The Bootlegger (Isaac Bell 7)

Somers yelled again, “Taxi coming up behind us!”

Fear in the boy’s voice made Van Dorn look back.

A long, low black boat was closing fast. Van Dorn had never seen a boat so fast. Forty knots at least. Fifty miles per hour. Thunder chorused from multiple exhaust manifolds. Three dozen straight pipes lanced orange flame into the sky. Triple Liberty motors, massed in a row, each one as powerful as the turbo-supercharged L-12 on Isaac’s flying boat, spewed the fiery blast.

The gun crew on the foredeck couldn’t see it.

Charging from behind, slicing the seas like a knife, the black boat turned as the subchaser turned, holding the angle that screened it from the cannon. The port machine gunner couldn’t see it either, blocked by the wheelhouse. But Joseph Van Dorn could. He pivoted the Lewis gun and opened fire.

The vessel began weaving, jinking sharply left and right, agile as a dragonfly.

A cold smile darkened Van Dorn’s face.

“O.K., boys. That’s how you want it?” He pointed the Lewis gun straight down the middle of the weaving path and fired in bursts, peppering the black boat with a hundred rounds in ten secon

ds. Nearly half his shots hit. But to Van Dorn’s amazement, they bounced off, and he realized, too late, that she was armored with steel sheathing.

He raked the glass windshield behind which the helmsman crouched. The glass starred but did not shatter. Bulletproof. These boys had come prepared. Then the black boat fired back.

It, too, had a Lewis gun. Hidden below the deck, it pivoted up on a hinged mount, and Van Dorn saw in an instant that the fellow firing it knew his business. Scores of bullets drilled through the subchaser’s wooden hull right under where he manned his gun and riddled the chest-high canvas that protected the bridge wing from wind and spray. Van Dorn fired long bursts back. A cool, detached side of his mind marveled that he had not been hit by the withering fire.

Something smacked his chest hard as a thrown cobblestone.

Suddenly, he was falling over the rim of the bridge wing and plummeting toward the deck. The analytical side of his brain noted that the taxi they were chasing was speeding away, covered by machine-gun fire from the black boat, and that, as he fell, the Coast Guard cutter was wheeling to bring the Poole gun to bear. In turning her flank to the seas, she took a wave broadside and heeled steeply to starboard, so that when he finally landed it was not on the narrow deck but on the safety railing that surrounded it. The taut wire cable broke his fall and bounced him overboard into bitter cold water. The last thing he heard was Asa Somers’s shrill, “Mr. Van Dorn!”

2

“POWWOW IN THE ALLEY. Hancock, you cover.”

Isaac Bell appeared to wander casually through the Hotel Gotham’s sumptuous lobby. Four well-dressed house detectives drifted quietly after him, a smooth exodus unnoticed by the paying guests. When all four had assembled in the dark and narrow kitchen alley out back, Bell addressed two by name.

“Clayton. Ellis.”

Tom Clayton and Ed Ellis were typical Van Dorn Protective Services house dicks—tall, broad-shouldered heavyweights, not as sharp as full-fledged detectives but handsome as the Arrow Collar Man. Tricked out in a decent suit, clean white shirt, polished shoes, and four-in-hand necktie, neither of the former Southern Pacific Railroad detectives appeared out of place in an expensive hotel. But pickpockets, sneak thieves, and confidence men recognized bruisers to steer clear of.

“What’s up, Mr. Bell?”

“You’re fired.”

“What for?” Clayton demanded.

“You sullied the name of the Van Dorn Agency.”

“‘Sullied’?” Clayton smirked at his sidekick. “‘Sullied’?”

Ellis said, “I’m with you, pal. ‘Sullied’?”

Bell stifled his impulse to floor them both. The others in their squad had resisted taking bribes. For the good of the agency, he seized the opportunity to remind the honest ones what was at stake and to give them courage to resist temptation. So he answered the mocking question, calmly.

“Mr. Van Dorn built a top-notch outfit that spans the continent. We have offices in every city linked by private telegraph and long-distance telephone. We have hundreds of crack detectives—valuable men who know their business—and thousands of Protective Services boys guarding banks and jewelry shops, escorting bullion shipments, and standing watch in the finest hotels. But the outfit isn’t worth a plugged nickel if clients can’t trust our good name. Van Dorns do not accept graft. You did. You sullied our good name. That is what ‘sullied’ means, and that is why you are fired.”

“Listen here, Mr. Bell, it’s human nature to share the wealth. The bootleggers are hauling it in.”

Ellis chimed in. “The bellhops get their cut delivering bottles to the guests and it’s only fair we get our cut for allowing the booze in the door.”

“Not every bellhop.”

Clayton and Ellis traded a cagy glance. They knew what had happened.