The Bootlegger (Isaac Bell 7)
“Oh yeah?”
“Ever hear that?”
The bootlegger shrugged. “I heard they got a speakeasy in a dirigible.”
“Like the Germans bombed London with?” asked Bell. He had heard it, too. It was one of the crazier Prohibition tales floating around the Motor City. No one was clear how the giant airship remained invisible in daylight or how the customers got from the ground to the hovering casino.
“How do they get up to it?”
“They must have figured out how to land an airplane on it.”
Bell said, “I think I’ll stick to roadhouses. What’s your name, by the way? I’m Joe.”
The bootlegger gave him a long look and decided to play it safe. “I’m Joe, too. Pleased to meet you, Joe.”
They shook hands. Bell said, “I also heard about hijackers with a black boat.”
“There’s a lot of black boats on the river.”
“This one’s got a Lewis gun.”
Joe nodded sagely. “You can’t go wrong with Lewis guns.”
“Ever hear about a tunnel under the river?”
“Sure. They got a train tunnel.”
“For hauling whisky?”
“Yeah, you grease a brakeman and slip some on a freight car.”
“But you never heard about a tunnel just for booze?”
Joe looked Isaac Bell in the eye. “A tunnel would be a surefire way to haul hooch. If I had heard it, it would be my tunnel and I sure as hell wouldn’t tell anybody about it.”
• • •
ISAAC BELL went back to the bar. Another fight broke out. It looked to Bell to be a staged battle intended to intimidate the paying customers and impress upon the owners the wisdom of paying for protection.
“Tarnation!” said Texas Walt. “Here we go again.”
Hatfield waded in. Ed Tobin joined him, trading his silver cocktail tray for a blackjack, and laid two men on the floor. The thug directing the theatrics pulled a gun.
Bell and Scudder moved swiftly to help. They needn’t have bothered. Light glinted on Hatfield’s scalping knife, and the gun fell from a hand flayed to the bone. Van Dorn waiters wrapped it in napkins and marched the gunman through the kitchen door. A woman stepped up for Walt’s autograph and the movie star obliged.
“Pay dirt!” he grinned when he got back to the bar. “We have finally attracted a higher grade of extortionist. He threatened to sell me protection ‘insurance.’ A step up from plain old ‘protection.’”
Bell said, “I’ll see if you put him in a talking mood.”
He found the gunman propped up on a keg outside the kitchen door, clutching his hand and guarded by an enormous Protective Services man. The napkins reeked of whisky that the Van Dorns had doused it with to prevent infection. He was white-faced with shock. But he retained the in-charge demeanor of a racket boss used to running the show.
Bell drew up another keg. “Hurt much?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you pulled a gun on the wrong guy.”
“No kidding. Where’d a movie star learn to use a knife like that? I thought they was all mamma’s boys. I never seen it coming.”