The Bootlegger

man who had his hands on the controls of an airplane, racing boat, or motorcar—a Cartier “Tank,” which Marion, his wife, had given him for their anniversary.
“I’ll do my best to get to the boat,” he promised. Pauline, after all, had risked her life to help him behind German lines.
•   •   •
HOLLAND AMERICA LINERS sailed from a Hoboken pier.
Bell made it with only minutes to spare, and when he boarded the Rotterdam-bound Nieuw Amsterdam, an aging seventeen-thousand-tonner, he found two Van Dorn detectives already crowded into Pauline’s little cabin. Research Department chief Grady Forrer—a scholarly giant of bull-like proportions—and young, pale-skinned, bantamweight James Dashwood—the finest pistol shot in the agency—who had brought her flowers. The giant and the rail-thin youth gripped their bouquets like clubs.
Pauline appeared oblivious to her dazzling effect on either of them.
“Isaac! I’m so glad you could make it.” She turned to Dashwood and Forrer. “Boys, thank you so much for coming. And thank you for the beautiful roses, Grady, and the lovely peonies, James. I’ll see you when I’m back in the autumn. Good-bye. Thank you. Good-bye.”
Grady and Dashwood shuffled out, reluctantly, and Bell had to hide a smile. The skinny little German student with yellow braids, freckles, bright blue eyes, and the moxie of a Berlin street fighter had grown up. A stylish bob replaced her braids. Her enormous eyes were deep as oceans. God alone knew where the freckles had gone. But the moxie was still there, hidden like a sleeve gun, ready when needed.
For a long moment, they stood looking at each other.
Bell broke the silence, speaking German—partly because people were shuffling by in the corridor and partly for old times’ sake—the college German she had helped him hone to stay alive.
“I attended the rumrunner’s autopsy.”
“What did you learn?”
“There was something a little odd about the way the killer shot him. He was shot point-blank. Not between the eyes or in the temple, where you’d expect, but in the back of his neck.”
Pauline’s eyes settled on him curiously. “Where in the back of his neck?”
“Just at the hairline.”
“The nape?”
“Exactly.”
“Next, you will tell me that the bullet did not exit.”
“How did you know?”
“It didn’t?”
“No. Straight up in his brain.”
“Was he American?”
“I assume so. He told the doctors his name was Johnny. Why?”
“Could he have come from abroad?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You just described a Genickschuss.”
“Genickschuss? What is that? Neck shot?”
“A bullet in the nape of the neck.”
“There’s a German word for everything,” Bell marveled.
“Actually, it’s Russian. The word is German, but the Russians coined it for the favored method of execution of the Russian Communist Cheka.”
“Soviet secret police?” asked Bell, equal parts intrigued and surprised. Cheka was short for the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage.
“A long and fancy name for the engineers of the Red Terror,” said Pauline. “Genickschuss is how they kill. Quickly, cleanly, efficiently.”
“The coroner thought it was efficient,” said Bell. “How did a Russian method of killing get a German name?”
Pauline reminded him that millions of Germans lived in Russia before the war. “There was plenty of mixing. And many a German worked for the Russian Revolution. Starting, if you will, with Karl Marx.”
“Funny way for a rumrunner to get shot . . . What would the Cheka be doing in New York?”
“Strictly speaking, they would not be Cheka but Comintern, the Russian Communists’ foreign attack force. The Comintern would be in New York for the same reason they’re in Germany. To lead revolution.”
Bell shook his head. “They call it revolution, but what they really want is to replace the old empires the war destroyed with new ones.”
“What gun did the killer use?” Pauline asked.
Bell looked at her curiously. “The boys at the police laboratory are pretty sure it was a Mann pocket pistol.”
“German. Why do they think it’s a Mann?”
“The cops found a shell that had expansion marks from the chamber groove.”
“That could only come from the new model. The 1920. Or the ’21.”
“That’s what the cops said. Apparently the 1920 model has a circular groove to permit an ultralight slide. I’ve not seen one yet.”
“You will love it,” said Pauline.
She reached under her skirt. Bell caught a flicker of a shapely white thigh encircled by black lace. She pressed a tiny semiautomatic pistol into his hand. It was smaller than a deck of cards, finely machined, and amazingly thin—less than three-quarters of an inch. It was too little for his hand, perfect for hers.
“Five shots,” she said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
The aluminum grips were warm from her skin, and Bell wondered, not for the first time, why such a beautiful girl had neither married nor kept a steady boyfriend.
“She is secretly in love with you,” Marion had told him.
“She knows my heart is spoken for,” had been Bell’s reply. He admired Pauline’s courage and her razor-sharp mind, and there was no denying she was wonderful to look at. But he, as he told Marion, was already in love.
“Is it accurate?”
“I trust it to twenty feet.”
Bell handed it back.
Pauline slipped it in its holster. She looked up with a smile. “Doesn’t it seem that our murdered rumrunner has experienced a more complicated death than an ordinary Prohibition gangster?”
“It might,” said Bell. “Except Prohibition’s get-rich-quick promises tempt all sorts.”
The liner’s whistle thundered overhead.
Pauline walked him to the gangway, where officers were urging visitors to disembark. “Auf Wiedersehen, Isaac. It was lovely to see you. Thanks for coming.”
“Glad I did. Your Genickschuss was worth the ride to Hoboken. Not to mention meeting your little Mann.”
She stood on tiptoe, kissed his cheek, and switched to English. “Please, give my warm regards to your wife.”
“I will as soon as I see her. She’s making a picture in Los Angeles.”
Deep in thought, Bell stood out on deck as the Hoboken Ferry steamed across the Hudson River. He looked back when it landed at 23rd Street. The tugs were turning Nieuw Amsterdam into the stream. For an instant, his keen eyes picked out Pauline among the passengers lining the rails, her hair a fleck of shining gold.
If Marion was right, he’d have