The Bootlegger (Isaac Bell 7)

“I have an aunt who’s formed a committee. But I’m not ready to hang out with a bunch of frumpy old ladies.”

Tobin started another engine. Bell raised his voice to be heard.

“If you were to ‘hang out’ with Dorothy Van Dorn, you would have to get used to men looking over your shoulder to catch a glimpse of her. She’s only a few years older than you are, stylish as Paris, and a dazzling beauty.”

“Sounds like you’ve fallen for her, Isaac.”

“Dorothy could make a good friend. I’ll introduce you.”

“I’ll give you a piece of information in return.” She stepped close to whisper in his ear. “Your ‘colleague’ is in love with you. Pauline never mentioned your name when we talked, of course, but now it’s clear.”

“I’m working on that,” said Bell.

“Ready, Mr. Bell?” called Tobin.

“One second . . . Fern, you told me that Zolner did not want to bomb Wall Street. But you also told me that you didn’t know about the plan in time to stop it.”

“I didn’t. Marat told me afterward, after Yuri died.”

“Why didn’t he want to bomb Wall Street?”

“He had bigger plans. Bombs would distract from the bootlegging plan.”

“Good luck, Fern. Safe passage to Bermuda.” Bell shook her hand, dodged her kiss, and ran down the gangway.

“Cast off.”

• • •

THE VAN DORN EXPRESS CRUISER Marion was ten miles up the Northeast Providence Channel, with Nassau and New Providence Island twenty minutes in her wake, when James Dashwood saw the gale-warning flag lowered from Fort Fincastle. A red flag with a black square in its center took its place.

Dashwood hurried to the cable office to warn Isaac Bell that a hurricane was approaching The Bahamas. But, as he had feared, remote Harbour Island had neither cable nor radiotelegraph. His friends might as well have been on the far side of the moon.

39

“BOSS MAN, HE GO TO RUM ROW.”

The Harbour Islanders who had been rolling gasoline barrels off a sailboat onto the Dunmore Town dock had stopped work to catch Marion’s mooring lines when the big cruiser rumbled into the harbor.

The tiny town occupied a low, narrow spit of land between the lagoon and ocean. Offshore, Atlantic combers pounded the fringing reef. But the sheltered waters inside the reef, where Bell had hoped to see the tanker looming above the shingled cottages, held not a single ship.

Marat Zolner had chosen well. The tiny shipbuilding harbor was both remote and cut off from the world. A four-masted schooner was under construction on shipyard ways, and the British Union Jack flew above a modest wood-frame government building, next to which ground had been broken to build another. But there was no radio tower, which made Dunmore Town not only remote but as cut off from the world as it had been in pirate times.

The Sandra T. Congdon had weighed anchor two days earlier, the islanders said.

Bell looked at Tobin and shook his head. “Making twelve knots, he’s halfway to New York.”

The sky was heavily clouded. They’d left the rain behind, and the forecast of the hurricane moving west over Cuba seemed to hold. But, Ed Tobin grumbled, wind gusts were swinging south of east, and the Dunmore Town residents had pulled small boats out of the water.

“Did you see a big black speedboat about the size of this one?”

“No, mon.”

“The tanker could have hoisted it on deck,” said Tobin.

“No, he’d have to catch up at sea,” said Bell, “if the tanker left two days ago.”

“Black boat last week,” an islander ventured.