No Accidental Death

by Garrett Hutson

  The most obvious suspects, he knew from reading countless detective novels over the years, were the last people known to have seen the victim alive. So, who would’ve seen Nick last?

  For starters, Doug listed Nick’s known buddies, the men from the ship he palled around with and generally went ashore with: Ben Trebinski, Chet Heiselmann, and Roger Aikins. There were probably others, but those were the three main ones Nick ran around with. Doug would have to locate these men and have a chat with them.

  At the very least, they needed to be notified that Nick was dead. And their reactions would speak volumes. Doug needed to be the one to break the news to them, before anyone else got to them first.

  Which left him with the colossal problem of locating three American seamen in a city of more than three million people.

  **

  There was a knock on his door a little while later, and Doug looked up to see the lieutenant from the front desk standing with a Marine lieutenant, who stood at rigid attention.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Commander,” the navy lieutenant said. “But Lieutenant Wells here has a message for you from Colonel Beaumont, of the 4th Marine Battalion.”

  The Marine lieutenant saluted. “Permission to enter, sir?”

  “Permission granted.” Doug motioned him inside. “At ease.”

  The Marine lieutenant strode up to Doug’s desk, and stared straight ahead with his hands clasped behind his back.

  “Commander Bainbridge, I have been ordered to relay to you that the 4th Marine Battalion, United States Marine Corps, was following our command to protect the American Concession from incursion by any combatants, Chinese or Japanese. A short time ago, the Japanese naval command ordered the evacuation of all foreign inhabitants of the districts north of Soochow Creek. The Japanese garrison in Little Tokyo was tasked with the evacuation, and in light of their superior numbers to our own, Colonel Beaumont ordered a tactical retreat. We are currently assisting American citizens to leave their homes in an orderly fashion, and escorting them into downtown Shanghai.”

  Doug’s mind jumped to Lucy, and his stomach muscles tensed. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Is there anything else I should know?”

  “That is the complete message, sir.”

  “Thank you, dismissed.”

  Lieutenant Wells snapped a salute, and marched out of the office.

  As if on cue, Doug’s phone rang. “Hello?”

  “I have a call for you, sir, from a civilian,” the front desk lieutenant said. “It’s a lady—Miss Kinzler.”

  A wave of relief washed through Doug. “Put her through.” The line clicked over. “Hello dear, are you alright?”

  “Doug, a pair of American marines just came to my door and said I have to leave, on the order of the Japanese.” She sounded breathless. “They told me I have five minutes to pack a bag, and they’ll take me across the creek. They’re escorting all Americans out of Hongkou. What’s going on?”

  “It’s alright, dear. It’s only a precaution to keep you safe,” he said, trying to sound reassuring. “The Chinese Air Force has started bombing the Japanese navy ships in the river, and that’s too close to the civilian population in the Settlement to take for granted. You’ll be fine, just go with them and do as they say. I’m sure you can stay at Kenny and Abbie’s until this blows over.”

  “I heard a bomb hit the Standard Oil tanker in Yangtzepoo,” Lucy said, still breathless.

  That explained the giant fireball he’d seen behind the Izumo earlier. Doug was surprised to feel disappointment that a Japanese ship hadn’t been hit. They were the aggressors, and deep down he was rooting for the Chinese to defeat them, and with losses sufficient to deter them from bullying China again.

  “Most bombs miss their targets,” he explained. “That’s why it’s a good precaution to evacuate the areas closest to the fighting, for the time being. Pack a bag and go to Kenny and Abbie’s place. I’ll swing by later to check on you.”

  “I’d feel much better about all of this if you were with me.”

  He felt immediate guilt that he wasn’t there when this was happening. He hadn’t spent much time with her over the last several days, but that was easier to forgive himself for.

  Still, the war raging just a mile from them sent the unwelcome image of Tim McIntyre’ s funeral to the front of his mind—only his imagination said it could be Lucy next time. He shook his head to clear the image. She’d be fine.

  “I will, I promise. I’ll see you soon.”

