The Bootlegger

“I’m not familiar with your firm.”

“We are auditors. Our clients include the Enforcement Division of the Internal Revenue Service.”

“What business do you have with Mr. Storms?”

“Income tax evasion.”

“Mr. Storms has paid his taxes.”

“A client of his has not.”

That got them into Storms’s office. The patrician stockbroker kept them standing in front of his rosewood desk while he fingered their business cards, which were so freshly printed, Adler could smell the ink.

“Let me set you straight, gentlemen. I am not a government official. It is not my job to collect income taxes.”

Adler asked, “Is it your job to help your clients evade taxes?”

“Of course not. It is my job to help my clients minimize their taxes.”

Kliegman spoke up. “Minimizing. A slippery slope to the depths of evasion.”

“Particularly,” Adler said, “when enormous transactions are made with cash.”

“Cash is honest,” Storms shot back. “Cash deters excessive spending. People think twice when they have to count it out on the barrel-head instead of blithely scribbling a check in the hopes their banker covers their overdraft. Cash backed by gold. That’s my motto.”

The three detectives stood silent as bronze statues.

Storms asked, “Are you inquiring about a particular client of mine? Or are you just fishing?”

“Prince André.”

That got them invitations to sit down. Storms looked considerably less sure of himself. When his voice tube whistled, he jerked off the cap and growled, “Do not disturb me.”

“How rich is he?” Adler asked bluntly.

“Prince André is a wealthy man. He was wealthy before the market took off like a Roman candle, and he is wealthier now. And I assure you that, come next April 15, he will pay his fair taxes on his earnings in the market.”

“We have no doubt,” said Adler.

“Then why are you here?”

“Cash, Mr. Storms. Our old reliable friend cash. Backed by gold.”

The mild-ma

Storms looked a little surprised by the question, and Adler feared he had misstepped. It turned out he hadn’t. Storms said, “Both actually. He has some corporate entities that maintain some accounts. And he also trusts us with the privilege of managing his personal holdings.”

“Numerous accounts of cash?”

Storms sprang to his feet. “I have spoken far too freely about private matters, don’t you think?”

“We think that a government prosecutor might wonder whether that cash was invested with you to hide all trace of ill-gotten gains.”

“I don’t like your implication, sir.”

Adler quoted from his dictionary: “Concealing the origins of money obtained illegally by passing it through a complex sequence of banking transfers or commercial transactions is a crime.”

Kliegman quoted from his: “To transfer funds of dubious or illegal origin to a foreign country, and then later recover them from what seem to be clean sources, is a crime.”

Adler added, “To help a criminal hide cash is to become an accomplice in the crime of tax evasion.”

Detective Marcum had yet to speak. He had a deep voice that rumbled like a chain-drive “Bull Dog” truck. “To gain by not paying taxes is tax evasion, whether the original gain is legal or illegal.”

“No one has ever been prosecuted for that,” Storms protested.

“Yet,” said Marcum.

“Would you like to be the first?”

Newtown Storms said, staunchly, “An American citizen would be violating his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination if he admitted to illegal gains on his tax return.”

“Would you like to spend years in appeal, waiting for the Supreme Court to eventually rule on that dubious interpretation of our constitution?”

“Mr. Storms, we’re not asking for your money. We are asking you to betray a crook.”

“‘Crook’ is not a word that applies to the gentlemen classes my firm serves.”

“What if we told you he was a Bolshevik?”

Storms laughed. “Next, you’ll tell me President Harding wants America to join the League of Nations. And Marcus Garvey is signing on with the Ku Klux Klan.”

“What if it were true that Prince André is a Bolshevik?”

“How can he be a Bolshevik? The revolutionaries kicked him out of his country and seized his estates.”

“What if Prince André is a Bolshevik?”

“If it were true, Prince André would be a traitor to his class, and I would tell you everything you want to know.”

The wind was rising in Nassau, shivering flags and slapping halyards, when Isaac Bell returned to the steam yacht Maya. Fern Hawley received him in the main salon, which had been designed in the old Art Nouveau mode by the Tiffany Company. It was a breathtaking sight, thought Bell, that would force anyone questioning the pleasures of wealth to change his tune.

“Why, Mr. Bell, where are your swim trunks?”

“I hired a launch. There’s a mean chop on the harbor. Besides, it’s getting dark and I’m told sharks dine at night.”

“I’d have sent you a tender,” said Fern. “Would you like a drink?”

Bell said that he thought a drink would be a wonderful idea.

“Daiquiris or Scotch?”

“Scotch.”

“We’re in luck. I have the real McCoy. Haig & Haig.”

They touched glasses. She said, “I’m glad to see you again. Lunch was over too soon.”

“I have not been one hundred percent honest with you,” Bell replied.

Fern gave him a big smile. “Is it too much to hope that you lied when you told me you were always faithful to your wife?”

“I lied when I said I was not sending a cable about Prince André.”

“That much I figured out on my own. What’s up, Mr. Bell… I should call you Isaac, for gosh sake. I am going to call you Isaac. What’s up, Isaac?”

“Prince André is a traitor.”

Fern Hawley looked mystified. “A traitor to what? Russia? Russia is no more. Not his Russia.”

“He is a traitor to your cause.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Fern, let’s stop kidding each other. Prince André’s name is Marat Zolner.”

“I know him as Prince André.”

“Marat Zolner is a bootlegger.”

“So are half the enterprising businessmen in America.”

“Bootlegging is a masquerade. Marat Zolner is a Comintern agent conspiring against America.”

“He can’t be a traitor to America. He’s not American — or are you suggesting that I am the traitor? Traitoress?”

Isaac Bell did not smile back at her.

“Did Marat Zolner set the Wall Street bomb?”

“No.”

“So you do know Prince André as Marat Zolner.”

Fern answered tartly. “Spare me the battle of wits, Isaac. It’s obvious you know a lot.”

Bell’s reply was a cold, “How do you know he didn’t set that bomb?”

“Because Yuri did.”

“Who is Yuri?”

“Yuri Antipov. A Comintern agent sent by Moscow to ride herd on Marat. Marat did not want to bomb Wall Street. So Yuri did it.”

“Did you know he was going to explode a bomb on a crowded street?”

“No! They didn’t tell me such things. I only learned afterward.”

“Where is Yuri?”

“He died in the explosion.”

“Along with forty i

She hung her head. “They don’t think the way we do. They’ve experienced terrible things we haven’t.”

“Those forty have.”

“Moscow made Yuri a ‘hero of the revolution.’ Not Marat. He didn’t do it.”

“Why do you say Zolner didn’t do it? Just because he wasn’t killed in the blast?”

“Marat would never make such a mistake. He’s too meticulous. Yuri was impetuous. He would blunder ahead. He couldn’t help himself.”

Bell looked at her and she looked away. He said, “Could Zolner have made a ‘mistake,’ deliberately?”

“Why?”