The Bootlegger

Novicki looked down at her hand. Then he looked into her eyes.

Sea captains must be alert, she thought. And unusually observant. Surely—

He spoke at last.

“I’m not certain the old girl could sail as far as England, but I would risk it for you, my dear, if you’re hard-up for gin. In fact,” he added, warming to the fiction, “I would gladly sail her around the Horn to fetch you the wines of Chile or cross the Pacific for Japanese sake.”

With that, Novicki gave her hand a little squeeze, let go of it, and seized Fern’s. His sharp eyes roamed her beautiful face appreciatively, and when a surprised intake of breath from her revealed that he had her attention, he said, “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Hawley. What yacht did you arrive in?”

“Maya.”

“Yes, I saw her come in. Handsome steamer. Beats the newfangled diesels hands down. But may I caution you, if you’re discussing business deals with this young lady”—he clapped Pauline on the back—“hold tight to your fillings and count the spoons!”

“We’re only drinking daiquiris,” said Pauline. “This isn’t business. We just ran into each other down at the harbor.”

“I’m only a tourist,” said Fern. “Would you join us?”

Novicki looked like a man who very much wanted to while away the afternoon drinking daiquiris with two beautiful woman. Pauline shot him an eyeful of No, no, absolutely not!

“Thank you, Miss Hawley… Pauline. Nothing would delight me more. But I don’t like the look of that sky. I want deep water under my bottom, the sooner the better.”

He made his good-byes, choosing an instant when Fern turned to signal the waiter for refills to give Pauline a solemn grin.

Fern watched him churn away. “Did you notice what was going on with him?”

“What do you mean?”

“He was flirting with me.”

“Do you want me to call him back?”

Fern burst out laughing. “No! He’s way too old.”

“Are you sure?”

“O.K., I wouldn’t kick him out of bed. But, no, too late. He’s gone to his ship.”

Pauline shrugged. “All I know is, he’s the nicest rumru

Fern looked up through the palm fronds. “I don’t see what’s wrong with the sky, do you?”

“It looks wonderful,” said Pauline, “though it could be the daiquiris. Oh, mine’s getting empty again.”

“I already called the waiter. Here they come… What shall we drink to? New friends? I can’t believe how we just bumped into each other and, all of a sudden, we’re telling each other things like we’ve been friends forever.”

“To new friends and old friends,” said Pauline, clinking her glass against Fern’s. “And nice rumru

“I’ll leave the rumru

“They’re rough, too, aren’t they?”

“Sometimes… Sometimes they’re real louses. Sometimes they’re the cat’s whiskers.”

“How do you tell them apart?”

Fern put down her drink and looked up at the sky. “You don’t. Until it’s too late.”

32

Isaac Bell inhaled the intoxicating mix of fresh paint, clean oil, and gasoline of a just launched, brand-new express cruiser. New she was, and beautiful, a sleek, ghostly gray that seemed to hover more than float on Biscayne Bay. He nudged her throttles and she got lively. He engaged the mufflers and she was suddenly silent.

A fast Prohibition Bureau boat pulled alongside and signaled him to stop. Bell waved good-bye. He cut out the mufflers and hit the throttles and left the revenuers bouncing on his thunderous wake.

He tore around Biscayne Bay, twirling her spoked wheel to cut figure eights past the hydroplane landings, the towering McAllister Hotel, draped in striped awnings, the Boat Club, and the Biscayne Boulevard finger piers, where the fleets of lumber schooners that supplied the building boom were unloading cypress and yellow pine. In the middle of the bay, off the Miami River, floated the pylons that marked the Motor Boat Race Course. Isaac Bell set an unofficial record around the three-mile circuit at sixty miles an hour.

Lynch & Harding had done themselves proud. She handled like a dream.

He circled a long passenger freighter from Baltimore that was transferring people to a harbor launch. A flying boat approached from the east. Bell raced alongside it as it landed. Then he opened her up and headed for the ocean, tearing under the causeway that linked downtown Miami to Miami Beach and pointing her razor-sharp bow at Government Cut at the south end of the bay. He blasted through the shipping cha

In the ocean swells, she felt big and fast and sturdy. Beyond the settlements, along shores thick with jungle broken repeatedly by the raw scars of clearance and construction, a dark boat shot from a mangrove swamp and chased after him. Bell slowed down and let the boat pull alongside. Three men wearing revolvers on their hips looked him over. Any doubts they were hijackers vanished when they reached for their weapons.

Bell tugged a lever conveniently located in the cockpit. A hatch popped open on the foredeck, and a Lewis gun swiveled up within easy reach. The hijackers raced back to their swamp.

Bell turned around and sped back past Government Cut and along the white sand of Miami Beach. He cut figure eights for the swimmers. Then he thundered back into Biscayne Bay and, having drawn the attention of half of Florida to Marion, he raced back to the dock.

A crowd of boatmen, tourists, and hotel guests had gathered. Bell landed in an explosive flurry of reversed engines, propeller wash, and flaming straight pipes.

“Wonder what you all are going to use that boat for?” drawled an onlooker with a snicker that everyone knew meant rum.

Isaac Bell said, “I’m going to get rich wi

“That’s a good story for the Dries.”

“Want to bet? I’m calling out candidates.”

“Heck, who’d race you? That’s more airplane than boat.”

Bell said, “I heard about a big black boat whose owner thinks he’s hotter than jazz. We’ll see if he’s got the nerve to put his money where his mouth is.”

“Where is he?”

“Lying low,” Bell gri

“A thousand dollars?”

“Call it a finder’s fee. Call it a reward. I intend to call him out.”

“Show us the money.”

Isaac Bell pulled a roll from the pocket of his white duck trousers and flashed a thousand-dollar bill, common currency among top-notch Florida bootleggers. “Tell your friends,” he said. “Share the wealth.”

He tipped his visored skipper’s cap to the ladies and sauntered up the boardwalk to make a public show of lunch on the veranda while the word got around about the thousand. Before he got ten feet, he was waylaid by a beautiful blonde who was wearing a big hat and dark glasses and a white linen sheath dress that the sea breeze shaped to her trim figure.

Marat Zolner focused binoculars on the McAllister Hotel quay.

A long gray rum boat was tied alongside, sleek and muscular as a captured shark. Ten stories above Biscayne Bay, in a top-floor suite, he had watched her slice through Government Cut at sixty miles per hour, streak across the bay, and land just below. He had not been surprised to see Van Dorn Chief Investigator Isaac Bell vault out of her cockpit.

From razor bow to sturdy transom, the gray boat’s powerful lines were first cousin to Black Bird’s, realized by the same Lynch & Harding who had built his boat. And by now he knew that Isaac Bell was relentless.

The Comintern agent had no time for regrets. But for a moment he indulged in speculating what would have happened if he hadn’t shot Joseph Van Dorn. If not for that chance event — a twist of fate that the machine gu