If the brothers were serious about selling whisky to the Americans—and they were—one of the most important cogs in the operation was figuring out how they would run the booze from their still to the docks and across the river fast enough that no one would catch them. That’s where the Frenchman—he insisted they call him that—came in. Jerry had caught on right away that he wasn’t a regular mechanic. Sure, he could change brakes and oil and tires, but the Frenchman went further. His expertise was in making vehicles faster and finding ingenious methods of smuggling liquor in them. The cars he had shown Jerry this afternoon had been rigged with hiding spots, just like the city’s hotels,manufacturers, and docks, many of which boasted tunnels and secret rooms beneath them.
“The gas tank in this Whisky Six,” the Frenchman was explaining, his rosy cheeks bright. “She is split,oui? You only need a small amount of gas, really. You’re not going so far, uh? But over on this side of the tank is so much room. Think how many bottles you can fit in here! Or you can do like some I have heard, who siphon the liquor into false gas tanks and spare tires. Once they get over there, they pour it all into bottles.”
“Show him the Packard. Underneath,” John nudged.
“Of course!” He grabbed Jerry’s elbow and brought him to a shiny blue Packard. Flinging the back door open, he knocked on the floor. “You hear that? It’s hollow,oui? Fake floor. Underneath, you can fit almost five hundred quarts at a time along the whole length of the drive shaft. You think you can keep up with that, eh?”
Jerry was more than impressed. The Frenchman, he was learning, was full of clever ideas.
“Look at the back seat,” John said.
The interior of the car looked perfectly normal, but when Jerry peeled back the black leather seat cover, he discovered that’s all there was. No cushions or springs beneath, just a wide box for storing cases of bottles, covered by the cloth.
“What did I tell you?” John said to Jerry. “He knows all the tricks.”
“C’est incroyable,” Jerry said, making the mechanic grin.
“Well, I have one more,mon ami. Come and see this Studebaker.”
“He’s got them all outfitted. He’s just giving us a choice of cars,” John explained.
The Frenchman opened the car door and touched the fabric ceiling. Working his fingers into a seam, he pulled the panel open and demonstrated that the ceiling was separated from the car’s hard roof by covert, four-inch pockets sewn inside. “You can fit 180 pints in here.”
“How does she drive over rough roads with all that weight?” Jerry asked.
The Frenchman pointed to the steel bars under the chassis. “We reinforce the suspension, you see? So they drive smooth. For the winter, I make big, big skis to attach to the front axle so you can cross the river. But I got no guarantee on how thick the ice is,n’est-ce pas? That is up to you.”
John already had the river covered for when it wasn’t frozen. In addition to the cars, he’d bought them an old fishing boat and hired a former navy man who knew almost as many tricks as the Frenchman. Jerry’s favourite was the one where he’d hide bottles in nets that could be cut free if their boat was stopped by the authorities—but they wouldn’t forfeit a drop. The nets also contained buoys weighed down by chunks of salt. Once those melted, the booze bobbed back to the surface.
The Frenchman was still talking, obviously enjoying his work. “Some fellows drag chains behind their cars, making a huge cloud of dust. Can you imagine? The police would be waving their hands, trying to see…” He clapped a hand on Jerry’s shoulder, laughing. “The things we do for money, eh?”
But Jerry’s mind was already elsewhere, calculating how many bottles he and John could hide in one car. One hundred and eighty pints was about twenty-two and a half gallons, and that was just in the ceiling panel. Five hundred quarts underneath would be about a hundred and twenty-five gallons. All together, that meant one car could hold almost a hundred and fifty gallons of their booze, not including whatever fit in the empty gas tank.
That left him stunned. From his figuring, if they fully loaded up the car and sold each case for about a hundred fifty dollars, they could make over five thousand every time they sent a shipment over the river.
“You look like you just thought of something,” John said.
He had, but Jerry didn’t know the Frenchman well enough to say it out loud.
“I’ll tell you later.” He studied the car again, still calculating. With almost a thousand bottles, he’d need two men: one to drive, another to protect the hidden crates with the might of his shotgun. Or pistol. Ortommy gun. Whatever Jerry could get his hands on. It was all going to add up, but he could see now that it was also going to pay off in a big way.Thanks, Pa.
“I’ll take this Packard for now,” Jerry told the Frenchman. “And the Ford over there by the back, without the modifications.”
John raised his eyebrows. “Are you giving me Pa’s Ford?”
Jerry laughed. “It’s not mine to give. But this one will be used as a decoy. Walter suggested it as a precaution in case the police get wind of a big shipment. We send two cars—the police will stop the first one, but even if they strip it down to its bare bones, they’ll find nothing.” He gestured to the Packard. “Meanwhile, our Trojan horse chugs by unnoticed.”
“Thank you, Wally,” John said, grinning.
Jerry turned to the Frenchman. “All right.Combien?”
He told them the price, and Jerry counted out the money. They arranged to pick the cars up the next day, then Jerry and John hopped in their Ford and drove out to the river and theboozoriumthey’d rented. With its padlocked doors and barred windows, the little building reminded Jerry more of a fort than a warehouse, but that was good. Nobody was going to get in there without his say-so.
One by one, the many threads of their operation were coming together. They’d worked hard to get to this point, and every new braid gave Jerry satisfaction.
They’d come a long way since that first night at the Edgewater. Jerry had woken up the next morning with a blistering hangover, but after observing everything around him and listening to his cousins’ stories, he also had a better sense of what he and John might be able to do with their father’s still. Specifics about liquor sales and buyers across the river were rather murky because of the evening’s libations, but between what he did remember and the notes from their father, he had been increasingly confident about their direction forward.
Muttering something about the hair of the dog, John had pouredwhisky into his coffee then held the bottle toward his brother’s cup, but Jerry waved him away. He needed a clear head to sort through all this. Too many thoughts and emotions had been stirred up at the Edgewater, and if he was going to move forward with this business, he’d have to cut back on drinking. It made it too easy for the unwelcome memories to creep in, and for him to possibly miss a step along the way.
