“Darned lucky. Thankfully, I don’t have to tell Joe right away. Bad enough admitting to you that I broke the law.”
“I’m not a cop,” said Bell. “And I’m not a priest.”
“You’re a Van Dorn, that’s worse. Joe sets high standards. It would be easier telling a cop or a priest. This is just embarrassing as hell. But I’m telling you for a reason.”
“What else happened?”
“I saw the black boat everyone’s talking about.”
Bell’s eyes lit up. “Describe it!”
The old sea captain, not surprisingly, was an excellent witness. He had observed closely and recalled details. He estimated that the boat was sixty or seventy feet long. “Narrow beam. She rides very low in the water, but she’ll be seakindly with that flared bow. Three Libertys in the motor box. And there was room in the box for an extra standing by in case one stopped running. Forward cockpit, room for four or five men. She looks small because she’s built so fine, but she is one big boat. I’ll bet she’ll carry a thousand cases.”
“Guns?”
“Oh yes. Sounded like the Lewis the Navy had on the subchasers. And a mammoth searchlight. Big as a destroyer’s.”
“Armor?”
Novicki shrugged his brawny shoulders. “I don’t know, I wasn’t shooting back.”
“How fast is she? Joe thought she turned fifty knots.”
“Those Libertys roared like she could.”
“It sounds very much like what Joe described. How’d you happen to survive?”
“Took my chances in the drink.”
“You swam ashore?” Bell asked, astonished. The seawater was cold and rough and Novicki had to be pushing seventy.
“No. I clambered aboard my boat, stuffed canvas in the holes they chopped, and bailed like mad until we drifted onto the beach. The Inlet Coast Guard Station lent a hand. Lucky the thieves took every last bag of booze, so I wasn’t breaking any laws.”
“Close call all around,” said Bell.
The old man hung his head. “I feel like a damned fool. I was out of a job. Broke. Fellow offered me money to make the taxi run. Sounded like easy money.”
“How many runs did you do?”
“It was my first.”
“Want some advice?”
“Yeah, I know. Don’t do it again.”
“Running rum will get you killed. The smuggling business is changing, fast — gangsters are taking over.”
“Based on last night,” Novicki said wryly, “I can’t argue with that.”
Bell said, “Maybe Barnacle Bill should go back to sea.”
“Isaac, I’d love to. Damned few windjammers left since the war sunk so many. No one’s going to put a man my age in charge of a steamer.”
“I’ll bet I can put you on a windjammer,” said Bell. “I talked to fellows in the Bahamas liquor business — I’m working every angle in this case — and they operate on the ‘lawful’ side, shipping Scotch and gin from Britain and rum from Hispaniola to Nassau. It’s a legal, aboveboard enterprise — at least until the rumrunners take it from Nassau. How would you feel if I could wrangle you a job sailing a rum schooner from the Caribbean up to The Bahamas?”
“If they’d hire an old man.”
“They’ll hire any qualified master who’s still breathing. Few young captains can be trusted with a sailing ship. And seafaring geezers are in short supply, what with so many captains taking up the booze business. What do you say?”
“I’d be mighty grateful.”
Isaac Bell thrust out his hand. “Put her there. We’ll shake on it. And don’t worry, Joe won’t hear about this from me.”
“I’ll tell him myself as soon as he’s up to hearing it. I won’t lie to a friend. But, Isaac, there’s one more thing I should tell you.”
Bell smiled. “I hope you haven’t rifled the poor box.”
“Didn’t burn down any churches either,” Novicki smiled back. “I don’t know what it means. I thought I heard the hijackers shouting in Russian.”
“Russian? Are you sure?”
“The Lewis gun was going to beat the band, but I’ve sailed with Russians — right good seamen when sober — and I swear they could have been yelling Russian. Sure as heck weren’t English.”
Isaac Bell dampened his excitement at this news. He did not want to encourage Novicki to embellish beyond what he believed. “There are many foreign sailors on Rum Row. Could they have been sailors up from the Caribbean?”
“No, I’d recognize the Caribbean dialect.”
“There’s a slew of Italian gangsters in the booze line. Maybe it was a ship from Italy?”
“No, they weren’t Eye-talian. Coulda been German, but the more I think on it, I heard Russian. Or Polish, I suppose. Except Russian doesn’t make sense. I mean, I could imagine Russians anchoring on Rum Row to sell the stuff, I suppose, but not running it to the beach. That’s for local fellows who know the water.”
“I’m glad you came to me, Dave.”
“Might this help you nail the thugs who shot Joe?”
“It could,” said Bell. Considering, he thought to himself, that a German-Russian rumrunner had been shot, in the grisly Cheka way, with a bullet that could have been propelled by Russian smokeless powder. “Go say good-bye to Joe and Dorothy and pack your sea chest.”
“I hate leaving them.”
“They’ll get by. I’m here, Dorothy’s strong, and, with any luck, Joe will continue improving.”
“If he doesn’t get another infection.”
“You being here can’t stop an infection,” Bell said firmly. He reached for his wallet. “Buy a train ticket to Miami. I’ll have a wire about the ship waiting for you at the station. Depending on where the ship is, you’ll have to take a steamer either to Nassau or down to Jamaica or Hispaniola.”
“I can’t take your money.”
Bell was not surprised by Novicki’s reluctance and had prepared for it. He extended a thick wad of bills. “It’s not my money, it’s Van Dorn money. And I’m hiring you to send me a report on the Nassau-to-Miami rum-running before you ship out for the Caribbean.”
Novicki set a stubborn jaw.
“It’s not charity,” Bell insisted firmly. “I’m convinced that the illegal booze business is about to become a national criminal enterprise. If I’m right, then the smuggling and bootlegging at entry points like Detroit and Florida are going to attract the same criminals who are getting rich in New York. I’ve already put a top man in Detroit. The fact that you are going to Miami means that you can help me out down there.”
“I’ll get myself down there on my own.”
Bell grabbed his hand and pressed the money into it. “I need you there right away. You’re alert and observant, Dave. I need all the help you can give me.”
He walked Captain Novicki out the door and hurried back to the bull pen, where he leveled an imperious finger at three bespectacled detectives. Dressed in vests, bow ties, and banded shirtsleeves, they looked less like private investigators than hard-eyed, humorless bookkeepers.
Adler, Kliegman, and Marcum gathered around his desk.
“The high-powered armored rum boat that machine-gunned the Boss is prowling the coast again,” Bell said. “Grady Forrer will pinpoint the location of boatyards in Long Island, New York, and New Jersey that are capable of building such a vessel. You gents will canvas them to find out which one launched her. Pretend that your bootlegger boss is offering top dollar to buy one like it — only faster. Telephone me the instant you find one and I’ll be there with the money.”
Something else that the cool-headed old geezer told him about the black boat had lodged in the back of Bell’s mind. Despite ducking bullets and swimming for his life, Dave Novicki had recalled in fine detail a long rank of three engines spitting fire from a motor box near the stern. He had speculated that the box had room for a fourth engine. That the fourth was not spitting fire indicated either that it had broken down or, as likely, was a replacement standing by in case one of the three regulars stopped running.