by Jack Tunney
Nobody knew the cap’n’s parentage exactly. Some said his mother was a New Orleans octoroon wooed away from a cathouse by a Spanish sea captain. Others said he was the son of a Haitian pirate who’d taken an Englishwoman to ransom and they fell in love. He was dark and broad and powerful, the kind of man no one wanted to corner.
He held a Tommy gun pointed at Shorty, and that big, greasy snout made him look even more scary. Of course, knowing that Thompson sub machine gun could actually cut a man in half would have been scary enough without taking in the man holding it.
“Call me old one more time and they’re gonna have to mop what’s left of you offa this dock.”
I smiled and thought maybe I’d better let Shorty know what he was up again. “That man up there means what he says. He’ll drop you in your tracks.”
Shorty cowered immediately. He dropped the switchblade and shoved his hands high into the air. “Don’t shoot!”
The cap’n looked like he gave that suggestion a thought or two, then he shifted his cigar to the other corner of his jaw. “What’s going on down there, Flynn?”
“These two mooks want us to weigh anchor, cap’n.”
“Why?”
“Says there’s a man named Falcone that’s claiming rights to this spot.”
“You see the name Falcone down there anywhere?”
“No sir.”
“Harbor master cleared this berth for us, didn’t he?”
“Yes sir.”
The cap’n nodded and shifted his attention back to Shorty. He glared at Shorty and the man withered in the heat. The Tommy gun never wavered.
“Did you start this fight, Flynn?”
I didn’t take no hurt feelings over the question. I been one to start fights every now and again, usually when I know there can’t be no help for it, but it was fair to ask. “No sir.”
The cap’n nodded again. “Good enough for me. Flynn, he ain’t always the brightest bulb in the box, but he ain’t one to lie.” He gestured with the Tommy gun. “You pick up your friend there and vamoose. And I don’t wanna see you around my ship again.”
Shorty cursed under his breath, but he was careful none of that swill reached the cap’n’s ears. He picked up his buddy, got him to his feet, and pulled an arm across his shoulders. High Pockets still wasn’t sure where he was, and he staggered like a man three sheets to the wind. Together, they lurched away through the milling dock people.
“Flynn.”
At the cap’n’s irritated roar, I turned round and faced the old buzzard. “I ain’t goldbricking.”
“Well, you ain’t working neither.”
So I got to it, but I figured we hadn’t seen the last of Shorty and High Pockets. Turned out I was right, but I had no way of knowing how much trouble I was gonna get myself into.
ROUND 3
Shortly after the sun set, Cap’n Slidell didn’t want to burn diesel fuel to keep the generator running for working light, so we called it quits for the day. You’d have thought after all the hard work the crew had put in, they would have called it a night and hit the rack. That didn’t happen because we was in portage for the first time in weeks and the cap’n always let us draw some pay. Every manjack aboard Wide Bertha caught a second wind and was ready to hit the beaches.
A sailor spends all them days at sea, he’s ready for shore leave when he gets a chance at it.
So at seven-thirty on the dot, after we had one of the fastest messes we’d ever seen, Cap’n Slidell came down to that small galley with his cashbox and his notebook. He set down the box and the galley got quiet as the courtroom of a hanging judge.
The cap’n always made a production out of letting men draw pay. There wasn’t no pushing or shoving because we knew we wasn’t going to sail into that harbor without being in a group. A sailor traveling alone down the streets of a port city was a man just asking for trouble. The unlucky ones ended up robbed of whatever they had on them. The really unlucky ones ended up robbed and dead in a gutter or back alley. Cap’n Slidell gave that speech to every new hand he took onboard. I’d given that same speech myself dozens of times since signing on with Wide Bertha.
Despite our impatience, we all sat there and watched the money being handed out in well-worn dollar bills, none of them larger than a sawbuck, and the cap’n would make a neat notation in his notebook. The cap’n had terrible handwriting, but I ain’t one to talk. My brother Patrick was the one of us with all the book smarts. Me, I just had a hard head and a strong back, and I wasn’t afraid of work or any man I ever met.
