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

“I wouldn’t know how Park Avenue swells do it, mister, but down here on the docks men who adopt nicknames like Trucks do not leave forwarding addresses.”

•   •   •

“TRUCKS O’NEAL,” said Harry Warren of the Gang Squad and proceeded to demonstrate why the Van Dorn Research boys swore, enviously, that surgeons had exchanged Harry’s brain for a Dewey decimal system gangster catalogue.

“Heavyweight, six-two, busted nose, black hair. Enlisted in ’17, one step ahead of the cops. Army kicked him out with a dishonorable discharge after the war for some sort of profiteering shenanigans. Came home and took up with his old crowd.”

Isaac Bell asked, “Is he a Gopher?”

“No,” said Harry. “He hates the Gophers and they hate him. That’s how he got his nose broken. You know, I haven’t heard much of him lately. Any of you guys?”

One of Harry’s younger men said, “I saw him on Broadway couple of months ago. Chorus girl on his arm, looking prosperous. I figured he was bootlegging.”

Another Gang Squad man said, “I don’t know how prosperous. I’m pretty sure I saw him driving a truck down on Warren Street. Scooted into a stable before I could get a good look.”

“A truck full of hooch,” said Harry Warren, “would make him prosperous.”

“Find him,” said Bell. “Pull out all stops.”

•   •   •

“THIS IS A WONDERFUL BUSINESS,” said Marat Zolner. He strutted restlessly about his improvised bottling plant on Lower Manhattan’s Murray Street. Trucks O’Neal was snoring softly on a cot in the back. A covered alley connected the former warehouse to the stable that Zolner had rented on Warren Street for Antipov’s horse and wagon.

“Smell!” He thrust an open bottle of single-malt whisky under Yuri’s nose.

Antipov recoiled. “It stinks like a peasant hut in winter.”

“That’s peat smoke, craved by connoisseurs. Smell this.” He extended a bottle of clear fluid.

“I smell nothing.”

“Two-hundred-proof industrial grain alcohol from a government-licensed distillery in Pennsylvania. So pure, it’s flammable as gasoline.” He splashed it on the concrete floor, flicked Antipov’s cigarette from his lips, and tossed it. Blue flame jumped waist-high.

“And this.”

He held another bottle over the flame. Antipov stepped back.

Zolner poured its contents on the fire, dousing it. “Water.”

“Listen to me, Marat. I am through waiting.”

But Zolner’s exuberance was not to be derailed.

“So! One part malt whisky, which cost us nothing but Black Bird’s gasoline. Ten parts pure two-hundred-proof grain alcohol, which cost bribes of fifty pennies per bottle, plus ten pennies per bottle for Trucks O’Neal’s payments to thugs to guard the shipment from the distillery. Ten parts water, free from the tap.”

He held up a bottle with a yellow label. “‘Glen Urquhart Genuine Single Malt Whisky’ counterfeit labels, indistinguishable from the original, a penny apiece. Empty bottle and cork, two pennies. Tea for color.

“Voila! One hundred hijacked cases become two thousand cases. Gangsters who have no idea they work for us peddle it to speakeasies and roadhouses for a small cut of seventy-five dollars a case. Rendering pure profit of one hundred twenty thousand dollars for the exclusive use of the Comintern.”

“It is time to take direct action against the capitalists,” said Antipov. “Are you with me or against me?”

“With you, of course.”

He signaled silence with a finger to his lips and led Antipov quietly past the sleeping O’Neal and through the covered alley that connected the back of the bottling plant to the back of the stable.

•   •   •

THE STRONG HORSE that had pulled Yuri Antipov’s wagonload of dynamite from New Jersey had grown restless cooped up in the stall. It snorted eagerly as Zolner and Antipov heaped hundreds of three-inch cast-iron window sash slugs around the explosives and concealed them under shovelfuls of coal. But it grew impatient when Zolner crawled under the wagon to connect the detonator to a battery-powered flashlight and a Waterbury alarm clock—leaving one wire loose, which he would connect only after the wagon stopped lurching and banging on the cobblestones.

The horse began kicking its stall.

“Easy,” Zolner called soothingly. “We’re almost ready.”

The animal calmed down immediately.

“How do you do that?” marveled Antipov, who had never fought on horseback.

“He knows I like him,” said Zolner. “He would never believe what we have planned for him. Would you?” he asked, approaching the animal with an apple.

Yuri, the least sentimental of men, asked, “Couldn’t we unhitch him?”

“The Financial District is crawling with police. The streets and sidewalks are jam-packed at lunch hour. We’ll be lucky to get away on foot, much less leading a horse. All right, are you ready?”

“I’ve been ready for days!”

“I am talking to the horse.”

Zolner opened the stall, said, “Come along,” and hitched the animal to the wagon.

They dressed in workmen’s shirts, trousers, boots, and flat caps, all smudged with coal dust, and rubbed dust on their hands and faces. Zolner climbed up on the driver’s bench and took the reins. Antipov slid open the stable door.

A man who looked like a plainclothes police officer stepped in from the sidewalk. He looked around with quick, hard eyes, took in the horse, Zolner seated in the wagon, and Yuri Antipov frozen with surprise. He opened his coat, revealing a gleaming badge pinned inside the lapel, and a fleeting glimpse of a heavy automatic pistol.

“Have either of you gents seen Charlie ‘Trucks’ O’Neal?”

•   •   •

ZOLNER SPOKE first in Russian, saying to Yuri, “I will distract him for you,” and in heavily accented English, “Ve not know such person.”

“Big guy, six-two, broken nose, black hair.”

“Ve not know such person.”

“That’s funny. ’Cause I hear he rents this stable. And here are you guys with a horse and a wagon, which are staples of the stable business, if you know what I mean.”

“Are you policeman?”

The man stared a moment, appeared to make up his mind, and suddenly sounded more friendly. “Don’t worry, gents, I’m not a cop. Van Dorn private detective. Harry Warren’s my name. I don’t mean to keep you guys from going about your business. Though I’m not sure who’s going to buy your coal in the middle of the summer.”

He opened his coat again, took out a wallet, and flashed