Joseph Van Dorn’s oldest friend, whom Isaac Bell had introduced her to at Bellevue Hospital, spotted her instantly and waved.
“Captain Novicki,” she blurted, jumping to her feet and trying to send signals with her eyes.
Dave Novicki churned toward their table, robust as a barrel of beer and guileless as a manatee.
She greeted him in a rush of words, hoping to contain him. “I’m so surprised to see you here, I thought you set sail already, may I introduce my new friend, Miss Fern Hawley of New York? She just landed in her yacht, you must have seen it in the harbor from your ship.” She took a breath and turned to Fern. “Captain Novicki commands a schooner that brings my import-export firm’s rum from, uhhm, Hispaniola, is it, Captain? Or will it be Jamaica next shipment?”
Novicki looked puzzled and about to speak, which could not possibly help.
Pauline stuck out her hand. Novicki took it, and she squeezed his horny paw as hard as she could, saying with a laugh she could only hope did not sound hysterical, “Or will you sail all the way to England to bring me some gin?”
Novicki looked down at her hand. Then he looked into her eyes.
Sea captains must be alert, she thought. And unusually observant. Surely—
He spoke at last.
“I’m not certain the old girl could sail as far as England, but I would risk it for you, my dear, if you’re hard-up for gin. In fact,” he added, warming to the fiction, “I would gladly sail her around the Horn to fetch you the wines of Chile or cross the Pacific for Japanese sake.”
With that, Novicki gave her hand a little squeeze, let go of it, and seized Fern’s. His sharp eyes roamed her beautiful face appreciatively, and when a surprised intake of breath from her revealed that he had her attention, he said, “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Hawley. What yacht did you arrive in?”
“Maya.”
“Yes, I saw her come in. Handsome steamer. Beats the newfangled diesels hands down. But may I caution you, if you’re discussing business deals with this young lady”—he clapped Pauline on the back—“hold tight to your fillings and count the spoons!”
“We’re only drinking daiquiris,” said Pauline. “This isn’t business. We just ran into each other down at the harbor.”
“I’m only a tourist,” said Fern. “Would you join us?”
Novicki looked like a man who very much wanted to while away the afternoon drinking daiquiris with two beautiful woman. Pauline shot him an eyeful of No, no, absolutely not!
“Thank you, Miss Hawley… Pauline. Nothing would delight me more. But I don’t like the look of that sky. I want deep water under my bottom, the sooner the better.”
He made his good-byes, choosing an instant when Fern turned to signal the waiter for refills to give Pauline a solemn grin.
Fern watched him churn away. “Did you notice what was going on with him?”
“What do you mean?”
“He was flirting with me.”
“Do you want me to call him back?”
Fern burst out laughing. “No! He’s way too old.”
“Are you sure?”
“O.K., I wouldn’t kick him out of bed. But, no, too late. He’s gone to his ship.”
Pauline shrugged. “All I know is, he’s the nicest rumrunner I’ve ever met. Most of them are pretty rough.” She took a sip from her glass.
Fern looked up through the palm fronds. “I don’t see what’s wrong with the sky, do you?”
“It looks wonderful,” said Pauline, “though it could be the daiquiris. Oh, mine’s getting empty again.”
“I already called the waiter. Here they come… What shall we drink to? New friends? I can’t believe how we just bumped into each other and, all of a sudden, we’re telling each other things like we’ve been friends forever.”
“To new friends and old friends,” said Pauline, clinking her glass against Fern’s. “And nice rumrunners.”
“I’ll leave the rumrunners to you. Bootleggers are more my style.”
“They’re rough, too, aren’t they?”
“Sometimes… Sometimes they’re real louses. Sometimes they’re the cat’s whiskers.”
“How do you tell them apart?”
Fern put down her drink and looked up at the sky. “You don’t. Until it’s too late.”
32
Isaac Bell inhaled the intoxicating mix of fresh paint, clean oil, and gasoline of a just launched, brand-new express cruiser. New she was, and beautiful, a sleek, ghostly gray that seemed to hover more than float on Biscayne Bay. He nudged her throttles and she got lively. He engaged the mufflers and she was suddenly silent.
A fast Prohibition Bureau boat pulled alongside and signaled him to stop. Bell waved good-bye. He cut out the mufflers and hit the throttles and left the revenuers bouncing on his thunderous wake.
He tore around Biscayne Bay, twirling her spoked wheel to cut figure eights past the hydroplane landings, the towering McAllister Hotel, draped in striped awnings, the Boat Club, and the Biscayne Boulevard finger piers, where the fleets of lumber schooners that supplied the building boom were unloading cypress and yellow pine. In the middle of the bay, off the Miami River, floated the pylons that marked the Motor Boat Race Course. Isaac Bell set an unofficial record around the three-mile circuit at sixty miles an hour.
Lynch & Harding had done themselves proud. She handled like a dream.
He circled a long passenger freighter from Baltimore that was transferring people to a harbor launch. A flying boat approached from the east. Bell raced alongside it as it landed. Then he opened her up and headed for the ocean, tearing under the causeway that linked downtown Miami to Miami Beach and pointing her razor-sharp bow at Government Cut at the south end of the bay. He blasted through the shipping channel at top speed and roared down the Atlantic Coast.
In the ocean swells, she felt big and fast and sturdy. Beyond the settlements, along shores thick with jungle broken repeatedly by the raw scars of clearance and construction, a dark boat shot from a mangrove swamp and chased after him. Bell slowed down and let the boat pull alongside. Three men wearing revolvers on their hips looked him over. Any doubts they were hijackers vanished when they reached for their weapons.
Bell tugged a lever conveniently located in the cockpit. A hatch popped open on the foredeck, and a Lewis gun swiveled up within easy reach. The hijackers raced back to their swamp.
Bell turned around and sped back past Government Cut and along the white sand of Miami Beach. He cut figure eights for the swimmers. Then he thundered back into Biscayne Bay and, having drawn the attention of half of Florida to Marion, he raced back to the dock.
A crowd of boatmen, tourists, and hotel guests had gathered. Bell landed in an explosive flurry of reversed engines, propeller wash, and flaming straight pipes.
“Wonder what you all are going to use that boat for?” drawled an onlooker with a snicker that everyone knew meant rum.
Isaac Bell said, “I’m going to get rich winning boat races.”
“That’s a good story for the Dries.”
“Want to bet? I’m calling out candidates.”
“Heck, who’d race you? That’s more airplane than boat.”
Bell said, “I heard about a big black boat whose owner thinks he’s hotter than jazz. We’ll see if he’s got the nerve to put his money where his mouth is.”