The Bootlegger (Isaac Bell 7)

The famous black prizefighter’s Lenox Avenue speakeasy was Fern’s favorite cabaret. A hot jazz band drew the cream of the Park Avenue crowd. They came uptown in limousines and taxis, dressed to the nines, after private dinner parties, theater, and the opera. Zolner enjoyed it, too, especially while playing the part of an aristocratic Russian émigré out on the town with his American benefactress. It was great fun to be rich, fun to slum with movie stars and gangsters and young flappers in short hair and shorter skirts.

“Yuri did not understand,” he said gently. “But he was coming around to seeing America the way it is going.”

“But where are we going?” asked Fern. She had been impatient for results before Yuri was killed. Now she was obsessed.

“We are going to a city where a narrow river, which a speedboat can cross in minutes, is all that separates a legally wet nation from a legally dry nation.”

“Detroit,” said Fern, who had kept up to date on every aspect of Prohibition since Zolner first hatched his scheme.

“Detroit. Three of every four drinks poured in the United States come from Detroit. Detroit sells to Saint Louis, New Orleans, Kansas City, and Denver, the West, Midwest, and South.”

“But the Purple Gang and the River Gang are fighting to control it. They own the police. They own the politicians.”

Marat Zolner reached under the table and took her knee in a firm grip. “That is why we are going to Detroit.”

“But what of the revolution?” Fern repeated defiantly. She looked away, refusing to meet Zolner’s eye. Her own eyes fell on the smiling Jack Johnson, who was greeting a striking couple at the door.

“Look! There’s Isaac Bell.”

20

“WELCOME BACK, ISAAC. And Mrs. Bell, what a pleasure to see you again.”

Former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson—a remarkably fit-looking forty-three-year-old black man—cut a splendid figure in a dark suit with chalk-white stripes. He bowed low over Marion’s hand.

“Would it be too much to hope that you are making a new picture in New York?”

“From now on, I’m shooting all my movies in New York. Nothing in Hollywood can hold a candle to Club Deluxe.”

Johnson accepted the compliment with a hearty laugh.

“By the way, Isaac, thank you for the cigars.”

“You thanked me already, Jack. They were the least I could do.”

Johnson had served a stretch at Leavenworth—railroaded into the penitentiary on a false Mann Act charge—and Isaac Bell, like many of the great prizefighter’s admirers, had sent boxes of the finest La Aroma de Cubas to help him through the year. “I see you’re looking to fight Dempsey. Or is that just newspaper talk?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re a mighty fit forty-three and Jack Dempsey’s twenty-six.”

“I believe I could lick him. I’m feeling tip-top, in better condition than ever.”

“You look it,” said Bell.

“I don’t want to fight any second-raters and neither does Dempsey. It’ll be a heck of a battle. I’ll tell you this, though.” Jack Johnson lowered his voice. “I better win. The hoodlums are moving in on me here. I won’t own this joint much longer.”

“Who?” asked Bell.

“Some bootlegger gangster they’re about to set loose from Sing Sing. I’m told he’s planning to buy me out cheap and redecorate with ‘jungle’ stuff, palm trees and all that. I won’t have much say in it unless I want to go to war with guns and knives, and that I am too old for.”

“Which gangster?”

Jack Johnson looked out at his busy cabaret. He smiled at the sight of the packed tables, rushing waiters, and crowded dance floor. “Don’t know yet, though I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got some scouts in here watching me right now. Like I say, it’s time for me to go back in the ring.”

• • •

MARAT ZOLNER recognized the man talking to Jack Johnson as the Van Dorn detective who pursued him the night he executed Johann Kozlov.