The Rum Runner Read online

  She’d had plenty of fights with her sister, but none of them resulted in having the police called in.

  “So it was just a friendly argument between friends?” she asked to be sure.

  “That’s all it was, nothing to concern your pretty little head about,” Snake said.

  Okay then, that pretty much guaranteed she was going to dig a bit deeper on this one.

  “Right, right.” She turned her attention to Patsy. “He wasn’t going after your girl or something?” Taking a stab in the dark here, but sometimes that led to the true information spilling out.

  “He ain’t got no girl,” Snake answered with a snort. “Who would look twice at this little Irish runt?”

  “I think he’s quite good looking, in a rugged sort of way.” If you liked windburned leprechauns.

  “Eh, we weren’t fighting about a girl,” Patsy admitted. “We was fighting about Jiggy.”

  Snake punched Patsy in the arm and Alice tried to hide her smile. The truth always comes out.

  “And who, or what, is Jiggy?”

  “He’s a customer.” Snake’s voice rang of feigned innocence. “That’s all.”

  “What does he buy from you?”

  Perhaps they weren’t as drunk as they looked, because Snake narrowed his eyes at her.

  “Fish. We’re fishermen. We sell fish. Scallops particularly.”

  “Right then.” That was a dead end. “And who sold you alcohol?”

  “No one sold it to us,” Patsy declared.

  “Did you make it yourselves?”

  “No.” Snake put one hand to his heart. “That would be illegal. You do know about prohibition, don’t you?”

  Oh yes, she knew. It would be so much easier if it were repealed, far from reducing crime, as promised, it had increased it. But as long as it was illegal, she was going to do whatever she could to make sure the rules were followed.

  “So where did you get the alcohol?”

  “Alcohol? We’ve had nary a drink since we’ve stepped ashore.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. They surely knew how pickled they were. Did they really expect her to believe them? “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing except some apple cider.” Patsy held up one hand as if taking a pledge. “It must have turned. That happens sometimes, you know. It’s quite a natural process. Can’t fault a man for drinking cider, if he doesn’t know it’s turned.”

  “No, I suppose not.” She clearly wasn’t getting more out of these two. She’d just leave them here until they sobered up. Nothing illegal about drinking, after all, only against making, selling or buying the stuff. However, there were ordinances against drunk and disorderly, and they definitely had been both.

  She sat at her desk and typed up her report before turning her attention back to Mark’s reports.

  The sun slipped further through the sky and the two men in the holding cell sobered up enough to let them out. Patsy and Snake were digging in their pockets for the cash to pay their fine when the door opened and the Chief and Mark walked in.

  Alice looked up from writing out the receipts to see the somber faces of her fellow officers.

  “It was bad, then?”

  “There’s a man dead.” Chief Murphy took off his hat and ran his hand through his thinning hair.

  The men in front of her paled visibly and exchanged nervous glances.

  “Who?” Snake asked, his voice cracking on the word.

  “Tomas Nagy. Know him?” Murphy looked inquisitively at the two men.

  Patsy’s face crumpled, and it looked like he was doing all he could to keep from bursting into tears.

  “We work for him.” Snake’s shoulders slumped, and he shook his head slowly back and forth in disbelief. “What happened?”

  The chief tossed his hat onto the desk. “He was shot. You say you worked for him?”

  “Aye.” Patsy got himself together enough to answer. “He’s the skipper of the Katinka.”

  “That’s right, he is. Or was.” Murphy ran his hand over his face, his eyes looked haunted. Murder was not common in their quiet town. He picked his hat back up. “And who are you gentlemen?”

  “This is William Olsen and Patrick Finley,” Alice answered. “They’ve been enjoying our hospitality this afternoon.”

  Murphy nodded with understanding. “When did you last see Nagy?”

  Patsy rubbed his ear as he thought. The raw emotion on the man’s face was heartbreaking.

  “Oh, man. We finished unloading around one or two?” He glanced at his companion for confirmation.

