“I’m not a Prohibition agent. I’m a businessman and you’re doing business on my block. It costs half to do business on my block.”
“You’re not a government agent?” asked Zolner.
“I just told you.”
“I had to be sure,” said Zolner. “Half, you say?” He dropped one hand into the satchel and the other into his pocket.
“Half— Hey!”
Zolner had crossed the space between them in a single swift step. He smashed the thug’s teeth with a blackjack in his right hand and swung a twelve-inch length of lead pipe against his temple. “Businessman?”
The thug swayed, eyes popped wide, feet frozen to the floor, blood pouring from his mouth. Zolner dropped him to the carpet with a second bone-smashing blow of the lead pipe.
At the front door of the speakeasy he counted the money Tony had waiting, piled it into his satchel, and returned fifty dollars.
“What’s this for?”
“You need a new carpet.”
Before crossing Central Park to Fern’s town house, Zolner made one more stop on the Upper West Side to buy a Prohibition agent breakfast at the Bretton
Hall Hotel. For five hundred dollars, the federal officer told him about a government raid planned against a leading whisky runner’s downtown warehouse.
“Where will they take the booze?”
“Customs. The Appraisers’ Stores, down in the Village.”
Zolner passed the agent a bottle wrapped in burlap.
“What’s this?”
“The real McCoy. Haig & Haig.”
6
“EVERYONE DOWN HERE is praying for Mr. Van Dorn . . . Well, not everyone, but you know what I mean.”
Dr. Shepherd Nuland, the New York County Medical Examiner, indicated a crowd of unclaimed corpses hanging upright in a refrigerated vault and then shook Isaac Bell’s hand warmly. It was an elevator ride and a short walk from Joe Van Dorn’s hospital room to Bellevue’s morgue.
“How’s he doing?”
“The docs aren’t making any promises,” said Bell.
“And how are you doing, Isaac?”
“I’ll feel better after I’ve seen the rumrunner who got shot at Roosevelt Hospital.”
“Figured you might. I’ll do him myself. You take notes.”
He gave Bell a white apron and a gauze face mask scented with oil of cloves and led him to a postmortem table where the body of the murdered rumrunner waited under a sheet. A stenographer was standing by. Nuland told him to go to lunch, and tugged off the sheet.
The Medical Examiner’s blithe disregard for official procedure was a wrenching reminder of Joe Van Dorn’s great gift for friendship. Rich, powerful, and accomplished men across the continent would jump to lend him a hand. Gather debts but never flaunt them, he had taught Bell from the first day of his apprenticeship. Forgive small sins. Offer help. Give favors, they’ll be returned.
Isaac Bell opened his notebook to take Nuland’s dictation.
“Caucasian male. Twenty-five to thirty years old. Sturdy. Muscular.”
Bell saw a large bandage around the man’s left thigh that the bedclothes had hidden last night. The Medical Examiner cut it off with scissors and whistled in amazement. “One tough hombre to walk on that.”