the garage to send over a Stutz Bearcat.”

The tall detective strode to the costume room, stripped off his clothes, and put on a one-hundred-thirty-dollar pin-striped navy suit that he had waiting in a closet. Its coat had a pinched waist and was cut to accentuate his broad shoulders. He knotted a silk necktie, folded a matching handkerchief and inserted it in the breast pocket, and transferred the contents of his pockets. From a rack of hats, he chose one carefully, a dark Borsalino, then studied his reflection in a full-length mirror. He laced spats over his boots and looked again.

Something else was missing.

He unbuttoned his coat and rearranged his belongings. He closed it, pulled the Borsalino low over his eyes, and returned to the bull pen. “Let’s go.”

Tobin said, “That’s why you want a Stutz. It’ll make you look like a high-class bootlegger.”

“That, and the fact that it has a three-hundred-sixty-cubic-inch engine that puts out eighty horsepower,” said Bell. “The image ought to convince your man I intend to hire his boat.”

“I like the gun bulge.”

“Don’t tell my tailor.”

Bell opened his coat to show Tobin the notebook he had shoved behind his shoulder holster, deliberately puckering the cloth that his tailor had so skillfully crafted to conceal the Browning.

•   •   •

THEY DROVE THE STUTZ to the Battery and took it across to Staten Island on the ferry. From the St. George landing, they drove past the mansions and resort hotels of Richmond Terrace and along the Kill Van Kull, a narrow, winding strait of water that separated Staten Island from New Jersey and led to New York Harbor in either direction. Tobin got out of the car at Bridge Creek and pointed Bell in the direction of Tom Kemp’s oyster boat.

Bell drove within sight of the boat and parked the car on the side of the road where Kemp would see it when he looked up from the motor he was working on. Then he swaggered down the gangway onto a rickety floating dock. Kemp’s vessel was typical of the workboats that New York oystermen had been converting from sail to motor power since long before the war. It was broad and flat and thirty feet long. The motor sat in a hole in the deck, and Bell saw immediately that it was anything but typical. He recognized an eight-hundred-twenty-five-cubic-inch, six-cylinder Pierce-Arrow that Tom must have pulled out of a wrecked touring car. A maze of tubing indicated that he had added on an oversize oil pump to keep it lubricated when the boat angled its bow up at speed.

“How fast does this thing go?” he asked the figure crouched over it with tools scattered beside him.

“Who wants to know?” Kemp said without bothering to look up.

Bell stepped onto the boat without being invited—a sin, Ed Tobin had told him, that a waterman would equate with burning an American flag or insulting his mother. Kemp jumped to his feet. He was a big man with arms and shoulders that bulged from lifting oyster tongs since boyhood. Bell moved closer, two feet from the man, close enough for him to smell his cologne and have to crane his neck to meet his cold gaze.

“I want to know. How fast does your boat go?”

Tom Kemp took note of Bell’s expression. His eyes fixed on the bulge under his coat. “Thirty knots.”

“What’s that in miles per hour?”

“Jeez, mister, I don’t know. Thirty-five?”

“How fast when it’s loaded?”

“Depends with what.”

“Booze.”

“Mister, booze is—”

“Profitable,” said Bell, and before Tom could say anything else, “I hear two different stories about you, Mr. Kemp. One says you’re available to run rum. The other says you’ve already been hired. Which is it? Are you available or not?”

“I’m available.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah . . . You don’t believe me?”

“What happened to the German guy?” Bell shot back. Now he had to wait. Would Kemp answer, What German guy? Would he say, The German guy disappeared?

“How do you know about the German?” Kemp demanded.

Bell repeated, coldly, “What happened to the German guy?”

“I don’t know. He was hanging out, looking for a boat. I thought we had a deal. But he never showed.”

“When was this?”

“What do you care?”

Bell said, “When I learn a lot about a fellow who I’m going to trust with ten thousand bucks of my booze, I also learn what questions to ask to see if he lies to me. When did the German say he would show?”

“Sunday.”

Bell nodded. Johnny had died Saturday. He could have been intending to make another run Sunday.

“When did he tell you Sunday?”

“Last week.”

“O.K. You’re doing pretty good so far. Next question: What’s his name?”

“He called himself Johnny.”

“I know he called himself Johnny. What’s his real name?”

“What do you mean? It’s Johnny.”

“Germans don’t call themselves Johnny.”

“Oh yeah. Well, Johann. Something like that. Johann.”

“You’re doing O.K., Tom. Tell me his last name and we’re in business.”

Tom Kemp wet his lips. Bell suspected that the oysterman knew Johann’s last name but didn’t want to tell. He wondered why it mattered to him.

“Tom, I thought we’re on the square.”

“Kozlov. Johann Kozlov.”

“Good,” said Bell. “Very good.” Finally, a breakthrough, but he still wondered why Tom hesitated to reveal Kozlov’s name. He pulled a large roll of bills from his pocket and peeled off a hundred-dollar bill.

“Down payment,” he said. As Tom Kemp reached eagerly for the money, Bell asked, “Did you know him long?”

“Nope.”

“Then how’d you meet him?”

Tom wet his lips again.

Bell held tightly to the bill. “How did Johann know where to find you?”

“I don’t know. He just found me.”

“Why would he trust you?”

“I got an uncle works on the ships. Stoker. He hooked up with Johann Kozlov when the Wobblies were trying to put some backbone in the seamen’s union.”

“Johann Kozlov was a Wobbly?” Bell could not conceal his surprise. The Wobblies, the Industrial Workers