  “Something like that,” Snake shrugged. “Didn’t quite check the time. Past noon for sure, but the sun was still pretty high.”

  “So you unloaded and then what?” Murphy asked.

  “Got our pay and headed into town,” Patsy answered. He was starting to get himself together now that the initial shock had passed.

  “You didn’t stay around the marina?”

  “No, sir. No point. We had no more work to do, and we had our pay.”

  Murphy nodded, acknowledging the logic of that.

  Snake cleared his throat. “He’s a good man, Tomas. He’s got a family. Little kids. Know who shot him?”

  “Not yet,” Murphy answered. “But we will. We will. I want to ask you both a few more questions though, to try to get an idea where Nagy might have been heading after you left him.”

  Patsy and Snake nodded and, heads hanging, went through the open door to the chief’s office and sat in the wooden visitor chairs there.

  Mark sat back at his desk, looking defeated. It was always hard when they had to deal with a death. Most often it was death due to an accident of some sort. Then there was the time that she tried her best to forget, when a man had jumped to his death right in front of her. Luckily things like that weren’t commonplace. She reached for the next report to type up.

  “Grady.” Murphy stood in his office doorway.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Go on out to the Nagys’, will you? See what help the family is going to need and arrange for it.”

  “Yes, sir.” She stood and put her hat on. This was not exactly crime investigation, but it was helping people, and her father had always said that was the most fulfilling aspect of police work. “Address?”

  “Berry Street. Three Twenty-Nine.”

  Just around the corner.

  “And does she know, sir? About her husband?”

  “Not yet.” Murphy shook his head. “You’ll be breaking the news gently, won’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She left the office, trying to think how she was going to break the news to the new widow. She knew from experience there wasn’t any good way.

  Chapter Two

  Water lapped gently against the side of the boat as Hank Chapman stood at the wheel. The afternoon sun was at such an angle that it blinded him as he looked over his shoulder to pilot the Mary B into dock.

  Overhead seagulls circled, squawking and crying to one another. The birds were his constant companions, scavengers, always hoping to get their greedy little beaks on his fish. They could find their own fish, they weren’t getting any of his.

  He cut the engines, and the boat glided into its slip. Slim jumped from the side of the boat to the worn dock and coiled the line around a rusted cleat. Once the boat was secure, Hank rubbed a hand across his face. Already he wanted to be back out to the peace of sea. He could hear men yelling across the fishery yard. Trucks backing up, machinery grinding. People. He’d rather not deal with people, other than his crew. They were a good group of guys who knew when to leave him alone.

  There were some benefits to being home. After nearly two weeks at sea, he was looking forward to stretching out on a nice soft mattress tonight. However, he already knew he would have trouble sleeping, despite the comfortable mattress, without the gentle swaying provided by the ocean.

  He left the sanctuary of the bridge deck with its sweeping windows and warm wood accents, to help w
ith the unloading. He noted that the two narrow metal flights of stairs needed to be repainted while they were in dock. In the storage hold his crew was already digging the fifty-pound bags of shucked scallops out of the ice that preserved them when they were at sea. The men formed an assembly line to get the three hundred fifty-pound bags up to the working deck where they could then be offloaded. He helped get them started, handing the first few bags to Smitty, his first mate. A quick glance showed that the false floors in the holds were intact. Should someone from the fishery decide, for whatever reason, that they wanted to come aboard he didn’t need them questioning the storage capacity of the hold.

  “You’ll all be sleeping in your own beds tonight,” Hank said as he handed the next bag to Smitty and then stepped out of the line. He needed to go find Martin, the dockmaster, and make the sale.

  “I ain’t seen my wife in two weeks,” Curly yelled from somewhere mid-line. “Ain’t no sleep happening in our house tonight.”

  Amid the laughter, Ahab called out. “At least you’ll be in your own bed.”

  “Some of the time,” Curly responded with a loud guffaw.

