The Bootlegger (Isaac Bell 7)

She held the tube to her ear, then she turned back to Bell. “I’m sorry. He didn’t either. I wish I could help you. Although . . .” Another smile. “The car’s running again. If you truly need a taxi, I can offer you a ride.”

Bell looked up and down the street. He hadn’t a hope of finding him. His best bet was to go back to the hospital on the chance the cop had caught a close look at who banged him on his head.

“If I see him, should I—”

“Don’t go near him.”

“I won’t,” she promised. “I meant, if I should see him, I can report him to you. You should give me your card.”

Bell gave her his Van Dorn Detective Agency business card and introduced himself. “Isaac Bell.”

“A detective? I suppose that makes him a criminal.”

“He just shot a man.”

“You don’t say!” She fished her own card from a tiny clutch and extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Bell. I’m Fern Hawley.”

Bell knew her name from the society columns, and her family’s name as well, having attended college in the city of New Haven. She was the sole heir of a Connecticut hardware-and-firearms magnate. And he was familiar with her sort, having been in France in the latter days of the war when independent, adventurous American heiresses indulged by their fathers—or left their own fortunes by their mothers and were therefore under the thumb of no man—flocked to Paris. Many came to do good, nursing the wounded or feeding starving refugees. Many had come to have a good time, run around with European aristocrats, and pay the rent for bohemian painters and writers.

He wondered why she had been on this slum street when her limousine broke down, but the fact was, New York’s wealthy young went where they pleased. Possibly headed to West 54th, where Park Avenue society “rubbernecked” at the drunks and brawlers marched through Men’s Night Court. Or exiting a side door from a private visit with a hospital patient.

“Are you sure I can’t offer you a ride, Mr. Bell?”

“Thank you, Miss Hawley, but not tonight.” He glanced up and down the street again. Back to the hospital to interview the cop before his sergeant arrived.

“Good night.” Fern Hawley tapped the chauffeur’s partition with her cigarette holder. The Packard Twin Six glided from the curb and turned uptown on Tenth Avenue.

• • •

FERN HAWLEY opened the chauffeur’s partition and said, “I tried. The man just would not get in the car.”

“Have you lost your touch?”

“Don’t make me laugh . . . Is Johann all right?”

“Dead.”

“Dead? How can Johann be dead? He walked into the hospital on his own two legs.”

Marat Zolner pulled off his visored chauffeur hat and dropped it beside his pistol. His hair was soaked with perspiration and he was breathing hard from running.

“The detective shot him,” he told her.

4

THE COP GUARDING the murdered rumrunner had not seen the man who knocked him for a loop. That was all that Bell could learn from the angry police detectives swarming the hospital. A uniformed officer gave him his hat, which he had found in the stairwell. His derringer was still in it. Bell thanked him with a double sawbuck and raced back to Bellevue Hospital.

Joe Van Dorn was finally out of surgery.

The exhausted surgeons made no promises. “If he makes it through the next hour, he’ll have a chance in the hour after that. At least he’s strong. I can’t recall a man his age so fit.”

“Heart like a cathedral bell!” boomed Captain Novicki with a reassuring glance at Dorothy Van Dorn.

Dorothy asked, “How many bullets?”

“Madam,” said the surgeon. “This is hardly the time nor place, nor a topic to discuss with a woman.”

“My father was a scientist and an engineer. We discussed his work daily. I am asking you how many bullets struck my