The Bootlegger

“I didn’t go to lunch. The nail is worn down like the shoe, so there’s no special marks on it. But I noticed something on the shoe so I ran over to Third Avenue and showed it to a carter. See this little wedge? The carter told me the farrier brazes it onto the shoe to lift the back of the hoof if the horse is standing wrong on it.”

Grady turned the shoe over in his huge fingers. “Horse podiatry?”

“Now look at this mark.” Somers peeled the rubber off the wedge and touched a fingernail to a faint mark pressed into the metal.

Forrer snatched up a magnifying glass. “What is this?… ‘RDNJ’?”

“NJ could mean New Jersey. So RD might be the farrier’s initials.”

“Sounds like you ought to get over to New Jersey and find RD.”

“How?”

“Remember those advertisements in Horseshoers’ for shoes and nails and pads. Where did they tell the farrier to buy their products?”

“The jobber?”

“Work up a list of New Jersey jobbers for blacksmith supplies.”

The bleary-eyed Gang Squad detective, who hadn’t slept in the twenty-four hours after the bombing, made a believable-looking derelict as he pretended to snooze in a doorway across Warren Street from the stable he was watching.

“It took us a while to catch on,” he told Isaac Bell, who hadn’t slept either, when Bell crouched beside him, pretending to give him a cigarette. It was late at night and the streets were empty.

“This guy who looks exactly like Trucks — Ed Tobin swears it’s him — goes in the stable in this side, then he drives out on Murray Street. The backs of the buildings butt together in the middle of the block. He just went in again. Ed’s watching on Murray.”

“Stay here,” said Bell. “Nail him if he comes out. I’ll cover the other side.”

He ran full speed to the corner, down Greenwich, and turned onto Murray.

Ed Tobin was waiting inside a butcher’s van, eye to a peephole. Tired as he was, he flashed Bell a predatory grin. “I snuck close. He’s got one truck left. Loading booze now.”

“How many helpers?”

“None. He’s clearing the place out all alone.”

Bell said, “Looks like he knew Harry was close.”

“If Harry was getting close, what was he doing on Wall Street?”

“Maybe Harry got too close,” said Bell.

“And Trucks killed him? And put him in the wagon?”

“That’s a stable on Warren Street. Where would you put a wagon while you collected dynamite?”

“The same guys.”

The chief investigator and the Gang Squad chief’s onetime apprentice exchanged a grim look.

“I’ve been asking myself something similar,” said Tobin. “Harry shadowed suspects close as glue. Trucks doesn’t have a mark on him. So Harry couldn’t have been following close when he got blown up. But Harry had no reason to be in front of the Morgan Building. He was supposed to be eleven blocks uptown, here at the stable.”

“What you are speculating,” Bell said, “is that Harry was in the wagon.”

“I didn’t want to say it. It sounds too crazy.”

“It’s not crazy,” said Bell. “It is speculative. And it would be purely wild speculation if we were not tracking possible Comintern agents hell-bent on sowing terror.”

“So what if Harry, looking for Trucks, got the drop on them in the stable? What if they turned the tables and killed him?”

Isaac Bell nodded. “That could be why Trucks is ru

“You want to bust in the door?”

“Very much so,” said Bell. “But I’d rather see where he goes. If anyone knows who Marat Zolner is, it’s the gangster who came back home on Zolner’s steamer ticket.”

“Door’s opening!”

“Can you trust this thing to keep up?”

“It’s ru

A heavyset man pulled the doors inward. The streetlight fell on his face. His skin gleamed with perspiration. He had removed his hat, revealing a distinct widow’s peak.

“That’s Trucks,” said Tobin. “No question. See what I said? Not a mark on him.”

Trucks O’Neal stepped back into the warehouse and a moment later drove out in a Dodge delivery van, riding low under the weight of a heavy load.

Bell said, “He didn’t close the door this time. He’s finished. He’s not coming back.”

Tobin jumped behind the steering wheel and stepped on the electric starter.

“Stick close,” said Bell. “I’d rather he spots us than we lose him.”

They followed the Dodge downtown for eight blocks, into the Syrian quarter, and across Rector Street to West Street and down a block. Trucks O’Neal rounded the corner, half a block ahead of Isaac Bell and Ed Tobin. They followed, turning into a dark street that was suddenly ablaze with muzzle flashes.

A staccato roar echoed off the buildings like a thunderstorm of chain lightning. A line of bullets stitched holes in a row of parked cars. Tobin slammed on the brakes.

Isaac Bell threw open the passenger door, collared Tobin with his free hand, and dragged him out with him. As they rolled across the cobbles the butcher van resonated like a tin drum, its sides and windshield punctured repeatedly.

“Thompson .45 submachine gun.” Bell rolled to a crouched position behind a bullet-riddled Model T and whipped his Browning from his coat.

“What are they shooting at us for?” Tobin shouted over the roar, which continued at the same deadly pitch.

“They’re not.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“They’re shooting at the guys shooting back.”

A scattering of pistol fire confirmed that the Van Dorns had driven into the middle of someone else’s gunfight. Tobin drew a short-barreled belly gun, which would be of even less use against the Thompson than Bell’s automatic.

Another storm of bullets raked the street. This time no one shot back. When it stopped, Bell raised his head to look for O’Neal. He saw the Dodge with its tires flattened and its driver’s door open, but no sign of the gangster. A Locomobile burst from a warehouse, careened past the Dodge, and raced around the corner on squealing tires.

And suddenly it was quiet.

Bell knew he had the briefest of moments to find whether Trucks O’Neal had survived before the cops came and took charge. Trailed closely by Tobin, who watched their backs, the tall detective approached the Dodge. It had been riddled, like the Van Dorn van and most of the vehicles in sight. It reeked of spilled alcohol from hundreds of broken bottles. There was no one inside.

Bell heard a groan. They followed the sound into the warehouse from where the automobile had just raced. Cases of whisky were stacked around the walls.

“Glen Urquhart Genuine,” said Tobin. “Same stuff Trucks had at Murray Street. Looks like he got hijacked.”

“But where is Trucks?”

Deeper into the warehouse they found a flashy-looking man in a gaudy suit who had been creased in the shoulder by a bullet. He was struggling to sit up and reach for a pistol that had fallen beside him.

Bell kicked the gun away and knelt by him.

“Who shot you?”

“Who shot me? What are you, a cop?”

“Van Dorn.”

“Same thing.”

“Who shot you?” Isaac Bell repeated coldly.

“No one.”

“What happened here?”

“Beats me.”

“Where’s Trucks O’Neal?”

The gangster surprised Bell. He laughed. “Trucks? Trucks went for a ride.”

“Where?”

“I don’t talk to cops.”

“You’ll wish we were cops,” Tobin growled over Bell’s shoulder. To Bell he said, “This guy I recognize is Joh

Qui

“You’ll need an undertaker if you don’t give us O’Neal,” said Tobin, and then he spoke to Bell as if the gangster was not sprawled on concrete between them. “The way I read it, Trucks is selling the stuff to this guy. Hijacker with the Thompson tries to take the stuff. Mr. Qui