The Bootlegger

Stymied, and hoping to see the problem from another, more productive angle, Bell put it to Dashwood in the starkest terms. “We can’t count on explosives breaching the main tu

Dashwood asked, “Why don’t we just raid the tu

“It won’t stay shut long,” said Bell. “The cops and courts are for sale on both sides of the river. They’ll put pictures in the papers of a prosecutor swinging an ax at a case of whisky. But hush money will keep that booze safe where it is. Zolner and his partners will lay low ’til the politicians are done demanding another ‘drive’ against liquor, then back to business — unless we flood the tu

“Where do you think he’ll go?”

Bell answered, “Where do I think? Listen.”

He sat at the private-wire Morse key and tapped out a message to New York.

FORWARD FINAL PAYMENT LYNCH & HARDING MARINE.

DELIVER MARION EXPRESS CRUISER MIAMI.

“We have to stop him from setting up business the way he’s doing here in Detroit and back in New York.”

“What if he goes to The Bahamas?” Dashwood asked.

“He won’t. He has no reason to go to Nassau. Nassau is like Canada, a relatively safe base for legal liquor. Florida is lawless, an import-and-distribution center like Detroit and New York where he can fight to expand and take over.”

Bell gave Dashwood a cold smile and added, “If for some reason he does go to Nassau, Nassau is three hours from Miami by fast boat. And Marion is going to be one fast boat.”

He wired Grady again.

HOW FAR FROM SHORE DID HENNESSY TUNNEL STOP?

Grady telephoned long-distance.

“Too complicated for the wire. I found handwritten engineers’ notes on the survey that suggest they stopped excavating just where the bank began to slope upward.”

Bell spread open his Detroit River chart. “There’s a deep cha

“They must have dredged it deeper since the survey. There’s no cha

“It hugs the shore,” said Bell. “The dredge would have struck the crown of the tu

He improvised calipers with two fingers and compared the distance to the chart’s scale.

Grady said, “The other reason I telephoned…”

“What?” Bell was distracted. It wasn’t so much the headache — they were tapering off, and the plague of double vision had pretty much ended. He was puzzling some way to drop his improvised depth charge exactly one hundred feet offshore. “What did you say, Grady?”

“The Research Department is assembling a complete Prohibition file — an up-to-date encyclopedia of bootleggers, gangsters, rumru

“Good job. That’ll show the Justice Department what we can do.”

“I thought I’d pop down to The Bahamas. Get the latest on the Nassau import-export racket. What do you think?”

“I think you’d get in Pauline’s way.”

“Oh, that’s right, she’s down there,” Grady said i

“Pauline is quite all right on her own… Actually, you raise a good point. She could use a trustworthy ru

APPRENTICE ASA SOMERS COMING YOUR WAY.

GO-GETTER SAVED JVD BACON.

Then Bell called for the Protective Services op, whom he had sent earlier to the library.

“Go buy a rope.”

“How long?”

“One hundred four feet.”

“One hundred four?”

“The four’s for a loop. Watch carefully how they measure.”

Jack Payne, a Van Dorn detective on loan from the Cleveland field office, had been a combat engineer in the trenches during the war. Working in an empty backwater slip Bell located near the Detroit Yacht Club, Payne rigged the dynamite with waterproof fuses and detonators and screwed twenty pounds of old horseshoes to each of the forty-pound cases so they would sink fast.

After dark, they tied the cases into one heavy packet perched on the stern of one of the Gar Wood speedboats.

“Just to review your scheme, Mr. Bell,” said Detective Payne, “keep in mind that that shock wave will go up as well as down. The moment you drop these crates, jam your throttles and get away from there as fast as you can.”

“The Bureau chief found the tu

“Sorry, Mr. Bell. They’re dickering the cost of protection right now.”

Isaac Bell’s response was a fathomless smile.

“Tell me all about it.”

“They somehow co

Bell cut him off. “I don’t care how. What can you tell me about the tu

“It’s got more booze in it than we thought. A lot more.”

“Guards?”

“Armies. Tons of them at the ferry terminal, tons in Ecorse. Every building around that boathouse is theirs. Including the second one we raided.”

“How many guards are in the tu

“They don’t let anyone in the tu

Isaac Bell said, “Good. I was a little concerned about not-so-i

Isaac Bell let Ed Tobin drive the dynamite boat. In the dark, a son of Staten Island coal pirates would make a shrewder helmsman than a scion of Boston bankers. The black water seemed to swallow distance. Cha

Shadowed by the guard boat, they raced down the Detroit River. As Ecorse came into view, Tobin lined up the boathouse, shore, and ferry terminal lights. He cut his throttles abruptly and swerved toward the row of boathouses that thrust out from the bank. Guards heard them coming and hurried out on their docks.

Twenty feet from the red boathouse dock, Tobin engaged his propellers in reverse, spun his helm, and raced his engines. The Gar Wood stopped abruptly, pivoted ninety degrees, and thundered backwards toward the dock pilings.

Isaac Bell jumped up on the stern and braced a boot on the dynamite. Ed switched his propellers forward again and rammed his throttles. The boat stopped six inches from a piling. Bell looped the rope around it and knotted the fastest bowline he had ever tied.

“Go!”

Ed Tobin eased forward, slowly paying out the rope. Bell let it slide loosely through his hands and watched for the bitter end. He heard men on the docks shouting for lights.

“Stop!” he called to Tobin.

They were precisely one hundred feet from the dock, over the joint between the two tu

Bell flicked a flame from an Austrian cigarette lighter made of a rifle cartridge that Pauline Grandzau had given him. Thompson submachine guns sprayed their once seen, never forgotten red flashes. Bullets whipped past, fa