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

Between capitalists and proletariat. Between owners and workers.” She touched Bell’s arm confidingly. “I’d never even called them workers before. I called them workmen. Or, as my father referred to them, ‘hands.’ Never people.”

“Prince André sounds unusually broad-minded for a Russian aristocrat. If there were more like him, they wouldn’t have had a revolution.”

“He can be sensitive.”

“Do you know what he’s up to now?”

“Business interests, I gather.”

“Did he ever ask you to invest in his interests?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“It’s a cliché of our times. The impoverished European aristocrat courts the wealthy American heiress.”

“Not this heiress. All he asked was to take him to Storms.”

“Storms?”

“Storms & Storms. One of my father’s brokers.” She laughed. “It was so funny. Stormy old Storms was quaking, terrified that André wanted to borrow money. He knew the cliché. When it was just the opposite.”

“What was opposite?”

“André gave him oodles to invest.”

Bell looked up at the sky. A scrim of cloud was spreading from the south. It had reddened the horizon at dawn. Now it seemed thicker . . . Cloud the issue, Joe Van Dorn taught apprentices. Throw them off with two more questions after you hit pay dirt.

“Would you have lunch with me at my hotel?”

“Let’s stay on the boat,” said Fern. “The chef has lobsters. Not our proper New England lobsters—they have no claws—but if we share a third, we won’t miss claws.”

“I wish we could,” said Bell, “but I have to send a cable.”

“About Prince André?”

“No. But there was something else I wanted to ask about him. I was wondering how a refugee survives suddenly losing . . . all this . . . comfort, I guess, that privileged people like you and I take for granted.” He gestured at her yacht, the gleaming brightwork, the polished brass, the attentive stewards. “That Prince André took for granted. What do you suppose is his greatest strength?”

“He’s an optimist.”

•   •   •

THREE VAN DORN DETECTIVES—Adler, Kliegman, and Marcum, dressed like auditors in vested suits, bowler hats, and wire-rimmed glasses, and carrying green eyeshades in their bulging briefcases—paused before entering the Wall Street brokerage house of Storms & Storms to observe the Morgan Building, where the cops had found Detective Warren’s gold badge. Other than some shrapnel gouges in the marble wall, there was no sign of the unsolved bombing.

They addressed their old friend as if he were alive. “Hang on a moment longer, Harry, we’re going to get some back.”

•   •   •

THE BLUE-UNIFORMED GUARD at the front door ushered them in with a respectful bow.

Senior partner Newtown Storms’s secretary was less easily impressed.

“Whom do you gentlemen represent?”

“Adler, Kliegman & Marcum,” said Adler.

“I’m not familiar with your firm.”

“We are auditors. Our clients include the Enforcement Division of the Internal Revenue Service.”

“What business do you have with Mr. Storms?”

“Income tax evasion.”

“Mr. Storms has paid his taxes.”

“A client of his has not.”

That got them into Storms’s office. The patrician stockbroker kept them standing in front of his rosewood desk while he fingered their business cards, which were so freshly printed, Adler could smell the ink.

“Let me set you straight, gentlemen. I am not a government official. It is not my job to collect income taxes.”

Adler asked, “Is it your job to help your clients evade taxes?”

“Of course not. It is my job to help my clients minimize their taxes.”

Kliegman spoke up. “Minimizing. A slippery slope to the depths of evasion.”

“Particularly,” Adler said, “when enormous transactions are made with cash.”

“Cash is honest,” Storms shot back. “Cash deters excessive spending. People think twice when they have to count it out on the barrel-head instead of blithely scribbling a check in the hopes their banker covers their overdraft. Cash backed by gold. That’s my motto.”

The three detectives stood silent as bronze statues.

Storms asked, “Are you inquiring about a particular client of mine? Or are you just fishing?”

“Prince André.”

That got them invitations to sit down. Storms looked considerably less sure of himself. When his voice tube whistled, he jerked off the cap and growled, “Do not disturb me.”

“How rich is he?” Adler asked bluntly.

“Prince André is a wealthy man. He was wealthy before the market took off like a Roman candle, and he is wealthier now. And I assure you that, come next April 15, he will pay his fair taxes on his earnings in the market.”

“We have no doubt,” said Adler.

“Then why are you here?”

“Cash, Mr. Storms. Our old reliable friend cash. Backed by gold.”

The mild-mannered Adler suddenly had a steel gleam in his eye, and steel in his voice. “Cash can come from untaxed gains. Even illegal gains. Does he have private accounts or does he represent a corporation?”

Storms looked a little surprised by the question, and Adler feared he had misstepped. It turned out he hadn’t. Storms said, “Both actually. He has some corporate entities that maintain some accounts. And he also trusts us with the privilege of managing his personal holdings.”

“Numerous accounts of cash?”

Storms sprang to his feet. “I have spoken far too freely about private matters, don’t you think?”

“We think that a government prosecutor might wonder whether that cash was invested with you to hide all trace of ill-gotten gains.”

“I don’t like your implication, sir.”

Adler quoted from his dictionary: “Concealing the origins of money obtained illegally by passing it through a complex sequence of banking transfers or commercial transactions is a crime.”

Kliegman quoted from his: “To transfer funds of dubious or illegal origin to a foreign country, and then later recover them from what seem to be clean sources, is a crime.”

Adler added, “To help a criminal hide cash is to become an accomplice in the crime of tax evasion.”

Detective Marcum had yet to speak. He had a deep voice that rumbled like a chain-drive “Bull Dog” truck. “To gain by not paying taxes is tax evasion, whether the original gain is legal or illegal.”

“No one has ever been prosecuted for that,” Storms protested.

“Yet,” said Marcum.

“Would you like to be the first?”

Newtown Storms said, staunchly, “An American citizen would be violating his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination if he admitted to illegal gains on his tax return.”

“Would you like