The Bootlegger (Isaac Bell 7)

“Where do I find him?”

“Who knows? I’m telling you, Max Stern ain’t my boss.”

• • •

“ADMIRAL ABE,” said Marat Zolner. “Aren’t you glad you saw reason?”

They were dining on sweetbreads, the most expensive item on the menu at Detroit’s classy new Hotel Wolverine and one that Weintraub could chew without many teeth.

Abe Weintraub shot a murderous glare across the table. He had a moon-shaped face with a small nose, ears, and mouth. He looked, Zolner thought, innocuous, even gentle, except for his dark dead eyes.

“Don’t get the wrong idea. I ain’t no pushover.”

“You made that clear,” said Zolner, who had seen enough Cheka torture chambers to admire a thug as determined as Abe Weintraub not to be broken. His conversion had taken so long that it was a miracle they hadn’t accidentally drowned him. But Weintraub had been worth the trouble. He commanded the Purple Gang’s Jewish Navy by dint of brains, unmatched brutality, and ruthless determination. He knew every Detroit criminal worth knowing, saw them with a clear eye, and knew their weaknesses and their strengths. He would make an aggressive captain of foot soldiers in any revolution.

“Now what?” asked Weintraub, mopping his plate clean with a slice of bread.

“Now you will tell me who to kill.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Tell me which gangsters to get out of our way. Starting at the top.”

“Tell you? Or kill ’em for you?”

It was like discussing terms with a wolf or a shark. Or the hotel’s namesake wolverine. Weintraub understood destruction and only destruction, but he understood it very well. Zolner had set up a number of gangsters like him in New York—to control supply and demand—but none so ferocious.

He said, “You will help me locate them. We will ferret out the chinks in their armor. Then we will kill them.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I will allow you to pick up the pieces.”

Weintraub stared in disbelief. “I thought I heard it all. This takes the cake.”

“I am offering you the city of Detroit,” Marat Zolner said.

“When I’m done, it will be my city. I don’t need you.”

“Would you prefer to wait five years in hopes your enemies all kill each other off? Keeping in mind that the one who survives will emerge strong. Or do you want to get to it right now?”

“Now.”

“Starting at the top, Abe, who do we kill first?”

“Max Stern.”

“Is that a fact?” the Bolshevik asked coldly.

“Max Stern,” Weintraub repeated.

The agents whom Zolner had sent ahead to scout Detroit and Windsor had predicted that the top boss would be a Jew. The Italian gangs had decimated themselves in the murderous Giannola–Vitale mafia wars. A Purple Gang killer named Max Stern had been rated most likely to emerge top dog.

“I’ve heard that, too,” said Zolner.

“Now you hear it from me.”

“Except that I also hear that Stern has disappeared.” The gangster had vanished the very night Black Bird rumbled into her Windsor boathouse.