“There the J.F. Johnson would have been waiting, ready to pick up the bobbing barrels and ship them onto receiving ports anywhere along the Great Lakes.”
“So, what went wrong?” Tom asked.
Sam thought back to the message they’d found inside the wheel house of the J.F. Johnson that terrified Senator Perry — STANFORD STOLE THE MESKWAKI GOLD SPRING. I CAN TOO. “Stanford stole the Meskwaki Gold Spring!”
Tom shrugged. “Yeah, I was there. I read the note, too. But how?”
“How would you shut down an operation like this and at the same time get rid of your old boss and any competition?”
“Of course, he’s filled some of the barrels with dynamite on a long timer!”
“Right! He then dumped the barrels, into the subterranean river, where they were carried into Lake Superior. There the J.F. Johnson loaded up her secret bilge compartments with what her captain assumed was rum. Somewhere, hidden among those were explosives.”
Tom grinned. “Only Stanford made a mistake, didn’t he?”
“Yes. Stanford miscalculated the fuse length. He assumed the J.F. Johnson would have pulled away from her anchor by the time the explosion occurred. Instead, the ship was still there, right above the mouth of the cavern. Which meant when it sank, the ship became wedged into the mouth of the cavern.”
“Stanford, assuming that he now had control of the new operation, kept using the Meskwaki Gold Spring until he discovered his barrels were no longer coming through the other side.”
“Decades went by until advances in SCUBA diving and closed-circuit rebreathers made it possible for the Meskwaki Gold Spring to be reopened. Only this time, Prohibition no longer existed, but drugs and weapons had become major business. A business that would make Senator Perry rich.”
“There’s just one thing I don’t understand.”
“What’s that?”
“If Stanford didn’t make his fortune by stealing the Meskwaki Gold Spring, how did the Perry family rise to its current position of wealth and power?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
It was silent on board the Annabelle May. The water along Lake Superior deceptively gentle. From the bridge of the pleasure cruiser, Virginia studied the radar screen. The dive boat still hadn’t returned, but neither had Sam or Tom. She felt tense and focused. With her senses heightened, everything from the splash of a gentle wave through to the intermittent, sibilant breeze made her rigid with fear.
The satellite phone rang.
Virginia answered it before the second ring. “Hello?”
It was Elise, Sam’s computer expert and hacker. “Has Sam and Tom dived yet?”
“Yeah, they put into the water about twenty minutes ago. Why?”
“I think I have an idea what’s happening. During the 1920s when prohibition was in full force, a number of organized crime families made a fortune in the bootlegging business. Some of the most successful of these operators were from Moosejaw, Saskatchewan — along the Canadian border.”
“Go on.”
Elise said, “There were a number of mob families, but the most notorious of these was a man named Alphonse Gabriel Capone. Nicknamed, Scarface, for a three-inch scar across his face, which he received after making an indecent comment about a woman at a bar, whose brother then slashed him across the face. Scarface was an American mobster, crime boss, and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit.”
“You think Al Capone’s descendants are running another contraband business at a shipwreck in Lake Superior?” Virginia asked, her voice, incredulous.
“No. Al Capone was finally indicted for tax evasion in June 5, 1931. At the time, he supposedly brought in rum to the tune of a hundred million dollars from Moosejaw, but to this day no one knows exactly what secret method his rumrunners used in doing so.”
Virginia asked, “So what does any of this have to do with the wreckage of the J.F. Johnson?”
“When Al Capone was indicted and his empire toppled, do you think bootlegging ended?”
“No, of course not.”
“Right, neither did the supply of arms, illicit drugs, or other contraband.”
Virginia smiled. “So, someone else picked up the mantle?”
“Exactly,” Elise said. “I found a buried police document dating back to the thirties, which reveals a new family had taken over Al Capone’s supply chain, moving into illegal arms and drug sales after December 5, 1933 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that prohibition had been repealed with the 21st Amendment.”
“Did they ever catch the new organized crime family?”
“That’s just it. The document noted that evidence was hard to produce because the new family had such strong connections to the police and politicians. Unlike Al Capone who flaunted his new-found wealth, the new family predominantly lived normal lives. In the end, the internal police decision, signed off by FDR agreed not to pursue the new organized crime boss — quoting huge collateral damage of hunting local police and politicians.”
“What happened to the family?”
“It’s suspected the family eventually made their fortune and assimilated into legitimate businesses. You want to guess where Stanford Perry — Senator Arthur Perry’s father — used to work as a boilerman?”
“On board the J.F. Johnson?”
“Exactly.”
“And you don’t think it was a coincidence that Al Capone was indicted two weeks before the ship met its ignoble demise?”
“What happened to Stanford after the shipwreck?”
“No one really knows for sure. He started up a number of legitimate businesses, which all were highly successful, until he became a prominent and successful man in town. His son, Arthur, studied Law at Stanford university — I’m not sure if the choice of university was Stanford’s humor there, but afterward Arthur became a successful criminal lawyer who quickly earned himself a position as Minnesota’s District Attorney.”
“He ruthlessly went after all other crime figures within the state, making room for his father’s original business to thrive!”
“Yes. In doing so, Senator Arthur Perry never got his hands dirty. His record was crystal clean. He cleaned up any organized crime in the state, and got rich doing so.”
Virginia thought back to the photograph of the note found inside the wheelhouse — the same one that Senator Arthur Perry thought would get him killed the day before he died of a heart attack. It read, STANFORD STOLE THE MESKWAKI GOLD SPRING. I CAN, TOO.
She swore. “Whoever’s in the process of taking over the Perry family crime business knows the wreck of the J.F. Johnson is the secret to the Perry’s wealth.”
Elise said, “I’ve gone over satellite images of the area for the past six months.”
“And?”
“Three weeks ago. The same time David Perry, the Senator’s son, went missing, a local dive operator’s boat started to make nightly visits to the shipwreck.”
“Sam knows about the dive boat,” Virginia said. “He and Tom believed they would be back before the nightly divers arrived. If not, they hoped the divers would lead them to the J.F. Johnson’s secrets.”
“When were they due back?”
Virginia stared at the radar screen that showed nothing but empty water and swallowed. “An hour ago.”