Bell could hardly believe it. It was a near miracle. But in diving straight down, he landed on the bottom next to O’Neal, who was clinging to his hand with all his might. Bell planted his feet in the mud and kicked off to pull him to the surface.
Bell could not lift him.
He tugged harder on the man’s hand as if to shout Push off! Help me lift you! Where was his natural buoyancy? Even a man who couldn’t swim would float partway to the surface, but Bell could not budge him from the mud.
He was running out of air.
He pulled himself down by the gangster’s hand, braced again in the soft mud, and tried to push off. But again he could not lift the man. Now he was out of air. He could hear his heart pounding. There was a roaring in his head. He had no choice but to swim to the surface, fill his lungs, and dive down to help him again. O’Neal’s hand tightened around his with the superhuman strength of desperation.
Isaac Bell pried his fingers loose, one by one.
He heard a sudden hollow rush. Bubbles of air rubbed past his face. O’Neal was drowning. His grip slackened. Bell yanked free and kicked with his last strength toward the light overhead. He held his breath until he could wait no longer and when he opened his mouth and inhaled, he was amazed to discover he had made it to the air.
“Get a rope!” he yelled. “Ed get a rope!”
The resourceful Tobin was already sprinting back from the ferry landing. He threw a long rope. Bell filled his lungs and dragged it under. Unhindered by the slack water, he dived directly to the drowning gangster, looped the rope under his arms and tied it around his chest and shot to the surface.
“Pull!”
Twelve feet above him on the pier, Tobin had been joined by a couple of vagrants, who shouted for others to help, and they heaved on the rope like men who worked on boats and slowly lifted Trucks O’Neal out of the water. His head broke surface. He was, Bell feared, dead, but he shouted for them to hoist him up to the pier. They did, then dropped the rope for Bell. He climbed out and discovered that the gangsters who had thrown Trucks in the river had tied concrete cinder blocks to his ankles.
Ed was laboring over Trucks’s prone body, pressing on his back and raising his arms, attempting artificial respiration, expelling water and making his lungs draw fresh air. But it was hopeless. O’Neal was dead.
Cops arrived.
“Well, that’s a new one. Cement overshoes.”
“Who was he?”
“He was,” said Isaac Bell, “the Van Dorn Detective Agency’s best lead.”
“Can I get a gun from the weapons’ vault, Mr. Forrer?”
“Apprentice Van Dorns don’t carry guns.”
“I learned how to shoot in the Coast Guard.”
“Nix. I am sending you to Newark to interview a jobber of farrier supplies. It is highly unlikely that a man who makes his living selling horse nails and anvils will engage you in a shoot-out.”
Somers looked so disappointed that Forrer elaborated.
“Mr. Van Dorn believes that a young man with a gun is less observant than he should be, imagining that he can shoot his way out of difficulty. But a young man dependent upon his wits to survive learns to be more observant… A necessary detective skill, wouldn’t you agree, young man?”
Somers took the train to Newark.
In the Ironbound District, near the freight station, he found the warehouse that belonged to the New Jersey horseshoe jobber that he and Mr. Forrer had settled on as the likely purveyor of the horseshoe Mr. Bell had retrieved on Wall Street.
The jobber told him that the rubber scrap stuck to the horseshoe could have been either a Revere Rubber Company Air Cushion Pad or a Dryden Hoof Pad.
“How about Neverslip Manufacturing from New Brunswick?” asked Somers.
“Coulda been.”
“Do you have any idea which farrier might have bought it from you?”
“No. It could have been anyone.”
“What if that same farrier also bought this Neverslip shoe?”
The jobber turned the worn shoe over in his hands. “Coulda.”
Somers showed him the mark stamped in the wedge. “How would this get marked like this?”
“The farrier has his initials on a punch. Smacks it with a hammer to make his mark. He signs it. Like a trademark.”
“Do you recognize the initials RD?”
“Sonny, why are you asking all these questions?”
Asa Somers straightened his skinny shoulders and stood tall. “I am an apprentice Van Dorn private detective. We are investigating the bombing on Wall Street.”
“I thought the government does that. And the cops.”
“Could he be one of your customers?”
“Could be.”
“Do you remember the farrier’s name?”
The jobber shrugged, as if deciding that Somers was an earnest lad who posed no threat to his customer. “His name is Ross. Ross Danis.”
“Where can I find him?”
“I don’t know where he sleeps these days. He used to be farrier and blacksmith on Mrs. Dodge’s estate ’til they let him go.”
“For what?” asked Somers, whose own firing by the Coast Guard still stung despite his wonderful new job with the Van Dorns.
“They say Mr. Dodge,” snickered the jobber, “was getting green-eyed, if you’re old enough to know what I mean.”
“Do you mean that Mr. Dodge was jealous of Mr. Danis’s attentions to Mrs. Dodge?”
“The lady was smiling like she hadn’t in years.”
“Where would I find Mr. Danis when he’s working?”
“Seeing as he just bought himself a spanking new Boss leather apron and a fresh set of Disston rasps, he’s probably shoeing horses at the Monmouth County Fair — unless Mr. Dodge is in attendance.”
“But what of the revolution?” asked Fern Hawley.
She was staring sullenly at an untouched glass of genuine champagne that had been poured for her by former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, the owner of Harlem’s Club Deluxe.
Marat Zolner had hoped a late-night outing would take her mind off Yuri.
“Bootlegging,” he reminded her again, “is our path to revolution.”
“Yuri didn’t think so.”
The famous black prizefighter’s Lenox Avenue speakeasy was Fern’s favorite cabaret. A hot jazz band drew the cream of the Park Avenue crowd. They came uptown in limousines and taxis, dressed to the nines, after private dinner parties, theater, and the opera. Zolner enjoyed it, too, especially while playing the part of an aristocratic Russian émigré out on the town with his American benefactress. It was great fun to be rich, fun to slum with movie stars and gangsters and young flappers in short hair and shorter skirts.
“Yuri did not understand,” he said gently. “But he was coming around to seeing America the way it is going.”
“But where are we going?” asked Fern. She had been impatient for results before Yuri was killed. Now she was obsessed.
“We are going to a city where a narrow river, which a speedboat can cross in minutes, is all that separates a legally wet nation from a legally dry nation.”
“Detroit,” said Fern, who had kept up to date on every aspect of Prohibition since Zolner first hatched his scheme.
“Detroit. Three of every four drinks poured in the United States come from Detroit. Detroit sells to Saint Louis, New Orleans, Kansas City, and Denver, the West, Midwest, and South.”
“But the Purple Gang and the River Gang are fighting to control it. They own the police. They own the politicians.”