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• • •
“TRUCKS O’NEAL,” said Harry Warren of the Gang Squad and proceeded to demonstrate why the Van Dorn Research boys swore, enviously, that surgeons had exchanged Harry’s brain for a Dewey decimal system gangster catalogue.
“Heavyweight, six-two, busted nose, black hair. Enlisted in ’17, one step ahead of the cops. Army kicked him out with a dishonorable discharge after the war for some sort of profiteering shenanigans. Came home and took up with his old crowd.”
Isaac Bell asked, “Is he a Gopher?”
“No,” said Harry. “He hates the Gophers and they hate him. That’s how he got his nose broken. You know, I haven’t heard much of him lately. Any of you guys?”
One of Harry’s younger men said, “I saw him on Broadway couple of months ago. Chorus girl on his arm, looking prosperous. I figured he was bootlegging.”
Another Gang Squad man said, “I don’t know how prosperous. I’m pretty sure I saw him driving a truck down on Warren Street. Scooted into a stable before I could get a good look.”
“A truck full of hooch,” said Harry Warren, “would make him prosperous.”
“Find him,” said Bell. “Pull out all stops.”
• • •
“THIS IS A WONDERFUL BUSINESS,” said Marat Zolner. He strutted restlessly about his improvised bottling plant on Lower Manhattan’s Murray Street. Trucks O’Neal was
snoring softly on a cot in the back. A covered alley connected the former warehouse to the stable that Zolner had rented on Warren Street for Antipov’s horse and wagon.
“Smell!” He thrust an open bottle of single-malt whisky under Yuri’s nose.
Antipov recoiled. “It stinks like a peasant hut in winter.”
“That’s peat smoke, craved by connoisseurs. Smell this.” He extended a bottle of clear fluid.
“I smell nothing.”
“Two-hundred-proof industrial grain alcohol from a government-licensed distillery in Pennsylvania. So pure, it’s flammable as gasoline.” He splashed it on the concrete floor, flicked Antipov’s cigarette from his lips, and tossed it. Blue flame jumped waist-high.
“And this.”
He held another bottle over the flame. Antipov stepped back.
Zolner poured its contents on the fire, dousing it. “Water.”
“Listen to me, Marat. I am through waiting.”
But Zolner’s exuberance was not to be derailed.
“So! One part malt whisky, which cost us nothing but Black Bird’s gasoline. Ten parts pure two-hundred-proof grain alcohol, which cost bribes of fifty pennies per bottle, plus ten pennies per bottle for Trucks O’Neal’s payments to thugs to guard the shipment from the distillery. Ten parts water, free from the tap.”
He held up a bottle with a yellow label. “‘Glen Urquhart Genuine Single Malt Whisky’ counterfeit labels, indistinguishable from the original, a penny apiece. Empty bottle and cork, two pennies. Tea for color.
“Voila! One hundred hijacked cases become two thousand cases. Gangsters who have no idea they work for us peddle it to speakeasies and roadhouses for a small cut of seventy-five dollars a case. Rendering pure profit of one hundred twenty thousand dollars for the exclusive use of the Comintern.”
“It is time to take direct action against the capitalists,” said Antipov. “Are you with me or against me?”
“With you, of course.”
He signaled silence with a finger to his lips and led Antipov quietly past the sleeping O’Neal and through the covered alley that connected the back of the bottling plant to the back of the stable.
• • •
THE STRONG HORSE that had pulled Yuri Antipov’s wagonload of dynamite from New Jersey had grown restless cooped up in the stall. It snorted eagerly as Zolner and Antipov heaped hundreds of three-inch cast-iron window sash slugs around the explosives and concealed them under shovelfuls of coal. But it grew impatient when Zolner crawled under the wagon to connect the detonator to a battery-powered flashlight and a Waterbury alarm clock—leaving one wire loose, which he would connect only after the wagon stopped lurching and banging on the cobblestones.