  As he hung up the receiver, he wondered if Kenny had had enough time to make it to St. Luke’s before the Japanese started sending foreigners from the area; if not, he wouldn’t be permitted to cross Soochow Creek.

  As an after-thought, he wondered if the Japanese were going to attempt to evacuate any foreigners from St. Luke’s Hospital. He wouldn’t put it past them.

  **

  The sailors’ inn on West Foochow Road was a four-story edifice with a grimy brick façade, in contrast to the gleaming limestone and glass high rise buildings closer to the Bund, which Doug had passed on his way here. Only a few blocks from the wharves, it was also just steps from the Honan Road intersection, beyond which West Foochow Road became a notorious red-light district. With cheap beds, it was the most popular hostel for sailors of all stripes, be they commercial, merchant marine, or naval.

  It was Doug’s best chance of finding seamen Trebinski, Heiselmann, and Aikins without calling out a search team.

  A diminutive late-middle-aged Chinese woman with long hair woven into an old-fashioned braid stood behind the well-worn wooden counter, and she greeted him in Pidgin. “Wantchee sleep?”

  “No, thank you,” Doug replied in Shanghainese, and gave her a polite bow. “I’m looking for three American sailors. Perhaps you can help me?”

  Her eyes narrowed and her lips tightened into a thin line. “We keep our guests’ privacy.” Then her eyes narrowed further, and she gave Doug a suspicious look over. “Who is asking?”

  Doug slid a couple of Shanghai dollars across the grooved desk. Her expression softened, and she stared at the bills, not touching them.

  Doug placed a couple more on top of the first two. The woman’s hand bolted out and swept them up in one quick motion. “Who do you want to find?”

  “Three sailors from the American navy.” Doug described the three physically, along with their last names.

  A hint of smile curved up the corners of the woman’s mouth. “They’re here. They came in late this morning, they’ll still be asleep.”

  “What time did they come in?”

  She shrugged. “After five o’clock. I wake up at five o’clock, and I heard them return. My number two son worked the desk overnight.”

  At least two hours after Nick was killed. “Did you see them yourself?” Doug asked. When she shrugged in silence, he handed over another dollar.

  “I saw their faces when they came in. They were loud and drunk, and I came out to tell them to keep quiet. They can keep that racket to the brothels.”

  “What did their clothes look like?” Doug asked.

  She frowned. “Just like every other American navy boy who comes in here, no different.”

  No blood stains, then. He bowed to her in thanks, and asked if she’d take him to them.

  “I have to stay here while my husband is out, and my sons are asleep.” She pointed at Doug and added in a warning tone, “I can wake them if there’s trouble.”

  Doug shook his head. “No trouble, I promise. May I go up myself?”

  She hesitated, but then motioned toward the stairs. “Third floor, second room on the right. If I hear trouble, I’ll wake my sons, and they will teach all of you a lesson.”

  Doug bowed again. “I understand. Thank you, mistress.”

  The stairs creaked, and at first Doug cringed at the way the sound echoed in the otherwise quiet establishment. Ten-thirty on a Saturday morning clearly wasn’t prime time. As he passed the first and second floors—the buildin
g’s floors being numbered in the European fashion—the only sound he could hear besides his own steps was faint snoring and the occasional snort from down the halls.

  The tell-tale sounds of drunken slumber.

  At the top of the stairs, he went part-way down the hall, and stopped at the second room on the right. None of the rooms had doors, and the ones he passed were all the same—roughly square, probably 10 feet per side, with bunk beds stacked three high on three of the four walls. The outside wall was bare brick, and a long narrow window along the ceiling provided the only illumination. A bare light bulb on the ten-foot ceiling was not lit, but Doug pulled the long chain hanging in the center of the room, and it came on.

  Five of the nine bunks were occupied by sleeping men in various stages of dress; all of them snored, but a couple of the bearded ones in the corner were snoring loudly enough to wake the dead.

