Bell braced for a timber-jarring crash and hoped the reinforced bow would take it. Surprisingly, the express cruiser slowed without collision and seemed to hang mid-channel. Instead of a crash in the bow, he heard several loud bangs deep within the boat. His engines screamed, revving wildly, and he realized that Zolner’s men had strung a heavy cargo net across the channel. Its thick strands had fouled his churning propellers. Blades sheared and driveshafts snapped.
The Van Dorn boat was trapped in the middle of the river.
“Thompsons!” Dashwood called coolly. “Get down!”
The night exploded with red jets of fire and flying lead.
Their searchlight went black in a burst of hot glass.
Thank the Lord for armor plate, thought Isaac Bell. And bless Lynch & Harding. She carried two thousand gallons of explosively flammable gasoline, but the speedboat builders had snugged her fuel tanks under the sole, out of the range of bullets storming past.
Their Lewis guns were still useless. Behind the Thompson submachine guns strafing them from both sides of the river were homes with thin wooden walls. Bell yanked from its sheath a .30–06 bolt-action Springfield rifle he had stowed for such a contingency.
Tobin had one in his machine-gun nest.
Dashwood had one in his.
The Thompsons’ muzzle fire made excellent targets, particularly as the two-handled submachine guns were designed to be clutched snug to the torso. Bell fired. A gunman tumbled into the river.
Tobin fired and missed.
Dashwood made up for it, firing twice and dropping two.
The three Van Dorns whirled in unison to shoot the submachine gunners on the opposite bank. Before they could trigger their weapons, the shooting stopped.
Isaac Bell saw why in an instant.
The black boat was coming back.
It stormed downriver, Lewis gun pumping bullets with a continuous rumble. The rapid fire starred Bell’s windshield and clanged off the armor. By now, he knew what to expect of Marat Zolner. He stood up and aimed his rifle. A man on the bow of the speeding boat was about to throw a grenade. James Dashwood shot it out of his hand and it exploded behind the boat.
A second grenade sailed through the air. Isaac Bell and Ed Tobin fired together, and the grenade dropped into the river. Black Bird raced past the Van Dorn boat at fifty knots, thundering toward Biscayne Bay.
“Close,” said Tobin.
“Not close enough,” said Bell, watching the red glare of her exhaust disappear behind a bend in the river. He called to a fisherman, venturing out in his rowboat. “Shooting’s over, friend. Would fifty bucks get us a lift ashore?”
“A hundred.”
“It’s yours.”
On shore, Tobin went looking for a tugboat to tow them to a boatyard for repairs. Bell and Dashwood scoured the riverbank. The ambushers had taken their wounded with them. Bell retrieved a Thompson submachine gun they had dropped. Dashwood found a full box of German stick grenades.
“I don’t suppose our ‘Captain’ friend is waiting at the dock for the rest of his reward.”
Bell said, “Zolner is counterpunching. Question is, where’s he going to hit us next?”
Asa Somers had been in love many times. He had fallen head over heels for Mae Marsh in Intolerance and returned to the movie house again and again. Mary Pickford was next, in Little Lord Fauntleroy, and then Mabel Normand. And of course he fell in love regularly with girls he saw on streetcars until they jumped off at their stops. But never until now with a real live girl.
And Fräulein Grandzau was a real live girl. She was beautiful beyond description, wore wonderful-smelling perfume, and had a way of looking him right in the face when she talked to him. Her eyes were blue, a slatey shade, like the ocean on a sunny afternoon. And she was very kind. She showed him how to use a knife and fork in the European style, and she would touch her beautiful lips just lightly with her finger to remind him to close his mouth when he chewed so he would look the part of an important man in the liquor traffic. She even took him shopping — Mr. Van Dorn was paying — because even an apprentice detective masquerading as a clerk had to look as if he belonged in Nassau in a panama hat and a white suit almost like Isaac Bell’s.
They ate in wonderful hotels because that’s where the bootleggers ate.
Liquor dealers had to be where they could run into people who might buy their consignments like detectives had to be where they were likeliest to hear the latest about a big tanker full of grain alcohol that for some reason hadn’t shown up yet. And detectives investigating a Comintern agent’s girlfriend had to dress like people she would talk to.
Earlier that evening, they had eaten dinner on Miss Fern Hawley’s yacht, which was bigger than the old CG-9, with much better food. There was plenty of laughing and kidding around with Miss Hawley, who was really a looker, too.
Somers listened carefully to how Fräulein Grandzau used small talk like a wedge.
“When I was in New York, Fern, I kept hearing an expression. Why is the ladies’ lavatory called the powder room?”
Fern laughed. “Girls didn’t go to saloons before Prohibition. Now we go to speakeasies, so they had to add places for ladies to go and they called them powder rooms. To powder their noses? Speaking of which, excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
Fern was gone a long while and when she returned she ended the party all of a sudden, apologizing she had a headache. The yacht’s tender dropped them at the dock. But instead of calling it a night, Fräulein Grandzau had decided they would stop for a drink in a rough bar on Bay Street where she said she hoped to meet a buyer.
So far, no buyer had appeared. Somers didn’t mind. He could sit at a table across from her for the rest of his life and not mind. She drank — drinking a lot less than she pretended to, he noticed — and put him to the test to guess, in a low voice, what was the business of the other patrons. What did this one do? What did that one do? What about the guy passed out in the corner? Not that one. The guy with two guns, a revolver peeking out of his waistband and some other weapon bulging under his coat.
“Bodyguard?”
“Who is he guarding?”
“Maybe it’s his night off,” ventured Somers.
“Maybe.”
“He’s fast asleep.”
“Are you sure?”
“He hasn’t moved since we came in. And the bottle on his table is almost empty.”
“I agree,” she said. “He’s sleeping. What do you suppose he carries in his shoulder holster? Automatic or revolver?”
Somers eyed the bulge. “Revolver.”
“Automatic,” she said. She looked around for another test.
Two big guys came in, bought a bottle at the bar, and sat down at a table facing theirs. Fräulein Grandzau’s German accent, which ordinarily Somers could barely detect, got a little stronger. He heard a v in the word “want.”
“Asa,” she said very quietly. “I vant you to do exactly what I tell you. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you see where I am looking at the floor?”
“Yes, ma’am. Right next to your chair.”
“I want you to stand up on that spot and lean over, close to me, as if you mean to kiss me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now!”
He stood up and leaned close. Her perfume was intoxicating. She reached a hand behind the back of his head, curled her fingers into his hair, and pulled him almost to her lips. “Asa?” she whispered.
“Yes, ma’am?” His mouth was dry, his heart hammering his ribs.
“Did the Coast Guard teach you how to cock an automatic pistol?”
36