Casey's Slip

by Richard L. Wren

  I tried getting a little pissed back at him.

  “Look, if you don’t think I tried and probably did a better job than the police, then you do it.”

  Interesting. He cooled down a little.

  “Anyway, I got the paper. Maybe that’s what you’re looking for.”

  “A single piece of paper? I don’t think so.” He was silent for a minute then, “Follow me.” That’s all, just, follow me.

  He led Red and me over to his boat. Below decks, lights on, he smoothed the paper out and read it to himself. “Just a bunch of numbers and short notes. Doesn’t make any sense to me. Here, you look at it,” and he handed it to Red.

  Red agreed and handed it to me.

  I took one look and immediately knew what it was. Studying at sea, I’d used the same method. It was a list of page numbers and short notes about what was on each page.

  “Give me a minute or two; I think there’s something worthwhile here. Look, the numbers are listed in numerical order but lots of numbers are missing. I think the numbers are page numbers. I think there was a notebook rolled up in here and Mitchell had made a record of pages he wanted to remember. He was establishing a pattern. Look at the notes after each number. Like the first number on our page, number 2. Right after the number 2 there’s a dollar sign and then the number one thousand and there’s a name. .Then the next number is 5 and after it is dollar sign 3,000 and another name. It goes on and on like that. My bet is that there was a notebook hidden in the boat hook and Mitchell was reading it and making notes about information on the pages listed.”

  “Why would anyone do that?” Red asked.

  “Yeah, and what could be in the pages that’d be worth killing for? Let me see that page again,” Smitty said. After a few minutes, he said, begrudgingly, “It’s possible. You might be right. But that doesn’t help us much. The paper’s just a hint; we need that book to find out what this’s all about.”

  “I think I know what it’s all about.” I interjected. “Think about it. The paper lists dates, names and amounts. I bet the books a record of blackmail pay off. I bet Mitchell had stolen the book, hidden it in the boathook and hoped that no one knew about his boat. He’d been reading the notebook and making his own notes. Maybe he was trying to blackmail the blackmailer and that’s why he was murdered.”

  “Wait a minute. Why didn’t he take the paper along with the book?”

  “It was down deep in the hook, maybe it fell out of the book?”

  A long silence.

  Finally, “I suppose it’s possible. That means that the book’s gone and we’re back at square one.”

  More silence. Then from Smitty, looking directly at me. “I dunno’. I think that’s too convenient for you. I still think you’re involved somehow. How do I know you didn’t take the book yourself? Maybe you found it on the way up and this’s all a smokescreen?”

  “Sure. And why would I find this piece of paper and give it to you?”

  Red broke the next silence. “That makes sense to me Smitty. And if he didn’t do the murder, someone else did. Maybe we can check around and see if anyone else saw anything.”

  A long silence ensued during which Smitty stared at me. It made me squirm. I was sure he’d decided to toss me to the wolves; it was just a matter of when and how.

  Suddenly he looked away from me and jumped to his feet.

  “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. First, and at least for now we’ll assume someone else murdered Mitchell. But we’ll keep young sailor boy here with us at all times until something turns up that clears him. No exceptions.”

  Turning to me he said, “You try escaping again, we’ll find you and you’ll be in deep shit. Got me?”

  CHAPTER 7

  “If you didn’t do it then I’m thinking it wasn’t an accident that the owner and his killer were both at the boat at the same time.” Smitty said.

  “Too much of a ‘coincidence. The murderer had to have been waiting around for a day or two, expecting the boat to show up. Then he’d have had to wait even longer for the owner to go on board, find whatever it was and start to leave.”

  He turned to me. “Okay, sailor boy, where could he do that and not be noticed?”

  I thought for a minute or two and asked, “Could he have hidden on one of the other boats?”

  “Not possible,” he said derisively. “I’ve been on my boat for the last several days. I would’ve noticed any strangers. But that gives me an idea. He had to be somewhere he could keep an eye on the docks. Someone must have noticed him. It’s a pretty tight-knit community down here, stranger’s would’ve be noticed.”

