The Bootlegger

“I don’t suppose our ‘Captain’ friend is waiting at the dock for the rest of his reward.”

Bell said, “Zolner is counterpunching. Question is, where’s he going to hit us next?”

Asa Somers had been in love many times. He had fallen head over heels for Mae Marsh in Intolerance and returned to the movie house again and again. Mary Pickford was next, in Little Lord Fauntleroy, and then Mabel Normand. And of course he fell in love regularly with girls he saw on streetcars until they jumped off at their stops. But never until now with a real live girl.

And Fräulein Grandzau was a real live girl. She was beautiful beyond description, wore wonderful-smelling perfume, and had a way of looking him right in the face when she talked to him. Her eyes were blue, a slatey shade, like the ocean on a su

They ate in wonderful hotels because that’s where the bootleggers ate.

Liquor dealers had to be where they could run into people who might buy their consignments like detectives had to be where they were likeliest to hear the latest about a big tanker full of grain alcohol that for some reason hadn’t shown up yet. And detectives investigating a Comintern agent’s girlfriend had to dress like people she would talk to.

Earlier that evening, they had eaten di

Somers listened carefully to how Fräulein Grandzau used small talk like a wedge.

“When I was in New York, Fern, I kept hearing an expression. Why is the ladies’ lavatory called the powder room?”

Fern laughed. “Girls didn’t go to saloons before Prohibition. Now we go to speakeasies, so they had to add places for ladies to go and they called them powder rooms. To powder their noses? Speaking of which, excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

Fern was gone a long while and when she returned she ended the party all of a sudden, apologizing she had a headache. The yacht’s tender dropped them at the dock. But instead of calling it a night, Fräulein Grandzau had decided they would stop for a drink in a rough bar on Bay Street where she said she hoped to meet a buyer.

So far, no buyer had appeared. Somers didn’t mind. He could sit at a table across from her for the rest of his life and not mind. She drank — drinking a lot less than she pretended to, he noticed — and put him to the test to guess, in a low voice, what was the business of the other patrons. What did this one do? What did that one do? What about the guy passed out in the corner? Not that one. The guy with two guns, a revolver peeking out of his waistband and some other weapon bulging under his coat.

“Bodyguard?”

“Who is he guarding?”

“Maybe it’s his night off,” ventured Somers.

“Maybe.”

“He’s fast asleep.”

“Are you sure?”

“He hasn’t moved since we came in. And the bottle on his table is almost empty.”

“I agree,” she said. “He’s sleeping. What do you suppose he carries in his shoulder holster? Automatic or revolver?”

Somers eyed the bulge. “Revolver.”

“Automatic,” she said. She looked around for another test.

Two big guys came in, bought a bottle at the bar, and sat down at a table facing theirs. Fräulein Grandzau’s German accent, which ordinarily Somers could barely detect, got a little stronger. He heard a v in the word “want.”

“Asa,” she said very quietly. “I vant you to do exactly what I tell you. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you see where I am looking at the floor?”

“Yes, ma’am. Right next to your chair.”

“I want you to stand up on that spot and lean over, close to me, as if you mean to kiss me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now!”

He stood up and leaned close. Her perfume was intoxicating. She reached a hand behind the back of his head, curled her fingers into his hair, and pulled him almost to her lips. “Asa?” she whispered.

“Yes, ma’am?” His mouth was dry, his heart hammering his ribs.

“Did the Coast Guard teach you how to cock an automatic pistol?”

36

Dazed by Pauline Grandzau’s perfume and dumbfounded by her question, Asa Somers asked, “Why, ma’am?”

“Do you know how to cock that gun?” A whisper. Fierce.

“Yes.”

“I want you to go to the drunk. Take the automatic from his shoulder holster and cock it and bring it to me.”

“Wh—?”

“My hand is not strong enough to pull the slide, and my own gun is not heavy enough to stop those two… Don’t look at them!”

Somers glanced at the sleeping drunk. “When?”

“When the shooting starts.”

“Wh—?”

“Now!” She tipped the table on its side so the thick wooden top was facing the two big men like a shield. She kicked her leg high. Her dress flew open. As Somers dived toward the drunk, he glimpsed her snow-white thigh encircled in black lace. He saw a tiny pistol in a half holster, which she drew and cocked in a blur of motion. The shooting started before he reached the drunk, two quick shots like snapped sticks and a sullen Boom! back from a heavier gun.

The gunshots sent everyone in the place diving for the floor and woke up the drunk, who slapped groggily at Somers’s hand. She was right about it being a big automatic — a Colt Navy M1911. Somers jerked the slide, chambering a round. Then he grabbed the revolver before the drunk could and leaped back to Fräulein Grandzau, who by then had fired two more shots. One of the men was down on the floor with a pistol half fallen from his fingers. The other was charging them with a gun in one hand, a knife in the other, blood on his shirt, and murder in his eyes.

Fräulein Grandzau took the automatic in both her tiny hands. She fired once.

The .45 slug knocked the man’s legs out from under him and he went down with a crash.

She turned to Asa, her eyes oddly detached, as if she had left the room earlier.

“Good job, Asa. Now ve auf Wiedersehen before the police.”

Everyone else in the bar had scattered or was still hugging the floor. She led him onto a veranda and down rickety stairs into an alley, back onto Bay Street, past the liquor row of shacks and stables converted to warehouses that were receiving crates and barrels even at night, and onto Frederick Street.

“Who were they?” asked Asa.

“Two Russians who wanted to kill us.”

“How did you know they were Russians?”

“I know Russians.”

Ahead, at last, was their Lucerne Hotel.

“Is it O.K. if I hang on to this?” Somers asked. He opened his coat where he had slipped the drunk’s revolver into his waistband.

“Yes,” she said. “You earned it. Go get some sleep. I have to cable Isaac.”

“No you don’t.”

Asa Somers pointed toward the patio. Isaac Bell was standing in the door, a grim-faced specter in white. Detective Dashwood was across the lobby, one hand inside his coat, and Detective Ed Tobin, the tough Gang Squad guy with the lopsided face, was on the landing up the stairs with a hand inside his coat.

Fräulein Grandzau said, “Go to sleep, Asa. We’ll see you in the morning.”

“We chartered a flying boat,” said Isaac Bell, “thinking Zolner might attack here.”

“They just tried.”