The Bootlegger by Clive Cussler (the best motivational books .TXT) 📕

was still hugging the floor. She led him onto a veranda and down rickety stairs into an alley, back onto Bay Street, past the liquor row of shacks and stables converted to warehouses that were receiving crates and barrels even at night, and onto Frederick Street.

“Who were they?” asked Asa.

“Two Russians who wanted to kill us.”

“How did you know they were Russians?”

“I know Russians.”

Ahead, at last, was their Lucerne Hotel.

“Is it O.K. if I hang on to this?” Somers asked. He opened his coat where he had slipped the drunk’s revolver into his waistband.

“Yes,” she said. “You earned it. Go get some sleep. I have to cable Isaac.”

“No you don’t.”

Asa Somers pointed toward the patio. Isaac Bell was standing in the door, a grim-faced specter in white. Detective Dashwood was across the lobby, one hand inside his coat, and Detective Ed Tobin, the tough Gang Squad guy with the lopsided face, was on the landing up the stairs with a hand inside his coat.

Fräulein Grandzau said, “Go to sleep, Asa. We’ll see you in the morning.”

•   •   •

“WE CHARTERED A FLYING BOAT,” said Isaac Bell, “thinking Zolner might attack here.”

“They just tried.”

Bell looked at her sharply. “Are you O.K.?”

Pauline shrugged. “Alive. Thanks to young Asa.”

Bell asked what had happened. Pauline told him. When she was done, she was shaking and blinking back tears. Bell slung an arm around her shoulders and walked her into the bar.

“Let me buy you a legal drink.”

•   •   •

THE SKY OVER NASSAU that a lifetime at sea had told Captain Novicki could be trouble had not lied, although the blow it had forecast had taken longer to shape up than he expected. He had sailed his wooden schooner through the Windward Passage and into the Caribbean without a change in the weather. Then, quite suddenly—due east of Port-au-Prince, west of Guantánamo Bay—the glass started dropping faster than a man overboard. Silky cirrus clouds thickened. He had to decide whether to change course for Cuba and run for shelter in Guantánamo Bay or chance continuing to Jamaica.

The wind rose.

He ordered his topsails in, and reefs in his foresail and mainsail, and soon reefed again. A few hours later, he had her running under bare poles, fore and main furled, with only a storm jib and a rag of staysail for steerage. Whatever was brewing was going to barrel straight through the Windward Passage. So much for Guantánamo. It was Kingston or bust.

The falling barometer, the rising wind veering north, and the steepening seas warned that South Florida and The Bahamas were in for a drubbing. But an aching pain in an old break in his left foot, courtesy of a sawbones who’d swigged Bushmills Irish Whiskey while he set it, threatened a more ominous possibility.

“If this doesn’t grow into a hurricane,” he told his mate, “my name’s not Novicki.”

The mate, a grizzled Jamaican even older than he was, thought it would veer northwest along the Cuban coast and into the Gulf of Mexico.

“She could,” said Novicki. “But if she re-curves northeast, look out New York, Long Island, and Rum Row.”

•   •   •

ISAAC BELL swam across Nassau Harbour. Employing an Australian crawl, he lifted his face from the warm water periodically to navigate by the cream-colored funnel that jutted above the mahogany wheelhouse of the steam yacht Maya. Alongside the enormous white hull, he hauled himself onto a tender and climbed the gangway rigged to the side. He stopped at the teak rail on the main deck and called out, “Permission to come aboard?”

Stewards swarmed.

Fern Hawley herself appeared.

She gave his swim trunks a piercing look and his broad shoulders a warm smile.

“Mr. Bell. You have more scars than most men I meet.”

“I tend to bump into doors and slip in the bath. May I come aboard?”

She snapped her fingers. A steward handed her a thick Turkish towel. She tossed it to Bell and led him to a suite of canvas chairs under a gaily striped awning. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? Or were you just swimming by and stopped to catch your breath?”

Bell got right to it. “I’m curious about your friend Prince André.”

“As a detective?” she asked. “Or a banker?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I looked into your background. You’re of the Boston Bells. Louisburg Square. American States Bank.”

“My father is a banker. I am a detective. Have you seen Prince André recently?”

“Not since New York. I believe it was the night we met at Club Deluxe.”

He decided to throw the dice on Pauline’s and Marion’s belief that Fern Hawley was disappointed in Zolner. If they were wrong, he would find himself back in the water.

“I could swear I saw you with him in Detroit.”

She hesitated. Then her smirk faded and a faint smile softened her face. “I hope,” she said, softly, “that I won’t have to call my lawyers.”

Bell couched his answer very carefully.

“I mispoke slightly. I did not mean with him, I meant near him.”

He was bending the truth only slightly. For while he was reasonably sure he had seen her in the Pierce-Arrow limousine at Sam Rosenthal’s send-off, he had not seen her in it when it sped away, firing at the police. Nor had he seen Zolner’s gunmen get into it. But by mentioning lawyers, she had all but admitted she had been there.

Fern acknowledged as much, saying, “Now you’re the one taking a chance.”

“How so?”

“Shielding a criminal.”

“I did not see you commit the crime. Before the crime, I saw a young woman whose sense of adventure may have caused her to fall in with the wrong crowd . . .”

“You’re very generous, Mr. Bell. I am not that young.”

“You met ‘Prince André’ in Paris?”

“At a victory parade,” Fern said. “A Lancashire Regiment marching up the Champs-Élysées. I couldn’t believe my eyes. They were midgets. None taller than five feet. Prince André told me why. They were poorly paid coal miners. They belonged to a race of men who hadn’t had a decent meal in a hundred years. I realized—for the first time—the difference between rich and poor.