  Hank gave Curly a slap on the shoulder as he passed him. He squeezed past his men on the steps. On the working deck Mack was stacking the fifty-pound bags so they could be off-loaded quickly. Hank grabbed the gangway and with a bump and a clank, locked it in place with a few swift moves. Once on the dock he took a second to let his legs get acclimated to solid ground.

  He’d prefer to stay out on the boat with only his crew at hand. He could deal with storms and high waves and malfunctioning equipment, he just hated dealing with all the people when he came into port. Jack Martin at least wasn’t too bad, he’d been a fisherman before he took over the fishery. He understood what it meant to be at sea. That counted for something.

  Martin was already out of the raw-boarded office and heading toward him.

  “Good haul?”

  Hank wiped his hands on his trousers before shaking hands. “Got seven and a half tons for you.”

  “Not bad. Could be better. The Katinka brought in eight a couple of hours ago.”

  “Good for them.” He was not going to get goaded into false rivalries. They worked night and day out on that ship, for nearly two weeks. They brought in what they brought in. They fished until their hold was full. Granted his hold didn’t carry quite as much fish as it used to, but for that matter neither did Katinka’s. There were no secrets between friends, and he knew Nagy was in the same business he was in. And he didn’t mean scalloping.

  “Come into the office, Hank, and we’ll settle up.”

  Hank followed Martin into the dim, crowded office. A wooden desk with a scarred top took up most of the space. A brass spike on the desk held a clutter of receipts. A ripped fishing net occupied the one spare chair in the room. Behind the desk was a large black safe with scratched gold trim. The older man spun the dial with a few quick flicks and opened it. He grabbed a pile of bills and after closing the door again handed the money to Hank, sitting down at his desk to write up the receipt.

  Hank took the bills, licked his finger and started thumbing through the pile, counting it.

  “Don’t trust me?” Martin looked over the top of his half-moon reading spectacles, pausing in the act of writing down the numbers.

  “Don’t trust anyone.” It was truer than he wanted to let on. He trusted his crew with his life when they were all out on the water, but other than that, he watched out for his own back. It was the only way to be certain of anything.

  “Good policy,” Martin answered. “Though you notice I trusted you on how many tons you had.”

  “You can check for yourself. It will all be on your dock shortly.” He shoved the wad of bills into his pocket. “If you found I shorted you, you can take it out of the next shipment.”

  “I know you wouldn’t short me.” Martin stood and handed him one copy of the receipt and stuck the other on the spike on his desk, to flutter with the rest in the breeze coming through the open window. “Because your daddy would have your hide if you did.”

  Hank smiled benignly at him. His father didn’t know half of what he did, but he did own the Mary B and several other fishing boats and used to fish with Jack Martin. He shook Martin’s hand once more. “Nice doing business with you.”

  “You keep bringing me scallops, I’ll keep buying them.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  Back out in the yard all work had stopped. The fishermen had gathered around one man and there was no making sense of the excited babble of voices. Hank found his men in the crowd.

  “What’s going on?” he asked Smitty.

  “Nagy’s dead.”

  He swayed, as his body as well as his mind reeled at the information. How was that possible? He’d only unloaded his fish a few hours ago. What could have gone wrong?

  “Tomas?” he asked, hoping it was some other Nagy. It wasn’t an uncommon last name, after all.

  “Yes.” It was one of the workers from the fishery who answered him. “Shot.”

  Hank’s blood ran hot and then cold in his veins.

  “Who shot him?” Was it related to the rum running? Was it an accident? A random crime? Did he have to worry about the same thing happening to him, or had Nagy just had incredibly bad luck?

  “Don’t know,” the fishery man answered, sucking on a toothpick. “Butch there told us. Ask him.”

  Hank pushed his way through the crowd until he was within arm’s reach of the burly man they called Butch. He reached out and grabbed his shoulder. “What happened to Nagy?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Hank closed his eyes, wishing people would stop saying that. He wanted it to not be true.

  “When did it happen? Where? What do you know?”

