Red Sky in Morning A Novel of World War II

by Patrick Culhane

  “That we do our job. I have my orders, Sarge, and now you have yours. We go ahead and light this goddamn fuse, and do our best to find a way to snuff it out, before she blows.”

  Dark eyes fixed on Pete for what seemed forever, and was probably ten seconds.

  Finally, Washington grunted something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You know, sir, I guess I was wrong about you.”

  “How so?”

  “For a time there I was thinkin’ you was maybe the craziest white motherfucker I ever met. Turns out? You way crazier than that.”

  And Washington held out his hand for Pete to shake, which he did.

  “Partners in crime?” Washington asked.

  “Partners in crime,” Pete said.

  he two men spoke fifteen minutes more, going through another cigarette each as Lieutenant Maxwell shared everything he knew (which wasn’t much) with the Chicago detective. Then Sarge followed the lieutenant down into the engine room.

  Blake and Smith, the two white non-coms at work there, eyeballed the colored intruder as he came through the door.

  When Maxwell came looking for him, Sarge had already known about the murder; he’d acted suitably surprised, which wasn’t difficult, because Sarge had been as scared as every other Negro on the ship, every one of whom now felt a suspect in the murder of a white officer.

  Though the crime had not been announced—and how exactly the news had spread no one seemed to know—every colored crewman aboard was well aware that Lieutenant Driscoll had gotten his throat cut down in shaft alley. And each and every Negro onboard had figured the white officers would pick one of them out to take the rap.

  Now, judging from the furtive looks Sarge was getting from Blake and Smith, the handful of white crewmen on the ship must have felt just as scared as the Negroes—whose white throat would be slashed next?

  Still following the lieutenant, Sarge passed Orville Monroe, slumped outside the hatch to shaft alley.The small-framed oiler had a seasick look. Sarge figured this was natural, considering Orville had found the body, but said nothing as he followed Maxwell through the hatch into the dank confines.

  As they moved down the tunnel toward where Mr. Rosetti stood guard near the body, Sarge asked, “Has anybody interrogated Orville yet?”

  “No,” Maxwell said, his voice echoing in the tight quarters. “Nobody’s been . . . interrogated yet.”

  That explained Orville’s sick expression—the little fairy had found the body, so the white officers would assume he did the killing. Orv would hardly be the first colored boy to get strung up for being a black face in the wrong place at the right white time.

  “Finding the body doesn’t make Orville the only suspect,” Sarge reminded the lieutenant, who glanced back and gave a perfunctory nod.

  The body lay in a heap at the far end of this endless corridor—throat neatly slit by someone who knew what he was doing.

  “We don’t got much blood,” Sarge said, “ ’cause our killer slit Mr. Driscoll’s windpipe without cutting the carotid artery.”

  Maxwell and Rosetti exchanged quick smiles.

  What was that about? Sarge wondered.

  “Sickening damn crime,” Sarge continued, “but still . . . you got to respect the skill of this bastard. Knew enough to do this without getting much red stuff spraying, so’s he could make a getaway without wearing half of Mr. Driscoll’s blood on him.”

  “Go on,” Maxwell said.

  Sarge gestured behind him. “If this is the only way in here, Mr. Maxwell, why not just ask the men in the engine room who come in here after Driscoll?”

  “That’s the problem,” Rosetti said. “Way you came in is not the only way in.”

  “I don’t see no other door.”

  Rosetti motioned for Sarge to step over the body with him. They did this, then moved to the absolute back end of the tube next to the wooden ring surrounding the drive shaft as it exited the ship out to the propellor.

  Once there, Rosetti withdrew a flashlight from his pocket and directed the beam toward the low ceiling. Sarge could see the beam disappearing up a long, dark shaft.

  “What the hell is that?” Sarge asked.

  “Escape tunnel for the oiler,” Rosetti said. “If there’s a fire, he can climb out.”

  “To where?”

  “Main deck, boat deck—take your pick.”

  “Hell. If our killer gone up there, he could come out damn near anywhere without anybody seeing him.”

  Rosetti nodded. “About the size of it.”

