“The boys told them to get lost. Several were so emphatic, they threw punches.”
“That is a great relief. How are we doing with the Coast Guard?”
“I’m sorry, Joe. They canceled the contract.”
“Damnation!” Van Dorn erupted, which set him to coughing. Bell held a handkerchief for him and then gave him water. Van Dorn caught his breath. “I was really hoping we could parley new government work out of that. I got shot and lost the client. No justice in the world.”
Bell was relieved to see a wry smile on Van Dorn’s bristly cheeks. He said, “I’ll try and learn what our chances are when I finally get through to the Coast Guard chief of staff.”
“O.K. . . . How are we doing with the gang who shot up the cutter?”
“One of them showed up at Roosevelt Hospital, wounded. Before I could interview him, someone killed him.”
Van Dorn whispered,
“What for?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they thought you were dead and they’d be facing murder charges if they didn’t kill the witness. At any rate, I almost caught the guy who shot him, but I lost him. I doubt I’d recognize him if he walked in the door. But we got the dead man’s name. Alien radical, deported to Germany, sneaked back in. I have Pauline working on who his friends were over there.”
“That’s a good start.”
“I am hoping you can help me, hoping you might remember a little more.”
“Shoot,” Van Dorn said weakly.
“The Coast Guard still won’t talk to me. So all I know about what happened out there is secondhand from the harbor cops. And the harbor’s boiling with rumors. What do you remember about a black boat?”
“It was going like a bat out of hell. Fastest boat I ever saw, Isaac. Had to be doing fifty miles an hour. It had a Lewis gun and a fellow who knew how to use it. And it was armored.”
“An armored speedboat?”
“Bulletproof glass in the windshield, too. I thought for sure I’d nailed him. Bullets bounced off it like rain. The only men I hit were on the other boat. The taxi.”
“Was the black boat guarding the taxi?”
“That was certainly the effect. Here’s the thing, Isaac.” Van Dorn sat up taller, his eyes glowing.
“Take it easy. Talk slowly. Don’t push yourself. O.K.?”
“O.K.,” Van Dorn whispered. “Here’s the situation. My head’s clearing, and I’m remembering that was one heck of a gun battle.”
“Machine guns and armor . . . I should say so.”
Van Dorn waved for silence. “I’ve been in plenty scraps, but not like that one. I thought I was back in Panama. Do you know what I mean?”
Bell nodded. Decades ago, as a young U.S. Marine, Joe Van Dorn had landed on the Isthmus in the middle of a revolution.
“Those boys on the black boat knew their business. They used their speed to hold an angle of engagement the Coasties couldn’t cover with their cannon. They’d been to war before.”
14
AS NEWTOWN STORMS had predicted to Marat Zolner, the stock market began to move up.
“I can’t promise every week will be as exciting as this one, Prince André,” Storms told him on the telephone. “We were especially fortunate with a New York Central offering. The firm had an inside track, shall we say. Your ten thousand dollars is now worth twenty.”
“I need ten thousand of it immediately,” said Zolner.
“May I strongly counsel, Your Highness, that you plow this windfall back into your account? I see new opportunities every day.”