  Ben Trebinski, Chet Heiselmann, and Roger Aikins occupied the three bunks to his right. Aikins on the top bunk was fully dressed; or almost—his right arm and shoulder were outside of his white uniform blouse, which bunched at his neck on that side. Clearly, he’d been too drunk to get it off, and had given up midway through. Heiselmann in the middle bunk was sprawled out in his boxer shorts, mouth open, one arm and leg dangling off the edge of the bed. Ben Trebinski was lying face down, his uniform pants and underwear both bunched at his ankles, over the top of his boots, which were still laced, and his blouse was twisted around his torso. His thick legs and buttocks gleamed white in the daylight streaming through the narrow window.

  Doug averted his eyes and walked to the head of the bunks. He shook Aikins by the shoulder, and said his name, loudly. The seaman stirred and cracked open his eyes, and Doug started shaking Heiselmann’s shoulder, calling his name.

  Aikins propped himself up on his elbows and squinted down at Doug, shielding his eyes with his hand. “Commander Bainbridge?” He sounded confused as much as surprised.

  “Wake up, boys,” Doug said, trying to sound commanding but not stern. He didn’t want them to think he was judging them. What did he care if they over-drank and caroused all night while on leave? That was their business. And it wasn’t like he and his friends hadn’t had their wild nights.

  Aikins swung his legs over the side of the bed while slipping his arm back through his sleeve, and jumped down, putting his hand on his forehead and groaning when he landed.

  Heiselmann stretched and yawned, then scratched his bare belly. Finally he crawled out of his bunk and put his feet on the hard floor. “What’s the matter, Commander?” he asked, stifling another yawn.

  “I’ll explain later. Right now just get dressed, and come with me. And somebody wake up Trebinski, will you?”

  Heiselmann snorted. Then he leaned down and slapped Trebinski’s bare ass so hard the smack almost made Doug’s ears ring. “Hey, Trebinski, get your ass out of bed, on the double. Commander’s orders.”

  Trebinski scrambled over onto his butt, and Doug’s jaw almost came unhinged for a second before he looked away in a hurry. His cheeks flushed hot.

  “Ah, Jesus, Trebinski, put that thing away, would ya?” Aikins bellyached.

  “Show-off,” Heiselmann muttered, shaking his head.

  Ben Trebinski’s face turned about twenty shades of red, and a sheepish grin spread across his face as he tugged up his pants. “Sorry, Commander. I must’ve passed out or somethin’.”

  Doug worked hard to regain his composure, and overdid the stern expression. “Don’t worry about that. I just need you boys to get dressed and come with me.”

  It didn’t take long. Active duty seamen were accustomed to speed drills for everything, including jumping out of bed and getting dressed. Two minutes later, they followed Doug down the stairs in single file.

  “Where’s Nick?” Ben Trebinski whispered before they reached the ground floor. This could have been said for Doug’s benefit.

  “How the hell should I know?” Aikins whispered back.

  Doug led them through the front door onto the sidewalk. He stopped short of the corner and motioned for them to gather around. “When was the last time you boys saw Seaman Bonadio?”

  They all shuffled their feet and looked down.

  “Speak freely,” Doug said, trying to take on the commanding-but-friendly tone he hadn’t quite achieved upstairs.

  “Well, sir,” Ben Trebinski began, barely looking up at Doug.

  “You’re not in trouble, fellas,” Doug said, though that might not necessarily be the case, depending on what he learned. “Go on, please.”

  “Well, we went into the cat house, you see,” Ben said, looking up at Doug, blushing.

  “Go on,” Doug prompted again, ignoring the involuntary distaste that made his throat tighten.

  “We split up, of course,” Chet Heiselmann said. “We were supposed to meet up downstairs after, you know, after we all finished. These two clowns came down, and me, but Nick never shows. Finally we ask one of the girls if he’s still around, tryin’ to scam another go or somethin’, and she said she saw him leave a while back, before any of us.”

  “What time was that?” Doug asked.

  Aikins shrugged. “I dunno, eleven or eleven-thirty, I think.”