  Sarge turned back to Pete. “Like I said before, we got ourselves one smart killer—clean way he cut Mr. Driscoll, now this escape tunnel? Says he’s smart. How many men on ship knew about that tunnel?”

  Shrugging, Pete said, “Anybody could have.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Well, it’s plainly visible on the cutaway view in the officer’s mess. And the oilers and engine room guys, they definitely all know—it’s their lifeline.”

  Sarge frowned. “Who’s seen the cutaway?”

  “All the officers, certainly . . . and anyone else who happened by, or asked to see it.”

  “So who asked?”

  Pete shrugged again. “Nobody that I know of . . . but any sailor could’ve talked to any officer and found out. In fact, the killer could’ve learned about the tunnel from Dick himself.”

  Sarge grunted, then returned his attention to the body, saying to Rosetti, “Sir, lend me that flashlight, please.”

  Rosetti handed the light over and Sarge knelt, in the tight quarters near the body, as best he could. He got a closer look at the fatal wound: short, neat, accomplishing its objective with both finality and a macabre grace.

  “Thin blade,” Sarge said. He looked up at Pete, then raised the beam of the flashlight to shine on the lieutenant’s face. “You still got Mullins’s switchblade, Mr. Maxwell?”

  “Why,” Maxwell said with grim humor, wincing at the light, “am I a suspect now?”

  “Who ain’t? Me included. And if you done it, Mr. Maxwell, you picked the wrong man to head up this dog-and-pony show.”

  “That’s not funny,” Maxwell said, blocking the beam with a hand.

  “Maybe not, Mr. Maxwell, but the question still stands. Do you have that knife?”

  “It’s hardly the only knife on this ship. We were just saying we hadn’t had a bag inspection since—”

  “You have the knife, sir?”

  “Yes. That is, I locked it up in the ship’s safe.”

  “And if it’s still there, it’ll go a long way towards clearing you.” Sarge’s hand was on Driscoll’s wrist. “Body’s still warm. Dead maybe two hours.”

  Rosetti’s eyebrows were up. “What’s that, your expert opinion? You’re a coroner, now?”

  Sarge shifted the flashlight beam over to Rosetti. “I didn’t ask for this job, sir. You going to fuck with me, or help out?”

  Rosetti didn’t blink at the harsh white light filling his face. “That remains to be seen—I don’t know you from the next colored boy. Pete says you’re a Chicago dick, but he’s from Podunk Center, Iowa, and is easily fooled. I’m from L.A.”

  Sarge rose and locked eyes with the ensign. “I was a cop in Bronzeville over ten years. Investigated near sixty homicides and got forty-nine convictions. Four resisted arrest and never made it to trial, one killed himself while I was knockin’ on his door to arrest his ass, another is as far as I know still running, but I figure the war won’t last forever and then that son of a bitch will be mine, too.”

  Rosetti’s eyes were wide now.

  Maxwell, amused, asked, “What, you don’t believe him, Vince?”

  But Rosetti had held up a traffic-cop palm. “Seaman Washington, if there’s any way I can aid you in your investigation, say the word.”

  “Appreciate it, sir. First thing you can do is tell me where you was two hours ago.”

  Rosetti offered no protestations about any status he might have as a suspect. “In the gal
ley drinking coffee,” he said, “making out reports on the engine incident. That’s where I was when the captain came through, on his way to the engine room, and told me to fall in.”

  “How long were you in the galley, sir, before the captain come through?”

  “I went into the galley before midnight and never left. The steward’s mate, Wilson, can vouch for me. He brought me a late dinner and coffee.”

  “Why the galley, not the officers’ mess?”

  “Privacy. I wanted quiet, and the cooks were gone and I figured I’d be done with my reports before they got back.”

  Sarge nodded, glancing from Maxwell to Rosetti. “Okay. Now, what are we going to do about the body?”

  “What should we do?” Pete asked.

  “Know anybody with a camera on board?”

  “I have one,” Rosetti said. “Nothing fancy—little Brownie.”

  “That’ll do fine. Know anything about taking photos at the scene of a crime?”

  “Well, I’ve seen it done enough times.”