  “I dunno; there’s no other place he could hide, no empty buildings or anything.”

  “Well, assuming the guy had been driving, he could have been sitting in a car waiting for the owner to show up in his car. There’s only a couple of places he could have done that.”

  Red said, “I don’t see how that can help us, whoever he might have been, he’s long gone by now.” and poured us each a cup of freshly brewed coffee he’d been nursing along.

  “Ah, but it does,” Smitty responded. “Let’s see, there’s only two streets leading to the docks. If I wanted to cover both streets, there’re a number of places I could park and keep an eye on both of ’em. If he was here for more than a few hours, somebody must have seen him. What we need to do is ask every business within a several block area if they’ve noticed any strangers recently.”

  Red looked at me and said, “Sounds like an awful lot of work without much chance of success to me.”

  “Smitty wheeled around and asked, “You got a better idea?”

  He didn’t.

  “Look,” he said, “I know it’s a long shot, but it might work. And, we’ve got the crew to do it. In the morning they can canvas that whole area in no time, fan out and cover the whole damned neighborhood before the days out.” He glared at both of us, daring us to argue with him.

  After a moment he said “well, that’s settled then,” and told Red, “You go on home; I’ll keep an eye on Mr. Casey here on the boat tonight.”

  I was still being treated like cattle. I wasn’t asked for my opinion on anything, they talked about me like I wasn’t there and ordered me around like they owned me. Nobody asked me to stay the night; I was just informed that I was.

  He rustled up some blankets for me and I spent the night on the settee. I was fairly comfortable sleeping in my clothes, wrapped up in blankets, on somebody else’s boat. Hell that was about what I did every night on deliveries.

  The next morning dawned clear and bright. I know ’cuz Smitty was shaking me awake just as dawn broke. He told me to freshen up. That meant running up to the onshore heads, using the facilities and washing up. For a minute I thought about just keeping on running and getting away, ‘til I remembered that Smitty had my wallet. No tooth brush, no comb, no underarm deodorant, I wouldn’t be able to “freshen up” very much.

  Just as I got back from the head he returned with two guys. I recognized them from the day before so we didn’t need any introductions. Smitty said they were live aboard’s too. I couldn’t remember their names but we’d at least met. Smitty spent a few minutes bringing them up to date on what we’d done last night, then briefed them on his new plan. As soon as they understood what he wanted them to do, he got the ball rolling.

  “Okay. You two get back to your boats and call all the guys. Get ’em to meet me at the warehouse by – let’s say nine-thirty. Most of the businesses ’round here don’t keep real regular hours, so there’s really no point in starting much before ten. And tell the guys that they’re probably gonna be tied up most of the day. They’ll probably have to wait ‘til noon or later before some of the businesses are open. That’ll give us time to grab a quick bite on the way over to the warehouse. Get going. We’ll wait for you over at the restaurant.”

  “You’re gonna ride with Me.” he told me. “It’s breakfast time.”

  Suddenly I was more than r
eady for some eats. The four of us went to a mom and pop restaurant on the way to the warehouse and had a truck driver’s breakfast. It wasn’t a tourist spot. Most of the customers at this hour were either truckers or from around the docks. Almost everyone knew Smitty. He took the opportunity to ask if anyone had noticed any strangers hanging around over the last few days, but got no nibbles.

  When we got to the warehouse, Smitty said that most of the guys were there and that we should get going.

  “I want every single business, house, store and anything else in the area canvassed. I want you to ask if they’ve seen anyone or anything at all suspicious in the last few days. If some of the places aren’t open yet, keep going back ’til there’s someone there to ask. Don’t come back here till you’ve covered every place, unless you get something. What I’m ’specially looking for is a man, maybe a woman, who was kinda’ just hanging around for a couple of days. Anything out of the ordinary.”

