The Rum Runner Read online

  “You knew she was a cop?”

  “Like I said, I knew her father. I’ve taken an interest in her career.”

  “I didn’t think she knew who you were.”

  Jiggy sipped his drink. “She doesn’t. Or didn’t, until you brought her by.”

  “She was helping me search for the girl.”

  “All very noble and good.” Jiggy put his drink down on the barrel, pulled his pipe out of his pocket, and lit it. “Keep her away from me.” There was a definite warning tone in his voice.

  “I don’t have any control over her,” Hank protested. “She’s a cop! Who knows who she might tell her suspicions to?”

  Jiggy took a long drag on his pipe. “If she busts me, I’m taking you down with me.”

  Frankly, Hank expected nothing less.

  “About that.” Hank cleared his throat and stood taller to show he wasn’t intimidated. “I’m done.”

  “What do you mean ‘done’?” Jiggy took the pipe out of his mouth and glared.

  “Not making any more runs.” If Nagy’s death had anything to do with his rum running, it might make sense to step back a bit. He didn’t have to think only of himself, but his crew, and some of them had families to consider. And now his brother wanted to get involved. It was too much.

  “You can’t stop.”

  “What do you mean, ‘can’t’? I can do whatever I like.”

  A small, almost evil smile came to Jiggy’s face. “I wouldn’t say that. You stop, I can’t trust you anymore.”

  “Of course you can trust me.”

  Jiggy pointed his pipe at him. “You brought a cop to my hut. I’m not even sure I trust you now.”

  “That was not intentional.”

  “Regardless, it was a dangerous move. So I’ll expect my next shipment from you when you get back in to port. What will that be, two and a half weeks or so from now?”

  “I told you, I’m done. I’m not going out to rum row anymore.”

  “Listen.” Jiggy stood up and got nose to nose with him. “The last person who told me he wasn’t supplying me anymore was Nagy.” He paused long enough for Hank to absorb that information. “Understand?”

  Hank took a step back, though there wasn’t much room to maneuver. This tiny space wasn’t much bigger than one of the trenches. One of the trenches that could collapse on you at any minute when a bomb hit it. Suddenly it didn’t seem as if there was enough air. He tugged at his collar and tried to concentrate on what Jiggy had told him.

  “You telling me I’m going to end up dead if I don’t supply you?” The thought was chilling, and it pissed him off.

  Jiggy didn’t answer right away, just looked deep into his eyes as if trying to read his soul. Slowly he smiled.

  “No. I’m not telling you that. You wouldn’t give a damn. You’ve been dead inside since the war. I’m telling you that someone you care about is going to end up dead. Maybe your mother, or your brother, or that cute lady cop. You want that on your conscience?”

  The blood drained from Hank’s face. His whole body went cold. “For God’s sake, what are you saying?”

  “I thought I was pretty clear.” He put the pipe back in his mouth and puffed casually on it.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll go out on another run.” He couldn’t risk anyone getting hurt on his behalf, especially not Alice.

  If anything, Jiggy’s grin became more sinister.

  “Care about the lady cop, do you?”

  “No.” Hank said, too quickly.

  “Then it really shouldn’t matter to you what happens to her. But in case you do care, you might want to warn her that nosing about my place could be bad for her health. Savvy?”

  “I told you, I don’t control her,” Hank repeated. How on earth was he going to keep Alice from visiting Jiggy if that’s what she got it in her mind to do?

  “Too bad for her.” Jiggy’s shoulders relaxed a little, and he took a sip from his drink.

  “I’ll keep her away,” Hank promised, because it did matter to him what happened to her. Because, dammit, he did care about her. A lot.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Alice inserted paper into her typewriter and opened the top folder on her desk. She would teach Irene to type and then she would be freed from this endless paperwork. Free to do actual police work. Like track down Jiggy Malone. She knew where to find him now, so it was only a matter of having the time to get there.

