The Bootlegger (Isaac Bell 7)

“You know who grabbed him, don’t you?”

“Yeah, and I ain’t tell

ing you because whatever you do to me they’ll do worse.”

“You want to bet?” asked Bell.

The gangster twisted his head to look imploringly at Ed Tobin. “Listen, buddy. You know who I’m talking about? The guys taking over the docks. Pushing out Lonergan and the rest.”

“Black Hand,” said Tobin.

“The Black Hand set Trucks up. They was waiting for him.”

Isaac Bell and Ed Tobin exchanged a glance. That the Italians, who were shoving the Irish out of the lucrative control of longshore labor, were gunning for Trucks O’Neal was a wrinkle unconnected to the Comintern and Marat Zolner.

Or was it unconnected? Bell wondered. What if Zolner was teaming up with partners? What if he had teamed up New York’s new top dogs? If he had formed a working alliance, then it was very possible that those new partners were doing Zolner a service eliminating a witness who knew enough to threaten their joint schemes.

“Where did the Black Hand take Trucks?” Bell asked.

Tobin leaned closer to whisper. “You better tell us. I have no control over what this guy does to you.”

Bell emphasized Tobin’s warning by sliding his blade deeper into the gangster’s ear. The point grazed his eardrum. Quinn went limp. Bell said, “You already told us they took Trucks for a ‘ride.’ Where?”

“I don’t know for sure. They usually take guys to Brooklyn.”

“Brooklyn’s a big place.”

“Fulton Street.”

“Fulton Street’s a big street.”

“Come on, mister, you’re going to get me in all kinds of trouble.”

“You’re in all kinds of trouble.”

Ed Tobin interceded again, in a manner now less kindly than fatalistic. “Think of this guy as your priest. God’s the only one he’ll tell your confession to and God probably doesn’t care. Where on Fulton?”

“Down by the ferry. Under the bridge.”

• • •

IT WAS LESS THAN A MILE across Lower Manhattan to the Brooklyn Bridge, even skirting the barricades in the Wall Street area where the police were still investigating the explosion. On the bridge, with the sky turning pink and the wind whistling through the bullet holes in the butcher van’s windshield, Ed Tobin asked, “Comintern and Black Hand? Funny combination.”

“Five’ll get you ten the Black Hand doesn’t know that Zolner is Comintern. Just a top-notch bootlegger smart enough to make friends. We can ask Trucks, but you have to step on the gas before they kill him. Go! On the jump!”

They careened through the snakes’ nest of exit ramps on squealing tires and down, down, down to the derelict ferry-landing neighborhood where Fulton Street petered out under the bridge in a slum of flophouses, blind pigs, and greasy spoons. Vagrants slept in doorways. Bell saw no cops anywhere.

The sun had yet to light the Gothic towers of the bridge, but it was reddening the top girders of the skyscrapers under construction across the river on Wall Street. The ferry to Manhattan, which few rode since the bridge had effectively put it out of business long ago, no longer ran at night. Along the waterfront, the shacks and docks and piers appeared abandoned, with peeling paint and splintery decks.

“There’s their Locomobile.”

They pulled up behind the auto they had seen race from the warehouse on Murray Street. It was parked beside a truck in the shadows at the foot of a pier under a broken streetlamp.

“Out on the pier,” said Bell, breaking into a run.

Far away, at the end of the long wooden structure that thrust into the river, a gang of six or seven surrounded a man they were half carrying, half dragging toward the water. Bell pulled his gun, stopped running, and took aim. Careful not to hit Trucks, he fired twice, close, over their heads. A hat flew. A gangster ducked and threw himself flat. The rest held tight, reached the end, and threw Trucks O’Neal into the river.

• • •