  Ben Trebinski shook his head. “Nah, it was after eleven-thirty. ’Cuz remember when we were walkin’ to the club right after, those bells struck midnight.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Heiselmann agreed, nodding vigorously.

  Doug didn’t hide his surprise. “You fellas didn’t see him at all the rest of the night?”

  They all shook their heads, and each replied, “No, sir.”

  And for the next five hours you didn’t wonder where the hell he was? Doug tried to think of a way to ask that indirectly.

  A low rumble from the south got gradually louder, and the three seamen shielded their eyes and looked up at the cloudy sky, where a squadron of Chinese bombers streaked across their line of vision at the end of the street, making another run up the Huang Po River.

  “Damn,” Aikins muttered. “Them Japs are in for it now.”

  The other two nodded solemnly.

  “I didn’t get to go out last night,” Doug said, smiling regretfully. “What club did you boys go to?”

  “We was at the cabaret show at the Ambassador first,” Ben Trebinski said with a grin. “Then we hired a cab uptown and went to the Paramount next, and then we hit Roxy’s on the way back down here.”

  “Hey, Nick’s girl was dancing there,” Roger Aikins said, slapping Ben’s arm.

  Chet Heiselmann frowned.

  Ben’s expression brightened. “Yeah! You remember her, Commander—the pretty dame that Nick started the fight over that one night, over at the Majestic. She got fired from there, I guess, and she works at Roxy’s now. We all got to dance with her.”

  “She weren’t there at first,” Heiselmann said, an odd note of resentment coloring the words. “She didn’t show up ‘til after four.”

  That’s interesting. “Did she mention seeing Nick before she went to work?”

  Heiselmann frowned again, and shook his head.

  “Why you askin’ about Nick, Commander?” Aikins asked, giving Doug a scrutinizing look. “He ain’t A.W.O.L. or nothin’. He got leave like the rest of us.”

  And that was that. He couldn’t get away with any more questions until he told them. He took a deep breath.

  “Nick was found dead this morning, killed by someone,” he said, not relishing giving that kind of news to a man’s friends—even if one of them might have been the one to kill him. It also brought to mind the last time he’d had to tell someone that a person he cared about had been killed. A profound sadness swept through him at the thought, even two years later.

  Doug watched the three young men’s reactions closely. Ben Trebinski looked genuinely shocked; Chet Heiselmann and Roger Aikins both looked more confused than anything else.

  “Killed?” Heiselmann said, quietly, looking as if the realization wa
s dawning on him. Doug wasn’t sure if that was sincere, or an act.

  Doug nodded, and gave them his most sympathetic look. “I’m afraid so. That’s why I’m asking about what happened to him last night.”

  “So, you’re sayin’ you don’t know who did it?” Roger Aikins asked, giving Doug a scrutinizing stare.

  “Not yet. The fleet’s going to conduct an investigation, but in the meantime Commander Rose and I are trying to learn as much as we can about what happened to Seaman Bonadio before he was killed.”

  That was partly true, though it implied that he wasn’t part of the real investigation.

  Aikins looked at Heiselmann, and swatted at his arm. “I bet it was that I-tai sailor he started the fight with.”

  This surprised Doug. “What makes you say that?”

  “Nick said he’d seen the fella around,” Aikins replied, looking Doug in the eye. “He joked just yesterday that those I-tais were following him. It’s not so funny now, though.” He looked at his buddies. “Hey, what was that word he used? The Italian word, ‘Ven’ something or other.”

  “Vendetta,” Ben Trebinski said, sounding very grave indeed. “He said it means ‘vengeance’ in Italian.”

  “Yeah, that’s it!” Aikins said, smacking a fist against his palm. He turned to Doug, eyes alight. “Nick said yesterday that the I-tai fella had a vendetta against him, for keepin’ the fella away from that dame Nick likes so much. Lola, that’s the gal’s name.”

  This was an unexpected development. It felt a little too convenient, but he’d have to look into it before he could dismiss it. “Did the Italian fella have a name?”