  She squinted at Mark’s handwriting before beginning to type.

  She couldn’t just tell Malone that she wanted to know what his involvement in rum running was. He’d lie. People don’t usually admit to illegal activity without a bit of coercion. But what coercion could she supply? She couldn’t say it was under the guise of the Nagy murder, because as far as the department was concerned that case was closed. In fact, the report was somewhere on her desk waiting to be filed away.

  But she could be simply investigating the illegal smuggling of alcohol in the township. Malone didn’t have to know she suspected him of being involved, but again, he would be suspicious, especially if he was involved, and then he would pick up and run and she’d never find out anything.

  Maybe the better thing to do would be to stage a stakeout, at night, when someone was likely to smuggle something in to him. If she saw it happening, she’d have proof that she could take to Chief Murphy and then maybe a real investigation could take place.

  She rather liked the idea of conducting the whole investigation on her own and presenting it as a fait accompli to the department, but she wasn’t a fool. In order to pull this off, she’d need the help of others. That didn’t mean she couldn’t get started on her own. If she could get away from her typewriter.

  For now, she tuned out the sounds of the office, the phone ringing, the background conversations, and concentrated on typing up reports. It might not be the most exciting work, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth doing well. That was a lesson she’d learned from both her father and her mother.

  She remembered one time a neighbor child had brought a torn doll’s dress to Mama for her to sew it. Mama, of course, had plenty of real, paying work to do, but she took that small dress, and brought it to her machine and fixed it up good as new, giving the little girl a cookie along with the dress when she was done.

  “You could have just whip-stitched it,” Alice had pointed out.

  “I could have,” Mama agreed. “But why shouldn’t I do my best work, even for a small thing?”

  Lesson learned.

  “Grady!” Chief Murphy’s gruff voice cut through the background noise.

  She looked up from her typewriter to see him standing over her desk.

  “Yes, Chief?”

  “Go out with Piccolo. There’s been a bit of disturbance on New Street.”

  She didn’t have to be told twice. She grabbed her hat and followed Mark out of the office.

  “What’s the call?” Alice asked him as they headed into the spring sunshine.

  “Neighbor called to report the sounds of a fight next door. She says there are little children in the house and she’s worried for their safety.”

  She figured as much. A bit of a disturbance, where her help was required, usually meant a husband was beating his wife. Mark would handle the husband, she’d comfort the wife, and see if she could convince her to press charges. They usually didn’t.

  “Anyone we’ve dealt with before?”

  Mark nodded. “George Evans.”

  Alice sighed. George Evans was a violent man, but a charmer. His wife Matilda was meek and lacked any kind of self-confidence. Their children were still too young for school. If Alice couldn’t convince Matilda to file a complaint, perhaps she could at least convince her to get her children to safety. But based on past experience, that wasn’t likely.

  They got to the house and Evans answered their knock. He was breathing heavily, but other than that didn’t seem too out of sorts. He could have just been doing some heavy lifting, or perha
ps he rushed to answer the door. Alice peered behind him and saw his wife, her back to the door, busy with a dustpan and broom, sweeping up some broken pottery. A picture on the wall was askew, and a chair was off center, as if righted quickly after being over turned. The children sat, huddled together on the sofa.

  “What can I do for you, officers?” Evans asked jovially. “Collecting for the officers’ ball?” He reached for his wallet.

  “Actually, Mr. Evans,” Mark said, making a move to step past him into the house. “We were called to investigate a disturbance at this address.”

  “Nothing wrong here,” Evans said and started to close the door. Mark used his foot to stop it from closing all the way and then pushed it open again.

  “Just the same, we need to investigate.” He looked past the man to his wife, now standing in the shadows, watching. “Officer Grady here is going to speak to your wife out back, while I have a word with you.”

  The man went to slam the door again, but Mark held firm, this time grabbing his arm as well to keep him there. Alice hurried around to the back of the house and could only hope that Mrs. Evans had taken the hint and gone out the kitchen door.

