The Bootlegger (Isaac Bell 7)

Two bullets had perforated the flesh. The examiner measured them as an inch and a half apart. He glanced at Bell. “Tight pattern.”

“Lewis gun.”

Bell wrote rapidly in a clear hand as Nuland went on to describe numerous healed bullet and knife wounds that scarred limbs and trunk, a broken nose, and missing teeth. The examiner noted that some of the scars were quite old, acquired in childhood.

“Your classic street-gang kid . . . All right, let’s see what finally caught up with him.”

Nuland noted the absence of an exit wound in the throat, mouth, and face, then wrestled the body onto its belly. There were more healed scars on the back of the torso and a single large hole in the posterior thigh where the Lewis gun slugs had exited jointly. Finally, he addressed the tiny, half-a-dime-size wound that Bell had seen just under the hairline in the nape of the neck.

“Point-blank range, small bore . . . Twenty-five caliber, probably . . . Powder tattooing around the flame zone . . . Powder grains embedded in the corneum . . . Powder grains in the mucosum . . .”

He scraped the grains from the skin’s outer and inner layers onto glass slides.

“Denser pattern of powder tattooing below the wound . . .” He looked up at Bell. “This Frenchman during the war worked out a system to gauge whether a bullet wound was courtesy of the Germans or self-inflicted . . . The Army wanted proof to prosecute malingerers who tried to get out of the trenches by shooting themselves in the leg. If we can believe Monsieur Chavigny, the heavier concentration under this wound indicates the bullet entered on an upward slant. Hand me that saw—let’s go find it . . . How you holding up, Isaac, need a bucket?”

“Getting hungry . . . Shall I run and get us sandwiches?”

“Corned beef . . . But let’s find the bullet first.”

Bell handed him a hammer and a chisel.

“Thanks . . . Where . . . ? Oh, thanks.” He took the forceps from Bell. “Aha! That’s why it didn’t come out his mouth. It’s in his brain! . . . Here we are. A little .25, just like I told you.”

Isaac Bell stared at the mangled remains of the man who had either been the thug who machine-gunned Joe Van Dorn or an accomplice.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why what?” said Nuland, holding the slug to the light.

“Why didn’t it exit from his mouth?”

“Good question . . . Looks to me like the guy’s head was bent forward—sharply—chin to chest.” Nuland demonstrated by tucking his own chin to his chest. “Bullet angles into the nape, under or through the occipital bone—through, in this instance—and up into the skull. Easy on the victim. Dead in a flash, no pain.”

“Easy on the killer, too,” said Isaac Bell.

“How do you mean?”

“No death struggle, no blood.”

• • •

“DO YOU HAVE TIME to see me off, Isaac?” asked Pauline Grandzau.

The doctors allowed no one but Dorothy, Captain Novicki, and Isaac Bell in Joseph Van Dorn’s room, which didn’t stop detectives from rushing to Bellevue to offer condolences to his wife and wish the Boss well and donate blood in the event of additional operations. The most striking visitor, by far, was Fräulein Privatdetektive Pauline Grandzau, chief of the Berlin field office.

The beautiful young German had won her detective spurs before the war when she was a teenage library student who helped Isaac Bell solve the Thief case.

“Are you going back already?” Bell asked. He was rushing off to the police laboratory, where, he had just learned, they were examining a pistol shell found in the murdered rumrunner’s hospital room. “Seems like you just got here.”

“I’m afraid so. Nieuw Amsterdam sails this afternoon.”

He reached automatically for his pocket watch, then shot his cuff instead to check the time. Strapped to his wrist was the perfect substitute for a man who had his hands on the controls of an airplane, racing boat, or motorcar—a Cartier “Tank,” which Marion, his wife, had given him for their anniversary.

“I’ll do my best to get to the boat,” he promised. Pauline, after all, had risked her life to help him behind German lines.

• • •

HOLLAND AMERICA LINERS sailed from a Hoboken pier.