  “Swell. Then you know to snap from every angle you can—get good and close on that wound. When you’re done, get a couple men to sew Mr. Driscoll into a sheet and stow him in the meat locker.”

  Rosetti merely nodded at that, but Maxwell blurted, “Meat locker? Are you kidding?”

  “Can’t leave him here,” Sarge said, “or he’ll get riper than that mutton. . . . Now, Mr. Maxwell, let’s us go talk to Orville and those two white non-coms.”

  Back in the engine room, where Blake and Smith were doing their best to keep the ship running at one-third power, Maxwell went first and Sarge took the rear as the pair escorted Orville Monroe up the stairs and into the passageway outside the engine room.

  The little guy was oozing sweat and his eyes looked everywhere but landed nowhere. The heat was oppressive, especially in the engine room, and Sarge and Maxwell were fairly sweat-soaked, too; but Monroe might have gone overboard and just been hauled on deck, wet as he was.

  “Seem kind of jumpy, Orville,” Sarge commented. “Even for you, son.”

  The engine noise was slightly muffled in the passageway with the hatch closed; but even then—and with the engine in bad shape—the roar might have been an airplane landing. “Hell yes, I’m jumpy,” Monroe said. He was trembling. “When did I ever see a dead body before?”

  Sarge studied him for a while. Then he asked, “Is that what’s give you the jitters, Orv? Seeing a dead white man?”

  Orville turned and fixed his nervous gaze on Maxwell. “What is this uppity nigger asking the questions for? Why ain’t you asking, Mr. Maxwell?”

  “Never mind why,” Maxwell said. “Just answer Sarge.”

  With no help forthcoming from Maxwell, Orville gave Sarge his full attention. “Don’t bullshit me, Sarge, you know and I know that there’s a dead white officer down in shaft alley, and some poor black bastard on this ship is going to pay for it.”

  “And since you’re the poor black bastard who found the body,” Sarge said, “you figure you’re first in line.”

  “Hell yes!”

  “Well, you’re wrong, Orv. Mr. Maxwell and me, we’re investigating what happened, and we ain’t making any assumptions about nothing.”

  “No?”

  “No. Now you just calm down, and take it easy, and tell us what happened.”

  “From when?”

  “Start of your shift.”

  Orville took a deep breath, then let it out slow. The way he was shaking, he might’ve been outside an igloo in Alaska, not an engine room in the blistering South Pacific.

  Maxwell shook out a cigarette from a deck of Chesterfields and used his lighter to get it going for Orville, who thanked him. The gesture, Sarge thought, was a smart one: all three knew it was against regs to smoke here, but the investigators needed to calm their subject, and this was a good start.

  Orville sighed smoke, then said, “Well, I got down to the engine room just ’fore shift started at twenty-three hundred. Wallace give me a report about his shift.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Sarge said.

  “First thing I did, when my shift really got goin’, was check the main bearing journal. Strainer’s been causin’ the problem with the engine. So, that was my first job.”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, I checked the bearings on the drive shaft in shaft alley, of course.”

  “And that’s when you found Mr. Driscoll?”

  Orville frowned, shook his head vigorously, and puffed away at the cigarette, not really inhaling—kid smoked like goddamn Bette Davis, Sarge thought.

  Orv was saying, “Everything looked swell at first. I just checked the bearings, then got right back to the engine room—got to keep an eye on the lube oil strainer, y’know. So, anyway, I didn’t find Mr. Driscoll until my second round through shaft alley.”

  Sarge nodded. “Did you see Mr. Driscoll come into the engine room, then go into shaft alley?”

  “No, but he might have. See, I was busy. Coulda missed him. Maybe Mr. Blake or Mr. Smith saw him.”

  “And you didn’t see anybody else go in there?”

  “Not a soul.”

  “Didn’t hear anything?”

  “You out of your mind, Sarge? You been in that engine room. It’s louder than Basin Street at Mardi Gras.”

  “Yeah, it is loud. By the way, Orv, you own a knife?”

  “No! Check my bag, check my bunk, I don’t carry such things. I am a gentle artistical type, Sarge, as you damn well knows.”

  Sarge patted Orville on the shoulder. “Okay, son. You done fine. That’s all for now.”