But when it came to toting down each man’s draw, which was the same on nights like tonight, the cap’n’s handwriting was as neat as any typewriter’s would be. The columns lined up like he’d laid them in with a ruler. Each man signed his name beside the draw.
Except for Sandbag Pete and Owney Tillman. They just made their X and the cap’n wrote their names in beside them. They could read their names, but that was about all. Sandbag was old enough that he hadn’t been taught writing. He’d grown up in North Carolina and hadn’t ever got no schooling. He’d worked tobacco with his pa until he’d quit the fields at age fifteen to go to sea and work on a tramp steamer.
Owney was a Texan and had worked as an oiler for a drilling operation. He preferred that kind of work to handling cargo on a ship, but he’d got into a fight with the wrong man in a bar one night and ended up sideways with the law. That had nothing to do with why he couldn’t read. He said he never saw the letters the same way twice and they seemed to move around while he was looking at them.
I could make my way through letters and such. The nuns at the orphanage made sure of that. I even read a book every now and again, if it caught my interest. I swapped for the pulps that circulated through Wide Bertha, and liked science fiction and Western stories best. In a lot of them pulp stories, science fiction and Westerns wasn’t too far from each other. Kissing cousins for sure.
Back at the orphanage where me and Patrick grew up, he always favored crime stories. Private eyes and tough guy cops. I always guessed that was one of the reasons he went out to Los Angeles and became a cop himself. I know he didn’t want to be like our old man, who was always working some angle, and the old man took down crooks as well as straights with his cons. He made plenty of people sore before he finally got cashed out at the end of a smoking pistol.
One of those angles was what had got our ma killed when me and Patrick was small kids. And why our old man couldn’t be there for us while we was growing up. Our Lady of the Glass Jaw, the name we hung on the church where Father Tim started teaching us boxing, had kept us until we aged out.
Patrick had himself a career. Me, I just wanted to see as much of the world as I could.
I was at the tail end of the draw line, turning pages in the latest Doc Savage Magazine. I usually was the last one, and I didn’t put up no fuss. Nobody was going anywhere without me. The cap’n liked me going last that way because he knew most of the crew would wait on me. Sometimes there was fights in the bars and taverns and the cap’n and them men knew I would stand by them.
No matter who it was.
I didn’t like all the hands aboard Wide Bertha. For instance, I didn’t care for Stan Higgins at all. The man was a lush, fell into a bottle of rotgut whenever we got into port. What we knew of him was that he left his wife and three kids back in Baltimore. The cap’n saw to it Higgins sent money home to them every trip, but Higgins didn’t much care to go home. Nobody else much liked him either, but he was a good sailor when he was sober, and a bad drunk when he was not. ’Course, him being a drunk that passed out, he didn’t start many fights. But you had to carry him back to the ship after a night out, and that got old.
We put him to bed in a dress one night, thinking that would cure him, but he just got up the next morning like it was nothing and even came down to breakfast in that dress. Didn’t bother him none, but none of the crew wanted to have another breakfast with Higgins sitting there in a dress, so that never h
appened again.
Cap’n Slidell would hand me my pay every time, look me square in the eye, and tell me to look after the crew. That evening, he put twenty dollars in my paw and looked at me. “Bring ’em back safe, Mick.”
“Aye, cap’n.” I’d learned not to salute him sarcastically at those times because he’d clouted me in the ear for it the first time I did it. Some things, I don’t need a repeat dose of. The cap’n had fast hands for a big man of his years.
All of us had pay in our pockets, and we headed out toward shore. We heard the music coming from the bars, the honks of cars passing in the streets, and the yells of people already celebrating another evening of entertainment.