  “All I know is he was shot down by Boynton Beach this afternoon.”

  Right by the marina. Not good.

  “Who did it? Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Butch answered with a shrug. “I wasn’t there. Don’t know if anyone knows those answers.” His face softened slightly with a touch of compassion. “Friend of yours?”

  Hank nodded, trying to keep the tears blurring his vision from spilling over. “Yes.” He pushed the word out past the lump in his throat. “Yes, he was.”

  He grabbed Smitty’s arm. “Get the crew back on board. We need to finish unloading.” He headed back to the boat, trying to process what he’d learned.

  Tomas Nagy dead. He couldn’t wrap his head around that. And by whom? Even if he’d been caught by the Feds, it was unlikely they’d just shoot him. Jiggy? But that made no sense, why would he shoot one of his best suppliers? Random crime? Personal grudge? Pirates? At this point it seemed anything was possible. He shook his head to clear it.

  The crew, working with incredible speed, had already started off-loading the bags of scallops. He took his place to help finish the job. The work was heavy and mind-numbing, and he went through the motions while his thoughts kept tumbling back to the fact that Nagy was dead.

  Nagy was one of the few people outside his crew who he could stand to spend time with. Nagy understood him, having also fought in the Great War, granted on the other side of the conflict, since he’d been fighting for his homeland of Hungary. But now, years later, on this side of the ocean, those distinctions didn’t matter. What mattered was that Nagy understood the horror of the trenches. Understood the way that a loud noise could set your nerves jangling. Understood how nothing was permanent, that one moment you could be talking to a buddy and the next moment he was vaporized by a bomb. He would miss Nagy. A lot.

  There were dangers inherent in rum running. It was one of the reasons he got involved with it in the first place. The danger made him feel alive. But up until now the danger had primarily been getting nabbed by the G-men, and having your boat confiscated, not death.

  Once all the bags were on the dock, he went up to the bridge with Smitty while the rest of the crew untied the lines and g
ot the boat ready to head out. He started the motors again, feeling a certain visceral satisfaction in the way their thrumming echoed throughout the boat.

  “Next stop,” Hank said with a nod to his first mate. He wanted to just go and drown his sorrows, but they had business to complete first.

  “Next stop,” Smitty echoed. At a signal from the crew on the working deck he said. “You’re clear to go.”

  Hank guided the scallop boat away from the fishery’s dock and down the channel toward the slip where the Mary B would undergo maintenance until they were ready to take her out again. Before he got to the Arthur Kill and the marina, he turned down another, smaller channel, the entrance to the Woodbridge River. No, this trip wasn’t part of their recorded voyage. But no one was going to complain about the detour. It meant nearly doubling their pay. It was a trip he was fairly certain Nagy had made shortly before his death.

  He carefully steered into a hidden cove. A plain wooden dock jutted out into the water. He cut the engines and let the boat float in. When they got close, Curly jumped ashore and tied the lines to the cleats. Hank left the bridge and got to the working deck just as Jiggy Malone, short and scrappy with his ever-present pipe and checked sports coat, clambered aboard, barely waiting for the gangway to be put down.

  “Thought I’d heard you were in.” He stuck out a beringed hand for Hank to shake. “What you got for me?”

  “Forty hams.” Hank led him to the hold where the crew had already drained the melted ice and removed the false bottoms of the storage areas, exposing the contraband. Each burlap-covered package contained six bottles tied together.

  “Of what?”

  “The finest Bordeaux.”

  Jiggy rubbed his hands together in delight, his eyes gleaming.

  “Lovely! Let’s get it unloaded.”

  Hank was more than happy to do that. If the wine was found onboard, he’d lose the boat. And since it was his father’s, there would be hell to pay. While he knew that technically rum running was breaking the law, the danger in that was part of the reason he found it exciting, but the law was a bad one, and he saw himself as doing a service to humanity. After all, what good was a civilized society without a glass of wine to enjoy with dinner? Or a shot of whiskey or bourbon or rum?