  With that he told them to huddle up and decide who was going where, on their own. There were over a dozen Devils there. I felt like Smitty was exaggerating – it couldn’t take long to cover the area he’d outlined, not with this much manpower.

  Turned out, I was wrong and Smitty was right. Lots of the businesses weren’t open yet and the gang had to go back numerous times to finally catch someone in. But by early afternoon most of the guys had returned, empty handed.

  The guys kept coming in and going back out, trying to catch the businesses when they opened.

  Because I came with Smitty, I was pretty well accepted. No one volunteered much information about Smitty, except that he’d been in the gang forever, and even though he’d “retired” from active leadership of the gang, he was without question “the boss.”

  I still thought it was a waste of time to canvas that particular neighborhood. Most of the businesses down there were borderline. Just making a living, not very neighborly. I couldn’t see them volunteering much.

  CHAPTER 8

  Some of the guys were coming in saying that this was a huge waste of time. Smitty pushed them to keep going.

  A little after one thirty, one of the guys returned saying, “I think I got something.”

  “Let’s have it,” Smitty said.

  Expectations weren’t very high. So far, they’d been coming in with nothing but disappointments.

  “Okay,” the guy said, “like you told me, I kept going back to my places over and over, and finally it paid off. About a half hour ago, I went back to that little restaurant over on the next street and found the owner in.”

  “Get to the point” Smitty said.

  “Okay, okay. The owner said that a guy he’d never seen before had eaten dinner there a couple of times within the last day or so. What struck him as odd was that, after he’d finished his dinner, the guy had ordered sandwiches and a thermos of hot coffee to go each evening.”

  “That’s it! He had to be sitting in his car all night.” from Smitty. “What else did he notice?”

  “Nothing else, just the dinners, lunches, and coffee to go”

  “Bullshit,” Smitty barked. “I’ll bet my bottom dollar he knows more than he’s telling you. I want to talk to him.”

  With that he grabbed my arm and jumped on his motorcycle with me close behind. He singled out a couple of the Devils and told them to follow him. On the way, Smitty said, “I’ll get something out of that restaurant owner if I have to beat the shit out of him to get it.”

  At the restaurant, a whole new Smitty emerged. Nice as pie, he told the owner, a Chinese guy, he needed to know anything and everything he had noticed about the stranger.

  At first the owner said he’d told everything to our guy earlier in the day. But Smitty kept pushing. Finally he asked if he’d noticed the car the guy was driving. It turned out he had, but it wasn’t of much help. A dark blue sedan, that’s all he knew. He did say that he thought he’d seen the same car parked up at the corner several times.

  Smitty nodded. “That’s the place I’d have parked to keep an eye on both streets,” he said. “Did he use a credit card?” No dice. The guy paid cash, no charge records. It was beginning to look like a blind alley, except it kind of proved Smitty’s theory.

  But just as we were halfway out the door, the owner said he remembered something else. He said he’d tried to be friendly to the guy because of his patronage. He’d asked him if was going to locate in the area. The guy, he now remembered, had said he was just passing through – and was staying at the Seaside Inn, just down the street.

  Again Smitty nodded. “I know where it is. Not much of a place. Sure doesn’t attract the tourist set.” The owner agreed.

  We got as complete a description of the stranger as we could. Another ride on the back of Smitty’s bike. Smitty did know where the place was, and it only took a few minutes to get there.

  A half block from the place, Smitty hand signaled to the other guys to slow down and make a quiet approach. He yelled over his shoulder to me that he knew the owners, that it was a family run business. He didn’t want to scare them.

  In the parking lot he told the guys to stay outside, that he and I would go in alone. He wanted them close by in case the guy we were looking for was still there.

  We went in, Smitty taking the lead.

  A woman I’m sure the Devils would describe as “a tough old broad” was manning the desk. She and Smitty exchanged nods of common recognition, then Smitty launched into a story, saying we were worried about an acquaintance of ours who’d been staying at their place recently.