Cap’n Slidell stayed behind and watched the ship. He didn’t much care for carousing and claimed to have sowed every wild oat he had. Story was that some woman had broke his heart in the past and he’d just never got over her. He stayed aboard ship, drank quietly, and did whatever it was he did that none of us knew about. We’d spent some time trying to figure out what that was, but we’d never had much luck. After a while, looking got tiresome.
Sandbag Pete had one story that never got old: that the cap’n had him a treasure map that showed where a Spanish ship filled with gold had gone down in the Caribbean. All them years, the cap’n was spending his time working out the tides so he could figure out where that ship had finally come to rest.
I didn’t believe it, mostly, but it was a good story and Sandbag could tell it well. Still, most of us figured that would be really something if it was true.
We went down the gangplank, feeling the unaccustomed steady land under our feet, and was hopeful of a good time because we knew the cap’n would work us like dogs again tomorrow.
Morrie Wilson, a sandy haired kid who was barely seventeen and had the sharpest eyes in the whole crew, gamboled loosely at my side. He was from Maine, a small town kid with an awkward accent and a cocky attitude he was seriously understocked for.
“Where we goin’, Mick? What do you feel like? Havana’s got it all.” Morrie grinned lopsidedly. “Wine. Women. And Song. What’s your pleasure?”
I shook my head and resettled my watch cap, straightening it out. “I don’t much care. Some place with beautiful women and fair beer prices.”
Sandbag glared gloomily at the city spreading out around us. Neon lights from nearby nightclubs tinted his cheeks pink and then blue as we passed them. “You ain’t gonna find fair prices here. Not with them Italian mob boys moving in lock, stock, and barrel. You can expect to pay a pretty penny for your drinking in Havana these days.”
I scowled at that. I’d heard the stories of how Meyer Lansky and his mobbed up buddies had struck a deal with Batista and moved in to take over the gambling joints after the G-Men in the states had started squeezing the mob pretty hard. Havana was wide open territory. I’d never been there before, and Havana wasn’t generally on Cap’n Slidell’s agenda.
“We’ll find something, Sandbag.” I made myself smile as I clapped the old man on his bony shoulder. “This has gotta be better than what Singapore has become.” I’d barely got out of Singapore alive a few months ago, and I was pretty sure some of them Chinese Tong would still be hunting me if we wandered back that way.
ROUND 4
As it turned out, we’d tied up near the Marianao neighborhood, where the Tropicana Club stood out against the night and the other clubs with a big show of neon lights and a long line of traffic out front. The nightclub was a monster venting a roar of samba music that carried out into the streets. Even the people waiting outside to get in was having a good time.
I wanted to go in, but I knew the prices would be steep. The cap’n was a fair man, but our wages was too measly for that place. But we all gazed at that glitzy building and swallowed our real interest and longing.
Morrie, though, he was downright intrigued and made no bones about it. “We should go over there.”
“Naw.” Sandbag shook his gray head. “Even if we could get into that joint, we’d be broke in less time than it took us to get in. What we need is a quiet little spot with pretty senoritas and good old American beer. I heard them mob boys done brought in truckloads of it.”
“You know what I heard about that place?” Hank Plaster, the mechanic who kept our diesel engines up and running, ran a hand through his dark brown hair. He talked with a Brooklyn accent and didn’t take guff from no man. With his big forearms and broad shoulders, he looked like a fireplug.
“What?” Morrie always liked to hear stories.
“There was this mobbed-up guy named Martin Fox who made his way as a gambler. Guy never even learned to read or write, but he could read pasteboards pretty good. Rented him a table in the Tropicana, then settled in and started making him a fortune playing cards. Within a few years, he bought out the club with his profits.”
“Are you kidding me?” Morrie liked the stories, but knew that sometimes the hands made up stuff to tell him just to wind him up.
Solemnly, Hank raised a hand. “On my ma’s grave, may she rest in peace. ’Course, it wasn’t just the gambling Fox did. He also had a numbers racket too.”
“So, he still owns that place?” Morrie gawped at the Tropicana and the sharp dressed guys parking cars for guests.
“Him and a few others, including Santo Trafficante, the son, not the father.”
