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“Tip-top,” Bell lied, gingerly rubbing his itching stitches. He pictured her lighting up Joe’s room in a smart suit and hat. “And how are you?”
“They gave me another movie. I’m having fun filming all day and missing you at dinner.”
“How about after dinner?”
“Worse. The New York papers said there was a shooting in Detroit.”
“It’s the national pastime out here. Bigger than baseball.”
“This one sounded like a war.”
“I will tell you all about it when I see you.”
“Can’t wait. Here’s Joe . . . He claims he’s ‘tip-top.’ Where do you suppose he learned that expression? Good-bye, darling. So lovely to hear your voice.”
Van Dorn did not sound much recovered. He took a few shallow breaths and wheezed, “How could you possibly admire a murdering, thieving, treacherous, bomb-throwing, godless Bolshevik who slaughters innocents?”
“He leads from the front. In the thick of the fight. He is no coward.”
“Neither is Satan.”
“It’s his Achilles’ heel. I’ll find him where the lead is flying. And that’s where I’ll finish him.”
Van Dorn fell silent.
Had the long-distance connection broken? Or something worse? “Are you O.K., Joe?”
“I was just wondering if a villain weren’t a villain, would he be a hero’s best friend?”
Isaac Bell was in no mood for philosophy. “I would not be one bit surprised that Marat Zolner manned the Lewis gun that shot you. And I have absolutely no doubt he was there when Harry Warren was killed and personally loaded his body—dead or dying—into that wagon.”
“All right,” Van Dorn whispered. “I know what you’re saying. What’s your next move?”
“Drive Zolner out of Detroit.”
“How?”
“Find out who Zolner installed in place of Rosenthal. Question his girlfriend, Fern Hawley. Send Pauline to Nassau to throw a monkey wrench in whatever he’s up to with that tanker. And find that whisky tunnel, because if the Comintern doesn’t own it already, it will soon. When they do, they will be so rich it could be impossible to stop them.”
• • •
PAULINE’S CABLE HAD ENDED:
REQUEST ASSIGNMENT NASSAU.
LIQUOR IMPORT-EXPORT GUISE,
WHISKY AGENT FOR GLASGOW DISTILLERY.
EAR TO GROUND.
During the war, Bell recalled, she had smuggled a downed Scottish flier out
of Germany. The pilot’s grandfather had founded a distillery. Bell cabled back.
GO NASSAU SOONEST.
The reply he received was not from Germany but from France, where Archie Abbott remained in temporary command of the Van Dorn field office.