  She had and was nervously wrapping her hands in her apron when Alice got there. She had a bruise forming on the side of her face and a trickle of blood ran down from a cut on her forehead.

  “Sit down,” Alice said, indicating the porch steps. She was afraid the woman would fall over if she didn’t sit. “Can I get you a cold cloth for your face?”

  Mrs. Evans let one hand drift up toward her face, but then let it fall again as she shook her head. “Better to not go inside.”

  “What happened?”

  “I fell,” she answered, rather woodenly.

  A lie. Or perhaps the incomplete truth. She might well have fallen after her husband hit her.

  “Your neighbor called, said they heard a commotion. Do you know what that might have been?”

  “George was angry that the coffee wasn’t ready. Sometimes he gets a bit loud.”

  “Ah.” Alice sat on the steps next to the woman. “He likes his coffee, does he?”

  “Doesn’t like to wait for anything is more like. And coffee takes time to brew. Can’t do it in a minute. Not with the children to take care of.”

  “He’s an impatient man.” Alice kept her voice neutral, hoping to draw the woman out a bit.

  Mrs. Evans gave a mirthless laugh. “That’s one word for it.”

  “Say the word, and Officer Piccolo will bring him down to the station right now. We can charge him with assault.”

  “And then what would I do?” The woman asked, almost angrily. “I’ve got two children and no skills. We’d be thrown out of the house and then we’d starve.”

  “There are organizations that can help.”

  “Charity? No. I don’t take no charity and neither do my children.”

  “You wouldn’t get hurt anymore,” Alice tried one last time.

  The woman put her hand to her face. “This? This ain’t nothing. Besides, he’ll go out on the fishing boat again soon and I’ll have a couple of weeks’ peace.”

  “Fisherman, is he?” Alice asked, her interest piqued. She hadn’t remembered that detail. “Who does he work for?”

  “Just started with some man named Salerno. Been with him a couple of months now. Pay is steady. I was hoping that would make things better. I just have to be faster about the coffee.”

  Alice didn’t think the problem could be solved by getting coffee ready faster, but she held her tongue. In the end she took the children to Woolworth’s for ice cream while Mark sat down with the husband and wife in the hopes of getting them to talk through their difficulties. Alice didn’t think it would matter much, but the kids enjoyed the ice cream, and they had no problem telling her all the details of the fights their parents had, complete with bad words and what piece of furniture got thrown most often: an ash tray.

  She’d have to try again with Matilda, perhaps go there when George was off at sea, and convince her to press charges, or at the very least to leave.

  Maybe it wasn’t so bad that she’d never gotten married. Better to be single and occasionally lonely than to feel trapped in an abusive relationship for the sake of security. She thought of Hank insisting he couldn’t live with someone else. Was he afraid he would be violent? If anything were to come of their friendship, would this be what she had to look forward to? She shook her head to clear it. No. Hank would never hurt her, she was sure of that. At least not intentionally.

  She dropped the children back home only to find that Mark had left. There was no reason for her to rush back to the office, the reports could wait. For now, she’d play “beat cop.” She strolled down Main Street, keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.

  She stopped to say hello to the grocer setting a display of fresh fruit on the sidewalk. She nodded to Mr. Parson the mail carrier as he left the post office on his rounds. She saw Patsy come out of the hardware store and quickened her pace so she could come even with him.

  “Good morning, Mr. Finley.”

  He stopped and looked confused for a moment before a grin split his impish face. “Everyone calls me Patsy, I almost didn’t know you were talking to me. Irene says you’ve been real helpful to her. Thanks for that, on behalf of Tomas.”

  “I don’t feel like I’ve done nearly enough,” Alice admitted.

  “At least they caught the guy who killed him,” Patsy said. “We can all sleep a little easier in our beds at night.”

