The Bootlegger

“Touch and go. The chief doc promised a progress report in an hour. Two hours ago.”

A terrible hour passed. All looked up when a nurse came in. She whispered to Isaac Bell that there was a telephone call for him in the lobby. They handed him a phone at the reception desk. “McKi

“Right here, Mr. Bell.”

“What do we have?”

“Ed Tobin found the boat the Coasties were chasing. Half-sunk near the Chelsea Piers. Not the boat that shot him. The taxi they were chasing.”

Tobin was a veteran of the New York field office’s Gang Squad and a blood relative of Staten Island families of watermen and coal pirates. As such, Ed Tobin knew the harbor better than the Harbor Squad.

“Booze mostly gone. Looks like they off-loaded into smaller boats. Ed says the cops claim they caught one in the East River.”

“Anyone show up shot in any hospitals?”

“We’re checking every hospital from Bay Shore, Long Island, to Brooklyn, to Staten Island, to Manhattan. Nothing yet.”

“No gunshot wounds in any?”

“None that don’t have a good story attached.”

“Tell me the stories.”

“Two guys who plugged each other disputing the right to sell beer to Bensonhurst speakeasies. Guy in a Herald Square hooch hole shot by his girlfriend for two-timing her. Guy in Roosevelt Hospital shot on the El. That’s it so far, but the night is young.”

“Who shot the guy on the El?”

“Got away. Cops found him alone.”

“Which El? Ninth Avenue?”

“Right. Cops took him to the closest hospital.”

“Cops? Why not ambulance?”

“He was walking under his own steam. Cops found him stumbling down from the Church stop at Saint Paul’s. You know, at 59th?”

“I know where it is.”

The Ninth Avenue Elevated Line, which ran right beside Roosevelt Hospital, started all the way downtown at South Ferry at the edge of the harbor and passed through Chelsea on the way up. A wounded rumru

McKi

“No. I’ll do it.” It was a very slim chance. But it beat hanging around helpless to do anything for Joe Van Dorn.

“How’s the Boss?” McKi

“I don’t know yet. They’re operating.”

“Of all the crazy things…”

“What do you mean?”

“That Mr. Van Dorn happened to be there, on that cutter, of all patrols. How many bootleggers go to the trouble of shooting at the Coast Guard? Anyone with half a brain knows it’s safer to surrender and let your lawyers bust you loose.”

“Good question,” said Bell. He hurried back to the waiting room, thinking that Joe had indeed run into an unlikely piece of bad luck. As McKi

Still no word from the surgeons. Bell asked Dorothy, “Are you all right here? There’s something I have to look into.” She was deathly pale, and he could see she was nearing the end of her rope.

Captain Novicki flung a brawny arm around her shoulders and boomed, “You get the louses who shot him, Isaac. I’ll look after Dorothy and Joe like a mother bear.”

Isaac Bell flagged a cab and raced across town through light late-night traffic. It was less than fifteen minutes from Bellevue to Roosevelt Hospital, a giant three-hundred-fifty-bed red brick building. The hospital and the fortresslike Roman Catholic church of St. Paul the Apostle stood between the Irish and Negro slums of Hell’s Kitchen to the south and San Juan Hill to the north. “Blind pigs,” windowless illegal drinking parlors, darkened the ground floors of tenements. A train rattled overhead as he ran under the El and into the hospital. He gave the front-desk receptionist a look at his gold Van Dorn chief investigator badge, slipped him five dollars, and asked to speak with the patient admitted earlier with a gunshot wound.

“Top floor,” the receptionist told him. “Last room at the end of the hall. Private room, with a police guard.”

“How badly is he wounded?”

“He made it under his own steam.”

In the elevator, Bell folded a sawbuck for the cop.

The elevator opened on the soapy odor of a freshly mopped floor. The hall was empty, the tiles glistening.

Bell hurried down the long corridor. The elevator scissored shut behind him.

Ahead, he heard the sharp bang of a small-caliber pistol.

He ran toward the sound, pulling his Browning from his shoulder holster, and rounded the corner. He saw a stairwell door to his left. The door to the room to his right was half open. He heard a loud groan and saw on the floor blue-uniformed trouser legs and scuffed black brogans. Cop shoes. He pushed inside. A New York Police Department officer lay on his back, holding his head, eyes squeezed shut. He groaned again, “It hoits awful.”

On the bed, a blond-haired man in hospital garb lay on his side, curled like a fetus, his chin tucked tightly to his chest. The gunshot Bell had heard had been fired point-blank. A tiny red hole half the diameter of a dime pierced the back of his neck, with a ring of blood seared around the rim.

3

The window was open.

Bell thrust his head out. The square top of St. Paul’s south tower stood at eye level across the street. Beneath the window, the hospital’s sheer façade dropped twelve stories to the pavement.

He ran to the stairwell, opened the fire door, and listened for footsteps. Silence. Had the killer stopped some floors down? He couldn’t have reached the ground floor yet. Had he bolted out of the stairwell into a lower corridor? Had he climbed the stairs to the roof?

Pistol in hand, Bell raced up the flight, pushed through a door onto the tar-surfaced roof. A smoky sky reflected the dim lights of the neighborhood. Elevator-machine penthouses, stairwell penthouses, and chimneys loomed in the dark. Skylights cast up electric light from the rooms under them. He listened. Far below, another El rattled past. A shadow flickered behind the glow of a skylight, and Bell sprang after it.

He ran in silence, footfalls light on the soft tar, saw the shadow pass another skylight, and put on a burst of speed. He was twenty feet behind when the figure ahead stopped abruptly and whirled around.

Bell dived through the air, tucked his shoulder, clasped his gun to his torso, and rolled as he hit the tar. Two shots cracked in rapid succession, and lead flew through the space he had occupied an instant before.

The killer ducked behind an elevator house.

Bell ran around the other side. He saw a flash of light. A stairwell door opened just wide enough for a man. Bell pegged a shot at the strong, supple, reptilian silhouette, but it slipped away with fluid grace.

He ran to the door, ducked low, and yanked it open. He heard the ru

Bell jumped to his feet and tore after the killer.

Suddenly, he had a clear shot. For a precious instant he was looking straight down at the crown of the man’s flat cap. He aimed his Browning, the modified No. 2 that he had carried for years. At this range he could not miss. He turned smoothly to keep the ru