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

winter in Florida, where more and more of the rich headed when the weather got cold. Typically, though, society people of Fern’s means were building elaborate homes in Palm Beach and Miami. She could be testing the waters. But for what? Winter holidays or Marat Zolner’s empire?

The answer came in a contrite wire from Dashwood.

MISSED BLACK BIRD FLATCAR YESTERDAY MIAMI.

•   •   •

“COUPLE OF PROHIBITION DICKS asking to see you, Isaac,” said Texas Walt.

Bell looked up from the sandwiches he was sharing at the kitchen chopping block with Leon Randolph, the Texas Walt’s Roadhouse cook whom he knew from the days Leon had cooked on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe’s Overland Limited.

“How did they know to find me here?”

“I wondered, too. I persuaded them to leave their artillery with the hatcheck.”

The bar was empty at this hour but for a bartender who was polishing a sawed-off shotgun.

Bell’s stern features darkened with such anger when he recognized the Volstead agents that Texas Walt’s hands would have strayed toward his Colts if the bartender didn’t already have them covered.

“We got to talk, Mr. Bell.”

Tom Clayton and Ed Ellis, the former Protective Services house detectives Bell had fired from the Hotel Gotham, looked prosperous. Their cheeks were pink from the barbershop, their hair slick. They wore signet rings on their fingers and remained somewhat handsome, despite imperfectly healed broken noses.

“We’ve already bribed your superiors,” Bell answered coldly.

“We know,” Ed Ellis said. “Bureau chief told us Texas Walt’s is hands-off.”

“It should be for what it cost us. Did you inform your chief that we’re Van Dorns?”

“No!” cried Clayton.

“We wouldn’t squeal on you!” said Ellis.

“Why not?”

“We don’t want to gum up your case.”

“Mighty big of you,” Bell said, more than a little puzzled.

“Can we talk in private?” asked Clayton.

“How’d you happen to land in Detroit?”

Clayton ducked his head.

Ellis rubbed his nose. “We knew we weren’t welcome in New York anymore.”

Clayton immediately said, “Hey, no hard feelings, Mr. Bell. We got what we deserved.”

“We just thank God they didn’t kill that little kid.”

“Detroit,” said Bell. “I asked how did you two end up in Detroit?”

“We figured the Detroit Prohibition Bureau had to be a gold mine, with all the booze coming from Canada.”

“Came out to wangle jobs,” said Clayton, and Ellis explained matter-of-factly, “Government doesn’t pay much, but the salary’s only a start, if you know what we mean.”

“You mean graft,” said Bell. “Hush money, payoffs, protection.”

“We ain’t lying to you.”

But their story didn’t add up. Congress had organized the Prohibition Bureau to be exempt from Civil Service regulations. As a result, its system of hiring agents was completely corrupt, and the bureau was hobbled by cronyism, nepotism, and patronage.

“How did you manage Volstead jobs? Nobody gets in the bureau without some bigwig pulling wires.”

“We know a bigwig,” said Ellis.

Clayton explained. “A Michigan politician staying at the Gotham was getting in a jam with his missus over a manicure girl.”

“We fixed it for him—arranged for a onetime gift—and he was mighty grateful. ‘If you boys ever need anything in Detroit, look me up.’”

“We looked him up.”

“Presto!” said Ellis and patted his badge.

Isaac Bell turned to Walt Hatfield. “I can handle them.”

The bartender put away his shotgun.

Bell took Clayton and Ellis to the cellar where he had interrogated Tony. “It better be good, boys. I’m in no mood to play.” Which was putting it mildly. Harry Warren was dead, and Marat Zolner was getting stronger every day.

Clayton and Ellis exchanged significant looks. They nudged each other. Then they chorused, “We heard you’re looking for a tunnel.”

28

“WE CAN HELP YOU.”

“Where did you hear we’re looking for it?” asked Bell.

“Everybody knows the Van Dorns have a new office down by the tracks,” said Clayton.

“Hoods and cops wonder what you’re up to,” said Ellis.

“They heard you’re asking about the tunnel.”

“It sort of happens,” said Ellis. “Word gets around.”

“Questions raise questions,” Bell snapped. “Go on!”

“Our bosses at the bureau caught wind of the tunnel, too. They’re hunting night and day. They reckon it’ll be worth a fortune in protection.”

“And they’re worried you’ll get there first,” said Ellis.

Clayton said, “Me and Ed knew they wouldn’t share it with us—they hog the big payoffs—so me and him did a little snooping on our own. Thinking maybe we’d get there first. We heard the tunnel guys drowned a bunch of Eye-talians working on it. They weren’t hoods, just some bricklayers and stonemasons.”

“Murdered ’em because they knew where it was,” said Ellis.

“It didn’t seem right.”

“Making us think that maybe getting rich off Prohibition isn’t completely right either,” said Ellis.

Bell stared hard at them, wanting to believe that they had stumbled onto valuable information but not clear about their motives. They gazed back, wide-eyed and guileless, and Bell recalled, with growing excitement, that a prison chaplain once told him that he was often surprised by the particular event that shunted a sinner to a righteous path.

“Do you know where the tunnel is?” he asked.

“Pretty fair idea,” said Clayton.

“Downriver,” said Ellis. “It starts on Fighting Island.”

“Comes up under a boathouse in Ecorse.”

This sounded pretty good, thought Bell. Fighting Island was logical—a large, empty mid-river island on the Canada side of the international boundary. Ecorse on the United States side was a lawless, wide-open town next door to Detroit with elected officials and cops in the bootleggers’ pockets.

“Do you know where the boathouse is?”

“Got some good hunches,” said Ellis.

Bell said, “There are two hundred boathouses on the Ecorse waterfront and dozens of slips.”

“Gotta be near the creek,” said Clayton, narrowing the location considerably.

“Where’d your hunches come from?”

“Heard our boss talking.”

“Any theories who dug it?”

“The boss thought Polacks started digging it. Polacks from Poletown. Started in Ecorse. Then Eye-talians pushed ’em out. Then there was talk of Russians.”

“Russians?” asked Bell, keeping his own information to himself. “Where did Russians come from?”

“Could be talk, but there’s thousands of foreigners in Detroit.”

“Where does your boss stand on this?”

Clayton’s answer suggested a second motive for their conversion: a healthy desire to seek shelter in Fort Van