  “Can you?” Were they really safe now that an arrest had been made, or were they all still involved in rum running which would end up with them encountering pirates who apparently stopped at nothing to get what they wanted?

  She watched as a variety of emotions flashed across his face. Finally, as if coming to a decision, he nodded his head.

  “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

  She had a feeling this wasn’t a case of him flirting with her. He had something to say, and she wanted to hear what it was. She followed him to the cafe.

  They took a seat in the corner, well away from the window, and when the waitress came over, Patsy held up two fingers. “Two coffees,” he said, then turned to Alice. “Do you take cream or sugar in yours?”

  “A little cream,” she answered.

  “I’ll have mine black.” The waitress walked off and Patsy turned to Alice with an odd intensity in his eyes. “You don’t think they got the real killer.”

  She was taken aback by this statement. It wasn’t what she was expecting.

  “As a matter of fact, I do think they have the real killer. But I don’t think they have the whole story.”

  The waitress came with their coffee, and they fell silent until she was out of earshot. Alice poured some cream in her cup and absently stirred. He had something he wanted to tell her, and she could wait here until he did.

  Finally, Patsy sighed, pushed his hands through his hair and had a sip of his coffee.

  “Ma’am, me and Snake, we weren’t a hundred percent honest with you.”

  “When?”

  “Ever,” he said with a shrug.

  She waited. If he’d admitted that much, chances were he was about to come clean. Marty said she had the patience of a saint, and while she wouldn’t go that far, she was good at silent waiting.

  “Jiggy was Tomas’s buyer, it’s true. Or he had been, but Tomas had a new buyer. Vince Salerno.”

  “The pirate?” She couldn’t help herself from asking. Patsy had already told her about Salerno, when they’d been at Irene’s. What had he held back?

  “I don’t know if he’s a pirate or not. He did buy the lot, and a pirate would steal it, but maybe he dabbles a bit in piracy on the side.” He took another sip of his coffee. “We unloaded the wine with Salerno and then Snake, Forster and I headed to a little place we know where we could get drunk. As you doubtless remember.”

  Yes. She remembered.

  “Forst
er wanted to tell Jiggy that Tomas had a new buyer. He didn’t think it was right to just leave him in the lurch. Snake and I thought it was best to leave well enough alone. Anyway, we argued, but Forster went to tell Jiggy anyway. Snake and I were arguing about what to do next, if we should warn Tomas or not, when you stumbled upon us.”

  Her hand shook as she put down her coffee cup. “If I hadn’t brought you in, you would have warned Tomas and he might not have been killed?” Pain squeezed her heart. “Is that what you’re saying?” Tears filled her eyes and she willed them away. She couldn’t cry. She was a professional. But had she aided in Tomas’s death in some way?

  “No, ma’am,” Patsy answered, reaching out to touch her hand. “I thought we shouldn’t say anything, and I’d won the argument. Locking us up made no difference.”

  That didn’t really make her feel better.

  “So you think Jiggy had something to do with it?”

  “Jiggy’s the kind of man who will smile and pat you on the back with one hand while stabbing you in the back with the other.”

  “I have to stop him.”

  Patsy shook his head. “He’s too slippery.”

  “What if I had proof of him accepting contraband?”

  Patsy shrugged. “Aye, maybe that. If you can catch him.”

  But she knew where the hut was. The hidden hut on the water that would be perfect for hiding shipments of illegal liquor until he could move it out. She knew who and where and what. Now it was just a matter of when. She could do this. She could shut him down.

  The bell in front of the shop jangled as two women came in, chatting amiably. They took a seat near the window. Patsy looked at his empty coffee cup and tossed a few coins on the table. “I have to go,” he said, standing.

  Alice stood as well.

  “Thank you for the coffee, and the conversation,” she said. “If you find out anything new, please let me know.”

  He nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Aye, and you’ll do the same.”

  “I will, Mr. Finley,” she said and headed toward the door, Patsy following close behind.