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

a ten-dollar bill. “Are you sure you haven’t seen him?”

Marat Zolner reached for the money and stuffed it in his pocket. “Man who rent stable . . . desk there.” He pointed at the office door.

“Thanks. You gents go on. I’ll wait for him in there.”

Harry Warren was halfway to the office door when Antipov started after him, dagger drawn.

“Was that Russian you were speaking?” asked the detective, turning suddenly and drawing his pistol with blinding speed. He fired once, into the stable floor, an inch from Antipov’s shoe. The Comintern officer skidded to a stop.

Harry Warren glanced at the distant door to the street. No one had been passing by, no one was peering in for the source of the gunshot, which was good. He needed time with these two without the cops.

He said to Zolner, “Translate to your pal to drop his knife before I shoot him. And you keep your hands where I can see them.”

Zolner spoke. Antipov let the dagger fall from his hand.

Warren did not know what he had stumbled into while looking for Trucks O’Neal, but it looked promising. Particularly with the Russian connections Isaac Bell kept turning up. He addressed Zolner in a deliberately conversational tone while watching closely for the man’s reaction. “The reason I ask about Russian is we keep running into a Russian connection to this case we’re trying to solve about who tried to kill our boss. Could be coincidence, though, if it is, your pal’s attempt to stick a knife in my back will require some explaining.”

Marat Zolner and Yuri Antipov stood still as bronze statues. Not even their eyes moved, not even to track the sudden motion of Trucks O’Neal entering silently from the covered alley and clutching a full bottle of counterfeit Glen Urquhart Genuine by the neck.

Harry Warren sensed the rush and whirled. The bottle aimed at the back of his head smashed against his temple, fracturing the thin bone and rupturing the artery under it.

•   •   •

MARAT ZOLNER shut the stable door. Antipov and Trucks O’Neal slung the detective’s body into the wagon beside the dynamite and covered it with more coal.

“Why,” Zolner asked, “are the Van Dorns looking for you?”

“Me?”

“He asked if we had seen you. Why?”

“Say, wait a minute. I didn’t do nothin’ to bring ’em after me.”

“Don’t come back here. We’re done with the stable. We’re done bottling.”

“But there’s eighty thousand bucks of Scotch next door.”

“It’s more like one hundred fifty thousand,” Zolner said quietly.

“Are you blaming me?”

“I’m sending you to Detroit before they catch up with you.”

“I’m not starting over in Detroit.”

Zolner stepped very close and stared down into Trucks’s eyes. “Trucks, I’ve never questioned your loyalty. Remove anything of yours that is incriminating. I’ll have people meet your train. Go! Now!”

O’Neal backed away, spun on his heel, and hurried through the covered alley.

“Kill him,” said Antipov.

“Capitalists first. Open the door.”

Antipov opened the door again.

They sat side by side on the driver’s bench. The horse plodded slowly through the clogged streets of Lower Manhattan, down Broadway to Trinity Church, and turned onto Wall Street. Zolner reined in and set the brake outside No. 23 Wall on the corner of Broad. Left to his own devices, he would have parked the dynamite around the corner at the New York Stock Exchange, the nucleus of the Financial District. But Yuri had chosen the marble headquarters of J. P. Morgan.

He climbed down and adjusted the horse’s feed bag, then knelt by the wagon, pretending to adjust the swingletree while he connected the final detonation wire.

“Cops!”

Yuri Antipov had spotted a policeman coming their way. Marat Zolner climbed back up, sat beside him, and took the reins. The cop pushed closer through the crowd.

Antipov fingered the dagger under his shirt.

“That won’t help this time,” said Zolner. “Wait on the wagon until I’ve dealt with him. I’ll be right back.” He jumped down again.

Yuri Antipov watched Marat Zolner intercept the cop. Would he bribe him? Or blackjack him? Not in front of all these people who thronged the busy intersection. Suddenly, both the cop and Zolner hurried away and melted into the crowd. What had Marat said to him? Antipov was trying to figure out what was going on and what he should do when he heard an alarm clock ring.

19

ISAAC BELL heard the explosion four miles away in the Van Dorns’ St. Regis office. Wildly divergent reports flooded in on the wires and telephones, blaming a dynamite accident on a Jersey City dock, a Lower Manhattan gas main, a subterranean New York Steam Company pipe, then a powder mishap at one of the many Financial District construction sites.

Bell received an urgent call from police headquarters.

“Inspector Condon would appreciate if you’d come down to No. 23 Wall Street.”

The fastest way downtown was on the subway. Bell got as close as he could and ran the rest of the distance from City Hall Station, where they had stopped the trains. He was blocks from Wall Street when he saw windows blown out of buildings. Nearer the explosion, the carnage was horrific. He estimated scores had been killed and hundreds injured. Trucks and taxis were turned upside down, scattered like toys. The dead were huddled on the sidewalk under coats. The street was deep in broken glass. From it, Bell gingerly extracted a cucumber-shaped piece of cast iron with a hole through its length.

He spotted Inspector Condon directing an army of plainclothes and uniforms from the front steps of the Morgan Building. Its windows were smashed from basement to attic, its marble walls pocked with shrapnel and blackened by coal dust. The mutilated carcass of a dray horse lay on the curb. Only the animal’s head was intact, blinders covering its eyes.

“Thanks for coming, Isaac,” Condon said gravely. He was a youthful-looking, fresh-faced son and grandson of cops and universally believed to be the department’s fastest-rising star. “I’m awful sorry, but I have to show you something.”

He handed Bell a battered piece of gold.

“Van Dorn shield.”

“I’m