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Bell looked up at a sudden commotion. Ed Tobin burst into the office, grinning like a bulldog that had sunk its teeth into a steak.
“—Hold the wire, Walt.” Bell put down the phone. “What?”
“Uncle Donny found the black boat.”
“Where?”
“Great River.”
Bell stood up. “Great River?”
“It’s way out on Long Island.”
“I know where it is,” said Bell. “Eight miles from the Bayport freight house, where the War Department shipped a dozen surplus Libertys. Where are they keeping it?”
“Stashed it in a boathouse on a private estate.”
Bell grabbed the phone. “Walt, I’ll call you back when I can. Meantime, tell your real estate agent to rent a big place out of town for a roadhouse.”
“Roadhouse?”
“You heard me. Rent a roadhouse!”
Bell banged down the phone.
“How did he find it?”
“It tried to hijack him. Uncle Donny followed it, hoping to steal it.”
“What changed his mind?”
“Too many of them. And he had little Robin with him. So now he’s hoping when we catch it, we’ll give it to him.”
“Fair enough. But that’s a lot of boat for one old man. Aren’t his nephews in the jailhouse?”
“Jimmy and Marvyn got set loose for good behavior—actually, a paperwork error in their favor. Wes, and Charlie, and Dave and Eddie, and Blaze are up for parole, eventually.”
“Wait a minute. How did that oyster scow manage to keep up with a fifty-knot express cruiser?”
“She ran aground. Busted props and driveshafts.”
Isaac Bell headed for the door. “We’ll get there before they fix her. Where’s Dashwood? James, round up the boys! And get ahold of some Prohibition agents you can trust.”
“Trust? How much?”
“More than the rest. But don’t tell them where we’re going.”
• • •
OUTSIDE THE ST. REGIS HOTEL, grim-visaged detectives piled clanking golf bags from the Van Dorn weapons vault into town cars. The lead motor was an elegant Pierce-Arrow packed with folding ladders and grappling hooks to scale walls and axes and sledgehammers to breach them.
Bell gave the order to move out. Then he took Ed Tobin, Uncle Donny, and two detectives who were strong swimmers to the 31st Street Air Service Terminal. The mechanics at the Loening factory next door had his flying boat warmed up and ready to take off. Coiled in the passenger cabin were several hundred yards of light manila line and wire rope.
22
GREAT RIVER opened into the bay between a golf course under construction on one side and marshland on the other. The channel moved inland on a northerly route through flat shores that were speckled intermittently by the lights of mansions. A mile or so in, the river narrowed to a width of five hundred feet. Tall trees grew close to the shore. A small tributary entered from the west. Its dredged channel led from the main river to an enormous boathouse that showed no lights when night fell.
Isaac Bell had seen this water route from the air in the last of the daylight. After Uncle Donny pinpointed the boathouse, he got a good look at a huge mansion behind it, the road in, which was blocked by a substantial gatehouse, and a spur that connected a mile inland to the Long Island Railroad.