  Orville blinked and then blinked some more. “You done with me?”

  “Might be some more questions later. Unless there’s anything you think might be helpful to us, Orv, that you mighta left out by accident?”

  “No! Nothing.”

  “Maybe you want us to take a couple minutes, then, so’s you can tell Mr. Maxwell here about that other trouble. About the fella that has been—”

  “No! You was told in confidence, Sarge, and anyways that don’t have nothing to do with this here.”

  “Okay. One other thing . . .”

  “What?”

  “Put the cigarette out, Orville. And police the butt.”

  Orville did as he was told, then turned toward the engine room hatch.

  “Send Blake out, would you?” Sarge asked.

  “Okay,” Monroe said and disappeared through the hatchway.

  Perhaps a minute later, Albert Blake came through the hatchway and closed it behind him.

  Blake was almost as short as Orville, but stockier, more muscular. His ready smile softening a shovel-shaped face with heavy dark eyebrows and regular five o’clock shadow, Blake had a reputation for getting along with the colored boys. Seemed he’d seen enough hard times during the Depression that duty on the Liberty Hill, largely Negro crew or not, felt like a step up.

  Maxwell led off. “This is Seaman Washington.”

  “Radarman, right?” Surprisingly, Blake extended a hand and they shook.

  “Sarge has a police background,” Maxwell said, matter of fact. “So he’s helping me look into Mr. Driscoll’s murder.”

  “Makes sense,” Blake said, and leaned back against the passageway hall. “What do you fellas need from me?”

  Sarge asked, “Did you see Mr. Driscoll come into the engine room tonight?”

  “You know, I didn’t. Sorry.”

  “Could he have come in without you noticing?”

  “He could’ve. But, honestly, I doubt he did. I don’t miss a lot.”

  “Is it possible?”

  “Yeah . . . doubtful, though.”

  “What about Monroe?”

  “What about him?”

  “You see him go into shaft alley?”

  “I saw him—twice.” Blake frowned in thought. “Well, to be more accurate . . . once. Little queer was in there already when our shift started, then came out. Then he we
nt back later, and that’s when he run out hollering about finding Mr. Driscoll’s body. He was pretty worked up, but who can blame him?”

  Sarge nodded. Then: “Notice anything unusual about how Orville did his job tonight?”

  “You mean did he act more nervous than normal? He’s kind of a jumpy little feller to begin with.”

  “Yeah, but was he more worked up than usual?”

  “Not till he came running out screaming like a schoolgirl that somebody killed Mr. Driscoll.”

  “Other than that, anything unusual you notice tonight?”

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t see Mr. Driscoll come through the engine room?”

  “I did not.” Blake got a rag out of his back pocket and worried it between his fingers. “Closest thing to unusual, I guess, was Orville being on shift.”

  “Why’s that unusual?”

  “It’s not. It’s just that Orville, he always works slow in shaft alley, but then he’s slow when he ain’t in shaft alley, too.”

  “Lazy, you mean?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. Washington, I don’t think all coloreds are lazy or stupid, but some are—like some white men are. And Orville is small and slow. That’s just the way it is. Now, Wallace and Big Brown both get done in there way faster than Orville does. Truth is, they’re faster than him in every part of the job. As for Mr. Driscoll, he must have come down the escape tunnel, because he never came through the engine room.”

  John Smith, the boiler attendant from Missouri, had green eyes, wavy red hair starting to recede and a nose like a doorstop. Maxwell told Smith that Sarge would be asking the questions and he accepted that.

  The boiler attendant echoed pretty much everything Blake had said. “Mr. Driscoll did not come through the engine room. Neither did anyone else, for that matter. Monroe’s slow, but I think it’s on account of his nerves. You may not have noticed, but he has got a permanent bad case of the heebie jeebies.”

  “Thanks,” Sarge said.

  As Smith went back into the engine room, Rosetti came out with a Brownie camera in hand.

  Rosetti announced he’d finished the photos, then said, “I’ve got three men putting Dick in a sheet and sewing it closed. They should be bringing him out any time now.”

  “Maybe we should clear a path,” Maxwell said.