“You should have waited. He could have helped us carry the guns.”
12
“I BLAME THE IRISH.”
“For which, the guns or the booze?”
“Both. The booze was a Sinn Féin smoke screen to get their submachine guns back.”
“Some smoke screen. Seventy-five thousand bucks of twenty-year-old Canadian Club. Sinn Féin oughta stop the civil war and open a speakeasy.”
So went the conversation among detectives hurrying in and out of the Van Dorn bull pen while Isaac Bell, who had set up a desk prominently in the middle of the room to keep everyone on his toes, combed through empty report after empty report on the Van Dorn shooting.
It was the morning after a daring and brilliantly executed late-night raid on the Appraisers’ Stores. The newspapers, which had printed less than half the story the private detectives had pieced together, were having a ball castigating Prohibition, Prohibition officials, Dry agents, U.S. Customs, the Treasury Department, and the New York City police.
“Just wait,” said Darren McKinney, “until they find out about the submachine guns. Heads will roll.” The New York cops and U.S. Customs had kept the gun theft out of the papers, but the story had to come out eventually.
Harry Warren burst in at a dead run. “Isaac! Wait ’til you hear the latest. I was just talking to a customs agent, and he—”
“If it doesn’t have to do with Joe Van Dorn, I don’t want to hear it—” But even as he spoke, Bell thought better of it and changed his mind. Any clues to the raid that were snagged in the Van Dorn net could stand them in good stead with the federal government. “Hold on, I take that back. What’s up?”
Harry leaned in close and spoke in a low voice. “Something’s fishy. They found a dead guy in the machine-gun room. A kid named Newdell. Ricky ‘Hooks’ Newdell. Small-potatoes thug dreaming of prizefights.”
“What’s fishy?”
“He hung out in a lunchroom on 18th. Customs guy didn’t know it, but that’s a Gopher joint. Hooks was a Gopher.”
“You’re kidding. What was a Gopher doing in that operation?”
“My question, too. The Gophers have been washed-up since before the war. The bunch that moved to Chelsea couldn’t pour water out of a hat with directions stamped on the crown.”
“Could they have been hired by Sinn Féin?” Bell asked dubiously.
“Sinn Féin aren’t stupid, and they’ve got plenty of gunmen without tapping Gophers.”
“How did he die?”
“Shot.”
“First I’ve heard there was gunplay.”
“No, no, no, not by customs agents. No, it sounds like one of his pals nailed him.”
Isaac Bell said, “That makes no sense. By all accounts we’ve heard, it was a smooth operation. Guys on that smooth an operation don’t usually kill each other on the job.”
“I agree, but a Gopher where a Gopher shouldn’t be is dead. Something’s up.”
Bell and Harry Warren were interrupted by Ed Tobin. The head of the Boss Boys squad looked like he’d slept under a pier. His suit was rumpled, his hat battered, his complexion sallow. But his eyes glowed with triumph.
“Found a friend of you
r Johnny,” he said. “I’m pretty sure.”
Isaac Bell surged to his feet. “Where?”
“Oysterman I was buying drinks for—Staten Island fellow named Tom Kemp—said a bootlegger he knew disappeared just when he was hoping the guy was going to hire his boat to taxi booze. The bootlegger looked like your description of Johnny, and he had a German accent.”
“Was his name Johnny?”