“Must be making himself a fortune.”
“That place is making all of them a fortune. They got one-armed bandits that pay out now and again, not very often, and bust-out dice that guarantee you ain’t gonna be a big winner at craps.” Hank scowled. “That place is just a machine designed to fleece the pockets of guys like us.”
I grinned at them. “Well, let’s just be smarter than that.” We walked on by and ignored the loud-mouthed shill standing out at the curb wheedling and taunting everybody passing by.
***
We finally settled on a small bar called the Mermaid’s Pearl a few blocks farther on. A small sign with blue neon tubing showed a mermaid holding up a fishhook in one hand and giving everyone a big wink. The sign would light up, then flicker, and the mermaid would wink. Then the sign would grow dark and start all over again.
I pushed through the door and went inside. This bar didn’t have salsa music. What it had was a big band sound that filled the room and warmed the heart. A guy in his sixties with a voice that was partially shot hung onto the mic and belted out “All or Nothing at All.” Even though he didn’t sound anything like Frank Sinatra, the song brought a smile to my face. Give me music like that and I feel at home no matter where I was.
The band was small but it crowded the stage with instruments and musicians. Most of the crowd that filled the place looked like they was regulars, not passengers visiting from one of the big pleasure ships lying at anchorage. Smoke sculled the ceiling like dark gray clouds, but not everything I smelled was from cigarettes or those thick Havana cigars. I’d been around the world a few times and I knew the score. There was a lot of contraband in that joint.
Sandbag slid through the crowd, flagged down a waitress, and had us set up at a corner table in about a minute flat. When it came to charting a course, I’d never seen anybody plot straighter than Sandbag once it came to reading wind and water. The cap’n swore by him.
The young woman waitress who came to take our order was a looker, tall, brunette, and curvy. Her green eyes belonged on an alleycat, and she didn’t hesitate about sizing a guy up. She turned heads throughout the bar, but didn’t give a man more than a second glance.
“What’ll it be, boys?” She blew a curl back from one green eye and gave us the once-over. Her attitude seemed American, but the accent was pure Cuban. Her pencil paused over her pad.
“Draft all around.” Sandbag twirled his forefinger in the air. “First round’s on him.” He pointed at me.
The brunette cocked an eyebrow at me. I gave her the nod. Everybody would be buying before we was through. We always made sure of that, but it made us feel like
big spenders all the same.
A guy at one of the other tables turned around and hollered at her. “Are we gonna be all night getting service?” He was a plug-ugly, and I figured him for one of the dockworkers or cargo handlers. Rough and strong, and impatient as all get-out.
I looked over at him and gave him the eye. “Pipe down and be polite.”
He looked like he was gonna get riled for about a minute, then gave it up when he got a better look at me. Patrick always told me I got this intimidating look about me when I got irritated. The nuns hadn’t liked the way I looked sometimes neither. He swiveled his head around and looked back at his buddies.
The waitress gave me a small smile. “Thanks, sailor.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll be right back with your drinks.” She turned and went and I watched her go.
Morrie slapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, Mick. I think she likes you.”
My ears burned a little and I glared at Morrie. I didn’t like nobody poking fun at me. Women made me nervous, even gals that worked in bars because I never knew for sure what to say to them. Didn’t stop them from hanging around occasionally, though, and I did okay when it came to keeping company with women. I might be nervous, but I didn’t let that stop me none, and women was usually involved in the fracases I had in different ports. Just couldn’t seem to stay away from them.
I tried to think of something smart to say, something to keep me from being mean to the kid, but we got interrupted by a guy in a cheap suit trailing cigar fumes in his wake. He was about thirty-five, hard-eyed and forceful. I didn’t like him right off the bat because he walked over like he owned the joint.
“Hello, boys. You look like you’re new in town.” He smiled but his eyes still looked like hard marbles set deep in his hard-boned face. I noticed the scar tissue around them then. “Tell me…do you like fights?”