  “We had lunch with him a couple of times at the restaurant over near the docks. We were supposed to meet him again, but he never showed.”

  “What’s his name?” she replied.

  “See, that’s part of the problem. The only thing he told us was that his nickname was Blacky.”

  “Gosh, I don’t see how I can help you without a name.”

  “How about a description? Would that help?”

  “Maybe, normally, but I’ve only been here since noon today. My brother’s been on duty the last five days.”

  “Can we talk with him? We’re really worried about Blacky.”

  “Will’s not here now,” she told us, scratching her mop of gray hair. “He’s gone home. He’s probably in bed by now.”

  “Could you please try and get him on the phone. I know it’s a nuisance, but we really need to find him. I can describe him over the phone to your brother, or you could, and he might recognize him. We could at least find out if he just checked out or what. Please?” Smitty had a whole repertoire of ways to be persuasive. She relented and phoned her brother.

  Good thing for us, he was still up and wasn’t upset by the call. She described the guy to her brother, and he immediately knew who we were talking about.

  “He says you must mean Mr. Richards,” she told us. She listened for a moment while her brother filled her in. He left yesterday,” she repeated. “He never signed out, just never showed up after night before last.”

  “You tell Will we really appreciate it,” Smitty said. She passed along the message and hung up.

  Smitty thanked her over and over and then said, “Just to be sure, can you check his address for us?”

  She said, “Sure,” and went into a drawer, dug out his registration card and handed it over the counter to Smitty. No way could he have gotten that type of information from a Holiday Inn, only a mom and pop type operation like this. Smitty jotted the info into a notebook, then handed the card back.

  Now he had his full name, address, phone number, even his credit card number. If it wasn’t all phony, he had him.

  CHAPTER 9

  Smitty used his cell phone to call the warehouse and tell them we’d found the guy’s name. “He lives in Richmond.” He gave them the address.

  “See if anyone had a friendly cop in his pocket and find out if the address we got is real and for chrissakes, don’t let them know why we’re asking, Make up some good reason why you wa
nt to know. Maybe like he owes you money.”

  It only took a few minutes to get back to the warehouse, where we found all the Devils waiting for us. Smitty said, “It’s only three-thirty. I think we’ve got enough time to get out to Richmond and see if we can catch this guy!”

  Just then one of the guys came out from a back room and said, as far as the cop he called could find out, the address was real and up to date.

  “Okay,” Smitty said, “Let’s go!”

  “Hold it, Smitty. Not so fast,” said another guy. “We might have a little problem.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “There’s a cop car been parked around the corner. It looks like your friend the sergeant’s keeping an eye on us. We need to check on him before we take off.”

  “Shit,” Smitty said. “He’s really out to get me. Somebody go check.”

  It didn’t take long for a couple of the guys to take a stroll around the block and report back to us that they didn’t see any cop cars at all. If there had been a cop keeping an eye on Smitty, he seemed to be gone.

  Once more, Smitty said we should get going. He told the gang to follow him to Richmond. He said he had an idea about grabbing the guy, but needed to check something on the way.

  “Casey,” he barked, “If you can ride a bicycle you can ride a motorcycle.”

  “What? Whoa! Wait a minute.” I started ticking off the first reasons that came into my head. “I don’t have any experience, I don’t have a license, I don’t have a helmet and actually, I’m not even that good on a bicycle.” That covered it pretty thoroughly, I figured, but Smitty wasn’t buying.

  Ignoring me entirely, Smitty turned to another of his gang and said,

  “Dave, give him a quick lesson and bring him along. Keep an eye on him; he tried to get away once.” The guy grabbed my elbow and told me his name was Dave. He was the one who’d asked me how I knew Smitty, earlier in the day.

  I told him I wasn’t kidding. “I don’t know anything at all about driving a motorcycle. I’ve never even been on one as a passenger until yesterday.”