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

around for the right fellow for Pauline.”

“Who?”

“Dashwood is nuts for her.”

Marion looked skeptical. “I’ve always thought that Dashwood is uncommonly close to his mother.”

“She starred in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and taught Dashwood how to shoot.”

“Mr. Freud would have a ball with that one. On the other hand, if anyone could wean Dashwood, it would be Fräulein Grandzau.”

Bell glanced through the crowds again. “Do you suppose you could get Fern Hawley to open up to you?”

“I’ll try. How can we get the prince out of the way?”

“I’ll ask the waiter to tell him he’s wanted on the telephone.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I want to know how Miss Hawley happened to be sitting in her limousine on a slum street outside the back door of Roosevelt Hospital the night the killer who shot Johann Kozlov got away from me. I wondered then, and I wonder more now. It had to be a coincidence. But . . .”

“But you hate coincidences. I’ll try and work my way around to it . . . Too late, there they go!”

Bell watched closely as Fern and Prince André left straight from the dance floor. A waiter ran after them with the feathered boa she had left on her chair.

“You’re right,” said Bell. “She is disappointed in him. There’s something in the angle she holds her head.”

“You should be a detective . . . Where are you going?”

Bell’s reply was a terse, “Don’t follow me.”

The man he had observed at the bar moved quickly to escort Fern and Prince André out of the speakeasy. Bell followed. A thug in a topcoat, who Bell had noticed lounging under the electric canopy earlier, blocked a newspaper photographer trying to snap a picture of Fern and the prince. Moving to stop Bell, he put a hand on his arm.

“Save yourself trouble, mister. Go back inside while you have teeth.”

The tall detective knocked him to the pavement.

But by then the bodyguard—Bell had no doubt anymore he was that—had shut Fern and the prince’s car door. The chauffeur stepped on the gas and sped into busy Lenox Avenue. The bodyguard faced Bell, took in his partner on the sidewalk with a swift glance, and opened his coat to show his pistol. “Want something, mister?”

Bell opened his own coat, closed a big hand around his Browning, and started toward him. But late-night revelers were swarming the sidewalk, and loaded taxis were hauling up to the curb.

The Packard carrying Fern Hawley and Prince André cut in front of a trolley and disappeared. The bodyguard helped his partner stand and they left in a taxi, leaving Isaac Bell to wonder whether they were guarding the wealthy young woman or her pampered gigolo who looked thoroughly capable of guarding himself.

•   •   •

IN THE LIMOUSINE, Marat put his arm around Fern.

She turned her face away. “The bank’s closed.”

“Bank? What bank?”

“It’s an expression. It’s the way a girl says she’s not in the mood.”

“Since when?”

“Since . . . I have the heebie-jeebies about Yuri.”

“The bank did not appear to be closed to Isaac Bell.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Marat. He’s a detective. That’s all we need.”

“You were falling all over him.”

“He’s married.”

“Do you ask me to believe that would stop you?”

“It would stop him—don’t you know anything?”

They rode in silence until the car stopped in front of her town house. The driver jumped out. Marat Zolner signaled through the glass not to open the door.

“Now what?” said Fern.

“How long will this bank be closed?” he asked.

“Not forever. I just need a little time.” She patted his hand. “Don’t worry, it’ll be O.K.”

“We have much to do. You keep asking about the revolution. The revolution requires intense focus. Nothing should distract from it. Therefore, we will do the following: You will stay here while I’m away. Use the time to think. I’ll send for you once I’m established. If you want to come, you’ll come.”

“Where are you going?”

“I told you. I am expanding our operation. I am ready to take Detroit.”

“Who is ‘I’? Who do you mean? I the bootlegger? I the Comintern officer?”

“We are one,” said Marat Zolner. “I. The bootlegger. And the Comintern. This is the plan. This has always been the plan.”

“What of the revolution?”

“We are the revolution.”

“Yuri was the revolution. Johann was the revolution. Look what happened to them.”

“Yuri lost his way. He lost his focus. Dynamite does not forgive mistakes. Johann had the bad luck to run into the wrong detective.”

“You won’t escape the Van Dorns in Detroit.”

“What makes you think that?”

“They have field offices everywhere, including Detroit.”

Zolner reached out and squeezed her leg hard.

“Stop!”

Zolner squeezed harder and said, “The Van Dorn Detroit field office is going out of business.”

21

THIRTY MILES TO THE EAST, that same night, Uncle Donny Darbee was running an oyster boat full of Scotch from Rum Row toward Far Rockaway Inlet. Progress, he was thinking, was a wonderful thing. The modern world worked better than the one he had been born in. Fog lay thick on the water, but a radio signal kept him on course like magic. The big Peerless V-8 his nephews had lifted out of someone’s new automobile made his boat faster than an old-fashioned twenty-horsepower Ford and beat the pants off sails and steam engines. And Prohibition, God bless the politicians who passed it, made running rum far more bankable than pirating coal and easier on an old man’s back.

It looked like the fog had scared off the marine police and the Coast Guard.

Guided by the crash of breakers, he slipped in near silence through the stone breakwaters of the inlet. He continued with his heavily muffled engine throttled way back into Reynolds Channel, a sheltered strait that paralleled the ocean between Long Beach Island and Long Island. Listening for other boats, so as not to collide in the dark, and paying close attention to the changing currents, which indicated his position in the narrow channel, he headed on the course indicated by Robin’s radio. They had two more miles of waters he knew well to a boathouse owned by a